I really really like storm totem, and really want to enjoy a pure totem playstyle. ive made it work kinda with upheavel storm crows and storm totem to create a mega juiced storm totem. But I would really like to see a world where we can have totems for the other thematic element of shaman which is cold. its not just the thunder, Shamans description speaks of the sea, the storm and the avalanche that shake the world man, give me some totem stuff for those themes.
Also I feel like upheaval totem got way over punished in how it works in the upheaval tree, making my totem have 50% less speed when its already so hard to get minion attack speed is just downright unplayable, which limits my options for getting more AoE clear on my totem
Since there has been no word at all on the new classes such as Falconer and whatever the others are called im pretty certain development has just stopped at this point and also the fact other classes need to be worked due to never being touched
Im certain EHG could just delete every 3rd class from the game and roll them into the current trees and not much would change, since the bonuses are not building defining in most cases - Void Knight gets melee void damage and almost nobody plays melee VK that I know of
So in that case they would delete:
Forge Guard / Shaman / Runewhatever / Warlock / Falconer - dont need to ever exist since they have not been created or dont have a reason to exist since you can just roll the other passives into the other trees and not much would change
Yeah the three fault lines comes with a hefty price tag with the increased mana cost multiplier on the skill node and the 50% less attack speed. I would have liked to see that split between the 3 and 5 fault lines. But to be fair, it’s not too hard to stack melee minion attack speed with idols. But then it just get hits with that overall more modifier that halves it. I’ve not taken those nodes at all outside of shatter shaman where Erupting Earth (5 fault lines) attack patter coincides with the thorn totem formation with Grove Mind and max totems
Shaman is a class that is trying to have a couple styles of play. Minions (Totems specifically) and spell caster. Maybe in the future they can have some support roles but druid seems more fit for that. Anyway, given that Shaman is spell caster and totems, maybe they should get a mastery level 35 skill that is a totem that you have to choose a path similar to Tempest Strike. Instead, the totem would choose the paths between your other spells (Tornado, Earthquake, Avalanche) and would use those.
I also think that Shamans top end tree is pretty bad. There are a bunch of melee specific nodes and a few, relatively bad, minion nodes. I would rather the nodes on the higher end focus on Elemental damage more, getting away from specifying melee or spell, and minion/totem nodes.
Shaman is also severely lacking in defensive nodes/identity. It has a couple Armour nodes. I could see Shaman being a class that could use Ward or Damage Dealt to Mana as another defensive option, although I would much prefer them not be able to easily go all in on those like the Mage or Acolyte classes.
I’m not sure if forge guard is in a good place. It’s the least popular sentinel mastery. Most sentinel builds on the forum or YouTube are either void knight or paladin.
I mean, it’s fine if it is slightly less popular than the other two masteries. But while searching for forge guard builds, I found that forge guard is WAY less popular. There’s got to be a reason for that.
The main reason is that we don’t really understand the logic of the passive tree. The Forge Guard seems to be oriented towards throwing (but not too much), two-handed weapons (but has bonuses with a shield) and minions (but with one only node).
But EHG already said multiple times that they are happy with the Forge Guard, so it should not change much.
Off topic from the original post but I think the issue with Forge Guard is that it seems like it could be good for various types of play so it confuses people and builds tend to be mediocre because of this… There are seriously good builds but they require more clever interactions and taking a non-Sentinel mindset when building… Take the Manifest Armour Shield Throw build… It is crazy powerful but relies on the way-out concept (for a typical sentinel build) of stacking stats purely for your Minion and giving yourself throwing skills, not to do damage, but to buff your minion by tagging it…
Forge Guard has lots of different options that actually do work well… its not just a normal type of class…
Forge Guard is a more defensive mastery & has had fewer shiny updates compared to Void Knight/Paladin so I’m not surprised that it’s less popular. If people have the choice between tanky & faster clear/bossing due to higher damage, they’ll usually take the latter. Especially when the Paladin is pretty tanky already.
It was not an official statement, but that was something Mike said on stream and wrote as a response on Discord. And sure he said that Forge Guard still needs some changes/adjustments though.
I’ll just add on here that IMO lightning shaman is also very weak, has very less skills and most of them are bad because they are very little and also mixed with other dmg types such as earthquake (Fire gets fully converted but Lightning is part phys ?), Tempest strike(meant to be 3 or 2 elements), Maelstrom(Lightning bolts are basically just supplemental), Tornado (same as maelstrom and they get outshined by the phys storm orbs), Fury leap and swipe (melee is much better as werebear or even beastmaster with shark stack + spriggan/shock scorpion/wolf). Even though the tree has much lightning support the current lightning spells and melee attacks are just weak (for lightning)
Druid with or without transforms look much better for lightning. Shaman’s whole hybrid melee/totems/spells thing feels off and I think currently the only reason most builds take it is to specialize in Avalanche. One other thing it has going for it is you can cap ele and
