Is Shaman Dead? (1.20 Changes)

Apparently, in 1.20, a series of changes will occur where "special knockback" or spell-induced crowd control will be nullified in some bosses. This will probably apply to spells like spin attack, bomb arrow, arrow shield, and most importantly, Aura. I'm not in the Hero beta, so I would like to hear some performance reviews on HB from people who've played. I'm not here to discuss why Aura being nerfed like this is bad for Shaman, everyone knows why. However, I am here to lay down the facts and go into detail about the possible ramifications of special knockback immunity.

What We Know
Here's a list of the Bosses in LI who don't have CCI:
Corkus Accipientis Stage 5
Mechorupter of Worlds
Cybel Vulnerability Stages
Yahya
Matrojan Idol Stages 9 and 10

Here are the bosses in LI who do have it:
Mummyboard
Virus Doctor
Corkus Accipientis Stage 1-4
Mechobob
Matrojan Idol Stage 1-8
Death Metal
Doctor Legendary
Cybel Invincibility Stages

That's basically ALL of LI. That's not looking good for the rest of the bosses.

We also have a guaranteed list of spells that will be nullified.
Uppercut CC (Free Uppercancel???)
Multihit KB (Free Multicancel???)
Spin attack Stun + Blind
Arrow Shield KB
Arrow Bomb KB
Charge CC
Bash KB
Smoke Bomb CC
Aura CC
Ice Snake CC
Escape KB
Teleport Blind + Stun
War Scream KB
Uproot CC

LMK if there's any I missed.

Effect on Gameplay
This basically means stuns and any sort of crowd control is no longer useful. Spells like Spin attack which could reliably put Assassin in a safe place all the time is no longer useful. Arrow shield is also no longer useful, and Archers will have to resort to using their movement spell. Mages can no longer blind bosses using teleport, which throws its effects out the window.
This affects Shaman on a whole new level. No longer can bosses be stunlocked into oblivion by any sort of mana sustain. However, this also makes Aura so much weaker than it is right now. I never thought that Shaman was all that powerful in the first place, as its damage was and still is lackluster. However, its effect on bosses was the only thing keeping it in the boss rush meta to me.
Shamans will now have to use their dodging skills in order to survive, which a lot of Shamans don't have. It also decreases its overall damage as bosses will escape from Aura's damage more often.

Is Shaman dead? Let me know your thoughts. I personally think that, while Shaman will still be alright to use, will probably be one of the worst classes in the game now. Warrior now has a friend.

 

I don’t think so. The good part of shaman was its damage, so stun while a major part of shaman isn’t that important

 

Frankly this is just gonna encourage Shamans to move a lot more in the arena and make melee a tad bit more superior, considering most melee shaman builds usually have good ws this is gonna just mean that Shamans will run around in circles around the borders of their totem but instead of focusing on the center where the boss will be auratrapped they'll just look in another direction while running sideways/backwards, although bosses that are fast is where it might be a bit of a pain.

 

It's hard to really state properly until we experience it fully and see how people will adapt, but at face value, having bosses become immune to most crowd control effects is a very adverse change which will make every class weaker in some way.

I can't really speak for warrior, since it is my least experienced class, but each class looks to have a major aspect which will make things a lot more difficult. Arrow Shield looks like it could become pointless in boss fights since it usually works as a safety barrier to force mobs off you with its kb, Assassin will have its major combo (spin -> bomb/multi) become much weaker, and forcing more reliance onto Vanish to drop aggro, and the lack of blind on Mage Teleport will make it much harder to get a boss off you, especially if they have a very fast movement speed.

But Shaman looks to be suffering the most out of the 5 from this specific update. It is clear that Shaman in its current state is incredibly potent in handling mobs, and can either give the shaman some safety (vs ranged bosses) or downright mitigate entire fights or phases (vs Melee-only bosses). Shaman is already receiving nerfs to address it, reducing its healing from totem by 25% (4%Max HP/s -> 3%), Totem Uptime (20s -> 15s) and damage on Aura (which I cannot recall exact numbers)

However the importance of Shaman's CC cannot be understated in its power. Shaman is THE definitive CC class. The main claim to fame for shaman is being able to keep the bosses at a good distance and having a potent healing aura to recover any hits they may take against their 40% defense value, which is quite helpful as the class' movement ability is dependent on totem placement. Shaman has the most restrictive movement spell of the classes, and doesn't have the same form of escape button that the other classes have when things get dangerous, so having your main functionality be dramatically weakened could make things much more difficult.

Even now, it isn't like Shaman is the de facto boss killer class. It is strong against bosses currently, sure, but it isn't like other classes are far off. Archers can spam from a distance, keeping foes away and blasting them down with raw DPS. Assassins can enter a strong stun chain, and even when not using it you can escape easily using your mobility spell to make an easy retreat. Mages can slow the boss and drop meteors from a distance, while constantly keeping healed enough where fights can turn into a war of attrition. Warrior just doesn't die if you are paying attention a little.

I do think it will at least help raise the skill ceiling for Shaman, but if this turns out as a full immunity to CC like it sounds like, combined with the other nerfs the class specifically is receiving, Shamans will probably find themselves in a very difficult situation.

Frankly, i'm concerned that Shaman could be looking to follow the exact same path which Assassin has already gone through: Starting off very powerful/bordeline OP, before suddenly finding itself heavily nerfed to the point that it jumps from most powerful to the least.

 

For Ice Bear the main thing that hits mage the hardest is how ice snake will become genuinely useless against CCI bosses due to its low damage it also will make landing meteors much much more difficult.

 

To add onto your list of CCI bosses, the following bosses do have CCI as well:
- Haros in Rotten Passage.
- Rymek Luke's second phase in Sunrise Canyon.
- Both the Unfettered and Unbound (second phase for both enemies in Prison of Souls).
- Greggr...for some reason. He's irrelevant but I just don't know why he randomly has CCI lmao.
- Matryoshka Idol for all phases outside of 9 and 10, just like Matrojan.
- The Tribal Chieftain in Tribal Sanctuary.
- Grand Magus in Arena of the Legends.
- The last two phases of Revenant of Skien in Altar of Sanctification.
- The Challenge of the Blades appears to have CCI in the first few groups of clones, but near the last cloning segment they appear to not have it. It is very hard to properly test this, though.
- Bob's Reincarnation.
- First three phases of Corpus Accipientis, just like Corkus Accipientis (the fourth phase mech does not exist in the original fight).
- All Hive Division Bosses (Psychomancer/Gale/Genesis/Oceanic Judge/Solar Vanguard/Qira).
- Orange Wybel stages 2 and 4, obviously.

Durum Protector, Plague Doctor, Amadel, Death, the mech in Geyser Pit, Adamastor, and all the AHC bosses probably have CCI as well. However, Plague Doctor/Amadel/Death are all currently bugged and the others I have simply not tested enough to know. Whether or not any of these matter is up to you.

Also,

this list is correct, though you forgot to include ice snake's slowness being nullified (I assume you meant to say this instead of meteor, since meteor does not have CC), haul's little knock up CC when it actually lands, and escape's blind.

As for CCI itself, this actually doesn't change much mechanically outside of Shaman. It technically does for obvious reasons, but in terms of actual gameplay utility wise it doesn't matter all that much.
- Warrior got a dps buff lol. Even though the utility from things like war scream kb was nice to have on occasion, it really never changed the outcome of fights aside from making you feel cooler.

- Despite spin attack and smoke bomb's utility being rendered null and void, vanish still exists. Vanish completely screws with mob AI harder than anything else in the game, so I honestly did not feel much of a change. Hell, usually mobs just don't attack you for the exact same amount of time as if you had blinded them after going out of vanish. If you have been relying on spin's blind despite this the majority of the time, though, I can certainly see how this would be rather game changing.

- Mage just has to rely more on teleport's actual movement is all. Most bosses where ice snake was needed to actually hit them with meteor (Antikythera, CoW, etc.) do not have CCI to begin with, and the ones that were annoying to hit with meteor still are annoying to hit with meteor (Psychomancer).

- Archer's arrow storm still applies it's knockback normally, and thus you can still easily stunlock at a distance where things like arrow shield or escape's blind were generally useless anyways (aside from dealing with the random minion like CoW's, which is still perfectly practical since they have no CCI).

If we are judging this purely based on fighting bosses, then you are (to an extent) correct. It's not dead, as you have stated, but it is certainly harder to fight melee bosses with CCI compared to pretty much any other class generally speaking. It is much more reliant on using haul, normally strafing, and moving your totem around to deal with them rather than just spamming aura and waiting for your victory.

Keeping in mind that totem still can block projectiles, though, it still deals with projectile spamming CCI bosses quite well. It should only prove to be troublesome against projectile spammers that move around a lot. Bosses that primarily rely on minions also tend to still be a joke, since the minions almost never have CCI.

If we are judging this from an overall perspective, then certainly not. Since most of the game is just random huge swarms of enemies thrown your way, Shaman will still eviscerate all said content without breaking a sweat. I can certainly agree with the sentiment that judging a class's power level based solely off how they perform in bosses is really the only time it matters, since realistically any class can deal with that type of stuff easily outside of something like wars I suppose, but we just have to keep in mind the content outside of just these bosses regardless. That will be what players, especially new ones, are dealing with the majority of the time, so we should still take it into consideration where the CC alone will easily be enough.

The bigger nerfs to Shaman overall because of that are the direct nerfs, being the nerf to healing, the totem timer being nerfed to 15s (only really relevant under level 66 to be fair), and totem having less range. However, these have not been that much of an issue for the majority of this content from my experience, so I wouldn't worry about it too much.

tl;dr Basically what you said, just further elaborated upon. Shaman will be the worst class against melee bosses with CCI generally speaking, but despite being the "worst" it's still pretty alright.

For reference, I have done a Shaman playthrough up to level 75 before I got locked in a quest, a Warrior playthrough up to level 60 ish before it got rolled back, and an almost full Mage playthrough in beta. I did most of the other bosses past Bob's Reincarnation on my currently existing characters (i.e. LI or the like). Make of that what you will.

 

Epic WoT post. Yeah I understand that Shaman will still be the king of grinding in early game, I just didn't bother to add it seeing as it's pretty obvious. Your insight is appreciated massively.

 

Versus CCI, spell shaman is the worst class imo. It's not dead as a whole, but its primary appeal and literally central design as a class is dead in many cases.

 

Finally a case where dodging with agility and walk speed would be good... no don’t look at my strati it only 60 ws :v