Forgive me for asking a question that has undoubtedly been answered before, but I found nothing in the first five pages of the forum, and I’d rather play the game than dig through the archives.
I have a shaman, level 24, and it’s very hard to keep her alive. So I’m asking for suggestions on what to do. The main things are I don’t want to delete the character and start over, I want to stick with a 2 handed melee weapon, and I want to keep lightning as one of the primary damages. Anything else is changeable.
Without that, what’s killing you? It could range from just low Resists, low DA, or a combination. What enemies are giving you the most trouble?
Have you taken and are you actively using Wendigo Totem? The healing it gives you will be a boon to survivability.
Also look at going Warder(Soldier+Shaman) for some defensive help stat and passive wise. You can find some good builds in the Compendium on these forums in the Classes section.
She’s only level 24. Neither of these will make much of an impact at that point. Probably she just needs to pick a couple skills and add 1 point to them on level up, 2 in the bar. Just keep moving that bar up for a bit, perhaps spend a level boosting a skill with all points etc, to get damage up a lil.
There isn’t really any reason at 24 to be having much of a problem with any class starting out.
That’s exactly how I’ve played my warder (who I think was still pure shaman at 24). No deaths through the end of veteran, super-easy so far.
The two main things that keep him alive are Wendigo Totem and ADCtH. At your level you’re probably just starting Wendigo Totem, assuming the usual two points in mastery, one point in a skill leveling pattern. If you’re using transmuted Primal Strike as your main attack, you should be able to focus on Wendigo Totem for a while, maybe even respec a couple points from PS to WT since PS hits incredibly hard and as I recall one-shots an entire room at that level. If you’re using Savagery from the start, you’re probably super-starved for points and I don’t know what to tell you. I switched from PS to Savagery around level 40 when energy started to become a problem in a few boss fights (and I had enough points to make better use of Savagery and Feral Hunger).
For ADCtH, if you don’t have an item with it already (Headhunter’s Trophy was great at that level), just farm the vendors for a yellow ring, shouldn’t take too much time for one to show up. There are weapon components that can give it to you, but I don’t think you want to use a Haunted Steel or Hollowed Fang so early.
Devotions can help later but you won’t have the points to get there at 24. Kraken is awesome for early dps anyway.
-While levelling, I like to do 2 points in the mastery bar and 1 into a skill to have a decent amount of health/attributes. I find that for most skills, you don’t need many points either for Normal/Veteran, usually around 1-4/6 for most skills will suffice.
-Put some points into Wendigo Totem as soon as you can, it provides a decent amount of health/sustain. Put a point into Blood Pact for a bit of life steal. You can put a Hollowed Fang on your weapon if you want more or want it outside of your Totem.
As a rough guide, for a level 24 Shaman using Primal Strike, I’d probably do something like this.
Devotion-wise, I usually plan my devotion routes out before starting characters but as a rough start again (for the Primal Strike skill setup I posted), my first goal would probably be Elemental Storm and binding it to Primal Strike. I’d probably go Quill, Crossroads Ascendant and Hawk to unlock Rhowan’s Crown. From there, maybe Chariot as it would pair well with Stormcaller’s Pact and offers an extra heal outside of Wendigo Totem.
Edit: Forgot about Kraken :rolleyes:, After Rhowan’s Crown, I’d likely go for Kraken next.
Okay, well after the comments I see right off the bat one glaring mistake. I have Savagery as my primary attack, Primal Strike for the right mouse button. So I guess I should choose one and run with it.
And the way I’ve been allocating points, I haven’t unlocked Wendigo Totem yet. The lower stuff has tons of points in it though. I guess mistake #2.
I’ll look through the threads for Warder builds. Hopefully easy to find, after all who wants to research when you could be playing, lol.
I just used Primal Strike as an example ability for a 2h Lightning Shaman. That said though, before Primal Strike was buffed a few updates ago, it used to be the case that PS was better than Savagery for quick levelling but worse at later levels. Nowadays, they both have decent endgame builds/uses.
My point anyway is if you want to use Savagery, you can swap to it later when you have something else to fill your AoE. Until then, use Primal Strike.
I’m sorry for the belated thank you, but I did try many of your suggestions and they helped. I dropped Savagery and strengthened Primal Strike. I got Wendigo Totem. I added the Soldier class and picked some passive skills along with Blitz so I could get to a specific enemy quickly, bypassing the rest.
All these made things far better. As before, sometimes when a decent sized swarm of enemies hit my health would drop a lot faster than it should, but all the changes made my health drop slower, both with normal mobs and with those sometimes mobs where something was hurting me bad. That meant I could get a handle on the situation and keep fighting, rather than needing strategic withdrawals (running for my life) to get time so I could take a second potion or let Constitution kick in.
And despite all that, I found that I just don’t like the Shaman class. I had more fun, but the fun came from the Soldier part, not the more effective overall part. So the character met the delete button. Still thanks for helping in knowing the changes to make.
