• Should have enough hit points to cover 3.5 - 4 times the highest amount of damage an Ugly can do to you.

For example: If a single Ugly can do a MAXIMUM of100 points of damage to you, this means that the average Ugly is going to hit for 50-60 points of damage. Having between 350-400 hit points should be enough to cover the damage that a group of uglies can do to you if they all successfully hit. PLEASE NOTE WE ARE TALKING ABOUT HIT POINTS, NOT RANKS IN STRENGTH.

Agility

• You should have AT LEAST 1 favor in agility for every level that you have.

For example: If you are level 20, you should have 20 agility. If you are level 350, you should have 350 agility.

Notes: Agility is a rather unique circumstance for Shaman. Depending on the leader bonus that they have, they may be able to effectively ignore Agility for a time. However, if you have a claw attack, that is not possible. The benefit of having low agility is that you can get hit more, and thus, use Heal more often for great favor gain. However, in terms of PvP, this leaves you vulnerable to other players who have leader bonuses similar to yours.

Most leaders tend to keep thier Spirituality levels low enough that thier minions can get hit to some degree by thier uglies to help thier minions speed up thier favoring by allowing them to use Heal often.  If you have Shaman as your second role and benefit from either Warmonger, Buracracy, or Dungeon Mastery, then you may have substantial defense and thus, not favoring Agility does you little good since you aren't going to get hit by your uglies anyway.

The one way you could possibly choose to allow Agility to lag behind is if you get either Spirit Shield or Sphere of Protection and use that as a way to artificially boost your base defense.

Energy

• If you have a magical attack, Energy should be AT LEAST as high as the number of ranks in the magical attack. If you have a magical second role, it should be 2 -2.5 times higher than your level.
• Energy should be 1.25-1.5 times your level for non-magical shaman.

For example: If you are a 350 Shaman/magical with Cold Breath at 800 ranks, you should have Energy at 800 ranks at least.  If you are a Shaman/Magical without a magic attack, you should have Energy around 700-750. If you are a level 300 non-magical shaman, you should have Energy between 375-450

Authority

• You should have AT LEAST 1.75-2 times your level invest in Authority

For example:  If you are level 100, you should have 175-200 in Authority.

Notes: Authority is extremely important for Shaman.  Having high Authority will not only allow you to use your skills better, it will increase the amount of favor you get for using them and hunting...thus you favor quicker.

Skills, Kills, and Thrills!

With all the skills available to a Shaman, how are you supposed to favor them relative to your attributes?  Here is a general look at how to favor your skills.  Please remember that every character has different needs and goals so its perfectly fine to deviate away from the advice below.

General Notes

You should never let either your attack or your shaman skills get proportionately out of balance to your attributes.  Balance MUST be maintained.  This will cost you a bit of firepower and shaman strength early on, but through the mid-to-high range of levels (350-1000), it will truely pay off. HOWEVER, you can allow your attributes to be disproportionately higher than your skills.

For example: You should never have a situation like this:

Strength: 400
Agility 300
Authority: 250
Energy: 350
Tooth and Nail: 1000
Heal:700

That is just setting up your character for disaster in the long run when you can put a big hurt on your uglies, however if you get hit, you're basically done.

A situation like this however, is ok (though, may not be desirable to some), but you may run into some difficulty with the success of your attacks and spells:

Strength: 900
Agility 750
Authority: 650
Energy: 750
Tooth and Nail: 200
Heal:100

The best situation however would probably be a more balanced setup like this:

Strength: 600
Agility: 350
Authority: 555
Energy: 425
Tooth and Nail: 400
Heal: 330

Favoring Skills

Now we'll take a look at how to favor your skills and what goals you should have while favoring.  For most skills, its ok to get success down to 50 and then effectively ignore it in favor of other skills or attributes. Some skills however require more investment before you can "ignore" them.

Attack Skill

• How to favor your attack skill is a matter of opinion to most people.  Some wish to have an extremely powerful attack while others consider it more important to have stronger shaman spells.  I would suggest maintaining a level of attack skill that can allow you to have "one-hit kills".  Never let your attack skill grow unproportionately to its supporting Attributes.

Heal

• To gain favor most effectively as a shaman, get Heal and begin favoring it so that its success drops down to 50. Heal is the lifeblood of Shaman.  Learn it, use it, love it.  On a good day, I can gain a favor every 2 minutes with the proper use of my Heal. Once heal success drops to 50, you can effectively ignore favoring it if you choose to do so.

Carapace and Endure Damage

• Both Carapace and Endure damage are two skills which you must favor beyond the point of attaining a success of 50.  For each of these skills you must favor them to at least 450 in order for them to have maximum effectiveness.  At 450, both Carapace and Endure Damage will block every type of damage the individual skills can possibly block.

Sphere of Protection and Spirit Shield

• Getting Sphere of Protection and Spirit Shield success down to  50 may or may not be enough to effectively ignore this skill.  You may wish to continue favoring SoP or Spirit Shield if you are using it as your primary means of defense.  You may also wish to favor Spirit Shield more in order to push away attackers more frequently.

Cure

• Getting Cure success down to 50 is probably enough to effectively ignore it.  However, if you feel that you aren't Curing enough poison per round, then you will need to enhance it more.

Sacrifice, Wards, Fortify

• Getting success down to 50 is most likely enough to effectively ignore these skills and work on Attributes.

You know the roles, you know the skills....now lets take a look at some possible Character Setups.