anyway, saw some videos on youtube today with a tele shockwave summoner wielding beast, looked kinda fun. was mainly shockwave tatic, but some cano vs hammers. i figured by making beast in fastest possible base, why not maul after shockwave hit?

you won't ever break the cyclone armor of a good druid with attacks that have a cooldown, while cyclone armor does not. Minions also shield from cano, which will only do phys dmg if it gets a hit through minions. They also distract bear and cover for the druid, while nado is a slow moving multi target aoe attack. Bear can't even get near druid without taking one to the face, and that is even assuming you have cleared the minions. I play blizz sorc and duel vs. druids often. It is difficult enough with blizz + ice blast/glacial. But to win with blizz alone? This is the analogy I am making, and it doesn't seem like a win for the shaman.

Self fissures. An ele needs to get on top of a shaman or at least fairly close to do its damage. The second you land in a self fissure your summons are erased and Cyclone is dropped leaving you open to continued fissure dmg and a nasty bear swipe with chances of a heavy armaggeddon landing as well. Rinse and repeat, eles were never that difficult for me just time consuming.

This post was edited by 00apacolypse on Jul 16 2020 06:58pm

A proficient druid will do a single tele nl, a single nado, and then retreat before cyclone armor is busted. Now you have to chase him, and your only attacks have cooldowns, while a bearswipe is bound to get a nado in the face. I don't see it working. You need about 15k-20k elemental damage to break through cyclone armor.

This post was edited by Gilgameshed on Jul 16 2020 07:15pm

I think youre forgetting that your single tele NL into a self fissure is instantly going to drop your summons and cyclone before your tele animation has even ended let alone the start of your single casted nado. Im not sitting here telling you an ele will never beat a shaman, im just clarifying that an ele can lose to one and ive done it time and time again. I'm not exactly new here, I know what the build is capable of

This post was edited by 00apacolypse on Jul 16 2020 07:21pm

Can we duel? I have a druid on ESNL, and will have one soon on ESL. I honestly don't see a single win happening on the side of either a fire druid or a shaman vs. a good ele. Even if the shaman druid is a much more skilled player, I feel there is a plateau where once you face a certain level of windy, your chances of winning drop to 0%.

I would but I'm currently retired on east softcore. Sold 95% of what I had and I just came back to play a little hardcore with a friend.
I'll see if I can dig up who has my old pelts and set you up

I would be happy to duel any other shaman as well. I would like to be proven wrong about the windy scenario, as I do want to try this build out. But I just don't honestly see it happening at high level play.

I think windy has the advantage but its a strategic fight
the main things are that the windy's wolves negate the shaman's bear while active, but they expose him to cyclone shotgunning
so while wolves are up, stepping into a fissure will hit the windy very rapidly and break his armor and kill all his wolves, since it triggers the lastcollide cascade like a tomb viper, albeit still limited at 6 fpa due to nexthit delay- fissures do this, blizzard doesn't. A druid can rack up 27k damage in 1 second, and then it pierces and hits the windy with -75% resists and nukes him
but while windy's shields are down, he's vulnerable to bear both when teleporting into it (will hit faster than nado/hurricane), or if the shaman takes a risky teleport behind the windy
its one of the only matchups where I've ever actually seriously used molten boulder, since it has the ability to interrupt a windy teleporting on top of you if you walk into your own boulder

there's a few ways to approach the duel. If a windy with no stacked resists is incautious and aggressive and the shaman is syncing around wsging with 6.8k fissure with -75% resist, cyclone armor will be a real false sense of security. Or the shaman could just ignore facets and go a normal caster route, dr or not, using fissure only to clear minions and force the windy to reset and fish for openings to bear swipe, or punish approaches with 1 pt sw.

but imo its too easy for a windy to punish a shaman and kill him outright because the duel always revolves around the windy getting his stack/cyclone burnt out and then retreating to reset, and that's the shaman's only opening for a bearswipe, so its just too predictable and easy for a windy to teleport away feigning a reset and lay a few nados to kill on approach. And with that threat, the shaman can't land any real damage beyond volcano physical


also, same as the windy vs barb matchup, MB/DR just makes it fucking impossible. I have killed plenty of vita druids and 163 setups and whatnot, but the MB/DR windy has a colossal advantage

This post was edited by Goomshill on Jul 16 2020 11:04pm

There are ways to kill 99 fcr max block druids on barb, but you can't tank them straight up. You have to stop their setups with leap. Another stun based strategy~ triwhirl in this situation doesn't always work, but 1-2x leaps and a clear tele/long ww then a reset several times (with ow hopefully procing when oak is down) can end the duel without the barb taking too many nados. Also, I have a 63% life leech setup on my barb with almost 50 dr. I heal 1-2k per hit on bear, and if I swap to grief/dracs I can be gaining over 30 life per wolf kill due to life gained per kill. Meaning 180 life per pass, and another 100-200 per wolf from leech. Which about covers a nado and hurri damage. Would be fun to try 2x eth lacs on swap with the dracs, with base throw mastery and 1 pt double throw, kind of like a Brawler but more BVC oriented. Prob amp or tap then chase like a mad man as they try to resummon. Haven't tried THAT one yet but it seems pretty fun, desu.

This post was edited by Gilgameshed on Jul 17 2020 12:21am