Newbie questions on arc totem hierophant and mapping

Hi everyone,

I’ve been playing for about three months now and arc totems is my first char that doesn’t suck and that I actually really enjoy. I used the following guides as baseline, but didn’t follow them exactly (https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2201648 and https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2115624 ). I use e.g. two Kikazaru + self flagellation, since I’m a pretty lazy casual player and don’t like flask management.

I just cruise around with Quicksilver and some casual Conductivity + Arcane Surge and spam totems. And if I’m accidentally overwhelmed by mobs I use Flame Dash or CWDT+Phase Run to gtfo. I only use the other flasks and Vaal Haste (plus totem spamming until I have about 10 curses on myself) to prepare for bosses. So far it worked out really great and I took the char to red maps, but I have a three questions:

1) What am I supposed to do in maps? The Elder spawned on a random T8 map. I killed 2 of his guardians but nothing happened. I read in the forums that I only get the fragments if the elder is on a red map. But how can I move him there?
2) What am I supposed to do with the Shaper influence? Should I just try to defeat all of his strongholds? I defeated one of them, but again nothing really happened. Is there any other goal or quest in maps that I should be aware of or is it just casually running maps that I like?
3) Do you have any suggestions on how to further improve the char (besides upgrading gems to 20% quality, that is already planned)? I have a budget of about 7ex and thought about dual wielding void batteries or upgrading my boots with lightning enchant, but both options would pretty much eat up my whole budget for only a single improvement. So I was wondering if I could somehow get more bang for the buck. Here is the https://pastebin.com/AyYEcfQB .

Thanks in advance for your help!

"

Plauzinator wrote:

1) What am I supposed to do in maps? The Elder spawned on a random T8 map. I killed 2 of his guardians but nothing happened. I read in the forums that I only get the fragments if the elder is on a red map. But how can I move him there?
2) What am I supposed to do with the Shaper influence? Should I just try to defeat all of his strongholds? I defeated one of them, but again nothing really happened. Is there any other goal or quest in maps that I should be aware of or is it just casually running maps that I like?
3) Do you have any suggestions on how to further improve the char (besides upgrading gems to 20% quality, that is already planned)? I have a budget of about 7ex and thought about dual wielding void batteries or upgrading my boots with lightning enchant, but both options would pretty much eat up my whole budget for only a single improvement. So I was wondering if I could somehow get more bang for the buck. Here is the https://pastebin.com/AyYEcfQB .
Thanks in advance for your help!

1) You can kill the remaining guardians and Elder himself. Elder will disappear but you can spawn him later or Elder influence might disappear after completing around 20 maps I guess (maybe more) without dealing with him.

2) Besides Zana´s quest you can farm shaper/elder influenced zones and/or continue with progression through Atlas to the centre:)

Shaper´s strongholds are special shaper influenced maps with special rewards (sextants, league specific unique etc…)

3) Every next upgrade will be expensive.
Dual wielding weapons - you need to stack PC to benefit from Void Batteries. You can also consider using the second wand with mods such as cast speed / added light / crit / lightning spell damage and/or scepters (Sambar) (Scepter + shield is also possible and using shield charge to move).

You can consider buying Shaper amulet with life/crit/penetration@, Helm/Boots with arc/lighting enchant, rare Elder fingerless gloves with cast speed, Stygian wise belt with delve mods (lightning/elemental damage mod).

What´s fit your build best depends on stats and market price.
Use PoB to choose what fits your build best before buying anything.

Btw take 15% crit damage nodes in the Doom Cast cluster instead of 20% cc.

I would also drop Soul siphon and take the Socket near the Melding.

First of all thanks for the reply!

"

Rakiii wrote:

1) You can kill the remaining guardians and Elder himself. Elder will disappear but you can spawn him later or Elder influence might disappear after completing around 20 maps I guess (maybe more) without dealing with him.

Does that mean, I can only move the Elder by killing him? So I have to be lucky to have him spawn again on a red map to get the fragments? Or can I influence that somehow?

Didn't know about the glove and belt mods, I'll definitely check that out, and I'll rework my tree as well with the next levels. I wanted to get another jewel anyway to further increase my life pool and get some dps at the same time.

Thanks again for your feedback!

"

Plauzinator wrote:

Does that mean, I can only move the Elder by killing him? So I have to be lucky to have him spawn again on a red map to get the fragments? Or can I influence that somehow?

Elder influence will respawn after you killed him and his guardians and it will respawn on the maptier you are farming in between killing him and his influences respawn.

So you can kind of determine the maptier his influence is going to spawn on.
Also you can spread elder influence by clearing connected maps under shaper influence.

As soon as elder has taken over 20 maps he and his guardians will spawn.
Naturally you want him to occupy as many red maps as possible to maximize chances for a red elder spawn.

Hi everyone,

I just wanted to give you some feedback on your suggestions. I reworked the char a little bit and went indeed from wand+shield to dual wielding rare wands (since I am using flame dash anyways). Also got a cheap stygian with lightning damage, a devotos devotion with additional arc chain enchant, reworked my tree a little and got some improved gems (some are only lvl 19, so still something to improve over time). I went from 362k dps to 534k dps (about 50% increase!) in PoB with only losing the 160 life from the shield (https://pastebin.com/PSDEzBar). So that worked out really nicely! I hope I am ready to face some end game bosses now and make them spawn on the right spots :)

Thanks again for all the feedback and suggestions.

I'm just wondering why you have faster casting in your 6l and not a spell echo. I always thought the latter was a better choice.

"

Benalishhero wrote:

I'm just wondering why you have faster casting in your 6l and not a spell echo. I always thought the latter was a better choice.

Totems can´t support SE.

thank you