Why is Soul Mantle so bad?

It's a serious question, the drawbacks are huge and the "7th link" sucks after cruel because of low totem life and wasted on Searing Bond, Shockwave Totem and Flame Totem users.
It's the only unique related to totems and I have never seen a single totem build using it.
What are your thoughts about this unique?
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It's really powerful offensively, but I don't want to spam curse dispel potions constantly. So I don't use it. If there were a ring or something that made you curse proof, would totally use it.

In most zones, using it is perfectly safe in Curse Aids mode most of the time. Since you can keep your distance. However, it's extremely dangerous in certain situations. Lunaris 3, a snooze mode harmless zone where I do almost all of my grinding, is basically asking for death with this thing. Vulnerability, Projectile Weakness, Flammability, Elemental Weakness; the tentacle shooters can potentially kill you with one hit.

A cruel irony is that Spell Totem is so much more inferior than Flame Totem, that even getting it as a free support, it's not really worth it. A spell totem Fireball has a tiny bit less than half the damage of a Flame Totem. So, either pure totems are a bit too good, or spell totem is a bit too bad.

"Expert Armchair Designer" = "Person Who Can See That Some Numbers Are Significantly Bigger Than Other Numbers" --->
Last edited by LimitedRooster on Feb 26, 2015, 6:10:14 PM
I tend to use Soul Mantle on totemers and just use a skill that's already a totem (Shockwave, Flame, SBond) or I use my own L18+ spell totem support and eschew the "free" one. It's a pretty useless upside after about level 60. The totem life% and +totem are the true upsides, the fixed link is just a low-level bonus.

As for the self-cursing downside, Warding flasks and pray. It's very risky, and you can always get suddenly Vuln'd right as you turn the corner into something that can chain-stun you or physically murder you. +totem is a really big upside, to be fair. 50% more damage is no joke.

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You can get away with a 7L from the low level spell totem support if you focus really hard on enemy cc (freeze or {stun, knockback, chill}). I saw a great tri-totem build where the character ran around with Freeze Mine prolif while the 7L totems did work and that seemed pretty legit. Certainly map viable, at any rate.

On an unrelated topic, this is what uniques should be like. It's nice to have to think instead of just BiS shenanigans.
Last edited by pneuma on Feb 26, 2015, 6:55:28 PM
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It's a serious question, the drawbacks are huge and the "7th link" sucks after cruel because of low totem life and wasted on Searing Bond, Shockwave Totem and Flame Totem users.
It's the only unique related to totems and I have never seen a single totem build using it.
What are your thoughts about this unique?


I have used it on one character previously and liked the ability to cast 2 totems and still use other self cast offensive spells. The self curses were sometimes a pain, but not really that much different than intentionally going into a map with tough mods.
PoE Origins - Piety's story http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2081910
Last edited by DalaiLama on Feb 26, 2015, 7:10:19 PM
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pneuma wrote:
On an unrelated topic, this is what uniques should be like. It's nice to have to think instead of just BiS shenanigans.
I disagree. It feels like toyems have become balanced around Soul Mantle to stick an extent that the chest is mandatory if you're using totems.
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
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ScrotieMcB wrote:
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pneuma wrote:
On an unrelated topic, this is what uniques should be like. It's nice to have to think instead of just BiS shenanigans.
I disagree. It feels like toyems have become balanced around Soul Mantle to stick an extent that the chest is mandatory if you're using totems.


Maybe spell totems but not the regular totems. I'm running flame totem on a 5L in bloodlines and it is strong. Even if I had a soul mantle I wouldn't use it. I don't need more offense.
When I kill a man he stays dead.
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ScrotieMcB wrote:
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pneuma wrote:
On an unrelated topic, this is what uniques should be like. It's nice to have to think instead of just BiS shenanigans.
I disagree. It feels like toyems have become balanced around Soul Mantle to stick an extent that the chest is mandatory if you're using totems.

Most totem builds don't use Soul Mantle.
Most totem builds don't use Spell Totem, either.

So... no, that's not it. It's a huge upside with a huge downside. That's a good thing.
The problem is that as a totem summoner, there is a need to constantly replace totems as they are immobile and that leads to being multi-cursed with very dangerous curses.
Something that no summoner has to worry about.
Another question, what are the totems max health at lvl 20??

A good effect for the mantle would be a "clever contruction-like" effect, so totems could not be damaged for 2/3/4/whatever seconds after being placed. That's an actually good plus.
Last edited by CadStolichnaya on Feb 26, 2015, 9:07:41 PM
I meant spell totems, actually.
When Stephen Colbert was killed by HYDRA's Project Insight in 2014, the comedy world lost a hero. Since his life model decoy isn't up to the task, please do not mistake my performance as political discussion. I'm just doing what Steve would have wanted.
Out of curiosity, is it feasible to keep permanent curse immunity uptime by simply filling your belt with a bunch of curse-immune utility flasks? IIRC quicksilvers have the best economy of uptime, charge usage, and charge cost.

I always thought it would be cool to make a triple flameblast totem build where all you do is cast the totems and the fourth one would kill the first, setting off the FB spell.
IGN: Ikimashouka, Tsukiyattekudasai, DontCallMeMrFroyo

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