So I tried a lot…I wanted to make a wandering lightning bolt throwing shaman with bolts everywhere.
The idea was to stack GS stacks so that your bolts have a high frequency.
With one idol granting you 5 thorn totems and the relic summoning storm totem those 6 totems would be my cornerstone of the dmg thanks to ascendant circle (6*32%=192%)
This and the huge amounts of flat damage would be enough to make all the storm bolts hit like trucks.
So I get tons of increaed dmg thanks to ascendant circle, stats on items, blessings, …
And flat damage from attunement scaling of SB, Rune of awe and avatar of thunder.
More dmg is harder to get like allways but there is this sweet mana node in GS excited bolts. with my 350 mana this is 3%*350/10=105% MORE DMG when my mana is full.
So I got the unique chest urzil’s pride, got my lightning res to overcap like crazy thanks to protective circle and got tons of mana regen.
A storm totem and GS friends of the tempest to keep the stacks at 15 and let’s go
Yeah turns out the 600% inceased + 100% more + tons of flat damage still don’t do shit for storm bolts.
I tried so much…getting uniques like oceareon for even more more dmg, trying dual wield vs staff (without the staff node tho), trying crows, earthquake and even maelstrom + tornado. I even went with warcry + berserk to get high attack speed to pump storm stacks further
So after everything I tried and allways felt lackluster this is what I learned:
- maelstrom + tornado does work kinda but then just play swamblade and ignore mana alltogether
- using GS as a main ability either as spell or meele is crap
- Storm stacks are basically only generated in 2 ways:
A) minions (aka storm totem since companions are dead 24/7) with 5 points in friends of the tempest
B) Using GS directly
Either way you need TONS of points in GS to keep the storm stacks high
But without the stacks, the entire skill is useless - converting the spell to frost and dmg over time was okay(ish) but I wanted high dmg numbers and crits. If you want to stack frostbite there are better ways to do it
- converting into physical was okay too but worse then frost. But I didn’t try it long enough to get to the same gear quality.
Converting in general has the advantage of being able to pump your maelstrom and tornado dmg at the same time.
But you loose the sweet lightning animation
Would be interesting to know which usage you guys found for GS. I really wanted to use the storm stacks which is why I left maelstrom + tornado out. Like I said: swarmblade would work better anyway.
So here are my recommandations for GS and storm stack changes:
A) Friends of the tempest, energized by the skies, island cleaver should not take that many points. Make them a 1/1 if you want people to play with storm stacks. It feels like a chore to get them high up.
B) Make stacking SS worth it. Change the increased frequenzy to something like “storm bolts deal 10% more dmg for every 10 stacks you currently have” or something like this. Make it a ramp that rewards fast stacking and using them
C) “expand a storm stack” is crap because this makes 50% of the skill nodes useless with other skills. Change them to “when you cast a storm bolt”.
D) Make storm stacks a shaman mechanic. You have the storm bolts in the tree anyway. Add a node with something like “each time you get a storm stack, you have a 20/40/60/80/100% chance to get another one”
E) Increase the Storm Bolt range. Just flat. And make clouds on the horizon easier to reach. Or change it to 50% per point. I am shooting lightning from the sky. Range should NOT be an issue for lightning bolts 
F) I don’t know why SB doesn’t scale with attunement the regular way. Don’t know which is stronger. But weird to have it function differently. This way when you look at it, causals will be uncertain if the scaling is good or bad.
In total GS itself doesn’t feel like a skill at all. You either only use it for SB scaling of MS and Tornado or you use it to pump SS as high as possible. Either way you never look at it as a skill itself. The hybrid functionality of being an attack that procs a spell makes it hard to scale.
So here are my final suggestions:
G) Lagonian diplomacy should not cost mana…it is (atm) 2 skill points just to change it. GS doesn’t cost mana. It is mana heavy if you use it for dmg anyway. Don’t punish me by making it a spell.
H) Change the functionality of GS
Meele: Storm stacks overload your weapon adding the storm bolt dmg to your meele hits, scaling with meele dmg.
Spell: Storm bolts shoot at enemies like they do now.