Monsters and Memories Shaman in Shroud of the Avatar

Spirit heals, slows and curses that leave the enemy weaker. How to rebuild the M&M Shaman in Shroud of the Avatar: schools, deck and specialization.

This post is for players who kept a Monsters & Memories group alive as a Shaman and want the same job in SotA. It is part of every Monsters & Memories class in Shroud of the Avatar. If SotA is new to you, read the character creation guide and the deck building guide first.

There are no classes in SotA. You choose from 21 skill schools, put two of them in your specialization slots and build a deck of glyphs; that deck plus the pair is what players mean by a class. The classes explainer covers it.

What the Shaman is in Monsters & Memories

The Shaman is the spirit caster of Monsters & Memories. Its power comes from ancestors, old forces and the ghosts of the past, and the class listens to that power and channels it instead of commanding it. In a group it keeps everyone's Health up while it strengthens allies and weakens enemies. Seven races can play one: Deep Gnome, Goblin, Human, Ogre, Troll, Var'nai and Wood Elf.

The official deep dive puts debuffs on the same level as healing. Pact of Renewal is the main heal and works best when it lands before the damage does, and Omen of Lethargy, the attack slow, is often the most useful spell in a hard fight. The rework tied the whole kit to spirits and sickness. The heals dropped their old spore theme, Flameburst went because fire never suited the class, and the Spirit Wolf and Summon Companion pets were cut. Consume now has a 45 second cooldown, and the damage-over-time spells of two Shamans now stack on the same target.

Healing

• Pact of Renewal: Health every few seconds on one target; the main heal.

• Rite of Mending: the group version of Pact of Renewal, on a long cooldown.

• Communion of Regeneration: raises the group's Health regeneration; learned through research.

• Spirit Mending: the standard heal, with a short cast time.

Damage

• Ghostly Blight: magic damage, then more every few seconds; the main damage-over-time line.

• Malady: disease damage every few seconds.

• Spirit Bane: magic damage; the only direct damage line.

Debuffs

• Omen of Lethargy: lowers attack speed; the signature slow.

• Omen of Enfeeblement: lowers Strength, Dexterity and Agility.

• Omen of Susceptibility: lowers Disease, Holy and Magic resistance so the rest of your spells land harder.

Buffs

• Tribal Spirit: group Strength, Stamina, Dexterity and Agility; each cast uses a Ritual Talisman.

• Ancestral Wisdom: a self buff to Wisdom and Health regeneration, plus the sight of invisible things and magical effects.

• Ancestor's Eye: gives an ally See Invisibility and Sense Magic in one buff.

• Aspect of the Bear: the Ancestral Wisdom buff in the shape of a bear; a Shaman quest reward.

Utility

• Consume: turns your own Health into Mana; 45 second cooldown.

• Curing Ritual: removes one Disease effect from each group member.

• Ritual of Escape: takes the group into the spirit realm, clears all threat, hides it from the living and the undead, lets it see invisible things and restores Health and Mana over time; long cooldown.

Retained lines

• Regeneration, Berserker Spirit (the single-target line Tribal Spirit is built on), Disease, Magic and Holy Protection (they replace Electric and Poison Protection) and Pact of Haste (the old Haste) stay as buffs.

• Cure Disease and Poison, Dispel Magic, Purge, Shrink, Speed of the Predator, Speed of the Wild, Speed of the Pack, Summon Food and Drink, Enduring Breath, Gate, Soulbind and Polar Alignment: North stay as utility.

• Invisibility, which now grants See Invisible too, and Invisibility versus Undead are the stealth lines; Blind, Lurching Impairment and Root are crowd control.

The Shroud of the Avatar translation

The Shaman maps onto the Healer archetype with a debuffer's lean. The archetype library's Healer pairs Life with Sun; the Shaman swaps Sun for Water, because Water carries the slow. Primary schools: Life, for Healing Grace, Healing Touch, Purify and Purify Burst, and Water, for Soothing Rain, Cone of Cold and Ice Arrow. Support: Chaos, which the debuff combos are built on, and Earth, for Strength of Earth and Root. Tap Soul, your Consume, is a Death glyph and the one deck card from outside those four schools.

Specialize in Life and Water. You have exactly two specialization slots, and only the schools in them pay out. Both are magic schools, so each slot brings up to 16 points of school attunement at mastery 80, about 1.3 % school mastery per Specialization level and one extra deck copy of that school's glyphs. The attunement also feeds Cone of Cold and Ice Arrow, since hostile spell damage scales with the attunement gap between you and the target. Water Magic Specialization changes the slow itself as well: it strengthens Cone of Cold's attack speed penalty and gives Ice Arrow a chance to slow attacks. Slotting a school and training its Specialization skill are separate steps: you buy the skill from a trainer and set the slot at any trainer or Oracle Confirmatory, with no lock-in. Every pair has a name in game; Life plus Water is not one of the five Catnip has confirmed.

Chaos and Earth get no slot. Their glyphs still level as you use them and still go in the deck, without the mastery bonus or the extra copy.

Take this deck shape as a starting point. More copies unlock as a skill levels, and the last copy needs the school specialization, which is why Life and Water carry the multiples.

• Healing Grace x3

• Soothing Rain x2

• Healing Touch x2

• Cone of Cold x2

• Ice Arrow

• Tap Soul

• Strength of Earth

• Purify Burst

• Juxtapose (Chaos)

• Combos to look for: Enfeeblement, Clumsy and Evaporate

Combos are not deck cards. Some glyphs combine into a combo when both are on your bar, and all three of these are built on Juxtapose, a Chaos glyph, which is why Chaos is on your school list. Enfeeblement pairs Juxtapose with Strength of Earth and Evaporate pairs it with Douse, a Water glyph. Clumsy needs Air's Embrace, so it only forms if you splash Air. There is no maximum deck size. The minimum rises with your character to 23 glyphs and a short deck is padded with blank Slugs, so add copies as your skills level. Leave Healing Grace unlocked, since matching unlocked glyphs stack when they are dealt together.

Worn armor slows Air spells and raises their Focus cost, Fire and Death spells pay half of that, and other schools pay nothing, so in this deck only Tap Soul feels your armor, at the half rate. Choose Link What I Am Wearing on the deck, and equipping the deck puts that set on whenever the items are in your inventory.

There is no deck code here yet. Codes come out of the game: Share Deck copies one as text, and Import Deck turns a pasted code into a new deck. We will add one when the site's deck planner ships.

Ability by ability

M&M systems with no SotA equivalent: Enduring Breath (no underwater play), Gate and Soulbind (no bind points) and Polar Alignment: North (SotA already shows a compass).

Leveling path

Skills grow as you use them, and every level spends from your adventuring pool, so the order below is about what you set to Training. You start with 25,000 experience in each pool, experience is permanently doubled, and there is no hourly ceiling. Right-click a skill to choose Training, Not Training, Train to Level or Unlearning; a skill that is not training gains nothing. The XP planner has the exact experience each level costs.

First, Healing Touch, Ice Arrow and Tap Soul. That gives you a heal, a slow and Consume's trade of Health for Focus from the start. Leave everything else on Not Training.

Second, Healing Grace, Soothing Rain and Cone of Cold. These are your Pact of Renewal, Rite of Mending and Omen of Lethargy, the core of the class, and each sits deeper in its tree; the skill pages show the chain of skills to train first.

Third, Purify Burst, Strength of Earth and Juxtapose, the Chaos glyph your combos need. Then buy Life Magic Specialization and Water Magic Specialization from a trainer for the payouts described above. Skills and Specialization skills cap at 200; a realistic specialization target is 100.

None of this is permanent. Unlearning returns 100 % of a skill's experience to your pool, slowly on each award or at once with an Obsidian Item of Unlearning, and dying never takes experience from a skill. Battle Fatigue starts at adventurer level 80.

What Shroud of the Avatar does not have

Eight rows in the table map to nothing. Pact of Haste is the biggest gap: our map found no SotA glyph to match it, and haste is the one Shaman signature that does not carry over. Malady has no match because the only disease damage over time we found belongs to a creature, and players cannot learn it. Shapeshift, the nearest thing to Aspect of the Bear, is marked removed from the game. Ancestor's Eye, Purge, Shrink and Invisibility versus Undead have no counterpart, and Summon Food and Drink has nothing to feed in a game without hunger. Cocoon of Night and Celestial Blessing also shrink Ritual of Escape and the Protection lines from the group to you alone. The breath, bind and compass spells drop out for the reasons given under the table.

FAQ

Can I switch to another build later?

Yes, and it costs no experience. The two specialization slots change at any skill trainer or Oracle Confirmatory with no lock-in, and your decks and glyph counts update straight away. Unlearning returns 100 % of a skill's experience to your pool, slowly on each award or instantly with an Obsidian Item of Unlearning; a town Oracle also opens a free ten-minute instant window when you ask it to unmake one skill.

What is Life plus Water called in game?

Every pair of specializations has a name, shown in the Skills window, on the character sheet's Stats tab and when someone examines you. Catnip has confirmed five of the 210 names, and Life plus Water is not among them. A town Oracle knows every pair name, so ask one after you set the slots.

What replaces Ritual of Escape?

Cocoon of Night, a Moon glyph. It sheds threat and is one of SotA's five stealth glyphs, so it also hides you. It covers only you, and Moon is outside your four schools, so it levels without a specialization bonus. Your heals draw little threat to begin with: about a sixteenth of a point per point healed, against a quarter point per point of damage.

Why is Tap Soul in a healer deck?

It is the Shaman's Consume. Tap Soul trades your own Health for Focus, the resource your spells spend. Use it when Focus runs low and your Health can spare the cost.

The hub lists every Monsters & Memories class in Shroud of the Avatar. The Druid also maps to the Healer archetype, and the Enchanter is the series' control caster; live skill data is on combat records. Mechanics verified against Catnip Games' work log and patch notes as of October 2026; the balance pass across 200+ skills is still running, so numbers can move.