When will spell totems be playable again?

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NasusPodInta wrote:

Well GGG really want to push caster meta. And because spells get buffs, totems must be nerfed otherwise people will play totems instead self cast because totem is more safe playstyle.

It is safer, that goes without saying. But is it right that a good budget build does at least 1m shaper DPS whether it's caster, attack, minion, etc... when totems have such subpar damage values that the moment they enter yellow maps they are struggling hard because the damage can't keep up?

Is it also fair that spell totems are basically in an unplayable state except for mirror gear (because mirror gear fixes everything, even heavy strike can be played at mirror gear). This is an entire playstyle being unplayable. We are not talking about that freeze pulse totems are no longer a thing. Sure, I liked that but if there was something else buffed to make up for it so that another spell totem build was viable I'd not be making this post.

Also let's not forget one thing. We pay for the extra safety of the totems with lower clear speed because even if we had the same DPS as non totem builds we'd still have lower clear speed on account of having to deploy the totems and wait for them to be finish deployment to start attacking. On that aspect even just considering the trade off should suffice to accept equivalent DPS from my point of view. But I don't even go as far as asking for that. If I can have totem builds that on a low budget have the same level of power as the good low budget league starters and on a medium, high and mirror tier it's less efficient but still good enough to be considered good to play compared to other better builds, that is enough.

In other words, I don't expect all builds or all playstyles to be equal, but there is a limit to how much disparity there should be, especially when it's so high that it has destroyed an entire playstyle that has been one of the halmarks of PoE. No other game has ever had anything approuching a good totem build.

EDIT:

@RuneLuthien

Minions builds are not as bad off as you think. Some things were gutted like skeleton makges even though they will still have multi million DPS at high budget no problem but they won't be good on a low budget. However absolution is going to be absolutly brutal, bare minimum you're looking at 3million DPS on budget and on high budgets we're well above 60m DPS. You have poison animate weapon back on the table as a strong contender. You have golems being even more powerful now, especially with the buff to clayshaper. You also have the buffs to SRS which was already reaching over 100M shaper DPS in 3.18 on mirror gear. Even with the actual base minion damage nerfs it will still deal more damage now.

Minions are very much alive. The meta changed, not the fact that minion are still very much one of the top tier builds.

Biggest issues i noticed in my SSF playthroughs is the casting delay and small life pool.

The casting delay is a combination of totem placing speed and then a small period where they orient and aim towards enemies and then fire their skills.
Around 1sec at least delay if not more.

Then the low totem life which makes them prone to being stunned and frozen.

.

according to my league start plan shockwave totems are very playable, moreso with an astral projector ring and an extra totem shield on a chieftain (Fire conversion) or hierophant (cold or lightning or even trinity). there is a strength stacking opportunity here as well for both ascendancies.

Similarly, I think its siege ballista, seems worth exploring on a chieftain .

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Fauxxx_NL wrote:

according to my league start plan shockwave totems are very playable, moreso with an astral projector ring and an extra totem shield on a chieftain (Fire conversion) or hierophant (cold or lightning or even trinity). there is a strength stacking opportunity here as well for both ascendancies.

Similarly, I think its siege ballista, seems worth exploring on a chieftain .

I am sure there are some people out there who believe cleave is a great skill and the +2 radius is a great buff. It doesn't changes the fact that it isn't good and so isn't shockwave totem. It actually scales better now that freeze pulse has no threshold jewel and soul mantle is absolute garbage but that's not by virtue of it having become better, it's just that everything else became worse.

Shockwave totem was already not considered viable before so I'm not inclined to agree that it is now viable just because everything else became worse.

that being said, in the spirit of not being too close minded about it, show me a PoB with a low budget (and when I say low budget I mean less than 1 ex like tabula rasa and extremely cheap items), a medium budget and a high budget. Also one that doesn't rquires pushing 500 keys to work. The build should need at best one key to move, one key to put down totems, one key for a curse or whatever debuff form there is, one key for a mobility skill and 1 key for a healing flask, more keys than that already start to make the build too key intensive. Then I'll take a look at what kind of damage it pulls and survivability although tobe fair, I'm not expecting miracles.

I played Ice Spear totems in 3.17 (I went from self-cast Frostbolt to Ice Spear to totem Ice Spear due to the better playability at each step). Clear was as good or better than in the past just with swapping GMP for volley (ie: Ice Spear was clearing fine on its own, no need to swap to a different 'clear' skill).

The totem playstyle is far from 'unplayable'. This endemic hyperbolization is confusing.

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SirGuySW wrote:

I played Ice Spear totems in 3.17 (I went from self-cast Frostbolt to Ice Spear to totem Ice Spear due to the better playability at each step). Clear was as good or better than in the past just with swapping GMP for volley (ie: Ice Spear was clearing fine on its own, no need to swap to a different 'clear' skill).

The totem playstyle is far from 'unplayable'. This endemic hyperbolization is confusing.

Ice spear totems were and aren't fine in any way shape or form to clear. First it's very janky because of the placement you have to do with them leading to very awkward moments with fast enemies that close in on the totems before they even start firing and ice spear is absolute garbage on the first stage.

Then they also don't have enough AoE to be able to clear fast and pierce is only in the first form so they really are terrible for clear. I tried it before and it was incredibly bad. Clear time more than doubled.

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SirGuySW wrote:

I played Ice Spear totems in 3.17 (I went from self-cast Frostbolt to Ice Spear to totem Ice Spear due to the better playability at each step). Clear was as good or better than in the past just with swapping GMP for volley (ie: Ice Spear was clearing fine on its own, no need to swap to a different 'clear' skill).

The totem playstyle is far from 'unplayable'. This endemic hyperbolization is confusing.

I'd like to see that fine Ice Spear clearing tbh

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Nabsta2201 wrote:

I'd like to see that fine Ice Spear clearing tbh

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Elhazzared wrote:

Ice spear totems were and aren't fine in any way shape or form to clear. First it's very janky because of the placement you have to do with them leading to very awkward moments with fast enemies that close in on the totems before they even start firing and ice spear is absolute garbage on the first stage.

Then they also don't have enough AoE to be able to clear fast and pierce is only in the first form so they really are terrible for clear. I tried it before and it was incredibly bad. Clear time more than doubled.

Feel free to die on this hill... but I enjoy totems. They aren't (and aren't intended to be?) as fast as the memest meta build zooming around clearing maps in 5 seconds. But they are plenty playable.


Regarding Ice Spear totems specifically:
Ice Spear totems don't "require" special positioning but they definitely benefit greatly from planning ahead. If your build can't kill mobs with the first form (you've probably done something wrong with your build) then you should place totems away from mobs or find a way to keep mobs away from the totems (for example by using double placement with the first placement 'holding mobs back' while the second placement (far enough away for the projectiles to enter the second form before hitting mobs) kills them).

As for the 'pinpoint' nature of a barrage skill: yes, that creates an issue for clear...until we equip volley which converts the skill from a pinpoint to a fairly wide column of frozen death...

Here's a random T16 (Atol) alch-n-go on standard with the char I mentioned earlier (ie: the char was transitioned from self-cast into totems, it's not exactly optimized for totems). Regarding the janky placement: I wasn't worried about it. The skill obviously works better in the second form but works ok enough in the first for me not to stress about 'janky placement'. The map didn't have 'fast' mobs so I placed totems directly in packs to simulate mobs that close quickly.

Pierce is provided by the skill naturally in the second form (but I think that's what you meant) which is why we typically add pierce somewhere on our build to allow the first form to pierce one or two mobs who get too close. But again, even without pierce, you can just stagger your placements and let one block the mobs while the other kills them with the second form.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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SirGuySW wrote:

Feel free to die on this hill... but I enjoy totems. They aren't (and aren't intended to be?) as fast as the memest meta build zooming around clearing maps in 5 seconds. But they are plenty playable.


Regarding Ice Spear totems specifically:
Ice Spear totems don't "require" special positioning but they definitely benefit greatly from planning ahead. If your build can't kill mobs with the first form (you've probably done something wrong with your build) then you should place totems away from mobs or find a way to keep mobs away from the totems (for example by using double placement with the first placement 'holding mobs back' while the second placement (far enough away for the projectiles to enter the second form before hitting mobs) kills them).

As for the 'pinpoint' nature of a barrage skill: yes, that creates an issue for clear...until we equip volley which converts the skill from a pinpoint to a fairly wide column of frozen death...

Here's a random T16 (Atol) alch-n-go on standard with the char I mentioned earlier (ie: the char was transitioned from self-cast into totems, it's not exactly optimized for totems). Regarding the janky placement: I wasn't worried about it. The skill obviously works better in the second form but works ok enough in the first for me not to stress about 'janky placement'. The map didn't have 'fast' mobs so I placed totems directly in packs to simulate mobs that close quickly.

Pierce is provided by the skill naturally in the second form (but I think that's what you meant) which is why we typically add pierce somewhere on our build to allow the first form to pierce one or two mobs who get too close. But again, even without pierce, you can just stagger your placements and let one block the mobs while the other kills them with the second form.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I think you just made the point for all of us. Your clear time is horrible and this is coming from someone who like totems above everything else and who only ever has had any degree of success in PoE with totems.

Here's the thing about ice spear. It deals significantly less damage than freeze pulse. The reason why ice spear is better at bossing is because the second form for crit combined with GMP scales the DPS massively, making it 2 or 3 times better than freeze pulse for bossing. However it shows in mapping. If you hit on the first form you pierce but do low damage, white mobs don't even lose half their HP. If you hit on the second form you still aren't killing even white mobs in one hit and where they hit, they are gone because it doesn't pierces.

Compare that to freeze pulse which will oneshot the white mobs, travels the whole screen and then some depending on speed modifiers and pierces through everything in a large line. The difference then becomes. You drop 2 totems and they almost instantly clear the screen and then you can move on. You only have the dealy that is waiting for the totem to be up and attacking vs placing the totem and from the moment it starts attacking it often takes several seconds to clear the screen which also leaves you more vulnerable to attacks since things are not dying fast enough.

Now, this is still a somewhat theorical comparison because it wasn't just totems that got nerfed, freeze pulse was nerfed too by losing access to the threshold jewels.

It is also a fact that totems are nowhere near in comparison to the level of damage output that ALL other playstyles have available. You don't see any other playstyles that don't enjoy at least 50+m shaper DPS on mirror tier gear but spell totems rarely are able to break 10m in mirror tier gear and the reflection of that is that on lower budgets they also deal much less damage comparatively to the other playstyles.

It is high time that spell totems got some love because they are in the gutter, they have been in the gutter for years which resulted in people not wanting to play them. It's not that people don't like totems. Sure enough there is going to be less people wanting totems than say, minions, regardless of how got it is, but there is a significant portion of the player base who would like totems to be viable.

Understand also the following. A build is not viable just because you can slot the gem in. A build is not viable just because you can play it on extremely expensive gear at a subpar but playable level of functionality. A build is viable when it can archieve at least close enough results to the meta builds at all levels of investment and especially at the lower levels of player skill. Now totems have the means to work of lower levels of skill since the totems do the job and the player can focus on dodging, but once you add too many keys is when it starts falling apart.

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Elhazzared wrote:

It deals significantly less damage than freeze pulse.

So then use Freezing Pulse? The question was specifically about Ice Spear so I showed Ice Spear. You can see I have Freezing Pulse in my inventory and could have swapped it in for easier clear but ... that wouldn't demonstrate Ice Spear's 'fine' clear.

As I said before, if you want totems to clear like the zoom zoom meta builds you're setting yourself up for disappointment. That's just not the playstyle.

Regarding Ice Spear mechanics: "Launches shards of ice in rapid succession. After travelling a short distance they change to a second form, which moves much faster and pierces through enemies."

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Elhazzared wrote:

If you hit on the first form you pierce but do low damage, white mobs don't even lose half their HP. If you hit on the second form you still aren't killing even white mobs in one hit and where they hit, they are gone because it doesn't pierces.

That has not been my experience. But, you're saying builds with 'only' 10 million Shaper dps are "unplayable". It looks like the build in that vid has just under 7 million Shaper dps (wasn't built to be a totem build and with basic gear) and it did basically all content in 3.17 (Maven, w/e the two new bosses were (and their sub-bosses), mastermind, atziri, shaper, elder, w/e those delve bosses are, etc). That seems pretty playable to me. Slower clear than the zoom zoom meta? Yes, of course. But playable.