Shammy or Chanter?Follow

On my server shammies are a dime a dozen. I've seen tons of them around and know a lot of people that play one or start one up. Personally I would go with chanter. A good chanter will stand out more than a good shammy (no offense to any good shammies).

Shams get healing and dots abilities. Chanters get cc and charm abilities but lack major dps. I don't really know the pros and cons of a shammy cuz I don't play one. My main is a chanter and I love playing the class.

Having done a bit of both, shammans are definately a more offensive class to play. With good dots and slow you can offtank a lot of mobs. Get the wolf pet and it gets bit better. I have soloed to 21 a chanter, so I dont haver a lot of charm exp. Chanters are more in demand for cc, and mean never having to worry about having some form of manna replacement. Damage spells are probably the worst of any pure caster,and the pet is not controllable.
I have fun with both, but if you have a chanter you will usually find a group as well.

Having played a chanter to mid 50's, I can say that it was my favorite class so far. They get great slows, great haste, ok dots and dd spells, and runes which are a small help. They get the mind buff spells, of course, and a pet thats acts like a nice punching bag. There mezz and AOE mezz are awesome and are certainly needed in most groups.

The pet needs some buffs, summoned gear, to be really effective but I have been able to make it work even without the gear. Haste is a must. You will also need to tash and slow the mobs. You cannot control your pet so you have to be able to take a beating in order for the pet to engage. This is where the runes come in.

/nod

I play a chanter main (lvl 70 with like a lot of aas) and a secondary rogue (lvl 70 with like a little bit of aas).

Next time you log on do a /who all for both chanters and shammies. Even limit the /who to different lvls and compare. There are a lot more shamans than chanters. I think part of it is because a bad chanter sticks out a lot more, and good ones are rare (just like bards).

make a chanter you won't regret it.

Yes you will when you get passed over for bards and shaman >_> =p


That is another option a bard.....

From my limited experience as a shaman (only like level 35ish on that character), the quote above brings up an excellent point. As a chanter you will buff with haste, clarity, and occasionally a few other buffs. As a shaman, you could spend all day doing nothing but buffing your group. The main reason I don't play my shaman anymore is because alot of pickup groups I got expected me to throw every buff in the book at them AND still have mana for slows, AND heal them, AND DoT things to do damage.

I had too many groups with my shaman where I had to handle CC by basically have all adds beat on me while the tank and the rest of the group beat up one. It just got so ridiculous in an LDoN one time where the entire group got mad at me because the tank was at 40% and I hadn't healed him. This would be a totally reasonable complaint if there weren't 5 mobs in the room, one with the tank and every other group member trying to kill it. The other 4 were attacking me. Group killed one. I killed three before the group got on to killing the last one. It just felt like I was there to PL the whole group, so I went back to my chanter.

That said, shaman are totally awesome and do get great groups at the higher levels, I just couldn't stand what I had to deal with from 30-35.



Me too. Though not both at 70. I know three other chanters with their secondary as a rogue. Kinda odd.

Good points. I went with the rogue so I could work with the augs my chanter was cutting. Everything you listed, though, is what kept me playing once I had poison making to 300.