Just because I want to go above and beyond with explaining why Shaman’s class identity is “totems, but not really”, here are the perceived identities of the other masteries in the game based on the Mastery Skill and Passives: *Note: the identity of a class does not define the builds available to the class. This is just a generic overview of what a player who has not touched the class can expect the class to do based on the Mastery Skill and Passive Bonuses.
Sorcerer: A spell slinger who focuses on casting high mana cost spells to deal large amounts of damage.
- Meteor
- +50 Mana
- Spells deal 1% more damage per 2 mana cost, up to 50% mana
Runemaster: A spell slinger who focuses on casting multi-element spells as fast as possible.
- Runic Invocation
- 30% increased Elemental Damage
- 10% increased Cast Speed with Elemental Spells
Spellblade: A magic swordsman style class who focuses on being up in the enemy’s face as they shred them with melee ranged spells.
- Shatter Strike
- 12 Ward gained on melee use and hit at least one enemy
- Mana spent on melee attacks is converted to ward.
Void Knight: A melee void specialist who focuses on creating echoes to repeat their attacks.
- Erasing Strike
- You gain 1% more melee void damage (multiplicative with other modifiers) per 3 Vitality.
- Your melee attacks, throwing attacks, and void spells have a 10% chance to be repeated by an echo 0.5s later (excludes movement abilities and Anomaly).
Paladin: A defensive melee specialist who focuses on keeping up high health through self-healing to deal more damage to the enemy.
- Holy Aura
- You deal increased fire, lightning, and physical damage equal to your percent Health remaining.
- 1% increased healing effectiveness per point of attunement.
Forge Guard: A defensive melee specialist who focuses on being in the thick of things. Can create minions with Forge Strike.
- Forge Strike
- +35% Physical and Fire Resistance
- You gain a stack of Stalwart when hit. Stalwart grants 5% increased armor, lasts 10 seconds, and stacks up to 10 times.
Necromancer: A minion master who focuses on having large armies of undead to serve them.
- Summon Wraith
- +1 Max Skeleton
- +1 Max Skeleton Mage
- Your minions deal 50% increased damage.
Warlock: A master of curses who focuses on destroying enemies by stacking curses on them.
- Chthonic Fissure
- 4% more damage per curse on the target
- +35% fire and necrotic Resistance
Lich: Opposite of a Paladin, Liches focus on staying as at low health as possible while wading through the hordes of enemies in melee range. Can transform into a Reaper for a second life bar.
- Reaper Form
- 1% of damage dealt is leeched as Health
- Spells and Melee attacks deal increased damage equal to your missing health.
Bladedancer: An evasive melee specialist who focuses on creating shadows to decimate their foes.
- Dancing Strikes
- +1 Max Shadows
- +15 melee physical damage
- 15% more dodge rating (multiplicative with other modifiers)
Falconer: A… well… falconer, who has an invincible birdy pet who can attack your foes for you. *Doesn’t really have an identity aside from that as it can work in both ranged and melee, description mentions “traps” but only Explosive Trap and Net Trap are a thing and afaik Net Trap isn’t really worth using.
- Falconry
- +12 Dexterity
- +1 Falcon Melee Damage per 4 Dexterity
Marksman: A master of the Bow, “Our arrows shall block out the sun!”
- Detonating Arrow
- Using a bow attack grants 5% increased attack speed. Can stack 5 times. All stacks fall off if you have not used a bow attack recently.
- 50% increased damage while using a bow.
Beastmaster: A pet specialist who, unlike a Necromancer, fights alongside their sweet fur/scale/feather/chitin babies in melee range.
- Summon Raptor
- +1 Companion Summon Limit
- You and your minions deal increased melee damage
Druid: One who communes with nature to become nature itself, can transform their human form to decimate their foes.
- Werebear Form
- When leaving a transformed state, you gain 70% damage reduction for 2 seconds (but we laughably stay Transformed as close to 100% of the time as possible, so unless this works in a Form-to-Form change, it’s not really useful).
- 20% Increased Health and Mana
Shaman: A Totem-mancer who can summon totems to destroy their foes!
- Summon Storm Totem
- -5 Totem Mana Cost
- +10 Attunement
- +50% Elemental Resistance while you control a totem.
So, everything kind of has an identity, and Shaman should have an identity as a totem-mancer, but where classes that focus on a specific aspect like minions/pets, such as Beastmaster and Necromancer, none of the other Shaman Mastery skills relate to totems at all.
Beastmaster starts with Summon Raptor, then gets Summon Bear and Summon Scorpion, then there’s a random Totem (a very good totem, but random) and a Summon Sabertooth. The skills match the identity of the class.
Necromancer starts with Summon Wraith, and while one of the passives augments an Acolyte Base Skill (Summon Skeletons) Necromancer unlocks Summon Skeletal Mage, Sacrifice (to detonate minions), Dread Shade (to buff minions), and Assemble Abomination (to sacrifice minions into a stronger minion). These ALL work towards the class identity.
Shaman? Cool, you get “Summon Storm Totem”, that fits. Tornado… doesn’t have a totem, nor does it interact with Totems. Earthquake, doesn’t summon a totem but can create aftershocks AROUND totems, so that’s cool I guess? Avalanche? Doesn’t have a totem, but does more damage with totems and can deal some lightning damage if you have a storm totem, so again that’s at least SOME interaction (even if it is only 2 nodes and not the identity of the skill).
So, to recap: Beastmaster’s identity is to summon beasts and its skills reflect that without needing to specialize them. Necromancer’s identity is to manage their army of the undead and its skills reflect that without needing to specialize them. Shaman’s identity is to be a master of totems and none of the skills other than it’s Mastery Specific one, represent this in any way unless you specialize two of them and that’s only 3 nodes across the two skills.
So when I look at Shaman and see the skills available to it, I don’t see “wow, I can use cool totems!”, I see “wow, I can be a master of natural disasters like earthquakes, tornadoes, and avalanches!” but then none of the Mastery Bonuses match this, and none of the passives synergize with this. It’s a mess.
Edit: since I mentioned “the description” for Falconer, I thought I should point out Shaman’s description is “Your strikes bear power, avalanches that shatter mountainsides, the lightning that cracks the sky open. You are the storm.” Which literally has nothing to do with totems, it’s hilarious.
