I stopped using the shaman dance after I tested it out on my first shaman character. Only interesting thing I can say about the summons is that their hits count as magic weapons. I don't like this ability at all.
I started a BG2 run over the weekend. I instantly found a use for summoning.
In the fight with the Cambion, I let the shaman spend some time summoning before I let him out. The spirits alone killed him fast.
So I was thinking, what about spending a few rounds summoning and then having your scout kite an enemy back into the group and have the spirits ready to go? Something I am going to have to look at through the run.
Really looking forward to getting the Demon Heart in the Planar Sphere and maybe actually killing the named one lol
My shaman run ended pretty badly - we lost. Ran into a pack of wolves and a pair of vampire wolves and then got hit with a ton of skeletons during a random encounter as we ran for it - and thats it folks. But it wasn't the shaman's fault it happened - we just didn't have any magical weapons when we encountered the vamp wolves and with everybody injured we fled and got hit with a random encounter - I've never seen so many skeletons all at once there had a be at least 16 or so completely surrounding us - who said that skeletons had no organization - they certainly did.
Overall the first shaman run, required some micro-management. My shaman, was a half-orc power house with 93 points (I was amazed when I rolled that) - with 19/18/16/10/14/16 - an exotic green-gray skinned, dark green hair, pointy eared, amazingly physically powerfully at almost 7 feet tall, and well spoken beauty with some scary eyes.
The single shaman spell I had was surprisingly useful for such a low level spell - it helped with the first assassin. Using bow and staff - she was able to adequately defend herself from most encounters. The summons - are still annoying - but they helped with the ogre with the belts - we almost didn't have to do anything but fire a round or two of arrows.
One strange thing - my shaman slept while dancing (sleep dancing maybe like sleep walking) sort of and we were interrupted in our sleep and she had 2 spirits all ready for action - how about that. Going to have to try that again to see if it works consistently - imagine a ready team of helpers to take on the monsters that like to wake you up - they should be chomped on by spirit creatures for waking us up - how inconsiderate of them.
One last sort of oddity - do half-orcs get fatigued faster than everyone else - my shaman was fatigued before anyone else - had the red bar that shows fatigue even before the others starting to complain about being tired. Dorn was like that too - he was always more fatigued than anyone else. He always said, "I notice you look tired, lets rest here it looks good."
I'm going to try again - I want to see how Dorn reacts to my shaman in a longer run.
I can't say I've noticed half-orcs getting fatigued quicker, but I've noticed those with lower CON tend to complain about being tired faster. Like right now on my sorcerer run, I have Rasaad in my party, and he complains about being tired far faster than anyone else.
Edit: I just had Safana join, and after a fresh rest (I needed my flame breath back to deal with some sirens,) she was the first to complain about the lack of rest, so far proving my theory right, as she has less CON than Rasaad. He was next in line, though, and he has the second least CON in my party.
Edit 2: Hrm... Branwen just threw a wrench in my theory, she got tired before Rasaad, and she has one more CON than he does. Will have to re-think this and experiment some more.
I can't say I've noticed half-orcs getting fatigued quicker, but I've noticed those with lower CON tend to complain about being tired faster. Like right now on my sorcerer run, I have Rasaad in my party, and he complains about being tired far faster than anyone else.
Edit: I just had Safana join, and after a fresh rest (I needed my flame breath back to deal with some sirens,) she was the first to complain about the lack of rest, so far proving my theory right, as she has less CON than Rasaad. He was next in line, though, and he has the second least CON in my party.
Edit 2: Hrm... Branwen just threw a wrench in my theory, she got tired before Rasaad, and she has one more CON than he does. Will have to re-think this and experiment some more.
It's not a theory. CON gives a modifier (plus or minus) to the number of seconds that a character will go, from resting, without becoming fatigued.
Personally, my shaman is a wrecking machine. Half-Orc.
We say ranged is king - you get a shortbow, a weapon relevant from start to finish. Half-decent armor, a nice buckler, an axe, and a half-orc's 19 natural strength lets me slug it out when I need to.
The spell system really works for me. Not a terrible amount of useful spells, so always having the 2 good ones per level, and the 3 decent ones on a whim, is pretty nice.
Summons - don't bother till after level 6. After that, abuse it, especially with a bit of meta. Although, I will say that once or twice the summons did help me out as a last resort in a long fight gone bad.
It's all in how you play it, like any class. When I play Shapeshifters they are unqualified weapons of destruction, so it's about finding your niche. If the class doesn't click with you, then no, it sucks. If it does, it's pretty powerful.
No one is ever going to say it's in kensage or berserker/cleric territory (or at least they'd be stupid), but if you're not devoted to absolute min/max, it's completely viable. I can see how I would solo it.
Started my Shaman from the opt in Beta of BG1 back in March. Played through that, then SoD, and now I'm just about finished BG2 and about to head into ToB. Already done Watcher's Keep and I'm about lvl 25 or something at the moment.
Overall I'll say that their sorcerer style casting is nice, make decent ranged DPS fighters, and their unique class specific spells are pretty neat (Used that mindlock Stun thing on about the last 3 or so dragons, and not having to 'memorize' a resurrection spell that is always available is a nice ease of life feature)
The spirit summoning dance is a crap gimmick that gets incredibly outclassed and doesn't scale well at all at the higher levels. When my frontline fighters are charging in with 3~4 attacks per round with -15 and better thaco, -10 and better AC, and dishing out somewhere between 25-40 damage per attack due to str and weapon and buff bonuses - then me standing there and getting the lol worthing 'No spirits answered your call' message while hoping for some weaker spirits to come in and join the fray becomes a waste of time and a fruitless endeavor, oftentimes me finally getting some into the fray just as the rest of my party has finished off whatever I am fighting. Even when I pre-dance and get 5 of them ready beforehand they don't do a whole lot compared to my beast higher level fighters, and typically just get ignored by the smarter AI enemies anyway, so they aren't even useful as meatshields or tanks.
Shamans do get some unique High Level abilities along with what I think is the Druid's pool of choices, nothing really memorable or standout though. An Enemy only Aoe that admittedly looks cool - but does crap damage along with some other stat draining effect. Some self buffs that cause them to take 50% less physical damage for a few rounds and another that lasts for an hour and casts an automatic Heal spell when they drop below 10% health. Would have been nice to get some proper epic unique spirit summoning thing, or maybe even some passives that make your regular summoning 100% chance along with making them actually viable at these epic levels.
Shame that the spirit summoning was the overall gimmick and selling point of the class when it's their spellcasting and decent gear allowances that actually makes me not outright hate my character. I do a nice decent amount of damage with the dragon tooth throwing dagger+3 or Impaler with my base str of 19(Spear/Dagger spec because why not, I almost forgot that throwing daggers used Str modifiers too ). Am currently wearing the Red Dragon Scale armour, was a surprise that I was allowed to don that and so she makes a half decent 'backup' 2nd tier fighter/caster I suppose with good AC and Thaco + Ironskin capability, just lacking proper amount of attacks per round.
Spirit Fire: A crappy 4th level fireball. Only nice thing I can say about it is that it deals magic damage instead of fire damage. Perhaps it will be more useful in BG2.
Don't forget the AoE Doom effect. That plus a Mage with Greater Malison is a nice opener to launch into a Fog Of War of enemies for follow up casting and/or for keeping your fighter slightly safer and to trigger their on-hit save effect weapons more often.
Don't forget the AoE Doom effect. That plus a Mage with Greater Malison is a nice opener to launch into a Fog Of War of enemies for follow up casting and/or for keeping your fighter slightly safer and to trigger their on-hit save effect weapons more often.
The doom effect only has a 33% chance of happening and a successful save vs. the spell will negate the doom effect. Unfortunately that means anything of consequence will never get doomed.
Comments
So I was thinking, what about spending a few rounds summoning and then having your scout kite an enemy back into the group and have the spirits ready to go? Something I am going to have to look at through the run.
Overall the first shaman run, required some micro-management. My shaman, was a half-orc power house with 93 points (I was amazed when I rolled that) - with 19/18/16/10/14/16 - an exotic green-gray skinned, dark green hair, pointy eared, amazingly physically powerfully at almost 7 feet tall, and well spoken beauty with some scary eyes.
The single shaman spell I had was surprisingly useful for such a low level spell - it helped with the first assassin. Using bow and staff - she was able to adequately defend herself from most encounters. The summons - are still annoying - but they helped with the ogre with the belts - we almost didn't have to do anything but fire a round or two of arrows.
One strange thing - my shaman slept while dancing (sleep dancing maybe like sleep walking) sort of and we were interrupted in our sleep and she had 2 spirits all ready for action - how about that. Going to have to try that again to see if it works consistently - imagine a ready team of helpers to take on the monsters that like to wake you up - they should be chomped on by spirit creatures for waking us up - how inconsiderate of them.
One last sort of oddity - do half-orcs get fatigued faster than everyone else - my shaman was fatigued before anyone else - had the red bar that shows fatigue even before the others starting to complain about being tired. Dorn was like that too - he was always more fatigued than anyone else. He always said, "I notice you look tired, lets rest here it looks good."
I'm going to try again - I want to see how Dorn reacts to my shaman in a longer run.
Edit: I just had Safana join, and after a fresh rest (I needed my flame breath back to deal with some sirens,) she was the first to complain about the lack of rest, so far proving my theory right, as she has less CON than Rasaad. He was next in line, though, and he has the second least CON in my party.
Edit 2: Hrm... Branwen just threw a wrench in my theory, she got tired before Rasaad, and she has one more CON than he does. Will have to re-think this and experiment some more.
It's not a theory. CON gives a modifier (plus or minus) to the number of seconds that a character will go, from resting, without becoming fatigued.
We say ranged is king - you get a shortbow, a weapon relevant from start to finish. Half-decent armor, a nice buckler, an axe, and a half-orc's 19 natural strength lets me slug it out when I need to.
The spell system really works for me. Not a terrible amount of useful spells, so always having the 2 good ones per level, and the 3 decent ones on a whim, is pretty nice.
Summons - don't bother till after level 6. After that, abuse it, especially with a bit of meta. Although, I will say that once or twice the summons did help me out as a last resort in a long fight gone bad.
It's all in how you play it, like any class. When I play Shapeshifters they are unqualified weapons of destruction, so it's about finding your niche. If the class doesn't click with you, then no, it sucks. If it does, it's pretty powerful.
No one is ever going to say it's in kensage or berserker/cleric territory (or at least they'd be stupid), but if you're not devoted to absolute min/max, it's completely viable. I can see how I would solo it.
Played through that, then SoD, and now I'm just about finished BG2 and about to head into ToB. Already done Watcher's Keep and I'm about lvl 25 or something at the moment.
Overall I'll say that their sorcerer style casting is nice, make decent ranged DPS fighters, and their unique class specific spells are pretty neat (Used that mindlock Stun thing on about the last 3 or so dragons, and not having to 'memorize' a resurrection spell that is always available is a nice ease of life feature)
The spirit summoning dance is a crap gimmick that gets incredibly outclassed and doesn't scale well at all at the higher levels. When my frontline fighters are charging in with 3~4 attacks per round with -15 and better thaco, -10 and better AC, and dishing out somewhere between 25-40 damage per attack due to str and weapon and buff bonuses - then me standing there and getting the lol worthing 'No spirits answered your call' message while hoping for some weaker spirits to come in and join the fray becomes a waste of time and a fruitless endeavor, oftentimes me finally getting some into the fray just as the rest of my party has finished off whatever I am fighting. Even when I pre-dance and get 5 of them ready beforehand they don't do a whole lot compared to my beast higher level fighters, and typically just get ignored by the smarter AI enemies anyway, so they aren't even useful as meatshields or tanks.
Shamans do get some unique High Level abilities along with what I think is the Druid's pool of choices, nothing really memorable or standout though. An Enemy only Aoe that admittedly looks cool - but does crap damage along with some other stat draining effect. Some self buffs that cause them to take 50% less physical damage for a few rounds and another that lasts for an hour and casts an automatic Heal spell when they drop below 10% health. Would have been nice to get some proper epic unique spirit summoning thing, or maybe even some passives that make your regular summoning 100% chance along with making them actually viable at these epic levels.
Shame that the spirit summoning was the overall gimmick and selling point of the class when it's their spellcasting and decent gear allowances that actually makes me not outright hate my character. I do a nice decent amount of damage with the dragon tooth throwing dagger+3 or Impaler with my base str of 19(Spear/Dagger spec because why not, I almost forgot that throwing daggers used Str modifiers too
That plus a Mage with Greater Malison is a nice opener to launch into a Fog Of War of enemies for follow up casting and/or for keeping your fighter slightly safer and to trigger their on-hit save effect weapons more often.