Quote (deathwinger @ Tue, Aug 11 2009, 03:43am)
Bowas are easy duels for a shaman, and smiters have no chance without absorb.
You are rendered functionally immune to guided arrow via your grizzly stack, and thus against bowazons not using strafe, all you need to do is namelock teleport right on top of them and cast volcano at your feet. Your mostly immune to multiarrow, so what are they going to do, try to shoot you before you can teleport into range? Circlestrafe teleport around them and pop in for the kill. Even against good bowazons they fight at a severe disadvantage; only the top 3 bowazons on all of useast last season had a chance whatsoever. Using DR/Block against them would be overkill, theres simply no need for it. In fact, bowazons are probably the easiest duel for a shaman of any of the major cookie cutters. You can mow them down by the truckloads. So why stack dr/block? Its like a fire trapper stacking DR against a wind druid; its a retarded idea, since you'll ezpk them either way.
Smiters are nothing but chargers against a shaman, since they'll never be smiting you. As such, unless they absorb, fissure tears them apart pretty handily. And yes, when they absorb, they're a right pain in the ass, and it takes a long time to widdle them down. But a properly played shaman will still beat a sorbing smiters, since he can use volcano defensively to take them apart piece by piece.
But to suggest that you need to stack defense against bowazons is to demonstrate to us that you have no idea how a shaman works, since its one of the easiest matchups already.
Further evidence that you just duel terrible pubs.