Passive Node Ideas - Primalist

Primalist
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41

Some shortcomings for shaman. which could be added in passives:
Ability to shred armor (for minions)
Ability to slow / chill / frailty / blind (for minions)
Ability to Leech (minion leech applying to shaman)

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42

beastmaster:

  1. The node viper fangs should be on the first half so all classes can benefit from it. It’s to good to be only for beastmasters.

  2. A new node for cooldown recovery on pet abilities.

  3. A new node that reduces damage taken for both on pet ability use.

Shaman:

  1. A new node for spell damage into melee damage or viceversa, shaman is suppose to be a melee caster, but its just awkward, help us make the hybrid nature caller we all imagine.

  2. I can’t get my head arround the lightning bolt(thunder strike and lagoon answer) with a 3 second cooldown, nobody uses that, NOBODY. 3 seconds cooldown!? it makes it unusable, on the endgame in 3 seconds you can die 25 times.
    Please remove the cooldown or remove the passives entirely, they do nothing. 5 passives for nothing, 5!

  3. The shaman tree needs to be buffed generaly, its so weak, you should get the sense of overwhelming nature forces instead you get a fart wind or lightning. You should be able by passives to cast on hit avalanche, aftershocks, tornado or more. (probably tempest strike should (instead of casting those lame spells) cast on hit avalance for cold, aftershock for earth, and tornado por lightning)

  4. A new node for more damage for totems, shaman needs to differenciate in something from the other classes, it does nothing, maybe being a master of totems could do the trick

  5. A new node buffing spell casting, spell casting on shaman sucks.

Druid:

  1. A new node for mana efficiency of spells and attacks, druid outside transforming is not viable, it would add versatility.
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Shaman

Passive nodes

  • Eterra's Guidance (0/5) - You gain 10% (20%, 30%, 40%, 50%) of your Minion modifiers (multiplicative with others)
    • Alternative: * Eterra's Guidance (0/5) - You gain 10% (20%, 30%, 40%, 50%) of your Minion defensive Modifiers (multiplicative with others)
    • Thoughts: This node should come in late game, after Iron bark has been skilled 5 times. This would move Iron bark up a tear and make it skillable earlier. I think this would be a valuable addition as you either play a minion / totem build and have to go all in on that or you play a melee / caster build and have to go all in on that. Supporting the playstyle suggested by Storm Totem that you should fight melee combat. Gaining the survivability though can be tough from what I experienced. This will help transitioning into close combat and not having to run away from hords of enemies.

Skills

Eterra’s Blessing

  • Time abundance (0/2) - Healing your totem directly, will reset the duration of the active totem -2 (1) second(-s). If a Storm Totem was healed 4 times it transforms into a Thunder Totem and have it’s duration reset all together. This requires the Thunder Totem node, within Storm Totem , to be skilled.
    • Alternative: Time abundance (0/2) - Healing your totem directly, will reset the duration of the active totem -2 (1) second(-s). If a Storm Totem was healed 4 times it transforms into a Thunder Totem and have it’s duration reset all together. This requires the Thunder Totem node, within Storm Totem , to be skilled. (The upgrade won’t occur in Arena within Monolith’s or the Arena itself.)
    • Thoughts: This could be placed after Efflorescence, so the cost of investment will be steep. One might argue this will become overpowered if combined with Storm Crows’ Aspect of the Crow > Arborist, as it’ll allow (fully skilled) for 54 added seconds of them to apply buffs. And while I fully agree that this time range may be a lot and can’t speak for lot’s of corruption Monoliths, I would like to throw in that this game is about movement. Seldom I stand on the same screen for more than 20 - 30 seconds unless it’s Arena for which I can’t speak but have thrown in the alternative version, just in case.

Storm totem

  • Winter Storms (0/1) - 100% of Storm Totem’s base damage is converted to Cold, hence it gains the cold minion tag and drops the lightning minion tag. Instead of calling down thunder strikes it now leaves local Blizzards that last for 1 second and scales with your area of effect and minion damage over time tags. The Minion spell casting is applied only by 50% to Storm Totem.
    • Thoughts: This should be available after the nodes Chill to the bone and Piercing winds have each been skilled once. It may promote a more direct playstyle that allows the player to concentrate on one element, rather than having to go for both, cold and lightning damage, if they wanted to incorporate Blizzard into their build. The heavy investment makes sure that it’s a decision taken. It’s a unique playstyle by the time those points are invested as it occupies 10 skill points for Storm Totem.
  • Danger of Snow (0/5) - Every second Blizzard is active it has a chance of 10% (20/30/40/50) to hurl an icy boulder on a nearby enemy. This boulder scales with nodes in the Avalanche skill tree that mention Boulder.
    • Thoughts: With one word: Synergy. This may help promoting different playstyles. If they want to be Frosty the Snowman, they now can be. Additionally to Avalanche this node brings synergy to Earthquake, giving more reason to identify with the Shaman itself.

Conclusive thoughts

In my opinion these type of nodes should help the Shaman to feel more ‘totemy’ and therefore help the totem to stand out more. I have little to no experience with the Beastmaster hence I’ve moved the passive node into the Shaman tree, though it may be a good option for the Primalist all together - being ‘attuned’ with his companions.

44

Let primalist cast spells while in transformed state. For example it could be a node which removes some bonuses while shape shifted but at the same time let’s us cast the other spells. Or we could get more idols to passively cast spells while transformed. (Such as malestorm every 5 seconds etc)

For spriggan form I have a cool idea which is to become a big tree by fusing with summon spriggan (Companion/companions) becoming completely immobile but gaining stats. Could be a cool situational build.

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45

Passive

New shaman passive - Make use of more resistance than 75%.
Each point 1 or 2% increase and use 5 points. Should be a shaman only passive. Or a shaman “Passive Bonuses” replacing the “-5 Totem mana cost”.

Maelstrom

  • Increase armor per stack % just as a default of the ability.
  • Frenzy and Haste gain at 2 stacks.
  • “Gathering Storm” raise % to double.
  • Remove “Strong Tides” make it cast “Strom bolt” as default if specced into “Power of the storm”
  • “Power of the storm” converts ability into lightning damage.
  • New ability “Strong Tides” with chance to shock.
  • “Calm” remove it, no one ever cast maelstrom.
  • “Sleet-Footed” - Grant additional armor.

Storm Totem.

  • Scale with all lightning damage (Storm totem is useless right now damage wise)

Gathering Storm,

  • “In the eye of the storm” Increase chance to at least 25%
  • Scale with spell damage

Thorn Totem

  • “Frenetic Attunment” Converts to lightning damage. Keep attack speed buff.

Eterras Blessing

  • Remove healing totems, it just makes you heal totems when you yourself needs it, killing the player. Make it auto selfcast.

Earthquake

  • “Storm Rift” scales with melee.

Warcry

  • “Challenging Might” really shows how outdated Primalist is. Give it a buff at least.

Tempest Strike

  • “Sky opener” why does this exist? let Tempest Strike create storm stacks!

I have no idea why you want to split Lightning into spell or melee builds, why not have them be able to do both? If i wanna go spell make them do so by equipping a staff and leave melee alone.

“Chance to gain a Storm Stack when you use Gathering Strom and hit an enemy” Most useless affix in the game. LET ME FIX;
“Chance to gain a Storm Stack when you use TEMPEST STRIKE and hit an enemy”

Placing totems should do spell damage when placed creating a AOE effect

46

Shaman

There are very large issues with shaman. I know you intended to enable the class to do fire, but its not really the most fantastic thing. The lack of cold tornado’s really kills the elemental-caster variation of the build. Further more, the potential of progressing that further is killed by the fully conversion of storm totem to fully ice related totems. Add frostbite here.

Maelstrom should get a soft design pass, increasing its radius by a factor of 3. IT should also be active and activating (onkeydown) the ability should make it become significantly more intense (visually and damage wise). This would massively improve this ability at face value. Things like gaining haste on 6 stacks should be changed to 1, and the aoe melee water when maelstrom depletes should be shifted to 1-2 seconds at a much larger (factor of 3) radius.

Another massive qol update to totems would be a passive that enables the shaman to make the totems orbit him. The current mechanics are fundamentally against the concept of speed farming, which is enjoyable to all.

Druid

The cold on thorns needs to be shifted to poison. spriggans should not count against the pet cap but should be limited to 1 base, 1 talent, 1 item. This will enable the druid to expand more greatly for pet play. Thorns should obtain a unique or item that applies Thorn barrier to additional allies near the casted target to help bolster more aoe potential on the druid in spriggan form.

If you ask me, I think shaman needs an entire damage design pass shifting away from elemental damage to physical and poison. Someone made a great suggestion that totems should be shifted to spirits, or if i can add more even spirit forums. Having shaman physical and poison damage and shifting druid over here would significantly improve the hybrid gameplay between the two while differentiating the primality class with the mage.

Functionally passives that shift according to those positions would improve the inter-spec gameplay significantly.

I Can make entire fidelity mockups if you want of a full design pass for the primary and masteries, if you would like. Let me know.

47

I hope Ancestral Weaponry and specifically the 2H staff interaction is changed to better suit the Shaman playstyle. Currently equipping a 2H staff allows GS to be a spell cast but that completely gimps the node entirely since the +30 mele lightning damage no longer applies. The passive right above it for spell/minion spell damage also drives you to use an axe for the triple bonuses. The weapon specific nodes in GS also drive you to use axes.

Maybe the Ancestral Weaponry node should be changed to +20 or +30 mele physical, lightning and cold damage to just equipping a 2H weapon over specific 2Hs.

48

To encourage more two-handed weapon builds for Primalist. I would add a node that adds flat spell damage to two-handed weapons

Ancestral Elements:
Cold spell damage with two handed maces: +5 per point
Physical spell damage with two handed axes: +4 per point
Lightning spell damage with two handed staffs: +3 per point

I would link both Ancestral Elements and Ancestral weaponry to Tempest bond and lock it behind a 4-point requirement.

For thematic reasons I think Earthquake should be moved to the Primalist skill tree and Storm bolts should be made a shaman skill to replace Earthquake.

Storm Bolt Ideas:

Charging Strike - (3-point node)  
 +2% to base critical strike chance when directly cast  

Lightning Rod - (4-point node) 
 5% chance to summon Storm Totem on crit 

Rain Dancer – (1-point node) 
 turns Storm bolts into a channeling skill that strikes in an area around the player.  

Northen Winds – (1-point node) 
 while channeling create a blizzard around the player   
 Freeze rate multiplier +50% 
 50% chill chance per second 

Grounded – (4-point node) 
 30% Electrify chance

Elemental Bond - (4-point node) 
 25% chance to shock 
 25% chance to chill
49

I would like a new archetype that uses the on death mechanic for totems. the current subskills have ridiculous damage, so it would be enough to introduce a new passive “energy release”: on totem death releases an energy wave that damages nearby enemies. 5 points: 20% totem damage per points.

50

That does seem quite similar to the poison on death node in Thorn Totem.

51

The problem is that that skill does no damage at all. It is only useful to proc frostbite if you convert to thorn to cold. Same problem with lightning nova in storm totem tree.A passive that procs on totem death could be useful with all type of totem builds.

52

Have you tried %minion poison damage modifiers & minion poison chance?

53

I can delete an entire screen of mobs with that skill, and nuke most bosses … It does a TON of damage if you build it right.

54

The only way I know to make poison burst hits decently is to use tornado to cast storm bolt to summon thorn totems thanks to idols.(20% max). You need a lot of mana regen to sustain tornado or spriggan form to reset mana. Poison burst is physical damage, and there is no Phys in shaman. So you convert it to cold. You also need a lot of plus totem skill cause base damage of poison burst is “2” with only 100 added effect and you need cold spell in thorn skill tree.if you go hit you need also want crit. Show me your build

55

But it applies poison stacks which is what you scale. It was a thing some years ago. From memory, you’d be in Spriggan form and use the node that applies the Thorn totem tree to Spriggan form’s healing totems (specifically the mana on totem death node as well as the poison on death node). If mana/rage is an issue you can take Umbound Garden in Spriggan to summon 3 totems without having take the similar nodes in Thorn totem (as they are relatively expensive on the mana).

56

So basically you are saying that poison burst sucks. It is only useful to stack dots, as I stated before. What I would like is a nice explosion on totem death, not a tool to apply poison or frostbite.

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57

Pretty much, as you say, the base damage & scaling are non-existent.

58

The Tornado skill in general, i really think that need a almost complete rework, the only worth things that you can let stay are the iteraction with the storm bolt, but aside from that, there isn’t a way to make tornado it’self a damage dealing skill, probably one of the coolest skill, that make you feel like a god, do no damage.
So, to fix that, i think should be added a path in the skill three that make the tornado switch from a damage over time, to crit, with a base damage and effective damage way higher compared to now, and with some node that actually really scale it’s damage, as something like more multiplicative damage for tornados on the field, with some cap like 15/20 or what you want, or that scale with the dimension increase, or the ability to make it hit twice but last less time, etcc there are a lot of way to make cool things with this skill, but at now is really in a bad state, i can’t recall a skill that seems that much useless if not for one specific archetype where doesn’t anyway do damage, please to something.