Looks like Ranged Attack Totem (Ballista Totem) Support was overnerfed

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Ranged Attack Totem Support (Now called Ballista Totem Support)
Supported skills now deal 50% less Damage at gem level 1 (from 30%), up to 41% less at gem level 20 (from 26%).
Supported skills now summon a Ballista Totem, rather than a regular Totem.
Supported skills now have +2 to maximum number of Summoned Ballista Totems.
Attacks used by totem now have 50% less Attack Speed at all gem levels (from 30% less).

On level 20 with quality 20, it had 26% less damage and 30% less attack speed, so skill supported by it had (0.74*0.7=0.518) 51.8% of skill damage. In 3.9 expansion, it will have 41% less damage and 50% less attack speed, so skill supported by it will have (0.59*0.5=0.295) 29.5% of skill damage. Taking into account that this support is used instead of different support that potentially gives 30% more damage (i.e. 130% of skill damage) - skill supported by Ballista Support will deal 4.4 times less damage than skill supported by different support.

This means you need to place at least 5 Ballistas to reach damage level of regular skill. This looks like overnerf to me.

Keep in mind that you can place up to 3 of them and STILL deal damage yourself. 4 with Skirmish.

Point is, you yourself can still easily deal damage while your ballistas are active, which a lot of other totem builds can't.

the support is always a downgrade from self-cast. this is to be expected. however even the ballista skill gems (which are ballistas on their own without the support) their damage effectiveness in total is....kinda average. but it does require you to have all 3 totems hitting the intended target.

so...eh. not the best

Consider the numbers with a Multiple Totems Support on the spell totem (+2 totems for 21% less damage), comparing 3 Spell Totems to 3 Ranged Attack Totems:
(51.8 * (.79 * 3)) / (29.5 * 3) = 1.387
This means that Spell Totems with MTS support will deal 38% more damage than Ranged Attack Toems with no support, which is roughly within the range of one support gems (especially since some supports for attacks give a bit more damage)

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FCK42 wrote:

Keep in mind that you can place up to 3 of them and STILL deal damage yourself. 4 with Skirmish.

Point is, you yourself can still easily deal damage while your ballistas are active, which a lot of other totem builds can't.

This is true, but price of doing so is need to be considered:
- to deal damage by both yourself and ballistas, you need 2x separate 6L (which not only cost you more but is also greatly reducing amount of sockets you can use on your gear for other skills);
- while you are placing ballistas, you are not attacking by yourself, which is reducing your overall damage;
- ballistas without investments into their toughness will die a lot, especially in boss fights. If you decide to invest into toughness of ballistas - you will invest into them instead of investing into your own damage, which also is reducing your overall damage;
- time spend on placing ballista is time when you are standing still, i.e. you can't dodge monster skills nor can't attack by yourself stun/freeze~locking monsters, which puts you in danger.

For me, this price is too high to use them together with main bow skill.

keep in mind ballistas also have a much faster placement speed than spell totems, now

I feel like the ballistas will be pretty good overall.

And once more an absolute meme with iron commander, reaching new, unexplored levels of memedom.

I think you guys forget some key problems here.

Regardless of the huge damage penalty, using totems is a spit in the face of QoL itself.

1. You have to stop and spawn multiple totems each time you clear a pack,
2. You have to cast totems 2-3 times to have a decent amount of totems placed.
3. You need more mana and have to be stationery for longer.
4.Bosses can RIP your totems real fast.
5. Totems can miss quite often when the enemy is moving.(especially with the insanely low Attack Speed of new RAT).
6.Investing into items with + extra totems might just cut your dps instead of increasing it due to losing damage modifiers from those items slots. Not to mention, even more totems = even more time spent with summoning your "wooden army".
7. Covering corners and labyrinth like areas with the new "totems are summoned at your position" is gonna be a nightmare.

Meanwhile, you can run through maps with a good bow skill/MA support to clear pack and use another 6 link skill to take down bosses.

Welp, i'm just some noob, but these kinda obvious problems seem to be overlooked by the poe staff. Its like they just looked at the numbers on paper and have never actually tested how these new RAT builds would function in reality.

those are great points.

overall i think the ballistas are going to be a good addition and fairly balanced out of the box. they're definitely not the purposefully over tuned additions we've been used to

Well, I'm sure the other new ballista skills will be interesting, enjoyable even.

But something else could've been done with RAT. Instead of having to spawn billions of totems, limiting it to 1 -2 max totems with less damage penalties, lower attack range or longer cast time or smth.

Having a more different mechanic compared to spell totem support would've been nice.