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Hey everyone this is Thyworm with a new build for Last Epoch, the Tempest Strike Shaman. If you are enjoying Last Epoch content, consider subscribing. Let’s start with the build philosophy of the Speedy Shaman.
[build philosophy]
What I wanted to achieve with the Tempest Strike Shaman is to make a build around, well, you guessed it, tempest strike! Tempest strike is a bit of a tricky skill to use, I feel, for numerous reasons. It has a fixed attack speed. There’s no clear best route to take when it comes to the skill tree, in my opinion, but despite all that, I think it’s a great skill.
My approach to creating builds isn’t by using a lot of theorycrafting, contrary to some other content creators out there, like let’s say HolyCoffee or Boardman21. I’m creating builds by just trying out a lot of things and when something feels good, I make a guide.
In this case, with the Tempest Strike Shaman, it’s not a build that crushes end-game or anything. It’s not a min-max optimized build. My gear is still pretty bad. My 2-h staff only has 3 affixes. But, the build is a lot of fun to play. And you can easily level with it too. And there’s lightning literally all over the place which results in a very cool, flashy look. It does decently well in the Monolith, at level 75. Arena, not so much.
This guy is all about lightning, cold, slamming their foes with Tempest Strike, slamming them even harder with Earthquake, and a bunch of supporting skills that provide lots of lightning.
Let’s look at the passives.
[passives]
We like strength, we like flat damage and we like some scaling with cold, lightning and or physical. With that in mind, let’s go through the tree.
Take 8/8 primal strength, for strength. 1 point in gift of the wilderness, because we need to spend the points. 5/5 Tempestborn, because this scales very well with tempest strike, which should be no surprise. And 6/6, Survival of the pack, because melee damage and leech does help.
Then the Shaman tree. 8/8 Ancient Stones, for damage and stun avoidance. 5/5 totemic fury, increasing attack speed, which is converted to crit chance. 5/10 wind bringer, for cold and phys damage scaling and flat dodge. 2/10 stormbringer, because we want the flat damage later on. We take 5/5 shattered heavens, for flat cold damage which helps with maelstrom and tempest strike. 5/5 storm shaker, for flat lightning damage. 3/5 static slash, because strength also scales well with tempest strike and earthquake. 8/8 Rune of Awe, because adaptive spell damage is just really good and we do have skills that scale off of spell damage. 5/5 dervish, because we do a lot of elemental attack damage already. 1/10 elemental shrines, just to get to 5/5 swirling maelstrom, so we get to cast Maelstrom automatically.
I have tried quite a few other options with this build, which I simply found to be not very effective. Glacial Strikes and Rhytm of Thunder add massive flat damage, but only once every 3 and 5 seconds. I tried it, but wasn’t convinced.
Then finally, we went into beastmaster. 8/8 ursine strength, because strength works well with our build. 1/8 savagery, just to get to 1/8 ambush, granting the Aspect of the shark, which is a very good buff. It increases melee damage by 50% and attack speed by 10%, for 3 seconds. And the cooldown of the skill is only 5 seconds, so most of the time, we have this up. You take another aspect as well, aspect of the boar, with 5/5 boar heart, reducing all incoming damage by 15%. We then specc into Porcine Constitution, to eventually get this up to 5/5, giving us a 30% damage reduction from aspect of the boar, for 5 seconds, every time we get hit. It’s a very nice defensive layer. Would I level further, I would take Axe and Claw, for flat physical damage.
[skill specialization]
It’s the Tempest Strike Show, with supporting acts.
Tempest Strike is an amazing skill. The main drawback is in its very core, which is that you can’t make it attack any faster than the base value. It always has the same attack speed, no matter your weapons or stats. Instead, surplus attack speed is converted into crit chance. You can use this to your advantage, especially if you’re going for a more frontloaded version with flat phys damage and crit, because you can stack some attack speed to make this skill crit very often. The downside is that other than additional crit, fast weapons don’t really offer any advantage.
You can go a few routes with Tempest Strike. You can try to specialize in a single element, in 2 elements, or in all 3. I went for mainly lightning as a specialization, because I have the most synergies with lightning in the rest of my build.
So take 4/4 static, to proc lightning more often. 3/3 Stormstrike, adding 12 flat damage to the skill and the lightning proc. 5/5 With the Wind, because base crit damage is very powerful and hard to get. 1/1 Tempestuous, granting us the Tempest spell when both lightning and cold proc from Tempest Strike. This is an AOE spell that deals lightning and cold damage, and it synergizes well with Maelstrom, I found. Take Mute Earth as well, eliminating the earth spike procs, but giving lightning and cold a much higher chance to proc. Finally, take 5/5 Elemental Imbuement, for more flat damage on lightning and cold procs and then the final point in Augury, to increase proc chance overall, giving you more uptime on lightning strikes, cold blasts and the Tempest AOE spell.
Our second damaging ability is Earthquake. I tried a lot of variations for this skill. For example, I tried turning earthquake into a spell, using Storm Rift. I took all the nodes behind it as well, which just seems like a good deal, but with my build it didn’t do as much damage as the current setup. I would only recommend this if you have a full spell-based shaman. I’m hybrid, and this route was not successful.
I also tried Seismic Tide. This does the most damage for sure, but the skill suddenly costs 115 mana, which is more than I currently have. It would basically lock me out of mana and using abilities every time I used this skill, so in the end I got rid of it. Which brings us to the current iteration, with 5/5 Rupture, initial hit damage +75%, which is a lot. 3/3 Potency, for more initial hit damage and then to Ground Slam, which makes the skill easier to control. It’s now a cone attack and you can point it somewhere. Take 5/5 crushing wake, for more aftershock damage. 4/4 concussion, for even more initial hit damage and we top it off with 2/3 outbreak, for some more AOE.
Then, Fury Leap, which is what we use to enter the fray. I went with a lot of lightning here, because it looks cool. Take ¾ Crater, just to get you to Lagon’s Wrath, which makes Fury Leap cast lightning along the way. This lightning also scales with spell damage by the way, and lightning damage, so it does quite a bit of damage. 5/5 Storm bringer, for more speed and then Rejuvenating Storms, so you may be able to jump again, casting a bunch of lightning along the way.
Then we go south, to make this skill also a support skill, by taking 7/7 Warrior’s Entrance, increasing global damage by 105% for 3 seconds after using Fury Leap. We take 3/3 Rage for global attack speed, which is once again converted to crit chance, with the way Tempest Strike works.
We have Maelstrom as well. This skill is cast automatically, by using the passives in the passive tree, and by using the nodes in here. To pull that off, go north to 3/3 Whirlpool, increasing the duration of each stack. 4/5 Turbulence, for more damage and to get to 3/5 Gathering Storm, which gives us a chance on kill to cast Maelstrom. 15% is enough, with the cooldown, I found. You don’t need the 25% here really, because you will trigger this once every 2 seconds, especially in a dense level.
Then we add more lightning to the mix. Take Power of the Storm, casting Lightning at 6 maelstrom stacks, every second. It’s hard for us to get 6 stacks however, without casting the skill ourselves, so we take 3/3 Strong Tides, reducing the required stacks by 3. That means that at 3 maelstrom stacks we start casting a lot of lightning. Take 3/3 Energized, increasing the lightning bolts that come out of maelstrom. Finally, we get Sleet Footed, for some dodge per stack which does help quite a bit.
Our final skill is lightning totem, for 3 reasons. Movement speed, protections and additional damage.
Go left to 3/3 Static field, increasing the shock chance of the totem. We want shock chance, because of the node Stormrider, 4/4, increasing our movement speed for 5 seconds whenever the totem shocks an enemy. This is super nice in the Monolith. We take some lightning protection while we’re at it, 2/2 Shielding Totem. Take ¾ lightning rider, so the totem casts faster, shocking more often that way, and making the movement speed buff more reliable. 3/5 storms reach has the totem shock anyone on the entire screen. Finally, 5/5 shock fury, which adds 15 flat lightning damage to our attacks, which scales really well with the skills we’re using.
[Gear]
You have a few options here for weapons, basically 3. I’m just not really using shields in a build like this, because I feel you need the damage, but you can experiment with that of course. I did something else, however.
Option 1 would be a staff. A staff is your typical hybrid item and this item would make the most sense, probably. I’ve played with all 3 options. The staff with flat melee cold and lightning damage, and a lot of adaptive spell damage, works really well. It’s the best option in terms of overall damage, I found in my testing.
Option 2 would be a 2-handed weapon with a lot of flat physical damage and crit. You’re basically turning your Tempest Strike in an ability with more frontloaded damage that crits quite a bit, especially if you take a polearm, like the ranseur I have over here. Your secondary effects from Tempest strike aren’t as powerful anymore, but it’s still not bad. This is also definitely a viable option. You’d go with some strength on the rest of your gear ideally to make maximum use of all the flat damage. Another nice advantage here is that Earthquake scales with Physical Damage, and having a lot of crit and a lot of physical damage, makes Earthquake do insane amounts of damage. It’s really impressive.
Option 3 is a bit of a funky one, but it involves the new unique Ucenui’s Sphere. This is a very peculiar unique, but it has a lot of potential. At least on paper. It’s really only worth it however, if you get the bonus from this item, which is that it casts 3 water orbs, each giving you 30% additional cold & lightning damage for 12 seconds, so that’s 90% increased cold & lightning damage, for 12 seconds. And this stacks, ladies and gentlemen. The only requirement is that your attunement is equal to your intelligence. And we don’t normally have intelligence on a shaman, and by default you have at least 10 attunement, from the mastery specialisation. but you could make it work with a sceptre and a scroll in your offhand. I equipped a moonstone sceptre, a pretty decent one, and crafted myself an unread scroll, also a decent one, which gives me both 12 intelligence and 12 attunement. This enables the bonus, and now every 3 seconds I hit a rare or unique boss, I get 90% increased damage, which is exactly the moment you need this additional damage. I’ve seen my cold and lightning damage rise to over 600% increased damage, and with basically only lightning and cold attacks in my kit, that’s a lot of damage on a boss, precisely when that extra juice is required. So it’s a cool concept to make this unique work, should you have found it by now. However, it must be said, that even though the tooltip says you’re doing 600% additional damage, you’re still not melting any bosses or anything. After extensive testing, I don’t think this setup is worth it on the build, unless you’re full spell damage, which we are not. It’s something to consider however.
You other gear is rather straightforward. My gear is really not that good. I’m glancing blow capped of course, which is pretty much always required in any end-game build. Everything else is a mix between cold, lightning and elemental damage, survivability with vitality and elemental protections. The only unique I have equipped is Yrun’s Wisdom, because 30 cold damage is a lot and it scales very well with our build. You can craft something as well.
Idols are a mix between totem protections to have that thing survive for a bit, spell damage and crit chance.
You can see my gear and my protections aren’t really all that great, but I’m still doing reasonably well in the Monolith. Arena is possible and I think the build is viable, but not with this gear. I’m getting killed currently around wave 45, simply because of bad resistances. And not an amazing damage output either.
[Levelling]
A bit about levelling.
While Tempest Strike falls off a bit at end game, during levelling it is a rather powerful skill that does a lot of damage. You get the skill early on, so you can spec into it pretty much straight away and it’s no issue to level with basically only using Tempest Strike. Depending if you like a staff, more frontloaded damage with a 2-hander, or more spell damage, you can pick and choose what you want. Some of the playstyles are a bit better with AOE, some are better vs single target.
Finally, the play style during end game
[play style]
Here’s the build in action.
There is a certain order in which you do things.
You dive in with Fury Leap, increasing global damage and crit rating on the Tempest Strike. You then summon your storm totem, giving 15 flat lightning damage to your attacks. And then you just use tempest strike. Very soon the maelstroms and secondary effects start to pile up, you start doing very decent damage and depending on which of the three versions you’re running, your damage is coming from different sources.
I just really like the way this build feels and looks. It doesn’t take long for lightning and thunder to take over the screen, while at the same time I feel I’m also contributing a lot, instead of only spellcasting. It’s a nice hybrid build that does well in the Monolith. At this moment in time, my defences are a bit low and significant crafting investment will be required to make this viable for arena. Getting more levels will help as well. Like I said, this isn’t a completely overpowered build, but it is viable, super fun to play and relatively easy to level as well.
For now, I hope you have fun with the build and that the guide was useful. Thanks for watching and making it to the end. See you all soon! Bye bye.
