Guide Some Tips And Tricks For Shaman

So I've finally got my shaman up to level 101, which means I've finally got the opportunity to mess with some shaman builds and test out the various mechanics. I've learned a few things along the way, too.

Right, first off, the basics, AKA mostly numbers:
-While your crosshair is level, your totem gets thrown ~18-20 blocks away
-The totem can be thrown about 6ish blocks vertically
-The totem radius is 10 blocks
-Aura's particle effect radius is 16 blocks, although the actual range of the spell might differ
-Aura can be cast a maximum of 24 blocks away from your totem
-after level 66, shifting while casting uproot will cause it to knock away mobs and totems, rather than having it pull mobs to you. Casting uproot also resets the totem (I know this is on the site but not everyone reads that and this is the basis for some of the more complex things)

Now, the fun stuff:

• Shine Suffocator is an EXTREMELY good weapon to use while levelling, and got me from level 50 all the way to level 80. Having a 1 mana cost, highly spammable aura with good damage and mana steal is extremely good for basically everything. The IMs deserve some serious commendation for making it (now give me a higher level version).

• Uproot will reset your totem timer regardless of whether you hit something or not, meaning that if you're using a weapon like Shine Suffocator or Lower, where casting totem is extremely expensive, uprooting into the air can be used to reset your totem instead, even if it misses everything.
  • Alternatively, in a quicker paced fight where losing totem's heal or strength effect for even a couple seconds may be problematic, uproot can be used in lieu of recasting your totem

• Melee attacks will only charge powder specials after the melee's travel time ends. If you're wondering why your powder specials charge so slowly, this is why.

• You can hit your totem with uproot in midair. Using shift-uproot on a totem right after casting it before it hits the ground allows you to move it further than shift-uprooting it after it hits the ground.
  • This is also very useful when trying to cast totems off a cliff, as the shift-uproot can be used to boost your totem in midair before it gets out of range to launch it extra far for some long ranged damage and support.

• Poison is very, VERY good with shaman. A poison shaman build might legitimately be the single best area denial kit in the game. The long ranged wide area melees, large AoE spells, and a built-in counter to the negative hp regen that tends to occur on poison builds make poison shaman a force to be reckoned with. Not to mention Spleen Splitter, the second highest poison weapon in the game, and Toxoplasmosis, the highest poison weapon in the game, are both reliks. A single totem spell will basically lock down any area for 20 seconds, meaning that most smaller arenas just become death pits. It's not going to win any contests for DPS or survivability, but the sheer ease of use and versatility more than make up for that in my opinion.

• Haul sucks ASS for mobility, but it's pretty good for evasive maneuvers. It's cheap and can get you out of a pinch. Just... get a horse. you will need it.

So yeah. Overall, a very fun class with a few cool, deeper mechanics. Tell me if I missed anything.

 

Haul doesnt suck ass, just spam totem and 2 hauls very quickly.
But great thread, had a fun while reading.

 

Comboing haul is pretty diffcult, and it'll just end up using more mana so you need mana regen

 

I can confirm that this does not work while living in EU

the connection is HELL no matter which servers you connect to. I swear, the lag I get when connecting to the NA servers is worse than the lag I got before they added the EU servers (maybe before 1.19 im not quite sure).

The thing is that my ping is actually (fairly) decent, so most of the lag is server side.

 

This has never been the case for me.
Do I have to upgrade my Uproot to a certain level for this to happen, or is it a bug?

 

Where in the EU do you live? In Finland its fine.

 

While true, and imo more effective than a black horse if you can maintain it, it's quite tough to maintain for long periods of time and is still pretty easily the hardest movement spell to get use out of.

 

Why do people hate on poison? ;-;

Here’s my poison build: https://www.wynndata.tk/s/o1y3rt

17k HP for survivability that maintains incredible poison damage.

 

Did you read the thread upside down or something? He explicitly said that poison is GREAT for Shaman, and Toxoplasmosis is a popular Shaman mythic, so what are you trying to say?

 

Shaman also gets a massive xp relik really early on :3

 

Honestly my issue is that if you mess up the left click even slightly, you’ll probably cast uproot and then be yanked back to the totem

It’s part of the level 66 upgrade

 

I realize now that you could’ve interpreted that message in more than one way. Text :/

The message that I was trying to convey is why hate on poison in the first place? As you can see from other threads, many people dislike it (Poison). Then I provided a poison build I enjoy using on shaman with good HP as well.

 

In my opinion Shaman is one of the best classes ever made. I really enjoyed leveling it up and don't regret doing so.

• Uproot is (if not the most) useful spell. Aura can cover big areas and generally does a lot of damage, however because Totem is stationary, it won't reach enemies out of it's range (in wars especially). This is where Uproot comes in. You get control over much bigger areas by pushing/pulling your Totem. Weaker units may drop off dead after the first two Auras, however others might need more hits. No problem! Aura can lock them to your Totem, and by lock I mean they won't fcking get out unless Aura runs out. So with Uproot you can move those stronger troops around and deal considerable damage to them while you continue literally vacuuming the battlefield. Displacing stronger units this way is also better because they might get out of players', who are more inclined to die after a few hits, range(although this is situational, nevertheless it's still a good tool). Uproot is also much faster than recasting Totem and somewhat more reliable (Totem might not land where intended, you can't move enemies around). It is additionally good for resetting mana costs. If a few mobs are too high for your Aura to reach them and Uproot somehow fails to pull them, you can throw your Totem to their level, lock them down with Aura then Uproot your Totem instead (from my experience, whenever Uproot hits the Totem it won't fail to pull/push it).
• Totem can block projectiles, therefore it can be used as an actual shield sometimes (like when the Eye goes into "machine gun mode"). Additionally you could push the Totem with Uproot, kill mobs with Aura then get behind your Totem with Haul to protect yourself from backfire (although this is not really worth the effort, but still fun though).
• Building too much damage is not neccessary because Totem gives you while you are in it's range (and why wouldn't you be) 35% increased damage. On top of that, the previous Aura + Uproot combo can be spammed in great succession, resulting in crazy high dps. Therefore to balance out your base defense (the lowest of all classes) it is worth to invest into either defense, agility or even both (WFA Shaman is reaaaally good)!
• This is trivial: Using the previous combo could end you up with losing track of where your Totem is (happened to me a few times, go ahead and call me bad, lol), Haul can be used to find it (Or just throw another Totem).

Overall, this is an absolutely insane class with it's ability to disable any melee unit and deal enough damage to ranged units to remove them before they can do any serious harm. It could probably get nerfed at some point...

 

A nerf is unlikely, when they buffed the hell out of Mage, I don't expect Shaman, a class with incredibly low defense and rather difficult gameplay strategy, to get nerfed

 

About the mobility issue - I have like 3/4s mana regen and about 4 or 5/4s mana steal in total and the totem+haul spell combo would be a great way to travel (except for being mage/archer) if you didn't have to sprint to get the most out of it. My experience is that if you don't sprint you simply won't get launched as far however you are free to debunk that. And this makes it a bit shit because then you have to walk for like 10 seconds until you can sprint+totem+haul again. But yeah, as long as you have decent mana regeneration bonuses you can just keep the spamming going (if you invest quite a bit in intelligence as well).

Also, holy shit, the rage when you are intensively comboing totem+haul and you accidentally do an uproot+haul and get launched backwards :/

 

I'm still confused as to whether or not uproot resetting the totem whether or not you hit it is a bug or not though, and I've never gotten a confirmed answer. It was specifically stated that you need to hit the totem to reset the timer in the original change log, but now the addition of push has messed up the wording so it doesn't specify either or.

I agree. The only two things I would expect to be nerfed would be the above and the fact that totem can block projectiles (whether or not either are intentional). The former makes totem managing basically non existent after level 66 except for remembering that you do need to uproot every once and a while (which you probably will be doing for spell cycling anyways), while the latter completely memes on most ranged enemies. As said above, I've never gotten an answer as to whether or not either is a bug.

Then again, the more likely thing is that they aren't going to nerf any class, rather just redo Wynn's combat as a whole.

 

This is fear

 

Nah. That isn't fear. The true fear is seeing that your poison basically goes up to 41k/3s because strength and realizing Courage could bump that up to 102k/3 or Curse to 127k/3s. I also screamed a little when I saw how low the build was on defenses but I guess this might really murder anything before they get to touch you.