【 Update Log】
- 2022/11/04: Added several FAQ
【 Video】
【 Overview】
- This is not an leveling build for new players, please consider following this guide after you are level 75~80 or have already acquired the Shattered Lance Set / correct 4x1 idols
- This build’s mechanics are fun enough, though the control feeling feels awful and has a worse map clearing experience than most other builds and covers that up with a very high movement speed.
- It’s a build full of shaman mechanics, and the theme is Cold Dot Aftershocks proc by Earthquake and Summon Thorn Totem
- Use a lot of totems with Spriggan Form and Frostbite Shackles to get nice dps and high survivability for Boss fighting (can face tank almost all boss skills).
- The Shattered Lance Set is used to build an offensive and defensive system based on life regeneration per second.
- Use the Summon Storm Totem and Shard of the Shattered Lance to maintain a super high movement speed of up to 150%.
【Pros】
1. This is a Shaman-only build
- Beastmasters and Druids can also make a similar build, but require large adjustments that lead it to be a variant build
2. Enough to complete all the content of the game
- Damage and survival is very solid, all dungeons T4 difficulty and 200 corruption timeline can be easily completed
3. High damage
- The theoretical dps after forming is about 2.0-2.5 billion
4. High survival
- About 2400 HP + 4000~8000 temporary ward, 300~500 HP recovery per second, about 50% armor damage reduction, and can face tank all skills during the T4 Temple Dungeon Boss fighting (except for the countdown explosion)
5. Quickly complete the echoes
- Cooperate with the Summon Storm Totem when complete the echoes, can achieve 120% movement speed for a long time, and can maintain 150% movement speed for 15 seconds when Shard of the Shattered Lance effect is triggered.
6. Damage's lower limit is high
- The core of the damage mechanism is the easily obtained set, single affix idols and character passives. Once they are collected, the damage will change qualitatively, and there is no need to find any damage prefixes from gears.
【Cons】
1. Some scenes will have very serious frame drops (5-15 frames)
- Due to the need for a large number of healing totems and thorns totems to maintain character resistance and gain buffs, this build will cause serious frame drops in some scenes when completing echoes
2. There are many buttons in the damage cycle
- A large number of button operation holding buffs are inserted in the damage cycle. You need to observe the character mana and skill cooldown frequently, and use different skills according to the situation.
3. The control feels poor
- The delay after transforming is extremely serious, and if the order of operations is wrong you will feel very clunky and need to get used to
4. Tend to skip over enemies
- It is more inclined to skip over monsters (unable to get an extra stability bonus for a lot of kills), and loots often appear out of sight.
5. Relies too much on totems
- Core damage and survival mechanics are bound to the number and location of totems, so insufficient number of totems and wrong locations will result in a significant drop in damage and survivability
【Damage Mechanism】
1. Aftershock mechanism
Summary
(1) The basic mechanism of the Earthquake skill is that the character performs a melee attack that hits a large area. In the description, this attack is called [Initial Hit], and then 2-4 [Aftershocks] are generated according to the number of surrounding enemies. The visual effect of aftershock is a small stone protruding from the enemy’s feet, causing a small area of hit
(2) Since aftershocks are generated according to the number of enemies, once earthquake without passive support can only generate one aftershock for a single target, but after we get the Divining Totem 1/1 passive, aftershocks can also be generated at the location of your totem. We can summon and control the position of totems so that the aftershocks will generate at the position we want
(3) Multiple dot aftershocks can be stacked, so the more earthquakes we can cast within 6 seconds, the more aftershocks that stack up and the higher the dot damage, so as long as the attack speed and mana recovery problems are resolved , increasing the earthquake frequency as much as possible can effectively increase the dps
(4) Aftershock has a very special skill tag after passive, including: melee, physical, damage over time, strength, attunement. Because aftershock is a melee damage dot, so it can benefit from increased melee damage and Doom status (unique ring Siphon of Anguish) increased melee damage taken
2. Totem damage increase mechanism
Summary
(1) According to the shaman passive Storm Blade 8/8, by maintaining 5 thorns totems + 8 healing totems (13 totems in total), a huge melee INC bonus of up to 416% is obtained
(2) According to the 4X1 idol suffixIncreased Cold Damage Per Active Totem, 13 totems can provide about 520% cold damage INC huge bonus
40% INC/totem * 13 totems = 520% INC
3. Two classic cold damage increase mechanisms
Summary
(1) In a long time (more than 20 seconds) boss battle battle scene, we can remove a 4X1 idol (loss of about 13*20%=260% INC) and replace it with a unique idol Throne of Ambition, which continues to hit the boss enemy after stacking 20 buffs, you can get a huge 400% cold damage INC bonus
(2) Since idols provide huge cold INC bonuses, the Shard of the Shattered Lance with high cold flat damage will be an excellent choice
(3) Getting the relic Fragments of the Shattered Lance to activate the set effect Shattered Lance Set. By stacking the character’s life regeneration per second attribute, we can get a huge (cold melee) INC bonus of 1.5 times the life regeneration per second
Every 10 hpr/s = 15% INC
350 hpr/s = 525% INC
4. Increased melee damage received
Summary
(1) As the aftershock mechanism mentioned above, aftershock is actually a melee damage dot, so we can get a unique ring, Siphon of Anguish, by hitting the enemy to stack the doom state, causing it to take about 20% more melee damage (Increased melee damage taken)
【Survival Mechanism】
Summary
(1) 2400+ maximum healthy
(2) 300~400 life recovery per second
(3) Beastmaster passive Ursine Strength 8/8, reducing damage from surrounding enemies by 16%
(4) Beastmaster passive Primal Strength 5/5, reducing damage received by 30%
(5) The hit chance (get from amulet suffix or 90 fire timeline blessing) adds a stack Frailty to the enemy, reducing its damage by 6% for each stack, up to 3 stacks
(6) Switch to a high block chance shield Ironglass Shieldwhen clearing echoes
(7) By maintaining a maximum of 13 totems and cooperating with the shaman passive Protective Circle 5/5 to obtain 195% physical resistance and 245% element resistance, a lot of suffix resistance resources are liberated
(8) In the battle state, about 2500 armor and 40% damage reduction. When the boss fights, 20 layers of Wild Vision Throne buff Throne of Ambition will gain an additional 400% armor INC, reaching 6300 armor and 70% damage reduction.
(9) Through the passive Leaf Barrier 1/1 in Spriggan form, when we transform into Spriggan every 6 seconds, we will get the same amount of temporary ward value according to our armor value (about 6000+ ward at the highest one time), and through unique gloves Frostbite Shackles, Convert the huge cold resistance obtained through 13 totems into a super high ward retention rate, which greatly slows down the loss of temporary wards and allows the ward to absorb more damage
【Mana Cycle Mechanism】
Summary
(1) Stack attack speed, use sweep to restore Mana
(2) Stack the cast speed to more than 80%, so that the time to summon the totem during transformation will be less than 2 seconds, and the attack speed buff of Fury Strikes 3/3 from Warcry can be seamlessly continued.
(3) Balance the mana cost of Thorns Totem and the character’s maximum mana. The maximum mana should be about 2 times the totem mana cost minus 10~20. For example, if the totem mana cost is 100, the character mana should be kept around 185
(4) Use up the mana when in human form, then turn into Spriggan form with CD stuck, and then summon Healing Totem 2 times and will immediately turn back to human form for 0 rage, you will find that the mana in human form has recovered to about 50~90 (in step 3 If the proportion control is good, it will become 80+ mana)
【 Build Planner】
【Q&A】
Q1:
Why not get the Berserker passive and keep low-life for 100% more melee damage?
A1:
- (Low life) LL+Berserker is indeed feasible, and will get higher damage (3~4billion possible).
But since I have experienced the LL ward system in another similar build for a long time, I don’t plan to use it again in Shaman.
On the other hand, the Exsanguinous required by LL is not very good for new players to collect, relatively speaking, the Shattered Lance Set will be a little easier.
Anyway i’ll put an example build planner below for reference.
Some possible issues with LL ward system:
- Doom from the ring of Siphon of Anguish is delicious for dps, but it will bring excess health leech that will destroy LL status. May need to drop the ring or use Xithara’s Conundrum necklace to avoid health leech
- Because the LL ward system takes up body armor and boots (and possibly amulets), there are fewer places to find health affixes
- Personally, I am used to specializing in StormCrow in Primalist’s LL ward system to get a higher ward cap and short-cycle ward recovery. However, there are 4 skills that this build must specialize in (Earthquake, Spriggan Form, Thorn Totem, Swipe), which means you need to give up Warcry (lower attack speed, slower mana recovery)
- Similarly, because there are too many skills that must be specialized, we cannot get “Maximum Companions: +1” by specializing in Wolf. So there will be only 2 crows to provide ward to the character (compared to 3/4 crows, the total ward is lower and the recovery interval is longer)
etc.
lowlife example build planner
Shaman, Level 100 (LE Beta 0.8.5f) - Last Epoch Build Planner
Q2:
What is the role of Spriggan form?
A2:
- Summon healing totems to increase the number of totems present and gain more bonuses (resistances/inc) that increase with the number of totems
- Transform into a Spriggan form every 5 seconds to gain a large amount of ward equal to the armour value
- Transforming into Spriggan form will empty the negative mana of the human form, while turning into human form will immediately give you an extra 50 mana
Q3:
Can I not use the Grove Mind (5 per summon) node of the Thorn Totem?
A3:
- Personally, this is highly discouraged. This is because Grove Mind increases the base mana cost of the skill based on the number of extra caps on the Thorn Totem.
Only with this node can we use the Summon Totem skill only 2 times in Spriggan form to quickly change back to human form with 0 rage.
With this node, the mana cost of the skill ranges from 84 to 146, while without it the maximum is 26, and the character’s maximum mana/rage is usually around 100-150.
Q4:
How should I calculate the mana cost of a totem?
A4:
- Actual mana cost = ( base + x * 15 ) * ( 1 + x * 25% ) / ( 1 + y * 15% )
Example
x=4
y=5
Actual mana cost = 84 = ( 13 + 4 * 15 ) * ( 1 + 100% ) / ( 1 + 75% )
Results are rounded upwards
- Base mana cost of Thorn Totem => 13
- Grove Mind nodes will add an additional 15 base cost based on each Forested Expanse node point (x) => base + x * 15
- Forested Expanse nodes (x) will multiply the total mana cost => total cost * ( 1 + x * 25% )
- Totemic Wisdom node (y) will divide to reduce total mana cost => total cost / ( 1 + y * 15% )
Q5:
I know this is not leveing build, so when should I switch to following this guide?
A5:
- When you are around level 75 you can get almost all important passives (a lot of inc from Shaman, Spriggan Form from Druid and damage reduction nodes from Beastmaster passives)
- Shattered Lance Set can be used when you are level 68
- 4X1 Idol Ornate Heorot Idol with the correct affix (cold inc per totem) would be better to start with
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