Improve Maelstrom

[CaptainFriendship]

When there are nodes on a skill tree that nobody, never, uses it is a glaring sign they need improvement, what is the point of having a skill tree per skill if everyone uses the same nodes, and half of them don’t give you much. This happens with a lot of primalist(shaman mostly) skills. So here is some ideas to improve maelstrom:

1. Tsunami and twister, i double dare you find someone that uses thoose. I would say make them cast when you loose a stack or remove them all together.
2. Reward accumulation of stacks: Give it a node like thorn shield: Chance to recast when stack lost.
3. Reward accumulation of stacks: Give it more global damage per stack (5% physical per stack is cute but not very impactful)
4. Give the option to speck it as defensive or offensive support/skill. On the defensive make it give dodge and armour and on the offensive make enemies on area more weak, to take more damage.
5. More//better unique support, some issues can be solved with a new unique. 3-4 ward per second per maelstrom? underwhelming at best, gimmicky.
   For instance a Catalyst that does for maelstrom something similiar as fragment the enigma does for spark change.

New Possible nodes to substitue the ones that nobody uses:

1. Knockbak or close up enemies like tornado or warcry.
2. Cast tornado.
3. Give more attack/cast speed per stack (Reward stack accumulation)
4. Give freeze rate per attunement, cold resistance or other resistance. Or per stack (Reward stack accumulation)
5. Fire conversion to increased interactions ( Aergon’s Refuge, fire starter, cinder song)
6. The minion interaction: give it the node: When you cast maelstrom on yourself you also cast it on the near minion. The minion interaction could also buff the minion. There aren’t a lot minion buff options and most of them you have to be bullseye to correctly point to the minion with the cursor, ejem, ejem eterra’s blessing(frenzy totem node is not enough).
7. Cast stormbolt every second, why? its just gimmicky, make it more powerful/frequent or remove it.
8. Cast on kill? all primalist envious of healing hands want chance to cast on hit! come on! it’s not fair (please dont nerf healing hands(besides the infinite ward), buff the other stuff)
9. thorn shield on youself? it’s frustrating that you dont have anyway to cast thorn shield outside spriggan, more over now that there are no ice thorns.
10. make something to make it plausible to use it as a main damage skill, like added spell damage per atribute or more damage per stack.

Conclusion: maelstrom is not a damaging skill, neither a jack of all trades, maybe a jack of one trade, improve it to make it fit in some category.
Thanks!

[TyphonBaan]

I’d like your ideas. I’m a bit more modest, I’d simply like them to just start by thinking about what Maelstrom is and can be.

If it’s not knocking back enemies or deflecting ranged attacks, it’s a melee skill. Period. So let’s just decide right off to not bother adding support for ranged classes. There are plenty of ranged skills that have no melee support, make this a melee skill.

So, since it’s a skill that only melee will use, give it the melee tag so we can scale it. Don’t put a Spell into the hands of Melee and expect it to be anything other than niche. Sure, give it node(s) that add the Spell tag, because Tempest Strike can proc Tornado’s and it would be nice to be able to scale both the Tornado’s and the Maelstrom. But let’s start with making the spell useful for those builds that will actually use it.

The fantasy of the skill is being at the heart of a storm that you ride. I think run speed, attack speed, mob debuffing (of some sort), damage are all parts of that fantasy. I think stacks are also a core part of that fantasy - storm starts small but builds to roaring fury. So I definitely agree with you here, everything that you had scaling with stacks should (have a chance to) be there in the skill tree.

Stack on hit. Strong agreement here with the principle that this skill should have many options to builds stacks as a by product of doing something else (like hitting with Tempest Strike or Gathering Storm… I mean, hello?! storm skills supporting storm skills?!). Melee characters have too much to do already, making them click on Maelstrom every three seconds is the definition of tedious and anti-fun. The skill (and/or linked skills) needs a way to automatically build stacks. I have a Shaman that has five of the chance to proc totem and every single other way to auto build stacks (except for the ‘on death’ node in Maelstrom itself because that is a waste of time - worthless in a boss fight) and it’s a chore to keep it at 6+ stacks.

I just want the Shaman to actually have good synergies between all his storm skills. It should be possible to build a really good shaman with;
Gathering Storm (builder)
Tempest Strike (spender) - procs Tornado’s
Maelstrom (buff, debuff(chill, freeze)) - give haste, frenzy and debuffs mobs
Tornado (damage) - Tempest strike procs tornados which is what actually kills (and cc’s via pull i)
Last ability needs to be a travel power (because that’s the way this game works, largely). So, I think;

Existing
Fury Leap - it’s fine. It’s not really on-brand for a storm lord though.

New(ish, Stormcrows already have a travel node)
Offensive travel power option
Stormcrows - for god sake make them unkillable like falcon. Then we can use them as a travel power and maybe an additional way of building storm stacks.
Storm Totem - add a node that pulls me to wherever I throw the totem.

[Felio]

My problem with maelstrom is the opportunity cost in casting it. You have to spam it and spam it and spam it to keep your stacks up, which means you aren’t using other attacks.

You can take the node that caps your stacks at 1, but it only increases the damage by 100%. Compare that to having seven stacks (and all the synergy that comes from other nodes by having multiple stacks), and it’s kind of pathetic.

[Llama8]

@CaptainFriendship

Reward accumulation of stacks: Give it more global damage per stack (5% physical per stack is cute but not very impactful)

I’m probably being stupid (& tired after cycling 43 miles), but which node does that?

[CaptainFriendship]

the node that makes maelstrom physical, its called Cyclone.

[TyphonBaan]

@Felio

My problem with maelstrom is the opportunity cost in casting it. You have to spam it and spam it and spam it to keep your stacks up, which means you aren’t using other attacks.

Yeah, totally agree. This is why CaptFriendship and I are saying, “we should be able to build stacks via doing something else (on hit with either Gathering Storm or Tempest Strike, for example)”