Oracle vs Shaman

[jesada89237]

:ora: vs :sha:

Which of these is REALLY the better healer?
Sure, oracle may heal for more, and her seth's will is more effective than brutal will, but she lacks noble sacrifice. This skill is actually pretty good for PvP. If you're evenly matched against your opponent, then both of you should be doing the same-ish amount of damage to eachother.

Let's say you're near the end of the battle and both of your have an open path to your healer. All other mercenaries are at 25% health. With the oracle, your only choice is to heal a row, and possibly switch her and move her out of danger. The other person, with an oracle, can sacrifice her and heal the rest of the party, while adding defense at the same time, over several turns. With this, the team with the shaman has a higher chance of winning.

A downfall of noble sacrifice is that it gives your opponent 100 points for losing the shaman...so if the battle is almost over and your points are tied, sacrificing her would actually cause you to lose.

-Personally, I prefer an oracle over a shaman, mainly because I like seth's will.

[PuppyPumper]

I prefer oracle for many reasons. The main being that the opportunity cost of having an oracle over a shaman just make more sense.

Also, the noble sacrifice skill must be used at critical HP, so you are also throwing another variable in the mix. They have to have your squishy healer almost dead to even make this point valid.

In my opinion, the rare instances where a shaman would be beneficial do not occur often enough to merit the lack of better healing and overall stats.

[Demon]

well id say the skill noble sacrafice is good against a team that focuses on AOE pressure where line healing wont be a good enough!

[UnderRasLight]

Well, I admit I am biased, as I have the scroll for my oracle but have not opened it yet, having focused instead on my shaman. That being said, if I were effectively able to farm the books for an oracle, I might change my mind. Maybe because I have had it for so long ( she is 90 now) I am too attached to her, or maybe I want to get her to 100 and get her on her way, but I figure I can suffer without an oracle for the time being.
As well, I hardly ever pvp so that aspect does not factor into my choice.

[LostCause]

I personally perfer the shaman over oracle because of noble sacifice. To me it has help me turn the tide in many battle and you dont need it at very high lv to really benefit from it.

Also i am not planning to run seth/will so oracle slightly better heal dont make a huge difference for me as it cost alot mroe to upgrade her skill and merc to really benefit. Maybe at end game when i can afford to upgrade her and her skill she would be chosen over my shaman but for now Shaman is my prized choice.

[aphrodite]

well, ur situation of both near death and u use noble sacrifice, think about it this way, if u had a oracle, u wouldn't b in that situation cuz ur oracle would keep ur hp above that of ur opponent w/ a shaman counterpart

oracle>shaman
replace asap imho

[Zpirit]

Well I have seen my healer down to 30% or lower a lot of times with 2 other lines that needs healing.

(mainly after a meteor + beast + deep insight)

Will need some testing to truly appreciate noble sacrifice imo.

(I also find the oracle voice extremely annoying so that's +1 for the shammy :D )

[jesada89237]

well, ur situation of both near death and u use noble sacrifice, think about it this way, if u had a oracle, u wouldn't b in that situation cuz ur oracle would keep ur hp above that of ur opponent w/ a shaman counterpart

oracle>shaman
replace asap imho

well, of course the shaman would be healing also...

[Flexor]

the ONLY reason why u should use shaman over oracle is because of noble sacrifice and cheapness to upgrade cost

[Axiom]

the ONLY reason why u should use shaman over oracle is because of noble sacrifice and cheapness to upgrade cost

That's not quite true. Many people revert to the noble sacrifice argument, but not too many look at their offensive skill.

Even if few people use it, Vortex is still much better than Hex of Darkness. One of it's more key points is that Vortex won't heal undead/shadow mobs like Hex of Darkness does. Also DoT skills are often underated in pvp matches and it's surprising how effective they can be.

[ziv]

So then I take it that Hex of Darkness is useless for pvp? Not even when combined with Dark Seed?

[Axiom]

I'm not going to say hell flame is worthless. I'd just prefer divine slash.

[Kiena]

What about vortex removing chaos wind? I've heard this is a problem - is it a bug, or something else to consider?

[nem4z17esis]

Oracle is the better healer hand down.
Shaman is just a weaker verison of the oracle.

[Jimsta]

Well, obviously the C rank merc is going to be better then the D rank counterpart, but if I'm not mistaken they're talking about the attack skills/buff they have? I didn't really read this whole post through.

In any case, Oracle's combo with Lady Knight > Hell Flame. I've never heard of this bug with chaoswind though, I should go test it out...

[A13x]

I also prefer Oracle - couse noble sac. i only can use 1 time in a fight. And the heal heals way more then blessing life. So if i have an battle where each makes same dmg - this one with the Shamane are way faster at 25% of all his mercs.And you say open path to your healer? why not just close it? ^^
And if you not have enough mercs to close the open path, then is noble sac. not that good - couse you dont have many mercs to heal.

[Kode]

It's shaman for me. Noble sacrifice is godly if well used in pvp. Also miko looks way better than oracle. But if I wanted to go for brutal/seth or just raw healing, I would get oracle without a word. She's way better in that. Shaman is specialized for noble, and that is the only argument to keep her.

[Balathorn]

Divine slash is garbage, pure garbage. From a combo standpoint divine slash has nothing on hellflame (comparable damage, and if you're lucky/planned well enough you can get additional damage from flame). In case you didn't already know, the "quick math" behind Divine slash is: with max level on both skills you get an extra 300-400 damage at the expense of 10 turns of vortex DoT.

Also as a side note, noble sac, like every other "oshit i'm kicking the bucket" skill can be activated at around 40-50% HP (so you don't need to have your HP bar flashing).

As for the topic, as always i'm going to throw in a depends.

Why use a shaman? It's the only one than can enable you to run some gimmick builds/combinations such as hellflame or DS/Noble Sac.

If you intend to use the slot for healing or willing, oracle will always win hands down.

[meloku2]

Shammy HAS nobal sacrifice it's fun to use. Besides that oracle > shaman.

[Nightroad]

Which is better depends on the situation and build. This is based as individual skill rankings and not combinations for various builds.

Will Builds
Shaman > Oracle
Brutal will is very similar stat wise at high levels, but the defense debuff is lower making it a more valuable decision. Seth's Will may be slightly better offensively but also debuffs more defensively.

Healing
Shaman < Oracle
"Healing" is the stronger straight heal.

Desperation
Shaman > Oracle
Noble Sacrifice has no counter part.

DoT
Shaman < Oracle
Vortex is stronger, and does NOT heal shadow units. Aswell it combos with the common swordsman replacements; Lady Knight's "Light Slash"

[Balathorn]

Will Builds
Shaman > Oracle
Brutal will is very similar stat wise at high levels, but the defense debuff is lower making it a more valuable decision. Seth's Will may be slightly better offensively but also debuffs more defensively.

The defensive debuff is not important since as far as i remember it's about -500def (easily ignorable), but extra ~60attack and ~11% chance to multihit is a pretty big DPT increase

[Nightroad]

For the extra debuffs given by seths, the actual attack difference hardly makes a difference. And as I said I am merely comparing the individual skills.

Brutal Will
[LV] [HP-] [Attck+] [Hit Rate+] [AP+] [MP cost]
1___-116____ 150_____ 13_____ 50____ 120
21__-196____ 230_____ 25_____ 60____ 180
41__-276____ 310_____ 37_____ 70____ 240
61__-356____ 390_____ 49_____ 80____ 300
65__-372____ 406_____ 51_____ 82____ 312

Seth's Will
[LV] [HP-] [Def-] [Attck+] [Hit rate+] [AP+] [MP cost]
1__ -225_ -410__ 150_____ 14%___ 55____ 210
21_ -325_ -418__ 250_____ 28%___ 67____ 310
41_ -425_ -426__ 350_____ 42%___ 49____ 410
61_ -525_ -434__ 450_____ 56%___ 91____ 510
65_ -545_ -425__ 470_____ 58%___ 93____ 530

[Balathorn]

For the extra debuffs given by seths, the actual attack difference hardly makes a difference.

I guess this is where we'll have to "agree to disagree" :). Just a note though, at high levels 400 def is about 2-3% of the total defense if not less while "% extra attack" is a "force multiplier".

[Nightroad]

I guess this is where we'll have to "agree to disagree" :). Just a note though, at high levels 400 def is about 2-3% of the total defense if not less while "% extra attack" is a "force multiplier".

Again its still situational, like most things, but no sense in doing an extended debate about it. We both have valid points regardless.

[ewe]

Noble Sacifice is the big thing for shaman.
Not only it heals the rest of the party for a couple of turns, it gives them defence boost as well. In pvp, all that matters is those few turns.

[Zpirit]

I got an idea, have both and switch in shaman vs AOE teams ;)

[methane]

I think shaman and oracle are both the same. Except one main difference. Shaman has noble sacrifice. A skill which i did not pump. Not that i think its useless but more to the sense that i haven got to a situation that my shaman is dying before my tankers are. If you have noble you probably losing out on a healer for the rest of the fight. And also oracle is better in the sense that vortex hits harder and heal more. About the seth will and brutal will i find no big difference among them. When we gets these 2 we're really just looking at the combo rate for more hits and the ap increase. Therefore after comparing these 2 i find that they're pretty much similar just that oracle has slight better effects against shaman's. Final conclusion is that i vote oracle. More heal and better dot.

[jesada89237]

Well, vortex and hex of darkness are pretty useless IMO, so I didn't consider them.

[Tuanie]

everybody say noble sac, is good....but i wouldnt know cause my stupid shaman wont cast it, and my noble sac is at lvl 21 :/ but i'm not really into deep of a health problem for my shaman to use it.

Oracle can do more imo.
oracle can also heal and other useful skills where shaman you pretty much use heal and ns. from time to time

[Samwise93]

Oracle wins hands down.

[AtsushiHayami]

i'd say Oracle better healing than the Shaman

[Elistaria]

I was using neither Oracle nor Shaman and I can avoid dropping down from div 10 below level 85! (82 now!) I think in PvP a healer slows down your formation and takes up a slot that a more usefull merc. could have taken.

[Marisa the Rainmaker]

IMHO Shaman for PvP, and Oracle for PvE. In PvE, there should be no situations where noble sacrifice is useful over better heals. In PvP, however, that 3k-5k heal for three turns can easily turn the tide of an end-battle, while an oracle's row heal can only go so far.

[jesada89237]

IMHO Shaman for PvP, and Oracle for PvE. In PvE, there should be no situations where noble sacrifice is useful over better heals. In PvP, however, that 3k-5k heal for three turns can easily turn the tide of an end-battle, while an oracle's row heal can only go so far.

I've ran into plenty of situations where noble sacrifice has saved my team in PvE. Most recently being the fight against Byzantine Emperor's Shade. He blows up on your party (it effects all 9 mercenaries). With my formation, it was enough to bring all my mercenaries down to ~400 health. Noble sacrifice saved me because he exploded again soon after...had I tried to heal row by row, I wouldn't have been able to heal my third row in time.

[meloku2]

well noble sac can always buy u 2 turns in pvp, especially late game, where amount of merc standing decides who wins most of the time.

[Shizi]

shaman is my fav merc =)

noble is a game winner