About hiero totems ascendancy choices

Yo

I've noticed that most hiero totems are picking Pursuit of Faith/Ritual of Awakening (obviously), but then Conviction of Power and Arcane Blessing wayyy over Divine Guidance/Sanctuary of Thought.

I'm quite surprised because to me (and my limited knowledge I need to extend apparently), a hiero totem would have more use for Mind over Matter since it won't spam as much as some other archetypes besides launching the totems and some support stuff (brands, curses, movement skill...) and won't benefit as much from aura stacking.

Transfigured Mind is a nice boost to damages, extra 10% damage to mana is great and makes us reach a nice 50%, while we have at least a good regen from Ritual of Awakening (with Arcane Blessing we even get a higher mana regen).

Sanctuary of Thought gives us another huge buff to ES and mana reservation (which becomes rarer nowadays with the nerfs on passives tree) along with little AOE.

On the other hand, I don't really see why Conviction of Power seems so popular, as it grants 4 power charges... which you can get from various ways otherwise and don't grant that much damages, unless you get some passives to get more dmg on power charges... But then you don't want to have "only" 4 charges !
As for the 4 endurance charges, you can get the resistances on stuff, the 16% physical reduction are kinda the only plus to me. Is it that better than some 10% damage to mana or some 20% mana as ES ? Does it have that much impact if you get a decent armor overall ?

For Arcane Blessing, you get 20% more spell dmg, 10% cast speed (mostly QoL, doesn't impact totems ?) and some mana regen. Is it really better than Transfigured Mind ?

If you could enlighten me on these, please ? :)

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Question out of the subject : what do you think on the new gems for some lightning spells totems ?
I feel like Divine Ire of Disintegration could be a great boss killer... Same with Arc of Oscillating (it basically multiply further the first hit, right ?)

Things are a lot easier than you think.

In general, you are talking about the glasscannons, and the default choice is all about damage.

Mechanically, totems benefit from anything you have. They cast spells for you using your stats. So If you have damage increase from Arcane Blessing, totems will do more damage. If you have some increased spell crit chance, totems will crit more often too. Same goes for cast speed.

Conviction of Power is utilized with Discipline of the Forbidden and Militant Faith by Dominus, which grants, besides a crapload of damage by proper mods, Inner Conviction (3% more damage per power charge), and the possibility to get +1-2 to minimum power or frenzy charges instead of passive nodes.

So the default number of minimum power charges, which has 100% uptime, is at least 6. And thats 18% more damage and 300% increased critical strike chance all the time.

To squeeze even more damage from power charges, Anathema is used for more curses.

Arcane Blessing is a lot stronger than DG, bc it actually scales with Arcane Surge increased effect. Just with the Arcane Capacitor (50% inccreased effect after spending 1000 mana) alone it offers 30% more spell damage, 15% increased cast speed and 45% mana regen. And those builds do it by Arcane Cloak.

Aura choice is just 1 - damage on eternal blessing.

And thats it.

Once again, this is about glascannons. Any tanky hierophant would use Sanctuary of Thought route for more auras.

Here are 2 of my builds from 3.20 with two different approaches:

1) Ice Spear/Freezing Pulse: https://pobb.in/PLGW7TZy93fK

Default glass with 0.5b dps that utilizes everything above.

2) Glacial Cascade Ivory Tower/Indigon: https://pobb.in/iW_8Dbtp8uKM

This was my experiment to get the proof of concept, was doing up to 80-100m burst dps (bc of GC overlapping) and significally tankier (50-60k max ele hit). Ofc it uses Sanctuary of Thought on its fullest.

I actually just logged and recorded a map for you of GC (forgot how to play it tho, a bit tricky): https://youtu.be/jucYnQJfFSg

There is the same build with everything related to Glacial Cascade, but uses flameblast: https://youtu.be/buSg89-QJ8U

Yes it works.

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Edit: About lightning spells - you don't want to use Arc of Oscillating bc it won't do any boss damage. Of surging is better.

Divine ire and storm burst totems are good (DI totems are in the list of my private starters). I suggest Lightning Conduit of the Heavens if you want blue lightning.

Thanks a lot for these exhaustive answers and showcases !

"blue lightning" ?

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fistoz wrote:

Thanks a lot for these exhaustive answers and showcases !

"blue lightning" ?

Np.

By color. DI and SB have kinda yellow lightning, all other lightning spells are blue.
I suggested lightning conduit of the heavens bc out of blue ones it would probably be the best.

I see ^^

What do you think is the best to beat uber bosses, going glass cannon I guess ?
Going more defensive probably is more of a QoL and harder to build, assemble all mana stuff etc. ?

"

fistoz wrote:

I see ^^

What do you think is the best to beat uber bosses, going glass cannon I guess ?
Going more defensive probably is more of a QoL and harder to build, assemble all mana stuff etc. ?

Yes.
I've killed ubers with both builds.
Glasscannon was more comfortable (and easier to play), and i tested different skill on top of that.
Anything works fine with >150m dps on ubers.

However, glass is restricted by content. It's indeed a good bosser/mapper, but not for delve or simulacrum, for example. Scales damage really hard and has a decent price/performance rate.

Tanky toon can do more things, but some of them won't feel as good. General experience would be more chilling and boring overall.

I can suggest Tatiantel2 totem spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1v72AZgtvuffNMKaE44MsyL7lvQ_L3GoaJqiNSWk_2LY/edit#gid=0

Personally, i don't like those kind of builds, not up to my standards.

Really interesting, thanks for all that and enjoy the league start ;)