Underwhelming Skills and Passives

Due to my interest in companions / minions, I have multiple Primalists, a Lich, and a Paladin, so I can give some feedback on multiple classes. As a general feedback, I think the story is great and the one-difficulty runthrough makes this game far better than other ARPGs I’ve played. Since you’re making 0.7.5 and are working through Druid balancing, I wanted to point out some skills that really, really need working on:

Tempest Strike: The RNG chance to get any of the three elements is pathetic. You’re not going anywhere on a 20% chance to activate, especially since you have multiple node paths relying on two effects going off at the same time (which is a 4 out of 100 swings, if you’re paying attention). I would at least double the chance of activating and make it so that if you’re using one element, it has a 100% chance of activating. It’s terrible to see other Melee strikes like Swipe have full effect all the time, while Tempest Strike works 40% of the time at most, and that’s even with 2 of the 3 elements removed to give more chance to the primary element.

Speaking of Swipe, it also has a bunch of Lightning nodes and can scale off Attunement, so if you told me to pick a Melee skill for Lightning Shaman, I’m taking Swipe over Tempest Strike any day.

Maelstrom: The buffs you get for getting high stacks are good and I have no way of judging whether the damage is okay, but my goodness, pushing the same button every single second is a pain. This skill is just so clunky, I wonder if it was meant to be a “auto attack for casters” where instead of constantly using your melee attack, you press this button constantly while the other skills are meant to be used in the background.

Holy Aura: Holy nerf, Batman, this skill is completely gutted. It seriously went from “great ability to use no matter what” to “why would anyone even specializing in this skill want to use it?” The passive ability is something like 12 Attunement. Why would you give up an entire skill slot for 12 Attunement? It gives you 12% ignite chance when other skills give you 100+%, the fireballs use up way too many node points for forgettable damage, I really see no upsides to using Paladin’s Exclusive skill. It’s a shame, because the Paladin’s passive tree is really good, but Holy Aura is now a waste.

Other skills that are good but have bad-functioning nodes:
Frenzy Totem: The skill itself is great, but a few nodes are just outright bad: the “store up damage” nodes are just sad compared to what the main skill does and the “Ice Thorns” node is far too small of a chance to get triggered while requiring you to take the above sad “storing damage” nodes. I’ve also tried the “use 4 points to get 20% chance to use Eterra’s Blessing” on my Raptor, and I’ve never seen it get used. I think the Eterra’s Blessing nodes are just borked.

Summon Raptor: Particularly, the “get 15% larger and do 15% more damage when you get 10 kills” node. Personally I think this node is fantastic and would be the perfect use of the “use only one companion” nodes found in the Beastcaller + Druid trees since otherwise it’d have to compete with the other pets for kills. However, I don’t really see anything that proves that it works. It would be nice to see some distinctive markings to show that it’s at the evolved stage. Additionally, I want to see multiple evolutions for multiple node point investment. I want to see MF’ing Godzilla terrorizing the Epoch.

Rip Blood and Transplant: Transplant has a node where you cast Rip Blood when you use it. I’ve specialized in Rip Blood and took the nodes where Rip Blood only takes the globes from your minions; I’ve tested it in a safe zone with multiple minions and I’m not seeing Rip Blood work at all. I was hoping for Rip Blood + Transplant to constantly take health from my minions and give it back to me, but I’m not seeing this interaction work at all.

Primalist Tree: That “Lumierra’s Salve” that gives a paltry Poison resistance on Potion use is still there at 45 Beastmaster points. Nobody, and I mean nobody, is going to invest 45 points to get that node. I will repeat my suggestion that “Wraithe” (the one that gives flat Dodge rating to you and your minions) should grant Dexterity bonus especially since Beastmasters rely on Dodge and effects that are affected by Dexterity much more than other classes. Finally, the “Partner” node got a bit better, but the 10% increased damage per point for having a single companion is just way too low. Considering what you’re giving up to get a hybrid summoner-minion playstyle, I consider the Druids “50% Armor and Protections” for 5 points to be well-balanced; 10% increased damage that’s not even multiplicative? Yeah, no. Doubly for the Comfort node that only gives 1 Vitality and 15 Protections for giving up all but one companion.

On the Shaman Tree, “Ironbark” is another useless passive - there’s not that much cooldown for Totem skills, so as long as you have 200-300% minion health, I wouldn’t take Ironbark at 0 points, much less having to get 45 Shaman points to get it. I wouldn’t get much near the “grants chance to gain a Stack of Maelstrom every 2 seconds.” It’s similar to the Holy Aura node where it’s only useful if you use Maelstrom in the first place. Since you got rid of those passive nodes, I suggest you remove that and put the “Health, Mana and Cooldown Recovery” node pack.

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