[1.3] Priestess of Rathma (Median XL Buff Totem Necro)

INTRODUCTION ___________________________________________________________________

This build was inspired by necromancer from Median XL, a follower of the cult dedicated to the nephalem Rathma, the first disciple to the ruler of the plane of dead. The difference between a Median Necro and a vanilla D2 one is in the scope of his skills where the former also has access to powerful melee and crossbow skill and is able to summon totems to augment his troops and himself or damage enemies.

For this attempt I focused on the aspect of buffing minions with aura totems, which could be considered a variation of a summoning auramancer, which are commonly accomplished by going low life so this can be regarded as just one more way to skin a cat.

MECHANICS ______________________________________________________________________

Fortunately, PoE allows us the luxury of making our own buffing totems by virtue of auras and spell totem support. The problem lies in prohibitive cost of such, as a 60% aura has the casting cost of 150% of your mana, which you obviously don't have. Again, fortunately, PoE also presents us with a solution to the problem.

Half of the solution are reduced mana cost nodes which are concentrated in parts of the tree easily accessible to a dedicated necromancer and the other part is this:


Mostly used for its considerable amount of ES, chaos resist and +1 to gems, it also has a somewhat overlooked 50% reduction to mana cost, which, if combined with tree reductions allows us to cast socketed gems for free. Or, at least almost for free as true zero cost can be achieved either by speccing marauder cost reduction nodes too or by a quality RM gem.

PASSIVE TREE ____________________________________________________________________

A fairly straightforward affair for an aura necro, with the addition of cost reduction nodes. Leadership notable is extra useful for this build because it means less repositioning of totems.
It should look like this at level 90:


GEAR ____________________________________________________________________________

Besides the aforementioned Vertex mask, you have total freedom in picking the rest of your gear for this, or at least as much freedom as a summoner normally has. I picked the usual boots and chest, a noobtrap amulet and a somewhat unusual Dying Breath staff. Most of this is left to the player's personal discretion, I just chose to follow the theme more closely.



SKILLS ___________________________________________________________________________

As expected, your main damage dealers are spectres with some help from skeletons, surprisingly enough. With resummoning totems as an additional task on your plate you don't really have the luxury to be spamming SRS and a few skeletons in right places can be extremely helpful. Zombies are specced for tanking as they usually don't get to do much damage and there's also Animated Guardian just for the hell of it.
Again, much of this is left to personal preferences and it's possible to accomodate your favorite setup.

The choice of permanent auras is Hatred, Purity of Elements and Haste, with Anger and Wrath on totems. There's also an Elemental weakness curse and not much else.

Q&A _____________________________________________________________________________

- Are there any downsides?
Sure, I don't suppose spending a significant chunk of your time placing totems is everyone's idea of fun and they also take up two of your hotbar slots which could be used for desecrate or offerings.
Another downside is no +minion helm which means your Zombies need to be specced for extra defense.
A big extra downside is lack of good ranged attacker minions which could properly profit from your big flat ele damage bonus, currently we got only Tentacle Miscreations and those are sluggish and squishy so they're best used in combo with undying bubble masters.

- And advantages?
Mostly freedom in gearing that regular auramancers don't have, with the exception of helm slot. I expect this kind of builds will shine once Anger and Wrath start working with spells, caster spectres are miles better than attackers.

- What about Clarity?
There's no need for it, or EB, all your skills cost only half of regular mana and you get a decent amount of it by taking cost nodes so a bit of regen is perfectly fine. The build isn't exactly a big spender either.

- Y you no generosity?
Generosity works only for auras you cast yourself, it's disabled on aura totems. If you can handle the cost without RM you can use Empower in your helm for a whooping +3 to aura level, +4 with a corrupted gem.

VIDEOS __________________________________________________________________________

Not much to show except how the totems fit in overall gameplay dynamic, a pretty much standard summoner other than that.
https://youtu.be/Ocm5awHCkhI

FINAL WORD _____________________________________________________________________

This build is dedicated to GGG and their feeble attempts to eradicate aura stacking.

"

raics wrote:

This build is dedicated to GGG and their feeble attempts to eradicate aura stacking.

Lol

I've been running some numbers, and the aura change seems to have an interesting effect on aura totem concept.

Right now, it has 93% reduced cost, which means an aura totem made out of 60% aura would cost you 13% of your mana to cast, which isn't exactly cheap.

Now, after the change it drops down to 9% which would be somewhat easier to handle. Or you could just hop down to Versatility and make it free no matter what you link it with or maybe we get reduced cost on a jewel or something. Anyway, in the best case scenario, Vertex and corrupted empower would give you access to level 25 Wrath and Anger auras, which is pretty damn nice.

It also opens up some new options for those not interested in Empower. With RM also offering reduced mana cost you could probably drop Vertex for a +2 minion helm if you so desire or you could use Vertex and skip the tree investment.

Putting auras on totems seems pretty niche atm (actually it is the first time i came across a build that uses that feature). But with the changes to reduced mana i expect this to become a common building block for summoners in 2.0.

You are 2 months ahead of our time so to speak:)

Probably more, I was reluctant to release it because it isn't exactly amazing as a build, but with the aura changes this trick probably needs a bit of publicity, it's more of a showcase that it can work.

My respect and congrats for figuring this out! Very interesting, cool use of aura totems, ive never seen this before. very original! I wonder what other builds could abuse this ...

I'd say any build that can get close to 50% reduced mana on tree and has a free head slot can use it, and in Awakening it will be even easier once reduced mana converts to cost reduction. As a bonus, totems are much sturdier and placing them is much snappier if you have no cast speed.

Well, as I said, many can use it, but abusing is another matter, a summoner has the leisure to go around placing totems and whatnot, busier builds don't have the luxury, maybe as a temporary bonus for bosses.

nice build idear m8, would it be possible for u to make a 20, 40, 60 , 80 lvling tree for some of us who arnt to familiar with what to focus on first? :)

This will never be common for summoners. All people talk about is the removal of reduced mana like they didn't reduce aura costs across the board (they did) aura stacking is no different in 2.0 as it is right now.