Last Epoch Shaman Gathering Storm Build Guide

The Shaman is a very interesting and unique Primalist Mastery, as it's a very versatile build where you can specialize on physical or magical damage. With that much versatility, if you're looking for an optimal Storm Shaman build in Last Epoch, keep reading as I break down the entire mastery build.

Best Shaman Gathering Storm Build in Last Epoch

The Shaman Gathering Storm build gives players a vastly improved clearing speed, which is useful in the Monoliths, where enemy hordes can quickly overwhelm your character. This build utilizes a ton of Lightning Abilities, so crafting and rolling specific gears that make this stand out may take a while.

Best Primalist Passive Skills for Gathering Storm Build in Last Epoch

• Natural Attunement (8/8)
• Hunter's Restoration (5/5)
• Wisdom of the Wild (6/6)
• Elder Branch (5/5)
• Harmony of Blades (1/1)

All of the passive skills above provide a ton of resistance to Lightning and increased damage output with Gathering Storm while keeping you tanky with increased health and health regen. I copped the Harmony of Blades (i.e. Primalist's version of Dual Wielding), as it can boost your attack speed with the right equipment.

Best Mastery Passive Skills for Gathering Storm Build in Last Epoch

Of course, we'll utilize the Shaman Mastery Passives in this build. However, the passives I chose were mainly composed of offensive passives, but what about defense? In this case, I opted to use the Beastmaster Passive Skill Tree due to the neat passive I discovered while building my Beastmaster Squirrel character.

In case you haven't played Beastmaster yet, they have a unique and arguably strong buff that grants them Damage Reduction whenever they are hit with a melee attack. Ursine Strength gives you a much-needed damage reduction from nearby enemies, and pair that with Boar Heart and Porcine Constitution, you'll have decent defensive stats upon entering the Monolith for the first time.

Related: Last Epoch Talent Calculator – Tools for Creating Builds

Best Skill Specializations for Shaman Gathering Storm Build in Last Epoch

• Gathering Storm: Gathering Storm is a newly added skill on Last Epoch, and this will be our main core damage-dealing skill throughout the game. You will need to gather a lot of Storm Stacks, so the skill specialization above shows you how you can get as much as possible to summon consecutive lightning bolts around your character.
• Warcry: Warcry is a very effective crowd control skill. However, I decided to change it to a more utility-based skill. With the passives above, you'll gain health whenever you cast Warcry, a chance to trigger Maelstrom and freeze enemies instead.
• Earthquake: Earthquake has only one job in this list of skills, and that is to detonate your Storm Stacks all at once. The Fury of the Elements passive is very crucial to this build as it allows you to expend your Storm Stacks with more force than you normally would.
• Summon Thorn Totem: This will be your secondary damage source in the early game. Thorn Totem's specialized passives improve on the damage output, number of placeable totems, and armor shred.
• Summon Storm Totem: What's better than a lightning storm? More lightning storm, of course! The Summon Storm Totem further boosts your DPS as it excels at buffing your Storm Stacks while outputting its own lightning bolts. It also increases your lightning penetration so you can deal more damage to your enemies with your Zeus-like bolts raining from the skies.

Best Gear Items and Affixes for Shaman Gathering Storm Build in Last Epoch

Note: +X signifies a flat stat boost (i.e. Any +X Health means +55 Health)

Best Blessings for Shaman Gathering Storm Build in Last Epoch

If your gear isn't fully prepared with proper affixes, don't worry. Blessings will give you the much-needed stats to sustain long and dragging fights and increase your chance of finding specific loot drops.

• Grand Hunger of the Void: Gives you a much-needed sustain throughout the battle as it provides a 2.2-3.5% Spell Damage leeched as Health. If ever you're in a pickle, remember your lightning strikes can now heal you.
• Grand Mysteries of the Deep: Another vital Blessing to get for your Shaman Gathering Storm Build. It gives you an increased chance to shred lightning resistance on hit from an enemy, making them more vulnerable to your lightning strikes.
• Grand Survival of Might: A must-have blessing for any build once you're doing the Monoliths since it grants Critical Strike Avoidance. Some nodes have enemies with increased critical strike chance, and even non-boss enemies can one-shot you if you're not prepared.

Best Idols for Shaman Gathering Storm Build in Last Epoch

If blessings and your gear aren't enough to fully cap out all of your resistances, or you just want to improve your damage more, idols are the next set of items you should target.

• Large Nomad Idol: These idols can increase your health and even boost your Lightning Damage and Minion Lightning Damage, given the right rolls.
• Ornate Heorot Idol: Ornate Idols have a range of useful spells for a Shaman Gathering Storm Build, like Storm Stacks buff, increased spell damage, and even summon totems.

Other idols like Small Eterran or Humble Etteran will give you increased resistances and health regeneration, which is essential since your character lacks a good mobility skill.

Related: Last Epoch Monolith Guide

How to play the Shaman Gathering Storm Build in Last Epoch

The early game will be a bit of a rough spot with the Shaman Gathering Storm build as no specialization skills can come online yet other than Gathering Storm, Warcry, and Thorn Totem. You can also use Summon Wolf at this point to try and speed up the enemy clear, but it will barely do any damage since you're not investing any passive skills.

Once you get Maelstrom, you can opt to specialize in it in the early to mid-game until you fully unlock all specialization skill slots. With Warcry's chance to proc Maelstrom, you can substantially increase your DPS to what I will say is decent at this stage of the game.

The real fun begins once you get your Shaman Mastery skills, especially Earthquake. Your goal is to quickly level up Earthquake as much as you can until you get to the Fury of the Elements node. At this point, you'll have two well-synergized skills (i.e. Gathering Storm and Earthquake) in the palm of your hands.

The trick is to autobomb (i.e. another term for auto-cast) your Warcry skill so you don't have to manage your buff all the time, and gather ten Storm Stacks from Gathering Storm and use Earthquake. It's a quick and easy way of dealing massive damage to your AOE.

If this guide got you hooked on more Last Epoch builds, check out Bleed Warlock Build Guide – Last Epoch right here at Pro Game Guides!