Considering rerolling

So I've been rolling with Lifting's quad icebolt totem build, and.. it's OK, but not fantastic. Partly I'm spoiled by the speed of the reave gladiator I played last season- hit 1.3M PoB DPS with him, and whirling blades is just ridiculously fast. The other part is the low single-target DPS.

So, I was contemplating a reroll, and was looking at some of these options:

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2094148/page/1 - Whispering Ice CI Elequisitor

[Removed by Support]

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1989546 - Ghostly Quad Totem HOWA


Anyhow- curious on folks thoughts on how these builds look- especially DPS-wise, or other suggestions.

Alternatively- there any decent totem builds that also incorporate whirling blades? I'd presume a spell dmg dagger/crit and the totem chain on the chest, but all the builds I've found so far really rely on either a unique MH (usually wand or 1h mace) or staff.

I would suggest a dark pact totem heirophant or ascendant. You can whirl or shield charge with a spell dagger.

Glacial cascade totems seems fairly ridiculous. I used it to level completely unrelated build/tree as it was just so strong. Don't know how big a respec that would be for you.

Why not remove ancestral bond and self cast GC so you have single target. Actually with hierophant ancestral bond is a total waste whether you cast or play attack based warchief. You get like 50% more DPS 3 plus yourself as opposed to 4 totems.

I think I'm going with the HOWA build- as the gearing there is claw + shield, allowing me to go with either whirling blades or shield charge for movement, and the build seems to be... very very tanky. Being able to drop totems and let them do the DPS while I simply dodge incoming attacks is... a really nice playstyle. And stacking the hell out of INT for both my DPS and my defense is awfully appealing, so I'm thinking this build's pretty much got it all.

This is going to sound very negative but I would stay away from Lifting´s builds in General.
I have tried out a couple of his earlier builds and they were all bad.
Back in the day he reccommended Soul Mantle Totem builds for HC.
The only thing to counter the curses were a warding flask.
That was before 100% curse immunity was possible.

He also reccommended a Flame totem build with winds of change and lioneye´s remorse shield.
To counter the movement speed drawbacks he reccommended using flame dash with faster casting.

His builds got a little better but usually I wouldn´t play anything he made himself.

Well, the new build is not from Lifting- and it's a Lifting build I'm rerolling after. I just couldn't take using flame dash and quicksilver for movement; whenever I needed to actually travel, it was just painful.

Though I will say I saw a very interesting soul mantle totem build where the curses were *mostly* counteracted and stacking curses actually gave you DPS bonuses... that was a novel concept, for sure.

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NoDiscoSisqoOrCalypso wrote:

This is going to sound very negative but I would stay away from Lifting´s builds in General.
I have tried out a couple of his earlier builds and they were all bad.
Back in the day he reccommended Soul Mantle Totem builds for HC.
The only thing to counter the curses were a warding flask.
That was before 100% curse immunity was possible.

He also reccommended a Flame totem build with winds of change and lioneye´s remorse shield.
To counter the movement speed drawbacks he reccommended using flame dash with faster casting.

His builds got a little better but usually I wouldn´t play anything he made himself.

So as I understand he told you the negatives, explained how to counter them and you don't like that? I don't understand this logic at all. Unless you are saying his counters to the negatives don't actually work which would be different but it doesn't seem that's what you are saying.

I am horrible at making builds, I watch a LOT of videos and try a bunch of builds as I'm an alt-a-holic and if I see a build that has drawbacks and yet tells me how to deal with that I have to research as to if I can A. Afford that counter and B. If it works with my game play style. At no point would I say the build maker isn't quality or people should stay away from them simply because I can't deal with limitations of a build they told me about to start.

I think he's saying that he played some Lifting builds where he ended up concluding he wasn't "OK" with the negatives, even if they were disclosed to begin with. Sometimes it's hard to judge how big a QOL impact a negative really is until you play it.