Hello Travelers, Welcome to the first blog post of the pre-patch blog posts leading up to launch! For all the new Travelers joining us for 1.0, pre-patch blog posts occur during the week before Patch Day, in which we talk about some of the prominent features coming with the latest update. We will have a post every day, culminating in the Patch Notes on February 19th. Of course, the three most prominent features coming in 1.0 are Item Factions, the Falconer, and the Warlock; however, these are certainly not the only features arriving with our release of 1.0! Back in November, we talked about some of the updates coming with 1.0 (November Developer Blog). When covering Tempest Strike, we mentioned that the change to Tempest Strikes mechanics left a gap in the Primalist class for a low cost, spammable generator. Without further ado, and to kick off these blog posts, lets start by covering the new Primalist Skill - Gathering Storm, as well as some of the new Tempest Strike features coming February 21st.

Gathering Storm

Gathering Storm will become available to all Primalists at level 2, replacing Ice Thorns. Those who have been following our posts for a while may remember we intended to remove Ice Thorns but wanted to have a new skill to implement in its place.
Strike at your enemy with a mighty lightning powered storm. When you use Gathering Storm and hit at least one enemy, you gain a Storm Stack. Every second you expend a Storm Stack to cause a Storm Bolt to strike a nearby enemy. This interval is reduced by 2% for every stack you currently have. With higher stack counts firing off Storm Bolts at greater rates, Gathering Storm is an ability that is about pressing the attack for greater reward. By the time you reach 50 Storm Stacks, there is zero delay between consuming stacks to generate Storm Bolts, so a greater stack count is always beneficial. Gathering Storm costs zero mana by default, and inherently gains 4% increased damage per point of strength to the Melee Attack, while each point of Attunement grants it +1 spell damage for Storm Bolt.
In its tree, you will find various ways to generate, spend, and manage stacks and gain different effects from Storm Stacks. Its also worth noting that old references to the Lightning ability in the Shaman Passive tree, and some of the other abilities, have been changed to Storm Bolt. All instances of Storm Bolt use Gathering Storms Storm Bolt - even when your Primal Wolves cast it. Meaning these additional Storm Bolt triggers synergize very well with Gathering Storm to create a quite frenetic storm of lightning. Lets take a look at some of the ways you can customize Gathering Storm through its skill tree.

Frostbringer

Frostbringer converts Gathering Storm and Storm Bolts Base Damage from Lightning to Cold, and converts Shock chance to Frostbite chance. This offers a great route for those looking for more crowd control through freeze, and damage over time with Frostbite.

Ranged Spell Conversion

With Lagonian Diplomacy and a Staff, Gathering Storm can be converted completely to a spell. Striking out with Storm Bolts directly, this node allows you to put complete focus into the spell aspects of Gathering Storm, though with an added mana cost.

Dual Wielding Support

What would a skill about pressing the attack be without some dual-wielding support? The Two Eyed Storm node grants your Storm Stacks the ability to strike two enemies for the price of one; so long as you have a weapon in each hand.

Whirlwind Tactics

For those that like to synergize their builds with Minions, youll also find support for this within Gathering Storm. One such node, Whirlwind Tactics, expends a number of Storm Stacks whenever you use a Companion ability.

Tempest Strike

As we covered in Novembers Dev Blog, Tempest Strike has been reworked in functionality while keeping the same theme. Tempest Strike is now a powerful high-cost combo ability which triggers a Tempest with each strike, rather than a chance for a spell effect that it had previously.

While we talked a bit about how the skill was mechanically changing, at the time we were still making changes to the ability, and werent quite ready to show the tree for it. So today, as we are covering the new Primalist Skill, we also want to show everyone some of the new skill tree options coming to Tempest Strike.

Druids Call

Supporting transformations, Druids Call allows you an option to turn Tempest Strike into a melee triggered ability while transformed. Im sure theres many lightning Werebears out there who just had their ears perk up at the idea of adding another skill to the repertoire.

Tempest Sacrificing

In Tempest Strikes tree you will find a number of nodes that allow you to sacrifice one of the Tempests in order to gain attack speed. Though do be aware, removing a Tempest does not remove the corresponding Strike. Youll also find opportunities to synergize with other abilities for further spell combos, such as with the Ceaseless Typhoon node, which grants a chance to cast Tornado each time you trigger Wind Tempest in the combo.

Totem Support

With the Looming Gale node, you will convert Tempest Strike into a Tempest Totem which casts the three Tempests in sequence without the melee attack. This also converts the ability into a minion ability by changing it to a totem, allowing Tempest Strike to fit into other totem and minion builds.

Tempest Focus

Just want to keep it simple and add more Tempests? Weve got you covered. Granting any of the strikes a chance to cast one of the tempests means you can lash out with multiple tempests on each strike. Pick a specific Tempest to focus on, or just trigger more of all of them, the choice is yours.

Closing

Thank you for joining us for this look at some of the updates coming to the Primalist with the new Gathering Storm ability, and reworked Tempest Strike ability. We look forward to seeing all the new Primalist, and in particular Shaman builds you all come up with. We also want to take this opportunity to provide advanced notice concerning launch preparation. To get our servers set up for release, we will be taking the servers down 24 hours prior to launch. Join us again tomorrow as we look at some of the new enemy models and animation updates weve made for 1.0 as we get ever closer to the release of Last Epoch!