The Shaman is a Cleric soul for melee DPS in the MMO RIFT by Trion Worlds. While many gamers roll a cleric for the heals or the tanking abilities, some might want to look at the Shaman for its pure burst damage and ability to be self-sufficient, making it a strong leveling and farming, not to mention PvP specialization. Let’s take a look at the Shaman in detail.
The Shaman relies quite a bit on burst damage, which means crits, more crits and crits. In addition, some of the most important abilities rely on certain triggers such as a crit or a parry.
Highlight of Shaman Abilities:
Crushing Blow: Your first melee ability that will always be your spam ability. This ability does decent damage and can trigger a cooldown reduction on your Massive Blow if specced for it.
Lightning Hammer: This is basically your melee DoT. It should be included in your rotation as it does decent damage and will be one of your few DoTs.
Massive Blow: Your most potent melee hit. It does have a cooldown that can be reduced through points. You will be using this whenever the cooldown is up. In addition, if specced for it, it can make the enemy bleed for further damage.
Jolt: Triggered by any Crit, this ability must be specced into and deals air damage. You will use this after every crit, so keep it handy.
Strike of the Maelstrom: Your most powerful AoE, which needs to be specced into as well. This ability does a good amount of damage and can be made to debuff afflicted targets with a short, but powerful DoT.
Rage of the North: This top talent ability enables you to become the 3 minute Shaman. When you use this ability, all your abilities will critically hit for 7 seconds, which means a lot of burst damage.
The Shaman can also enchant his weapon with different powers. Among them: A snare and a debuff to for targets to have a 5% increased chance to be critically hit.
A Shaman also can choose to have the “courage of” an animal for a party buff. these increase Wisdom, Dexterity and Strength. Only one can be active at a time, however.
So what other souls are good to pair with a Shaman? Glad you asked.
There are probably, in this writer’s opinion, 4 souls worth pairing with a Shaman. These are:
- Justicar
- Inquisitor
- Druid
- Sentinel
The Justicar is the most commonly used second soul with a Shaman primary soul. It offers heals, extra damage and buffs. In addition, Reparation, an ability you must spec into offers the ability to AoE heal friendlies as you DPS.
The Inquisitor offers good DoTs but most importantly, helps raise, through talent points, your crit chance and damage.
The Druid is another Melee DPS soul and while it is good, it’s probably the weakest of the four souls above. It does provide you, through talent points for additional Attack Power and Crit Chance.
The Sentinel simply provides an instant heal. Useful since the heals in Shaman only triggers when critically hit and the Justicar heals require Convictions.
Who would play a Shaman?
If you’ve played melee DPS, burst classes, you will likely enjoy this class. If you tried an Enhancement Shaman in World of Warcraft or White Lion or Slayer in Warhammer, you will enjoy this class. If you are like any class of burst damage, and don’t mind relying on Crits for your big damage, you will enjoy this class.
Here are some specs recommended for the Shaman using the souls mentioned above:
We hope you found this guide to the Shaman in RIFT useful and look for other RIFT articles including more class guides on our website.
