A handful of us have been brainstorming up a shaman revamp for a while, something that got majorly derailed when we lost our last server and it was necessary for effort and time to go a hundred places that weren't there.

The rough plan we've been working with called for a system of specialization along two axis, much like paladins have dedicate + virtues, or rangers have style and terrain, or warriors have specs and legacies.

Having seen (and liked) Valg's recent efforts to put a chunk of stuff in for orcs at a time rather than saving it all up to put in a massive set of changes at once, it occured to me that while proposed shaman revamp axis #2 was complicated and going to take a lot of time, axis #1 was something relatively simple that I could throw together in my spare time over a weekend, and so I have. Obviously this still does not put the shaman class near the completed full revamp we would like and still plan to do, but my hope is it breathes at least a little new life into a class that hasn't seen many changes in a while.

Here is the helpfile in question:

WARPRIEST
Syntax: warpriest <heavy/light>

This command allows a shaman to specialize their combat training. This choice
is made at the 10th level.

A shaman focusing in heavy armor receives the following benefits, each dependant on wearing heavy armor:
- Increased hit point regeneration.
- Minor reduction of damage caused by others; this improves as the shaman faces multiple player opponents.
- Increased chance for armor deflection of an attack.
- Small chance for heavy armor to reduce the effectiveness of a stunning
attack; this is very rare unless the shaman is fighting multiple player
opponents.

A shaman focusing in light armor receives the following benefits, each dependent upon wearing light armor:
- Increased mana regeneration
- Increased evade chance
- Increased effective level of supplications; this is more powerful while fighting and has a smaller effect upon communing to initiate combat or while not yet fighting.



I would like to point out the following additional things:

Currently, your warpriest choice can never hurt you. That is to say, if you pick light and wear all heavy armor, in the worst case your choice will do nothing for you and you will be exactly like a choiceless shaman. This may change in the future if/when other shaman goodies come in.

As a heavy armor warpriest, generally you benefit from wearing gear that is actually armor and is made of a heavy material like most metal, stone, and bone armors.

As a light armor warpriest, generally you benefit from wearing armor that is not the above, and/or is light in weight.

Generally speaking, I think shaman is a fairly terrible class to try to win a fight against a gang with. Because heavy warpriests have some abilities that get better as they're fighting a bunch of players, you might draw the conclusion that they're good for fighting a bunch of players. My gut feeling is that these improvements upgrade them from terrible to merely bad in this department.

The light armor warpriest casting level bonus works a lot like spellcraft, except it's generally a smaller bonus. I think this is a really useful ability and probably the best selling point for light armor for most PK-oriented shamans, but at the same time I would caution anyone not to expect too much from it -- with as many saving-throw-negates kind of abilities as the shaman class has, a small bonus has the potential to go a long way, but it is a relatively small bonus.

At this point I think both choices are pretty balanced; which is better often just comes down to the play style of your character.

Finally, it's entirely possible that there will be additional choices available someday, just as paladins eventually got the champion and monk options for dedicate added. I'd initially really wanted to do a weapons/melee warpriest choice, but I was unable to get it to a state where I was happy with it in terms of not overlapping too strongly with other classes and balancing reasonably with the other two. At a later date that or other options may become available but currently the light and heavy options are all I plan to work on for the foreseeable future, so I wouldn't recommend saving your choice and hoping.

nt

.

Wesley Hinkley wrote this on the fan page:
---
Personally, I like the term "Warpriest" way more than Shaman, IMHO. Shaman has the connetation of the half-naked, skull helmeted, fetish wearing naturalist priest dancing to evoke spirits (sorta like the Witch Doctor of Diablo 3), whereas the CF Shaman class really is none of those things. Warpriest fits better.

So basically, I'd be happy even with just a name change."
---

I fully agree with this, although this depends on what you have in store for us in part 2. Right now, as the class is currently warpriest is a much more fitting class name. Shaman invoke nature'y references to me.

So perhaps when part 2 starts to go in, look at renaming the class if it dont fit with what was mentioned above.

Anders
aka. Cerunnir.

When shamans were first brought in, I was ecstatic... until I played one and figured out that they didn't fit my stereotypical image of a shaman.

Animists are more inline with what the term "shaman" brings to mind.

Do light warpriests get the evade skill or is it more hardcoded evade? I checked and saw it was not in the shaman skill tree.

Also, are shaman communes more powerful with high wisdom?

Can we have bone armor benefit both choices? It's got a very shamanny feel to it.

Glad to see the change.. shamans always seemed like a fun class, but a bit too weak for me to actually wanna play one.

>Do light warpriests get the evade skill or is it more
>hardcoded evade? I checked and saw it was not in the shaman
>skill tree.

More the latter. Currently no skills are attached to either specialization.

>Also, are shaman communes more powerful with high wisdom?

Nope. Probably you'll see some that care about it in the eventual Part 2.

>Can we have bone armor benefit both choices? It's got a very
>shamanny feel to it.

You might be able to sucker Valg into giving the class bone armor use; that being said, a decent chunk of bone armor is heavyish and probably would mechanically suit heavy armor warpriests even though the shaman class doesn't have bone armor use.

>Glad to see the change.. shamans always seemed like a fun
>class, but a bit too weak for me to actually wanna play one.
>
>

Since I know for years there was a great misconception about what armor meant for gates.

When you say armor do you mean things that flat out have high weights.

Or do you mean things made out of certain materials like metal, leather, woood.

Or things with high ac values.

or some combination of the above.

svbsdrvbs

Some combination of the above; I'll unvague that some:

If you're a heavy armor shaman:

To get maximal value out of your specialization (which may not be worth your while if it otherwise compromises what you're trying to do with your armor, there are trade-offs, etc.) you probably want to aim for pieces of armor that are actually armor, and are made of heavy materials like metal, stone, and sometimes bone.

If you're a light armor shaman, you probably want to avoid the stuff that heavy armor shamans like, and additionally you prefer lighter weight armors.

Some armor (including a lot but not all of the dragonscale stuff I checked) falls into a kind of limbo wherein it's not as heavy as a heavy armor shaman wants but it's not as light as a light armor shaman would like either.

What do you mean by Heavy?

Are we talking about a 29lb steel breastplate?

Are we talking a 5 lb steel breastplate?

Are we talking a 29lb leather breastplate?

I'm still not clear on weather you're talking about the material it's self it's AC value or it's weight.

Material and weight.

AC value is relevant to armor deflection, however, which heavy armor warpriests do better than most people.

What about armor that is of a "heavy" material like stone or iron but for one reason or another is relatively lightweight?

Splntrd

"Material and weight."

Think it needs both.

sfvbsvb

So you have three things that matter:

Weight
Heavy: Higher number is better maybe starting at around 15lbs
Light: Lower number is better maybe starting at around 2lbs

I made these numbers up. They're almost certainly at least kind of wrong.

Material:
Light: cloth, leather, energy, fur, silk,
Heavy: iron, copper, steel, all stones, ice, dragonbone, bone
Not sure: wood, mithril, adamantite, flesh,

Class
Light - You want it to say "is clothing worn on"
heavy - You want identify to say "is armor worn on"

Questions:
Is there any way, as a shaman you'd be able to figure out what was actually working? Like if I took a wood shield and an iron shield that weighed the same, would I be able to tell for sure if I was getting a bonus? If I wanted to go from my made up 2/15 lb cutoffs to something not pulled out of my ass, how would that be possible? For most stats you just get a plain number e.g. str, damroll, saves, etc. For this it seems like you just have no way of knowing at all, except in very broad "hey when I wear all dresses and veils I regen noticeably faster" sort of way.

Is there anything you could add like adding something to score? For stuff like stats you can definitely get an idea, but it seems like for this you're basically shooting in the dark. You have no idea if it's worth losing 1 str to go from 10 pounds to 20 as a heavy priest, because you have no idea how much good that 20 pounds will do. Maybe something like :

Warpriest effectiveness: none, poor, fair, good, very good, excellent, superb

How does being naked compare to wearing something appropriate for the lightpriest flavor. E.g. empty slot vs 1 ounce, cloth, clothing-class bodywear?

For heavy priests, does slot type matter. E.g. A breastplate will give a lot more heavypriestness than a glove? Do items held in hand count? If I wave around that tubing from the sanctum, am I INVINCIBLE?!

As always awesome! Now I'm really incliend to try my first Shaman.

Always shoot first and then call whatever you hit the target.