shammy/wc as support - what kind of equipment?

well i am going to box a would be wc, and i was wondering what kind of weapon i should put on him? i don't feel like making him use a dagger because that would waste a lot of soul shots. so perhaps a claymore?

also, should i keep him in robes? or light armour is okay too?

well i am going to box a would be wc, and i was wondering what kind of weapon i should put on him? i don't feel like making him use a dagger because that would waste a lot of soul shots. so perhaps a claymore?

also, should i keep him in robes? or light armour is okay too?

At what point are you going to stop using him as the main char?

If your going to L40 before leveling him by leeching, I would recommend the Scallop Jamadhrs. Until you can buff Acc uracy yourself or have it supplied, the high patk and extra accuracy you get from fists gives you more options for leveling locations and less misses.

The few SS lost to half-misses is no more or less than wasting SS by overdamaging with the claymore.

I've tried swapping between Duals and Scallop Jamadhrs as well as comparing to my OL which I ran through 1H blunt (MotU), 1H Sword (SoWD, Tallum) and even 2H sword (Flamberge) as well as a Dagger (Hellknife, Bloody Orchid), a Staff (Cursed Staff) and more duals. (Kesh * Kesh).

Ever since the added the light armor/evasion mobs, going with a dagger (even with acc) those mobs have been painful. With duals it's not too bad, even though it's still frustrating. Once you start getting Haste/Focus and Death Whisper as buffs, the loss of accuracy isn't nearly as bad. But until then, it helps a lot.

I'm making a WC myself right now, to help my OL out. (Sad ain't it?) and as soon as I passed level 20 and started getting Mage buffs instead of melee buffs, the lack of accuracy really started to hurt. And that is when I was already using fists! (Viper fangs -> Scallop jamadhrs)

I brought my OL down, to buff Accuracy after that. And even then, I stuck with the fists. (Why are there so **** many evasion mobs in orc lands to begin with?!) I just passed L30 with the WC-to-be and I tried using the duals again on some non-evasion mobs....and the Fists still worked better at this point even with OL buffs.

Your second best weapon, if SS use is such a big issue for you, is to go with the claymore. (From my experience with the Flamberge.) For that matter a Titan's Hammer isn't that bad of a weapon if your going to be using shots. Although you may want to splurge on some haste 1 pots no matter which weapon your using. Just don't bother with a shield at this point...it's not going to do you much good if any.

As far as armor goes, use heavy if you got it. (I have a full brig set.) I'd pass on the light armor unless you have VR from somewhere. And save the robes for post-40 when your in party and have enough buffs to really tax your MP.

im not going to manually level him past 20, but he isn't going to go around auto-following my bd either. i'm going to be switching between screens and using macros to make him acquire my main's target and /assist.

thank you for the insight about the fists, i haven't even thought about them as an option.

in regards to armour, the reason why i am concerned about heavy or light is that i might not have enough mana to keep buffing every 20 mins.
well, that shouldn't be a problem until 40s any way.
another reason is because in light and in heavy, attack speed is a lot slower than in robes, so i'll be loosing out on that extra bit of damage.
so once my WC is in C grade, should i keep him in robes? like i said my main concern is amount of mana for buffs and attack speed.
it says on the light/heavy armour masteries that it increases attack speed. from experience i know that the increase is just one time when you first get the mastery, but is that increase enough to compensate for the penalty of wearing light/heavy?

Once you get the first level of Mastery in Heavy or Light armor you no longer have any penalty to attack speed. There is still a slight reduction in cast speed/regen, but atk speed is the same between all armor types. (And the regen loss is pretty much unnoticable in most cases.)

Heavy gives you more pdef than light and light has some (very) slightly less regen/cast speed penalties while robes gives you the most cast speed/regen and most importantly extra MP. Those are the only real differences other than the ones you get from set bonuses.

Depending on what class your partnering with, you can probably drop a couple buffs and save mp. (Evasion or revenge for example...or even VR if your in no way hurting for herb drops.) But other than that the only real reason you switch to robes is if you don't have enough MP to cast the buffs you do need. (Since you don't need the MP to sleep/heal.) And at a few levels it's going to be pretty close.

As far as switching back and forth, I've done it for the pig event...but I won't even bother trying in normal play. There is just too much you need to watch/handle with your main to be swapping screens that often. (Pig event was in town, and the kill speed was so slooooow.) Maybe your PC is beefy enough to handle it, but I would definately test before I go all out with it.