Summon Tide Elemental is a Shaman skill, unlocked after 30 points in the Shaman passive tree. This page follows Sartory's full-life cold Tide Totem / Maelstrom Tsunami configuration, using his saved planner and complete build video. It is a Primalist build; neither the Mage class nor a Tornado-focused Shaman tree reproduces this setup.
The core interaction is unusually specific. Whirlpools makes the Tide Elemental mirror your Maelstrom using its own minion stats and your Maelstrom specialization. Tidal Totem adds the totem identity. Maelstrom's Tsunami then becomes the main damage delivery, supported by the Tide tree's damage, crit and flat spell-damage nodes. You move the otherwise stationary totem with Fury Leap and a teleport modifier.
The official descriptions establish the interaction; Sartory's video explains the chosen implementation. Official Season 5 skill and node descriptions, author's skill section at 15:08.
| Configuration | Selected version |
|---|---|
| Class / mastery | Primalist → Shaman |
| Damage identity | Cold minion spells; Maelstrom Tsunami through Tide Totem |
| Specialized skills | Maelstrom, Warcry, Upheaval, Summon Tide Elemental, Fury Leap |
| Movement requirement | Experimental minion-teleport boots or the matching totem-teleport idol enchantment |
| Defense | Full life, endurance, recovery, conditional totem resistances, chill/freeze and timed invulnerability |
| Evidence limit | The author describes approximately 200 corruption in the video; this wiki has not game-tested it |
The linked planner displays a level-100 destination with roughly 4,190 health, 600 mana and 131 Attunement. The author's live example has around 2,000 health and unfinished upgrades. A saved planner is not proof that his live character owns those rolls, and its displayed resistances depend on which totem conditions are active.
Level through the author's own sequence
This route has an actual pre-Tide path rather than asking a new character to equip a completed level-100 planner.
| Stage | Skills and actions | Transition condition |
|---|---|---|
| Early Primalist | Begin with Summon Thorn Totem and straightforward damage nodes; add Warcry's Whirlpool path for Maelstrom stacks | Keep the totem clearing while Warcry supplies early stacks and defensive utility |
| Maelstrom setup | Specialize Maelstrom; use Windswept for haste and Beneath the Waves for multiple stacks; alternate Maelstrom and Warcry | Maintain the six-stack haste condition without draining mana on every pack |
| Shaman mastery before Tide | Add Summon Storm Totem; its Storm Rider route supplies movement after hits on shocked enemies | Keep clearing with the temporary Storm Totem while earning 30 Shaman passive points |
| First Summon Tide Elemental | Replace the temporary damage summon; take Wellspring and Whirlpools; keep the elemental mobile without Tidal Totem initially | Establish the mirrored Maelstrom loop before committing to a stationary totem |
| Normal Monolith totem transition | Add Tidal Totem and Pools of Reverence; obtain minion/totem teleport; specialize Upheaval and Fury Leap's trigger | Fury Leap moves your Tide Totem and maintains supporting Upheaval Totems during consecutive packs |
| Empowered refinement | Reproduce the cold gear package and life/endurance defenses; improve Attunement, minion crit and skill levels | Test recovery, resistance conditions and a longer boss fight before raising corruption |
The author calls the gap before Storm Totem the awkward part of leveling: without the completed Maelstrom stack and recovery package, six stacks can lapse. Keep the temporary summon and avoid needless repeated casts. Do not interpret that gap as a reason to buy the endgame rings immediately. Leveling walkthrough at 0:32.
Core skill nodes and allocation boundaries
The table names the selected engine nodes. Some point counts can be established directly; others remain in the saved planner because the video gestures at the tree without saying a precise number. A node's official maximum is not automatically the author's allocation.
| Specialization | Engine nodes | Confirmed point boundary / job |
|---|---|---|
| Summon Tide Elemental | Tidal Totem, Wellspring, Pools of Reverence, Whirlpools | Tidal Totem and Pools of Reverence are one-point nodes. The demonstrated doubled Wellspring gives 32 flat cold spell damage, consistent with 4 Wellspring points. Whirlpools supports mirrored Maelstrom; verify its saved allocation in the planner |
| Summon Tide Elemental damage | High Tide, King Tide, Crashing Waves, Mana Swell, Erosion; Crimson Harbor for recovery | More damage, base crit, minion crit multiplier, cold resistance shred and minion recovery; do not replace these with an unrelated Geyser or Tornado route |
| Maelstrom | Tsunami, Beneath the Waves, Windswept, Windfury and the increased-damage-on-totem branch | Tsunami is the selected damage output; multiple stacks support its repeated use. Exact connecting allocations belong to the saved planner |
| Warcry | Whirlpool, cold conversion, cooldown reduction, cleansing and defensive branches | Supplies Maelstrom stacks, cleanse and support. The author sacrifices the early freeze behavior for more frequent casts |
| Upheaval | Earthbreaker totem conversion, Glacial Cascade cold conversion, extra totems, armor shred and frailty | Supporting totems improve Tide damage and debuff enemies; their direct damage is secondary |
| Fury Leap | Violent Upheaval, minion flat spell-damage support, cooldown and invulnerability nodes | Landing triggers an Upheaval Totem and moves the permanent Tide Totem when the teleport modifier is present |
The official Tide tree defines Whirlpools at 25% mirror chance per point, maximum four, and Mana Swell at +1% crit chance per 100 maximum mana per point, maximum two. Use those values to understand why mana and the selected mirror path matter. They are mechanic limits; this page does not invent the remaining allocation or guarantee your minion is crit-capped. Official node values, the author's complete trees.
Seahenge is not the teleport solution. It moves totems when you summon the Tide Elemental. Fury Leap moving an existing Tide Totem requires the experimental affix or idol effect. Recasting the permanent summon repeatedly also discards its alive-time damage buildup from High Tide.
The five specializations and action bar can differ. Sartory uses Eterra's Blessing on the bar in place of Upheaval because Fury Leap already triggers the specialized Upheaval Totem. That provides an optional heal or minion buff without changing the underlying five trees. If you prefer manual Upheaval placement, keep it on the bar instead; do not remove its specialization and expect the triggered version to retain its nodes.
Passives: offense follows Attunement, defense follows life
The selected Shaman route values Attunement for Maelstrom and the Tide Elemental, mana for Mana Swell, and the health/mana regeneration paths explained in the video. Shamanic Infusion supplies elemental penetration to you and your minions. Protective Circle, with five points in the author's walkthrough, supplies conditional resistance support while totems exist.
The author's Beastmaster cross-tree investment includes the nearby-enemy damage-reduction and Aspect of the Boar path. He first takes four points in Ursine Strength, then finishes it to eight for the demonstrated 16% nearby-enemy reduction. The video also takes the minion-leech node to help the Tide Elemental recover. The complete passive graph and connecting points remain in BM6dLK4w; these stated priorities do not claim to be a complete 113-point transcript. Passive walkthrough at 4:18.
Treat the Shaman mastery and Protective Circle resistance bonuses as conditional. Check your defenses with your totems active, after a totem dies, and before your first summon. A character sheet that is capped only during the ideal state can still be vulnerable while rebuilding that state.
Gear: separate the engine from expensive examples
| Item / slot | Selected use | Starting or interim alternative |
|---|---|---|
| Two Apogee of Frozen Light swords | Cold minion damage, cold/necrotic minion skill levels and a buff supported by minion deaths and melee hits | Ordinary minion-damage weapons during leveling; they do not reproduce Apogee's buff. Dual wield only after allocating the required passive |
| Phantom Grip, minion variant | Seek minion skill levels and minion base crit; the author targets +2 minion skills and +4 minion crit rolls | Rare rings with Attunement, life and needed resistances while assembling the package; the player-crit version is wrong for this plan |
| Withstand the Elements, cold minion modifier | +1 minion spell damage per 5% overcapped cold resistance, up to 200% overcap; 275% total cold resistance reaches the 40-flat-damage modifier limit | Ordinary defensive gloves can keep the earlier character functioning, but do not grant this interaction; verify the actual modifier because another variant is a different item |
| Experimental teleport boots | Move your Tide and supporting totems after Fury Leap; the author wants at least three minions moved | The video description names the idol enchantment “Totems teleported to your location after traversal skill” as the alternative |
| Frozen Eyes of Formosus | The author's freeze-oriented amulet choice, with minion damage and minion freeze support | A defensive rare; Death Rattle is the author's damage-oriented alternative but trades away the same freeze package |
| Defensive belt | Endurance, hybrid health and resistance repair; the author uses a Brewmaster's example and previously used Legacy of the Quiet Forest | An ordinary belt with the needed defenses; the rare Uber combination is not required |
| Rare helmet / chest / relic | Attunement, health, endurance, minion crit multiplier and useful skill levels | Use the rolls you have. Tide Elemental or Warcry levels are suitable relic targets in the author's description |
This is a functional equipment map, not a shopping list demanding three or four LP everywhere. The author explicitly says the exalted and corrupted rolls in the planner are examples. Failed legendary crafts and missing health on his live rings are discussed openly in the video. Gear walkthrough at 27:56 and description clarifications.
Use one bee-summoning idol for the selected Apogee interaction: minion deaths create the weapon stacks, and Fury Leap's melee hit consumes them for the minion buff. Check that both the death condition and the melee hit occur during a boss fight. “I equipped two swords” is not equivalent to maintaining their conditional buff.
The saved planner's Apogee tooltip defines Frozen Vengeance up to eight stacks, eight-second stack duration, and a melee hit consuming a stack to grant minion Frenzy and 24% more damage against chilled enemies for eight seconds on its shown roll. The buff does not stack, and the trigger is limited to once per second. Do not double that buff to 48% merely because the setup dual-wields. The video discusses two weapons; the actual item tooltip controls the stacking rule. Selected planner and item tooltips.
The Eternal Font + Omen of Thunder idea, low-life Exsanguinous/Twisted Heart conversion and strength/intelligence experiments are alternative concepts in the video. They are not the full-life configuration selected here. Do not strip the life/endurance affixes from this setup in anticipation of an item combination you do not yet own.
Scorched Earth is a fire-conversion option, not a direct upgrade for this cold configuration. A conversion changes which damage, penetration, shred and support nodes apply. The resource catalog's comparison links do not mean that a fire item belongs in Sartory's cold Tsunami planner.
Blessings and idols without a fake fixed checklist
Sartory explicitly describes several blessings as unfinished and offers replacements by defensive need. The sensible way to copy him is to follow those choices, not claim that every blessing visible on his live character is the completed goal.
| Need | Author's selected direction | How to decide |
|---|---|---|
| Recovery | Health-regeneration blessing; mana is a temporary alternative | Check repeated boss casts and recovery without relying on kills |
| Resistances | All-resistance blessing; cold resistance can support the glove interaction | Fill actual poison, necrotic and void gaps; account for conditional totem bonuses |
| Endurance / armor | Endurance until adequately covered, then flat armor; increased armor is another option | Choose the missing defense before moving to a minion-damage blessing |
| Basic life | Flat-health blessing | Keep this full-life setup's defensive identity; ward-decay alternatives belong to another variant |
The exact final blessing names and rolls are not fully established in the video's spoken description. Inspect the saved planner and your available timeline choices rather than filling this table with a different Shaman author's list. The author's clear preference is defense first, then optional minion damage. Blessing discussion at 47:23.
After the bee idol and any required teleport effect, use idols to cover health, resistances and endurance needs. The author also discusses minion cold penetration, added minion spell damage from an enchantment and Aspect of the Boar effect. The arrangement depends on which glove, weapon and defensive affixes you have actually acquired.
Clearing and boss rotation
- Summon the Tide Totem and establish the supporting totems.
- Cast Maelstrom and Warcry to create stacks and trigger the Tide's mirrored Tsunami output.
- Use Fury Leap through successive packs. Confirm the totem follows you and its triggered Upheaval appears; land on an enemy when maintaining Apogee's melee-hit buff.
- Against a boss, maintain Warcry and Fury Leap on their appropriate cadence and cast Maelstrom as recovery permits. Keep the Tide in range of the target.
- Use Eterra's Blessing only when its heal or correctly targeted minion buff is useful. The author notes that targeting can pick a supporting totem instead of the Tide.
Fury Leap and the selected Warcry branch provide timed defensive windows. Freeze and chill help ordinary encounters, but a boss or dangerous projectile pattern still needs positioning. The author identifies fleeing lizards as awkward because damage is concentrated around the totem; moving the totem is more useful than blindly adding sheet damage.
Diagnose a broken totem loop
| Failure | Check | Correction |
|---|---|---|
| Tide remains behind after Fury Leap | Teleport affix or the matching idol enchantment; which minions are moved | Obtain the correct effect and test with all summons present; Seahenge alone is insufficient |
| Tsunami damage is absent or inconsistent | Whirlpools mirror path, Maelstrom Tsunami specialization and the cold totem route | Reproduce the selected trees before buying crit items |
| Permanent totem dies or keeps being resummoned | Minion health, leech/regen and incoming damage | Restore recovery and positioning; frequent resummons lose High Tide buildup |
| Mana fails on a long boss | Shaman recovery investments, Attunement and excessive Maelstrom spam | Let recovery catch up and fix the passive/gear engine instead of relying on on-kill sustain |
| Cold gloves give little benefit | Correct Withstand the Elements modifier and actual overcapped cold resistance | Check cold resistance in the active totem state; increased cold damage is not the same modifier |
| Health feels much lower than the planner | Actual rare/legendary rolls, rings and defensive suffixes | Compare real items with the planner's target rolls; do not treat its 4,190 health as an achieved total |
| Apogee buff disappears on a boss | Bee deaths, weapon stacks and a Fury Leap melee hit | Verify the full condition rather than replacing defensive gear with unconditional increased damage |
Patch review and evidence
Official 1.5.2.1 fixes Summon Tide Elemental VFX hiding other visual effects, including enemy attack indicators. This improves visibility; the note does not claim a Tsunami damage buff or a new corruption ceiling. Reviewed on October 11, 2026. Official hotfix.
The saved planner and reviewed automated English captions support this guide. Some spoken node names and final blessing rolls are not explicit, and the wiki has not played the character. The exact graph remains in the author planner; the page identifies those gaps instead of silently inventing points. No author loot-filter XML was verified for this configuration.
Evidence and references
- Sartory's full build video: leveling, skill engine, current gear, defensive choices, live demonstration and alternative boundaries.
- Sartory's saved configuration: level-100 planner, equipment and complete skill/passive allocations.
- Official Season 5 patch notes: Shaman ownership, 30-point unlock and Tide Elemental node definitions.
- Season 5 build explorer: compare the movement and gear dependencies before changing mastery or equipment.