Best combo for Shaman

[Spankmybass69]

My preferences are I enjoy Mele play but I want to keep my pets and have good aoe attacks.

[Faust Wither]

occultis

[Halcyon]

Pets probably means occultist. Melee means other stuff like soldier. It's hard to do both pets and not-pets.

[Spankmybass69]

i was looking into some builds i think i may do a necro or arcanist any thought on these?

[Spankmybass69]

i feel like having pets as a way to draw attention is ideal but i dont feel like having them do all the work would be fun.

[Childe Roland]

Real pets are an all of nothing proposition, except maybe for some very advanced players. You could use "player" pets that scale off of your bonuses, such as Wind Devil, Blade Spirit, Guardian of Empyrion, or several pets from Devotions to create a sort of hybrid build but many of those pets are invincible and cannot draw threat from enemies, meaning that they will not be targeted. It's simply the way that the game woks.

If you want real pets then you should probably start here: https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/the-carnival-a-guide-to-pets/81781

This is the closest thing to a hybrid I can think of: https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/1-1-5-2-hc-the-immortal-army-pet-dervish-beginner-friendly-pet-build-super-fast-mc-farmer/94148

[RodHull]

Shaman works very well with Inquisitor, Nightblade and soldier though honestly its a great support class with solid (if unremarkable) skills that goes well with any of them.

[Spankmybass69]

I dont have any dlc but are pets as high Dmg as a vitality builds or lighning build. These are what I’m basing off of

https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/the-curse-of-cain-the-strongest-vitality-build-everything/92405

Or
https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/the-witch-doctor-pet-ritualist/82220

Or
https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/duke-nuker-druid-the-proc-machine-c-sr-g3/50400

I don’t need pets I just think they look cool but I want to do all the dmg either through aoe or mele

[Brother Arivus]

Try necro, bone harvest is also a melee aoe attack and can buff pet

[MedeaFleecestealer]

If you don't have the expansions then you probably need to look at builds in this compendium and adapt them

https://forums.crateentertainment.com/t/build-compendium-v-base-game/35696

All the builds you linked are recent ones and will be using both expansions. With base game only your max level cap is 85 instead of 100 and you'll also be missing the constellations added with the expansions.

[Childe Roland]

Originally posted by MedeaFleecestealer:

With base game only your max level cap is 85 instead of 100 and you'll also be missing the constellations added with the expansions.

Not to mention some of the gear won't be available without the expacs. And some current builds only work because of the gear, meaning that there are build concepts that can't be done in vanilla, or even AoM.

[Blinkybubs]

Entangling Vines is a fun AoE.