The Shaman - Topic

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Aug 10 2009 11:52pm

The Shaman.

Contents:
I: Introduction
II: Stats
III: Skills
IV: Gear
V: Advanced Mechanics
VI: Advanced Techniques
VII: Matchups
VIII: FAQ
IX: Credits
X: Videos

I. Introduction:
A shaman slept with your mother.
The Shaman is a fire/summoning druid, or more specifically, a summoning/fire druid. A Shaman is a hybrid between two different character builds, which plays completely different from either of them. A Shaman is not a fire druid with a grizzly; he is something else, something far removed and much superior. This is what a Shaman is.

Shamen are caster druids that focus on dueling supremacy via tactical advantage and always having the upper hand. They utilize fire damage & physical damage from both spells and 'melee' which provides you a vast array of techniques to use both offensively and defensively, giving you the ultimate ability to react to your opponents. A Shaman, unlike say a hammerdin or wind druid, does not rely on having huge damage attacks that are difficult to tank, but easy to avoid. Instead, a Shaman has attacks which are impossible to avoid, but often deal much less damage, while supported by the lightning-fast bearstrikes that can sink anyone.

That is the ticket: A Shaman is not a cookie cutter character, but it is not something designed for purely being 'different'. The purpose of the Shaman is to be BETTER. A shaman is easily the most versatile PvP character, as strong as any cookie cutter and with no bad matchups. If you play a Shaman properly, you are not at a disadvantage against anyone. Some people might try Zeal sorcs or Enchantresses just to mess around in duelin games as 'Weird Builds'. Thats not what this is. This is a competent build designed to go toe to toe with everything else; you can beat any other build in the game. With the ability to play offensively and defensively at the same time, switching tactics at a moments notice, a Shaman Druid has no counter build. A windy loses to a trapper. A bvc loses to a bvb or bone necro. A trapper loses to a charger, a ghost loses to a barb. All of the main cookie cutter builds have clear and obvious rock/paper/scissors advantages and disadvantages against other builds. But a Shaman holds his rock, paper, and scissors all at the same time, and can choose between them as he wants. Your grizzly is your rock, your fissure your paper, and your volcano your scissors, and all at the same time geddon rains down a fiery holocaust. There is no build that will always beat a Shaman. Even the hardest duels; ghosts/hybrids, are still clearly winnable.

But this all sounds much to good to be true to most people, and indeed it is, for there is a catch in place of a silver lining: Shamans are also the most skill-intensive build, the most difficult to play and master, which the highest learning curve. I've seen shamans with gear 10x what I could muster, lose to tal's fireball sorcs, because they didn't know how to duel. I've killed Oni with my budget shaman with 0 life from charms.

The Shaman is not for everyone. Some people will love it, some people will hate it. Some will not have the patience to master this secret kung fu art, and should stick to groveling in the mud with their hammerdonks and smiters and the wailing and gnashing of teeth. Those who I have seen make successful shamans, however, have often made it their favorite flagship character.

And I could espouse all day the versaility, well-roundedness, and dire learning curve of shamans. But the main thing to know about a Shaman: Used properly, it is the most fun character to duel with and again. The wide variety of attacks, massive amounts of projectiles and elegance to the attacks makes it a hundred times more fun to duel than say a fireball sorc, who does nothing but teleport and fireball. At any given time, you must throw out fissures, volcanos, grizzlys, geddons, hell even boulders and cyclone armor recasts. Once you've seen one in action, you'd understand.

II. Stats:
A Shaman should always be built pure vita, not max block, as I have said before and will say again. The stats are hence extremely easy to figure out:

Strength: Enough to reach 156 str to equip a monarch
Dexterity: None
Vitality: Everything Else
Energy: None
For a level 94 Shaman with the exact gear I've proscribed, and a 20/20 torch & 20/20 anni, your base stats will be this:

Strength: 41 (26 points invested)
Dexterity: 20 (0 points invested)
Vitality: 429 (454 points invested)
Energy: 20 (0 points invested)

After your items, on your character screen, your stats will be displayed as:

Strength: 156
Dexterity: 75
Vitality: 496
Energy: 65

In terms of your final stats, when your character is finished, if it resembles mine, it should look like this (this is using a 2x facet godly rare impossible pelt with +5/5/5):

3500 HP
99% FCR, 99% FHR
75/75/75/75% Stacked Resists
-10% Target Fire Resistance
4662-4874 Fissure Damage
1149-1156 Volcano (Physical)
1338-1496 Volcano (Fire)
6472-7537 Armageddon Damage
8194-8432 Grizzly Damage

III. Skills:
There are two different skill builds for a Shaman. This is the first thing to building one, and it depends entirely on what helm you have. Read below about Rare Pelts. If you manage to get a godly rare pelt with geddon on it, your build should look like:
(level 94):
20 Firestorm
20 Molten Boulder
20 Fissure
20 Volcano
(Armageddon provided by pelt)
20 Grizzly
1 Heart of Wolverine
Additional points, if you level up past 94, should be invested into heart of wolverine.

WITHOUT a godly rare pelt, your build should look like this:
(level 94):
14 Firestorm
20 Molten Boulder
20 Fissure
20 Volcano
1 point Armageddon (and synergies)
20 Grizzly
1 Heart of Wolverine
Additional points would ofc go into firestorm, up to 19 @ level 99.

A quick introduction to your skills; more is covered in Advanced Techniques & Mechanics:
Fissure:
This is your spam spell that you use for supression against teleport and persecuting melee opponents, and especially frying whirlwinders. It works functionally exactly like blizzard, except with a wider AOE, faster hit pattern, harder to see animation, and less damage.

Volcano:
Your primary targetted attack. This leads your volc/bear combo which is your bread and butter, and can blocklock/fhr lock your opponents to death. It serves as targetted damage against stationary opponents & interrupting teleporters. It is easily the most versatile spell in all of d2: You can use it like FOH, to rail down a single target, or you can use it like blizzard to haze an AOE, and you can deal both fire *and* physical damage with it, put opponents into *both* fbr & fhr. It is also incredibly hard to aim for newcomers, and clunky, with a moderately long timer delay, meaning you often get 1 shot with it, and then have to pull back if you missed.

Grizzly:
This is your primary damage dealing attack, simply as ambient damage. Namelock teleporting on someone will cause your bear to attack them instantly, smashing them for a great deal of damage, striking faster than a namelocked tele/nado or tele/zerk could ever, ever hit. You can teleport on someone and then immediately off them, with no delay at all, and your grizzly will provide the damage. This is also known as the Telefrag, or Driveby, or Bearswipe, as mentioned later. It also provides a great meatstack on top of your to render you functionally immune to things like arrows, firebolts, etc.

Armageddon:
This is basically like thunder storm on a sorc. You cast it, and then you forget it, and if it happens to damage anyone along the way, its awfully nice, but you're never *trying* to hit with it. It just provides a great ambient damage in the background. As I mention later in the FAQ, it is ALWAYS worth having armageddon, even if it means less fissure damage. This has been debated before, and the answer is always the same; 1 point geddon. Its a huge bonus.

Molten Boulder:
This skill you will barely, rarely use. It is only used about as commonly as a ghost uses blade fury; only in one or two matchups. Rather, I find myself using boulder more often for comedic effect, than practically, but it still holds a niche; you can use it defensively against namelocking hammerdonks/windies to provide a surprise attack.

IV. Gear:
For the purposes of this guide I will be only listing one setup. This is the ideal setup for the shaman build using the 'glass cannon' idea; low dr, low block, high resists, the standard caster fare. The reason for not using a max block/dr setup is that a shaman simply doesn't need to. Properly played, a shaman never puts himself into the line of fire. You should never be giving characters like wwbarbs, chargers, wind druids a chance to hit you, and therefore not need it. This is a major difference from other characters; max block / dr are musts on wind druids & hammerdins. These characters must get in close to their target, and thus must tanks them at close range to drop their hit. Shamans have long ranged spells to control the duel, and use the grizzly as a quick 'pass' rather than 'telestomp' attack; you never sit on top of anyone. Thus, the need for tanking on a shaman is greatly diminished. Its not to say that maxdr/block variants won't work, I just have found that they will not work nearly as well. Most of the attacks that you can block/dr, like whirlwind, would kill you either way if you got trapped with them. Your bear provides protection from projectiles like arrows/etc, making the need for blocking even less. In the end, its a debate. Some people will make max block / dr shamans; I strongly advise not to. If you are tanking with a shaman, you are doing something horribly horribly wrong and should make a different character. So I will explore only one setup:
Helm: Rare Pelt
This is the lynchpin of the shaman, the one deciding item. The rest are all easy items to figure, but the helm is what makes or breaks you. A rare pelt is easily the best option, if you can get a good enough one. Ravenlore makes headway as a great starters item, like for early in a ladder season, but its not hard to beat. The ideal pelt is like this:
+2 druid
+3 volcano
+3 grizzly
+3 geddon
(whatever else)
Such pelts are incredibly rare. The main thing to realize with the pelt is that 1 point into geddon on your pelt saves you 6 skill points. This is why it can be tricky. If you get your armageddon from your helm, you do not need to invest points into it. If you don't, you need 1 point into the damned thing. After much consideration & analysis, I've found the best mods to be, in this order:
Volcano, Grizzly, Geddon, Fissure, Heart
Fissure is not particularly needed; it will not be a big difference from 4600 to 5000 damage. But volcano can make or break the difference of landing FHR lock on people, and thus +2 druid / +3 volcano is a great starter helm. Grizzly is the next best, as it is your primary attack. The +1 geddon mod saves you a vast amount of skill points to invest into firestorm for fissure's synergy, which will boost the damage more than +3 fissure would; with the setup I list, +3 fissure with 6 less synergy gives 4200 vs 4400 damage, PLUS bonuses to boulder & geddon.

The rest of the gear, however, is very standard:
Armor: Enigma
-Nothing to say here

Weapon: HOTO
-This beats out suicide branch / etc. You do not need a 163 fcr setup, and thus hoto does excellently. Theres no need for any other weapon switches imo, nothing does close to as well.

Shield: Spirit
-Since I strongly advice against block/dr setups, you will be opting spirit over stormshield and thus easily reaching the 99/99 breakpoints with the gear I list.

Gloves: Magefists
-Magefists +1 fire skills applies to all your druid fire skills, and hence there is no other option

Belt: Arachnid Mesh
-Nothing to say here

Rings/Amulet: 2x SoJ's & Maras
-Since you already hit the FCR breakpoints with your other gear (99%), and you cannot reach 163% without sacrificing far too much (and its not worth it), sojs/maras are the best options. It is almost exclusively superior to every other setup; you can use a bk ring or two to gain a piddly amount of life but lose a huge chunk of mana, and you could potentially use a rare druid amulet, but the +2 skills applying to your battle orders makes maras usually better. Since you don't need dext, it takes a particularly good ammy to beat out maras; it would have to have massive resistances, life, strength, 2 skills, and so on. Honestly, maras does it just fine.

Boots: Rare Resist Boots
-Waterwalks/treks are the other option, but +65 life and/or some fhr is not nearly as important as getting your resists nice and high. It really pays when you're dueling things like sorcs, fohers, auradins, etc. If you're playing pubby games, you should just use rare resisters all the time.

Switch: CTA/Spirit
-NN explain

Charms are a tricky subject which requires an explanation of their own. It is very hard to determine a proper layout for charms; you neither want all summoning nor all elemental, you want a mix of them. Its largely a matter of preference. After lots of dueling, I've found my ideal setup to be:
5x Elemental, 4x Summoning.
This gives me a solid volcano and a whompass grizzly. It is possible to go 4/5, or 6/3, or 3/6. I'd recommend nothing more drastic than that. Honestly, it largely has to do with your helm. If you get a +2 druid +3 volcano helm with no grizzly, get some extra summoning skillers to make up for it. If you get +2 druid +3 grizzly +3 geddon, get some more elemental charms. If you're a starter who can only afford ravenlore, use summoning gcs, at a 6/3 ratio (since raven has no +grizzly at all).
The rest of your charms are obvious:

Torch, Annihilus, 10x small charms of your choice.
Ideally I'd recommend nothing but 20/5 small charms. You should make sure you hit 99% FHR, so if your helm doesn't provide some FHR, you need to make up some from SC's that spirit doesn't cover. Get enough 5/5 charms for 99%, then go for the rest life/resist.

Your stashed gear should just be all your standard sorb crap for when push comes to shove; hotspurs, 2x dwarfs/raven/wisps, rising sun, 4x psapphire/ptopaz monarchs, etc. S'all good.

V. Advanced Mechanics:
Faster hit recovery:
In the D2 engine, FHR is *not* a 1/12 magic number like some people say. For all the spells a shaman uses, it is the exact same formula, using the divisor 16:
If the attack deals more than 1/16 of the targets max HP, they have a 37.5% chance to go into fhr
If the attack deals more than 1/8 of the targets max HP, they have a 75% chance to go into fhr
If the attack deals more than 1/4 of the targets max HP, they have a 100% chance to go into fhr
Against a 5000 hp target, the cutoffs would look like this:
313 damage = 37.5%
625 damage = 75%
1250 damage = 100%
Hence, any attacks which deal less than 1/16 of your targets max HP will not put them into FHR. These numbers are figured after damage reductions, including resistances & pvp penalties. So an 8500 damage grizzly will deal 708 damage after reductions; he'll have a 75% chance to put a 5000 hp, 50% dr pally into fhr.

Fissure:
Fissure works almost exactly like Blizzard. The code may very well have been a copy/paste job. It simply spawns a series of small vents that act as collision boxes, which, when overlapped by a hostile monster, deal damage to it. These vents are all spawned with relative randomness inside an aoe surrounding where you cast the spell. Each vent can only strike a target once per overlap, but the function controlling this is screwed up by overlapping multiple vents at the same time; hence overlapping multiple vents will hit you as fast as the nextdelay allows. Thus, it is safer for your opponent to stand still in a fissure than to run around in it.
Fissure opens 13 vents over its 3.2 second duration, one every 6 frames. The vents are much larger than the displayed ones in-game, which, as far as anyone knows, don't actually have any correlation; its better to assume that if you are in a fissure, you're going to get hit. Compared to blizzard, fissure spawns more 'vents', spawns them faster, with larger hit boxes, in a larger aoe. As a result, fissure is noticeably easier to hit with, and will utterly punish opponents who move through it. Whirlwind in particular often scores a quick death through fissure.
The nextdelay on fissure is 5 frames. That means it strikes at most 5 times per second.
Fissure has a casting delay of 2 seconds.

deathwinger

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Aug 10 2009 11:52pm

Volcano:
Volcano is a nasty complicated mess of a spell. Volcano spawns the cone directly where you aim it and immediately begins to spawn fireballs, one every 2 frames, which will hit anything on top of the volcano as it is spawned once, and again will land randomly in an aoe and hit again. The effect, which would be ridiculous, is hampered by nextdelay: Being struck the initial cone forming (frame 0) will deal volcanos normal damage and then give the target a 10 frame next delay. After this initial strike, further fireballs from volcano will only have 5 frame next delay. However, since volcano only shoots on even frames, the end result damages like this:
frame 0: spell cast
frame 2: damage
frame 12: damage
frame 18: damage
frame 24: damage
frame 30: damage

This initial 'long' hit on volcano gives enemies a solid chance to teleport off of it, since they have twice the alloted time to escape. If for whatever reason they did not manage to teleport away by frame 12, they will be struck every 6 frames, which will annihilate them if they are in the FHR range. Furthermore, volcano can be blocked. This has both positive and negative ramifications, as stated before. While it means volcano will deal less damage against high block opponents, it will also throw them into block lock; the blocking animation will interrupt casting of spells, rendering your opponent easy prey. However, while it could be potentially devastating, blocklock has low effects beyond the first few hits; as of 1.10, blocking will activate a 10 frame timer after you finish the animation which states that you will not be put into blocking animation until its up. So for 10 frames after blocking, your opponent can block without animations (he'll still block attacks, they just won't paralyze him). So against a necro with 7 frame block, he can only block at a maximum of once every 17 frames. This 10 frame "free escape" will give that necro the ability to teleport out easily after a half a second trapped in your volcano, if he has 75%+ fcr. Opponents with less than 10 frame FCR tend to get stuck; amazons will be utterly locked in a volcano thanks to dodge/evade/avoid being so slow, and enemy druids fall just short of 10 frames using a 99% fcr build. This also tends to hold true of assassins, especially c/c, which get trapped in extremely slow blocking animations if they are not whirlwinding. High block sorceresses, on the other hand, can easily escape. The catch, is, of course, that volcano can throw you into both FBR & FHR. An attack that is blocked will use the blocking animation, and attack that is not will use the FHR animation. This will only occur if the enemies max hp, dr, resists, etc are below a certain threshold. For a 1150 physical, 1350 fire volcano, against an 8% dr 75% resistance caster opponent (enigma gives 8% dr), volcano deals 232 damage; if they have more than 3700 hp, they will not get thrown into FHR. As a result, a good chunk of 'less than perfect' characters get ruined by volcano, whereas tank characters can teleport right out. Vita sorcs and es sorcs once their es breaks will almost always get thrown into fhr, bone necros with their armor down, etc.
One last note on volcano; Volcano will not spawn next to obstactles; it has a collision size. If you namelock it on someone, but they were next to a puddle or tree or rock or wall or something, sometimes volcano simply will not spawn. You won't be docked the cast delay / mana, but you won't get the volcano, either. Its important to try not to let your opponent camp in puddles and such. Use fissures if they try to take advantage of this. Its a rare occurance, but it can be gamebreaking if you lose a volcano like this.

Armageddon:
Theres really not much to say here, besides the non-obvious: Multiple castings of armageddon do *not* stack, they simply refresh the duration. Armageddon's meteors deal a large amount of fire damage, which is displayed, but also a small amount of physical damage. The duration effect is almost always negligible. Geddon will follow you perfectly even though you cannot see it when you teleport; the meteors are falling at your previous location. Hence, geddon is just as useful while teleporting (or more) than when walking, even though you cannot see it. This "I can't see my geddon" has given rise to the idiotic notion of fire druids being supposed to walk. Its just misinformation. Armageddon's level can be 'prebuffed', and its duration can be fairly short. You'll want to cast it while BO'ing, but be careful, as geddons terribly long casting delay can leave you rather dead if its used in the heat of a battle. Often, shamans will let their geddon run out during a duel, and only recast it if it devolves into teleport chasing. If a duel lasts 50 seconds, its a bad sign anyway.

Molten Boulder:
Boulder is a silly little spell. As I've said before, you use it very rarely. But when you do, its best to know the mechanics: Boulder can be blocked, and it carries a knockback effect. Anyone who is struck by the attack will take both the listed physical & fire damage, and knockbacked (and then struck immediately again, and again, and again). Since knockbacking always triggers FHR, this can be deadly; people with low frames and small enough brains to get hit in the first place can get trapped by a self-chaining boulder blast. However, if someone blocks boulder, it will pass right through them and not knockback, thus making it ineffective against 75% block characters. However, the end explosion, when the boulder blows up, cannot be blocked and deals full damage, in a much larger aoe than the boulder itself, making it a hell of a finisher.

Firestorm:
You will never use firestorm under any circumstances, so its really unnecessary to go into detail about it. But anyway, I will. Firestorm creates 3 'snakes', which are fire collisions being repeatedly spawned. Anyone who overlaps a fire trail takes a specific damage, which is completely removed from the listed damage. Each 'cell' of the firestorm deals its own damage, and hence the more you overlap a single trail, the more damage you take. Yet at the same time, overlapping *multiple trails* will deal that much more damage. Overall, in the absolute best case scenario, with all 3 trails overlapping a player and hitting him a total of 9 times per frame (the maximum), he'll take approximately twice the listed damage on the skill per second. Which is, of course, still piddly crap; a 7000 dps firestorm might deal 14000 dps for a single second, at melee range, when a 5000 damage fissure can deal up to 25000 damage in a second, without requiring you to get into melee range. Hence, firestorm blows. Its moderately useful for pvm against large collision size bosses, but you'll want boulder on your left click.

Grizzly:
There are a lot of summoning nuances I could go into detail about, like how HOW/OAK interact, but these are best given by googling the "Druid Pet Calculator". The short story is that Grizzly will choose the nearest target with its AI, and move to it. If you teleport on top of this, it will hit him immediately. If it was going after someone else, it will either move off for a second or take a moment to rechoose its target. Hence, dueling in an area filled with fallen can mess with your grizzly's brains and make him not hit. However, once the area is cleared, the grizzly will make a beeline for your opponent. It often takes a short hop around your opponent for the AI to *sink*. However, if your grizzly starts a swing at your opponent, and you teleport on top of him (moving the grizzly while he's swining), the swing will still connect! The game only checks if the target is in range at the end of the animation. Likewise, if your target teleports away before the blow lands, it will not strike. However, I have seen occasions where a grizzly *misses* its attack due to being out of range, but it will still activate secondary "on attack" effects, like it will drain an ES sorcs mana, break a necro's bone armor, get chilled from frost armor, all without dealing damage. This can be played to your advantage, since stomping on these flighty characters can break their defenses unfairly.
Your grizzly will have 85% resists in hell, which are not stacked (-%resists will have the expected effect). He'll attack at either 12 or 17 frames, but this is enormously faster than it seems, since it is handled serverside, as I mentioned above. He has a 10 frame FHR, and typically around 8000ish attack rating, meaning he has no problems at all hitting casters.

Oak vs Heart of Wolverine:
"AKA: Why we don't use oak"
Oak is a highly overrated druid skill. A shaman uses heart, not oak. The reason for this is non-obvious; HOW adds only minor damage/ar, like +20% overall or so. Meanwhile oak might as much as double your HP. Why not use oak? It has to do with how Oak simply does not work. Oak is a misconception, a lie told by wind druids. The +% HP on oak is NOT anything like battle orders. See, the problem with oak sage is that it dies. And after oak dies, you lose its +% HP. And what good is +% HP if it vanishes the second you get hit? None, whatsoever. If you get struck by a fireball, and it kills your oak, then your HP drops. You thought you had 6000 HP, now you have 3000 HP. Instead of dying in 6 hits, you die in 3 hits. So what did oak accomplish? Nothing. Almost every single attack in dueling games will either be an AOE, and thus kill your oak and you at the same time, or be single target, and thus kill oak first, since it is a minion stack. For example, a hammer will hit oak first, and a fireball hits you both. But either way, 1 hit of anything kills oak, and then you lose the benefit INSTANTLY, on the same frame, before the damage resolves, leaving you down hit points as if you didn't have it. In other words, oak does almost nothing. Heart of Wolverine, on the other hand, tends to die *after* you hit someone, meaning it will give its bonuses to your bear just fine. Hence, we opt for HoW. Remember, the HP from oak is purely an illusion, it does not actually exist for PvP purposes. Druids who say they have 6000 HP with oak are liars, they really have 3000 HP without it, and that is all that matters. Oak sage sucks.

VI. Advanced Techniques.
A shaman holds a great repertoire of tricks and combos to use against his opponents.

Volcano + Grizzly.
This is the bread and butter of a shaman, your primary dueling tactic, which is responsible for crushing every caster from here to kalamazoo. Calling into the earth with his crossdressing mojo, a great torrent of hot steamy love shoots directly into the anus of your opponent, quickly followed by a man-bear-pig running a train on his face. Volcano + Grizzly is the first thing you must master as a shaman. The combo is extremely simple: Namelock a volcano, cast it, and immediately switch to teleport. Since volcano naturally chainlocks your opponents, due to its cast delay, simply switching to teleport will cast it, namelocked, on your opponent. This is extremely simple on paper, though aiming the volcano is tough to learn. The effects should be obvious: The first eruption of your volcano will often either FHR or FBR lock your opponent momentarily, and thus open up an easy shot for a namelocked teleport, which lands your grizzly a free swipe. Even against a character that recovers and teleports away, a volcano + grizzly combo can hit an easy 3-4 volcanos & 1x grizzly, which adds up as 15000+ damage, delivered straight into your opponents quivering butthole. The difficult part, as I said, is aiming the volcano. You get a single shot, a single click, and then you're on cast delay. Therefore you MUST learn to namelock with a single click, a tough learning curve. Executed properly, this combo requires only two buttons: Once right click to volcano, one hotkey to change to teleport, thats it. This 1-2 punch will dominate teleporting casters; use it against bone necros to break down their defenses, against sorcs to clobber them, against zons to blocklock and 1-hit-ko them, against fohers to get in their face, etc. Bear in mind that with your bear in mind, its risky to teleport directly onto some builds as they tank. Your grizzly / heart provide you only minor minion stacking, so teleporting onto a hammerdin can be deadly. But this is when it all comes down to dueling experience & judgement. Trying to do a volcano/bear combo on a wind druid out of the blue is purely suicide. But if you widdled him with fissures, so that hes got no minions and needs to restack his armor, and you namelock a volcano/bear combo as he teleports away, it can be the duel, right there and then. A fire sorc shoots balls. A blizz sorc lays blizzs. A bvc telewhirls. And a shaman, he Volcano + Grizzly's. This is your bread and butter, your namesake move. Learn it well.

Grizzly + Volcano.
A simple inversion on the above. Against most characters it is beneficial to use the chainlock/interruption of volcano followed by grizzly, but in some circumstances you can win more by using grizzly first, then volcano. The protocol is simple: Teleport on top of them, and then immediately volcano at their feet. This requires a bit more aiming and timing, but it can be more effective in some cases: High FCR ES sorcs in particular, or bone necros- your bear drains their defenses more easily and can knockback/stun them momentarily when your volcano would simply bounce off them. Hence, against an ES sorc, it is often better to hit them with a bear, draining their ES, and then drop the volcano on them. This can often score 2 hits with the bear, meaning ES drains away. In particular against the mana potting sorcs, or ones using hacked 70/15 items, etc. Often times, a volcano/grizzly combo against them leads to them teleporting off your volcano, whereas with the grizzly leading, their energy/bone shield breaks, letting the volcano molest them to death.

Fissure Spam:
Congratulations! If I need to explain this one, you're below the average tal's blizz sorc. Simply lay down a bunch of fissures pretty much at random. This technique is a proven way to harass and psyche out fast teleporting/charging characters. For example, against a 200% fcr fire sorc who is buzzing all around, she'll teleport herself into fissures. Once she realizes you are spamming, she'll slow down and aim more. And this gives you the opening to drop the volcano/bear combo. Use random fissures to both haze flightly evasive characters, and to supply suppression cover against teams; If you are being 5v1'd by people chasing you around blood moor, teleporting like a maniac with fissures will thin the pack.

Fissure Matador:
Drop a fissure at your own feet. Teleport away. Watch opponent teleport into it and cry. Pretty simple. Variations on this form your #1 attack against most paladins; they just *love* to either telestomp (hammerdonks) or charge at you (smiters). Dragging their sorry asses through fissures leads to them stopping to play offensively, again, leaving you open to start your offense with volcano/grizzly/etc.

Fissure Psychic:
One of my favorite moves against wind druids. Simply cast a fissure at the edge of your screen, then teleport into it. Just like the matador, as people follow, they get burned. But this is a hell of a lot less obvious. You are leading them into your fissures, not expecting them to bumble in there. So simply place a fissure and teleport directly into the middle of it, and then out again.

Invisible Fissures:
Fissures when cast with your opponent off the minimap will be invisible, making for beastly traps. And yes, obviously, the disappear when you enter town, but can still damage. In long teleport races, take advantage of this to get your opponents to teleport into what should have been obvious stacks of fissures

Volcano Matador:
Volcano was always a neat spell because of its huge versatility; fire yet physical, stationary yet namelockable, single target yet aoe. Take advantage of the AOE spread to use volcano just like you would fissure, against charging paladins. Volcano is much less effective in an aoe than fissure, but it has a key trick: It cannot be absorbed as easily. If you are up against a 95% fire resist charger, you can widdle them down faster with volcano tricks than with fissure. Try to lure them through the bulk of it, else, the huge aoe spam often lands a hit or two. Because of its high physical damage, its not easy to absorb since the fire aspect alone. As they get more wary of your volcano psychology, it opens room for bearstrikes.

Volcanolock:
Its very easy to see how Volcano chainlocks you for teleport, but in some duels its just as nice to save it for just another namelocked volcano. If an opponent teleports away from you with 10% HP, you can often kill them just by holding down Volcano until the timer is up and letting loose another one from 3 screens away. Volcano will spawn regardless of range, as long as you maintain the namelock.

The Telefrag (Bearstrike):
This is your secondary attack, behind the volcbear combo. This is often where the meat of a druid's hot and melty damage comes from. While fire skills are great for controlling the flow of the duel, this is your finisher and your destroyer. Learning to properly aim a bearstrike is the *other* difficult thing for a shaman. The mechanics are simple: Namelock and teleport. Bam, grizzly hits them. The real trick is to learn timing and psychology. You must know WHEN it is safe to bearstrike them, and when it would land you a 1-way-ticket to the rogue encampment with one less ear. Bearstrikes become your most valueable asset against characters that they would seem impractical against: Trappers, bvc's, hybridsins, smiters, etc. If all you did all day long was try to hump them with your grizzly, they'd turn around and destroy you. Instead, you must use your fire skills to create openings for a quick in-and-out bear facemelter. For example:
Throw a fissure under a trapper, and as he teleports away, catch him with namelock, then tele out. Even though if he was tanking he could have pummeled you with mindblast/traps, this quick "spite check" just smacked him down a bunch of HP. You knew he would teleport away to escape the fire under his bum. Another example:
WWSin/barb takes a long whirl past you, and the instant it ends, you land on top of her, and then off again. Even though whirlwinders could destroy you if you were pure summon by just whirling in circles, well, when they sense the damage they take from fissure, they'll play more cautiously. And learning to anticipate their whirlwind patterns provides you to opportunity to sink an attack straight through them. As a smiter stops charger to run for a second to try to namelock you, you pass right by his head and leave him down 1/3 his hp. Bam. Learn to control your teleports- a smiter that has 30k defense and 75% block is nigh untouchable while walking/charging, but if your fissures convince him to run out of the way, he has 0 defense and 25% blocking. Easy bear-loving delivered via US postal, right there.

Shake the Namelock:
If your opponent namelocks you, you should be able to sense it. If they are charging straight at you even as you teleport, or dropping foh's on your head, or chainlocking you with throw/unsummon, or shooting bone spears way too uncomfortably straight at you, shake it! Once an opponent has you namelocked, it is incredibly unsafe to get close enough to him to drop the volcano+bear combo, or to haze fissures. Don't risk it. If your opponent namelocks, teleport away until they are off your minimap and immediately return. Thats it. Don't l8z, don't run for it, don't book it to cold plains. Just take 2 teleports to the south and 2 to the north and bam, you're back and he's lost his lock.

Grizzly Playtime:
Against melee characters who cannot teleport and cannot charge, or that is to say, against shapeshifted characters, that don't use rabies, this is a great trick for destroying them quickly. As if fissure didn't already bash their faces in. But especially against absorbers, this trick can win you the duel: Simply teleport a short distance away from them, and then walk in the opposite direction. As they namelock you and try to chase you, your grizzly will hit them as they walk right past it, and they won't hit you. Since they are running, they take a huge smack to the face. Then just teleport away, wince, rather, lepeat. Against an absorbing fury druid, this is a really neat tactic. Short hops with your grizzly standing still as you walk away leads to easy bear strikes. This is really the only time your grizzly hits anyone that isn't a telestomp.

Grizzly Techchase:
Against high ES sorcs, recasting windies, and other characters who simply want to get AWAY from your big bad grizzly, one hit is often not enough. To penetrate that energy shield, what you need to do is badger them nonstop with a grizzly. After landing your volc/bear combo, teleport after them again and again. Namelock teleport every time they move, follow them at their heels. Your grizzly will land hit after hit as their energy shield breaks, bringing them down. This is really the only way to beat those 5000+ mana ES sorcs using hacked items, etc.

Walking South:
When a hammerdin namelock teleports on you, walk south.

Bowling for Hammerdonks:
Despite the name, this also applies to wind druids. The concept is simple- this is your only chance to use a boulder in a duel, and its fuckin hilarious. Throw a molten boulder, teleport into its path, and then walk alongside it. Any hammerdonk/windy dumb enough to namelock teleport you will have to suck your chocolate lava balls. If it proves fatal, make sure to say "STRIKE!" in chat. The idea is, that fissures mainly persecute the hammerdins, but if they get absorbed slightly, then your hammerchucking foe can make meat for boulders. Boulders provide a disturbingly huge punch when they land, and since hammerdins will inevitably attempt to namelock teleport on you, this makes them easy prey. For best effects, cast your boulder due south, and run south along it. This way you'll run straight out of the path of hammers, yet the pallydonk will be pushed along like the aztecs taking revenge on indiana jones.

Townguarding:
When push comes to shove and the going gets tough and the BM gloves come off, a Shaman can hold his own. You know those glorious fissure druids that sit at town? You can be one of those. You know those summoning druids who fail hard? You can be one of those too. Both at the same time, fissureguard AND grizzlyguard. But this is such a glorious waste of time, rather.

General Batshittery:
Necro got you by the balls at low hp? Sorc pummeling you? Hammerdin wants to charge in for the kill? I think its time you go batshit insane. Make sure your geddon is up. Drop a fissure nearby, then drop a volcano near it, then teleport, left, right, left, right, up, down, left, right in all directions, all in a small area, like a maniac. Geddons will drop everywhere, volcano fireballs spamming across the screen, fissures popping out of the groudn. I am yet to meet someone who isn't thrown immediately off their attack by such a visual rape of their eyeballs. When someone sees all that shit flying across the screen, they will take a moment off their stompchase. And that can buy you a precious few seconds to gather your marbles and go back on the offensive. It might seem silly, but this tactic actually works. Look at the video I refer to later on in this, and watch the beginning part 30 seconds in as that guy duels a necro. Exact same tactic as I use, right there.

deathwinger

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Aug 10 2009 11:53pm

The BOULDERPK:
You're in a baal run, you're on a level 60 sorc with not much hp, no stats spent yet. Theres some kinda fire druid shooping around in the background. BAM. HE HOSTILED YOU. BAM, YOU DIED! BOULDERPK is just about the only manual TPPK that can be done in d2; you can tppk people without needing hacks. Simply roll a boulder, go to town, hostile. Boulders are so slow you can do this with your pudgy fingers alone. Just be warned that its hardly effective against competent characters. Great for picking off lowbies.

VII. Matchups:
Specific techniques for dueling specific character builds.

Sorceresses
Fire Sorcs: (Medium)
These guys are the most basic character in D2. They teleport, and they shoot projectiles in a straight line at you. Thats it. Yet the duel can be deceptively tricky. Crappy fire sorcs, ones without massive tank gear, are exceptionally easy duels: Just drop a Volc/Bear combo and watch them die. Nothing at all going on there. In fact, even good sorcs you cross are often just 1 volcbear away from a Your Deeds Will Be Remembered screen. But it becomes tricky once you duel very good fireball sorcs. When they pack ES, or mass vita/dr/mb, and know how to telestomp against you, they can put up a notable fight. The tactics are everything I've listed in the techniques section; Lay down supression from fissures, and when you get the chance, drop volc/bear combos. This is not complicated whatsoever. HOWEVER, there is a trick. Against fire sorcs, you should never be namelock teleporting on them; instead, when you volcano/bear them, try to teleport directly BEHIND the sorceress. This way, your grizzly will still hit them, but you'll be out of shot of the fireballs. So namelock the volcano, then shift to just the side for the teleport, simple trick.

Lightning Sorcs: (Easy-Medium)
Honestly, these guys are just weaker fireball sorcs. They attack slower, which makes them easier prey for your bear. Just make sure not to underestimate them, and to stack your resists if need be; they often have great deals of -resists. Use the exact same tactics as above; teleport behind them, etc. Lightning sorcs are more likely to be energy shield based, and often stronger at it, but using the proper bear-badgering, tech chasing is all it takes to drain them to 0 mana and win this duel.

Blizz Sorcs: (Medium-Hard)
Without stacked resists, this can be a very difficult duel. WIth stacked resists (and ravens), its trivial. But if you die in a single hit to blizzard, this can be a real tricky duel. In the end, you need to completely outplay the sorc to win; you have bigger fissures which are easier to hit with, but their blizz will deal much more damage. Cater to your strengths. Get your opponent to start offensively blizzarding, so that they aren't camping and blizzing their feet, and then drop volc/bear combos for the kill. A blizz sorc can make this very tough for you with ES/200% fcr, but its only difficult if you don't stack your resists at all.

Orb Sorc: (Easy)
They can't hurt you, but most of these take ages to break down. Grizzly renders you mostly immune to orb, but this duel will leave you frequently recasting your bear, almost every few seconds, since grizzly is the only way to penetrate their ES. Drop supression from fissures and keep them from teleporting too much with it, and then its just a matter of trying to land a volc/bear before your grizzly gets frozen. In the end, you'll crush them much faster than they can widdle you down, they simply don't do enough damage and they get blocked by your bear.

Nova Sorc: (Easy)
This can be tougher than it looks at first. While fissures will fry them, they can win if you don't stack your resists against infinity/frost nova. Drop fissures at your feet, drag them through a few, and finally crush them with your bear. If you get trapped in nova/conviction without stacked resists, however, you'll be dead faster than you'd expect. Don't try to tank them out, but instead keep on your toes and dance fissures all over the place to drain their ES. If they're vita, its a laughable duel anyway.

Enchantress: (Easy)
Just teleport in their face and laugh, ffs.

Amazons
Bowazon: (Easy)
I want to list these guys as medium, but I just can't bring myself to do it. 99% of bowazons just get mowed down by shamans. Theres one or two I've seen that can go even with me, demonstrating that with a proper player, they can be effective. But crushing them is trivial in pubs and such. There are so many tools at your disposal. You're immune to guided arrows thanks to bear, half immune to multishot, and you can plant a fissure at their feet and they have no choice but to run out of it, and a namelocked volcano will dodgelock them so they can't react, and a grizzly often 1-hit's them. However, its best not to underestimate bowazons. Teleport around them in a strafing pattern, going circular to the angles orbitting them. Drop a fissure from the edge of your screen under their feet, and then as they choose to move, move in for the kill with volcano/bear. A bowazons main tool against a shaman is strafe. Strafe is worthless at range, but if you teleport on top of a strafing amazon you WILL die, period. If they don't strafe, volc/bear owns them. If they DO strafe, fissure owns them. Outplay them and switch between the two. If they move out of a fissure, you can land your big hit.

Javazon, Light: (Easy)
Nonteleporting javazons simply do not have a chance, and they're all the rage. Just drop fissures on them, honestly. It fries them alive. I've very rarely had to use anything else. And even if they teleport, fissures still fry them. But if they DO try to tele, keep in mind volcano will shut down their teleports pretty hardcore, since it will dodgelock/interrupt them. You will rarely need your grizzly in this duel, since fissure does it all on its own.

Javazon, Poison (Easy)
Same deal, honestly. Just be wary about teleporting into traps, and keep frying them. You can feel safer to hound them with chain-teleports in order to badger them to death, which works great if they aren't CS hybrids.

Necromancers
Bone Necro (Medium)
Honestly, this is the most fun duel there is. Shaman vs Bone Necro is somewhat even; you'll be at a clear advantage, especially if they aren't mb/dr, but its still anyones game. Theres no secrets to this duel, its all player skill. You'll have to be plenty used to dueling with your Shaman to know how to do this. You will need to take full advantage of your fissure fields, volc/bear combos, bearstrikes, etc. Keep switching tactics to even up the score. This is an incredibly deep and involved duel. Keep overly offensive necros who are trying to telestomp you off your back with fissure fields, and always be looking to land your volc/bear combo. Now, remember that this is a duel that can swing any which way at any time and requires shifting tactics, but overall you should be trying to accomplish this little trick of an order of objectives:
1) Kill the clay golem with fissure
2) Take down the bone armor with 1 bear pass (even if it misses the armor breaks)
3) Volcano/bear before he recasts.
The key is to kill his clay golem first. If your bear strikes it, it doesn't strike the necro, and you'll have to recast him because of the slow effect. So you need to drop fissure fields to kill the golem, and when it is down, move in for the kill. This is just a loose objective you'll be trying at all times. I swear, just check out that video of the other guy I posted, to see what this duel is like

Poison Necro: (Easy-Medium)
I seriously haven't gotten to duel enough of these to know for sure. But the ones I've seen, well, you need to be cautious; they'll drain you in 1 hit with nova, and kill you with the next. You'll be thankfully immune to fire golem's aura due to cyclone armor. But most of these guys can be blitzed with volc/bear and killled; if you are directly on top of them, the poison nova with not strike you, and thus you're quite safe. But its quite risky. Keeping them at a range and widdling them down with fissures tends to kill most of them; they'll be in such a rush to get to close range you can drag them through your fissures and exploit your superior range. If you get poisoned down to 1, just keep playing normally. These guys need 2 hits on you to win, and that second one could be any other spell, sure, but its hard enough for them to hit you with teeth/spear/spirit, luckily. Properly made, these guys can be a real treat to duel, but the vast majority of them are just free ears.

Druids
Melee Druid: (So Easy Its Like Duping Ears!)
You can't lose to a melee druid without rabies. Just drop fissures on em, drag them through fissures, hell, let your bear have his playtime like in advanced techniques. Its easy as pie. Without teleport, melee druids simply cannot win this duel, its laughable. Many have lots of HP and move quickly, and will travel at angles to you, so don't sit still, and as long as you keep teleporting to stay out of range, you'll be safe. The only way you'll die is if you get overconfidant.

Rabies Druid: (Easy)
These guys have one trick they can use against you and one trick only- they can poison your summons, and it will spread to you. This is dangerous! It WILL kill you if you teleport around. So instead, beating them is quite trivial- just unsummon your grizzly & spirit, and duel as a 'naked' fire druid. They'll just be like melee druids without your bear, thats all. And thus, they will die, and die horrific burning deaths of agony, serves em right, those furrys with aids.

Wind Druids: (Medium)
This can be a tough duel for newcomers to shamans. Your grizzly is *useless* against windies when their minions are up, it will never hit them. Your fissures get sorbed by cyclone, what do you do!? The duel, however, is rather easy once you're used to it. Simply start of the duel by supressing with fissures, to kill all their minions and weaken their armor. Just one teleport into a fissure and a windy has to fall back to recast. And when he falls back? Destroy him! Once his minions are gone and his armor is slightly weak, a wind druid is like a white boy in the prison showers bending over for his soap. A volcano/grizzly combo wrecks him, up his anus. But be warned that some druids will try to deceive you into stomping on their waiting nados. As a response, you should be ready to just let the volcano widdle them down; their blocking speed & fhr / fcr are conducive to getting stunlocked, and thus its not uncommon to land 2-3 hits from a volcano. Don't be hasty to drop a grizzly on their faces, you can do without it. For offensive wind druids who just love to constantly namelock teleport on you instead of dancing around outside your aoe, abuse them with matador tricks. Drag them through fissure fields, drag them onto waiting volcanos, and hell, go bowling. Drop a boulder and teleport into it and bam, all their minions die, they get knockbacked, take a big chunk of damage, etc. It ruins their shit. Wind druids are tough until you really learn how to duel agains tthem, its something experience teaches best.

Fire Druids: (Easy)
You are a fire/summoning druid, they are just plain fire. Simply exploit the fact that you can go offensive and they can't. Play along with fissure vs fissure duels until you get an opening to namelock volcano + grizzly, and bam, its over. Offensively you have a HUGE advantage on the fire druids, but they have a defensive advantage with their higher fissure / geddon damage. Don't get fooled into chasing them, which is what they'll want you to do. Simply lull them into false confidance until you get that opening, and then drop the combo. You have the clear cut advantage in this duel, they're literally just a weaker version of you.

Shamans: (Medium)
If you have ever witnessed this duel, as I have, you will know how unpredictable and insane it is

Barbarians
BvB's: (Easy)
Whirlwind barbs that don't teleport? Lul. They have no chance. Just drag them through fissures, they die even faster than melee druids. BvB's are easy peasy.

BvC's: (Medium-Hard)
The most basic BvC's are easy duels. Lure them into fissure patterns and they'll fry themselves to death as they play offensively. But this will only avail you against the weaker ones, the ones that don't know how to leap/telewhirl/chainlock as properly. A good BvC is a real handful. To win this duel, you need to not just know how to drag them into fissures, but also how to lance a cunning bearstrike on them. Anticipate when whirlwind ends. Catch them offguards, get them while they teleport around. Your grizzly deals huge damage and these guys often don't have entirely maxed DR, and never block, so your grizzly can do a number on them. BvC's can be a right pain in the ass if they absorb (hotspurs). The real key is to keep widdling them down with the fissures, and only bearstriking when their guard is down. No barb is going to mindlessly chase you through fissures, so whenever they hesitate, remind them of your 8500 damage friend. If they leap heavily, your only chance is to stay out of range and drop fissures from long range. It can be a slow, punishing duel, and kill you if you screw up even once, but you should still be able to land at least 20 hits of fissure on them to every 1 whirlwind they land on you. The worst part of this duel is that most pubby BvC's will simply return to town when low on HP, and repeat it. You'll have to frustrate them to really score a win, here.

BvA's: (Medium-Hard)
They're actually better against you than BvC's, since you can't bearstrike them. So you need to rely entirely on fissure, which they'll be a tiny bit weaker against. But its the exact same duel as above, honestly. If they teleport slower and have less HP, just makes them easier to fry with fissure.

Throwers (Easy)
Teleport on top of them, volcano them, fissure them, whatever. Their projectiles will not hit you over your bear, and therefore unless they whirlwind, theres not much they can do. Just hound them until they are dead. Play highly offensive if they aren't a hybrid, since they can't deal with someone telestomping them. If they are a hybrid, look to widdle them with fissures just like they were a BvC, just be wary abou invisible axes/javas/etc. They will usually be easier to land grizzly strikes on than BvC's.

Singers: (Easy-Medium-Hard)
Ok a good singer can actually make an incredibly interesting duel, and even a hard one. If they lock you down, you either WSG out of you die, and it is that simple. They often have such ridiculous HP's that you can't reliably tear them apart with your grizzly, which means the best way to really win this duel is to defwhore with your fissures and drag them through them until they are widdled down. Good singers will know how to chainlock and telestomp, which can make it incredibly dangerous to ever be on the same screen as them. They will howl away your bear, and they will leap to stun you in a large aoe. They are a serious threat against a shaman. One of the hardest matchups I ever had was against a singer. Fortunately, most singers suck balls, and you'll tear right through them. They are not nearly as susceptible to fissure as a whirlwind barb, and yet its your best tool against them. I love a good singer, if these guys were more popular, being a shaman could really be difficult. Its a tough duel, done right.

Pallydonks
Hammerdins: (Easy)
The most popular character on d2 (sigh) is a terrible one. They can't hurt you, they can't kill you. The best they can do is absorb you. Walk south, drop fissures, watch them burn. Its a robotic duel thats uninvolved and shallow, the opposite of a bone necro. Mindless namelock-tele-hammer pallys will do nothing against you. Your fissures rip them apart sans sorb, and even then volcanos/bear destroy them. Use matador techniques, grizzly playtime, etc.

Joderdins: (Not a duel)
I do not define killing a joderdin as a duel. A joderdin is a hammerdin who loves to charge around spamming desynced hammers at random and praying you'll teleport into one. The best way to duel them is to ignore them. They can't do anything to you unless you try to kill them. Just drop fissures, widdle them down enough to make them akara/juv. Use your grizzly as an "Anti-desync Alarm"; if it starts running towards something, it means a pally is desyncing up to you. Just widdle them with fissures, never chase, and don't teleport all around blood moor. And christ, tell them to make a real char.

Smiters: (Easy-Medium)
Smiters are easy and trivial duels, up until they absorb. Unfortunately, they all absorb. But then its just a medium duel. Drag them through fissures as a matador and bam, they are dead. No problems there at all. Just keep it up. If they have huge absorb, you need to start thinking outside the box, however. Use volcano matador tricks to wear them down, and always be looking for opportunities to land grizzly smashes. If a paladin namelocks you with charge, immediately teleport off screen and shake off the lock. Never try to dick around after being namelocked, and don't let them namelock you in the first place. Just play it safe and be defensive with fissures, and you'll kill any gm smiter. BM ones, well, just take patience.

Zealots: (Easy)
They're just like smiters except that they suck. Since the only attack either has against you is charge, both smiter & zealot are effectively the same thing, anyway. Zealots tend to have less defense & stacked resists, unless they are melee. That is to say, they tend to have EITHER defense OR resists, and rarely both. So the low resist ones are just fissure food. Zealots are a hell of a lot less likely to absorb, and therefore not a problem at all.

Auradin: (Not a duel, just an absorbfest... well, easy I guess)
Absorb them. Don't bother trying to duel em, its not a duel. Cyclone armor recast, tgods + rising sun negates all them auradins from ever widdling you down. After that, just duel them like they were a much much weaker smiter/zealot/whatever. Be wary of charge, and drop the law of grizzly upon their arses. If you don't want to absorb, well, I don't understand you since auradins are lame and pathetic. But if you really want, just keep recasting cyclone armor, and play more offensively; trying constant bearstrikes/etc,and shake off a few screens teleport whenever conviction sinks in. Haze them with fissures, but be warned that many auradins will be sorbing (dragon). If they are, its just more reason for you to sorb in return. And in a sorb vs sorb battle, you have volcano/grizzly left over, and they have a crappy crappy charge. You win.

Foher: (Easy)
These guys can be tricky duels again. FOH is at a terrible disadvantage; they will always end up targetting your grizzly/oak/whatever, and thus have an incredibly hard time killing you. Unlike a windy, though you don't survive as many hits if they DO hit you. The trick to playing against a pure foher is to be utterly offensive when you are near them. You can haze them with fissures a bit, but when you decide to drop your volcano/bear combo, badger them like you would an ES sorc and do NOT let go. Just keep up the namelock teleports until either your grizzly or the foher is dead, then pull back. FOHers suck in close range. Be warned that if you don't recast properly, you WILL die to conviction + foh, and thats never pretty. So don't be ashamed to fall back and recast for a few seconds.

V/T's: (Medium)
Lets not kid. Smite does nothing here. These are really just charging fohers as far as you are concerned. This makes them harder to stomp with your grizzly, but the duel is, obviously, just like dueling fohers & smiters at the same time. Drop fissures to haze them down, and keep up your grizzly. Only try bearswipes when they are not charging. If you see conviction active, it universally equates to "Sodomize me now with your grizzly", since it means they won't be charging yah. These guys can be a tough, cheesy duel. Often their main tool against you is just absorb, so get used to it. Overall, you'll end up just mostly widdling them down with fissures, so hey, crack open a beer and get ready for a long duel.

This post was edited by deathwinger on Aug 11 2009 12:05am

deathwinger

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Aug 10 2009 11:53pm

Assassins
Light Trappers: (Easy-Medium)
These guys are all over the board. Pubby trash defensive trappers are your bitch, since you can simply siege them with fissures and drop the grizzly bomb as you move. Yet offensive mind blast-primary tankasins can be a serious challenge. The thing to remember here is that a Shaman is very very different from a wind druid. You are not weak to trappers, not any more than a sorc or necro is. And that means you can have troubles, yes, but thanks to your long range fissures, its not terrible. The primary idea in Shaman vs Trapper is to keep your distance at first, and as the sin tries to "Fort" with a defensive trap placement, you drop a few fissures in there under her feet; this will get them moving. Now, when a trapper is moving out of her traps, thats when you've got 'er by the nuts. When they move out of trap fortress, drop a volcano bear combo before they can set up another 5 traps. Bam, damage up their wazoo. However, if the sin plays offensively by trying to telestomp you with mindblast/trap spam, it can be a neat little duel. Use defensive fissures to discourage this, and even walk an inch from your grizzly so that it will smack them down while they mind blast your face. This can serious convince trappers not to play offensively. Remember that every time their shadow master mind blasts your grizzly, you must recast it! This can be a lot. With high levels of mind blast, it will paralyze your grizzly. So just keep recasting, chipping away at them from a range, and seizing on them when they move.

Fire Trappers: (Medium-Hard)
These guys can hand your ass to you. Play defensively, and be wary as hell. WoF can stunlock you horribly, and with high mindblast/etc builds, these guys are like ghosts who don't have to whirlwind you. Duel them like you would a ghost, but don't be afraid to risk a grizzly swipe once in a while.

Hybridsins: (Medium)
Actually not as bad as they seem on paper. You don't need to be terribly scared. Duel them like you would regular trappers, except throw in more matador fissure tricks, since it utterly persecutes their whirlwinds. Landing grizzly swipes can be extremely rare against these guys since volc/bear combos will risk landing in whirlwind, so its more of a defensive-fissure-spamathon matchup. Whirlwind often proves to be more of a liability for these guys, when you start dropping fissures everywhere.

Ghosts: (Hard)
Easily the hardest matchup for a Shaman. Ghosts are a right pain in the bum. You need to play defensively with fissures to get your chance here. This is really the kind of duel that you'll never win until you're quite good at the character, but once you are, its very possible. You're at a disadvantage, but you've got a great potential. To beat a Ghost, you need to wear her out. Fissures all over the place, defensive teleports, and they'll take damage chasing you and sometimes lose her shadow (if its not spawned immune). But you cannot win this duel with fissure alone. This is where you REALLY need to learn how to do the Grizzly Driveby to have a chance. To beat a good ghost, you must teleport on top of her and off again and let the grizzly do the work. The huge chunk of damage rips right through them, when fissure often bounces off due to sorb/etc. Really though, trying to explain this duel is pointless. You'll never win it unless you're great at a shaman already, and then you don't need me to explain it. It involves a large amount of grizzly whacking, and fissure spamming, and even volc/bear combos. Things that would see all out of place against a ghost, these are your greatest assets.

VIII. FAQ:

Q: What are your hotkeys set up as?
A:
F1: Fissure
F2: Volcano
F3: Teleport
F4: Grizzly
F5: HoW
F6: Oak
F7: Armageddon
F8: Cyclone Armor
F9: Battle Command
F10: Battle Orders
F11: Raven
F12: Unsummon
I'm a stinker who uses the F-keys. I know they arent the best, but I'm used as hell to them
The only important thing is that volcano/teleport should be immediately next to each other
Switching between them is the main part of your combo

Q: Does a Shaman really work?
A: No this entire guide is a joke and the only viable dueling chars are hammerdins

Q: Really?
A: You're retarded

Q: Should I go max block / dr?
A: No. A Shaman doesn't need to tank like a wind druid / hammerdin does, because he duels a completely different manner. It is generally better to simply not get hit than to try to tank with a glass character. It is certainly possible to build mb/dr, but your damage output, fcr, etc would all suffer terribly, and it is not worth the tradeoff.

Q: Should I max XXXX instead of YYYY (typically geddon instead of boulder)?
A: No. The skillset has been firmly hammered out over many seasons of careful testing. You max boulder instead of geddon as a synergy to volcano, because the physical damage will usually do at least twice as much as the fire; 50% dr vs 75% resist, or even 8% dr vs 75% resist. Its a huge difference. Physical damage is much stronger, cannot be absorbed, etc etc. Futhermore, you lose it as an attack

Q: Is geddon really worth a single point in it, or could I skip it?
A: Yes. Emphatic yes! Armageddon is an excellent one point wonder. The damage scales up linearly on it, so even with only 1 point it will deal good damage after your +skills; maxing it only doubles it. It is simply not worth passing up no matter what. Even though it means a weaker fissure by missing firestorm points if its not on your helm, its worth it, easily. The damage it does as it trails you, the psychological effect, the supression, is all unmatched. Armageddon is an awesome skill

Q: So why not max geddon?
A: Because the damage scales up linearly. You don't get very much bang for your buck skill point wise. Other skills grow exponentially, and need hard points due to synergies, etc.

Q: Why use Heart of Wolverine instead of Oak Sage?
A: Learn to read, sherlock. I already answered this above
We don't use Oak because it dies whenever you get hit, which immediately removes its HP, which makes it work as if you never had it at all. Which means it gives you nothing at all besides an additional minion stack, which HoW does anyway. The benefit to your bear is worth more than that.

Q: Why not just make a pure fire druid?
A: A pure fire druid is an underpowered build who cannot play offensively, because he lacks the telestomp attack that can badger people to death. After casting a single skill, hes impotent. A shaman, on the other hand, uses fire skills as a 1-2 punch.

Q: What damage penalties does a Grizzly use?
A: The same. Attacks by a grizzly on a player do 1/6 pvp penalty, of type physical. Attacks it receives, however, will not be reduced; a 10k damage fireball deals 10k damage to your grizzly. It just happens to have 85% resists, which can keep it alive. It does not use 1/2 pvp penalty or anything else, no matter what you've read.

Q: Why doesn't Grizzly knockback all the time?
A: A grizzly has two different attacks, swipe (normal attack) and smite. The Grizzly's "smite" is not anything like a paladins, its simply a normal attack with +15% damage. This is stacked additively with hte rest. The smite attack always knockbacks, and attacks slower, with slightly higher damage.

Q: Why not use Tornado instead of Grizzly?
A: It doesn't work. You do not have enough skill points to get decent damage on all your skills, since nado has 3 synergies, and a grizzly attacks much faster than a tornado; you can driveby with a grizzly, but not with a tornado. Hitting someone with a grizzly is like punching someone. A tornado is like biting them. You can punch much faster with your bear, and it does more damage in a single strike, even if your teeth could leave a bigger hole. Wind/Fire hybrids simply do not work, nothing like a shaman does, sorry.

Q: Why not use spirit/dire wolves/etc?
A: Grizzly provides the damage to all these. To use dire wolves effectively, for example, you'd have to max both them and grizzly. But doing so would take too many skill points. Grizzly gets full damage just with itself maxed. Furthermore, its much easier to recast, does more single strike damage, and therefore knockbacks/fhr's much easier, and tanks better, and strikes faster on teleports.

Q: Why not max spirit/dire wolves/etc?
A: Druid synergies in the summon tree are not like other synergies. When you cast a grizzly, it gets the benefits based on your current level of wolves, not on the base points. So the synergy IS helped by +skills. Hence, with just 1 point in each, you already get most of the benefits it would give. But anyway, the benefits; ar/defense/life, simply aren't important. Your grizzly doesn't need more than 8000 AR. It doesn't need defense. It doesn't need more life. Its got plenty of all. Points into these skills are simply wasted. You see, a druid summoner only needs 20 skill points to be effective; 20 grizzly. Points into wolves are, again, a waste. Hence the left over 80 skills get dumped into fire.

Q: Why not max heart of wolverine, it gives huge %!?
A: The %damage on wolverine stacks additively with the %on grizzly. Grizzly might already have +600% ed on top of a 1000 damage attack. Giving it +200% more damage will only increase your damage by 2000, not by 14000. Refer to the druid pet calculator for more

Q: What mercenary should I use?
A: You shouldn't. Its a PvP character. Your merc should be pvm only; either infinity or reapers toll on an a2 might. I use reapers, since its easier to break physical immunes and kill them with bear/merc/volcano, than to break fire immunes, as most fire immunes in hell will not break with infinity alone.

Q: When do I use firestorm?
A: Never

Q: Should I use cyclone armor?
A: Yes, by all means. Even with only 400 damage blocked, thats 400 damage prevented from a trap or an auradin or so on and so on. Its well worth recastinge even when its effects are so low. If you don't have a point in geddon (you get it from your helm), you should still consider 1 point into cyclone at level 96. Its excellent at taking the edge off something like traps, since it can prevent your opponents from widdling you down in longer duels. I personally hotkey it.

Q: Should I use ravens?
A: Yes. Ravens will put opponents into their blocking animation once in a blue moon, but thats still a nice bonus since you have the skill anyway. Cast them once, and then forget about them for a very long time. They also blind enemy summons, which is interesting in Shaman vs Shaman duels.

Q: How does this character do in PvM?
A: Marvelously. Can solo basically anywhere in the game, but chaos will be slow. Can run keys, meph, shenk, eldritch, pits, andy, even baal. Works like a charm.

Q: What should I socket in my pelt?
A: Up to you. Shael for FHR, 15% resist jewel for resists (my choice), Jah for life, Ber for DR, Facet for damage, it all works. Even though a solitary facet may seem like nothing, the difference between 75% resists and 70% resists is an extra 20% damage, and with the +5%, thats as much as +26% overall fire damage from a single facet. Or as little as +5%

Q: Theres a girl in my class and I think I like her
A: Put your hand down her pants and finger her. If she pepper sprays you, you're out. If she don't, you're in. Tough luck, at least you can say you tried, wuss bag. Do it.

Q: My friend told me Shamans suck
A: Thats not a question. It reminds me of a joke Sean Connery told me, about how your mother is a whore.

IX. Credits:
Thanks to Flames (Earths_bday) for his excellent, albeit outdated, Shaman guide, and to varsity for his good work on his. Further thanks to Darkkobra for providing me with resources on Shaman Druids. Further thanks to clan_iraq for his work on druids & videos. This guide was written by me, Deathwinger@jsp for the Strategy & Guides forums, but feel free to copy/paste it anywhere, so long as you don't try to take credit for it or whatever.

X. Videos:
This section is reserved for dueling videos, once I've found as many of them as I can.
For the moment, the only one I could find is this (This isn't mine, all credits to whoever made it):

This post was edited by deathwinger on Aug 11 2009 12:06am

yippee

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Posts: 41,079

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Aug 10 2009 11:54pm

Flood control: Please wait a short while before making another post.
crap could not combo break in time

forgot to add how fissure is a ground spell and not blockable by claw block unlike blizzard

This post was edited by yippee on Aug 10 2009 11:56pm

rjg

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Aug 10 2009 11:57pm

lol wow it's clan_iraq's multiaccount

the funniest part is how he posted a video of clan_iraq and then says "oh its not me, i found it from someone else"

deathwinger

Banned

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Aug 10 2009 11:59pm

hrmmm??
that video is from Varsity's Shaman guide found here:
http://forums.d2jsp.org/index.php?showtopic=33894269&f=87

full credit to varsity for info
(and the druid in the video don't even use the same kinda pelt I use; I have a green +2 druid, +3 volcano +2 HoW at the moment. That looks like a ravenlore)

This post was edited by deathwinger on Aug 11 2009 12:14am

Myrddrall9

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Aug 11 2009 12:30am

I can feel the incoming spam/flames already ^_^

Still, this is quite a nice guide (one question in the faq was amusing), a very enjoyable read actually.

drt1245

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Aug 11 2009 12:35am

Quote

I've killed Oni with my budget shaman with 0 life from charms.

lolwut?

P.S.:

Also:

Quote

Assassins
Light Trappers: (Easy-Medium)

lol

XoDiaC

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#10

Aug 11 2009 12:39am

This is a whole lot of bull shit to make a rediculously terrible build look good.

Nice try

100's of players have tried this before you, you didn't invent it.
and there's a real good reason they have to sit at town to get their kills ;p

PS.
To prove it I will personally ft5 your "Shaman" anytime you like, lmk.
Don't give bad advice to people, retards here will actually believe you and get frustrated trying to make this bad char work.

This post was edited by XoDiaC on Aug 11 2009 12:44am

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