7.10 Poison storm totem Shaman build

Disclaimer - I’ve tested the synergies of the build, and they work well with crappy gear going a few nodes into the monolith. I cannot confirm very endgame viability.

Summary and Synergies

Storm totem has nice base cast speed, so it doesn’t need much poison chance to ramp up decent poison damage. Shaman mastery has excellent resistance buffs, and attunement, so we can be tanky and spam spells. The attunement buffs totem damage, but also increases the frenzy effect of fenzy totem, which we cast right next to the storm totem to give it poison chance and a nice cast speed increase. The frenzy totem also gives great buffs to the thorn totems, so we drop them nearby as well. Thorn totems have delightfully long lasting poison, and AOE clears, so enemy poison resistance gets low fast and stays low. We can send our scorpion into the mix and have it drop a poison pool that gives even more poison chance and cast speed to totems. Then we join the party and drop entangling roots for extra damage, slows and healing for all.

The result is 5 button presses to create a circle of poison procs that clears the screen while you kite damage, look at items or run to the next group. It’s active, in that you must choose where to place totems, poison pools and entangling roots. It’s relaxing, in that you don’t need OP gear to get decently tanky, and decent clear speeds. You don’t have to aim anything, which is great. There is solid AOE from thorn and storm totems, as well as excellent single target DPS, while maneuvering around even the most obnoxious boss skills. Other benefits include:

  • We get lots of movespeed from passives and storm totem shocks (movespeed is the most important thing in this game)
  • We get lots of minion stun chance from shocks and tree (but… this has no noticable effect)
  • We get lots of mana via attunement, which makes play so much more enjoyable than builds that constantly run out of mana.
  • We get decent flat damage reduction from tree and passives, plus Shaman is possibly the easiest mastery to cap resists.
  • We get excellent healing, and a pretty safe area of the screen with lots of totems to hide behind

Skills

Thorn totem > poison chance, poison duration, max totems, all summoned at once
Frenzy totem > frenzy effect, poison chance for allies, duration, area
Summon scorpion > brood invigoration, then poison damage of your choice, via attacks or nova spell. (easier to get poison nova nodes, and we have the mana to spam this.)
Storm Totem > Cast speed, shock chance, movement speed for us on shock, slow for enemies, stun chance, lightning resists for allies
Entangling roots > increased area, ally damage, increased duration, healing, mana, healing nova

you can swap entangling roots or scorpion for the spriggan. The attunement gives her amazing healing for you and totems, so this is great if you like being tanky. However she hangs a long way back from the action, so she’s less reliable positioning-wise.

Passives

Primalist > Gift of the wilderness, Ancient Call, Natural Attunement (for health, minion health and attunement)
Beastmaster > Defences of your choice (ursine strength and boar heart), and minion attack/cast/movespeed, plus artors loyalty for single companion scorpion buff. We need to get these passives first to get the scorpion and the frenzy totem)
Druid > Soul’s attendand (for attunement and to get entangling roots), then it’s nice to get vitality and poison resist.
Shaman > Attunement and ancestral speed for attunement and totem cast speed. (minion stun and stun avoidance seem to do nothing)

Items

Anything will do, just aim for minion damage, minion damage over time, and defences of your choice. The easiest defence to stack is life regen, life, vitality, and healing effectiveness. With capped resists, these provide more value.

Since minions hit a lot, ‘doublet of onos tul’ is a nice cheap chest unique that gives a lot of easy damage.

Idols
minion poison chance
minion poison damage
minion damage over time
defences of your choice
minion bleed chance if you cannot find anything better

Hi There, im trying your build but could you say something to the skillpassives?
Thx for the work so far.

Hi Greenpac,

The passives are explained in this section:

Passives

Primalist > Gift of the wilderness, Ancient Call, Natural Attunement (for health, minion health and attunement)
Beastmaster > Defences of your choice (ursine strength and boar heart), and minion attack/cast/movespeed, plus artors loyalty for single companion scorpion buff. We need to get these passives first to get the scorpion and the frenzy totem)
Druid > Soul’s attendand (for attunement and to get entangling roots), then it’s nice to get vitality and poison resist.
Shaman > Attunement and ancestral speed for attunement and totem cast speed. (minion stun and stun avoidance seem to do nothing)

The key things to aim for are:

  • Points in Beastmaster to get the scorpion and frenzy totem skills (I like using aspect of the boar, so put points in that, then get minion cast speed passives.

The most noticable passives you can get are: ancestral speed in the shaman tree.

Otherwise, you just want and defences and attunement nodes that are lying around.

Hi Grimlock,

I hadn’t seen your build until the recent posts and I’ve been building a poison Totem shaman over the last week and he has ended up being very different to yours but I’m still finding him probably the strongest/easiest build I’ve come up with yet.

My main skills are:

Storm Totem > Cast Speed(4), Crit(1), Blizzard, Frostbite(3), Frozen solid(4), Icicles(5) Storm’s reach(3)
Summon Spriggan > Floral Ascendance(7), Vale Barrage(2), Vale Assault(1), Vile Orb(5), Festering Orb(5)
Entangling Roots >Max out the Spriggans of the Grove area to give your Spriggan cast speed, damage and heal her to full… Then a few in area duration and healing.
Ice Thorns > All the Proc on hit nodes taken and freeze chance. This can help with heal on hit from the main passive trees.
Maelstrom> Healing Winds and max stack 1 for some healing and then chill and freeze chance.

I also took Elder Branch+Harmony of Blades on the Primalist tree and use a Tempest Maw in off hand. This gives the totem 15 adaptive spell damage. Six points in Beastmaster to get the Artor’s Loyalty passive to boost the Spriggan. Gear is basically as many minion chance to poison Idols as you can use and then minion chance to bleed on the chest slot. Then get as much gear with the Sorrowful affix as you can wear. Totem cast speed on helmet slot helps loads to proc as much poison as possible. I guess he is more of a hybrid as I also took all the +base/adaptive spell damage nodes on the tree. Minion DoT, Totem cast speed and minion damage is best to invest in.

Gameplay is cast a Totem up ahead and let the Blizzard damage and chill whilst the Spriggan stands in the Entangling Roots and takes down bosses/rares with her gattling gun. Lighting strikes from Storm Totem do massive AoE and proc poison and the Storm Sprites and Spriggan also poison. Ice Thorn’s and Maelstrom heal.

It’s interesting to see how you built your Shaman, one of the most fun builds I’ve tried yet :smiley:

Hey Dobster,

Thanks for sharing this. As I note in this thread, the original build I posted got nerfed insanely hard just a few days later, so thorn totems now feel terrible to self cast. As a result, I might follow your lead and look at ice thorns or other skills.

Have you tried dual wielding tempest maw? Those storm sprites are quite fun, and 8 of them might be worth giving up a shield and taking more damage for…

I tried using two but having to give up a main hand Sceptre that gives 130% minion DoT damage and some other good minion damage boosts is too much of a DPS loss to be honest. An off hand axe with some minion damage may give better DPS than Tempest Maw but I like using it because the sprites do look very nice and move quickly to attack.

If you haven’t already, I highly recommend trying summon Spriggan with Storm Totem. The two work very well together if you spec her for single target damage and she is buffed by all the minion spell damage bonuses on the Shaman tree.

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The initial build defenatly doesn’t work out anymore. Just eats too much mana. Im trying out now Dobster’s build. Could you maybe be a more specific about the skilltree? I’m new to this game so prefer to just have build to get to know the game a bit better.

Hi Greenpac, I’ll link some pics of the skill trees and hope it helps:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2337236148
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2337238196
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2337239606
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2337240551
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2337241735
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2337242957
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2337243698
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2337244591
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2337245277

Very nice! thank you for the effort! Are people playing more HC or SC? I’m trying this in hardcore so I will transform it maybe into a bit more tanky build . But its fun so far.
And one more question I got, why do the stats of idols dont show up in the overall stats?

It depends what the stat on the idol is. The character sheet is very specific, “chance to ignite on melee hit” won’t show up on the ignite line, for example.

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