My Shaman is level 38. I have 25 mastery points into it, and have been using the remaining 84 points to test the many different skills and see what is good for me. I know eventually I will need to pick a second class, but is there any downside to prolonging this decision? I just don’t know what I want, yet.
Also, is it a good idea to put 50 mastery points into both classes? Seems like all those extra stats will really help out in the end game. (do they?) I plan to have 50 in Shaman, at least.
Not quite. Normal/Veteran is pretty easy. So you’re not at a disadvantage here. Take your time
No it’s a common beginner’s mistake to do that. It all depends on what build you want to go for. 50 points in each bar gets you extra stats, doing that isn’t a bad thing. But there are other sources to get Physique, Spirit and Cunning, so many people choose not to do so and use those points in other skills.
Pure classes are tough to run but are Ultimate viable with the Right gear. For that build an Ultos set would be great. I think Devouring Swarm is useless for that build though.
Here is an example of an incomplete mastery bar hybrid
In this i only invested in soldier bar till the point i could get the passives from it, the last two aura skills are exclusive skills (only one can be active at a time) their aura’s weren’t beneficial to my aim of Lightning build
You can generally get through normal on purely 1 class alright. I tend to max my first class by about level 30 though, tbh, unless it’s a strange case like a P-blades Nightblade, where you take NB to 32 then leave it usually as you max your “second” class for it’s exclusive skill.
General rule of thumb I use is get at least 75 points in mastery between the two classes, which generally means the second class is at 25 points, or more commonly, 32. This leaves you 138 points to put into skills at full build.
Also, my personal leveling rule of thumb is 1 skill point, 2 mastery points till 1 mastery is at 50, then 1 mastery point and 1 skill point per level for the rest of the time, with the extras alternating (Because at level 50, you start only getting 2 skill points per level, fyi).
You generally don’t need(Or want, in many cases) a ton of points in your skills early game, so it’s generally more helpful to rush the stats from mastery and to get the Exclusive skill you want to use for your build if you can instead.
Thank you Chthon and Steelflame for the helpful replies! I better plan carefully then. That GrimCalc seems really useful, so thanks for linking it. I’ve been avoiding putting a lot of skill points into the mastery, since they are permanent, so I can respec and try out various skills. I’ll start adding them to my Shaman mastery to get an Exclusive skill.
So far, I’ve settled on using Primal Strike, Summon Briarthorn, Wendigo Totem, Mogdrogen’s Pact. I was using Savagery, but I’ve been leaning toward Thunderous Strike instead. It’s so fun!
I’d recommend specializing a bit more than that. If you want to focus just on Primal Strike, I have a build that should work very well for a first time build. http://grimcalc.com/build/CnvMlK1
It’s a Warder, meaning Soldier for your second class, focusing on durability while using Primal Strike as the primary DPS source. You pretty much should be a god tier tank with the build, innately hitting about 15k HP easily before you even take gear into account. You should be able to break 20k HP after you gear up. Just a thing to note, don’t overlevel Heart of the Wild, any points extra you get in that skill should just instantly be taken out and dumped into Wendigo totems up till they hit 12/12. HotW overlevels really really bad.
I specifically chose soldier for your secondary class because you get Blitz with it, a really nice gap closer, and tons of innate durability, which is very helpful for a person who has no gear already banked up from other characters to quickly power spike.
Thanks for the suggestions! I really like the idea of Blitz, so I may consider that as my second class choice. Survivablity is ultimately my main concern. Wendigo Totem really helps with that. Before getting that, I would have to run away, use a potion, run away… and I wasn’t enjoying it. I like tanking!
What do you mean by overlevel Heart of the Wild? Is that using items to increase the skill past its maximum points allowed?
Yes. The limit is 10 points over the standard level cap of the skill, aka you can get Primal Strike to 26/16 as an easy example.
Specifically in the Heart of the Wild case, it’s scaling drops significantly after 10 ranks, and is not worth putting any points into it that puts it over 10.
I don’t personally agree with those devotions, as you are trading out 33% lightning resist shred, on a build with 0 innate shred for trying to squeeze in Tempest, which IMO is the worst devotion in the game.
Losing out on the resist shred pretty much leaves him with 0 fallback if his target is naturally highly resistant or even immune to lightning. Even with how wasted the rest of Widow’s Aether modifiers is, the sheer value of the resist shred on a build with none of it already is rather massive, and actually makes Widow a stronger T2 lightning devotion than the actual dedicated T2 Lightning devotion. You also have him give up Behemoth, which means losing Giant’s Blood. For him, I just want to give the new guy stupid levels of sustain, and Giant + Tree + Soldier passives is just that, stupid levels of sustain.
Tempest isn’t a bad devotion but it could use a little bit of rework.
I can agree with your choice of giving him Widow. The reason why i made the change wasn’t just for Tempest but also for Falcon Swoop. The skill’s scaling and late-game damage make it worthwhile to get.
But for Giant’s Blood, i agree with my choice as i made some changes to skills accordingly to compensate. ToL+Lizard provide him good health regen, combine that with soldier and shaman’s i think i have him covered there. Plus i made additional changes to make sure he could use the Totem to heal himself. I also gave him Turtle which is a pseudo-circuit breaker in case he doesn’t get an alternate one through an item
I did plan to edit my post to include some other things but i got busy with some other things.
Mind you i have only completed the game with DEE spammer Witch Hunter so far. The rest of my profiles, a Chaos Warlock and a TSS Sorcerer haven’t hit ultimate yet. Plus, i rarely play them and only made them to get a feel for the skills. I have made other class-combos for similar purposes and deleted those that i didn’t find interesting or those for which i didn’t have the proper gear.
Attach your Falcon Swoop to your main weapon and the rest according to your playstyle
You’re using Primal Strike so you’ll be using a two handed weapon. Use Oleron’s Blood component on it, you can get it’s Blue print from Black Legion. It’s granted skill helps a lot against the stronger foes
As i mentioned in a previous post, warder gives you the liberty to pretty much smack your foes with anything. So you can go for vendor gear in case the RNGesus isn’t kind to you.
My point here is if you don’t find the appropriate gear you can use vendor gear, components and augments to fill the gaps in your build, That being said even when you find your gear to be perfect visit the vendor.
Vendor here implies the faction quartermaster, not seller of common goods.
