Extremely disappointed with the direction of Shaman

Feedback and Suggestions
1

I had a very fun build I played with Shaman pre-1.0 that was focused around Tempest Strike generating a lightning and cold Whirlwind when both effects procced. Paired this with Auto-follow Tornado/Avalanche and Earthquake and the ability for Tempest Strike to summon a Storm Totem, Earthquake summoning avalanche boulders and aftershocks appearing around totems, tornado giving me haste and shocking nearby enemies and avalanche creating patches of ground that dealt damage over time and I had a monster who would walk through an area as a storm of lighting and ice.

I literally don’t have any way of playing a similar playstyle anymore. I was excited with Gathering Storm proccing Maelstrom as I always wanted to use it in my previous build but recasting it was slow. But tornado is physical or fire. Nothing can summon storm totem for you. Tempest Strike is completely different, and while cool for a different skill, it goes completely against the playstyle I wanted for Shaman. I’ve spent the past 3 hours mix and matching skills in the build planner but there’s just no real synergies anymore for Shaman. It’s 5 skills with 1 or 2 interacting and the others just kind of there to fill slots.

I’m not expecting this post to change anything, I just wanted to express my disappointment.

1 Like
2

Gathering storm converted to cold. Maelstrom is cold. Warcry is cold. Fury leap casts storm bolts. There’s a huge storm bolt synergy that was created.

1 Like
3

It’s not about the cold conversions, it’s the walking Aura of devastation. I had Tempest Strike Whirlwind, I had tornado following me, I had avalanche following me, storm totem would be summoned as I fought creating blizzards and lightning storms. Honestly Earthquake was mostly there to help add more. Avalanche boulders and to give me something else to press as I basically just held down Tempest Strike and would cast Avalanche/Tornado as they came off Cooldown.

I can do maelstrom, Avalanche, and Tornado, but there’s no elemental synergy that they all can be. Tornado is physical/fire + storm bolts. Avalanche is pure cold or physical/cold mix, maelstrom is pure cold or pure physical with + storm bolts. And gathering storm is pure physical, pure cold, or pure lighting with ITS storm bolts (and only it’s storm bolts) converting with it. So if you have cold Gathering Storm + Maelstrom with Storm Bolts… Well guess you better spec in some lightning damage for Maelstrom’s storm bolts, but Gathering Storm’s won’t benefit. Add in tornado for more storm bolts? Cool they’re still lightning and tornado is physical, so that’s a third damage type to add in. Maybe you’ll ignore the storm bolts and bring avalanche, cool, now what? That’s 3 skills with synergy and nothing else really works together. Warcry can proc more Maelstrom’s, I guess, but fury leap being cold does nothing for the build.

If you keep Gathering storm as lightning, then Maelstrom’s cold damage is worthless unless you spec cold damage too (I was already doing this part) but now Tornado suffers the same issue as before with being physical or fire for the actual tornado, avalanche has no lightning so, that’s just benefitting from Cold, and Warcry is cold or physical.

I could try bringing Storm Totem but the only reason I liked the skill was that you could summon it through Tempest Strike, now it’s manually cast which disrupts the melee gameplay as it’s not instant cast (my issue with Maelstrom).

See my issue? There ARE playstyles for the new Shaman, just none that I find engaging. Maelstrom and Storm Bolts are the only synergies I can find that I’m interested in and there’s no way to make them work in a way that I would enjoy.

Again, I’m not asking for a change to be made, I’m just expressing my disappointment at the lost of my favorite build pre-1.0

Edit: Forgot I recorded a video VERY early in the builds development when leveling. So I don’t even have Tornado at this stage, and I played poorly but you can see the concept I was going for. https://youtu.be/Ja6O00TTixo?si=W9JMulcBrERmu6L3

4

Why do you think Maelstrom’s storm bolt isn’t converted when you convert it in the GS tree? Seems like if they have you convert storm bolt in the GS tree it should convert everywhere otherwise like you said, cold conversion is pointless.

Edit: I just checked and this is what the dev said:

5

I wouldn’t say disappointment from my end, granted I passed on shaman pre launch. I went in cold (pun intended) hoping to make an earth and fire type build, but unfortunately there isn’t a lot of fire stuff in the trees that I have noticed.

I have still managed to create a sense of frozen destruction between storm totem, maelstrom, and avalanche. It just requires casting and all don’t follow along with the minion health. All things I am trying to solve as I keep figuring out my build.

Still enjoy the playstyle and feel, but it definitely doesn’t seem as powerful at least when leveling.

6

The wording in the skill node for Fury Leap specifically mentions “Uses Gathering Storm”, every other instance of Storm Bolt says “scales with Spell Damage and Lightning. Not with other nodes in this tree.”

So while I could be wrong about the Conversion nodes as they say “change Gathering Storm and Storm Bolt to X”, the wording elsewhere still means that any nodes to buff Storm Bolt in Gathering Storm only apply to Fury Leap. (or the descriptions are wrong, which I’ll admit can be a thing.)

So, assuming the descriptions are wrong about Storm Bolt.

If you go Physical Gathering Storm and Physical Maelstrom, you can do Physical Tornado + Physical Avalanche, with Earthquake/Warcry for the last slot. But that is the only option to play something similar to my build from pre-1.0, Pure Physical. It’s still missing the blizzard Storm Totems, but I can’t summon them with my basic skill anymore, so I don’t really want them anyway. And there’s no only synergistic conversions as Cold/Lightning, Pure Cold, or Pure Lightning don’t work for at least one skill in that list.

Pre-1.0 I chose to do a Cold/Lightning split to deal with resistant enemies, but I could have gone pure cold or pure lightning as well. The build variety for Shaman is the worst it’s ever been in my opinion.

Edit: So in typical 1.0 Shaman fashion, I was able to put together a skill build of pure physical and make it look viable, but the passive tree does not like physical damage and there’s a ton of wasted points in skills that increase cold or lightning damage because I wanted the bonus effect or a skill further down the tree.

It just really feels like the skills, passives for Shaman don’t want to synergize outside of a few specific builds, which limits the build variety.

I know it’s not a perfect representation of what I’m talking about, but an example are the builds listed on maxroll.gg,

Druid: 4 unique builds, swarmblade (Lightning or cold, but same skills), cold Werebear, swipe Werebear, and earthquake Werebear.

Beastmaster: 3 unique builds, tempestquake, squirrels, upheaval.

Shaman: 1 unique build… Thorn Totem (Explosive or Generic, bring Storm Totem or Eterra’s Blessing) and I should add that both builds are based on Spriggan Form, so they’re basically Budget Druids.

7

I suppose I should clarify that my preferred playstyle for Shaman is a tanky melee who just shredded enemies with the elements swirling around him. And when I said in my other reply “build variety for Shaman is the worst it’s ever been in my opinion” I was referring to melee specs. As a caster/totemancer, it actually has more options now, despite losing a spell in Ice Thorns. I’m just not a ranged/caster/summoner player in these games.

8

I share your disappointment. I’ll be the first to admit I’m not a master build-crafter or anything, but I just can’t find a way to make Shaman work the way I hoped it would.

I decided I wanted to do a lightning shaman, which seems like it should be pretty straightforward: Take Gathering Storm, buff the hell out of the storm bolts, then supplement with skills that generate storm bolts or otherwise synergize with Gathering Storm, but there seem to be so many gaps in the synergizing skills that it just doesn’t pay off.

For example, Gathering Storm has the In the Eye of the Storm node to provide a way to generate Maelstrom, and Maelstrom in turn has the Power of the Storm node that causes it to cast storm bolts while at 6 (3 with max Strong Tides) stacks of Maelstrom. Cool. But there’s no way to actually convert Maelstrom to lightning damage, so aside from the storm bolts, Maelstrom itself doesn’t really do anything for the build. On top of that, the rate of Maelstrom generation from In the Eye of the Storm is so mediocre (10% per storm charge at max ranks) that it’s not really a reliable way of keeping up enough Maelstrom stacks to keep the storm bolts flowing. If Beneath the Waves could proc on indirect casts, it would be excellent, but as it stands, it just feels like too much point investment for too little reward.

Again, I’m no expert, so maybe I’m just not seeing how Shaman is “intended” to be played. The passive tree focuses on totems/minions pretty heavily, but it feels like there’s no real way to use totems as part of the build instead of focusing the whole build around them, if that makes sense. It just seems like it’s spread too thin without enough synergies to really fill out a well-rounded build, but maybe I’m just not seeing the interactions.

For what it’s worth, I agree with @Scipo0419 in my preferred Shaman playstyle: I’d hoped for a melee fighter who can trigger things like Maelstrom, Earthquake, totems, etc. in melee combat, but unless I’m missing something, it just seems like Shaman is all-totems-or-bust. Would love to have someone more knowledgeable prove me wrong, though.

1 Like
9

I love the way you described Maelstrom and I’d like to point out that the next step in the process might be “ok, I’ll just convert Gathering Storm and the Storm bolts to Cold, then they’ll synergize with Maelstrom.” but Tornado is still physical damage because they removed the cold conversion. Adding “spend storm stacks” to Earthquake makes it lightning damage with cold storm bolts. And tempest strike is always physical, cold, and lightning. Even if you cut out the other tempest for cold tempest.

It’s just really weird. Like they didn’t know what to do with Shaman.

10

I had the very same issue — Manipulated Tempest Strike to somewhat represent the old version — mana was a major issue.
Storm Totem
Thorns Totem - specced into cold
Warcry for Maelstrom procs
Maestrom - with Lagon node
Tempest strike -->> Gathering storm specced into cold

Tempest strike just drains your mana, but also, dual elemental damage (cold & lightning) takes 2 affix spots and are most interchangeable with mana — so the choice is resource or damage.

x% elemental affixes on drops seem to have decreased (could just be my luck)

The old Tempest strike just needed a buff (??) not so much a rework.
PERSONALLY Gathering storm does not have nodes that stand out or seem very interesting — playing around still though.

Having both gathering storm and tempest strike on your bar does not make a lot of sense either.

Using gathering storm does relief my mana issues and can generate a fair amount — even if you have no mana.

11

for extra maelstrom charges, you can spec into the Lagon node (left side) — for each second (??) you gain a “charge”, once you activate Maelstrom (directly) you gain all those maelstrom charges.
Warcry generates 4 or more, I think — then combine with manually activating maelstrom, I usually end up with 8 to 11 — but I normally keep maelstrom up and in some moments warcy+maelstrom for absolute destruction.

{at the office and not able to confirm numbers and names}

12

Shaman is a mess with a laughable ammount of skill and passivetree ineractions. The whole masterie (outside of 2 skills) is so dated if it had a social security number it’ll be 1. We wait over a year now (iirc) for a shaman overhaul but not much is happening while BM and Druid were put in a good spot for some skill builds.

Shaman with the totem mastery focus that lacks in totem skills is a joke by itself for me personaly. I always feel bad picking Shaman because I know I use most likely no skills from his tree because the other masteries and the base class do a better job then the Shaman skills. It’s a shame.

13

The devs are literally a joke. I had a very fun black hole build I was using and they completely gutted it for no reason at all. There was literally no reason to change the Meteor node to use meteors tree and manacost.

For some reason they gut my not even great Sorc build but apparently testing Falconer doing corruption 600+ with blue gear on is okay. Absolutely hilarious devs.

There are still passive points on the base Mage passive tree that grant ONE stack of chill on a 5 second cooldown. Literally mindblowing how bad these devs are.

And of course it’s been almost 5 days since Devs released any sort of news or hotfix despite the insane disaster this launch was.

They still haven’t hotfixed Merchants Guild having an insane error where you need 10x the XP needed to go from level 6 to 7. Embarrassing. Bet that full wallet feels nice though. I’d rather have my dignity than do a crappy job on a game to pay a second mortgage.

14

Over 2 years waiting for Shaman changes. Earthquake still has fire node and split phys\lightning spell node.

15

I’ve tried so many things and now it’s working for my melee lightning shaman. The only real issue I’ve got is that I make so many storm bolt that I’m always out of mana :frowning: if you wanna make full lightning, don’t use maelstrom for damage but to generate storm bolt.
I think they should remove the mana from Storm bolt because it’s proc, you should never have to deal with mana managing for a spell who proc…

16

I have similar feelings to many of the previous commenters here, I wanted to make a melee lightning shaman (think enhancement shaman from classic wow, which I think is what a lot of people are going for) but it just felt so bad the whole way. I ended up pivoting to a tornado / physical spell damage build where i stack maelstrom and it works pretty decently but it isn’t really what i wanted when I started the shaman. The weird mix of spell damage, melee damage and lightning damage on the lightning build just felt bad, and none of the utility skills seemed to compliment the play style at all.

I got my shaman to like 70 and then i switched to warlock and the difference in the passive tree is night and day, I mean I feel like on warlock i never have enough points for all the good nodes, and then on shaman half of my points are in the beastmaster tree because the shaman talents are so underwhelming

I think the totem thing is the main issue, who wants to use totems as the cornerstone piece of their build? In every game I play I lean toward shaman archetypes, they always have totems, and they always suck. I get having a couple niche builds and nodes that empower totems but my god its like the only way to make a viable shaman is the inclusion of totems, POE actually has a similar problem on melee builds where they all run totems to buff damage (everyone hates totems and they are reworking them to be less mandatory).

And how many totems do you even have access to ? 2? One shoots thorns, one shoots lightning, not exactly exciting or build inspiring

If they want shaman to be a totem class, make the totems sick, make one spawn a volcano or a whirlpool or something and let me put down 50 of them at once

But as it stands now it feels like they didn’t lean hard enough into the totem aspect or the melee aspect and both are left lacking, I hope a shaman rework comes soon and fixes some of these issues because the class just doesn’t feel great honestly

17

Maybe you need direct him another way with build / min,max and choice of right nodes ?

18

I agree, I feel forced into going down the druid path so I can summon a healing totem automatically…how is it that the only skills that synergise with healing totems are on spriggan form? Also how come the beastmaster gets the best totem skill?

Shaman is honestly a complete mess with regards to its passive tree. The changes to gathering storm and tempest strike were nice, but all the passives need a rework and so do the skills (why does Shaman only have 4 mastery skills, while the other two classes get 5?)

Really, just a mess all around.