This guide focuses on the Shaman Ascendancy for the Druid in Path of Exile 2, covering their unique Skills and Skill Interactions.
Table of contents
Shaman Overview
Shamans harness their Primal and Elemental prowess to excel in both Physical Attacks as well as Spellcasting.
A Shaman may want to lean toward powerful Attacks mixed by channeling the Rage generated by Furious Wellspring. Thanks to the Druidic Champion passive, this Rage can also empower their Spells to be equally devastating on both fronts.
Shamans can also tap into their Elemental prowess, reducing incoming Elemental Damage through Adaptation. Perhaps they’d much rather become a walking Apocalypse, calling forth the elements in a raw and destructive form.
Sacred Flow
Sacred Flow grants 40 additional Spirit for each of our empty Charm Slots.
With the current state of charms, if we’re not using a single one, this is a rather free 120 Spirit. Or about as much as a perfect T1 Spirit roll across Body Armour and Amulet. However, there’s a good chance we’ll at least want to be using a Thawing Charm to mitigate Freeze, if we can’t do so any other way, but 80 Spirit is still exceptional.
Assuming the Charm rework is still planned to go out in the future, we’ll eventually have 6 Charms. Though it’s very likely this value will go down in the same patch when it does happen. If not, it’d be a potential 240 Spirit to claim from this ascendnacy.
If we do take this and opt into using zero charms, we can also pair this with the Oasis Keystone, assuming we’d ever path that far to the right. This fully disables our Charms, but also gives us better Flasks. It’s a small Synergy, but if we’re already in that area for any reason, it’s worth considering.
Wisdom of the Maji
Wisdom of the Maji adds Bonded effects to Runes and Idols. This gives them a secondary effect when socketed into an Augment slot.
All of the bonuses for the different Runes and Idols are currently unknown, so it’s hard to gauge just how powerful this can be. If most of the effects are offensive or utility, there’s a lot of room for power to be had here.
Wisdom of the Maji also synergises with Uniques like Morior Invictus, Greymake, Bringer of Rain, as well as all Exceptional Items due to the increased number of Augment slots they can potentially have. With Morior Invictus being buffed in 0.4 as well, this may be a highly desirable Body Armour for aspiring Shamans that want to incorporate this passive into their builds.
Druidic Champion
Druidic Champion grants 1% more Spell Damage for every 2 Rage.
By itself, this passive is a solid bonus for Hybrid Attack/Spell builds, as Attacks would be needed to generate Rate, while both skill types would benefit.
If we wanted to not rely on Attacks at all, there are multiple sources of Gain Rage when Hit, which can pair very well with the more defensive points available to the Shaman, like Reactive Growth.
Though just taking Furious Wellspring is going to be a much more consistent option, as it will not only provide Rage Generation, but also prevent Rage Loss.
Furious Wellspring
Furious Wellspring grants 7 Maximum Rage, while also regenerating 6% of Rage per second (scaling with Mana Regeneration Rate) and preventing Rage Loss. However, all skills have their Rage cost increased by 5.
Furious Wellspring is, without a doubt, the Shaman’s strongest offensive passive. Not only do we get consistent access to Rage for all of our skills, but we get it in a way that doesn’t rely on using skills, taking hits, or using Spirit.
Since this regeneration scales with Mana Regeneration, we can also lean toward Damage Taken as Mana Before Life as a solid defensive layer on top of everything else the Shaman already offers.
The Rage Generation is also an amazing bonus for Shapeshifting Skills, allowing some of the more powerful skills, particularly for the Bear Form, to really shine with more stable uptime on Rage, enhancing their effects. If we wanted, we could even pair this with Eternal Rage for even more rage generation, at the hefty cost of 100 Spirit.
Reactive Growth
Reactive Growth grants 10% less Elemental Damage Taken. Additionally, Gain Adaptation matching the highest Elemental Damage taken from a hit and take 10% less damage of that element per adaptation.
This is a pretty generic, but powerful defensive option that will excel when taking on the game’s Pinnacle Bosses, as each tends to be focused on just one or two elements at most.
With access to 3 Adaptions that have no downtime once applied, bosses that deal damage of a single element will have a much harder time defeating a Shaman. Perfect for getting the Arbiter of Ash down to unlock better access to better tablets.
Avatar of Evolution
Avatar of Evolution grants 5% of Physical Damage Taken as Cold, Fire, and Lightning Damage. Additionally, the Strength of Adaptation is doubled 20% per Adaptation, but will only last 5 seconds.
For enemies and bossing dealing consistent damage, this is a huge upgrade for Reactive Growth. As this adds Physical damage to the pool of damage types that can trigger Adaptation. Having 15% of Physical Damage taken as Element also makes it much easier to mitigate Physical Damage in the first place.
We can take this a step further, adding additional sources of Physical Damage Taken As to our build and making ourselves more resistant to Physical Damage overall.
With the use of Scold’s Bridle, we can also trigger a small amount of self-damage to quickly apply and maintain our adaptations in combat. We can also pair this with Unique Charms for a variety of useful effects like generating Rage, generating Charges, and many other effects.
Turning of the Seasons
Turning of the Seasons grants 10% of damage as extra of a Random Element. Additionally, enemies in our Presence have Exposure.
The Damage as Extra of a Random Element is a nice bonus to have and provides a pretty solid damage boost. However, the random element is always going to be a bit of a downside, as it’s not going to consistently apply any one element.
This means, at best, on top of the damage, we’ll see a minor Chill and the occasional Shock. While these can be useful, it’s not likely to ever be consistent enough to truly benefit from them.
Applying Exposure to enemies in our Presence is also a very solid damage boost that we can scale with the Passive tree. Thankfully, we also get easy access to Presence-related Passives nodes to help scale this area to not just be a tiny area around us, but anything we do on top of this will be a massive help for consistency.
Bringer of the Apocalypse
Bring of the Apocalypse grants the Apocalyse Skill, which calls down a disaster of a random element every 0.75 seconds for 12 seconds after being charged with 100 Glory.
This skill will be the strongest paired alongside the Bear Form’s Walking Calamity, which effectively turns our Rage Generation into Glory Generation, allowing for very high uptime on one or both skills.
If we don’t use Walking Calamity, we’d fully rely on picking up and using the Fury of the King Unique Talisman, which passively grants us 5 Glory every 2 seconds. This also offers the advantage of an Exposure Aura, helping to further increase the damage of this skill.
The only other reliable form of passive Glory Generation comes from the Glorious Anticipation Notable, offering 1 Glory every 2 seconds per rare or unique monster in our Presence.
Furious Wellspring is always an option, but in many cases, Eternal Rage will be a better option. This allows us to not only have this powerful skill but also sustain it without giving up the powerful defensive layer offered by Adaptations.
