Questions about flame totem

So I have been trying out a flame totem build now and finally got my 6 link.

I have seen many people suggesting the following links;

Flame totem, Fire penetration, Faster casting, Added chaos damage, Greater multiple projectiles, Faster projectiles.

I am going a non-crit build and are looking for more ways to scale dps with flame totems.

I was thinking about possibly changing out faster projectiles for added lightning damage for shocking enemies. I also use flammability curse to lower resist, so perhaps swapping out fire pen for added lightning instead?

Maybe there are other gems to swap out? would spell echo be any good?

I have also been thinking about doing Atziri with this build at some point (Bloodlines).
That is the reason I went with the non-crit build and started as marauder to get more defensive nodes with blood magic. Or is a crit build necessary for doing Atziri?

Thanks for any help!

Swapping out fire pen will nerf damage, there is not a better dps support. Faster projectiles would be the gem to swap if you have something better but you are not going to see a huge jump in dps with A light or A cold. Shocking is going to be fairly tricky for bosses no matter what and is meaningless on lower mobs that melt immediately. The lightning and cold heralds are more or less mandatory if you are not BM and no reason to be BM. The only significant way to boost damage after 6L is adding crit or going low life. If you go crit and have A light you may be able to shock the mobs that matter.

Edit: echo doesn't affect totems.

Edit2: use elemental weakness with heralds.

Thanks for the reply, really appreciate it.

not going crit is a mistake.

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Malone wrote:

not going crit is a mistake.

If you play in groups I would agree. For solo play FT does pretty decent damage although i have not tried it against atziri. Even a little crit will make a difference if you can shock since FT hits so often.

I always wondered about the benefit of shocking, sure you hit often, but the individual damage is so low, will the mobs actually stay shocked any decent amount of time?
I use my flametotem build as mf, so damage is low as 2 of my 6-link gems are increased rarity and quantity, so only play low level maps.
but I use three dragons to get shock to proc... can't say I have noticed a big difference so considering swapping it again for a headpiece with inc rarity
purely gut feeling though, so if anyone has more info about this it would be appreciated :)

I run mine with dual curse, flammability and ele weakness, linked to curse on hit and arc, works pretty well and even with very low tooltip dps it does alright

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blubbber wrote:

I always wondered about the benefit of shocking, sure you hit often, but the individual damage is so low, will the mobs actually stay shocked any decent amount of time?
I use my flametotem build as mf, so damage is low as 2 of my 6-link gems are increased rarity and quantity, so only play low level maps.
but I use three dragons to get shock to proc... can't say I have noticed a big difference so considering swapping it again for a headpiece with inc rarity
purely gut feeling though, so if anyone has more info about this it would be appreciated :)

I run mine with dual curse, flammability and ele weakness, linked to curse on hit and arc, works pretty well and even with very low tooltip dps it does alright

I don't have any experience with crit FT but I agree with your thoughts on it. The best chance to shock something that matters is three dragons and crit but I am just not sure hom much multi you would have to stack. Not doing any math and just pondering the idea seems pretty unlikely on a boss. Linking prolif and shocking trash close to boss would work fine.

when I find a decent headpiece with MF, I will try running a few of the same white maps back to back with and without three dragons and see if there is a noticeable difference in killspeed. if it is too hard to tell, it is obviously not worth it and I may ditch three dragons for the FT build

Are you blood magic and using an Infernal Mantle? If not you should do that first since Infernal Mantle is very strong with Flame Totem. You can try Three Dragons and/or Herald of Thunder. Even 10% chance to shock is enough since you hit so frequently.

There's nothing wrong with your gem set up if that's what you were thinking. Since Flame Totem scales very well with level you can always buy a level 20 Flame Totem gem if you really feel like you need more dps.