It's time to face the fact that Totems are a failed mechanic.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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nynyny wrote:

Spoiler

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

With Spark, I suspect it's chosen because projectiles cast by the totem are still lingering around even after the totem dies; the extra waves which are cast between the first wave being cast and the first wave hitting allow it to ignore reflected damage even more than usual. Both of these are very speed-based issues.

Its one of the reasons. The other two are the fact that it applies Shock pretty reliably and, more important than anything else, it gets rid of the problem that totems lack focus.

If you pump the room full with projectiles focus isnt necessary, something a lot of other skills lack because their projectiles travel in a straight line.

Lowering cast speed also helps with Shock application; less stacks.

Not when the damage would be higher, like it would end up being in your proposed change.

The hits would end up being even bigger than they are already, making shock stacks on bosses even more common and easier to achieve, let alone that they would last longer unless I misread your post.

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Doable builds are efficient.

Thats completely false. You can play an Arc basec caster that uses an Ice Spear totem or Cold Snap to CC. I guarentee you thats it doable, but it will be far from efficient.

Doable just means that it can be done. That says nothing about the efficiency which would be pretty low in this case. I believe that you can make a lot of builds work, there simply isnt a point in doing so because who would want to need 30 minutes for a 66 maps?

There simply are too many situational spells in the game right now, spells who dont cut it as a main spell.

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nynyny wrote:

There simply are too many situational spells in the game right now, spells who dont cut it as a main spell.

This isn't really a problem with the spell design so much as the way that socketing and itemization interact. If those situational skills were being used situationally, everything would be in order. But having very light limitations on auras and very heavy support requirements for main skills in order to do acceptable damage means that having a decently-supported secondary skill is out of the question for most builds.

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nynyny wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

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nynyny wrote:

Its one of the reasons. The other two are the fact that it applies Shock pretty reliably and, more important than anything else, it gets rid of the problem that totems lack focus.

If you pump the room full with projectiles focus isnt necessary, something a lot of other skills lack because their projectiles travel in a straight line.

Lowering cast speed also helps with Shock application; less stacks.

Not when the damage would be higher, like it would end up being in your proposed change.

The hits would end up being even bigger than they are already, making shock stacks on bosses even more common and easier to achieve, let alone that they would last longer unless I misread your post.

The troubling part of Spark totems isn't shock stacks on bosses, it's whites/blues — generally filling a whole room with sparks and essentially doing lots of AoE that way. Under those situations, the more you can particulate your lightning skill, the more efficient you become — this is evident with how people build Lightning Arrow builds with Chain and whatnot.

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nynyny wrote:

Doable just means that it can be done. That says nothing about the efficiency which would be pretty low in this case. I believe that you can make a lot of builds work, there simply isnt a point in doing so because who would want to need 30 minutes for a 66 maps?

There simply are too many situational spells in the game right now, spells who dont cut it as a main spell.

There are more efficient spells besides Spork and FP. Especially if you play solo since those two can't be combined with Equilibrium, shotgun effect of multiprojectile FP cancels EE benefit and spork hits too fast for anything but flame totem to debuff fast enough for it. On the other hand Fireball with Conc, Ignite, Burn and Proliferation could be called efficient even before burn damage support. There's fire trap too which ignores reflect, does very nice damage and can stack ignite from explosion and burning ground to melt stuff like wax, the only snag is you must carry multiple gems to chain-cast it.

I'll revive the comment from a couple of pages ago, it actually might work well as it would make you build specifically for totems, as it is, pretty much only Ancestral bond separates your self caster from a totemist and that's a pretty low investment for big buck. That's why I support limited aura count with +1 aura keystones, you are supposed to invest heavily to reap such large benefits.

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Might be best if totems cost nothing or had a symbolic cost to place but drained your mana to cast, that would augment your dps but induce severe resource and build issues. Totem users would have to be built as a serious mana-whores like druids from Might&Magic which would also limit their aura number. That said, we wouldn't have troll cost situations either, where your souped-up flame totem costs 200 mana and a pretty much superior incinerate totem 30.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

The troubling part of Spark totems isn't shock stacks on bosses, it's whites/blues — generally filling a whole room with sparks and essentially doing lots of AoE that way. Under those situations, the more you can particulate your lightning skill, the more efficient you become — this is evident with how people build Lightning Arrow builds with Chain and whatnot.

But thats wrong.

Even if you reduce the cast speed by a 30% multiplier that doesnt change anything about the fact that packs will fall like flies. Whether or not you kill them a split second slower doesnt really matter when you now are able to shock rare and bosses more efficiently which will automatically help your whole group so kill stuff faster.

If your group knows what they are doing the Sporker barely will get his totems down for white packs anyway because they usually are dead before they attacked for the first time. As for solo, the increased damage will make up for the reduced cast thanks to Fork.

Yes, the fact that it fills room is an important part of why Spork is so good but the situation doesnt change if there are less projectiles but they hit for more so half the room is constantly stunned.

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On the other hand Fireball with Conc, Ignite, Burn and Proliferation could be called efficient even before burn damage support. There's fire trap too which ignores reflect, does very nice damage and can stack ignite from explosion and burning ground to melt stuff like wax, the only snag is you must carry multiple gems to chain-cast it.

Correct, yet Discharge is miles above it but we can still call it efficient as long as you dont play shotgun Fireballer. I wouldnt really call Fire Traps a spell, they are traps after all. I was rather talking about skills like Arc, Firestorm, Shock and Ice Nova, Incinerate, Arctic Breath, etc. Those spells barely even are situational.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Observation: Spork and Summon Skeleton are the main problem totems. Freezing Pulse and Ethereal Knives may be good skills on their own... but you don't see a lot of totems with the former, and with the latter you mostly see them to avoid physical reflection, not because it's inherently amazing on its own. Conversely, you don't see Spork and Summon Skeletons without totem support, except sometimes prior to level 31.

Conclusion: Totems are not globally OP; slapping any old skill in a totem doesn't make things better. It's the combination of certain active skills with Spell Totem that creates an OP situation.

So what is it about Spark and Summon Skeletons which makes them so good in a totem environment? I think the answer to that is "cast speed."

I agree with this but your suggested change is way too minor to make a difference. More along the lines of 60% Less Cast Speed, remove damage penalty.

This only changes the balance between "damage" spell-totems and "special effect" spell-totems. I doubt that is the only thing about totems which warrants balance consideration, though.

Hotels on Boardwalk are OP and need to be nerfed. It's not the Hotels per se are broken. It's just that when used to support Boardwalk, they make that property become the most powerful property in the game. I've never owned Boardwalk and Park Place, and couldn't afford to build hotels on them if I did (unlucky RNG), but when others have it, they are always better than me.

Edit: oops, disregard that. I thought I was on the Monopoly feedback forum.


Seriously though, I haven't built a Sporker. I have fun playing builds I enjoy even if they aren't the most efficient in the game. Isn't just playing fun? Why do you have to be as strong as anybody else?

If you're going to do anything to nerf dual totem users, change the life/mana of the totem to be equal that of the castor instead of independent. If you have low life, your totems will too. If you have low mana, your totems will stop casting when their mana pool falls below the casting costs and have to wait until mana regens enough for the next cast.

Isn't the answer kinda obvious? Make totems degen your mana.

Totems have a base mana degen per second cost, and it gets modified by support gems.
Remove all totem immunities.

Also an interesting idea for a keystone:

Blood Bond
Totems you cast cannot die to damage.
When your totems run out of health, all damage they would take is redirected to you.

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Xendran wrote:

Blood Bond
Totems you cast cannot die to damage.
When your totems run out of health, all damage they would take is redirected to you.

If you want people to pick a node at least make the node do something. This thing wouldnt give you any benifits.

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nynyny wrote:

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Xendran wrote:

Blood Bond
Totems you cast cannot die to damage.
When your totems run out of health, all damage they would take is redirected to you.

If you want people to pick a node at least make the node do something. This thing wouldnt give you any benifits.

Immortal Call Decoy Totem tank build would benefit from this. It would allow you to go full tank for something like turbo (or blamt 1 week maybe? would be fun) party race. Three targets constantly drawing aggro physical immune, and you can have an extreme amount of block too. You could also go acrobatics + evasion + ondar's guile since you don't need armor because of immortal call. Could be using conduit to give charges to party members too.