[Newbie Friendly Guide] 1.3 Dual "Chaos" Totem ES Three Dragons Templar "Budgetish" build

Before I start know that this is my first guide, so bear with me.

This build is easy to use and super fun. I tried to explain some basics to help the guide be more new player friendly. Sorry for you veteran players, there is a lot of basic explaining :( A simple skim will get experienced players the gist tho.

Basics
Using dual flame totems has always been somewhat powerful, but the main things the totems lack is survivability. We fix this in 3 ways. The first and most important way is Quality on the flame totem gem itself. Quality increases life by 3% per point, so the higher the better! Secondly, % fire leech. Specifically a doryani's invitation belt. For those who don't know, if you have %X leech using totems, the TOTEMS gain the life, not you. And lastly, and least importantly, Discipline. It honestly doesn't help TOO much, but it does help.

Next, we turn the basic "flame totem" into roughly 30%-40% chaos damage in a few easy ways. First is the infernal mantle. Infernal mantle converts 25% of fire damage into chaos. Simple. Added chaos support gem connected to the flame totem itself. Simpler. And of course, Atziri's promise. A flask that during its duration gains 13%-15% of elemental damage as chaos. "Gains" meaning it doesn't convert like the infernal mantle. So if you have 13% roll on an atziri flask, and deal 100 damage with the totem, it will still deal 100 damage of fire, and an EXTRA 13 chaos.

This is my favorite part. Three Dragons Helmet. It stops fire damage from igniting. Igniting is based on the hit that applies the ignite, and since the point of flame totems is to do lots of really small hits, that is essentially useless. The Three Dragons instead allows fire damage to shock. Much better. For those who don't know, shocking is a debuff that increases all damage received by 50%. That is significantly better than the piddly little ignite that would have happened. In 1.3 in the starting area of the Templar is a passive called "Elementalist" That gives 5% chance to shock. That chance does not mean "From lightning damage" That chance applies to anything that CAN shock. The next and most important passive related to the Three Dragons is called Celestial Punishment. It is slightly more to the left on the tree, around the outside. It has the 5% chance to shock as well, however it also has 25% increased damage against enemies that are shocked, ignited, or frozen. Shock applies all the time because flame totem hits so fast and so much.

One more things that is important most of the time is Curses. I use Flammability and Elemental weakness, although an argument can be made to switch out one for Warlord's mark when the totems would take more damage. Flammability both decrease the opponent's fire resistance, effectively increasing the main portion of damage. Warlord's Mark causes the totems to leech a lot more life. I use Windscream boots to apply the second curse.


Passive tree and explanation
http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgUAAW8GoAx9DXwQfxDMFy8abCj6KhMqjSymNZI22DdmN4M_J0GHQ2NDyEbXSRtKyE8EVdZXlFfJWOVaK1ugXGteXV8qY_1khGTnZp5o8m6qcU1xhXRVeuZ7IHwOfEuApIKbgseESIt6jHaPRpDWlnSaO5rPm6Gdrp48o_Km66cIp1WnlKyYsUK18raGtzG3PriTwBrDE8Ntxp7GrtH91abYvdq52t3i9-Qi6-Tr7uw47FXtIO088Wz3wffX-JP5vfnd-ej60v4K_oc=

I have already explained Elementalist and Celestial Punishment.

Ancestral Bond is obviously a much for this build. Having the second totem is the whole point.

Zealot's Oath is optional because it gives regen to your energy shield, and since this is an ES based character, it only makes sense.

Basically I grabbed as many totem, fire damage, and ES nodes as I could. (Personally I still am working on more ES nodes). Going all the way to the southeast of the sion tree for the extra totem life is totally worth it. Don't underestimate totem life.


Gear
I've already explained why the Three Dragons Helmet is important in the "basics" section.

This scepter is OK. It adds quite a bit of damage and some mana, which is always nice.

The shield provides a little damage and some much needed ES, and of course all resist.

I've already explained why the Infernal Mantle is important in the "basics" section.

Straight up, I need new gloves. You would want to try and get as much ES and resist on these as you can. Although that can start to get expensive really fast.

I've already explained why the Windscream boots are important in the "basics" section

Aside from the fire leech, doryani's invitation (fire variant) also gives a nice little boon to fire damage. Every little bit helps!

This amulet does a lot of really nice things. Max mana, MORE max mana, mana regen, and most importantly corrupted to give 1% fire leech. That's 2% total including the doryani's. At this point the totems don't die.

Le Heup is an ok ring. All resist and "damage increase" that increases any and EVERYthing. Even the chaos part.

Again, another piece of gear I need to replace. It could be replaced with a second Le Heup.

I use a quicksilver to increase map speed clear and use it as a "gtfo" button in sticky situations. And I use 2 Atziri's Promise flasks to increase the uptime to pretty 100% against big packs.


Gems
You can see all my links in the gear section above, I will explain them a little more in depth here.

The Flame totem should be linked with
Greater Multiple Projectile >
Faster Casting >
Fire Penetration >
Added Chaos >
Faster Projectiles

Mine specifically has Added Chaos instead of Fire Penetration because I am a little too lazy and scared to chromatic the sockets on my Mantle.

Lightning Warp + Faster casting + Reduced duration = super fast travel speed

Elemental Weakness and Flammability linked with Increased AoE for easier cursing. An argument can be made for increased duration instead of AoE. I use AoE because things die way too fast most of the time for duration to matter, and half the time there is nothing better to do than reapply curses in longer fights because the totems do all the work.

Discipline and Purity of Elements linked with Reduced mana. Basic defensive auras.

Clarity + Blood magic + Reduced mana. I will switch this back to mana when I get some more max mana. I don't recommend doing this with Infernal Mantle as it has "100% increased spell damage taken when on low life". This will change, do not do this.

Enduring Cry + Spell echo. This currently isn't on MY build as I haven't gotten around to fixing a place for it to fit. This should be used tho. Spell echo foregoes the cooldown on Enduring Cry giving you more endurance charges against single or very few enemies.

Immortal Call + Cast When Damage + Increased Duration. This is your basic defense against physical damage. Mixed with the charges from Enduring Cry it lasts for roughly 4-5 seconds.


At this point, doing some basic math. Without curses or flasks I run roughly 31k DPS. That's OK but not super high. The curses and flask bump it up to 50-60k DPS. The shocked status is where the good damage is applied. 75% increase in damage. This runs between 70-100k dps at normal times.

All the gear and gems cost less than 10 ex for me. The Most expensive single item was the 23% quality lvl 20 Flame totem, that ran 4 ex. (Honestly I think I got an ok deal).

That's about it. Please let me know if I should add more information. I will do a video guide if requested. I planned on doing it but I figured I would only do it if needed. I hope this helps! It's definitely a fun build.
Is this build end game viable in Bloodlines?

Also wont bosses ( Aziri, Dominus, etc ) kill the toems fast? or can u do end game boss farming with this build?
"
Camaron wrote:
Is this build end game viable in Bloodlines?

Also wont bosses ( Aziri, Dominus, etc ) kill the toems fast? or can u do end game boss farming with this build?


Honestly I haven't tried Atziri or 78 Dominus yet with this (It can kill norma dominus NP) I can assure you that it runs through 73-74 maps without even trying. I haven't done much higher than this tho. I don't really intend this to be a boss killing build, it is good at quickly farming as it clears normal waves in less than a couple seconds without any trouble.

How about survability?

I have died 3 times in bloodlines already, so I am looking for a good tanky build

Btw thx for the answer
"
Camaron wrote:

How about survability?

I have died 3 times in bloodlines already, so I am looking for a good tanky build

Btw thx for the answer


At lvl 80 I went ES, You can see my passive tree I need quite a bit more ES nodes and I still have 4500 effective life, maxed resist. My armor is pretty low but the survivability comes from playing the build properly. You don't run up in an enemies face and summon the totem, I summon totems at max range and stick way back, in most situations things don't even aggro on you right away. When they do you can easily tank the shots.

And NP for reply I'm happy to help :) I am pretty sure if you play this correctly it will be fine for bloodlines. I wouldn't go into ancestral bond until probably level 50ish tho. Totems aren't quite as effective until later. Going ancestral bond at lvl 20 won't do you any good.
I'm wondering about the shock..

Since shock duration is based on the damage dealt and the target life, I don't think you will be shocking any high health target (Kole, Piety, Dom, Map bosses)

If the shock duration would be less than 0.3 seconds, the shock isn't applied. and since flame totems deal a massive amount of small hits, leaving the ignite effect on I find would be better, since you can ignite for really low dmg, and it still increases the damage dealt by 25% thanks to Celestial Punishment.

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Shock
Survivability wise I have to say this set up is horrible. Intentionally going for energy shield over armor and hp when templars have so many of these nodes available is puzzling. Likewise the ideal setup requires that you roll 4 off colors on your infernal mantle which is extremely expensive for players who are new, which is the whole point of this guide. Using the typical marauder version of dual flame totems using the exact same gear on here poses much higher survivability than is possible with what you have presented. Getting 1-2 shot is very common with this energy shield setup as the energy shield recharge rate is extremely slow, and being reliant on running aura's takes away from maximizing survivability and damage as you are forced to get mana regen passive nodes and stats on gear. These problems are non existant on a blood magic flame totem user as there is no longer a need for clarity and just naturally you would have the hp regen required to spam totems and curses without any problems. Having leveled an entirely new flame totem character just to test this set up I have to say it was one of the worst leveling experiences I could have ever had from the point of view as a noob. I fortunately have all the gear already in this guide, but with the except of the infernal mantle since I did not have the colors I needed, damage was almost identical to any other flame totem build. A 100 dps per totem difference at most is nothing and stacking tons of spell dmg increase has diminishing returns. In the end it does not matter how much dmg these non-crit flame totems do as long as you yourself can actually survive long enough to keep them on the field.

I rate this build 2/10 for poor leveling speed, poor survivability, and high gear / money requirements for a build that is intended to be for noobs to the game. A templar or marauder focusing on melee physical dmg and molten strike / cleave could vastly out perform this build with only rare and magic items. (I leveled a marauader dual flame totem to 80 and this templar dual flame totem build to 65ish so I feel I have adequate experience on the build in general from a non-crit flame totem point of view)
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