What's the difference between Occultist and Shaman?

[God Snek]

It seems they're both summoning classes but occultist is more uh DoT's and shaman is more pure damage if im correct...?

[[OCN] John Wick ~ Rabbit]

The shaman is the better summoner in my opinion. But both combined make a hella pet build. i want to say the shaman is more damage based.

[God Snek]

Originally posted by OCN John Wick ~ Rabbs:

The shaman is the better summoner in my opinion. But both combined make a hella pet build. i want to say the shaman is more damage based.

That's.. Confusing. The shaman is a better summoner BUT is also a better damage dealer?

[timmo4444]

shaman leans towards: two-handed melee, lightning damage. Occultist leans towards: caster, debuffer, chaos damage.
In my experience so far shaman is one of the more fun classes.

[God Snek]

Originally posted by timmo4444:

shaman leans towards: two-handed melee, lightning damage. Occultist leans towards: caster, debuffer, chaos damage.

But who's the better summoner? Also, uh, if i'm an arcanist (magic missle guy) which would work better for me? occultist?

[[OCN] John Wick ~ Rabbit]

Shaman would be the better summoner. The familiar pet is dumb.

[timmo4444]

I cant speak for the late game, but yeah for early to mid game shamans pets seem better.
It depends how you want to play, if shamans melee stuff doesnt interest you, maybe occultist is better for their curses.

[God Snek]

Originally posted by timmo4444:

I cant speak for the late game, but yeah for early to mid game shamans pets seem better.
It depends how you want to play, if shamans melee stuff doesnt interest you, maybe occultist is better for their curses.

I prefer ranged but idk what the uh curses do. Curses implies status effects but that sounds not great since you kill enemies so fast in ARPG's (or well how far i get usually playing you do)

[Astasia]

They aren't really "summoning classes." You can build them that way, but 3/4 of their trees are unrelated to pets or summoning. Even as a pure shaman or pure occultist there are like 5-6 very different builds for each, melee, ranged, caster, traps, dot, etc. You can't really look at any of the trees and define them with a role, this game doesn't work like that.

As far as their summoning skills are concerned: The shaman pet is much more durable and useful early on, especially with Mogdrogen's Pact. On paper the occultist pets would be equally durable if not more so, except in my experience the bird heals like once an hour and never uses the buff skill. It's so bad I don't even get the bird in my pet builds. Later game the occultist gets much larger pet bonuses from Bonds of Bysmiel that closes the gap a bit. Then the shaman has primal spirit, which is a temp summon, and I've never used it so I don't know how useful it is.

Combined they work very well, but there are also other trees that can help. They both pair well with demolitionist and Flame Touched/Temper, arcanist works well with the occultist pets (not really the shaman pet) with a large elemental damage boost. Soldier is also a solid choice for both, with Squad Tactics and a bunch of skills to help your own survivability.

[timmo4444]

Originally posted by SuperSpader623:

I prefer ranged but idk what the uh curses do. Curses implies status effects but that sounds not great since you kill enemies so fast in ARPG's (or well how far i get usually playing you do)

you can reduce their elemental resist with the curse, which in theory would be nice for arcanist, particularly if you played into higher difficulties.

[inovade]

Originally posted by SuperSpader623:

Originally posted by timmo4444:

I cant speak for the late game, but yeah for early to mid game shamans pets seem better.
It depends how you want to play, if shamans melee stuff doesnt interest you, maybe occultist is better for their curses.

I prefer ranged but idk what the uh curses do. Curses implies status effects but that sounds not great since you kill enemies so fast in ARPG's (or well how far i get usually playing you do)

play in ultimate, it's a godsend :p
although i dont have access to it, using shaman+arcanist

but shaman pet is actually more durable than occultist one. just 1p to unlock is enough though

[Ri0Rdian]

No one mentioned this yet...but you can play shaman ranged no problem too! Savagery whatever you wish or Primal Strike with a rifle/xbow.

[Steelflame]

Shaman has like 4 different play styles locked within it (and has support for 2-3 other playstyles when combo'd with other classes, such as a 2h range build with Demos or dual wielding with Nightblade to abuse Primal Strike's max ramp up power). It has 2H melee, cold/lightning caster (focusing on it's wind devil and storm totems), Vitality/bleed vampire build, and pet builds, letting it pair pretty well with just about every other class with ease. To be fair, most of the classes have 2-3 play styles innately, and some have synergy combos where they can't do one thing normally, but together enable it, and generally what you do is pick 2 classes with a same style combo to match eachother. Arcanist is pretty flat as a class add-on (As a primary class it's pretty solid, with 2 different focuses on its damage types), although it has stuff which benefits all classes as side points from IIE line, Maven's and Mirror for defence, and Arcane will as an insane total damage up, by far the strongest dps booster in the game when maxed. Demo is about the flattest class overall, and even then it has 4 different builds, with 2h ranged, dual pistols, bomb caster, and sword and board.