At some point (I Hope) the shaman will receive some significant attention, and its 5th skill. There has been some improvement this season, which is great. I have some suggestions for changes to talents, both skills and passives, as well as unique ideas that would breath some fresh air into the mastery.
Passive tree
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“Shamanic Infusion” gives physical. lightning, and cold pen. Change the physical to fire. beastmaster and druid are the physical variants of primalist.
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Shaman is heavily an Attunement class, which is defined by its mana properties. change one of the pinnacle talents to work like archmage in POE, where there is added lightning damage to skills based on max mana.
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Triple the increased mana regen from “elemental shrines”, or maybe make it multiplicative
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In the shaman only portion of the tree, add a mana on hit talent
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In the shaman only portion of the tree, add a damage to mana before life talent.
Gathering storm:
- Change the node for ranged storm bolts to work with staff, sceptres, and wands.
- Add a node that makes storm stacks no longer automatically expend, this will help save them up for talents like spending them when you use a companion skill, the EQ talent when its a lightning spell, and the new idol that makes upheaval cast EQ if you have 30 stacks. I personally think this would greatly improve the interaction with these kinds of talents
Storm totem
- Add a unique that allows you to summon more than one storm totem
- Add a unique that converts the totem to a non totem skill. I had an idea a while ago to call it the lightning rod, and it just attaches to the player and becomes a walking lightning storm
Tornado
- Make the multiplicative damage bonus while channeling double every X seconds you remain channeling. Currently, its doesn’t even come close to spamming tornado, and in general all non mage skills lack channeling support as most IMPACTFUL channel crafting shards are class locked to mage
- Add a unique or a talent that converts the tornado to lightning, or add a unqiue that makes tornadoes alternate their elemental type. POE does this with tornado of elemental turbulence. It is a really cool idea to summon a fire, cold, and lightning tornado (one type per cast).
Earthquake
- Add a talent that gets rid of the primary hit, and makes the skill just summon aftershocks. this could occur at once or over the course of X seconds
- Add a unique that makes anytime you create an aftershock from any source, you instead create 2, but aftershocks deal X less damage
Maelstrom
- Add a unique that makes the single max stack of maelstrom give the benefits that require you to have 6 stacks. I’m sure there could be a appropriate downside. Maelstrom as a damage skill itself is really weak and probably needs a rework, but i think leaning into the buffs it provides is the niche of that skill. The unique could have a side where its more effective with more stacks?
I could go on and on, but this is a fine place to stop. thanks for the updates to shaman in Season 4, looking forward to its final skill and some larger updates and new uniques hopefully!