Two totems at a time feels sooo bad (and how to fix it)

I had just gotten a quad Warchief Heiro to level 90 in Standard before 3.5 launched. I've been playing it now, and... yikes.

First off, let me get this out of the way: the damage nerf doesn't bother me at all. It's barely noticeable. But being forced to place two totems at a time fucks me up in several ways:

1. AoE coverage. Warchief totems have an ok-but-not-great AoE. With 4 totems, I could just about cover the entire screen. But now that I have one less totem, AND I'm forced to place two of those next to each other, I went from having the AoE of 4 totems to 2 and a bit.

I don't need the overlapping damage of multiple totems for map clearing, or for low level Delve encounters. I just want maximum AoE, and I'm taking a 33% nerf to it for no good reason.

2. Being forced to resummon totems. Suppose you place two totems near a boss or tough rare, and one further back to clear mobs. A little later, you want to move the third totem up closer to the boss. Because you have to summon 2 totems per cast, one of the totems already on the boss will be unsummoned and resummoned, pointlessly cutting your boss DPS in half for the duration.

3. Lack of precision placement. Becomes a huge pain in situations like the Shaper fight, when you want to place totems just between two DoT pools. Since you have no control over where the second one spawns, it will more than likely end up inside the DoT pool and die instantly. And if you try to resummon it, you run into the previous problem again, where it disables one of your existing totems for a short time (and you still have no guarantee that both of them will end up in the right place).

4. Vaal Warchief. Sometimes, I don't want to blow both my uses at once, thank you very much. Feels really bad in phased bossfights, or when I want to conserve souls for an upcoming tougher fight.



How to fix: replace the two-at-once modifier on Ritual of Awakening and Multiple Totems with one that sets your base totem placement speed to twice its normal value.

This will have the same effect of doubling the speed at which you get totems out, the two boni still won't stack, and it fixes every single problem I listed above. Literally all the benefits of the current solution without any of the drawbacks.

You're welcome.

Absolutely agree!

Placing 2 Totems at once feels really clunky and bad.
My Hierophant got so unfun to the point where he's literally unplayable for me because why would I want to summon 2 at a time with a maximum of 3?
I already have a very hight placement speed and laying out my 4 totems in a smart way was the most appealing part of a my char's gameplay.

Please give us back the 4th Totem ans scratch the doblecast thing maybe nerf the damage but not the way it feels to play!

I haven't tried the new multi-cast totems yet, but I can imagine feeling what you're describing and how it doesn't quite work the way you might want them to. Good post.

+1

Agree too will remove that point and put it into Illuminated Ilussion together with frostbomb (or any other skill) and arcane surge it will give 50% spell damage and placement of totems free at will and not a useless second totem.

Ritual of Awaking has become a useless passiv this way.

BUMP

Hierophant is obviously designed with spell totems in mind. For most spells you put on totems (arc, glacial cascade, frostbolt, ice spear, etc) there's not really any issue with the new mechanic, since they're ranged attacks.

For short range totems like warchief or dark pact, you're spot on that it is a clunky mechanic. Fortunately you're not forced to use it. There's very strong totem builds available on scion, chieftain, berserker, and more.

100% more totem placement speed would of course be even better, but I'm guessing they didn't want to do that because it would make totem builds have clear speed comparable to some of the best builds out there, while still being just as good at boss killing as always.

+1

Hiero's 'Ritual of Awakening' change is a disaster.

the support gem is terrible as well - but this one is at least optional and in SOME builds it is cool addition.

Ritual of Awakening on the other hand is 'mandatory' (aka what else should i take on a totem Hiero?) and for both clear and boss situation it is a downgrade (details were really well described above)


my Shockwave Totem character (that was already obsolete and terrible) just got sh..-tier with these changes. coverage went down, boss damage went down (because if one totem dies it means that also its sibling dies)



i bet they tested these changes with Arc and nothing else..

"

magicrectangle wrote:

Hierophant is obviously designed with spell totems in mind. For most spells you put on totems (arc, glacial cascade, frostbolt, ice spear, etc) there's not really any issue with the new mechanic, since they're ranged attacks.

For short range totems like warchief or dark pact, you're spot on that it is a clunky mechanic. Fortunately you're not forced to use it. There's very strong totem builds available on scion, chieftain, berserker, and more.

100% more totem placement speed would of course be even better, but I'm guessing they didn't want to do that because it would make totem builds have clear speed comparable to some of the best builds out there, while still being just as good at boss killing as always.

The diffrence between warchief/darkpact and arc totems is just 1!!! of his points. You lose AOE coverage for them. Each and every other point he makes is just as valid with the stupid shit aka arc totems.

Losing totems to aoe dots because they unintentionally get put there, a super hard loss of uptime fror your damage with odd number of totems etc

It's a little bit mind blowing to me, how GGG changed that node ...
I just don't understand how they thought that this would be a good thing .... just reading and I was like ... wut??

I actually love the new support gem but honestly I dont play a totem build and so I do not care much about that stuff but yeah even myself I find that they are too close to each other and awkward to use (if you want to spawn 3 for example)


But reading you I could easily understand the frustration and your idea sounds quite interesting

+1