Been playing as a primalist and liking the concept behind Maelstrom, however it feels more like a chore rather than legitimately active part of a rotation when using it, constantly having to worry about fluctuating among of stacks you gain and lose rapidly.
Paladins both have Holy Aura and will soon gain a rework to sigil of hope, transforming it into Symbol of Hope to remove the “annoying” factor from it. So It would be fair to do the same to Maelstrom to make a viable choice without having to constantly worry about the stacks you have.
My suggestion would be to allow Maelstrom to passively deal damage and gain Lagon’s Slumber over time to spend in order to increase the area and damage of the aura for 5 seconds, transforming it a burst to quickly clear nearby mobs. With skill nodes, you also gain the ability gain stacks as from melee attacks as well the option to Make a more defensive, gaining more endurance threshold (from the Shaman tree) or give up on damage to gain Damage reduction.
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I think there should be options imo.
like for example, there is a “you can only have 1 maelstrom stack” node in maelstrom. but its only 200% more damage, so its about 3~ stacks of maelstrom. Why not make the node be 400% more baseline(5 stacks) but also have a secondary mechanic that scales off something else. like say Healing effect, since the nodes before it are healing based, then it could scale up to say 10 or 15 stacks but with a smooth playstyle at the cost of some alternative scaling.
or make it a unique, etc.
Currently maelstrom falls into a weird situation, where self cast maelstrom is “playable” but the majority of people just use it as a utility thing where they get 6 stacks and get haste and frenzy.
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Yeah that is what I use it for, the haste and frenzy. However when using a staff or any other weapon with added spell damage and getting up to 20 stacks, it can deal pretty good damage.
The issue I see with Maelstrom is that it yo-yos too much and needs to be more consistent. Violent Squall is a joke because you need at least 10 stacks to deal viable damage with Maelstrom. However then there is the issue with Frenzy and Haste as you no longer can benefit from it, even using it for healing would require more nodes and reworks to make it viable.
Examples of changes
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The player gain consistent damage.
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Lagon’s Slumber is gained passively up to a cap(lets start with 9) to use for a burst of extra damage over a fixed duration.
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Violent Squall should be reworked into a stronger aura (going up the base amount of 9) so that can’t be used for burst AoE damage, however, Lagon’s Slumber can still stack in order to activate 0 Maelstrom stack effects like Twisters and Tsunami and proc Haste and Frenzy.
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Another node could be implemented that allows Maelstrom to stack up per melee hit and allow for consistent uptime on haste and frenzy but at the cost of reduced maelstrom damage (and healing).
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Beneath the waves will instead increase the max stacks of Lagon’s Slumber as it already stacks passively for bigger burst of damage.
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Windswept(Haste) and Windfury(Frenzy) will still proc at 6 stacks.
LIke I said before, having maelstrom become an aura would fix a lot of clunkiness,
Some other ideas that could also work could be an effect that causes Lagon’s Slumber stacks to fade over time rather than right away. Allowing damage to fall off slowly instead of right away and the buffs to be maintained for longer.
And they keep emphasizing it as an “auto-cast through passives, items, and other skills” mechanic rather than something to actively use.
Rework it to be an Aura that “calls forth a maelstrom” every 3s, stacking with the items and passives for more stacks per tick. Activating it could consume all stacks for an effect (damage/healing/etc) based on number of stacks and trigger Twisters (which should use Tornado’s tree…) and/or Tsunami if you have those nodes.
The “only one stack” node could increase in area and damage whenever you would gain a stack, up to 2x the base damage and area but the stack counter never goes up so you can’t trigger effects like Storm Bolts, or Haste and Frenzy.
Edit: Oh, and Lagon’s Slumber could be modified to add a global delay to when stacks would be added (so all sources of cast Maelstrom every 3s would be affected) by 1s per point, but it would grant more stacks when it procs. So, Base + Eye of Storms would be 2 Stacks every 3s, 1/3 Lagon’s slumber would be 3 Stacks every 4s, 2/3 is 4 Stacks every 5s, and 3/3 would be 5 Stacks every 6s. Those numbers don’t seem too great as it’s only +1 or 2 stacks over base+eye in the same time frame (8 base+eye stacks in 12s vs 9 stacks every 12s for 1/3 | 10 base+eye stacks every 15s vs 12 stacks every 15s for 2/3 | 4 base+eye stacks every 6s vs 5 stacks every 6s for 3/3) but that can all be tweaked. The concept functions.
Edit 2: The only nodes that currently exist that would be seriously affected by changing it to an aura are the two “cast on minions” nodes. The first could be modified to be “your aura now affects your minions, calling forth a maelstrom around one random minion every 3s” and then the other node could remain the same: “maelstroms surrounding totems deal more damage”. Alternatively, it could cast around all minions affected by the aura, decreasing in strength per affected target (self included)
