So I’m away for work and in my downtime I made a build that I would like to implement when I return on Friday.
The theme is a melee cold build. Maelstrom and Blizzard Totem are there purely for freeze/chill etc. Damage will come from Upheaval/GS. Unskilled leap will be on hotbar instead of Maelstrom. Will have to play around with the build to maintain 6 stacks of MS up at all times for frenzy/haste.
Remaining idol slots will be defensive in nature. No pun intended.
Any help would be appreciated, I’m a novice at this game. My main worry is survivability high corruption.
Apprehend node in Warcry is wasted as Jormun’s Wrath prevents knock back and pull. I’d put it in Kinetic Scream to add some cold damage to Warcry
I’d also move the 2 points in Staggering Roar to Whirlpool for the same reason as above. It’ll help keep Maelstrom at 6+ stacks too.
I’d also recommend the Stormcarved Testament in your relic slot. It gives a chance to summon Storm Totem on hit. So you can spawn one in at the start and then go to town summoning it automatically
Not looking forward to farming Lagon for that relic as its a low drop rate, but at least with Shaman you naturally have high elemental resists which helps with the fight.
I’m confused by this, you can only have one storm totem active at a time. Right?
I did a similar build to this last season (maelstrom and blizzard storm totem), keeping 6 maelstrom stacks (haste/frenzy) up all the time is really hard, but you do freeze almost everything with that combo. Not bosses though.
I went tempest strike spawning tornados though, not upheavel/GS. I could lock down most things, but boss fights sucked because survivability was an issue.
It depends on the build. I did a druid storm bolts build and it easily kept 8 regularly. You increase their duration, then you take the 4 stacks on warcry and the chance to cast maelstrom with gathering storm. I also used the warcry node where it can cast warcry while it’s on cooldown.
I was running around rampaging all the time with at least 8 stacks.
That’s correct, but resummoning one instantly heals it and puts it in a new location. So if you summon one at the start and the boss/elite moves, you can chase it down with melee strikes and have a ~10% chance to move and heal it.
I haven’t been able to get a melee Shaman build that felt as good as my 0.9 build. I miss the old Tempest Strike giving me the Whirlwind. But I agree, keeping Maelstrom up is much easier than ever.
So I think we’re talking about different things. I’m talking about 100% uptime on Maelstrom. I think you are talking about using Warcry to have a lot of stacks when you need them.
Also, I shouldn’t have said, ‘hard’, because it’s not hard with the Beneath the Waves (Lagon’s Slumber), it’s just incredibly tedious.
Is there a difference (aka, am I doing it wrong)? Yes, having 100% uptime on haste (something I think is doable with other characters with much less fuss) is awesome. I wanted a freezy tempest stikes generate tornados dual melee/caster that had perma haste to offset the need for a travel power. I got it to work, but it was fragile and keeping the maelstroms stacks up was soul-crushingly tedious.
I just want the natural disaster melee/caster to run around giggling like a moron, is that so much to ask?
That is what I meant, though. I maintained 8+ stacks without having to do more than warcry when it comes off cooldown and rampaging everywhere. Those were the only 2 skills I used.
And the stuff I used for that isn’t rectricted by build. With just stack duration and warcry you can maintain it. Yes, you need to use warcry all the time, but you usually want to do that anyway.
Are you talking about Shallow Breath? The drops the cooldown to 5 seconds.
Or are you talking about Ferocity? That gives you a 5% chance to cast Warcry again on crit.
And yeah, I was trying really hard to not use Warcry. Why? Just thematic reasons.
Yeah, I was talking about ferocity. I found that it triggered quite often on my build.
Well, if you’re not using warcry it’s harder to maintain stacks, yes. Maybe you need to find other sources of haste/frenzy that are not from maelstrom stacks. But that is a limit you’re imposing on yourself.
It’s quite possible and not that hard to maintain enough stacks for 100% haste. But you do have to use the tools available. If you restrict yourself on those tools, yes, it will be hard and in some cases impossible.
Did you go crit heavy? 5% on top of crit chance… what attack were you using? What was your crit chance? Sorry, probably you don’t have easy access to the char/can’t remember. I’m just curious about you recollection. Was this an, ‘as close to 100% crit chance as possible’ type char?
Yeah, I went crit heavy. Ideal was 100% crit, which was achievable, but I was still level 76 when doing it. I think my crit was around 30-50% with all buffs, but I can’t recall now.
You can see my build, actually:
Although LETools won’t account for increased crit chance from buffs.
EDIT: The reason I stopped playing it for now is that while the build itself was very fun, just running around rampaging and warcrying 100% of the time, rampage as a movement skill is very buggy and gets stuck in obstacles all the time, which is frustrating.
100% agree here. I really like the druid for awhile, I’m the same as you here.
Agree. I found it impossible and eventually swapped Warcry in. Just seemed weird that I’d have to use a Warcry to generate a Maelstrom. Honestly it seems weird that ‘Warcry’ isn’t a Sentinel (or Barbarian) ability. I get hung up on stuff that breaks the fantasy.
Technically you don’t. You can just use Maelstrom directly and generate more stacks that way. Warcry is just the easier way to autocast it.
It’s not a Sentinel ability because Sentinel is modeled after the D2 Paladin archetype. It branches out with the masteries, but that was the base model.
Barbarian, though, is an archetype that fits better next to Beastmaster. I’m guessing when we do have a Barbarian mastery that it will be a Primalist one.
Your Health is low, you have no Armor/Dodge/Block, and only 60 Health Regen. You can’t fix all that with just Idols.
12% Melee Leech is nice, but half of your damage is spells and minions. With this setup, you’re going to die for sure.
Aim for at least 3000 HP and at least 40% Armor reduction, ideally more since you’re melee.
Aim for 10% of your Max HP as Health Regen (ie. 3k HP = 300 HP regen).
Some of the uniques you selected might have to go.
Believe it or not, it isn’t that difficult anymore. Even if you’re CoF. Given the Envy glyphs can great accelerate your boss ‘pops’, you can probably set it up to do 2, 3 even 4 virtually back to back to back. And with the EGG if it doesn’t have LP on it you can drop it in there to get some free affixes.
