Not I O_o
Windy's are a tough duel, and extremely insurmountable for new shamans. However, once you get used to it, its quite winnable. If they aren't mb/dr, its actually rather easy. MB/DR ones though, they will have an advantage if they can chainlock sufficiently well, but its still quite winnable. Fairly even once you're good at it. It sorta goes like this:
1) Get windy to land in a fissure or two, killing all his minions and lowering his cyclone armor
2) As he backs off to recast, chase him with a volcano and grizzly combo chainlock
Now obviously good ones will make it into mind games so you don't know when its ever safe to engage with grizzly, but a shaman has a million tricks up his sleeve too (see advanced techniques section)

Once you appreciate the fact that you can actually go on the offensive and telestomp windy druids if you do it unpredictably, the duel becomes a lot easier. Its mostly just a lot of running around as you fissure and he recasts, etc etc, until you either land the coup de grace or teleport into his waiting nados by accident. Its actually quite a fun little duel when you're good at it.

does hurricane freeze bear before it hits?

Well you need to admit that a windy has a ridiculously difficult time against a trapper, even if its winnable via l8z spam and defwhoring all day long and looking for potshot telestomps. But evenly played the trapper should always win, especially fire, and especially if they have access to 1 pt dragon tail / dancers / venom, as we've all discussed before (GG wsg'ers).
But its a pretty clearcut duel in favor of the trapper. Just as necros should always beat smiters. Its a pretty tough duel to lose as a necro, when you've got bone prisons, iron maiden, bone spirit, etc. Sure telesmiters can do their thing once in a blue moon, but this is the kind of enormously uphill matchup that I'd just try to avoid if I could. And trappers become hard to classify for matchups like that, since most characters actually stand an extremely good chance the second they toss on tgods :x

but I'd be inclined to agree that trap vs smite is easier than shaman vs ghost, but thats mostly due to the difficulties of classifying trappers in the first place, as they are more often beaten by sorb than skill, and, apologies, don't require much skill anyway, so the duels are never that difficult. But I'd say that shaman vs ghost is easier than windy vs ghost, for example. That should be pretty clear cut; a windy has to place himself directly into the line of traps to land a hit, and thus is 100% predictable, whereas a shaman can land his grizzly hits by virtue of having long ranged attacks to force the offense, etc.

So yeah, trappers just a bad example >.>
Shaman guud, essay over pew pew pew

It often can, which poses a bit of a threat. Since a grizzly has 85% resists, the cold slow duration is only 0.3 seconds, and hits every 0.8 seconds.
The real problem is that it deals 3000 cold damage, and even though its reduced to 450 after resists, a grizzly might only have 6000 or so HP with battle orders
that means that hurricane just ekes over the 1/16 threshold usually, giving it a 37.5% chance to throw your grizzly into FHR. And that can be more annoying than the tiny tiny duration slow
So theres a good chance that while drivebying on a windy that your bear will miss due to hurricane alone, yes. Its one thing to be aware of. Really a pain in the ass when they're 75% block to boot
so maybe a 50:50 shot of hurricane hitting at all, which might either FHR or slow your grizzly causing it to miss.

the reprieve is that hurricane only lasts 50 seconds, and the fissures make them recast everything so hard that they'll often miss their hurricane in order to drop wolves/oak.

This post was edited by deathwinger on Aug 17 2009 05:58am

no, windy doesnt really have ridicilous hard time vs _average_ trapper
I played windy for couple days @eud2pk and I could beat some trappers that werent really bad but not awesome either
the fact that trapper cant chase properly without putting himself in risk and the fact that windy can wsg out and recast cyclone and take no damage and kill trapper in a few nados means that its nowhere near impossible vs average trapper
however when you try to duel the best trappers it gets harder. They still cant chase you that well, however you cant afford to be stunned by them since they can keep you stunned easier and with kicks kill you pretty fast

about ghost v shaman, yes you dont have to get in range of traps, but you really have no way to stop the assa from chasing you, on the other hand assa who tries to chainlock windy without trap support is usually dead

ps. trapper does take skill, you make yourself look like a retard saying otherwise
and about sorb, trapper is 100% gm char really, so you wont have to worry about full absorb. tgod is just normal and its retarded to play vs trapper without tgod, its just way too easy for them then

This post was edited by tudey on Aug 17 2009 06:06am

hummm I don't think of myself as a good trapper but I've never encountered a druid that had a chance, but then again I use kicks/venom against WSG and fire traps stun em better (yes I said that).
And thats including the druids that juv/autoaim/tmc/etc. I'm not ashamed to say my shaman dies to crap like that, but for whatever reason I can still beat druids like that on my sin.


I've always regarded windy vs trapper as the most unbalanced caster matchup there is. Sure, things like whirlwind > zeal are easy, but taking melee out of the picture, I always figured it to be the bottom of the barrel.

firetraps are harder in a sence since they are harder to dodge, however you can just wsg away before they start shooting and they wont hit you
it totally depends on your playstyle, if you play carefully its hard for the druid, but then its also really hard for you to catch them
id say ghost vs druid is a lot more unbalanced than trap v druid

This post was edited by tudey on Aug 17 2009 06:04am

NN skill. I've played trappers so long now, that I feel safe in saying its like playing Easy Mode diablo 2. I can eat a sammich and kill a windy at the same time :x
Its not to say that theres no opportunities for great displays of prodigy, but for trappers the skill/benefits curve is much more center-heavy: Crappy trappers can still do ok, and great trappers only do marginally better
This is contrary to, for example, a shaman, where a poorly played shaman will lose 0-100, and a well played shaman can beat things that wouldn't be imaginable at first.

The primary way to keep ghosts from chasing you down is to play like a blizz sorc and just teleport offscreen dropping fissures in your wake. Sure its not going to kill them, but keep it up and they'll switch tactics. Its one of the weakest bits of the shaman vs ghost duel; being weak against telestomp chasing, but grizzly intimidation and fissure widdling can often keep them off your back long enough to mount an offensive.

This post was edited by deathwinger on Aug 17 2009 06:07am

[QUOTE=deathwinger,Mon, 17 Aug 2009, 15:06][QUOTE=tudey,Mon, Aug 17 2009, 06:58am]
about ghost v shaman, yes you dont have to get in range of traps, but you really have no way to stop the assa from chasing you, on the other hand assa who tries to chainlock windy without trap support is usually dead

[quote]ps. trapper does take skill, you make yourself look like a retard saying otherwise
and about sorb, trapper is 100% gm char really, so you wont have to worry about full absorb[/QUOTE]

NN skill. I've played trappers so long now, that I feel safe in saying its like playing Easy Mode diablo 2. I can eat a sammich and kill a windy at the same time :x
Its not to say that theres no opportunities for great displays of prodigy, but for trappers the skill/benefits curve is much more center-heavy: Crappy trappers can still do ok, and great trappers only do marginally better
This is contrary to, for example, a shaman, where a poorly played shaman will lose 0-100, and a well played shaman can beat things that wouldn't be imaginable at first.

The primary way to keep ghosts from chasing you down is to play like a blizz sorc and just teleport offscreen dropping fissures in your wake. Sure its not going to kill them, but keep it up and they'll switch tactics. Its one of the weakest bits of the shaman vs ghost duel; being weak against telestomp chasing, but grizzly intimidation and fissure widdling can often keep them off your back long enough to mount an offensive.[/QUOTE]

it becomes pretty easy after you are good at it, however when you are not its hard as fuck
crappy trappers really cant kill any serious duelers

fissures wont keep ghost from chasing you, they can just chainlock dclaw and fissures wont do shit vs that

crappy anything loses to serious anything o_O
thought thats a given. But a trapper running in circles like an idiot can still be a nuisance when a dumb fire sorc is nothing but ear-duping.

But no, fissures don't keep ghosts from chasing you. They can still chase you, but if you l8z and defwhore, it will inevitably widdle them down.
Its one of those duels where you'll be trying to keep them off your screen the whole time, yes. At least until you've got them wary enough (they WILL turn wary after getting struck by a grizzly)



But for a simple thought experiment. I run a crappy shaman with almost nothing for gear, and he can beat most well equipped duelers, played often by better duelers than me. Now, with my "0 life from charms" crap druid, I stand no chance against good ghosts/hybrids with 4500+ life and all that crap, with 100% perfect gear. Of which there are quite a few, and I've had the unfortunate luck to have to duel them. I win rarely, but die more often than not. But a mediocre ghost or hybrid is almost a trivial duel. When you remove their ability to tank a million fissures and survive a half dozen grizzlies, its suddenly a much more difficult duel for the ghost.

Now I've got a crap ass fire trapper with almost no gear at all; wizspike and griffs are her best items. Well, I'll beat windies with 100% perfect gear, yet I die to half geared chargers with anuses in their brains.
Thats the difference between duels being "well rounded and winnable" vs being "unbalanced and unfair".

This post was edited by deathwinger on Aug 17 2009 06:16am