Shaman Melee Buff

Hi everyone,
No, I'm not going to suggest buffing Aura's spell multiplier (please buff Aura's spell multiplier), I might get to that later, but I'm here because as a Shaman who's tried Melee, there a couple problems.
Actually, there's really only one problem - the fact that the attack is split into three beams. I get that this is a feature that fits in with Shaman's crowd control theme, but it's really inconvenient in practice - it means that if you want the full dps, you need to stand right next to the mob.

Shaman is not a class that's good at facetanking mobs.

So, alright, in order for Shaman to have a unique main attack, I get that this is necessary, but I have a couple ideas. Honestly most of these probably suck, but they're all I got.

Idea 1: Have Powders charge up seperately for every beam.
This might be a bit overpowered (especially in Heavy Melee, where Quakes can make up most of the dps), but it could be balanced by nerfing the damage or smth.

Idea 2: Have Life/Mana steal activate seperately for every beam (I cannot spell "seperately" for the life of me).
Not much to say on this, but -life/mana steal might be a bit of a problem.

Idea 3: Increase damage.
Just make each beam do 40% or smth so that, even though each beam still won't have the full dps, it'll be something.

That's all I have for now, feel free to reply with your own ideas.

 

BRO I CLOSED MY TAB WITH LIKE 6 PARAGRAPHS REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE. I'll respond to this tomorrow. For now I rage quit

 

idea 2 seems pog
we should also change the independent beam dmg to 1/3rd instead of 33%. i don't care if its a 1% difference from other classes, i just want shaman to not be jank

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ive done this so many times :doom:

 

I'm too gosh darn lazy to write out my response again :despair:

To oversimplify what I would've said: perhaps the centre beam could have higher stats than the other 2 OR decrease the size of the angle(s) across the entire melee attack. I think shaman melee "may fail" due to the fact of having to go super close to achieve optimal DPS (total melee DPS does not need to be buffed).

I definitely left out a lot of what I wanted to say but oh well, leaves room for others to step in I guess.

 

bump10char

 

bump16characters

 

forcing the squishy-ish class to be close to enemies to maximize dps is actually pretty dope ngl, same thing with arrow storm & archer

 

Yes but shaman has even less defense and doesnt have an as good movement spell as archer

 

Regarding the first two ideas, every bolt of shaman's melee already separately charges powder specials and procs mana/life-steal, but at reduced values to compensate. So, I'm assuming what you're proposing is to raise those values to the standard 100% similar to the other classes, which would be hilariously broken with such suggestions in mind. 3x the amount of powder specials would boost damage to the highest in the game, and 3x the amount of mana and life-steal would very quickly make the class near unkillable with great mana sustain. Idea 3 is the best proposition of the ones you have here, but even then I don't like the idea of a flat increase to a class' base unboosted melee damage in a game where the items in your build are everything.

I think people misunderstand the point of shaman's melee attack. It doesn't exist solely to screw with powder charging or stealing procs, but acts as a sort of in-between for the differences of all the other class melees. Warrior and assassin both have the weak close ranged attacks, mage having a more narrow horizontal range of attack but reaches much further, and archer's being able to travel the furthest with an even more narrow range of piercing. Shaman's melee is a combination of most of them, as whilst it incentivizes playing closer to enemies for all bolts to land at once akin to warrior and assassin, it still has reach similar to that of mage's (albeit, this range varies depending on your target, as slimmer mobs will require you to be closer and wider mobs can allow you to play even further back) and has the ability to go even further like archer's, at the downside of worse damage, charging and stealing chances.

The main issue is that shaman's melee attack disappears in the event another is thrown (which is primarily an issue for faster melee speeds) akin to archer's arrow also disappearing with consecutive melees, but this is confirmed to be a bug. Otherwise, I think people just don't quite get the point of the attack and seemingly undervalue it.

 

I personally think that the whole "3 bolts but if you're closer they all hit" is an issue because of one fact: There's only 3 bolts to divide damage between, when something like 5-9 (akin to a shotgun) would be more ideal. Currently, if only your center bolt hits, you can say goodbye to 66% of your DMG, but splitting everything between several bolts would keep this frustrating 3-bolts issue from occurring at close-to-mid range.

Reducing the spread would definitely be nice, but I'm okay with splitting the attack into 5, 9, or 10 bolts instead than 3.

 

This is a great idea.

 

Maybe if after the attack is 'done' (the particles have traveled to the max range of the attack stopped being created), the game counts how many mobs were hit by the attack, and what % of the total possible damage each mob took (str, dex, attack dmg % and all those kinds of modifiers are not counted, they'll be added in later, now that I'm thinking about this I'm not sure if it makes a difference), then it'll deal the percentage damage not dealt, divided by the number of mobs, to all the mobs that were hit (this is where damage ids and str/dex get added in).
(Maybe we subtract ~-7% from the total damage dealt by this second attack so that there's still some advantage to getting close to your enemy if you're in a 1 on 1 boss or something like that, this means hitting the mob with the actual beam is still preferable even in a 1v1)

Here's a example, you have two zombies in front of you and attack them, one of them is really close you you but off to the left, then other is further away but directly ahead, the closer one gets hit by two beams and takes 66% damage, the further gets hit by the center beam and takes 33% damage.
Now, the game will deal a second hit to both mobs, for the one that got hit by two beams, it'll take 17% damage (with dmg ids and str/dex factored in), since it took 66% damage meaning 33% of the possible damage was lost, and there were two mobs hit by that attack, and 33/2=16.5 which rounded to the nearest whole gives us 17. The mob that got hit by only one beam will now take 34% damage because it took 33% of the full main attack damage before meaning 67% of possible damage was lost, and there were 2 mobs hit by that attack, 67/2=33.5 which rounded gives you 34. etc

This solution would mean that shaman's crows control use of it's main attack would be mostly unchanged meanwhile the spell's utility in 1v1s or 1v2s and fights of that nature will be a lot greater.


Another option is to give players the ability to change the angle of the different beams. I'm pretty sure the server can detect when the player presses F (or whatever their swap hand button is), so maybe letting shamans cycle between different angles of the spread of the beams. Maybe pressing F cycles between 2 or 3 presets of different angles (1 with the current spread, 1 with a slightly tighter spread meaning the beams are closer together, and depending on how generous the CT is maybe 1 with just one beam that deals 100% damage, just as an example).