Spell Echo should work with Totems

I'm well aware of the fix to Enduring Cry.

Not sure about the whole clear speed claim. Arc does that quite well with Echo already. And despite the complaints of animation, I think the animation for both casts are about the same amount of time as a unechoed self-cast would be. Nevermind the benefits to channeling that you pointed out. EK is likewise clunky without it.

But as to fixing the discrepency of Cast on Crit . . . uhhh, it's a bad way to level that discrepancy.
Instead of fixing actual mana or the spell costs, Spell Echo becomes this one-stop solution for that because of how it gives a free cast. Incidentally, nobody is going to ever use Reduced Mana for self-cast if they can just take Echo instead. It's also good enough on its own that you can drop Faster Casting in favor of Echo if you were forced to choose.

Now you have to put in fine print that it doesn't work with totems or channel spells. Which is a completely unintuitive way to apply a rule. (Support with "spell" in their descriptor supports all spells. Except when they don't. Wait what?)

+1

Totally, totems are already bad in the case of spell support gems. 50% less damage and 30% less attack speed is a huge hit. This can help builds overcome that steep penalty on a nice 5-6 link. I have a soul mantle that wont accept the gem for my arc totem -_-. We need to make this happen!

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Theporter wrote:

+1

Totally, totems are already bad in the case of spell support gems. 50% less damage and 30% less attack speed is a huge hit. This can help builds overcome that steep penalty on a nice 5-6 link. I have a soul mantle that wont accept the gem for my arc totem -_-. We need to make this happen!

Did you not read why it doesn't work with it?

Balance and calculation restrictions, Plus it would probably need the totem or minion tag for it to work? Regardless, game breaking or not i still stand by my stance. Plus i am speaking from a Live POV not Beta by any means.

Yeah, totems have MANY drawbacks and only a few advantages...


Advantages:
- You have 2 (or 3) tanks that absorb all the damage for you
- Can be cast into rooms and you don't have to make a single step inside to kill everything
- When your totems can take quite a beating, you only have to summon them once and then you are free to move around and let the totems do the job
- Totems can be used to block entrances/doors or projectiles that do not pierce
- Easy early/mid game


Disadvantages:
- You have no life leech/life gain on hit
- Your totems die very quickly when surrounded by enemies and can only hardly be upgraded in survivability through some nodes that are far away from each other
- Your totems are mostly useless against ele. reflec (or phys. reflec when using Ranged-Totem) or corrupting blood
- Spell totems have extremely reduced damage and cast time. So having 2 totems shooting at one target still results in less damage then you would do with self-cast. Also don't forget: A self-cast build can still cast one totem and increase the damage even further. A totem user must depend solely on totems and if you want to use 3 totems, you will be cursed with lvl 20 random curses all the time...
- Using Spell- or Ranged-Totem consumes one gem-slot more compared to a self-cast build, reducing the build possibilities (mostly damage) even further
- If an enemy makes it to you, you are very defenseless
- Thanks to the extremely reduced damage of Spell-/Ranged-totem, it is quite hard to inflict status effect, especially on magic/rare/unique monsters with high life
- Slow summoning speed can kill you and totems sometimes die before they are fully summoned, leaving you there without any defense.
- Slow clearing speed compared to self-cast
- Extremely bad in close-combat situations (like boss-rooms in a dungeon map) where you can't avoid the strong mob because there are no cover possibilities
- Really bad endgame (no clear speed, less damage, strong mobs that insta-kill totems)


I really hope they do buff totems in the next patch... They should be more endgame viable

Well flame totem is totally end game viable in the current state. Maybe even a little OP.
End game i mean level 78 maps.

As for the other totems, tried only shockwave totem and it's pretty strong too.

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ZeeZ wrote:

Well flame totem is totally end game viable in the current state. Maybe even a little OP.
End game i mean level 78 maps.

As for the other totems, tried only shockwave totem and it's pretty strong too.

I'm mostly talking about spell and ranged totem. The others are OK, but still not as strong as self-cast builds.