Incinerate Totem Chieftain - Safe, Tanky, 100k+ DPS on a Budget

Atziri Run + Character Gear
Obligatory Dried Lake

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/elevator13 - character's name is "Sammamish"

As you can see in the Atziri run video, I have 14.7k DPS per Totem without Elemental Overload up on a 5L with a level 19 Incinerate. With EO up my damage per Totem goes to 20.5k DPS. Multiply that by 2.5 because of the Incinerate ramping damage multiplier and by 2 again because of 2 totems, and we get 20.5 * 5 = 102.5. This can be even higher with a level 20 (or 21) Incinerate and a 6L - I think this build could get 150k+ DPS with the right gear. This tooltip also doesn't factor in the 59% fire penetration we have, pushing our actual damage even higher.

-Very tanky with several layers of defense
---High amounts of life, armour, and life regen to mitigate damage
---With the Tukohama and Arohongui ascendancies, totems will also taunt enemies away from us and cause them to deal ~17% less damage if we get grazed by projectiles/AoE because of the 8% less Damage from Arohongui and the 10% less Damage dealt to other targets from the Taunt debuff
---Once dropped totems will do the damage for us - can spend the rest of our time repositioning and manually dodging attacks
---With the Hinekora ascendancy, totems will also leech life back to us

-Good in parties - totems will taunt enemies, cause them to deal 17% less damage (explained above), and amply physical/fire damage dealt by anyone in the party by 16%

-Non-crit - makes gearing cheaper and easier since we don't have to get any crit stats
---We can also invest more into tankiness on the tree compared to crit builds.
---We still get great damage via Elemental Overload! EO's 40% more Elemental damage multiplier provides us with the damage increase equivalent of 300% increased critical strike chance and 150% increased crit multiplier while it's active (compared to a standard 5% base crit chance skill)

-Can run any map mod
---This build is completely reflect immune. Totems will take their reflected Fire damage instead of us, and they are immune to Fire damage because the Tukohama ascendancy

-Low mana costs

-59% fire pen, making fire damage-resistant enemies a non-issue

-Clear slower than self-cast builds
---Totems take about a second to activate and start using abilities
---Incinerate also has to ramp up before it hits max damage

-Lower damage ceiling than crit builds - we can only scale our DPS from increased damage, cast speed, and added damage to spells, all of which have diminishing returns

-Cannot buy several required gems as Marauder, will have to mule them or buy from other players [note: a Shadow can get all the gems you need]

-Cannot target specific enemies like a self-caster, so dealing with "Allies cannot die" enemies, farming certain Uber lab mods for keys, and killing enemies while Atziri is healing can be tricky

Leveling a spellcaster from the Marauder start is painful at best, so instead I would level as 2H melee. Before you've killed Gravicus, I would use Molten Strike, Sunder, and Ancestral Protector as your damaging skills. After, you can either use Earthquake as your main skill, or get Ancestral Bond and go dual Ancestral Warchief - the leveling trees below assume Warchief, but if using Earthquake the only difference is not picking up Ancestral Bond until later. Earthquake links would be Earthquake - Less Duration - Melee Physical Damage - Added Fire; Warchief would be Warchief - Melee Physical Damage - Added Fire - Faster Attacks. Once you've picked up enough spell/elemental damage from the Templar area, respec your melee nodes (7 points) and switch to spellcasting totems in mid-late Cruel.

If you have <50% projectile speed, use Flame Totem - Faster Projectiles as your main ability setup instead of Spell Totem - Incinerate. Support your main ability with Faster Casting and Fire Penetration if you have the slots. Switch once you have more projectile speed (wands, the Winds of Change unique gloves, and quality Incinerate are good sources). Also, even while using Flame Totem, try to keep your Spell Totem and Incinerate gems slotted so they are properly leveled when you switch.

26 point tree


63 point tree, before respec

63 point tree, post respec - spec out of Butchery and Born to Fight, use one of the refunded points to path by Arsonist instead of Resolute Technique to get to Templar, respec out of Resolute Technique and the pathing nodes, and dump the rest into the Celestial Judgement/Punishment wheel by Ancestral Bond

76 point tree

90 point tree

103 point tree/level 82 "complete" tree

What you do from here depends on whether you want more damage or survivability. For damage, pick up the Mental Rapidity cluster by Elemental Overload for more cast speed. Otherwise, finish rounding out the Purity of Flesh cluster and pick up the Tireless cluster for more life. You can also get the jewel socket by the Marauder start.

115 point/level 94 tree

Arohongui, Tukohama, Ngamahu, Hinekora, in that order.

I would recommend doing the first three labs in A4 before Kaom's Dream and Daresso's Dream, so you're overleveled for the Labyrinth and the Daresso/Kaom/Malachai fights are easier with your newly acquiared ascendancy bonus. As a totem build labs should be relatively easy. For Uber lab, make sure you're resist capped and have a decent amount of life (4k minimum) before attempting it.

Don't worry about these until mapping. Boot enchant is most important - helm enchant is good but a luxury, and glove enchant is least important.

Boots - Damage Penetrates x% of Enemy Elemental Resistances if you haven't Killed Recently. This should be your first priority once you can farm merciless lab safely, as well as the enchant to chase if you farm uber lab. Because our totems kill instead of us we should always have this up. However, note that if an enemy dies from an ignite, it does count as us killing it and we will lose the bonus for 4 seconds.

Helm - increased Incinerate projectile speed. This is a luxury, but still nice to have - the other Incinerate bonus mods are ok as well.

Gloves - __ of Spite - this is like another CWDT - Arctic Breath setup for us that leaves chilled ground. Not super important.

Normal - Help Oak
Cruel - Help Alira
Merciless - Kill all

While none of these are required for the build to work (like a Shavs), they will greatly enhance its effectiveness and you should definitely use them.


This is our BIS chest. The Pierce support inherit in Lioneye's Vision gives a whopping 24% more damage (we already have 100% to pierce) for only 10% more mana.


One downside of Incinerate is if your totems are stunned, the damage stage is reset and your totems have to ramp up the damage again. With Spire of Stone, the only way for enemies to interrupt the channel is to freeze the totems. You should place this in the jewel slot by the Ancestral Bond keystone to get the most amount of Totem life.


This is basically a better LMP for Incinerate, which doesn't reduce damage as much (because of the reduced instead of less modifier) and doesn't take up a link on your Incinerate setup. Will make clearing packs a lot faster. Of course a lower damage penalty roll is better, but you shouldn't break the bank over it.

Another option which I'm not currently utilizing is to using Anger an Essence Worm Ring to avoid reserving Mana. This means we can get the Blood Magic keystone and its OP life nodes, as well as the Clear Mind jewel for a big damage boost. Pathing to Blood Magic also puts us right next to the totem Ironwood cluster which is strong as well.

Winds of Change isn't amazing compared to the others, but it gives a nice boost to your damage and more importantly a good projectile speed boost. These are great for leveling and are still good lategame, but you may want to swap these out for a nice pair of rare gloves once you have enough damage and projectile speed from other sources.

You should either dual wield wands or use a wand and shield - I recommend dual wielding wands. You will also need to pick up some int on your gear so that you can use wands, you will need ~40-70 depending on if you use the +30 int notable on the tree.

Rings/Amulets
Life, cast Speed, elemental resists.

Helm/Gloves/Chest/Shield
Life and elemental resists. You should aim to get more of your resists here instead of your other gear, since these have the least demanding combination of mods and will therefore be cheaper.

Boots
Movespeed, life, and elemental resists.

Wands
Added fire damage to spells, cast speed, projectile speed, and as a luxury more fire/spell damage (the wand implicit tends to be good enough for this)

Belt
Life, flask bonuses, armor

For gems, a quality Incinerate is a HUGE difference compared to a non-quality. They should be pretty cheap, I was able to get a 20q Incinerate for 4c this league. You should also get a quality Faster Casting if possible, but it isn't as big of a priority.

If this is your league starter or you don't have a good currency base, your most important priorities are getting resist capped and life - follow the priorities in the Gearing section. Next get rare wands with decent rolls (45%+ fire + spell damage, 10%+ cast speed, 25%+ projectile speed) - these should be below 3 chaos each, but you can get ones with higher rolls if you can afford them. Also be sure to use the Winds of Change unique gloves, they should be cheap and give you a nice damage and projectile speed boost. Finally, work on getting a quality Incinerate. These will get cheaper as the league goes on, but aim for the highest quality possible - you should splurge on this compared to your other gear. As of this writing a chaos and GCP are 1:1, so paying 20c for a 20q incinerate is fair. However you should be able to get one for much less.

Your main damage setup in your chest is:
Spell Totem - Incinerate - Faster Casting - Fire Penetration - Controlled Destruction - Elemental Focus/Empower
I don't have a 6L so I'm not sure whether to use Empower/Elemental Focus. Elemental Focus gives a bigger damage multiplier and we don't have to worry about ignites killing enemies and losing our boot enchant bonus, but we lose out on the 60% increased damage against burning enemies from Ngamahu and Celestial Punishment. It'd also be difficult to roll 4B2R on Lioneye's Vision for Elemental Focus instead of 3B3R for an Empower setup. My guess is Elemental Focus is better, and just respec out of Celestial Punishment at that point.

Once you have Elemental Overload, you'll also want in one of your weapons/shield:
Ice Spear (level 1) - Greater Multiple Projectiles (level 1) - Increased Critical Strikes Support

For added mobility (in a weapon/shield):
Lightning Warp - Less Duration - Faster Casting

You will also want Lightning Golem, Anger, and a curse somewhere - you can use either Flammability/Elemental Weakness for offense or Temporal Chains/Enfeeble for defense.

That leaves us with 2 empty 4L setups and a spare gem slot. You can use these however you like, one option is to use all 9 slots to level gems for the level 20 gem -> 20% quality recipe; however I recommend at least the following CWDT setup for one of them:

CWDT (level 1) - Arctic Breath (level 4) - Ice Spear (level 1) - Greater Multiple Projectiles (level 1)

This will help you keep Elemental Overload up via Ice Spear crits while also creating a bunch of chilled ground. You could also swap out Ice Spear for a Chain Support for a more defensively oriented setup.

Another option is to move your Ice Spear or Lightning Warp setups into the 4Ls, and add Faster Casting or Rapid Decay respectively. But I don't think these supports add much to the skills' effectiveness.

I've also tried a Searing Bond setup, but didn't like it - felt clunky to use, didn't add a lot of damage, and had a high mana cost. YMMV, so give it a shot if you want to see how it performs.

Sadly it isn't good, even with a Chance to Ignite gem the ignites barely tickled Voll and other bosses.