Would love to love the class and how it’s put together, sadly that is not the case. Really dislike having to use non-storm totems or abuse lightening bolt to make a decent build.
Hope that maybe the shaman will get some love in season 3.
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the problem is, that shaman isnt bad. its just not living up to its fantasy.
I played storm bolt proccing storm totem in 1.1, it was insane damage. the problem was it feels extremely 1 dimensional.
So storm totem has a few things going for it that being that it has lots of more multipliers, and is a solo totem, so the gameplay for storm totem builds has always been, summon the totem, and buff it with crows/upheaval. with access to lots of flat damage, you can now drop the crows(they are still good)
but thats like, the only way to do it. going like thorn + storm + tempest strike totems costs more mana, does less damage, and clears worse cause you gotta cast so many totems.
Thorn totem focused build is just a spriggan build, it can be played on shaman and is id say comparable to the druid version, but neither build really feels “shamany”
And for the non totem stuff, its not even strictly shaman only. you can 100% make a beast master version of tornado + lightning bolts. it has upsides and downsides its not only shaman. There is a druid version too.
Shaman as a class has a class passive that solves some res stuff which is good dont get it twisted, but otherwise does not offer a whole lot of pay off. if you could get avalanche as a druid, im sure all those builds would be druid lol.
At the end of the day shaman just has too much going on, is squishy, and otherwise alot of the time focusing on one core aspect of something instead of going shaman works out better.
But the shaman builds that are decently strong, are strong enough that it probably does not warrant an entire rework of shaman, so its likely to not really see anything for shaman for a long time.
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I agree with most of what you said, but I disagree with this comment based upon the Sentinel rework. The sentinel had/has a greater diversity of decent builds, but most/all of them included volatile reversal. And based just upon that, EHG decided they needed to do a rework.
Shaman has like two builds? (genuine question here and I’m very definitely removing those builds that are better on beast master or druid) Given that, it doesn’t seem impossible that shaman gets some love in a season or two… or three.
Thats sorta the interesting part here. is that VR was seen as a negative for all sents to be balanced around.
But for the most part any shaman build is only going to be a shaman build if it uses storm bolts.
like this is the skill usage rate for shaman builds in 1.1(not full guides, just builds scraped)
its not as bad as VR(in 1.1 VR has 80% usage on paladin/VK and 40% on FG which averages out to a similar value as stormbolts)
So im not quite sure their angle. Storm bolt was added to “Tie together shaman” and its passive tree got reworked, so yeah im not convinced other then seeing some balance tweaks.
Totally agree.
And agree it’s an interesting conversation. Imo, Sent builds have a bigger variety of skills that provide the core offense/defense, and VR was always tacked on because it was just so good. So much so, that they realized they were balancing around that one skill.
Compare that with, “to have a shaman build, you have your core offense from storm bolts… with a couple different ways to generate them”. Are they really different builds? I think kinda, but also kinda not.
If I was a designer I’d be arguing that is a sufficient reason to take a look at the shaman. BUT, also as a designer I’d be saying, ‘well what are we going to do about Attunement not providing defense?’ If we didn’t have a good answer for that, I’d say, “let’s hold off on shaman until we can figure that out”.
And I think the answer to that is to give shaman passive tree buffs that provide some defense from mana. Or a skill that provides defense from mana. Maybe as simple as gaining health from mana spent.
Avalanche is pretty solid, it uses storm bolts just for utlility tho.
We got Seed of Ekkidrasil although that needs mana generation more than max mana and mana regen from Shaman just doesn’t cut it.
There’s mana spent gained as ward on staff/sceptres and a passive that does health based on mana cost in early druid (Spirit Warden).
I think there’s some good synergies they have been trying to add indirectly for Shaman. One example is Hollow branch (ward per sec per maelstrom), wall of nothing (ward threshold based on endurance threshold) and Swirling maelstrom (endurance threshold per maelstrom). I’ve messed around with this and it can be good although maintaining high Maelstrom stacks is a PITA they really need to buff its duration.
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I had a lot of fun with shamans. I did thorns/storm totems, bear quake, avalanche is good now.
I just want my nature warrior back. Shaman’s Mastery passives are Totem based, but only Storm Totem is actually a Totem, Earthquake has one interaction with Totems through aftershocks, and Avalanche only has more hit damage in range of Totems and adds lightning damage with Storm Totems, so clearly Totems aren’t the class identity despite the Mastery Passives being directly related to Totems (and the multitude of Totem Passives in general).
Then, Storm Bolts, right? Wrong again, bucko, Avalanche doesn’t interact with Storm Bolts at all, Earthquake has one node to expend Storm Stacks for nukes, and Tornado just casts them passively every 2s (which is really infrequently tbh). If gets even worse when elemental synergies are taken into account.
Storm Bolts is slightly more cohesive than Totems, but the singular binding element is Physical… For a Shaman. Fire has 0 synergy despite both Earthquake and Tornado converting to fire for some fucking reason. Earthquake can’t fully convert to Lightning and can’t convert to cold period, and even if it could Tornado can’t convert to cold. Maelstrom is good for storm bolts but again, the only synergistic element is physical.
Idk about you, but when I hear “I’m a Storm Bolt throwing Shaman wrapped in a cloak of storms!” I don’t imagine “physical damage”. I imagine lightning or cold damage.
Melee sucks now because Tempest Strike was absolutely gutted in it’s rework. And none of the Shaman skills actually work well together so you end up with “Druid in disguise” or “I’m just a fancy Primalist” builds.
Shaman was my favorite Mastery pre-1.0, and in that one patch it became my least favorite by a significant margin. It makes 0 sense as a cohesive class and I get actively angry trying to put a build I would find fun together on it.
In short:
Edit: if I could have one wish fulfilled by EHG it would be to undo the entire Shaman/Primalist rework from 1.0 and just give Tempest Strike the ability to scale with attack speed. Storm Bolts was a neat concept, good on you for trying something new, but it’s an actual downgrade from 0.9
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Nah don’t agree with this, Shaman passives have a ton of benefits for using totems. First off you can easily cap/overcap elemental resistances by having a totem active and even physical resistance if you have multiple totems active. There’s also passives giving armor, mana regen, attack/cast speed and MORE melee and spell damage while having an active totem. The totems themselves also can buff any spell/melee build with Storm totem giving movement speed/flat lightning damage and Thorn totem having solid armor shred.
Avalanche can generate Storm stacks (and storm bolts) with the Stormcaller node. This is one of the only ways(AFAIK) to generate storm stacks without using gathering storm aside from Friends of the Tempest.
Can’t comment on how good this one is but I have seen that Dr3ad has used this and said it was pretty fun.
Bruh what? Do you not see the 140% increased frequency behind that node? Its every 0.8 seconds, not to mention Tornado can be doublecast which means 2 bolts every 0.8 seconds per cast which is also not counting Tornado’s various proc sources like Tempest strike, Rule of simoon and Swarmblade form as well as its increased duration making it the #1 way to play storm bolts.
Tornado casting Storm bolt is the strongest Werebear build, the strongest Swarmblade build and a fairly solid Shaman build.
If you ask me the true problem with Shaman and storm bolt is the passives in lower Shaman tree. They currently only create/buff indirect storm bolts which is something Druid can do better anyway. Shaman has a better synergy with storm stacks due to Avalanche and Friends of the Tempest (with Totems) being solid ways to generate storm stacks (and mostly exclusive to Shaman) so the passives should synergize with Storm stacks rather than indirect storm bolts. Also Storm stacks are underperforming on their own compared to indirect casts so it should be buffed somehow.
Agreed on Fire, they seem to be meme/flavor conversions in the current state. I dunno when or if EHG will ever do anything on these.
Yes, its a shame and a problem with many skills that relevant conversions don’t exist. I was expecting the adaptive damage rework to change that but…
Doesn’t matter even if it could convert to cold. In the current state Tornado doesn’t really deal damage on its own (mostly relying on sugadaddy Storm bolt and its huge uncapped damage multiplier per mana). Even with 45% more damage casting from Tempest strike or 80% more damage from Swarmblade, its damage is negligible due to its low damage effectiveness. (If you wanna make it elemental for Uhkeiros you have lightning/fire tags anyway).
Actually the pure melee part of Tempest strike is the only winner from the rework. On beastmaster mostly of course(either to buff crows or as a melee skill). The tempest part really needs another rework…
I also agree on melee shaman being a problem though.
Shaman definitely has problems in the current state, I’d recommend playing around with Avalanche as its actually fun post rework and has a bunch of ways to play it. Shaman is one of the 4 masteries missing an exclusive skill (Shaman, Bladedancer, Lich and Paladin) that will hopefully get some more variety from another exclusive skill and I’d say Lich is the worst of the bunch (and Paladin least as its honestly better than most other 5 skill masteries).
Storm bolts is actually very strong right now, but I actually agree with this take as it is only two nodes in its tree actually doing the heavy lifting (Excited bolts and Rending Vortex) and if they nerf excited bolts next patch I fear it will heavily impact primalist viability (especially druid).
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That’s because they are. Fire is not a “core”/thematic Prinalist element (like cold for Rogue or Void for Mage) but EHG like mixing thinfs up & breaking those rules in limited ways (such as the gloves to convert Tornado to fire, the offhand that converts Acid Flask to cold & the spear to convert VO to void).
The point was: there’s tons of “look guys, use Totems!” through the passives (as you point out), but there’s only one Shaman exclusive Totem, and three total nodes across two skills that interact with Totems. (Beastmaster also has an exclusive Totem + 1 node in Summon Bear that interacts with Totems, and Druid has 9 nodes across its skills that interact with Totem, 7 are in Spriggan Form). You’d think that a “Totem class” would actually have Totems of its own instead of relying on Spriggan Form to use Thorn Totem.
I searched for “Bolts” since there’s lots of “Storm” stuff, and even if I searched for “Storm Bolts” I would have missed this. I concede that Avalanche does indeed interact with Storm Bolts albeit barely.
My issue is less “how good is it” and more " are you really going to specialize into Earthquake for this singular node for your Storm Bolt Shaman?" same issue applies to Avalanche as you’d already have to specialize into Gathering Storm to get the buffed Bolts anyway, why use a second slot to generate the stacks when you already have a generator? There’s no synergy here.
Admittedly no, I missed that. I was posting early morning while doomscrolling to fight insomnia. Either way, that’s one Shaman skill that works with Storm Bolts exceptionally well. One that generates storm stacks when you already have a generator. One that spends storm stacks and requires 7/20 spec points to reach (8/20 to max it), and another that just makes it scale off storm bolts. There’s no real “yes, play a Shaman for Storm Bolts!” synergy any more than the Werebear Druid build you mentioned. Why would I play Shaman specifically for Storm Bolts? I wouldn’t. I would make Storm Bolts work for Shaman, but I could just as easily make a Storm Bolt Beastmaster or Druid and have just as much coherence in the build as 90% of Storm Bolt synergistic skills are Primalist + Tornado.
But this is a problem, if you remove the Tempest from Tempest Strike… It’s just a fucking Strike. Pre-Rework I had it generating a Tempest (Cold/Lightning) and a Hailstorm (Cold/Physical), Summoning Storm Totems (w/ Blizzard for Lightning/Cold) for free, and creating explosions (cold/Lightning/physical). Pair that with Maelstrom+Warcry, Tornadoes that doublecast and followed me around for buffs and more aoe, and an Avalanche that followed me around creating frozen ground. I basically was a walking natural disaster and it felt epic. Only issue was Tempest Strike not scaling with attack speed.
Now, I can’t make a build that fits this fantasy as you’re forced to play a caster or you’re just a worse Storm Bear.
Yeah, but I don’t want to play Shaman as a caster (I’m glad that option is available for people who like it!), I want to be a melee bruiser striking with the forces of nature with every blow. Which I could do pre-rework, now it just feels awful (I’ve tried many times to get this fantasy to work again and it never feels good).
Again, it has nothing to do with how strong it is. Storm Bolts could be the singular most OP broken attack in the entire game and it would still be a downgrade from pre-1.0 Shaman imo. There’s no “fantasy” there, most of the synergies don’t make sense and only work because of the nodes you mention. I like the idea, but the execution absolutely failed.
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This is different to the examples you have given. Both Tornado and Earthquake have Fire conversions within the skilltree(rather than niche unique items) so I would say there should be some synergy for them to work within the class itself.
This might not be the best example due to warlock existing but pre 1.0 Ignite and Fire Hungering souls(which has fire conversion in its tree) were very solid builds despite Lich not really having fire support. Ideally Tornado/EQ should reach this level (IMO).
The problem with Tornado and EQ is that they are more of supporting skills and can’t really take center stage like Hungering Souls could. If for example there was a unique that gave Gathering Storm fire conversion it would kinda resolve both problems. Fire EQ gets a fire generator skill and Fire Tornado can support Fire/Ignite Storm bolts (Although I kinda dislike this solution since Gathering storm/Storm bolts is already kinda obnoxious).
Also I dunno about Rogue not having Cold as a core element(atleast marksman), its got multiple cold skills HoA, Detonating arrow, Explosive trap, Umbral blades (the upcoming Heartseeker too). Also to a lesser extent Decoy and Ballista (not usually used as cold) and of course Puncture and Acid Flask as you mentioned through uniques.
Hmm personally, I don’t mind the totems not being class exclusive as long as Shaman is the class that uses them the best.
Yes, it works pretty well from what I saw, boosts the damage of the storm bolts and EQ actually has some support nodes like armor shred.
I actually use this one on my build. Using this interaction(and Friends of the Tempest), you can maintain a solid number of storm stacks and cast plenty of storm bolts simply casting Avalanche without even coming into melee range. Storm bolts provide supplementary damage(especially helpful when clearing) and further armor shred/frailty stacks while the Storm stacks provide global stun chance and freeze rate multi. Its a pretty good synergy!
SwatIsaid
In terms of pure melee Shaman stands no chance against Beastmaster. But even in terms of hybrid melee/spell I think Shaman falls short currently hopefully they work on this aspect.
I would say Druid fits the force of nature melee/spell smasher more currently (Although mainly thanks to Storm bolts ofc).
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Uh… that’s exactly how I felt when I last played my EQ Shaman.
Idk… seems like you’re ignoring that earth is also a nature’s force, and that being struck with a huge stone boulder would deal physical damage, not “earth” or any elemental damage…
And that half-lightning conversion node, oh boy, it’s just so satisfying. Imo, it adds up to the whole fantasy, a shaman striking with a lightning infused earthquake nuke.
I’m on the opposite side, as I liked the shaman rework much better than the 0.9 version.
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Sure, there’s absolutely physical builds, but I guess the problem is when I think of “earthshattering strikes!” it’s Barbarian. Which Primalist is the closest to Barbarian we have even if some Barbarian-esque skills are in Sentinel with Whirlwind and Forge Strike being like a hammer blow.
Earthquakes are absolutely natural disasters, but Shaman’s should feel elemental imo. Like how Paladins should feel Holy or Necromancers should raise the dead. It’s like… The class fantasy. You absolutely can play a void Paladin or a pet-less Necromancer, but in that case just play Void Knight or Lich? If you’re going to be a physical Shaman, just be a Druid or Beastmaster.
While we’re on the topic, how the hell does a bolt of lightning get converted to physical damage???
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I don’t have any strong opinion on Shaman so I can’t contribute to this thread that much, but one thing I want to touch on:
There are a lot of conversions that are meant to be not a “main theme” for the class/mastery, but still have some limited support. Often through a couple of skill tree nodes coupled with a few uniques.
And I really hope EHG will keep it that way, because not every class and every mastery needs to have all the conversions. It will take away a lot of the core theme.
It is ok, if there are some lesser supported conversions and they do not need to become top tier, but can still be fun.
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I completely agree on the non-meta conversions. Not every Mastery needs access to every element. I just wish there was some more support inside the Mastery for the conversions that are available. You can’t make a fire Shaman. You can supplement your main damage with fire conversions, but you’d be hard pressed to make a primarily fire build with only two fire converted skills. It would make more sense to drop the fire entirely and just accept that Primalist isn’t a fire mastery. Or instead of physical storm bolts, convert them to fire (literally fire bolts). It wouldn’t take many tweaks in the current spec/passive trees to make a fire build make sense and then we still wouldn’t have a void Primalist would would still be fine.
Yes and that is the point I was trying to make. And this is fine.
Get creative, there are ways to make fire work pretty well, but yet you will not be a fully fleshed out Fire Shaman. With a lot of these off-theme damage types you need to think a bit more than your average cookie cutter build.
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That is never how I see them. I feel druids should fill this spot, since they are, by definition, “nature-y”.
Shamans are more spirit related. So totems would, in a way, fit that. So would having spirit animals following you around. So would spiritual attacks. Calling lightning strikes, not so much.
I definitely feel the fantasy can vary depending on the setting. Druids, in my experience, are often the “in tune with nature” (i.e plants and animals) where Shaman’s are the spiritual leaders who can control the elements (again, in my experience).
I’m all for variety, definitely don’t think physical Shaman shouldn’t be a thing. Same way I don’t think melee or caster should be the only viable way to play Shaman. My frustration with Shaman stems from: I had a way to play it that fit my class fantasy, now I don’t since the rework.
The Avalanche changes further cemented that “wrapped in the elements” feeling is never coming back because the only way to get it to follow you now is to channel it, which defeats the purpose when I don’t want to be a caster. Popping off a spell that lasts for 10-15s and rains frozen boulders around me and standing there channeling a spell to do the same except it continues for up to 3s after I stop are completely different feelings.
I still have Maelstrom and Tornado, but it just doesn’t click like it did pre-1.0.
Every time I think about Shaman, I get excited to try and put something together that I think will fit the fantasy and always end up getting frustrated that my dream Shaman is gone and likely won’t be coming back.
Edit: I had 5 AoE effects on me at once. Plus the Storm Totem Blizzard AoE and AoE lightning strikes. It wasn’t great at single target but it felt awesome cutting through swathes of enemies. Lol
You can definitely make whatever you want in your setting. There’s a trilogy by Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman where dwarves are horse riding nomads, elves are conniving political assassins, etc.
But in general terms, druids are more nature and weather oriented. In D&D (which did help cement many of the standard “stereotypes”) they have spells like Control Flames, Shape Water or Thunderclap.
Shaman, on the other hand, are usually more linked to the realm of dead spirits. They are tribal and create totems to try to control them or gain their favor/protection, they have spirit animals and bestow them to the tribe, etc. This mostly comes from the real world examples of native americans and african tribes.
So that is how I’ve always seen them. But of course, they can be anything EHG wants them to be. After all, Spriggans seem to be a thing with LE shamans and I don’t think I’ve seen spriggans mentioned anywhere else in relation to them.
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