Spell Totem and Ranged Attack totem

Please god, This is soooo painful. So I decided to go back to the olden days where people would use spell totem / ranged attack totem, and I am doing a Ranged attack totem build and they are so lame.... They deal little to no damage at all and you tend to take alot more damage than the mobs do, and this is in a 6 link atm...

Please GGG revisit this because right now Theses are just soo weak and so bad right now its just so horrible going totems and I don't feel any benefits of going totems, like totems imo should be the feeling of being strong and safe with the downside being that you have to lose alot of defenses and ability to leech and also costly on mana to cast again and not being that you deal 0 damage, mana costs, not safe, really slow on everything it just feels like totems have no place in the game at all "support gemed totems that is".

I would love to see totems have a place in the meta because I have yet to see anyone do a totem build and now I can see why.

"

Tolerancece wrote:

Please god, This is soooo painful. So I decided to go back to the olden days where people would use spell totem / ranged attack totem, and I am doing a Ranged attack totem build and they are so lame.... They deal little to no damage at all and you tend to take alot more damage than the mobs do, and this is in a 6 link atm...

Please GGG revisit this because right now Theses are just soo weak and so bad right now its just so horrible going totems and I don't feel any benefits of going totems, like totems imo should be the feeling of being strong and safe with the downside being that you have to lose alot of defenses and ability to leech and also costly on mana to cast again and not being that you deal 0 damage, mana costs, not safe, really slow on everything it just feels like totems have no place in the game at all "support gemed totems that is".

I would love to see totems have a place in the meta because I have yet to see anyone do a totem build and now I can see why.

About the only totem builds we see now are shockwave, at least for endgame.

RAT was never good and has somehow gotten worse over time.

ST was kinda comparable to hard-casting (even after the big numerical nerf targeted at spork totemers) until SEcho (and PoH) blew it to smithereens.

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The only ST totemer build I've seen recently that worked was a SC totem while the player ran around and kept stuff perma-frozen, cursed, or otherwise debuffed. Even with that fairly optimal play, the damage was still worse than if the player was just hardcasting SC or Tendrils manually.

Separately, relying on Soul Mantle to get the 3 totems to get enough damage compared to the other casting varieties (trap/mine, hardcasting, CoC, Mjolner, defensive triggers/Scold's) is super janky.

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Overall, it seems that SWT and FlameTotem are doing ~okay, so it's not a global totem problem, just a RAT/ST problem. Those supports could definitely stand to be buffed given that GGG is so into the power-creep nowadays.

The spell totem support was waaaay overnerfed, and the RAT totem support was built off of that.

And the whole thing was a huuuuuuuuge over reaction! It all precipitated from the LL Spork craze; that was, approximately, the biggest reason for both, the AB nerf and the support nerf. The way balance goes these days, I don't see why these supports should remain waaaaay overnerfed, especially considering we currently allow ~1,000,000 times worse than what sporkers were.

I do think they could stand for some more interesting balance though... I was very vocal about this stuff back in CB because totemancer is one of my favorite builds. IMO, ditch or at least reduce the penalties, and supplement its MCM with a "reserves mana" qualifier. Spell totems are expensive to cast, and considering how much re-casting totemancers have to go through, reserving the mana instead of instantly regenerating it... would solve everything.

Totems enable a unique playstyle and I also would like to see a reballance of spell / ranged attack totems. I would love to try a Ranged Attack Lightning Arrow totem for instance - yet 50% less damage plus 30% less attack speed plus the drawbacks of 1 less socket and even more drawbacks from LMP / GMP and way harder to gain charges ( and the stretch for dual totems basically preventing any bow damage nodes to be picked up ) - I can not imagine how that would do ANY damage.

Please ballance those or take them out of the game since like that they seem useless.

"

Spell Totem Support now has a smaller damage penalty. At level 1 it has changed from 50% less to 35% less. At level 20 it has changed from 31% less to 26% less.

*Ahem* what about Ranged Attack Totem which is still way more underused than spell totem??

Let me reiterate my point:

That was my first try at using Gimp. Took too long and was somewhat painfull. Should have just pasted the super pixelated wiki image over his head.

I haven't used RAT ever so I can't comment on that gems balance... but as it reads the same as Spell totem 50-31% less damage + 30% less cast/attack speed I'll assume they're in a similar way potential wise.
I've played Spell totem a heap because I like Totems and last league I played a non crit Dual Ice Nova Totemer. It did fine... it wasn't super OP but I could clear T11's quick and comfortably (25% freeze chance). My totems DPS tooltip was 17k so 34k for the 2 totems and I had Atziri's promise flask and vaal Haste to take me to 22k per Totem. The level of investment for this exile was very low - I bought a tabula rasa and the rest were w/e rares were ok, so I feel it was fine. Also it farmed Dried Lake like a Boss. Now this is low damage I'll agree but if I went a Crit route I'd be sitting on 50-60k DPS spell totems which is super fine and also I'd be freezing a lot more (I'm just too lazy to have to attack for power charges :P so I went non-crit).

While I'd love to see RAT and Spell Totem buffed I definitely wouldn't say they're in an unusable spot (again I haven't tried RAT, only Spell Totem). You can Flame Totem into Spell Totem later on without a significant tree change... the build is ezpz and if you wanna go late game you go crit with it or settle for T11/12 damage ceiling. Shockwave and Flame Totem have that extra gem slot and no punishment so can comfortably go higher...

Maybe I should have a go at RAT and see how it goes. I'm thinking Caustic Arrow.

"

pneuma wrote:

RAT was never good and has somehow gotten worse over time.

Damn, that was a long time ago, too.
The wheels of balance turn pretty fucking slow.