I never thought I would hear myself say this but....

[EZ_Myrkskog]

Well, DaoC has ran its course with me, and ive heard nothing good about Horizons. We saw EQ Evolutions is 30 bucks, so to pass the time until EQ2 and WoW come out, my brother and I have decided to start up again(we quit during Luclin initially). We want to play on Sullon Zek, and he plans on making a shadow knight Ogre. I am thinking about making an Ogre Shaman to play with him. Basically I just want to know has much changed with either of these classes in the past two years?

Since we will be starting from scratch, most of the money can be spent on getting the SK a good weapon and some armour. From what I remember shamans are low maitenance.

Basically I just want to know are these two still a good combo, and are there any mechanical problems with either.

[Elerion]

They are probably still the best "normal" combo for most of the game. You can do a druid/chanter or cleric/chanter combo to make a badass charming team that will be crazy efficient from 1-65 though, but it might bore you, and is a lot more skill intensive. Pet class combos like necro/bst are also great, and generally the bst is one of the more versatile duo classes out there, sporting a private tank, slows, heals, buffs and more. Caster combos like chanter+dru/cler or pet class combos are less gear intensive than tank based combos.

For "fair" PvP, I dont think any duo beats SK/Sham, but I don't know too much about it.

Either way, the SK/Sham combo is still very very good, albeit more gear intensive than some of the other popular duos.

[EZ_AsturiasAurora]

Changes in thsoe two classes? Actually quite a good variety of changes for SK's and Shamen over the last year or so.

SK's - Shadowknights seem to hold the top of the flagpole when it comes to GETTING aggro. Those viscious lifetaps and debuffs they get are major aggro-pullers. 2nd in line would be a Paladin with their stuns but those mainly work better to HOLD the aggro rather than to pull it in the first place, unless they have their AE heal aa which taunts better than just about anything I have seen. SK's are VERY gear-intensive though, as Elerion said. If you got teh cash to put down, your SK will dominate the battlefield. If you don't, you won't really end up being mroe than a normal warrior with a few spells (that are going to suck your mana dry as they do any other hybrid). Some kickass new SK/Pal only weapons to come out of PoP though. Even if those two classes didn't already have enough reasons to skip their worthless epics, they have even more reasons now.

Shamen - The changes to Shamen with PoP were phenomenal. The Alternate Advancement abilities gave shamen some really nifty edges to situations. i.e.- Summoning up to 5 other "pets" at the same time, that attack the mob for a limited time, then disappear. The spells they get like DoT's and HoT's are astounding. Makes doing the epic for them almost meaningless when a 64-65 spell of theirs does more damage faster.

I'm not sure how they are in PvP these days, as I haven't played on a Zek server since pre-Luclin so I can't offer any insight there.

To sum up though, PoP gave just about ALL classes some new defining characteristics -- albeit some more than others. Shroud of Stealth, Dire Charm, and countless other class aa's really put in quite a stir. I can see why the developers have so many issues with balancing. Players right now can achieve almost godlike status with the right gear and time. They've had to bump up the difficulties of certain zones and gods just to help cope with the sudden uprise of omnipotent players. I don't think you'll do far wrong with just about any duo you want, 'cept maybe Ranger/Druid (unless you actually enjoy kiting).
Click the pic for my Magelo


~"Classes are not that out of balance"--AbsorEQ~