After playing all 4 archetypes in arena to wave 300ish plus in patch 0.7.5, I would like to say that in my opinion the primalist is the weakest of the archtypes I played in high level arena . This is due to the proximity the primalist needs to do damage to mobs and the lack of survival skills primalists have compared to mages sentinels and acolytes . Here are my recommendations to level the playing field.
The nodes for fury leap are lackluster in my opinion . I would have a node to lower the cool down of leap to have it in line with teleport at 4 seconds . In addition I would have a node to have the primalist be invulnerable to damage types while in the air. Having to leap behind arrow archers at wave 250 is almost suicide . In addition consider a node or baseline where upon landing fury leap stuns all enemies for 1 second.
In the primalist passive tree create a node called Transference where 1/2/3/4/5% of damage taken is transferred to your minions.
Increase threat of all minions relative to the primalist. This includes totems .
Increase all minion affixes by 200-500% but have them on fewer slots so the primalist can gear for both his minions and for himself.
Freeze / shock / etc chance and spell penetration must be reworked to not be based on mob hp which scales infinitely at higher waves.
Lower the mana cost on earthquake stun . Increase the area of effect and lower the cool down.
Primalist needs a mana replenishment spell out side basic mana regen . Volatile reversal , focus , and transplant all are far superior. Prinalist has nothing that compares to those abilities .
Any or all of these would help bring the primalist in line with the other archetypes, abilities and class defenses such as reaper form , teleport , flame ward , ring of shields , sigil of hope , ward retention, extra block chance, etc
Can confirm after reaching wave 150 with good damage, and barely trying. We lack the defensive skills like the other arch types, but do bear in mind (im a pun guy) that we are missing key survival skill trees like healing wind, and eterras blessing, so perhaps those skill trees can just be made strong for now, and devs can focus on rebalancing after the rest of the classes, and all skill trees are added first? I mean, arena, and monolith’s aren’t even the devs MAIN end game content, they said arena, and monoliths will be side things in the future, and wont be near as important to the game as it is now.
The most important thing that crosses my mind is: Sure Primalists need some defence mechanics and even a bit more then mentioned because glacial is gone sooner or later BUT what do you do to balance this? Loosing more dmg potential? Look at Werebear druid… he had offence and defence and was guttet to uselessness when you look at it from a performence point of view. From my gameplay experience Shaman and Druid are in a “good” spot and simply Beastmaster minions need a tweak. You can’t increase the defence of Druid or Primalist without changing something in because this would make both to strong.
To add to the mana regen point . If you are looking for another unique way to restore mana for the primalist Everquest had a shaman spell called cannibalize which decreased health in order to increase mana.
Also I think a good niche for primalist defense could be stun. Earthquake evokes a stun image as does fury leap. Why not have both. I don’t think dodge is the right way to go for its niche as dodge is just too squishy as a defensive mechanic. Look at wow with trying to have death knights or monks as dodge tanks at one pint or another. It never is as good as block or mana shield etc.
I REALLY like this idea. It feels like a defensive mechanic that is uniquely beastmaster and helps solve the gearing problem that having to put minion affixes while also find enough defense creates. However, I think it would need to be companions instead of minions, because otherwise it might be possible to reach absurd amounts of damage transference with totems. Companions have a limit so it creates a hard cap for how much damage can be mitigated by this.
I was going to make a new thread but I guess this is close enough.
An issue I’ve been running into while playing around with the primalist class is the severe lack of Vitality-based resistances in the passive tree. Each class only has one passive that provides those resistances, either through vitality (Druid & Beastmaster) or indirectly via totems (Shaman) and all three of those nodes are above the mastery line. As far as I can tell, that’s all the class gets as none of the active skills provide these resistances either. I’ve died more in the early and mid stages of leveling on primalist more than any other class.
I know you can pick up these resistances on gear but I feel like at least one of the mastery trees should provide these resistances in the lower portion of their tree, if for no other reason, to promote cross-mastery passive point distribution.
Primalist is more based on healing than resistance in the tree. IF you work in healing effetivness nodes, and use healing skills you willsurvive a long time. Currently entangling roots heals massive amunt. But in the future healing wind/eterras blessing will have skill trees and will probly be just as good.
