[3.4] Storm Call Crit Totem Hierophant (or any other AOE spell) SSF / League Starter

Thanks for the constructive review, the guide was a theorycraft adapted quickly into a build, so it was muddled and ambiguous in places. I have done a rewrite focusing just on the tested DPS version, with the tanky variants at the end.

Allow me to address some of your questions:

"

Kwitch wrote:

You claimed that your tanky version can reach 9k effective eHP, but it comes in at 5256 life and 1636 es.

Initial theorycrafting was done with very mediocre gear, but that gear did all have reasonable life rolls and resists, the kind of gear you aim for first. I was including mana as eHP, which was giving 9k life + mana with the tanky tree. The gear in POB is what I have found myself ingame. I have expalined the defenses in order to clarify. 152% life is borderline yes on the dps tree, but in practice MOM will help a lot, and there are many little tweaks possible to make the character more tanky.

"

Kwitch wrote:

I was curious why you only leveled the increased duration to 4 for your CwDT setup, as you have plenty of strength to keep going and it will always improve the duration of the supported spell Immortal Call without causing it not to trigger with your level 1 CwDT. Also... Flame Surge + Fortify?

ICS in your main 6-link versus CD, since you're choosing to always have a diamond flask up, seems like a lot of wasted damage. Sure, you might think 'I always want the highest possible crit chance!', but 67%~ is more than enough for consistent and constantly near-max critical hits.

I realised that when you import character a number of times into POB it doesnt replace old gem setups, so they were a mess, sorry for that. I am not sure when I had replaced ICS with CD, but this did not update in the import. I have made build specific links in POB so it should be much clearer.

Often I am just levelling gems in spare sockets too, so fortify was just with flame surge because it was only red socket spare. Thanks for the tip on increased duration, I assumed that it needed to be in the level requirement of CWDT also.

"

Kwitch wrote:

Any thoughts on getting added fire or cold damage on attacks, and replacing your wand with a sceptre or dagger, picking up EE, and causing your targets to have -50 resistance to lightning damage? It seems like it could be easy to do, and you could actually have a working fortify.

To be honest, i never found a good dagger or shield, so I was stuck with flame dash the whole time. EE is an option if you want it, but with the nature of storm call being a series of separate hits, and most of the gameplay being killing things you have not even seen yet, it did not seem needed at any point.

Hi :)

Love the idea of the build and it sounds unique. Think it could still work well as non-crit?

"

Jakzca wrote:

Hi :)

Love the idea of the build and it sounds unique. Think it could still work well as non-crit?

From my experience with Hierophant in its current state (and we are not expecting much in the way of nerfs in 3.3) I would say that the ascendancy will carry almost any setup even if it is not optimal. I see no reason why a non crit build wouldn't work, if you are building more tanky anyway. The tree would end up quite similar to the tanky tree shown at the end of my guide, but with a few changes, but you can connect ancestral bond through the templar nodes 'Elementalist' and 'Light of Divinity' and with the crit nodes you save, you can head further down to the bottom left of the tree to grab 'Ironwood' and 'Bloodless' clusters.

something like this: https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/3.2.4/AAAABAUCAAOaBAcEUQSzCPQJqg3NDjwQzBEtFE0UcRZAGJEaOBzOHNwgbicvKhMrJitQLJwspzLRNZI6FjpSOlg64TwFPC09X0VHRZ1G10lPSsRMs03jUDBSU1NSVcZYbVjlWfNaK15dXypkM2ZUZp5oWmhlakNtGXGFcg9yqXaseyB8g4IHgpuDX4PMg9uFMoV7hX2GgouMjxqQVZRvly2XlZf0mjua4KIAo_KmV6eUrKqvp7FCtz68n7yqvOrAZsCaxPbGrsy3z37QH9H91XXVpti92XzZ_Nq5217hc-oY6-Tr7uw47TzvfO_r8B_yRfPd9q73MviT-Ov53fxL_gr-VP6H_o8=

although maybe you want to work elemental overload into the build also.

when I get my passive reset, I will try the tanky version on ssf standard to see how it compares to the dps version.

Currently lvl90
My accendencies are:Ritual of Awakening , Conviction of Power and Divine Guidance
First of all without Divine Guidance this build is too squishy.
I have approximately 2.2k unreserved mana pool. And %40 MoM.
In my opinion still god damn squishy.Especially against phys and chaos damage.

1) - 11 days of playing my experience is that biggest problem of the build is high tier maps or bosses the totems are dying too quickly in second without hitting the enemy.

2) - Even with these 5L gear single target damage is not satisfied me. And dying totems are also the big setback for our DPS.
With 5L + 4 totem up + Atziri Promise + 5 Power Charges tooltip says : 27.000 Damage.

3) - Because of totems die in high tier maps most of the time i have to be the target for monsters so i am not tanky that sometimes i ended up being dead. For example T14 Dark Forest Map with crazy mods i died 3 times because of DoT from Boss. My hp pool is 4.5k + 600 Es = 5.1k + 2.2k mana pool.

4) - Most of the time in order to get Arcane Surge i have to cast Conductivity by myself several times , it really doesnt help me clearing the map only for big bosses.

11 days and invesment is approximately : 8 - 9 ex.

It was really interesting experience but if the single target have been became good for big bosses i could say that it is worth playing but for me it isnt.

Thanks for the feedback, sorry for the late response, I don't check forums often.

The squishiness is a problem for sure in some situations, but it really depends what you are comparing it to. Positioning is key, but for some encounters it is not possible to position yourself safely. Doedre in Sepulchre map I remember was particularly hard, this chaos damage as you mention. However as with most things in POE you can certainly build around this, with chaos resist on gear and an Amethyst Flask. I didn't personally have many problems with most bosses up to t14 though. The vast majority can be safely offscreened.

I didn't have a problem with totem survivability, although I do like to keep summoning them to keep power charges fresh, and the leech from Illuminated Devotion may have helped, which you didn't have. Remember they have huge range, you can spread them around rather than grouping them up in one spot.

The damage was fine from my experience throughout the whole gearing process, obviously it depends what you compare it to. If I compare it to beserker Ancestral Warchief totem, which I played a couple of leagues prior, the damage and totem survivability were far better on the hierophant (comparing 2 totems to 4 respectively) and AWC was considered one of the best SSF options at the time. Obviously storm call is not current meta, destroy everything with 10c budget, but it is certainly a very playable skill with some significant upsides. Perhaps with a 6 link and Illuminated Devotion your damage would be better, you have similar increased spell damage to me on gear.

updated for 3.4