Quote (deathwinger @ Tue, Aug 11 2009, 05:52am)
http://img22.imageshack.us/img22/7656/shamank.jpg
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.
http://img33.imageshack.us/img33/5324/deadnecro.jpg
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.
http://img20.imageshack.us/img20/5384/fissurek.jpg
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.Gfg Guide man 10/10
