How important are totem durability nodes?

So decided for the first time to give a legitimate shot at crit flame totem,

this naturally has my tree back bone following the int tree from the templar to the shadow

grabbing spell crit , crit multi and any juicy fire damage nodes i like (such as ones that have fire pen build it , yum).


my current totems cost about 160 mana too cast which i have compensated for mostly using EB.

however i have found these totems to die to everything including a stiff breeze.


And here I am thinking ... my god how the hell do all these totem builds make these things durable?

i have the built in 32% life as a given , and I even have 25% resists from a purity aura i use to save on the moneys.

however still these things get one shot.


So naturally i am at a loss. is the goal of totem builds just get mana independence and recast these things all the damn time ? or should i actually get some durability on the totems.


the good totem nodes are really really really REALLY out of the way and i really hate to extend my +10 pt back bone anymore than i have too. the only viable set of nodes i can go for currently are the ones near the scion bubble which would give me 10% resists , 6% physical reduction and 24% life ... but considering my totems get literally flattened instantly vs bosses that get pooed out of void spawns.those nodes hardly seem to be worth the investment to me.

are they good? should i just have pocket purity auras instead? shoudl i just get some mana nodes and spam spam spam?

the totems themselves are doing decent damage , 6.5k lmp while under charges at level 73 (lvl 17 totems)

On my ft build i get 3 life nodes, one from AB wheel, one from the wheel next to scion life wheel, and then the one below scion right. For spamming totems I want a very fast totem summon cast speed and be able to spam 4-5 totems back to back. With this there are very few bosses I can't kill or that give me much trouble.

but that would take quite literally 20 points out of my current backbone.




this is what my current tree looks like as you can see going for those nodes you suggested would cause me to waste another 7 nodes getting pointless + 10 nodes

Levelling the totem also gets it a lot of life, that's why I tend to use Empower for such things most of the time.

It could also mean that DPS isn't enough, thus your totems taking too much damage.

well when the totems do start shooting things , they almost always instantly melt trash mobs , and blue mobs and yellows die in a few seconds depending on their mods.


i have 560 crit multi and 25% base crit chance before charges and i only have 4 power charges

"

Saltychipmunk wrote:

but that would take quite literally 20 points out of my current backbone.

Just trying to give you an idea of when totem tankiness is not really an issue. Tankiness can be substituted with castability to a certain extent.

"

BackwoodsS wrote:

Just trying to give you an idea of when totem tankiness is not really an issue. Tankiness can be substituted with castability to a certain extent.

Quite true.


That's quite the glasscannon tree you got there. Hope you don't die as often as your totems.

sometimes, positioning is the key. I usually sandwich mobs and bosses between two totems so they're forced to target only one, increasing the surviability of the other.

Witch start isn't really a good start when getting totem nodes. You'd probably be forced to just focus on cast speed, like Backwoodss said.

"

enveratise wrote:

Levelling the totem also gets it a lot of life, that's why I tend to use Empower for such things most of the time.

It could also mean that DPS isn't enough, thus your totems taking too much damage.

Speaking of which, I have never had a lvl 20 FT. I use them as mf chars and don't lvl them to much. So my prior post is with lvl 19 totems. I could probably drop a life node at lvl 20 without issue but I would not want to lose the 30% summoning speed in lower scion right. The effect on clear speed would be noticable. So left of life wheel woukd be first to go if I were trimming nodes.

Edit: when I get home I will post my standard FT tree.

"

enveratise wrote:

"

BackwoodsS wrote:

Just trying to give you an idea of when totem tankiness is not really an issue. Tankiness can be substituted with castability to a certain extent.

Quite true.


That's quite the glasscannon tree you got there. Hope you don't die as often as your totems.

sometimes, positioning is the key. I usually sandwich mobs and bosses between two totems so they're forced to target only one, increasing the surviability of the other.

Witch start isn't really a good start when getting totem nodes. You'd probably be forced to just focus on cast speed, like Backwoodss said.

the only time i have died are due to desync, for the purposes of what i am doing, i dont need a build as durable as most hardcore builds.

it is only glass cannon , because it is before i take all of the life nodes , i left it sparse so people had room to work with my question. but my end build can go anywhere from 144 - 168% life rather than the 100ish seen on that tree.

keep in mind this is a crit totem build , not a normal totem build. which is why you see me in the witch shadow and templar

I tend not to take them in the end, I took a few when I last ran it and respeced off of them later when the totem was higher level. I would say try to get a quality totem instead of the nodes, as that adds life.