[2.4 Essence] Yet another Flame Totem build
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Quick & Painless
Bandits Help Oak, Kill All, Kill All Passive Skill Tree Link Gems & Links Flame Totem -> Faster Casting -> Faster Projectiles -> Increased Critical Strikes -> Controlled Destruction / Elemental Focus -> Increased Critical Damage Recommended Unique Items Infernal Mantle  Clear Mind  Other Gearing Recommendations A helm with the 2 additional projectile enchant will greatly increase clear speed. Rain of splinters is another option and of course you could use both. Try to get at least 400 energy shield from your other slots to fill out mind over matter. After energy shield I prioritize armor bases so I have a bit of extra physical mitigation. From there I recommend you work on positive chaos resistance and elemental weakness capped resists. For an endgame weapon you have to decide between a cast speed dagger (essence of misery craft) or a wand (which also has cast speed) with projectile speed. Dagger gives higher crit chance and access to whirling blades. Wand gives better coverage for clearing maps. If your damage is sufficient consider spire of stone make the totems stun immune. I laid off PoE for 5 or 6 months, but with the launch of Atlas I knew I had to try the grind once again. I thought I had this great idea for a build, then quickly found a few others have done it. So I'll link the other guides I found at the bottom. Even though it's been covered by others, I've had a lot of fun playing and want to make some videos for it. What is the concept of this build Scale deeps through crit multiplier. Have a high effective health pool through eldritch battery and mind over matter. Passive Skill Tree Link Bandits Help Oak, Kill All, Kill All
Gearing
I'll start with the two unique items I feel are very important to the build and something that should be incorporated to make going blood magic feel worthwhile. The infernal mantle is incredibly cheap and gives us a lot. +1 fire gems, a fire damage roll, and 100% crit chance. You can gear a near perfect roll for a chaos, a perfect roll may cost a bit more. The clear mind jewel can be added cheaply if you get a low roll. It's up to you if you want to save for a perfect or near perfect roll. Main-hand This slot is your money maker. My wand adds almost 10k damage. The ideal affixes are as follows; Spell Damage Spell Damage & Mana (hybrid) Added Fire Damage to Spells Cast Speed Increased Critical Strike Chance for Spells Projectile Speed / Increased Critical Multiplier When looking for a main-hand weapon look for 60+ spell damage, 15 + cast speed, and 60+ crit for spells. If the weapon has the other stats, gg. Wand vs. Dagger Right now the only benefit to a wand will be projectile speed and more potential spell damage. This is due to the misery essence which allows you to put cast speed on any weapon. If you love whirling blades as your movement skill, get a dagger. Personally I would suggest searching for both wands and daggers and get the best item for your price range. Off-hand You have three options here; Pure Damage with another wand / dagger, Semi-damage with an ES shield, Pure Defense with an armor shield. Personally I prefer semi-defense as this is a great place to get more energy shield four our mind over matter. Here are the stats to look for when going this route; Life Energy Shield Spell Damage Increased Critical strike chance for spells Resist Resist Jewelry The amulet can be a great source of damage, my ideal amulet is a Jade or Citrine that looks like this; Life Spell Damage Energy Shield Crit Multiplier Dexterity Resist / Critical Strike Chance As for your rings a Diamond base is ideal, and if you can get fire damage or cast speed while still elemental weakness capping your resists, kudos. Primary stats to look for are; Life, energy shield, and resists. The belt is ideally a life or energy shield base and has; Life, energy shield, armor, and resists The rest Out of the boots, gloves, and helm try to get one in an energy shield base to fill out your mind over matter. I like the new fingerless gloves base as it gives you 16% spell damage. The only other thing is of course get movement speed on boots. Otherwise the primary stats to look for are; Life, armor / energy shield, and resists. Once the build is running smoothly for you, try to get the 2 additional projectiles enchant on your helm.
Gems & Links
Flame Totem -> Faster Casting -> Faster Projectiles -> Increased Critical Strikes -> Elemental Focus -> Increased Critical Damage Controlled Destruction vs. Elemental Focus Controlled destruction takes away 100% crit chance (6.9% chance to crit) and doesn't have as high of a multiplier as Elemental focus. However it allows you to ignite your target for 20% of your highest damaging hit per second for 4 seconds. In a 5 link I feel Elemental Focus is superior based on my testing through tier 12's. My current plan is to test this again if my damage feels significantly weaker in higher tier maps or when I get a 6 link. Cast When Damage Taken (lvl 3) -> Arctic Breath (lvl 6) -> Greater Multiple Projectiles -> Increased Duration Fairly standard defensive setup. It creates some chilled ground to slow your enemies. Cast When Damage Taken (lvl 4) -> Immortal Call (lvl 6) -> Enduring Cry -> Increased duration This is very helpful vs a group of monsters bursting you suddenly (like snakes or porcupines). I personally self cast enduring cry on cool down not only for endurance charges, but also because it can conserve health flasks. Stone Golem -> Minion & Totem elemental resistances -> Minion Life -> Fortify You can also use a flame golem for the deeps, or no golem at all if you hate them. Personally I like the additional body to tank for me and the stone golem's health regen is a great help since I don't get much from the tree. Flame Dash -> Assassin's Mark -> Faster Casting Since I'm using a wand, I'm using flame dash for my movement skill. Assassin's mark is a fantastic dps curse for bosses/rares/whatever. Temporal chains or enfeeble are also viable if you want a defensive curse. Lightning Trap -> Greater Multiple Projectiles -> Increased Duration This is for when you want things dead in a hurry. Extra projectiles increases it's coverage and duration keeps it around longer. You will want this for mapping.
Leveling Passives
For leveling you can either go dual flame totem as soon as possible or you can use 1 flame totem and self cast fire storm. I personally used fire storm until Act 4 cruel, if you wish to do the same just skip the ancestral bond cluster until you are ready for dual totems. 25 points 50 points 75 points Moving toward 100 points you are in your high 70's. If you have your resists worked out, and have completed normal and cruel lab, it's time to spec into crit. Also keep in mind to make this transition to crit, I highly recommend you have a 5 link infernal mantle. The links are as follows: Flame Totem -> Faster Casting -> Faster Projectiles -> Increased Critical Strikes -> Elemental Focus 100 points
Ascendancy
Inquisitor When you do the labs is personal preference. Since I don't have much lab experience I waited until I was ready to switch to crit (level 60 ish) to do the normal and cruel lab. I didn't do the merciless lab until I hit yellow tier maps and felt I needed some extra elemental damage reduction. I'm level 89 now and still need to find 1 trial to be able to do uber lab. Here is the order I recommend you get your ascendancy points. Righteous Providence -> Inevitable Judgement -> Augury of Penitence -> Instruments of Virtue. Sanctify is another possible option, but you would need sulfur flask to get good use of it. I would need to test it and see how big the consecrated ground area is to really know. At some point in the league I will try Sanctify and Pious path and let you all know my findings.
My Gear
With my current setup (lvl 19 gems and little to no quality) I have 27k tooltip. Once you've made the journey around the skill tree, every node you get adds substantial damage. Your damage starts taking off around level 80. This gear puts me at 7.5k effective health. 5.8 life and 1.7 energy shield Flasks
Can the build be done on a budget
Yes I chose this build to start the league because I was confident I could operate on a budget. To start you can craft a +1 fire gems scepter with the vendor recipe (blue scepter / wand, ruby ring, alteration). This weapon with a 3 link of Flame Totem -> Faster Casting -> Controlled Destruction will carry to maps if you so desire. However around act 4 cruel you have some other options. You can find a +2 fire gems scepter or staff (if you want more links). You can also use a sire of shards for faster clearing. I personally went the sire of shards route and used that until I was ready to push crit to the max. Beyond the weapon and gem recommendations, like any other build look for life and resists on your gear while leveling. White tier maps are easily completed in a +2 fire gems 3 link, however the addition of faster projectiles will greatly increase your clear speed. Luckily an infernal mantle can be picked up cheap (1 chaos) and a 4 link is very easy to get. So that, capped resistances, and about 4k life is enough to get you mapping and making currency.
Why not Three Dragons or Added Lightning Damage
So I was using a three dragons at one point and an added lightning before that. A few days ago though, I was building a damage calculator for PoE to learn a new programming language. In doing this I learned about a change to shock that essentially requires you to do 5% of a targets health for shock to have any effect. Well this is easily accomplished on a lot of content, but not on content that mattered. This is due to flame totem being a series of small hits. It becomes increasingly difficult to actually shock mobs as you progress higher in the map tiers. After much comparing in back to back maps, I found using elemental focus and a lightning trap gave me superior feel and clear speed. It also opened my helm slot for something with life and armor.
Videos
I've recorded some game play, but I need a new mic to record some commentary for a proper video guide. So check back soon for videos.
Other Guides
Last edited by nosrek_avowed on Sep 12, 2016, 5:33:47 PM Last bumped on Jan 21, 2017, 12:24:04 PM
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focused only on crit and defenses are entirely absent. u can't map and clear high tier without solid defenses, no matter how much dps.
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My effective health pool is 7.5k at the moment, 5.8k life and 1.7k es. With that much energy shield I have a very effective 30% mitigation vs all types of damage. On top of my raw health pool, the two cast when damage taken, golem and having two totems go a long way in preventing damage.
Tier 12 is my highest so far and I've run minus max, crit/crit multi, monster damage, vulnerability, temp chains, shocked ground, blood magic, less regen, no regen, reflect, etc. I have not had any issues. In fact my deaths have only come from learning the traps in the uber lab. The hardest boss fight I've done was a minus max shocked ground double fire storm guy. If I wasn't immune to stuns that would have killed me (I suck at dodging on 100+ ping). I was having issues with porcupines, which prompted me to add the immortal call setup as 3 endurance charges and my armor stat was not enough physical mitigation. After adding that I've not had an issue getting chunked. I'll see if your statement is true in tier 16, but the build is doing fine in content harder than most players get to. |
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i can clear tier 15 abyss without deaths on my flame totem built it very similar
but shows dmg of 100k~ | |
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Ok, i am checking your build on one of my chars, and i kinda dont get why do you combine mom, eldricht and blood magic. I still cast auras on health, and moving energy shield to mana which i dont have rips me from ES and blood magic is still in place. Am i doint something wrong..?
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Yep, thats where i get confused too, but i don't have Eldricht Battery skilled yet.
Maybe it's used to get the 30% damage, that would be applied to mana from MoM, to drain from the Energy Shield instead? Or does MoM in combination with Blood Magic mean, that 30% of the damage taken just vanishes? Would be nice if OP could explain. Edit: Okay, I did some research. IF I understand the mechanics correctly, it SHOULD work like this: Normally, Energy Shield tanks 100% of the damage taken (except Chaos damage) until the shield is depleted. MoM moves 30% of the damage taken to Mana (when your Mana pool is empty, the damage goes to the health pool). If the Mana pool is protected by your Energy Shield, the shield tanks the damage first, then Mana, then life. So the idea is: BM gives you access to a bigger health pool and makes you mana independent. MoM doesn't do shit with BM skilled because you have no Mana to take damage. So OP skills EB to add a Energy Shield to your Mana pool to tank the 30% damage from MoM AND by moving the Energy Shield to Mana it can recharge while you're casting (Blood Magic gives you damage and therefore would normally prevent the shield from recharging) because the Mana pool never takes any damage. Maybe that's the trick? :D Edit 2: It's debatable, if this is a more efficient way than ditching MoM and Eldritch Battery. The way OP skills, the Energy Shield does prevent far less damage as it would without EB and MoM. On the other hand side casting doesn't prevent it from recharging... I don't know. I would rather have a more effective Energy Shield and stop casting for a few seconds than than having 70% of the damage I take circumvent the shield altogether... Last edited by sockenklaus on Jan 11, 2017, 5:38:17 PM
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I guess having blood magic is good for one thing - Infernal mantle hurts a lot with all mana reserved for auras.
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Sorry for double post, but im still fairly new here.
Second good part of blood magic is use of clear mind jewel's boost all the time. I got mine 53% fairly cheap, so i guess its not that bad, and that boost is huge for its price and easy availability. One thing im sceptical about, is that in total you have very spreaded stats between HP, ES and Armor, with mantle being pure ES, you are left with not that much other items to boost them, all leading to mediocre stats in every of mentioned 3 cathegories. That maybe a bit overkill, but being mathemetic lover my sanity hurts a lot when i combine such unoptimal set :D. |
