Shaman - Two-Handers, Summons, and Pets in One Mastery

What It Does Well

Officially described as spiritual leaders of the northlands, attuned to their patron deity Mogdrogen, wielding the forces of nature and calling savage beasts - and excelling with brutal two-handed melee weapons.

• ▸Weapon attacks: dedicated two-handed skills for both melee and ranged, with Savagery as an easy, powerful default-attack replacement.
• ▸Sustain: Feral Hunger is a rare skill with attack damage converted to health, and paired with two-handed damage it drives both survivability and clear speed.
• ▸Placed summons: Wendigo Totem, Storm Totem, and Wind Devil scale off the player's damage bonuses and act automatically once placed, so they don't crowd your inputs.
• ▸Pets: the pet-bonus Briarthorn and Primal Spirit, supported by area buffs and pet-scaling skills.
• ▸Resistance reduction: strong and varied across vitality, bleed, and elemental - and since it reduces all three elemental resistances at once, it works as a secondary for fire or cold partners.
• ▸Attribute growth: Physique 3.5 / Cunning 2 / Spirit 2.

Strengths and Weaknesses

• ▸Strength: enough self-sufficiency to scale its main damage on this mastery alone.
• ▸Strength: many healing options, easy defensive auras, and skills that raise maximum health and regeneration in both flat and percentage terms.
• ▸Strength: strong area clearing from early on through the two-handed tree, Primal Strike, and Storm Totem.
• ▸Strength: multi-hit skills, pets, roaming summons, and stationary summons give varied control over devotion procs.
• ▸Weakness: outside a temporary buff in the Savagery tree, only pet skills raise Offensive Ability.
• ▸Weakness: no mastery skill reduces enemy Offensive or Defensive Ability.
• ▸Weakness: many support skills need re-casting every few seconds to pay off, which keeps the rotation busy.
• ▸Weakness: no enemy damage reduction debuff for endgame content, so the second mastery or devotion has to supply it.

Choosing a Partner and Getting Started

• ▸Occultist: the strongest base-game pet pairing - both masteries' buffs reinforce the pets while keeping the character durable.
• ▸Soldier: overlaps on physical and bleed, and adds armor, health, and enemy damage reduction for front-line stability (shield block only works in a shield build, so with a two-hander count on the armor side instead).
• ▸Demolitionist: shares lightning while bringing the enemy Offensive Ability reduction and enemy damage reduction debuffs Shaman genuinely lacks (Shaman already has strong resistance reduction and crowd control of its own, so this fills a gap rather than duplicating).
• ▸Decide early whether to favor pets or the character - splitting the difference tends to stall after the midgame.
• ▸For how placed summons scale (player-bonus versus pet-bonus), see the Pet and Player Bonuses article.

1. Official Grim Dawn Game Guide: Masteries — Confirms the official description of Shamans as spiritual leaders of the northlands, attuned to Mogdrogen, wielding nature's forces and summoning beasts, and excelling with brutal two-handed melee weapons.
2. Grim Dawn Japanese Wiki: Shaman — Confirms lightning, vitality, and bleed as primaries with physical alongside; the Savagery plus Feral Hunger and Primal Strike builds; Feral Hunger as a rare skill carrying attack damage converted to health; Wendigo Totem, Storm Totem, and Wind Devil scaling off player damage bonuses and acting automatically once placed; Wind Devil becoming a permanent undying version you can maintain several of; the Briarthorn and Primal Spirit pet builds and the Occultist synergy; reducing all three elemental resistances at once; and the listed strengths and weaknesses.
3. Grim Dawn Japanese Wiki: Masteries index — Confirms the attribute growth (Physique 3.5 / Cunning 2 / Spirit 2), favored damage types (1. lightning, 2. bleed and vitality, 3. physical, 4. cold), and the positioning as strong with two-handers at both ranges, with placed-summon caster and pet builds also viable.
4. Official Crate Forum: Grim Dawn Version v1.3.0.4 + Hotfixes — Official patch notes for the verified version, which changed Thunderous Strike to reduce skill cooldowns by a flat amount instead of a percentage.