There are so many lightning synergies in the shaman passives that thorn totems should be allowed to participate in, also storm totem is lightning so making thorns lightning too seems a no brainer. WE can turn everything cold. so why not lightning?
This would be great! I really dislike that you are limited to the storm totem being the best totem. Iâve made a Shaman lightning build with melee dual wielding tempest maw with lightning wolves then switching to a variant of ActionRPGâs build but itâs kind of had itâs luster gone in a couple days. I donât like some of the nodes in the skill trees or passive trees - it feels a bit underpowered to be honest.
Last Epoch Shaman Storm Totem Endgame Build Guide! Over 600 Corruption⌠Totem MASTER!!
I feel like they need to redesign all the skill trees to allow us to swap every skill to any other element, without locking you out of/ or into certain nodes. Like Iâd want to get the Spark of Celerity node in Frost Claw, but to get to it, Iâd have to convert to fire or lightning, and I donât want to do that.
I think they need to redesign the entire skill tree system to let us get the nodes we want without all the web like prerequesits.
That would destroy the balance of the game. There have to be trade-offs in character building.
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Why? How does limits destroy balance? Itâs not like itâs a pvp game.
The devs donât want that as itâs not âthematicâ. While I agree it would be nice to convert any given skill to any given element, I get where theyâre coming from in that would make things less âspecialâ/unique/thematic.
Just because itâs a PvE game doesnât mean there doesnât need to be balance or limits/trade-offs.
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But WHY? I understand that there are tradeoffs⌠but WHY? Itâs not like itâs a requirement. We already have a limit of points to get to what we want, why further complicate it with webs/ paths we have to take to get to the stuff you want? the limit/ trade off is you canât fill up the whole thing and pick every point.
Why donât we start the game at level 100?
Why are there any classes in the game?
Why do we even need gear, just give everyone max stats all the time.
Why even have a game? Just start the program up and roll the end credits.
Tradeoffs provide the path to progression, you canât be everything and have everything all at once. Thatâs boring. Itâs an RPG. RPGs rely on progression, character building, stats, gains, losses, trade offs.
Your line of questioning - why why why why - is barely worth responding to. There are no such things as solutions in life, only trade-offs.
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Your line of thinking can barely be called thinking. Youâre just defending the status quo.
As Iâve said before, the limiting factor is the number of skill points you have to deal with. You donât ALSO need a web framework to further limit your options. This just limits your build options.
You can make more meaningful choices and more meaningful trade offs if you donât have to take nodes just to get the skills/ abilities you want.
This web/ skill tree is something thatâs been around forever, and really needs to change.
IMO the web system introduces complexity and a further level of decision making. The web system often forces you to take suboptimal nodes to get to the nodes you really want. This means another layer of choices and trade offs that a simple list of options does not provide.
In a simple list format you have N points and Y choices and simply pick all the best choices till your points run out. In a web format you have to path towards your best choices and weigh the costs of the sub optimal choices you have to make along the way against the benefits of the optimal choices you are trying to obtain.
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I agree, but the further level of âchoiceâ is not meaningful. You would probably still take the same node if it offered no benefit just to get to what you wanted.
It seems that these types of choices are just a means to remove potential choices and reduce the builds available.
If you remove the web/ tree format, you give players the optimal choices in how they exactly want their characters to be. They can then focus on giving players more different choices in skills they can choose, opening up more options for builds.
Actually, it tends to increase them.
Imagine you want a node that will convert damage and one that will increase projectiles and theyâre on opposite ends of the tree. That will create 2 builds: one with converted damage and another for extra projectiles because you canât take usually take both. It will probably even create a 3rd one where you sacrifice many things to get both.
If, however, you simply have a system where you donât have these restrictions you only have 1 build because youâll always take both, since thereâs no downside to it.
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Thank you! Exactly. I want lightning thorns. lets say that requires the same investment line as cold thorns today. With my current build that would require I no longer shred armor⌠which is on the other end of the tree and thus a HUGE sacrifice. In a list format I would just take both and sacrifice some of the less important intermediate nodes/choices to pay the points.
A good web puts the best stuff on the outside of the tree such that you have to make choices with way you want to go, thus making different builds.
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Incorrect. I am helping you get up-to-speed on the last 40-years of gaming 
Welcome to RPGs bud
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The problem is that there are âless importantâ nodes to take.
What if every node was a meaningful choice, so you could specialize exactly how you wanted, but every single node was good, instead of the lack luster choices we have now for some of them?
Canât happen. The chaotic complexity of the system means that real balance will never happen. You can just get in the ballpark.
What you want is something like the support gems in PoE. And even in PoE you have lots of them that are basically useless because they donât give you as much as the few good ones that almost every build uses.
If node A gives you +100 DPS and node B gives +101 DPS, you will always take node B. So a system without restrictions will always take nodes A, B, C and D because those are the ones that are stronger (even if just slightly) and nodes E, F and G will never be chosen because theyâre not as good. As can be seen in PoE as well.
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Of course some nodes are going to be better than others. You cant make all choices the same in terms of out come. IF that were the case you could just randomly pick any choices with your points and get an equal outcome. That might get you diversity but it would not get you meaningful choices or coherent themed builds. Infinite random builds that all perform equally is not what anyone wants.
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I like thematically where they were going with the shaman, but running with somebody else as a shaman while they were blasting and destroying things as a sorc with more lightning feels like I was a kid and didnât feel right. Kind of want to roll a sorc now, havenât played that since Beta with the lightning frost claw build and the broken ward at that time. lol
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Have you played Torchlight 2?
Thereâs 3 classes, each with 3 skill trees (read: lists). Each tree has 3 passives and 7 active skills. This gives each character 9 passives and 22 active skills.
The only limiting factor is the character level that skills unlock/upgrade at, but you can easily just hold onto skill points until you need them in a level or two.
In your head, this would lead to endless build variety. But in reality. There are one, maybe two, builds per character that are so good while being so easy to play that youâd rarely find anyone doing anything else. Thesr are called âCookie Cutterâ builds because you can just âcutâ the build out with the same template as every other person playing that class because itâs just so damn easy to play it. Examples are Emberquake Engineer, Prismatic Embermage, and Glaivelander (even if Shotgun Outlander >>>> Glaivelander, fight me).
So then a good dev would look at the unused skills and improve them, or replace them with better skills.
There will always be a âbestâ⌠the objective is to make is so there isnât just one âbestâ, but a bunch that are equally played because their isnât one that is stand out better then the rest.
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