Why is Soul Mantle so bad?

Downside isn't that bad. You can get pots that will let you spam totems for 15+ seconds without worrying about the curse. The bigger downside is you get a shitty HP totem, the chests stats are garbage, and totems themselves have been crap for a long time. At least, that was my takeaway when I ran it. So many better ways of killing shit than totems.

I used to play totem builds exclusively. They were my favourite build, especially when built cold, crit and prolif, where its so freakin safe, I dont need any curse immunity pots.

After the nerf, well, the clear speed got so slow, from an interesting tactical playstyle, to a slow drawn out boring one, went ranger instead, I now clear 3-4x faster.

Its a big shame.

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ventiman wrote:

its an amazing unique it allows 2 totems without the ancestral bond restriction
saw a build few month ago stormcall totem +selfcast coldsnap high crit version

i used to dislike the unique till i saw the build

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1151549/page/1

Still, the power of this unique is directly tied with the power of "spell totem". And after a nerf streak, spell totem became quite a trash, and so did Soul mantle.

you realize the build i linked is a bloodlines build ? so its up to date and will be my next choice for a temp league

i have to admit you are right the spelltotem nerf was way too hard and killey so many builds
i will never undestand this balance team they kick spelltotem in the nuts and if that wasnt enough to make totem spark unplayable they nerf spark aswell

IMHO this item is really good with blood magic totemic marauder maxing armour.

I mean, get a good shield, 4 life flasks of warding, one granite flask of armour and you are fine.
(and I got to around lvl 70 on HC and then dieded to desynced revenant on merci docks)

Because Totems are bad 1 or 50 of them.