[2.0] Tanky Shockwave totems.

"

How do you do to do damage with incinerate while having Ancestral bond?

i don't, incinerate is only for building charges.

I suffer from heavy altitis and I wanna try this build in Tempest. I'll play it self-found, so let's see how far I get. I'm gonna write some sort of diary after every or every other session to give you some feedback.

[Session 1 - Normal Act I and II]
Once I killed Hillock, I took the Magma Orb gem and said good-bye to Fireball forever. After the Mud Flats quest, I took Flame Totem as suggested in the OP and been running the Magma Orb-FT combo ever since. Progression-wise was not much to say, other than that I nearly ripped to Merveil because my frames dropped for some reason.

Starting Act II, I found a B-R-B Quartz Scepter and upgraded it for +1 fire gems. I linked an Added Lightning gem to both my skills and went ham on the enemies. The act basically played itself, everything melted. It was raining uniques tho, I found a Prismweave, a Goldrim (30% ofc) and this Iron Ring trash with chaos damage. Oh, and some club with 300% increased phys.

Logged out after reaching Sarn Encampment.



[Session 2 - Normal Act III and IV]
As soon as I had Ancestral Bond available, I specced into it and got rid of Magma Orb in favor of Faster Casting. For there on it was dual totem all the way, not much to say about that. I reallocated a few traveling points as I got higher levels and tried to build up a life pool. At Kaom, I had about 1300 HP and against Malachai I had 1450.

The ridiculous rain of Uniques continued: Heatshiver (x2), some unique Skinning Knife, the Ignomon and something else I vendored. I have found more uniques on this char than in the rest of my Tempest play combined.



[Session 3 - Cruel up to Dried Lake]
Flame Totem is OP so I encountered nothing that was too difficult to handle. Almost ripped to a Storm Cultist exile (the summoner one) but luckily my seething flask was up. Closest call so far. I used my Scion to buy a Herald of Ash, a Added Fire Damage and a Physical to Lightning gem, so I could level them in the weapon swap. Also, I did every quest that gives me respec points for later.

After killing Piety, I made the switch to SWT. I was level 50 at that point and took Zealot's Oath and Eldrich battery with the 2 Piety skill points. I alt spammed some random 4-link gloves to link the spell properly (the gloves are still garbage but what can you do). I was using the Sovereignty cluster to run Hatred/HoA/Discipline for a while since I thought my 400 ES is not gonna carry me, but that was probably unnecessary. On the next level up, I took MoM.

I killed Dominus, last phase was a bit tricky because it's kinda hard to not get hit with all the ads and Dominus' AoE, but when I got pissed by not having mana, I just took a quick portal out. Afterwards was just some Dried Lake farming up to level 55 to be more leveled to the content. Also I wanted that tasty Written in Blood notable and did so by respeccing Sovereignty for it. I dropped Discipline for Arctic Armor, did another Lake run to see if I run in mana troubles but everything was fine. I am anxious about Kaom because Cruel Kaom frequently puts an end to my chars, so next stop in the tree will be Melding before I start accumulating damage.



[Session 4 - Rest of Cruel]
Kaom wasn't as scary as I thought, SWT does a good job killing the SRS he summons and Daresso is easy with totem builds as the arena is big enough to practically offscreen him. Entering the Belly of the Beast, I thought of leveling for a second so I can get Melding before the remaining fights but I ended up just rushing through.

Piety wasn't a problem at all, just make sure you kill those Eye Hatchery things as they spawn because their Lightning Call spell (or whatever it is) can stun you while running from the laser.
Hardest boss in the Malachai organ quest is Maligaro for sure. I had to portal once because I ran out of pots but in the end he dropped.

I entered Malachai's arena with around 2.6k HP and 2k damage on the totem tooltip (including auras). First stage was easy, I even tanked a smash because I didn't see him winding up for that. It dropped me to about a quarter of my HP, if he had crit I would have probably been dead, so take care.
Second stage was way more stressful and I experienced the drawback of going EB here. There is just so much stuff going on that your best bet if you run out of mana is to take a trip to town. I think, I did that two or three times. The fight took me pretty long, partly because I tried to keep my potions up by killing ads and partly because I sometimes didn't realize that I had no mana. Damage-wise, the first form was scarier tho.

In merciless, I killed Hillock, got a nice ring from Tarkleigh and went to my hideout to craft life on that ring and cold res on my boots. I am thinking about 4-linking my boots so I can get rid of the ridiculous gloves I am using.



[Session 5 - Merciless up to Docks]
Merciless went pretty smooth so far, I 4-linked my boots and moved my gems there so I can get rid of those abysmal gloves, but no luck yet (one would think it would be easy to find something better, but I don't sacrifice much to RNGsus). Act 1 was easy, resists are looking good as well, so I just progressed.

Only hard thing in Act 2 was the Weaver fight which I took during a Consuming Tempest and boy, that soul eater buff lasts forever on enemies. He dropped my to half HP with 1 attack but if you get him to attack your golem, he is not too big of a threat anyway. I also opted to kill all bandits as I won't be picking up power charges for a long time anyway, so I thought the +1 was a better option.

Starting Act 3, my lightning res was quite low, so Crema Piety was kinda scary, but I had around 3K HP that time, so dying is out of the question. On the way to Docks, I found a white Two-Stone ring that I transmuted for +72HP and augmented for some lightning res, which was a perfect fit for my needs. The regal unfortunately yielded mana reg, which is a useless stat considering that my ES isn't affected by that, and I wanted to craft further res on it but checking my stats revealed that I actually need the strength, so what can you do? I could have taken a +30 strength node, but I already have 2 tech nodes with the dex and I really didn't want to pool more points into stats considering that the upcoming Shadow life notable comes with +20 strength.
I had to log out in Sewers because Spinesnap thought it would be funny to show up when my Quicksilver ran dry. Funny thing is that he was gone when I reentered the Sewers, I even looked for him to get some revenge, but I couldn't find him.
I finished the busts quest and rushed to Docks afterwards where I took the WP and logged out.

Tomorrow, I will farm Docks and hope to find gloves. Any with life + res would do, so come on RNG, don't be a Richard. I am almost res capped and I think I still have a suffix slot in my chest piece, although I would prefer a better base. I want to be res capped before Piety, so I might have to tinker a bit with my gear. I also could use a better wand because this build scales insanely well with spell damage, but the game thinks I am playing Kinetic Blast or something. At least I could upgraded my shield. I always thought Catarina would craft +spell dmg on shields but it is wand-only unfortunately, so I simply took more ES.



[Session 6 - Change of plans]
Farming Docks got me nothing at all. I even swapped out Phys to Lightning for Item Rarity, but I still ended up getting nothing. After 2 levels I got bored and thought I should rather go on and farm Dried Lake. So I went to take down Piety and Dominus.
Lunaris 2 nearly got me killed when I went upstairs to find a huge pack of Spirit Walker titty bitches. I didn't fight them and just rerolled the area. Piety herself was easy.
Dominus' last phase was stupid to fight since I didn't have a staunching flask which meant I portaled out a lot.

I did a single Dried Lake run after reaching Highgate to test how it would go and considered it easy. I then proceeded to link Arc+Culling Strike+Item Rarity in a wand that I bought from a vendor. It took me 37 alts to roll spell damage on it, so I settled with the first one I got. Further plans include to ignore the Act 4 quest line after freeing Deshret's spirit and to map a bit. I still don't have a Zana in Tempest by the way.



[Session 7 - Dried Lake and low maps]
Farming Dried Lake was way better than docks, Voll is easy to manipulate and drops decently. I farmed there until I hit 71 and then I went off to do low level maps. My plan was to get a Zana, so approximately 25 maps later I got one in Cemetery. I wasn't too pissed off about having to run that much before she appeared because I want to hit 82 for the challenge anyway.

I dropped a decent armor and a really good helmet and also I got a better set of gloves. They are still pretty trash but still better than the magic ones. I still need a wand, tho.

I ran through mines to free Deshret's spirit for the skill point and logged out.

Stats right now:
4K HP
1.3k ES
Resistances capped, I even got 1% chaos res.
Tooltip on SWT with auras: 6.1k (that's enough to oneshot trash with a crit and it eats through rares/bosses reasonably well)

Small update: Crafted my wand. Alt spammed it until I rolled T2 Hybrid, augmented and got cast speed, regaled it (mana on kill - useless) and crafted the 4c spell damage on it. DPS increased by over 1k, so you should probably do that earlier.



[Session 8 - Getting the challenge]
Short update only, I was farming maps to get the level 82 challenge. No hardships encountered, the worst mod seems to be chilling ground because if you accidentally cast totems onto that, they barely make damage. The cast speed reduction must be incredible.
I reached 82 pretty fast, partly because there was a 50% XP tempest in Arena and I had like 4 Arena maps.
I started a TS-Ranger, so I benched this character for a while. After reaching 82 on the Ranger, I will probably finish Merciless on this char.

After all, I had a blast playing this char. Self-found seemed to have little drawback as you don't really need a 5L or even decent gear.

"

Karyoplasma wrote:

I suffer from heavy altitis and I wanna try this build in Tempest. I'll play it .... ()

ey i just want to say that i appreciate what you are doing. Very fun to read!!.

Edit: Abbreviated a little bit the quote

Hey there, thanks for your build ! I think im gonna try it as a Tempesting Templar. =)

Fairly new player here. Thanks a lot for the build guide; I've been looking for something like this. It's a very relaxing way to play the game and learn.

I'm currently level 42 (over-levelled quite a bit) and I'm actually still using Flame Totem with 1k dps (3L Added Lightning, Increased Critical Chance). I'm also dual wielding maces for added Spell/Elemental damage.

If it's not too much trouble, would you mind answering a few questions?

1. I noticed that my DPS with Flame Totem is vastly superior to the Shockwave totem. What advantage does the Shockwave have over the Flame?

2. So far, the Flame totem also seems to have a larger attack range/radius. Are the unique items you have listed really vital for the Shockwave totem to work as you've demonstrated?

Thanks again.

"

klan_nedoklan wrote:

15 exalted minimum investment is very far away from chap build.

Rathpith Globe current lowest price in Warbrands is 10 ex???
Lightning Coil lowest is 4.5.
Suggest to avoid ES builds for new leagues and first character.

Im playing this build in tempest. You don't need those item to perform well.

also,this char aint an ES char. It used ES as mana to cast spell. You don't need 900es armor to actually make it work. The build depends on life to survive,and es to cast spell - Eldritch battery.

I bought a 6l corrupted armor 3b 3r for 15chaos. Rest of my gear is found and/or bought @1chaos per.

Im loving it so far. I took more life node since I am tempest/hardcore but im still 1hitting trash mobs and killing stuff easy.

"

Archaevist wrote:

Fairly new player here. Thanks a lot for the build guide; I've been looking for something like this. It's a very relaxing way to play the game and learn.

I'm currently level 42 (over-levelled quite a bit) and I'm actually still using Flame Totem with 1k dps (3L Added Lightning, Increased Critical Chance). I'm also dual wielding maces for added Spell/Elemental damage.

If it's not too much trouble, would you mind answering a few questions?

1. I noticed that my DPS with Flame Totem is vastly superior to the Shockwave totem. What advantage does the Shockwave have over the Flame?

2. So far, the Flame totem also seems to have a larger attack range/radius. Are the unique items you have listed really vital for the Shockwave totem to work as you've demonstrated?

Thanks again.

No,you can check my gear atm and im having a blast with shockwave. You can also buy a 5l for like 2-5chaos. INC AOE /fastercast / shocktotem / added fire and phys to light.

Thanks for the information, Deadbringer. Your choice of skills are pretty interesting. I'm curious which skill is better for this: Added Fire (add x% physical as fire) vs Added Lightning (add x–y Lightning Damage).

By the way, does the Heralds work on totem ? I thought this had been changed long ago.

"

Archaevist wrote:

Fairly new player here. Thanks a lot for the build guide; I've been looking for something like this. It's a very relaxing way to play the game and learn.

I'm currently level 42 (over-levelled quite a bit) and I'm actually still using Flame Totem with 1k dps (3L Added Lightning, Increased Critical Chance). I'm also dual wielding maces for added Spell/Elemental damage.

If it's not too much trouble, would you mind answering a few questions?

1. I noticed that my DPS with Flame Totem is vastly superior to the Shockwave totem. What advantage does the Shockwave have over the Flame?

2. So far, the Flame totem also seems to have a larger attack range/radius. Are the unique items you have listed really vital for the Shockwave totem to work as you've demonstrated?

Thanks again.

good to see people are playing this too.

Flame totem is also very strong, i would say they are equally good.

Later on, when u have high crit chance, shockwave totem will shock and freeze, due to physical to lightning gem and hatred. It also has knockback.

Another thing i like is that because its a physical spell, has many "more damage" support gems.

I also like that 3 gems from the 6L are red. This allows you to use lightning coil. With flame totem, most support gems are blue, and cuz of this you will have to use an ES chest. This is a problem cuz i really like lightning coil :D.

Overall I believe it is a more defensive option with almost the same DPS.

The AoE are pretty similar.

U could replace those unique with good rares. Since rathpith is so expensive in tempest, u can just use a rare shield with ES, spell damage, life, resistances, spell crit chance, all this stats are good for the build. Look for something that fits your current setup, probably life and ES is what you need first.