So I’ve been trying to do a Werebear-based spell lightning druid build because it looked fun and interesting and I wanted to see if I could do it (For anyone wondering, Lightning Swipe Melee build works just fine). As I’ve been going over all the different skills and how I can trigger different lightning procs I’ve noticed something: They’re all over the place. They’re confusing. It’s impossible to tell if there is any synergy. Initially I had intended to use Tempest Strike to augment my Fury Leap Lightning Bolts but when I noticed them not double-casting I took a closer look. It went deeper than just these two skills, however.
Fury Leap has the Lagon’s Wrath node, reading “Fury Leap summons Lightning Bolts…” Now, when I hold alt to inspect the skill a tooltip comes up for the sub-skill Lightning Bolt. Lightning, Spell, Area tags but no scaling. 8 mana. Alright.
Tempest Strike casts one of three spells, each on an individual proc, one of which is Lightning Bolt. The tooltip reads Lightning Bolt. Lightning, Spell, Strength, Attunement. The names of the skills are the same but the icons, damage, tags, mana cost, and scaling are all different. It is clearly a different skill, but the skill name is identical.
Maelstrom has Power of the Storm, a node that reads, "While you have 6 or more stacks, you strike a nearby enemy with Lightning each second. Lightning, Spell, Area, Attunement scaling. The tooltip for this sub-skill shares an icon with the sub-skill for the Tempest Strike Lightning Bolt as well as its mana cost (10). Okay…
Now Tornado has Charged Storm, a node that reads, “Tornado casts Lightning at a nearby [sic] every 2 seconds.” The sub-skill in this tooltip is the exact same one that appears in the Power of the Storm node, however the other two nodes in the Tornado tree that modify the sub-skill show a different tooltip. It shows a tooltip for a skill called Lightning that shares an icon, damage, mana cost, and tags with the Lightning Bolt sub-skill from the Fury Leap nodes. Having not tested it myself I have to assume that these nodes do, in fact, alter the sub-skill appropriately because otherwise that would be a surprisingly egregious oversight.
And finally (barring the Lightning Storm sub-skill in the Avalanche tree) we have Werebear Form. The Crackling Assault node reads, “You cast Lightning from the sky a number of times each second while Rampaging.” The tool-tip here is the same one that appears for both Maelstrom’s Lightning nodes and Tornado’s initial Lightning node. Same name, icon, damage, mana cost, tags, and scaling. On top of all that, the next node in the tree, Unending Storm, seems to have a tooltip for Maelstrom which I cannot explain.
Now all of this begs a lot of questions. Do the shared sub-skills get modified by the nodes of the other skills’ subskills (Maelstrom, Tornado, Werebear)? Do these skills ever drain mana/rage when they are triggered? If not, why do they have mana costs? If so, why is it inconsistent? As far as I can tell these skills only ever appear as sub-skills and I have tested the fact that at least the Werebear and Fury Leap nodes don’t drain additional rage or mana. It’s all making planning this build frustratingly difficult despite the fact that I’ll probably just stack strength and use Rampage with the Strength as Spell Damage node in Werebear, synergies be damned. It’s still very frustrating though.