Hope the TOTA league mechanics never make it to the core

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Zrevnur wrote:

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Pangaearocks wrote:

In that case the POBB I posted wasn't correct, cause I used Multistrike when in TOTA.

Just looked at your char. Multistrike is likely much better for TOTA. But you are still the gem levels (and likely other things) short of 'Nomancs's build.

Took a look at Nomancs build in PoB since it's hard to tell much from a public profile, and our builds look very similar. Well, my normal build, not the one I used in TOTA last to try to handle all the BS.

He has more DPS (but the difference isn't huge), which mainly comes from one extra SRS due to a high-quality (%) roll on the Ashes, and that I'm using Stormshroud instead of an extra damage jewel. He also has a level 21 divergent SRS, which I've not been able to self-craft yet. The console market is quite shit for high-level stuff like this, so I need to do everything myself. First attempt failed.

Won't matter squat in TOTA, but looks like my defences are a little better, at least from this quick glance. I'm topped out at spell suppression and am elemental ailment immune from Stormshroud.

I see there are 2 +2 all minion skill gem levels fractures helmets on the market now, but none existed when I did my gear earlier. And each costs 25 divines, which just isn't worth it. I was pleased to get the third spectre (level 25), so that's fine enough for me.

Looks like the normal ghastly jewels are better too on his build, but again, I'm on console so need to craft those myself. Getting damage from using minion skill recently is pretty much hopeless when I need to roll for 15% poison chance. Anything else good on top is just a bonus in my case.

It sounds like you haven't played to rank 2000 yet, or have you done that? Cause I don't get your repeated annoyance about DPS. TOTA isn't a DPS mechanic. It's just pointless going around trying to kill everything. And whether you have 20 mill dps or 50 mill dps, that is more than enough to kill turtles at rank 2000.

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Pangaearocks wrote:

Took a look at Nomancs build in PoB since it's hard to tell much from a public profile, and our builds look very similar. Well, my normal build, not the one I used in TOTA last to try to handle all the BS.

He has more DPS (but the difference isn't huge), which mainly comes from one extra SRS due to a high-quality (%) roll on the Ashes, and that I'm using Stormshroud instead of an extra damage jewel. He also has a level 21 divergent SRS, which I've not been able to self-craft yet. The console market is quite shit for high-level stuff like this, so I need to do everything myself. First attempt failed.

Well, they're very similar and they're not at the same time. Difference is a bit bigger, I'm around 56.5M dps (53.5M without vaal haste) compared to your 25M - I'm using perma heist and vaal haste, precision and aspect of the spider, also 3 spectres, one with temporal chains (ancient suffering?).

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Pangaearocks wrote:

Won't matter squat in TOTA, but looks like my defences are a little better, at least from this quick glance. I'm topped out at spell suppression and am elemental ailment immune from Stormshroud.

I have attack and spell block chance cap, 99% spell suppression. Added defense is temporal chains from spectre, aspect of the spider slow, and chaos res cap. Sadly, your extra defense is armour that doesn't help much (or even at all) in TotA, so that don't give any adventage there (well, I droped determination entirely as I don't get hit in maps anyway - sorry for the flex). Elemental ailment is useless as there are no ailments that could influence us much there either. Better than armour would be evasion, movement speed, and (as mentioned before) slow on enemies. You may want to try to get chaos res cap too, can help on one of the champions aoe. But mostly, best defense is knowledge about units.

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Pangaearocks wrote:

Looks like the normal ghastly jewels are better too on his build, but again, I'm on console so need to craft those myself. Getting damage from using minion skill recently is pretty much hopeless when I need to roll for 15% poison chance. Anything else good on top is just a bonus in my case.

All my gear (except uniques) is self crafted. If you need any tips hit me up on PM.

I have also rules about composing my team, what position to fill first, what units go where, what equipment to get on what unit, what favour I need to prioritize to fill gaps. Knowing enemy fighters hit patterns also is great help, like who is ranged, what cd they have on their casts/skills, if they cast their wave spell how much time I have to take down totem.

EDIT: Funny story, in last TotA I had 3 goliaths with dmg items, I was curious how they will perform in battle - just after start they wrecked enemy goliath in sub 1 sec time. Fun thing to watch.

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Nomancs wrote:

I have also rules about composing my team, what position to fill first, what units go where, what equipment to get on what unit, what favour I need to prioritize to fill gaps. Knowing enemy fighters hit patterns also is great help, like who is ranged, what cd they have on their casts/skills, if they cast their wave spell how much time I have to take down totem.

This is whats missing from many players that struggle I think, too many players don't think about their team because they think they are irrelevant.. which they are if you don't put the right items on the right mob types.

Realistically once you understand that you can beat most enemies, I struggle with Kahu because of the one-shot squad but even against him I probably win 70% ~ of the time, I just rush because he tends to use melee only and if your flankers don't get stuck in midfield you win really fast. If they do you lose really fast, that's all there is to that one :p

Yeah, I removed Stormshroud too in TOTA when I had the last ditch attempt earlier, cause it doesn't really do anything anyway. Recoloured to do determination -> grace instead too.

Sounds like you have a great build there tho, with very high damage despite no AG in TOTA. I'd probably drop off more (not checked recently), but for normal mapping I'm at around 45 mill dps atm, with melee splash + multistrike. Tried the Omen of blanching but the wording is... iffy. So it recoloured all the sockets, which makes the 1 white I got kinda pointless. So I had to redo it, then settled on 4B + 2R.

Presumably flasks won't be up all the time (I'm capped atm even without quartz flask), but then spell suppression probably does next to nothing in TOTA anyway.

Have got Blind in the belt tho, so that should blind just about anything, which does help. But I don't really want to go back there yet again, nor change the build around yet again. It works well for all other content in the game, so I'm very pleased with it.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

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Nomancs wrote:

I have also rules about composing my team, what position to fill first, what units go where, what equipment to get on what unit, what favour I need to prioritize to fill gaps. Knowing enemy fighters hit patterns also is great help, like who is ranged, what cd they have on their casts/skills, if they cast their wave spell how much time I have to take down totem.

This is whats missing from many players that struggle I think, too many players don't think about their team because they think they are irrelevant.. which they are if you don't put the right items on the right mob types.

Realistically once you understand that you can beat most enemies, I struggle with Kahu because of the one-shot squad but even against him I probably win 70% ~ of the time, I just rush because he tends to use melee only and if your flankers don't get stuck in midfield you win really fast. If they do you lose really fast, that's all there is to that one :p

Think a lot has been said and kind of concluded about sensible team compositions by now, so I'm sure that is something most / all people pay attention to. I certainly do. That said, it would be cool to hear Nomancs thoughts on the subject, since he apparently crushes TOTA with a no-cheese build, but with admittedly very high dps (for those special cases where dps matters).

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Pangaearocks wrote:

<snip dps>

Nomancs can obv answer this better than me and did, except that Nomancs didnt mention evasive mobs - DPS discrepancy is likely higher vs them than for the rest.

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Pangaearocks wrote:

It sounds like you haven't played to rank 2000 yet, or have you done that?

My (failed) DPS build is at rank ~400, already wrote that. And for the TotA build: If rank has significant effect then I havent noticed it over the last ~1000 ranks. Rank is ~1500 now.

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Pangaearocks wrote:

TOTA isn't a DPS mechanic. It's just pointless going around trying to kill everything. And whether you have 20 mill dps or 50 mill dps, that is more than enough to kill turtles at rank 2000.

My own DPS build experience: If you think (and play like it) DPS is for killing "Turtles" then its unsurprising that you have issues. I needed the DPS to kill all the wimpy mobs that are creeping around everywhere before they sniper my char. And the more DPS the less window they have to sniper. Its also helpful against Chieftains but staying away from them also works mostly.

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Nomancs wrote:

But mostly, best defense is knowledge about units.
<snip>
I have also rules about composing my team, what position to fill first, what units go where, what equipment to get on what unit, what favour I need to prioritize to fill gaps. Knowing enemy fighters hit patterns also is great help, like who is ranged, what cd they have on their casts/skills, if they cast their wave spell how much time I have to take down totem.

So basically you need to have "TotA skills" to perform well with a non-TotA build. (I dont.)

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Draegnarrr wrote:

This is whats missing from many players that struggle I think, too many players don't think about their team because they think they are irrelevant..

I dont think its irrelevant. My issue is that I dont know "the rules". And Im rather bad at figuring out "the rules" inside the game. Here a large part of "the rules" is weird AI behavior which cant be seen in poedb. So this is a mechanic that Im intrinsically bad at.

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Draegnarrr wrote:

I struggle with Kahu because of the one-shot squad but even against him I probably win 70% ~ of the time,

And then there are those TotA builds that can just walk over Kahu (minus defending "turtle") carelessly and sloppily played without the need for thought, knowledge or expensive gear.

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Pangaearocks wrote:

Tried the Omen of blanching but the wording is... iffy. So it recoloured all the sockets, which makes the 1 white I got kinda pointless.

Same experience...

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Pangaearocks wrote:

So I had to redo it, then settled on 4B + 2R.

You could just use Vorici in Research to get a flexible socket.

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Zrevnur wrote:

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Draegnarrr wrote:

I struggle with Kahu because of the one-shot squad but even against him I probably win 70% ~ of the time,

And then there are those TotA builds that can just walk over Kahu (minus defending "turtle") carelessly and sloppily played without the need for thought, knowledge or expensive gear.

The strat i do usually works for turtles too but yes that is a little annoying but frankly that is every league mechanic and boss lmao, comparison is the death of happiness and all that right?

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Draegnarrr wrote:

The strat i do usually works for turtles too

Unfortunately I still dont know the "Turtle rules". Maybe Turtles only use their "defend" if the player character goes near them. Need to experiment more. Just had one in 'Escort' and rushed it (for science) and it use 'Defend' then. Then stayed away for some time and it stopped defending and advanced. No idea if that is just happenstance though. If its reliable its an easy counter to defending turtles. Only drawback is that I need to look at the enemy team to find out if they have a turtle.

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Pangaearocks wrote:

That said, it would be cool to hear Nomancs thoughts on the subject, since he apparently crushes TOTA with a no-cheese build, but with admittedly very high dps (for those special cases where dps matters).

This is a tough task, so I will try my best to describe my elementary strategy (Writing down everything would be a full guide, so I guess that would be too big wall of text, and not fully relevant to the topic).

Keep in mind that this is my way of playing TotA, it works for me, don't have to work for everybody (different builds, gameplay styles etc.)

1. START - At first, depends on what I got, I set up my flankers (2-3, Kunekune, tuatara, birds), def (1-2, here goes if I have any: tidecallers, spearfishers, warcallers, useless firebreathers to be sold later), attack (1-2 honoured warrior, warcaller). Honoured sage usually end at def or flank, depends how many I'm missing. I usually prioritize flank>def>attack (escort = 0)
2. Early game games 1-3 I try to get as many favours as I can and as many troops as I can, with some exceptions like firebreathers, thunderbirds. Slowly filling flankers and def.
3. Mid games 3-5 filling flankers>def>attack with good troops (higher tiers, like camouflaged tuatara, maybe get item like extra totem damage for it)
4. End games - filling escorts. I'm fully aware that I can die from time to time, so thats why I don't pick escorts till my team is full on all other positions. I would rather have my team acting independent of my actions at 100% strength.

Now, I tend to give enemy team up to 5 seconds at start to get in, then rush enemy def, here I get rid of fast moving defenders - I consider birds and spear dancers as very dangerous so they're my priority. Other troops are mostly slower, so I can take down totems sometimes dashing away to get totems on the other side while my srs and golems are taking them down slowly. Doing this I need to be aware what can target me, like Horns have big swing so passing them too close can be a mistake.

At the end of the game sometimes enemy champion is coming back under the totem, thats when I pop up my cooldowns (flasks and so on, I use bottled faith) and it usually finish the job in 5-10 seconds.



I know this might be chaotic and I didn't go in depth with what troops I prefer for what position, I could describe that, but it would become a full guide that don't have to be useful for everyone.