Massive Shaman Feedback Thread (Tons of Suggested Changes)

Primalist
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I did mention I had a ton to say about Primalist, so buckle your seatbelts, everyone, cause we’re going on a ride. The Primalist class, as a whole, is the dream class for someone like me. Numerous different types of pets, multiple synergies that encourage you to pick different types of pets, and even formidable bonuses for simply having one pet. I am simply over the moon regarding how many builds I want to try out in this class alone.

A lot of words have already been said about Shaman, so let’s rip the band-aid off and get into what makes Shaman such a poor choice. For all the talks about how bad Shaman is, I couldn’t really find many videos breaking down the class in particular, but Perry the Pig makes some good points.

As with my general feedback thread, I’ll be breaking my thoughts down into multiple posts.

Passives

Firstly, there’s the Mastery Bonus: 50% Resistances from having a totem. As I mentioned in the general feedback, having resistances based off a temporary condition (like channeling or a specific buff) makes no sense unless you’re running something like Frostbite Shackles where there’s a bonus that’s dependent on having as high of a resistance as possible, and if you want to go that route, there’s a Shaman passive that provides these bonuses already. Unless you plan on adding more interactions with uncapped resistances (like the Shield of the Erased where Block Effectiveness is based of total resistances), this Mastery bonus is functionally obsolete.

Now, for the elephant in the room. If anything from this post stands out, it needs to be this one. There are 115 or so passive points you get. You’re spreading these points along three masteries, as some early-mastery nodes can get quite good. There are some high-investment nodes high up in the tree, and you’ll probably have room for one, maybe two of these nodes. So, let me take a breath here:

Why are there 7 10-point nodes in the Shaman Mastery?

None of these nodes are even good. 5% Physical damage + small Dodge Rating? Chill + Shock when hit when you have multiple abilities that provide these bonuses on attack and these ailments have such low caps (3 for Chill and 10 for Shock)? TOTEM ARMOR!? This has to be the most egregious mastery tree, and it’s probably the biggest reason why people complain about Shaman needing a massive re-work.

The reduced damage by shocked enemies was recently introduced and a really big boon for Shaman builds; however, even though Cold builds will likely go for Freeze and Frozen enemies do no damage, it’s super-dependent on Corruption level and the ability to invest in Freeze Rates. Shaman is designed to be the “Attunement” Mastery (more on that when I get to my suggestions), but there’s only one node post-mastery that raises it. Oh, and there’s that Attunement node that’s tied to Stun Avoidance and Stun Duration. Why?

There are even more blunders, but I’ll be visiting them in more detail when I discuss the affected skills specifically:

  • Maelstrom: 1 stack every 5 seconds? When you have War Cry and things like Dive giving 4 stacks every 3-4 seconds?
  • Big stack of flat damage (Cold for Glacial Strike and Lightning for Rhythm of Thunder) every 3 seconds? When you have no control over which skill provides the big bonk bonus?
  • Lagon’s Answer requiring wasted points giving melee benefits if you’re planning on playing a Storm Bolt caster/channeling build that does no melee?
  • Only 30 Mana in a class that’s all about accumulating Mana?
  • Zero Crit Chance in a class that’s about big bonks!?!?!?

I’ve got about 5,000 words in my Word Document about this class, and **** it, I’m going to use every single one of them. This will be divided up into thee posts, and once I finish the last post, print out this thread, bring it to your dev meetings, and study it. You want to know why people feel like Shaman should not even be in the game? I’m listing nearly every reason and then some.

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TOTEMS

Well, it is the totem class, so it’s natural that I handle this next. Did you know that Primalist has a totem that grants Frenzy? And that Frenzy effect increases per point of Attunement (so that 50 Attunement = an extra 10% Attack Speed for free)? And provides a fat Crit Chance bonus if you’re using Wolves, which were given a ton of Lightning / Attunement stacking synergies that match really well with what Shaman offers?

What’s that… Shaman can’t use Frenzy Totem?

Bummer.

So… let’s go over what Shaman can use…

Thorn Totem (alongside Spriggan Form Healing Totems)

Yeah, it’s the early class skill, so I’m not expecting miracles, but did you really have to combine <100% added damage effectiveness with the fact that multiple thorns have a hard time hitting the same target? To be honest, I just don’t see that much going on with the skill. You have the top area of the skill tree which is all about increasing the number of totems and having you summon multiple of them at once. You have the Poison / Frostbite applicators on the right, but Armor Shred is on the left all by itself? Then random assortments of damage multipliers, but with pretty critical downsides (reduced cast speed meaning fewer thorns per duration is a big one), but the nodes that make up for the downsides are further away meaning you have to invest in “useless” nodes to get to them.

As for synergies with Spriggan Form, there’s also not much to ride home about. There’s a single 10% chance to cast Spirit Thorns from the totems, but that Spirit Thorn cast doesn’t even contribute to the Vale Spirit limit so that Spriggan Form can cast Entangling Roots (which has some great Totem benefits) more quickly. You’ll have to spend 3 further skill points in Cycle of Life for the Healing Totems to contribute in that fashion. You can get a ton of bonus points in Spriggan Form, but considering how many benefits Thorn Shield provides and the general tankiness bonuses Spriggan Form gives you, I just don’t see any reason to use up necessary skill points for totem related things.

Tempest Strike Totems

This one just confuses me, and I wish I could see how this works, but there is precisely one build that uses the Tempest Strike Totems, and the video for that build shows no gameplay at all. So yeah. You’re disabling the melee attack to summon a totem, but you have a 1/3 chance to summon the totem associated with your Tempest, but you’re not casting the Tempest, the totem casts the Tempest (so you can’t do Thunder Tempest totems alongside the node that gives your Storm Totem a Thunder Tempest too)? Then you can disable certain Tempests to get the Tempest that matches the type you’re building around, but instead of having 100% to have the Tempest, you instead have 66% to just have a Melee attack that does nothing (but will occasionally give you benefits like Mana generation)? Why is this so convoluted?

Upheaval Totems

I’m not going to lie, Bleed Upheaval Totems (or better yet, Melee Cold Upheaval Totems) sounds pretty sick. My main gripe is that you can’t combine them with Thorn Totems for the massive “Cold Damage per Active Totem” bonuses because the Upheaval Totems eat the Thorn Totems in order to be summoned in the first place. But considering that Upheaval is one of the few skills that gives flat Crit Chance bonus alongside War Cry’s Cold Minion Crit Chance node? Seriously something I want to try out.

Storm Totem

Finally, we get to the Mastery Skill, and it’s the worst out of all of them (okay, maybe not Tempest Totems, but still…). It’s just so bare-bones and contributes so little to the Mastery, and you can only summon one of them at a time. It’s clearly designed with the Lagon’s Relic in mind, as the Unique provides huge Shock chance and Lightning Penetration, and makes it so you can summon it on hit so you can put an unspecced skill in its place, but that Unique is pretty darn rare to find.

You give it a bunch of flat damage, but Storm Totem has 55% Added Damage Effectiveness? Ew. You have flat Crit Chance, Crit Multiplier, and even Crit Chance multiplier against Shocked enemies, but it practically takes up all of your Skill points to get those nodes because there are so many 3-4 node requirements before you can get to the next node. Shockfury gives you and Allies melee damage (so it probably doesn’t work with other totems, which is the whole point of Shaman mastery), but it’s only Lightning damage, so if you’re converting it to Cold, the bonuses are a waste. There’s Lightning Nova, but it only has 18 flat Lightning with only 100% Added Effectiveness? Pathetic.

This skill is just sad, and I’m not even talking about its interaction with the Boardman Set, which limits you to one companion but provides no companion bonuses like the other “limit to one companion” nodes out there. Oh, and most of the other skills don’t even interact with Storm Totem, like at all. Oh, Avalanche has some flat Lightning when it’s near a Storm Totem? Nothing else? How cute. Everything about this skill is a travesty.

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MELEE

2/10 Too Much Melee

Let’s exclude Swipe and Serpent Strike as they’re more specifically designed for Primalist’s other masteries (but even then, Swipe provides a flat Melee / Spell bonus to Totems when you hit with Swipe until the Totems expire, and speaking of which, why does Shaman not have any Totem Duration passives?), you still have 4 big Melee skills that you can work with. All of them have some funky interactions with each other, and honestly, with a little more ingenuity, would make the Shaman feel like a massive Elemental melee God.

Gathering Storm

Storm Bolts. Bonuses liberally spread throughout the passive tree, like Storm Bolt on cast or Melee hit. Other skills like Earthquake have some pretty chunky bonuses with Storm Bolts. You can’t get Storm Bolts unless you whack enemies with Gathering Storm. I mean, I don’t mind using one skill like a Mana Generator / Damage Booster and then overkill everything with a massive melee ability, but the two are at odds with each other. Gathering Storm needs Melee Attack Speed to gather as many stacks as possible. Your other Melee ability needs Crit Chance and Crit Multipliers and likely needs nothing to do with Speed. You see where the conflict is?

Yeah, the Shaman passive that gives you 25% Attack Speed with a Totem is great, but Frenzy Totem is just outside our reach, and Storm Totem is a disaster. You can make War Cry a Totem, but not only is it a lot of skill points to reach the totem, but the nodes that lead up to it are practically useless, and actively take away from both the Berserk nodes (since you need more attack speed) and the crit chance nodes. So what type of totem are we using here?

Oh, and did I mention that Storm Bolts are in a lot of skills and passives? Would be nice if there was Storm Bolt Crit Chance… anywhere? Yeah, there’s the “Storm Bolt does damage multiplier by every 10 Mana,” which is perfect for Shamans, as you can easily reach 3X with the amount of Mana you can obtain, but without other Storm Bolt damage multipliers, this skill just falls flat.

And before anyone responds, I am just saying this with regards to its synergy with Shaman. I am currently running a Gathering Storm Raptor Beastmaster build, and it is performing great as a main attack ability. Just not as a Storm Bolt generator / damage multiplier.

Upheaval

There’s so much Cold Penetration with a Staff it looks awesome to try (170% between Natural Weapons and Glacial Crash), and there’s even a node that increases damage at the cost of not scaling with Attack Speed if you want to forego the pure speed route and just want to do big bonks. Sadly, there’s just nothing in the Shaman tree that would benefit from this, unless you want to do the idol that grants you the ring of Thorn Totems on hit which then benefits from the melee damage per active totem, which I guess you’re doing anyway because you’re combining the Thorn Totem affix with the “Cold damage per Active Totem” affix. But then you have to scale minion health so that the totems don’t just die immediately, and are you seriously going to put points in a useless passive that does nothing but give flat Totem health and Totem armor? I guess Thorn Totems have enough percent health bonuses that Ironbark isn’t so terrible, but seriously, why does Ancient Power (a damage node) come before Oaken Protection (the survivability node you need)? WHY?

The bigger issue is that Upheaval – Thorn Totem – War Cry is a 3 skill combo, and there are honestly no other skills that synergize with Cold Upheaval. You have Maelstrom / Tornado to give you Frenzy or Attack Speed, respectively, but that’s all they do, and they’re spells which are clunky to cast & have no melee synergy. I already went over how bad Tempest Strike totems are. Storm Totem? LOL – doesn’t even give Cold Melee damage. A companion like Spriggan so it can help freeze enemies? Now you have to invest even more in minion health, and Shaman doesn’t have the one-companion mega-boost the other two masteries have. I’m shocked, there really is no other skill that remotely synergizes with this combination.

Tempest Strike

This still feels like a weird skill to me, but the melee portion of it is at least more intuitive than the totem portion. You generally want an element, remove the chances for the other elements, gain mana when you hit with Tempest Strike but don’t cast a Tempest, and just attack really, really fast thanks to the attack speed modifiers and high base. A lot of the tree is just really weird, though:

  • You have a chance to combo a Tempest when you hit with a different strike (so you’re casting a Cold Tempest on a Physical melee hit), but it just seems like a ton of skill points into an spell effect that does little to effect the melee portion (okay maybe Wind Booster is pretty good but then you also have a chance to cast Tornado which does nothing outside the general buffs and takes up more skill points)?
  • Removing the unwanted Tempests gives you attack speed and mana efficiency, but you also have a damage multiplier that’s fully dependent on having Tempest Strike cost more mana?
  • Adding more levels to Tempest Strike increases Spell damage but you want to use it in Melee?
  • You can have it provide Storm Bolts with a pretty nifty 1.6 damage multiplier, but you have to use Gathering Storm to get the stacks so you’re alternating between two melee skills with no real synergy outside the Storm Bolts?
  • Not to mention you have to cycle every three hits to get the damage you want, so if you want something like Physical Tempest Strike to provide Bleed with massive Physical Penetration, you can only bonk with a Physical strike every 3 hits?

I mean, I can see where you’re going with this, and the concept isn’t terrible, but the whole “do melee hits to get off a spell effect (and honestly, all the spell effects look pretty terrible outside of Thunder Tempest giving you a ton of Shock stacks, too bad there’s a cap of 10)” just seems really clunky and unreliable, as affixes spent raising melee attack speed are affixes spent not increasing things like damage increases, critical strike chance, and critical strike multipliers.

Earthquake

Earthquake, more than anything, is a victim of having so many 4-5 skill point nodes. You want big initial hits? Well, there’s this node that converts aftershock damage multipliers to initial hit multipliers, and you can’t possibly grab all of them. Or just take “The Harder They Fall” and have it apply to bosses only. Want to focus on Aftershocks? For some reason, increasing the minimum aftershocks and maximum aftershocks are in two completely different directions in the Earthquake tree. Aftershocks also have a ton of damage multipliers, but you need a huge amount of added flat melee damage as aftershocks only have 100% effectiveness compared to the initial hit’s 350% effectiveness.

Want an initial hit that can’t be dodged? You need to go through 5 points of useless nodes to get to it. Want a 20% damage boost and a little stun? Give it a 6 second cooldown! I’m descending into argle-bargle here.

Some of the skill combinations are pretty cool, like Tempest Strike Cold Tempest provides Chill so that Earthquake Aftershocks provide massive damage and then have Avalanche Boulders fall on enemy’s heads for even more damage. However, the Shaman passive tree does nothing to promote this playstyle, as all the bonuses on the Shaman mastery tree are either tied to totems (which the skills don’t interact with well) or Storm Bolts, which are spells that will just clutter up the screen with small numbers so you can’t even see the big numbers go off.

I can go on about the spells themselves and the spell interactions, but I’m honestly not well-versed enough in playing casters in this game to give a well-informed opinion on them. There are multiple spell skills that are just used for their bonuses (Maelstrom for the Frenzy bonus and Tornado for Aspect of the Tornado), and Avalanche doesn’t play well with the other skills and people instead go for things like “chance of Avalanche Boulder per Melee hit.” To emphasize, I think Primalist is pretty underexplored, but there’s just not much pizazz if you’re not a player like me who absolutely loves Nature skills + Nature animals.

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FIXES

The foundation of the Primalist / Shaman interaction is not great. The changes I’m recommending now shouldn’t be too disruptive and allows you to test further ideas on granting you what you consider to be the Shaman’s vision. I can’t say I speak for everyone on these changes, but I think they’re a good start, and seriously, you have to do SOMETHING for this class before 1.1 hits.

  1. Either change the resistance if you have a Totem Mastery bonus to a large Melee bonus or, if you feel like you have to keep the bonus, add more interactions that give better bonuses per uncapped resistance: Things like Frostbite Shackles and the Erased Shield provide some unique things you won’t find in other builds. Tempest Strike has some nodes that give penetration per uncapped resistances as well. You can lean into that to make it the beefier version of Mages who also have high Mana reserves and have offensive benefits for having tons of Mana.

  2. Change how Attunement works: Multiple people complain that Attunement should have some sort of defensive component like how Strength improves Armor and Intelligence gives Ward Retention. I don’t think it needs that. What I think would help a lot is if Attunement provides some flat Mana Regeneration per every 5 Attunement or so. No matter how much %Mana regen you get, you’re still working with a 5 Mana per second base, and Shamans are very Mana heavy, whether it’s through constant Tornado spamming, Avalanche channeling, or big beefy melee attacks that require a ton of Mana like Earthquake. Yeah, you have Mana generator skills like Gathering Storm or Tempest Strike, but having to intertwine those with no attack speed feels sluggish and ruins the purpose of a spell-driven build. Note that would mean you’d have to change the Shaman bonus where you have % regen per Attunement since it’s going to be baked into Attunement anyway, but you’re creative guys, you can find a better 5-point passive buff.

  3. Swap the Frenzy Totem skill with the Scorpion skill so that Shamans can have access to Frenzy Totem. Yeah, that will mean that Beastmaster mastery will be entirely filled with companions, but it’s honestly the only skill I could find that would fit as a Beastmaster-exclusive skill without ruining the relationship Primalist skills have with other skills. Besides: Scorpion’s reliance on Poison (its other conversions like Cold & Lightning do practically nothing for Shamans / Druids) and Beastmaster’s amazing Aspect of the Viper nodes means that it’s probably better to seal it off behind Beastmaster anyway to avoid providing “traps” where people think Scorpion is good on a build when it’s not.

  4. Remove the following nodes on the Shaman Passive tree entirely: Storm Elder and Sky Armor just leave, full-stop. Add the Armor from Sky Armor to Ironbark so that you have a little defensive utility alongside using Totems. I’d probably remove Glacial Strength too and put the Strength bonus alongside Wind Rider and move the 5-pt bonus to Shattered Heavens (more about this later). That gives you 3 spaces to put some unique passives with fun interactions (especially something to do with FIRE! Fire Earthquake with Fire Tornadoes sounds awesome!)

  5. Rework the remaining 10-pt nodes to around 6 so you get similar bonuses for fewer points: I don’t need to explain this one, do I? Fewer points so you can invest more in other nodes, more damage per point so that every level up feels potent.

  6. Instead of providing generic melee bonuses like 30 Cold damage every 3 seconds, tie them to specific skills: This way, you don’t have this weird phenomenon where your Gathering Storm has one weirdly big hit compared to the remaining smaller hits and you don’t know how to manage your leech. Instead, you can make the bonus: every 3 seconds, your next Upheaval hit does 30 Cold damage. That way, you can weave in your Mana Generator skills to provide a big freaking wallop that does massive damage. There are already numerous melee skills that provide big damage multipliers at the cost of adding a cooldown or a giant Mana cost, and these passives would be perfect for adding that OOMPH factor to these abilities that Beastmaster / Druid would not be able to replicate (though they make up for it by having more Attack Speed to provide many more hits per second).

  7. Rework the Maelstrom implicits so that it provides 5 stacks every 5 seconds instead of 1 stack every 5 seconds: We already have things like War Cry provide 4 stacks immediately and Lagon’s Slumber has it so that instead of having to spam the skill over and over to get stacks, you get a big chunk of stacks more evenly spread out. It’s not like Maelstrom is doing anything big in the meta anyway.

  8. Better interaction with Companions: Both Wolves and Crows have a lot of interesting interactions you can have with Shaman (and even Spriggan pet can help due to its aura providing a ton of Freeze chance), but no Minion Health and no way to stand out from Beastmaster just makes Shaman particularly sad. You already have fewer maximum companions than Beastmaster, but things like the Wolves having additional scaling based off Attunement and Crows having fun interactions with Tempest Strike means you can do some creative things. You can’t really go the “1-companion mega-buff” route like you do with Beastmaster and Druid as it takes away a lot from what makes these particular pets so good, so maybe a passive that says “Storm Crow buffs are doubled (like Aspect of the Crow or Goodberries)” that helps buff companions somewhat but doesn’t take away from what the other companion masteries do.

  9. Tear down Storm Totem and rebuild it from the ground up. Seriously, it’s inexcusable for a Mastery skill to be this bad. Barely any buffs (which only work on 1 damage type), terrible ailment chance, laughable interaction with the other skills. First and foremost, make Storm Totem grant Storm stacks so that Shaman spellcasters can have some fun Storm Bolt interactions without having to use a melee skill to obtain them. There’s that node in Maelstrom that grants it huge damage when applied to a totem; give Storm Totem some Maelstrom interaction so the Maelstrom provides massive Lightning bolts. Give it better interactions with Thorn Totems and Upheaval Totems. There are so many possibilities you can make with this skill.

  10. For the love of all that is good, give Shamans the ability to Crit: Big bonks require high Crit Chance. War Cry with its Crit chance bonus + additional Crit chance when you take the Cold route is good, but not good enough. There are already idols such as “increased Crit Chance with Lightning Skills,” but they interfere with other necessary idols like the “Thorn Totem on hit” affix and the “flat Storm Bolt damage” idol. Beastmaster has Aspect of the Lynx which gives Crit chance, Crit multiplier, and leech from Crit. Druid has a ton of crit chance in its passives. Please, give something to Shamans. I don’t care if it’s tied to a specific skill or a specific damage type. Just let us make some big Crit numbers.

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I’d throw in that the skill Avalanche has no real interaction with any other skill Shaman has access to, I think Tempest Strike is the only other skill that references it.

Its also near impossible to create a ranged primalist dispite all the spells they have access too.

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Im writing this post just to explain why somethings are the way they are, and what appears to be “bad” skills are just skills that need a bit more effort rather then being directly bad.

I wont quote the whole block but tldr, Thorn totems have less then 100% added effect because thorn totems are insanely disgustingly strong. When set up you can have a whopping 9 thorn that have 100% chance to crit, tons of more multipliers, and in spriggan form mana becomes not real.

Now, this still does need work. just not for the reasons you listed. its just mostly tied to how thorn totem is just 10x better when used in transform, and if you dont transform the skill is probably one of the most expensive skills in the game to cast outside of %mana consumption skills cost well over 140 mana if you fully spec 5 totems. But the totems do good damage, its damage isnt a problem.

These are just bad full stop. Half the tree is support for melee, half the tree is support for proccing stuff when you use it(which totems cant do because its not u proccing it, or its bad because you miss out on scaling if you make totems do it)

There is basically 0 totem support here. they are also reallllly bugged currently and lots of stuff does not even register them as totems. So yeah… they basically need to add way more nodes to tempest strike to add stuff to take if you go totem… otherwise why bother casting these totems, just cast more thorn totems, they do a single damage type, all scale with crit, and even if they cost buttloads of mana you have a few ways to cheat them in without mana vs tempest totems which cost shitloads of mana and then… do nothing.

Upheaval totems are actually one of the most unique totems currently and are fairly decent if a bit meme. The node “Master of the totem” causes upheaval to buff totems it hits. it gives them armor/damage. this bonus stacks. its 15% more damage per stack. The upheaval spawns inside its own totem, meaning it actually buffs itself. if you place all 3 on top of each other, they all buff each other meaning they are gaining 45% more damage each and every time they attack. So you get some minion melee attack speed and suddenly these totems ramp themselves up to insane levels. its very janky, but its certainly unique.

There is lots of power in upheaval totem, the problem with them is that upheaval is an attack skill, all the other totems are spells. So when you go upheaval totems, you are basically better off going beast master to synergize it as a minion rather then a totem.

Now them is just fighting words. Storm totem is by and large the best totem currently for a shaman. Thorn totem basically feels like you are a druid, as matter of fact you can totally go druid for more bulk on that build, its not strictly a shaman build!

Storm totem again has a small added damage, because its spell it casts essentially is a single cast, that then spawns a few lightning bolts, not quite sure how many off hand. they target an area, and can overlap. aoe = more damage for the skill as the aoe increases not where the bolts fall, but rather how big each bolt is.

While id argue its tree can be cleaned up with less travel points required like you said, it actually has all the makings of a good skill currently. it can be built utility to slow enemies and speed you up(40% movement speed on recent shock is actually bonkers, especially combined with haste of totem use potentially getting like 80-90% speed just from casting it and walking away if you build it right) it can be built as a single minion focused build that just buffs up storm totem to insane levels, or you can use it as just a generic minion with a mix of the above in a totem spamming style build, it can even buff your other totems with a unique belt.

I guess my tldr; is other then tempest strike, the totems are actually quite okay. They just need a little bit of clean up in their skill trees to make them less… old. But as for what builds they offer, each totem that isnt tempest currently has quite a few ways you can build it, while also maintaining decent power.

The reason shaman totem falls off is because shamans passive tree offers no healing, and you cant leech with totems. So you end up having to do weird shit like heal yourself with eterras blessing or warcry and getting some healing effect.

Totems are one of my most played archetypes, I think its almost there, shaman just needs more support for totems in the back end of the tree that offer ways to heal off your totems, and further reduce the cost of them so that you can play a totem spam focused build.

Edit: I agree with you btw on frenzy totem. Fun fact, Shaman used to get frenzy totem. Frenzy totem was the 15 point skill on BM, it got shuffled around(All primalists used to get sabertooth as well.) there used to be a fairly decent “Basic totem” build that was built as a beginner totem build and it just focused on having thorn and storm totems do damage while buffed by a strong frenzy totem with a companion and I think eterras for healing. it was a cute little basic build. Frenzy totem i agree should be put back into the core primalist pool.

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I would switch Tornado with Storm Totems to give the Shaman the totem stuff it deservs while Tornado could ne a good “caster” option for every Primalist player who dislikes the caster options they have as a Primalist from the beginning.

Primalist needs a big passive tree overhaul from start to finish and I don’t even know where to start and where to end. On top of having three non totem skills and one totem skill and that big of a totem synergy makes the class look like a failed concept. Sure in reality you can have different skills work as a totem but by just looking at it it feels wrong to me.

Druid Spriggan having better Totems then the Totem centric class is another proof how dated and old primalist is. With the introduction of the Spriggan it’s a nobrainer to use it if you want to play a Totem build because it’s the best thing you can do by a lot.

The other problem is the ammount of Totem skills. Most builds have one or two totems in it like Storm and Thorn totem and that’s it. I miss the possibility to setup the shaman like other classes where you have one dmg skill and everything else is utility while the big spot is on totems.

I think Shaman is to much all over the place with summons, melee skills and spells and high mana costs. Then I miss the options to change elements on the skills. If I want to play a caster i have Tornado that is physical or fire, EQ that becomes lightning and Avalanche that is physical and cold. So I could pick and choose skills that fit from the kind of dmg or i have to skill and itemise all over the place and end up with a hybrid char that gets nothing done.

Maybe shaman will rise with the fifth skill that isn’t even implemented in 1.0. Who knows?

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I appreciate you giving your feedback - obviously I’m going to have a lot of gaps in my knowledge because my experience is spread among different skills / masteries (and I’ve spent most of my recent time leveling a Warlock as my stash needed more Necro-related gear), so having other players share their experience is a massive boon.

Something that’s a big stickler for me is when a skill appears to have multiple branching paths, but in gameplay there’s only one real path and all the other paths are traps. For the purposes of this thread, Thorn Totem is one of the biggest culprits. You have to pick the ring of totems per cast (it’s mandatory for the Spriggan Form builds that use the “Thorn Totem when hit” idols), and you either have to go crit + damage multipliers (if you want direct damage) or ailment chance for DoT builds (and as I said, the Armor Shred node is in the opposite direction of the Poison / Frostbite node). Now don’t get me wrong, when you build it the exact optimal way, it works fine, but there’s just no room for creativity and a lot of nodes just feel wasted.

As for the Upheaval totems, you raise a good point. What DO they scale off of? The totem tag says they scale off Melee, but when you go into LastEpochTools and select the Upheaval Totem minion, it states they scale off of cast speed. I’m sure the damage scales off of melee (like the huge idol that gives +1/+2 flat Crit to melee minions), but if they scale off of melee attack speed, then you lose one of the best Shaman passives, which is the cast speed for totems + haste when you summon a totem. More clarity in the tooltip would be highly appreciated.

Good news: we got to see a new Shaman passive - Attack Speed + Cast Speed + … Dodge Rating. The best part is that it’s in the 40 Shaman location, which I assume means the team took my advice and deleted the really terrible passive that was previously there. 8 points for 16% attack speed, when Beastmaster has 50% attack speed for a mere two extra points, it feels kind of bad, honestly.

Also, I don’t really see how a 3 second Frenzy for an individual totem is going to accomplish anything. I’m not proficient in the ways of Storm Totem, so I’m not sure if Frenzy allows it to cast its Lightning (or Blizzard) so that it provides more hits per second. I honestly wouldn’t know if anyone playing the class will feel the difference, which is exactly what I was griping about in the first place. With the new Forge Guard buff, you can feel the extra flat Crit Chance as you build around a throwing skill specialty. But Shaman? The level-ups just don’t have any weight to them, and not feeling any progression is the worst thing an ARPG player can feel.

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Yeah this really comes down to how lackluster the tree is for totems for shaman.

You get almost all the good totem stuff right away, with huge damage/cast speed for totems in point efficient packages. 10% per point is quite good as far as passives go, and same with 7% cast speed.

its why often times shaman builds have less points in shaman then say BM/Druid. because you mostly want the class passive and the early passives, then you just dump into attunement/defensive stats from the other two branches.

edit: just looked at the new shaman passive, yeah thats not too fantastic. I mean free frenzy is fine, its a useful stat. The problem is that getting 2% speeds per point that do nothing for your totem is terrible. I really think they need to find some way to tie players and totems. No self casting build that uses totems to proc effects cares about frenzy on the totems. And no totem build cares about the self cast speeds(not exactly true, but its not that useful.)

So summoning totems, aka casting the totem itself, uses cast speed. But the totem itself then uses the upheaval skill based on attack speed. Complicated I know lol.

10

Gathering Storm is another pain point. There are many abilities that cast Storm Bolts, maelstrom, leap, tornado etc. These casts to not require or generate storm stacks. Yet nearly everything in Gathering storm scales off stacks or melee, so few nodes buff the stormbolts themselves.

11

All this is my opinion. Trying to do a quicker summary here.

Major themes; Shaman needs a rework.
Main points: Shaman is all over the place, in a very bad way. This isn’t being fixed with some little tweaking. The shaman totem supports neither the caster build nor the melee build, and there is no build that allows the storm totem to shine.

  • Could be a caster, as two of the four the skills that the shaman get imply. Main problem here is that the ‘spell’ skills have little synergy with passive tree, each other, or the storm totem. All the spell skills are mana expensive, so it almost seems mean spirited that Totemic Fury has a spell component. What is also mean spirited is that the tier ten passive only works with non-shaman totems.
  • Could be a totem (pet) build, as NINE of the passive nodes (two of which are tier 10) imply, except that the ONE castable totem that is unique to the shaman has little to no synergy with spells, and has crappy synergy with melee. You have to go off-brand to get a totem that you can spam. As is currently, there are level 6, 8 and 10 passives in the Shaman tree that build power based off of each active totem. And the storm totem is limited to one. Say that out loud. You can’t make that make sense.
  • Could be a melee build, as the new Gathering Storm, reworked Tempest Strike, and Maelstrom are all storm-themed melee skills and seem to imply they are for the Shaman… except the NINE totem passives mostly just buff totems, or are based off of having a lot of totems. Did I mention that you can only have one Storm Totem?
  • Earthquake. This is in a category all by itself. There is ONE shaman passive that seems like it could be for Earthquake, and that is Glacial Strike. No one is spamming a 50-mana-cost skill, so attack speed does nothing for Earthquake. Earthquake is physical, so all the elemental boost passives don’t apply. And yet, even Glacial Strike, which is built to support slow, impactful strikes, boosts cold. Again, another mean-spirited passive that doesn’t really do anything to work with the shaman.

Thematically it’s just nuts. Who thinks that a storm shaman wants to use thorn totems to capitalize on most of the totem passives in the shaman passive tree?

Across multiple class/masteries EHG needs to spend some time making the core concept builds actually good, before putting a lot of power into dual mastery builds. For example, how about EHG complete a shaman storm totem build, an avalanche caster build and a storm melee build first, then maybe put in a little support for a shaman with thorn totems?

Look, I know that EHG isn’t deliberately trying to piss off shaman players, all my comments about ‘mean-spirited’, are semi-sarcastic. And yet, it does almost feel like that there is a bit of spite in there somewhere.

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(the above is about what I think are the problems, this is what I think should be the guiding principles and a suggestion)

EHG, think about what you want totems to be. Then think about what you want the shaman to be.

Totems
Totems seem to be (mostly) about buffing. Storm Totem should buff storms and the shaman. It should not innately be doing damage itself.
[Aside: I really like the concept of the Shaman passive ‘Eternal Storm’, but it’s too tough to pull off and it’s too hard to keep going. I think it belongs in an item that bends the (new) rules by making the totem a damage dealer, and making it able to grow based upon some not terribly difficult to achieve conditions]

Masteries
Beastmaster is about pets. You don’t need another Naturalist to be about pets.
Druid is about shape shifting. I think the Druid is really solid and already packed, you don’t need more here. Fantastic class.
Shaman is about… what? Totems? I don’t think any Naturalist mastery should be about ‘totems’, totems should just be a thing Naturalist use to buff themselves, their pets, their spells, etc.

Suggestion
So we need something else for the Shaman. I think Shaman is currently about “natural disasters”, but the signature skill is “Storm Totem”, so I actually think that the Shaman should be about storms. Especially since the natural disasters are each one-offs that don’t work well together.

How we do that is with new spells. His skills now are Thunder Storm (new, lightning), Tornado (physical), and Blizzard (new, cold). Both Thunder Storm and Gathering Storm are used to build storm stacks (which cause storm bolts). So now the Shaman can build storm stacks via melee or spell.

Storm Totem is changed to be about buffing one or many storms (Thunder, Tornado, Blizzard).

Tempest Strike should probably be moved into the Shaman tree and each tempest has a chance to proc a specific tempest (not just Wind proc’ing Tornado), allowing the player to have melee proc a skill that scales with that skill.

So now this is awkward, because Earthquake and Avalanche are saying, “uhhh, hello?”. Don’t worry my friends, your new master is the fourth Primalist mastery called, Earth Master. He’ll have Earthquake, Avalanche and Volcano. He will be physical, cold and fire. Yes, I imagine EHG has nothing but time and money on their hands to build out an entirely new mastery shortly after 1.0. (eyeroll)

13

Tornado needs a cold option too. Fire tornados are cool but there is so little fire damage for it to synergize with. Honestly tornado and maelstrom should have more connection and so should earthquake and upheaval.

Shaman also needs some type of elemental movement skill. Leap is a melee attack and we need a spell to do it, something like surfing an upheaval or being carried forward by a tornado or teleporting with a thunder bolt.

Being able to play all spells of the same element is extremely important to scaling as well, Multi-element builds are cool in theory but the elemental damage affixes are dogshit for number ranges. Currently in a Multi-elemental build you go pure spell damage or pure damage-over-time because its so bad.

14

Agree with all your points.

I’d like to see the storm crows get the same treatment as the falcon (unkillable), they have a node which transforms the crows into a travel power.

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Earthquake can create avalanche boulders.

And there are Idol and Set Affixes for Avalanche Boulders as well.

16

I’ve been playing a 100% stormbolt & lightning strike shaman build lately, storm totem, wolves with lightning retaliation, tornado with storm bolts, gather storm with staff node to be a caster, leap with storm bolts… And thematically, it’s great. I love lightning builds, in most games. It’s cool summoning storms… But Shaman just doesn’t have the DPS or survivability. And, what I notice compared to other caster builds, is that Shaman is very stationary, which makes sense considering storm totem and tornadoes are supposed to be stationary … But it doesn’t excel at holding ground… Other casters are very quick moving and destroy everything in their path, Shaman does neither of those things lol… It would be nice, if he’s meant to be stationary, for him to do way more damage in that specific area he is trying to control, than other caster builds, or if the storm (totem & tornado) followed him as he moved … Maybe a node for storm totem to float alongside you, or for storm totem to do a bit more than just summon lightning strikes, maybe it also procs tornadoes.

I also would like gathering storm’s storm bolts from storm stacks to do WAY more damage … They passively cast which is nice, but they just don’t compare to any other caster’s DPS.

In summary, when I play my voidknight caster build, or a warlock, or runemaster, I’m speeding thru the level clearing everything in my path. But when I play my shaman, it’s stop go, stop go, and he still does way less damage, with way less survivability than those other classes … And plz EHG buff gathering storm damage.

17

Ok so 2 skills. Sets and idols don’t count as they can be impossible to attain without really good luck. So they may as well not exist because you can’t count on having them when the time comes.

18

Or the Merchant’s Guild. And TBH, sets suck & Avalanche idols aren’t “top tier” so they should be relatively cheap.

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I guess that is going a bit beyond this threads main topic but I have to disagree here.
It is very easy to reliably get set items and idols with one specific affix.

Except like one single set item (from another set) all set items are basiclly common drops and very easy to obtain. Both Factions on top of that give oyu even more ways to get them even easier.

Idol affixes are also not very rare, only getting idols with 2 good affixes is hard, but that is basically min-maxing and not acquiring build enabling items.

20

You and I are not playing the same Last Epoch. I can’t get squat to drop.