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You guys wanted some feedback and I've got 300 hours under a neo shaman so I figured I'd post this here.
First off, I really enjoy the new path system - I think it adds a much needed depth to the class and a lot of "customization" which is really what people want for most classes (aka warriors, shifters, thieves). I thoroughly enjoyed playing a neo shaman and just wanted to say thanks for putting in the new system.
There are two flaws I think though in the system...
1) Limiting a particular immortal to certain paths is pretty hampering - times don't always match up with a given Immortal if you want a specific set of paths or your RP might not match up well either... and for certain combos, you're basically required to follow specific Immortals even if they aren't even active or accepting followers. This really should just be either self-set by the player like specializations/focus/etc or just allow any Immortal to grant any path. You already have to go through the hoops to get empowered so this really isn't going to be abused. Maybe this won't be as important later on when more paths are added but for now, I think it's a bad choice to leave it as is.... it's also worse for evil shamans considering there aren't that many evil Immortals that are active.
2) I'm not sure it's entirely possible, but with mana costs and new communes, as it stands now I'd basically never suggest someone play a giant/mino/dumb shaman. Even with 1200 mana and black channels, I used my mana up a lot and when I lost black channels and mana regeneration gear, I noticed how bad it could get (and I was even warpriest light focused). If you could make a commune a flat % of mana, I could see it working perhaps but as it stands now the mana costs on some of these abilities is absurdly high for a low-mana race. For example:
Level 29: holy word 100% 100 mana
Level 30: dire omens 100% 40 mana
Level 32: noxious cloud 76% 100 mana
Level 33: oracle 100% 150 mana
Level 34: demonfire 100% 20 mana
Level 37: avatar of venom 100% 85 mana
Level 38: aristaeia 92% 200 mana
Level 39: miraculous foresight 89% 250 mana
Level 40: wither 95% 175 mana
Level 42: rot 88% 50 mana
Level 45: malice 100% 50 mana
Level 48: seal fate 99% 250 mana
There is absolutely no way possible a non-Imperial "dumb" shaman could use half of this effectively. It could be different for other paths but the cost on a lot of this was pretty nutty considering some of these are 20%+ of a drow's mana pool with gear at hero. It's also very very very very common at hero to need to "spam" abilities to land and combat with a shaman lasts a long time... originally I was sad when Danjuh and Lona was deleted and the new paths came out but a fire giant shaman with these costs? Screw that.
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With that though, let's get into the specifics. I went path of Revelation first (and looking back I wouldn't take this path first) and was happy with my choice as this path has extremely high utility... and let me be incredibly lazy 
21 Sanctimonious Sight
30 Dire Omens
33 Oracle
39 Miraculous Foresight
48 Seal Fate
-Sanctimonious Sight was a pretty amazing power. It makes your unveiling and illuminate last longer, harder to dispel, and your illuminate will do a DEVAS at hero. A 1-round lag DEVAS that costs 5 mana is pretty badass and surprised quite a lot of people near the end of fights. The part about "hard to distort" was hard to test but it seemed that bard distortion and other similar effects had little affect on my character... but I also had insane saves and was a drow so your mileage may vary. I was kind of hoping that my unveiling would do an AoE attack (maybe not as strong in damage) since the helpfile seemed to hint at it... but all in all, a great first ability in the path.
-Dire Omens was pretty lackluster. It's mental damage that stacks -2 wisdom per cast, but the damage drops drastically with each use and as they get wounded it does even less. Even after three or four uses, you're hitting lower case damage. There were two echos you could land but the only difference seemed to be the initial damage. The lag was 1-2 round, which was a pain since you can't plan if you'll have the time to do something before someone flees/etc. I found myself never using this ability... I wondered if it's technically possible to instant-kill someone with dropping their wisdom to 0 but when you're doing "scratches" after a few casts and it'd take at least 16 rounds to do this, you could just have easily killed them the normal way at that point. Even demonfire seemed a better alternative with 1-round guaranteed damage... and with miasma, forget it. I know every ability can't be amazing but this one just needs some tweaking.
-Oracle... man, it's going to be hard to ever play a shaman again and not take the path for this ability. It's perfect danger sense - so anytime anyone enters the zone, or the air above, you sense them... and if they're sitting in the area (like an assassin), every few hours it'll let you know again they are still there. This alone makes this ability absolutely amazing - I knew if Nyst was around or anyone was hiding in the Refuge, I knew of every thief/assassin that walked into the area, I could sleep on Eastern road safely or I could be ranking with a group somewhere and not spam "where" at all because I had no need to. This alone would make this one of the best abilities...
But wait, there's more!
"You have a brief vision of Deaer in The Snowy Courtyard."
If someone flees or teleports/words away from you, you get constant "visions" of where they are. Ever wanted to find that guy who teleported away almost dead? Then this ability is for you. It doesn't always fire and it seemed to work better the "closer" you were to that area but holy crap was this helpful. I had to keep my log searcher up constantly to try and remember where rooms were with names like "The Path in the Forest"... but this ability alone is why someone should take this shaman path. You're given the absolute peace of knowing you can *never* be surprised by someone and you get the lazy man's ability to see where your opponents ran to. Without a shadow of a doubt this is the best ability in the path of revelation.
-Miraculous Foresight is "meh", seemed more of a filler than anything. It was useful for exploring (basically makes you immune to instant-death abilities) and would make me pretty much immune to assassinate/cleave/pwk, which is useful, but oracle was much more useful in that regard. And with a crazy 250 mana cost for an ability that lasts 3 hours at hero, I rarely used this at all. Don't get me wrong though, it's a nice thing to have. Just not a huge gamechanger (but could be depending on who you fight a lot).
-Seal Fate was a mixed bag. I though it'd be a lot better than it actually was given the huge limitations and mana cost. To my knowledge, it hampers healing/regeneration (but doesn't stop it completely like healing curse) and stops healing sleep... but not that stupid acolyte altruism ability so the healers of the Fortress would just "pull" the seal fate to themselves to save their target with a healing sleep. It's got a 200 hour cooldown, unless they die which will reset it, so you better hope they do or you're not seeing it for a long time. It also doesn't seem to last that long on your enemy either. There's some weirdness around shifters (since you actually have to be able to speak to them) but hopefully they fix that on the bug board. I got a few kills from this, no doubt, so I guess in that regard it was nice... my whole plan was to rot, malice, and seal fate but it didn't pan out to be that effective as malice usually did the trick by itself. The whole line about "Additionally, skills that are prone to critical successes and luck are much more so when used against them" could be useful I guess if you partnered with someone with cleave/pwk, but I never really grouped with others and that's pretty useless for a shaman. If I were to fix one thing to make it better, I'd say that it shouldn't be removed via the acolyte power... it's kind of your "ultimate" ability and to have it just transferred when you're sealing a particular person's fate is pretty lame.
And now for the path of Venom which people complained so adamantly about... I can't think of a single time I've had so many people complain OOC about something, most of which they never understood how it worked. It's a very offensive path with very little utility, which helped counter-balance the path of revelation (no offense, very high utility). Since I was also a drow, this path is what made me actually a force to deal with.
21 Cataplexy
28 Miasma
32 Noxious Cloud
37 Avatar of Venom
45 Malice
-Cataplexy seemed to be a simple twist to normal poison. It could "mini-stun" once after it set in and it hampered dexterity instead of strength. I never really found myself using this directly since it's one of the "miasma" options, but I guess with this plus the wither -dex edge, you could drop a lot of dexterity... but why would you really want that as a shaman?
-Miasma... a love/hate relationship with this power. Without a doubt it's one of the strongest abilities of the path, if not that strongest, but it was a "gamble" a lot of times. Miasma has 2 round lag, hits for a DEMO-DEV, strips any poison resistance (including favor of the sun, avatar of venom and even quaggath blood so don't bother getting it), and can land a random type of poison. It can land the normal poison, cataplexy, anti-coagulating venom (-con which helps stack for malice), neuro poison, emetic poison, fear poison... and nothing. I might be missing one but that's pretty much the jist of the abilities. Now most people would look at that and go "holy #### that's OP" and a lot of times I found myself using this ability over most other things but...
1) If you want pure damage, there's better options with less mana and less lag.
2) I cannot tell you how many times I lost a kill because I landed fear poison when I didn't want it. Fear poison can be great or it can be your worst enemy. When you start a fight with someone and they're suddenly feared, the fight is basically over for the next few hours and more often than not, they're running away. When you're fighting someone with a group of people and land fear poison, all that bashing/tripping/lagging that helps you normally seal a gang kill goes out the door as they instantly whimpy away.
3) It's random what you get. I've spammed this 5 times on a dwarf and landed everything I wanted, I've spammed it 10 times on an elf and got one poison out of it. In the beginning, I spammed this all the time but I soon noticed there were plenty of times if I had just done plague, demonfire or whatever else, I would have killed them. Miasma is very "in your face" which kind of counters how most shamans win fights. People also LOVED to bitch about this ability so you'd get people threatening to multi-kill or full-sac you all because you landed a fear poison and the fight was basically stalled for awhile.
In the end, it's a very solid ability with a lot of random side-effects... some that will help you seal kills, others that won't. It definitely helped my shaman have a lot more "offense" though which was nice.
-Noxious Cloud is pretty lame. You can't do it inside most cabals or a lot of key areas, it does nothing but a very very small amount of damage with a slight chance to land a normal poison, and you're not even immune to it with avatar of venom. I used this cute ability once or twice than realized it was a complete waste of mana.
-Avatar of Venom is a pretty amazing ability. It gives a solid amount of poison resistance although ironically it'll get stripped by miasma from another venom shaman... but more importantly it "eats" poison effects. So let's say you get bit from a cavefisher - on the hour, the aura will devour the poison and remove it.
But wait, there's more!
It also makes it so if an opponent gets close (throw, bash, trip, etc), they get a random poison effect just like miasma does. This can help quickly spread the venoms to your opponent. It also works on "armor blocking" so it seemed it could be more useful for a "dumb" shaman with warpriest heavy armor focus.
But wait.... there's more!
It also stops any "close" knock-out effects. I saw it stop garrote, blackjack and strangle... there could be more but I rarely fought people who did these kind of abilities. Needless to say, this alone is extremely powerful but with everything else wrapped together it's a very nice ability. It's also pretty cool that you get a "Toxic Aura" that's bright green that shows for your character.
-Malice.... now to stop the endless bitching about this ability, let me say that it is very very easy to survive malice. All you need is a small set of gear you can keep in your container and suddenly this ability does very little. If you don't know about this helpful FAQ, than use it: http://diku.qhcf.net/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?RotFAQ
Now malice for all intensive purposes is the exact same as the old Rot with a full twists. First off, you won't get an echo when it's placed and you won't see it immediately in your effect list... but if a venom shaman nods and communes on you in combat and you see no echo, when then DUH they just used malice (it's 2 round lag). After 4 hours (which is plenty of time to get the gear on or even go collect it from scratch), you'll get an echo about malice starting and the particular echo will tell you how "strong" the malice will be. At this point it'll show up in your effects list and you'll know how long it'll last. To my knowledge, you could technically stack poison resist right before the echo and it'd help stave off the effect (no point doing it before you fight since miasma will just remove it all).
Now once it starts, malice has a tiny immolate effect - instead of the damage ticking once per hour, it fires per "tick" like immolate. If you're a cloud giant villager, it's going to be quite a bit of damage... but most other people seemed ok with it unless I stacked on plague/poisons/rot (which now just does another immolate effect).
Anyone with half a brain or more than 10 con has no reason to die to malice unless you get -constitution damnation and a bunch of other things stacked on you... which was exactly how Rot used to work. I found myself only using it on people I particularly hated who I knew had low con (Hi Ruk!) or on Fortress healers to keep them busy with healing sleeps while I continued to raid or fight. Malice got me quite a bit of kills but again, if you play it smart, you'll be fine.
All in all, I liked both paths and would highly suggest them for someone wanting utility and offense. Looking at the other paths and seeing them in action, I do think there are better combinations to try out (and I probably will someday) but I was not disappointed with the choice I made for these two paths.
Enjoy!
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