Crit SWT w/ Animate Guardian

Since the launch of Path of Exile I have been engorged with totem skills and how versatile they can be along with how they work, how effective and efficient they are at clearing maps and doing some of the more difficult content. One thing I like the most about the totem skills is there is an unlimited amount of options to create and use a ton of different combinations of skill gems and support gems, as well as get use of a lot of different unique items to play with. Enough about that lets talk about my current build for the [5WHC] Darkshrine HC Event.

Crit Shockwave Totem utilizing Animate Guardian for another source of defense as well as giving your totems a 33% damage increase. I will be using flame totems and I personally prefer magma orb to level with until i get Ancestral Bond, Switching over to Shockwave Totem between lvl 50-60.

Skill Tree


Let's talk about the passive tree now because there are many routes you can take with this build, this tree is what I found works the best for me. As a witch the first thing you want to do is rush over and get Ancestral Bond (can now place 2 totems normal attacks do no damage). From here there are many different routes you can take depending on what your lacking the most, I prefer to go over and grab Doom Cast and taking advantage of the life nodes on the way, as well as picking up Shamanistic Fury if I feel my flame totems need a boost in damage. Once I have Doomcast, then I like to run down and start grabbing all the crit nodes over by the shadow tree as well as taking advantage of the life nodes that are available as well. At this point I have to take a look and see what my ES looks like to see if its manageable to switch now to MoM and EB, which helps a ton for survivability, If your ES is to low to convert over start looking into ES items in order to make the conversion to EB also you can head for Melding which is a 4 passive Wheel that contains both Life and ES nodes. At this point you should have already obtained or should be investing in a Carcass Jack at that point whats left u say, now we can go for Blast Radius just above the witch area that we skipped earlier, Now it's time to Head for Shaman's Dominion and Arcane Potency. Lastly once you are ready to start using shockwave totem and your animate guardian MAKE SURE you grab that 1.5% minion life regen node its enough with your 3 link guardian to keep him up in most hairy situations. PLEASE NOTE JEWEL NODES, I only take these nodes as I get jewels so not to waste points on the way to important parts of the tree, once you get jewels you are never more than 2 points away this makes for an easy passive respect for 2 points then moving on.

Bandit's


Gear

Unique's


Rare's



Unique Item's
Carcass Jack seems to be the best option here you get EV/ES, Increased AoE, and Increased Damage plus Life and + All Res. Divinarius gives Spell Damage, Critical Strike for Spells, and Increased AoE, Divinarius also allows the use of Whirling Blades as your movement skill. Facebreaker's with these the only thing that matters is the 60% Global Critical Strike Multiplier BIS from what I have tested.

Rare Item's
Optimal setup for SWT (Shockwave Totem) will be 24% Rustic Sash, 30% Diamond Rings (In Darkshrine HC was unable to find any to switch out my Two-Stone Rings. I use Citrine Amulet to help make up for the dex requirements needed on the Aura gems, and you want to get high life as well as both global crit as well as global crit mulitiplier if at all possible. ES boots with life dual resistance a must for the build, move speed if u can would be optimal, The Dream would be +Life, %Movement, Flat ES (Prefixes), Either Tri Ele Res or Dual Ele Res + Chaos Res. As for Helmet ES ES ES, u can go hybrid if u can find a hybrid with a large amount of ES as well as high life and dual res. Shield the 2 big things here I look for is +Life, and %Crit for Spells, anything else is a bonus whether or not you want xtra res, spell damage or even extra ES, another option which I was unable to find would be +2 Cold and then run your auras there.

Jewel's


When it comes to selecting jewel's as SWT (Shockwave Totem) there are a lot of options available since multiple things can effect it. When it comes to choosing jewel's you need to look for things like Increased Area Damage, Increased Totem Damage, Increased Physical Damage, Increased Spell Damage, % Max Life, Cast Speed, Cast Speed while holding a shield, Crit Multiplier, these are just some of the options available to you compared to other skills. My preference will always be to make sure each jewel I select has %Max Life this helps to ensure an adequate life pool and make up for the low amount of health nodes from the passive tree, compared to other builds.

Skill Gem's + Links

Aura's


Herald of Ice - I find is very effective with the use of Hatred for extra chance to freeze plus chance to shatter mobs.
Hatred - No brainer, a portion of your physical damage to Cold.
Arctic Armour - Gives you a small amount of survability with reducing not only physical damage taken but reduced fire damage taken.

Animate Guardian


If I choose to use this in a 4 link vs a 3 link I would add Minion Totem Resistance support gem.

Animate Guardian adds a bit of defense by having the mobs target it over you or your totems, allowing your totems to do work as well as granting you an additional 33% spell damage with the right gear equipped on your guardian. As for equipment on the guardian, I use the following items.

Dying Breath (Unique 2 Handed Staff) gives increased aura effectiveness and grants you 18% increased damage)
Leer Cast (Unique Head) grants you 15% increased damage
Southbound (Unique Gloves), This gives your guardian upto 16% max life, also gives up to 50% cold res
Ambu's Charge (Unique Chest) Provides some armour and es for your guaridan, more importantly grants 15% all res, 2% life regen on low life, and gains endurance charge when a critical hit is taken, then shares endurance charges with party members
Boots (Rare) I try to find a good pair of boots with decent life as well as high fire and lightning res as I can to give the guardian some more over all survivabilty in junction with fortify.

Shockwave Totem


This will be your main source of offense given my current gear setup with the links and gems i have available my totems are doing 33kdps, In a 6 link I would add Increased Critical Strike, as for bosses I will swap out Increased Area of Effect with Concentrated Effect doing this gives me an increase in dps to around 68kdps but decresed AoE, unless I need the AoE for the fight. After a bit of testing I personally found using Added Fire out weighed that of Physical to Lightning though you can use it over added fire if you so choose.

Flame Totem


Flame Totem can be very useful when it comes to running maps that have phys reflect, as well as the culling strike ability as well as item rarity to increase the amount of items on a boss.

CWDT Setup



Self Cast Enduring Cry + Increased AoE, Smoke Mine I use for opening boxes. For you Movement Skill you can use Whirling Blades, or Flame Dash, I prefer Whirling Blades + Fortify.

Pro's and Con's


Video's