Lacks survivability, unique identity, and balance in endgame.
What a chore compared to my Beastmaster.
2 Likes
Yes. I have a lvl99 shaman, I am a self cast avalanche shaman build.
I hate totems, I hate the shity passives for shaman, I hate that I have only 4 skills, and only 1 of them is a totem skill, yet half the passive tree for shaman is conditional goodies for when you have a totem.
I hate that you can get a higher amount of cold damage from Druid passive tree than Shaman, when shaman is the mastery that ltierally gives you a dedicated cold damage spell.
I hate that thereās no more multipliers on shaman, I hate the absolute lack of crit passives for shaman, when thereās a dedicated passive for when you crit with avalance.
I hate that I have to spend 8 (EIGHT POINTS) points to make avalanche actually viable to use, and with all those 8 points invested, you make it follow you and it has a flat mana cost of 80mana, which compounds the issue of shaman because Attunement only gives you more mana, not mana regen and thereās only a measly 2% increased mana regen per THREE attunement, when you are already so god damn passive point starved as a shaman, because nothing god damn synergizes, itās only small amounts of increased damage and some flat damage in the entire tree.
I hate shaman. I hate that they release this game as it is now, when more than half the masteries are absolute trash compared to the design of the newer masteries - Runemaster, Warlock and Falconer.
Oh and lets also talk about defense for shaman.
There is none. Thereās some flat armor and resistance, when you have a totem up - thatās all there is.
You can try and get aspect of the boar, what does aspect of the boar do? well it only activates when you get hit by a MELEE attack from an enemy.
99.9999999% of all enemies are ranged in this game and shoot spells. They wonāt trigger aspect of the boar for you.
Please proceed to fall over and die immeditely mr.Shaman, you are a bad worthless trash class.
Honestly - at this point. As it is right now in the game.
Disable Shaman and forge guard masteries.
People should not be able to pick shaman or Forge guard.
Because they are so far behind in design and power that they are essentialy a āpick this mastery if you ALWAYS want to struggle in this gameā gamemode.
2 Likes
This is funny but also a sad reality of shaman.
This class need more work.
Totem in general feel pretty bad compare to totem in other game.
Earth quake is the only really good skill in shaman kit but thatās it. Storm totem have dog shit damage even when u stack as many buff as possible to it, it still doesnāt kill anything fast enough before itself get deleted.
I tried buffing the storm totem with etera blessing, stack 3 upheaval totem on it. Still garbage.
Iām not here to say totems or Shaman are in a good state, butā¦ As far as Iām concerned, Shamans are always tied to using totems in almost every game (specifically as a means to support YOU in the battle, not for the totem to battle for you), and PoE is the only game I have ever played that has totems being used by non-shamanic classes (totems can wear weapons in PoE rofl)
So, maybe you should really pick another class if you donāt like totems, I mean, real proper shamanic totems.
Ironically, my shaman build does ~750k dps. I maintain endless supply of tornadoās which is only capped by the amount of time they last.
Imo, Shaman needs some serious help in the passives area. The totems are exceptionally bad, and the base concept of their gameplay is horrid. People want to move fast and all that.
Honestly, I wonder if shapeshifting would be a good move for shaman and maybe making them do the whole wolves shapeshift (like in some blizzard games).
The totems for sure need to be something that orbit the shaman or something they hold in their hand, not something that is stationary. most people want to ārushā through levels and thats fundamentally against shaman AND druid.
Totems had a brief moment to shine, but then were subsequently nerfed (because they werenāt Sentinels, when Sentinel was the OP class).
The problem with balance in this game is that the 90% average player is usually fairly well-balanced. But then a min/maxing try-hard (said in a non-offensive way) will come along, and really push a certain build/skill which causes an over-nerf that ruins play for everyone else.
LoL? You mean totems for sure should not be totems? Going against the very definition of a totem?
They would just be spirits or something, not totems.
Gosh, I really gotta stop engaging in such topics.
Which would make for an interesting skill transformation node within the totem skill treesā¦ similar in theory to the orbiting hammer node.
1 Like
I could support the idea of spirits, since shamans do that also. The problem is often class design is locked behind the well established lore of well established games (IE dnd and blizzard). It does not have to be that way.
The point i was making was that having totems is not the issue, the real issue is making them something you āplaceā rather than something that is seen on cast, or that orbits the player (like planets orbit a sun). That would make them move with the shaman and effectively solve that ārooting problemā.
As a player and designer i just done find the ācampingā gameplay style all that engaging or good in a game where people are looking to rush through levels.
1 Like
Personally, Iāve always liked the drop and forget playstyle of totems/traps/mines. One of the builds I had most fun with was shaman totems.
But yes, Shaman and Forge Guard both need a lot of love.
1 Like
I posted a review on it. After 320 hours, most of which is in shaman and some in druid and then a little in sorc, I have to said shaman lacks a few key things. Itās not mobile enough for my taste. Its spells have unintuitive mismatched elemental types, and there are some mechanic issues (ie maintaining maelstrom for example).
Those lead me to a whole list of changes.
Iām not against what you said, rather how you said it.
I mean, yeah they could be spirits, but they would not be totems.
Iām not a conservative in any ways, but things have names and definitions for a reasonā¦ (I refuse calling a smoked veggie pattie bacon, even though I like eating them, for instance)
If one wants to create something, then create something, donāt just get the āwell establishedā concept and change the names only, or donāt give it the same name as a completely different, separate thing.
So may Orbiting Spirits be 
edit: sorry for the edgy first reply, your post sounded different to me before your response to me.
The mastery is pretty bad. I donāt get why itās so hard for them to just slightly buff it when you got like 6 or so godmode masteries running around doing 2-3k corruption (yes, even after the ānerfsā).
4 Likes
Shamans need less totems and more earthquakes
2 Likes
Exactly how I feel about my Shamans as well. Let me just add something else.
I hate that there isnāt easier way to make truly ranged caster Shaman with builder+spender skills.
The only ranged 0 or cheap mana builder is Gathering Storm with Lagonian Diplomacy node. This node works only with a Staff and puts +6 Mana on normally 0 mana builder skill.
Because $#!%* you shamans.
Back in the day when Spriggan came out I wanted them to make Spirit Thorns the baseline spell for Primalists and not that other abomination of a skill we had back then that was the only ranged spell available to Primalists. I was happy with the melee options before but Gathering Storms spell convertion node is kind of poop ^^.
I disagree dude, this guy doesnt spam totems all day and hes a way bigger badass than stupid negative IQ totem shamans - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yzGlpaOyGdY
How about me just becoming a absolute master of the elements summoning lightning storms and blizzards and firestorms all over the screen?
INstead of runing around, poping a puny stupid ass looking stone pillar ātotemā and letting it do some casting then it immeditely dies anyway and I get to deal no damage while its down.
Fuck that play style, fuck that play style of poping shit down - wait for that shit to actually start attacking - and then having to pop that shit down at the next pack.
3 of the 4 skills are NOT totems. stop shoving shity TOTEM style down my throat.
Spriggan form would be great - if we could use other spells while in that form.
afaik someone from the dev team said shaman and forgeguard are on a to do list for to improve/rework because of their state.
but that might take some time
1 Like