Dragona Online Shaman Skills Analysis Guide

Dragona Online Shaman Skills Analysis Guide by Hylebos

Hey folks!! Be prepared for a bit of length here, this is a little write up of what I’ve experience so far with the Shaman class skills (I have not tried any others yet so far in Open Beta). I wish I’d taken a few screenshots of my skills since the servers will be down til tomorrow afternoon for the Live patch and all that. The main problem I have with Shaman skills and the pre-requirements for them is the fact that there is such little return for the skills you HAVE to put points into for the skills you want. And even then, the skills you’ve just unlocked are woefully inadequate. I have zero previous Dragona experience with PH or any other version – my start with the game was the Open Beta launch.

I am going to go through skills as I *think* they are available by level – this is from memory and another skill list so I am not entirely sure.

The following are active skills and buffs, I tried to get the levels they can be learned at but I know a few are wrong and I can’t currently get in the game to verify. Also it is late and I’m sure there are a few typos so please bear with me =).

Active Skills and Buffs

1. Power Strike – Level 1 – This is your basic auto attack entirely based off of your minimum and maximum attack.

2. Lunatic Strike – Level 1 – You start off with one point in this and the total damage goes up maybe… 250 or so from base damage at 5 ranks. Very poor damage scaling for points invested, however it does have the lowest cooldown of any skill I believe at 3 seconds. In pvp this will interrupt other players who are charging up skills to attack. It unlocks Violent Wild Strike at 5 points invested.

3. Flame Strike – Level 2 – I haven’t tried this skill yet – It seems to have mediocre to ok damage scaling, I have been told the cooldown is 3 seconds. As far as I know it doesn’t unlock any later skills. Anyone know how well the damage on this scales? I will check in-game this afternoon.

4. Ice Wall – Level 5 – I was hoping this skill would be usefull in pvp at some point but it’s totally lackluster. I believe the developers consider it a pvp skill since it has a 15 second cooldown. I only have 1 point invested and it basically does damage based off your attack plus a little extra and some property damage. The cool thing about it is you do a Street Fighter uppercut animation with ice swirling around you. The BAD thing – it takes 1.5-2 seconds for the skill to charge up, and then the animation continues. Hardly feasible for pvp application – especially since the slow debuff applied by the skill only lasts TWO seconds.

5. Energy of the Waves – Level 15 – This buff is a beauty for us. Don’t look at other classes damage buffs or you will cry haha. No requirements other than level 5 I think, 1 point gets you 10% extra min/max damage for a base of 3 minutes or so. This will affect you, or your entire group members within about a 10m range. The cooldown is nearly as long as the buff lasts so you can basically only keep yourself/your group buffed. You get a 10% damage buff with the first point, and a 1% increase per point invested thereafter.

6. Energy of the Earth – Level 20 – To unlock this skill you need to have 5 points invested in Wild Strike, which is one of my main skills. I can’t remember the specifics but I believe it is about a 5.4% physical protection buff with a 3 minute base duration. This is one of my 3 main buffs in my current (sloppily thrown together) build.

7. Beastly Strike – Level 5 – This is a pretty good skill as it has physical and property damage. It does decent physical damage, then an initial property damage. If that property damage isn’t resisted then a set amount of property damage will tick 3-4 times for additional damage. The only bad thing is it has a lower % chance to apply the property damage, and if the initial property damage is resisted, the later ticks of property damage will not apply.

8. Wild Strike – Level 5 – This is a pretty good skill with decent damage that is somewhat split between physical and property damage. Since it has the physical/property damage split it can still do ok against targets with high defense. For some odd reason getting 5 ranks of this opens up the Energy of the Earth buff, which is one of the reasons I use this skill instead of going the Lunatic Strike -> Violent Wild Strike route.

9. Cut Off Blood Flow – Level 10 – This is a 20m ranged attack, which in the PH and other versions I believe has a stun component which has been removed in Dragona Global. Too bad, Shaman needs all the help it can get and this would have helped. As it is I have one rank in this skill for a ranged pull option for quest/world bosses. Getting 5 ranks of this skill opens up another ranged skill Phoenix Strike at level 20. I believe it has a 15-20 seconds cooldown. Also – the damage scales poorly, I would only put 5 ranks in this if you are completing the pvp skills line through to Asura Phoenix Strike (at high or max levels at that), otherwise 1 or none would probably be best.

10. Flow of Nature – Level 1 – This is a health regeneration over time buff that is the same whether you are in or out of combat. It is one of the 3 main Shaman self/group buffs. It starts off healing 20 health per tick, and adds +5 to that with each point invested after that. However, some skills change how much benefit you get as you add more and more points and I am not sure if this is steady at just 5 health per point gain. It may get even better as you add more points to it, can anybody verify this?

11. Restore Stamina – Level 15 – This is a basic heal with a full 1 minute cooldown. I think it starts off healing 300hp, and an additional 400hp per point invested as it heals me for 1500hp now at Rank 4, and adding another point will take the heal to 1900hp. Getting 5 ranks in this skill opens up Wave of Life.

12. Restorative Power – This skill is a debuff remover, which you have to put 3 points in to learn the resurrection skill Return the Brave. The wording says it removes one debuff from “you and an ally”, although I think ‘and’ is meant to be ‘or’. I am not sure if it will remove multiple debuffs at once with more points invested in the skill, can anyone elaborate? I do not currently have any points in it but I do plan to have at least 1 point invested for pvp to remove stuns.

13. Violent Wild Strike – Level 20 – You need to have 5 points in Lunatic Strike to access this skill. It has high base damage I believe around 750-1k damage at 1 point, I haven’t put any points into it yet as raising Lunatic Strike was not a priority for me. It has only a 6 second cooldown. The damage is entirely based off of attack and not property so it will do lower damage to targets with high Defense values like turtles/guardians/gunners and other hard targets. However against average defense targets it should do pretty good damage, especially on a crit with only a few points invested.

14. Phoenix Strike – Level 20 – You need 5 points in Cut Off Blood Flow to gain access to train this skill. It is a 20m ranged attack with I think mostly property damage. It is on about a 20-25 second cooldown and damage scales per point much better than Cut Off Blood Flow so it probably isn’t as painful to put 5 points into this to unlock Asura Phoenix Strike. I haven’t trained this yet but it looks ok damage wise. Anyone have more info?

15. Wave of Life – Level 5-10? – This is a group heal on a 5 minute timer that gives a two second burst of 10 movement speed, it heals 1000 hp at 1 rank but the wording of the skill is odd making it seems like it adds maximum hp? I haven’t put 5 points into Restore Stamina yet so I haven’t used the skill so I have no definitive information. Would anyone care to add info about this?? Seems incredibly lackluster, like many of our skills unfortunately. I don’t see how reducing this to even a 1 minute cooldown would be OP for Shaman – it would have the same impact in pvp as currently many fights are over with 1 shot kills being as prevalent as they are and would actually gives us a chance to heal the group more than once per boss fight.

16. Return of the Brave – Level ??? – This is a single target resurrection skill with a base 10 minute cooldown I believe. From the skill description it raises the target with barely any health but at least they are up. You have to have 3 points invested in Restorative Power to learn this skill.

17. Great Nature – Level 25 – A skill that has no pre-requisites, they DO exist!! Great Nature is actually a really good aoe skill, finally! It does have the detractor of having a 35 second cooldown and a somewhat low property attack %, but it hits up to 7 targets at once so a few misses are ok. It also hits really hard with just the first point invested. What I like to do is gather up a few targets by using skills on 1-5 of them, then dropping Great Nature on them all at once. Or you can just run up to where 2-4 happen to be near each other and unleash your other skills on one and then hit them with Great Nature, I guess it depends on your ability to tank. I have the Defense passive skill nearly maxed, and it can still burn through a lot of pots trying to hit 7 targets and then tank them as you take them down one by one. Especially if they are the ranged caster types like Priests/Neophytes etc. However they do tend to go down quick. No matter how you slice it, I love this skill and use it ALL the time, even on single targets if there aren’t others near.

18. Deification – Level 30 – Man… How upsetting. This is one of the skills I was really looking forward to until I saw how it is compared to other versions of the skill like in Dragona PH. It gives 30% resists to damage types, however it only lasts 5 seconds AND it’s on a 5 minute cooldown. Also, in order to get access to this skill you have to put 5 points in Return of the Brave which in turn means you need at least 3 points in Restorative Power. That means alll those points are invested, and all you get is a little bit of time off your resurrection cooldown. I bet it also has some ridiculous 3 second animation charge-up so it’s not “Too OP”. As the current skill system is, I do not see myself putting ONE point in this for the foreseeable future, if ever. Having to invest at least 10% of our total points just for a 5 second buff just isn’t worth it. Has anyone used this? What are your thoughts??

19. Asura Phoenix Strike – Level 30 – To access this skill you need to have 5 points in Cut Off Blood Flow and 5 points in Phoenix Strike. It is a 20m range nuke that is also a 2.5 second stun, supposedly a way for us to finish off runners or to close distance. It also seems to have pretty good damage, although it’s not a flat damage like other versions but varies between 900-1800 property damage and maybe a few hundred attack damage. I’ve heard that it does have a second or two wind-up animation, can anyone verify? I still think it would be viable in pvp for using after you make someone use their pot, then get their health down close to their pot % of health and then stun them and finish them off (hopefully) while they are stunned.

20. Concentrated Strike – Level 35 – I can’t check the skill since the game isn’t up right now, so I can’t remember if this is a purely ranged targeted skill or if it is a point blank aoe like Great Nature. It slows the movement of enemies by 32 and does some damage. It also blocks their skill use for a decent time, I believe around 3 seconds or so. You do have to have Asura Phoenix Strike trained as a pre-requisite so it’s not something you can just pick up at level 35. You must have the pre-requisite skills.

Passive Skills

All the passive skills are available to be trained from level 1 I think.

Predatory Instinct Each point in this passive skill lowers your mana by 2, but increases your minimum and maximum damage by 5%, per point. It appears to be 5% added per point, but it may increase if you have 10 points or more invested – Does anybody have any info?

Defensive Instinct Each point in this skill lowers crit chance by .3% and critical evasion by .3%. However!!! It also raises your Defense by 10 and your physical protection by (I think) 1.4% for the first point, then an additional 10 defense and .7% physical protection each thereafter up to 10 points. At a total of 10 points invested it will put you at an extra 100 Defense and 7.7% physical protection.

However!!! At the 11th point the Defense bonus DOUBLES to 20 with EACH point!!! Getting 20 ranks of this skill will (as far as I can tell) put you at THREE HUNDRED base Defense and 14.7% physical protecion, not including what you get from your armor and other gear. I will verify the numbers for sure when I can get back in game. As far as I can tell nobody knows the math behind how Defense works exactly and physical protection % is probably the flat % reduction as shown. I have this at 9 right now, but a few points available at the moment and maxing this skill at my current level at 11 points invested would give me 120 bonus Defense, for a total of 218 defense at level 32. And the blue pants I have right now give 0 Defense. I should have 250-270 Defense easily by level 35 I believe.

On a side note, just before the servers went down tonight for the Live/Cash Shop patch I killed the 9 Tail Fox in Earis for a quest solo. I used maybe 2-3 santa cookies and 1-2 Sacks of Life as well as the usual 1350 hp pots. This was just standing there taking a beating, I made no attempt to move around to let my pots refresh etc.

Train Body I am unfortunately iffy on the numbers for Train Body at this time. As you put in points, you get a bigger return on the points you invest. You should get a 30% increase in maximum health for 10 points invested and another 5% per point after that at least.. I only have 2 points in the skill for maybe 7% more hp (should have more) but my priority was on getting my Defense up and saving RS’s to get more hp from reinforcing level 30+ gear (which hasn’t happened yet).

As for the rest of the passive skills, their names escape me at the time so I won’t attempt to give them individual names I’ll just cover the basics. There is one that increases your maximum mana a certain % per point, and one that increases your maximum CORE by a % per point. I don’t know the names of them and do not have them trained nor do I expect to.

There is another one that increases your property attack damage from skills by 1% each point, but I have no idea if it’s a flat 1% per point, or if it eventually ramps up like other skills do. Does anyone have concrete info if you have trained this yourself?

There are 4 other passives that increase your resists to the 4 elements besides dark. There is Fire, Frost, Lightning and Poison resist and they appear to increase your resists a flat 5% per point invested. I have not checked these does anyone else have some info???

This turned into more of a skill overview than I expected, it is a bit late and don’t have time to add more. I wanted to cover starting basics (for Shaman and new people in general), just basic tips about what would have helped me as a new player and such. I will add more tomorrow since the servers will be down until the afternoon for the patch so have a good night!

-Hylebos 32 Shaman – AMARANTHINE Guild – Ezulan Server