Tornado Shot is a joke right?

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Tempada wrote:

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JohnNamikaze wrote:

If you use Pledge of Hands, EK will definitely not be a garbage skill.

It baffles me when people recommend Pledge of Hands for dps. You can get more damage with a nice wand and shield setup, plus you have better survivability options with a shield. And there's Geofri's Crest as a cheap alternative to a 6L if you can afford a wand and shield but not a 6L Pledge.

reason is very simple. 'one less aura'. with pledge of hands and tailored gear you DO NOT NEED discipline for EB/AA setup. you have one 60% aura less to worry about. and for spells this means options of: supported heralds and/or Haste and/or CoD

it is huge. heralds with supports vs unsupported heralds - big difference. it is not shown in the tooltip but oh my it affects the clear speed

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sidtherat wrote:

reason is very simple. 'one less aura'. with pledge of hands and tailored gear you DO NOT NEED discipline for EB/AA setup. you have one 60% aura less to worry about. and for spells this means options of: supported heralds and/or Haste and/or CoD

it is huge. heralds with supports vs unsupported heralds - big difference. it is not shown in the tooltip but oh my it affects the clear speed

People don't need Discipline with an EB/AA setup! Like, I understand using Discipline if your gear is really bad and you can't get enough mana regen no matter what else you do, but it's totally possible to run EB + max lvl or higher AA + Clarity + Haste + Hatred + a Herald gem... and some people, like myself, can even use Acrobatics on top of that!

I have my build in my signature, but check out my Shadow tree:


This tree gives a huge boost to mana/mana regen while still giving you plenty of dps and very solid defenses. If you don't have enough mana regen to do a high level AA and Acrobatics, you can take Iron Reflexes instead:


It's all about the power of aura nodes and Inner Force.

Now don't get me wrong; Pledge of Hands is a nice item and the 100% increased Maximum Mana mod is what makes it worthwhile, but there are ways to make up that mana, at least in an EK build, with the tree + a wand + a shield, you can get higher dps with a wand + shield, and using a wand + shield gives better defenses than a staff.

this kind of tree is pretty much possible only with EK. your build damage does not come mainly from the tree - tree gives you some base and perks but thats it.

you get your damage from auras and without 21 reduced mana even that would not be possible. thats the beauty of EK that it uses different scaling than most of other spells

for a build like sparker, ball lightning'er, or any other spell that needs spelldamage and/or crit this is not possible (as auras do not affect damage)

and then that bonus from Pledge of Hands is noticeable. it is all about scaling. EK allows non-spell scaling (auras, auras effectiveness, inner force), while with my fav spark it does not work and 'classic' scaling has to be used. then one cannot use as many points to boost mana/mana regen and Pledge fits perfectly as a solution

but - nice build and will try it out (however with 8 points less some important parts of it are cut - and i do not have the patience to grind to mid 90s, it simply gets boring around 85-86..)

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sidtherat wrote:

this kind of tree is pretty much possible only with EK. your build damage does not come mainly from the tree - tree gives you some base and perks but thats it.

Shockwave totem said hello :)

You know, it's strange that one is still very much overlooked, even though damage is pretty awesome for a totemist build and knockback does defensive miracles. Maybe that's just another symptom of what I'm feeling, that PoE turned into a dps race like never before and knockback hinders your offense there as much as it helps your defense.

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sidtherat wrote:

this kind of tree is pretty much possible only with EK.

You're totally right. I was only questioning the use of Pledge of Hands with an EK build.

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you get your damage from auras and without 21 reduced mana even that would not be possible

I use two lvl 21 Reduced Mana gems in my setup, but two lvl 20 gems do the job as well (as long as you don't have any Herald gem links that increase its mana multiplier - Herald of Ash is perfect in this case). Oh, but you do need Alpha's Howl.

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but - nice build and will try it out (however with 8 points less some important parts of it are cut - and i do not have the patience to grind to mid 90s, it simply gets boring around 85-86..)

Yeah, I understand that. It took a depressing amount of grind to reach level 93, although it was simpler than I expected once Forsaken Masters was released, and I was kicking butt long before level 93.

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Vipermagi wrote:

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Tempada wrote:

I use two lvl 21 Reduced Mana gems in my setup, but two lvl 20 gems do the job as well (as long as you don't have any Herald gem links that increase its mana multiplier - Herald of Ash is perfect in this case). Oh, but you do need Alpha's Howl.

Well yeah, of course level 20 Gems would do just fine...

Supports apply before Reduced/Less Mana Reserved. With only RM as a Mana Multiplier, a level 21 gem is completely pointless

You're not taking Clarity into consideration. I get some extra mana by using a lvl 21 RM gem linked to Clarity, Haste, and Hatred, so it's not completely pointless. It doesn't help at all for the Herald setup, as you said.

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raics wrote:

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sidtherat wrote:

this kind of tree is pretty much possible only with EK. your build damage does not come mainly from the tree - tree gives you some base and perks but thats it.

Shockwave totem said hello :)

You know, it's strange that one is still very much overlooked, even though damage is pretty awesome for a totemist build and knockback does defensive miracles. Maybe that's just another symptom of what I'm feeling, that PoE turned into a dps race like never before and knockback hinders your offense there as much as it helps your defense.

Probably because no one wants to wait 20 minutes and keep recasting Shockwave Totems because mobs are constantly knocked out of AoE range.
Or probably because Shockwave Totems not only cause desync but have also sucked since release.

Seriously.

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casval776 wrote:

Probably because no one wants to wait 20 minutes and keep recasting Shockwave Totems because mobs are constantly knocked out of AoE range.
Or probably because Shockwave Totems not only cause desync but have also sucked since release.

Seriously.

Exactly, I had a li'l hipster shockwave totemist before it was cool and that was the main problem, melee enemies are all well and good because they constantly try to approach the totem but ranged enemies were a pain in the arse to kill. And damage sucked, so enemies were usually out of reach before it kills them. And desync, I used to carry a bear trap too just to be able to tell where dangerous enemies really are as they are thrown to their real location.

Yeah, you summed it up nicely.

Shockwave totem could actually be the counterpart to LA, a skill that received the most buffs. It got, if I remember correctly three damage buffs, two cast speed buffs and it got converted to spell damage. So the damage can be pretty damn good now and enemies are killed before they get knocked out, some streamers were using it after last buff I heard, and it performed well enough.

But, seems that desync is ultimately more annoying than watching two totems pinball bosses around is entertaining.