I’ve only been leveling an animist(one farm class for each realm have I) but the salvage is nowhere near that from shaman farming, mostly due to what I believe is that chain drops higher frequency because shammy uses it.
yes, the bigger pool of loot will be rogs that are needed/usefull for everyone in the grp. So if you invite a hero, he dont even have to be close to you, and scale will start dropping more frequently.
As a caster farmer, you should have max woodworking to salvage and tinker all the Staves that drop, that is your money. You get more than 3 boards after salvaging compared to metal and you will get many staves farming as a staff user. I have played both shaman farmer and caster farmer and still pull in an average of 2-3 plat an hour depending on how lazy I am that session just from farming regular mobs nothing special.
The above statement is correct tho, invite a metal wearer into group and more will drop. But you shouldn't be too far behind money making wise. The only thing a shaman can do that most other farmers cant do is pull the 120 mobs at moderna by themselves. A cabby and animist/mentalist simply can not do this anywhere. We have pulled most of the beach in Aether guild on alb but we do this with a mincer while the cabalist diseases the stack of mobs. We've pulled over 4 camps of mobs at once and stacked them in one big clump but it does take some time to do and you have to be flawless and of course this requires more than one player.
I've been getting (as a champ) lots of scythes recently (and a few one-handed weapons, but not the LWs I need), to the extent where it's quite conspicuous (just scythes, no spears for instance, or other weapons I can't use). Bug or feature?