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1. The bleed cancel is an omnidirectional 400 ms attack. Blocking it is not too hard, but certainly leaves a lot of room for error. If you miss the block, you have now given her Blood Trance.
2. Predator’s Hunger is a 500 ms feintable opener with good range. Already an upgraded Warlord Headbutt and already difficult to dodge. Add to that the wide sweep of Wild Cat’s Rage that will hit you 9 times out of 10 if you try to dodge it in the opposite direction (expecting to dodge Predator’s Hunger) and you’ve got a strong mixup right there.
3. Shaman has a total of 9 options off Mountain Lion’s Power, including committing to it for 40 damage + guaranteed bleed for Blood Trance. Also, go into Arena mode, select Shaman not, select her first preset, and enable the timing indicator (whatever it is called). You will find that the timing between her maximum softfeint window and her parry window are INCREDIBLY tight. Possible, but it is quite literally the tightest timing in the game, barring legitimate 50/50s.
4. Predator’s Mercy is also 500 ms, feintable, and guaranteed on a parry or throw. It does more damage than Shugoki’s Demon Embrace (50 damage) and heals her for 25.
I’m currently writing a bit of a paper on her with statistics, facts, and direct comparisons. The general gist of it is that almost all of Shaman’s tools are on par or better than every other character’s tools, and she gets them all rushed into one character.
In summary, Shaman is statistically the strongest character in the game.
and if shugoki is very low health, he can one shot many people with it.
Predators Mercy is also 400ms
Her tracking doesn't really have a problem anymore. I've succesfully dodged the vast majority of shamans trying to use the pounce on me. I've also heard that especially after a missed Predator's Hunger most heroes can even get a guaranteed top heavy after a succesful dodge, although I haven't tested that.
Predator's Mercy is 400ms, supposing she is right next to you. However, much like the dash heavies, it takes some extra ms before it actually triggers. This makes it vastly different from moves like the shield bash or warlord's headbutt. You can easily recognise when she is about to jump at you with an attack. Of course, baits for guardbreaks do exist, but I just wanted to point out that it takes much longer than you'd expect for the attack to actually come out.
By 9 options I take it you are referring to the 3 forward dash attacks and the 2 side dash attacks as well. The forward dash attacks don't matter that much for the simple reason that you'll only give your opponent time to realise what you are doing so he can cancel his parry attempt. The only reason you should use them would be to catch rollers. Like, usually it works more like this.
-Dash attack to catch rollers
-Soft feinted gb most of the time
-Let it go if you want to play risky
-Side dash attack if your opponent's heavies have no big guardbreak window.
I am not sure if the unblockable actually guarantees the follow up bleed attack.
The window after the soft feint is 200ms. Just throwing it out there.
Predator's Hunger heals her for 20, not 25. Furthermore it's important to not forget that the pounce also "eats" the bleed damage while being executed. So, it says you deal 50 damage but in reality it is a bit less.
Only nerf would be on bleed, but I feel like in general bleed from feats - synergy with PK-Shaman-Nobushi is too strong in 4v4.
I consider Conq-PK-Gladiator-Zerker stronger in 1v1. And Conq-PK as strong as her in 4v4.
2. That’s why I am giving it roughly an extra 100 ms (for the startup time). Dodging Wildcat’s Rage is no simple task. It’s the same as dodging any other attack in the sense that you need to dodge it in the same direction that it comes from (except for the top attack). Only assassins (and Kensei’s dodge attack) have the dodge range to be able to dodge it regardless, so that is just ensuring the assassin meta.
3. Cancelling into Wildcat’s Rage is also able to catch people trying to dodge Predator’s Mercy, due to the fact that they share the same startup animation.
4. Mountain Lion’s Power does guarantee the follow up bleed. The bleed does a total of 17 damage. This means that landing Mountain Lion’s Power (which is not unlikely due to the following reason) nets you 57 damage. The only character that can deal more damage off guaranteed attacks from an unlockable is Centurion (65) and he can’t even do any sort of feinting after the attack reaches the unblockable phase.
5. Just go into the Arena and have a bot spam it at you with the attack timing indicator enabled, like I said, and you’ll find that the time between the maximum softfeint window and the parry window is much less than 200 ms.
6. I was fairly certain it healed for 25, by looking visually. Unfortunately, this is not something you can easily test in the Arena mode. Also, the bleed still ticks during the animation of the bite, so a well-timed Predator’s Hunger can net you both the 17 bleed damage and the 50 bite damage. (If you land Mountain Lion’s Power, get the guaranteed bleed, and time Predator’s Hunger correctly, you can get a massive 107 damage combo.)
Basically, almost every tool Shaman has is either on par or better than other characters’ counterparts. However, the fact that there are not many good Shamans out there is skewing public opinion and makes people think that the character itself is not that powerful. When in reality, it is almost impossible to logically argue it any other way, because if you just look at her moveset logically, factually, and statistically, it is an undeniable fact that her kit is just stronger. To name a few:
- Predator’s Hunger is easier to land and does more damage than Shugoki’s Demon Embrace.
- Mountain Lion’s Power has more possible mixups than even Kensei’s signature top heavy mixups, and can guarantee more damage than almost all other unblockables. If the opponent is already bleeding, she can deal more damage off her mixups than any other character’s mixups.
- Predator’s Mercy (including the startup frames) is just as fast as the fastest openers in the game, but is feintable and has 3 options to use during her startup frames, one of which (Wildcat’s Rage) dodging is incredibly difficult as a non-assassin. It also wallsplats for a guaranteed heavy. The only opener in the game that I’d say is better than Shaman’s is Conqueror’s, however, his does not wallsplat on the opener version and guarantees less damage.
All-in-all, Shaman is just statistically the strongest character in the game. I really don’t see how you could argue it any other way.
First of all, to respond:
Shaman's pounce is completely reactable. If you get baited for the guardbreaks, that is entirely on you. That of course doesn't mean they are not strong, but it means that a cautious player should be able to dodge them basically everytime. I wouldn't say 100ms "extra" is accurate. More like 200-300ms.
As for Wildcat's Rage, that is, once again, reactable. If you get baited, rip. The baits are good, no doubt, but it would take a very profficient shaman to make a player used to her fall for them. And due to shaman's high skill ceiling - because admittedly she does have a lot more tools and ways to combine them than other heroes - this is very rare.
I haven't done any particular research on the follow-up bleed being confirmed, so I'll take your word for it. The only thing I want to point out here is that there is no situation in which Shaman gets her unblockable guaranteed, unlike centurion, which you mention. Players trying not to parry or counter in general this move is very, very rare, and I am sure you've noticed it too anyways.
What I said about 200ms isn't just a number I pulled off my ass. There are spreadsheets for stuff like this. I got my info from here https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1xRMNYPIzPgXr9TBNGZ4hURPt_CWR2YI8_ACdJsLYYH8/edit#gid=0
It's not like 200ms is exactly a generous amount of time in which you can consistently react anyways.
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All in all it's important to note that Shaman is indeed, a good character, strong, and with very high potential if you know how to use her, unlike the other 98% of Shaman mains. However, the reasons you'll see many competitive players putting her on A tier right now, is simply because there are stronger heroes than her in the current meta.
Let's take berserker as an example. Yes, Shaman has a lot of tools, and they are strong ,and they can deal a lot of damage if used correctly. But let's look at berserker. A nearly invulverable offense, due to nearly costant hyper armor every time he initiates his offense, 400ms lights from neutral feints and in a chain, a very easily accesible unblockable, incredibly fast recovery from missed heavy attacks and tracking on dodge attacks.
Now , I am not implying that Shaman stands no chance or anything, but try to picture in your head a fight between the two. Berserker comes on top. Shaman has some very nice tools, but she can't maintain herself in a fight like berserker can. Berserker says "♥♥♥♥ you" to every kind of attack you may try to interrupt him, then immediately starts storming you with fast and heavy damage. He has you continuously pressured. Again, Shaman has a lot of chances to win the match, but objectivelly speaking berserker has the upper hand. Do point out where I am wrong with this if you find something, as calculating every situation in this imaginary matchup isn't exactly easy.
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Now let's take peacekeeper. Peacekeeper was actually considered the only character to be able to shut down Shaman even from s4 launch, from what I remember. Shaman may be fast, but she doesn't have the overwhelming advantage of a zone as fast and with such good tracking. Even if this is just one tool, especially against heroes with reflex guard, Peacekeeper excels. Peacekeeper also has some insane punishes - who the ♥♥♥♥ gets 35 damage from a side attack, for example.
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And now a quick break to talk about something else, Shaman's punishes. She does have a pretty good oos punish, that's for sure. But I am talking about something else. Let's compare her light attacks and heavy attacks to other heroes. Her double light is actually the weakest double light ever, dealing 15 damage. It isn't bad but it gives her one of the weakest heavy parry punishes. The only character that gets less than her that I can think off right now is ironically conqueror.
But the real problem is her heavy attacks. 27 damage is suprisingly low, especially for an assassin. She has the lowest heavy damage out of all the assassins, and competes with other heroes for lowest heavy damage in the game. She is only a measly 2 damage away from being like centurion etc. It's important to look at stuff like this because it shows that other than her side unblockable - which will never land since almost everyone tries to parry it or do something anyway - and Predator's hunger, Shaman's overall damage output is actually very low . The side and forward dash attacks all deal 20, lights do 15, heavies do 27.
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That being said, in comparison Peacekeeper has glorious punishes. Her heavy parry punish is her weakest from what comes to mind right now, but even that is 20 damage with her zone. Light parry is 49, because reasons, guardbreak is a solid 35, and as previously mentioned, every darn dash attack punishes you for 35 as well. So all in all, every offensive trick shaman may attempt to pull is shut down with Peacekeeper's godlike zone, because it's just that much powerful, while every mistake is much more heavily punished than what Shaman is capable off.
These aren't the only heroes against which Shaman has a relative disadvantage in an 1v1, but seeing as they are considered the strongest in the current meta, I picked them to illustrate my point.
My point with all these is just that, yes, of course, Shaman is powerful. But truly consider the strength off other heroes, specifically the reworked ones plus peacekeeper and maybes highlander, and you'll she that she is in fact, not as powerful as you may think. I believe that maybe you are just a bit terrified of her, as we all were once, and having convinced yourself that she is just that powerful, you lose to her even more than normal.
Fearing that you'll lose is something that I myself suffered from a lot. For example, wardens, even after their nerfs, always proved a serious challenge to me for a long period of time, just because I had convinced myself that I can't beat them. Only after calming down and trying to look through the actually very much obvious gaps in their kit was I truly able to overcome them. And this is a pretty weak character we are talking about, but I wanted to mention it just to underline how much bias can affect the result in our games.
And now I am off to cook spaghetti, if you feel like responding this you might have to wait a while.