Quote (deathwinger @ Tue, Aug 11 2009, 05:57pm)
I agree that 'legit farcast' can be a real pain in the bum, but CS is really out of the question. If a zon manages to CS you at melee range, you're doing something terribly wrong. Which means that most duels devolve into zons throwing lightning furies, you throwing fissures. And you're bound to win that. If they don't teleport the duel is trivially easy, but if they do yes they can have a chance. But like you said, legit farcasters can be a pain, its true. But thats iffy territory to be navigating anyway: Aurastacking auradins are a pain too- drop barbs are a pain too- flamebellow barbs aren't going to lose to you :*(. Its all glitch territory and its really iffy on who considers it GM in the first place.
But even so, I've found that against legit farcast, you need to keep them at a screens length and drop fissures from corners, and play ultra defensively, unless you're using tgods + stack. Thats the blasted thing about CS zons. I've been dueling them with my shaman since before people found out about farcasting, and without it, they simply don't ever win. But with it, yeah they can be tough like you said. But its hard to feel sympathy for them and not defwhore or sorb them, when they're being about as legit as a drop barb or aurastacker. SO I wrote that passage referring to the non-farcast variant.
Yeah I wouldn't use volcano against good zons that WSG walk anyway. I honestly feel that all you need in that duel is just fissure and more fissure (its a good opportunity for oak sage). Never go on their screen, use screen corners, etc. Its very difficult to beat farcasting javazons without absorb.
oh yeah and my easy/medium/hard system worked like this:
Easy = I win more duels than I lose
Medium = We go about even
Hard = I lose more duels than I win
Non-farcast javazons are at such a huge disadvantage that they go under 'easy', even if the duel isn't easy to win, since I'll still win many more than I lose. Wind druids are an incredibly hard duel for newcomers, but I've gone just about even with them once I got good at it, and orb sorcs, even though the duel is extraordinarily difficult/annoying/tiresome, go under easy because in the long run I'll end up winning, even if it takes 10 minutes a duel. So don't mistake what I meant by easy/medium/hard, I just mean in terms of win ratios, not in terms of how taxing the duel will be.
well I guess it depends where you duel. Being this was on d2pk pretty much every cs zon on there would legit fc or at least know how to do it, and its not looked upon as a gamebreaking tactic like aurastacking that it can be labeled as bm overall considering other gm tactics and builds in d2, although it certainly does change this particular matchup for cs zon.
and ya the duel is really really simple if the zon doesnt legit fc and doesn't teleport, thats just a no-brainer, kinda like dueling vs true melee. but as I said where I dueled there are no such thing as non-teleporting zons, the average player has good enough reflexes and judgement to avoid slow fissure and not get lured in, and legit fc is not something uncommon with those players.
As for your easy/medium/hard rating, thats a bit biased thing you got there, I mean.. if I wrote a kicksin gameplay guide under those same ratings I would put most of my matchups as easy-medium. I certainly won a whole lot more vs barbs than I lost, in fact I could count the barbs who gave me hard duels on one hand, but it would look silly to list that matchup as easy-medium even though most of the time thats what Im thinking when someone rejoined on a barb to duel me back in my useast days. Matchup difficulty also looks very different if we are talking about pub vs pub or average vs average or vet vs vet players.
btw have you had any experience with team duels on your shaman? Ive found d2pk volcano druid to be surprisingly good in teams (2v2 or 3v3) (volcano + mindblast or volcano + amp, both rape in teams) not sure how well it would translate to bnet with the lower damage, but your thoughts/experiences with shaman in tpk?
(although I take it most of your experience using that char is just 1v1 or 1vpub)