I’ve been experimenting with the primalist fire skill conversions and quickly noticed there are no fire passives any where on the tree. there’s also a lack of fire support skills.
I think fire would be an awesome addition to the shaman tree.
the current tree feels overloaded with totem based buffs and lightning strike proc.
A node that converts some base class skills to fire would be great
A shaman exclusive utility skill could be ‘stone skin’
a physical based buff that you could convert to ice or molten
you could just move the “when hit” passives from the tree onto the Stone Skin skill.
that would help free up some space for more fire archetype passives.
You will find a similar thing when trying to do this with other classes… damage types are thematically linked to classes by design. E.g. you cannot get a Mage to be successful with void damage - purely because the devs have decided thats how they want to do it. sure you CAN have a mage do void damage but there are no ways to scale it vs the damage types that the devs intend Mages to use - i.e. elemental.
Where there are damage conversions, they are usually secondary and dont tend to apply to base skills - i.e. they are not intended to be the primary damage type for the class but may have a valid use in a niche build.
Sometimes the only way to get around this limitation in any effective way is through a unique item and these are generally the only way to really make a damage conversion work well.
That said, there is nothing stopping the devs from expanding damage types and conversions to allow other classes to use non-default types in future.
Imho, I wouldnt want them to allow this too much as it tends to break the “theme” of the classes.
I’d be pretty interested in seeing a decent (e.g. corruption 300) endgame capable mage that did void damage. Off the top of my head I can only think of something using the Forgotten Knight set which is what I alluded to wrt the uniques enabling it.
I really don’t think it would break the shaman theme. fire and lava is a primal element. the fact that the devs added a couple fire conversion skills (In the Shaman tree) tells me future fire skills are not off the table.
But you will notice if you look around some other classes, this isnt that far fetched or out of the ordinary.
Rogue has a cold conversion for many many skills. Rogue has 0 cold passives and bowmaster has a few elemental ones. Rogue also has some lightning conversions and again, no lightning support.
These “Splash elements” as ill call them exist to reward players for thinking outside of the box, or as unique build enablers for off the beaten path builds.
They are basically very much intentionally hard to work out.
One “theory of elements” mike has given is they dont want any single mastery to 100% overlap or encircle another. Adding fire to cold lightning and phys would encircle too many masteries if you follow that logic. Also worth noting they don’t follow this strictly, Paladin and FG have a large amount of element overlap.
Personally I would like to some fire support for shaman
if the’re not going to straight up add fire passives to the shaman tree they should at least add ones that are generically useful to it. like all ele res/ damage/ pen.
the tree has all res but it’s tied to having totems
there are no fire totems…
All primalist trees have almost nothing useful for a fire caster build. except attributes, health and mana.
and once you get all those you have something like 20 points left over.
the rest have to go into non fire element stats.
It isn’t not that far fetched or out of the ordinary because people cried a river because they wanted to be a speacial snowflake. When the classes have been released they had a theme and you played them because of said theme. Right now we aim more and more towards “each class can do everything” instead of having a reason to play different toons.
I hate it to be honest and I wish every special snowflake stuff would be removed and we get some kind of idendities back reasons to play a toon. Make Totems good for example so people are eager to play the shaman for what he was inted for insted of whatever.
This is only my oppinion and I only want to voice it and I don’t want to offend everyone or the person I replied to especially.
I simply want Masteries to be outstanding with the tools they have without playing a Void Knight and all of the sudden a Battlemage flies through my screen and is better more effeicient and versitile with void skills because the devs grow weak to the “bUt Me WaNt BeCaUsE ReAsOnS!” crowd.
It adds no depth to thegame because every build enabeling unique that twists a mastery into something different is easy to figure out or there are 12 guides about it on the internet.
On the other hand more options make more people happy and the few people who are alienated by bastard hybrid builds that exist for whatever reason are the minority for sure :D.
While I agree in theory, it isn’t like Shaman was only a totem class. That is meant to be the caster spec for Primalist. That is why 3 of its 4 skills are spells. Tornado and Earthquake both have fire specs, they just aren’t very good specs.
For what it’s worth, Shaman seems to be lacking in quantity anyway and should probably get an update soonish.
Conversion and a large number of ‘generic stats’ allow Grim Dawn to make almost every type of skill combo basically from gear choices and couple of passives
You can take a Lightning Shaman and pair it with an Occultist doing Vitality damage which doesnt ‘work’ but then you use an item that converts your Lightning to Vitality and now you have a way to scale all Vitality damage
PoE conversion works off the pre converted and then converted numbers and you get a damage bonus for both. ie you convert 100% physical to lightning, every generic ‘physical % and lightning%’ scale the damage
The easiest way i guess in this game regarding Fire Shaman would be a node or piece of gear ‘Your increases and reductions to cold (instead or (also) apply to fire’ but there you are just gimping non fire damage if you are losing cold scaling
Just the most important thing to put in here… Shaman is old and outdated and will be changed in the future most likely so it might be insightfull if you simply write what you want because the is a chance you might find it ingame if it’s a good idea ^^.
I made an Ignite Swipe+earthquake Beastmaster, the idea was big ignites from earthquake and smaller ignites from tornado and swipe with mana on hit from swipe. It was alright but heavily gimped due to needing DW for decent speed and ignite chance, sustain was reliant on shark’s LGOH and 2% leech. Looked something like Beastmaster, Level 100 (LE Beta 0.8.5f) - Last Epoch Build Planner (I respecced the char)
I then found out Tornado - Igniting Swirl and Inferno not working and ditched the tornado ignite nodes completely.
Build was working ok-ish when I made it in like 0.8.3 but 8.4 felt a bit worse I think because of change to spirit wolves node in swipe made sustain much worse so I ditched it completely.
I ditched the build and went poison serpent strike bcos it was essentially just much better and no 15% extra dmg taken.
I feel like such builds generally don’t really work out too well compared to sticking to elements/dmg type that is directly supported by the class. Maybe that is something that will change as LE grows but as it is now I feel it is designed to be a bit too restrictive.
It’s quite funny that you choose to name an example here that actually has several different build opportunities that work very well, including Builds around Dark Shroud of Cinders or Gaspar’s Set.
Yes exactly, the devs do sprinkle in some “outlier” cases for a lot of classes, but that doesn’t mean they are meant to be “fully supported”
I mean I think that the classes still very much are played because of what they offer.
I think it feels that “every class can do everything” because many of the special mastery skills or passives are not good enough.
VK is very much special because of his unique mechanic to echo, if you want to play an echoing warpath build you must be a VK.
Shamans special skills is weak, his unique passive is useful but generic. And his deep skill tree that only he can get is also fairly lackluster other then using totems as stat sticks.
So this leads to many builds that should be shaman, to be druid instead. Because for whatever reason druid gets to proc tornados, summon more thorn totems then shaman and has the EQ werebear too rofl.
I think shaman is the outlier of a class who has no real reason to pick currently, where as most other classes very much are picked for their special things only they get.
