A defensive alternative to Soul Mantle: Ancestor's Blessing

Hi fellow Totemers!

I have played many builds but I always come back to Totems. Be it any kind of Spell Totem, Flame, Searing Bond, Shockwave, even Ranged Attack Totem. I just love this kind of playstyle, having played a trapper in Diablo 2 a lot (and Diablo 2 traps = PoE Totems).

But we only have 1 unique specific to Totems. And even if Soul Mantle is a cool item, I rarely end up using it because the drawback is very annoying. Still, it is justified, as 1 extra totem (50% MORE damage) and - in case of using Spell Totems - a 7-link, means your offenses shoot through the roof upon equipping this (if spamming curse immune flasks to nullify the drawback).

But Totemers could do with another unique affecting their precious Totems. I think another chest piece would be cool, so you have to choose between Soul Mantle, another equally powerfull unique chest or a general chest offering much more defensive stats then the uniques.

As Soul Mantle obviously is a VERY OFFENSIVE chest, the new Totem unique chest armour should offer a defensive alternative. Here is my suggestion:

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Ancestor's Blessing:
(base: maybe an Evasion/Energy Shield chest to make requirements more difficult)

+33% Totem duration
Damage taken by Totems is gained as life*
Totems are immune to all damage for 2 seconds when cast

"The Ancients will always stand by your side"
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* This is subject to a hefty damage effectiveness penalty, but as I don't know how much life Totems exactly have, it's difficult to determine the precise figure.

=> This chest - in contradiction to Soul Mantle - doesn't do anything for your effective DPS, but it largely makes up for that with two welcomed defensive mechanisms (which exclude eachother by the way). Firstly, your Totems cannot be insta-wrecked anymore. And secondly, when they start taking damage after their initial 2 second immortality, they add a portion of their life lost to your life pool, effectively healing you.

Basically this chest encourages you even more to intelligently place your totems, and to stay even better out of reach, like all Ancestral Bond builds already try to do.

I don't see how it can be OP (no life, resists, very low defenses, just 3 stats: 1 weak and two other that never work at the same time), so apart from the DEX/INT requirements I didn't see the need of giving it an explicit drawback. I was thinking about "you cannot use flasks", as you are supposed to stay out of all danger, but that seems to kill the item to me as it's not strong enough to compensate for that.

What do you guys think about this unique?

Feedback from experienced Totemers greatly appreciated!

I personally consider Soul Mantle to be one of the most elegantly designed uniques in the game. It requires dedication on flasks and actual micro etc in order to overcome the curses which usually aren't that dangerous but can occasionally ruin your day. Using the Soul Mantle is like walking a cool tight rope between too good and too bad. In other words I think it's pretty keenly balanced.

however Ancestor's blessing from what I see just reads 'safe'. And totems in general are already safe enough as it is. So even though I think the unique would be welcome by many especially in hardcore. I just don't like it.

Soul Mantle introduces risk to the totem equation. Ancestor's Blessing seems to make one of the safest builds even safer than it already is.

additionally, Thief's Torment can significantly reduce the drawback of Soul Mantle (50% reduced effect of curses) -- but you're sacking both ring slots for it.

I agree with Bear that totems are already one of the safest and most defensive playstyles, and a unique solely geared at increasing that isn't particularly interesting to me. Here are two alternative items (all numbers are completely ballparked and may need to be balanced):

Soul's Ethereality:
(base: Energy Shield)

66% less Totem duration
Totems are immune to all damage
Totems deal 50% more damage
Totems deal 1% less damage per 1% of duration passed

-- This encourages the opposite of Soul Mantle's (and most totemers') playstyle: spamming new totems as fast as possible, as they both have less duration and their damage rapidly declines over time. (note, at casting it will deal 150% of base damage, decreasing to 112.5% at 25% duration expired, 75% at 50% duration, 37.5% at 75% duration, and 0% [and death] at 100% duration)

or

Soul's Rage
(base: Strength)

10% less totem casting speed (not casting speed of totems) per 1 range cast from player
Totems in this item are supported by [Point Blank-style effect]
25% of damage dealt to player is redirected to the nearest totem owned by them

-- This encourages (forces) a totemer into close range from their enemies (again, very different from normal totem playstyle). They will want to cast totems close to them, and close to enemies (and thus they will be close to enemies). To compensate, they get a unique method of damage mitigation.

"

Soul Mantle introduces risk to the totem equation. Ancestor's Blessing seems to make one of the safest builds even safer than it already is.

On one hand you have a very valid point, and you argument it well and polite, which is not that common on the forums. So thank you for your feedback!

But on the other hand: people playing Totems mostly just like that kind of safe playstyle, even at the cost of clearing speed or whatever. So why not appease them and let them have that kind of playstyle even better?

Even if what you say about Soul Mantle is 100% true (it's exactly what a unique should be), few Totemers use it. Because if you choose to go Totems, that kind of "dps payed in augmented risk" is rarely what you are looking for.

Then again, in hardcore this chest piece could turn up to be overused, and that shouldn't happen with any item... .

"

Soul's Ethereality:
(base: Energy Shield)

66% less Totem duration
Totems are immune to all damage
Totems deal 50% more damage
Totems deal 1% less damage per 1% of duration passed

Ah, that is pure gold! Also cool to see how people will overcome the heavy manacost of Totems. Yeah as a dedicated Totemer I would certainly experiment with this cool unique. 66% less Totem duration seems a bit heavy though: that puts Flame Totem at a base of 5 seconds.

"

Soul's Rage
(base: Strength)

10% less totem casting speed (not casting speed of totems) per 1 range cast from player
Totems in this item are supported by [Point Blank-style effect]
25% of damage dealt to player is redirected to the nearest totem owned by them

I certainly like the idea, but this current version is a bit chaotic and has some weird mechanics. You can just cast it on top of you and immediately warp out e.g. while it retains its cast speed. Like a snapshot. Would be better if the Totem constantly checks the distance from you, but I have no clue if that is feasible program-wise.

=> Glad to have this kind of feedback! Seems there is still plenty of potential for new Totem chests. But why stick with only one new? We can have several:

* Soul Mantle is the pure offensive one: add damage for an annoying and unique drawback.
* Some defensive boring unique for those who want safety at all costs. On the other hand, we could spice up my suggested unique and add "cannot use flasks" to give it the same "great benefits with great drawbacks" characteristic of the Soul Mantle. In a special and unique way, it would make the chest much less safe.
* A weird chest redefining how Totems work, like the 2 that tsftd suggested: make Totems interesting as a spamming skill or encourage you to be as close to them and the enemy as possible.

Seems like a nice triumvirate choice: offense, defense, weirdness.

Keep on commenting!

Sorry, I had difficulty elicidating exactly what I meant on this in one line:

10% less totem casting speed (not casting speed of totems) per 1 range cast from player

Meaning, the speed at which the totem is cast by the player; the totem's speed at casting its spells would be unaffected.

The idea being that it penalizes people for casting from afar, and encourages them to cast the totem next to them (to avoid the penalty when casting it).

Granted, it's certainly possible that you could cast, then GTFO -- though I would think that the fact that the totems themselves are in close-range (and thus should die quickly), as well as the damage redirection, plus the fast-placed playstyle typical of mapping groups, would mitigate the effectiveness of this.

However, you could change it to affecting the totem's speed at casting its spells, and make it persistent, not an on-cast check, to mandate people staying closer.

Also, you do have a point that, while it may not be "interesting" to people like me and BearCares to have a moar defensive totem build, that doesn't mean that it wouldn't appeal to other people.

You could just make a chest piece that provides the additional totem, without the passive spell totem support for the gems, and remove that lv 20 curse thing. You could just replace that with somethig like a penalty to the summoning speed/casting speed of totems and or a damage penalty.

straight 3rd totem (with or without the you can't deal damage part) would be OP.

nerfing totem cast speed/damage would either make it pointless (if nerfed too far) or too strong (if not nerfed enough). e.g. nerfing dps by 33% and giving a third totem is the same as just having 2 (3*.66~=2). I guess that there might be some builds that would prefer the extra totem, but that'd be pretty niche, especially given the drawback of sacking your chest slot alone. if you keep the no damage part, it's even worse.

I love seeing different ideas regarding totems...

Things that differentiate totem builds would be cool. We already have Soul Mantle triple totem. So what could be different?

Definitely, something with a different cost/trade-off would be cool.


I love the idea of a totem that start strong but fades. This could be that it fades by lowering damage or cast/attack speed over time, but what if it just took damage over time. Kind of like it is in overdrive with a reckless result? Either way, you're going to have to keep recasting them for the positive effect, and the more you're recasting them the higher the mana cost and the closer you will be to the action (because otherwise you could cast and then run away and cower.)

Therefore:

Ancestor's Relic Saintly Chainmail
( Requires 99 str 115 int base (But we could throw increased stat requirement on this) )
- 25% Increased mana cost of Spells
- Totems degen 30-40% of life as fire damage per second
- 120-140% increased Armor and Energy Shield (761-878, 216-235)
- 15-20% Increased Cast and Attack Speed
- 20-30% Increased Totem Damage
- 10-20% Increased Totem Crit Multiplier

Numbers not balanced, but then your totem would only last a couple seconds and less if taking other damage from boss. Perhaps you could run purity of fire or elements, and stand near your totems to give them a longer life. Also, casting totems is normally pretty expensive, but it was just made more expensive by this item. The increased Damage and Cast/Attack speed is actually not as high on your totem as it might appear after the regular totem less multipliers.

That is indeed pretty interesting, and well balanced!

Pretty interesting Gregorial, I would also like to see that chest work with minions too =p

Summon hyper strong zombie that immediately self immolates and start self destruct. Mana cost would have to be very high though. Like +300% mana cost of socketed spells