How are totems this league?

Templar ES+armor defense seems to be strong this league. I noticed last league that my DPS dropped a lot when I'm constantly avoiding boss abilities, totems could fix this. How are totems this league?

What spells would work well? Freezing pulse seems good for my defensive playstyle, anything else you would recommend?

I played Forbidden Rite totems (Hierophant) and Earthbreaker Consecrated Path (Inquisitor) in 3.15.

Especially conc path is hilarious having 3+ totems teleporting and slamming around. Teleport range & clear is bigger with Chieftain and his passive Tukohama, war Herald.

Not much as far as nerfs to totems. It sounds like the lowered totem life & damage taken should feel about the same for non-FR totems. So I think totems should be fine in Scourge.

I played Eye of Winter totems last league and downed all content/challenges and plan on the same this league. It's better for bosses than clearing, and you have to consider the distance to explode the ring and hit a boss with all projectiles, but it felt fun to play. Viable with medium-low investment (6l soul mantle, pandemonius, viridi's veil).

I pob'd a quick and dirty 3.16 version of a warchief chieftain build for my starter and it seems that the worst nerf is that some crit chance got deleted in the marauder area of the tree, but overall the rest doesn't look much different so I'd guess that melee totems are all probably still fine.

Spell totems should be fine. The new Asylum node and it's wheel + mastery should help a lot for mitigating the drawback of Soul Mantle. Asylum + curse effect mastery + Yugul pantheon is 70% curse effect reduction. This means you only need 1 ring to be completely protected from Soul Mantle curses.

I PoB'd up a quick Divine Ire totem build and it seems fine. The damage looks a little lower than it used to be but it should not be a problem.

Totems DPS seems to be fine but I have yet to see a tanky 3.16 totem build. Like one build had life and some mana as buffer but no other big layers of defense...

I hope tanky totem builds come later.

So long as whatever you're doing doesn't scale off of totem life (aka Forbidden Rite, but also Dark Pact), you'll be fine. Basically they want you to use totems as totems, not as glorified suicide bombers. There's other minion builds for doing that.

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kolpo wrote:

Totems DPS seems to be fine but I have yet to see a tanky 3.16 totem build. Like one build had life and some mana as buffer but no other big layers of defense...

I hope tanky totem builds come later.

I run mine with Glancing Blows max block as well, which along with MOM/Agnostic makes me tanky enough for endgame content, but it is hard to get truly tanky. If you do some ES Corrupted Soul shenanigans that might do the trick.

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gandhar0 wrote:

I played Forbidden Rite totems (Hierophant) and Earthbreaker Consecrated Path (Inquisitor) in 3.15.

Especially conc path is hilarious having 3+ totems teleporting and slamming around. Teleport range & clear is bigger with Chieftain and his passive Tukohama, war Herald.

+1 conc path was a real blast x'D

I tend to like a quad totem + arma brand with a crit focus for league start because it's actually cheap to do most content - quick clear and most bosses are downed quick (just beware the dreaded "resists elemental damage" - in certain scenarios, you might as well just away/run forward).


3.15 changes hurt, but not THAT much - we shall see how it fairs. You are already tanky for not being the thing monster are focusing on - so some more of that (tankiness from defenses) wont be bad.

If anything, the claim of "longer fights" makes sense if monsters are unchanged (in general, for how it feels to down them) but we get better defenses vs before.


That all said - I was all armor + Agnostic/Mom for this build in the past, so we shall see if going arm/nrg feels as survivable with just Mom (my pob has crits being reduced 60% from the tree alone, and curses are halved, again, without gear to help).

Probably - but who knows till we have that new gear in our hands (PoB still has old gear and gems as of my writing this, and other bugs wrt 3.16 and masteries properly affecting damage equations, etc.).