2.1 Talisman League Guide for Cheap Permacurse Dual RF Totems for Hardcore/Softcore -Atziri Viable!

Hey all Thraxeus here.
This is my offical guide for a dual RF totems build that I will be playing in Hardcore at the start of the new Talisman league in 2.1
Note this build was designed and leveled prior to any 2.1 patch notes were released which buffed RFs base radius which makes pack clear even more amazing now
To see the video for this guide click the link below and it will take you there.

https://youtu.be/vrcUg0LyxZU

Atziri down lads!
https://youtu.be/44GCONfaijA

The aim of this build was to finally use RF for leveling and to also have it get into mid tier maps. This build uses skill gems that are all available to buy from the vendor during quests and has 0 unique item requirments to do effectively. The only limitation that it has is its designed to be done using a Scion to take advantage of the area of effect nodes the Scion can get near the very start but it is possible to use a Templar start as well.

The benefits of using this build are it BURNS EVERYTHING!
If thats not enough here are some more practical benefits.

1. Easy to level and all the gems are there without needing to trade or find them

2. Super cheap and effective to get into maps

3. A 4 link is all you need for maximum damage or aoe and a 5link provides both

4. Deals respectable damage without investment and can scale to doing amazing damage.

5. Very safe to play as dont need to be next to mobs to kill them

6. Does not need to worry about casting requirements e.g. mana or life costs

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Now onto the build

Primary Skill Gem Setup+Getting the gems you need

Prior to starting as your Scion grab a Shadow and run it to Lionseye's Watch to get Fire Trap which you will use to level until you get the RF gem in Act2.

This build is based around this gem

as you can see it hurts your character to use so to get around that we link it to this support gem
and now it burns the totem instead of you :)

But before we go any further people might say but doesnt it do 50% less damage then if you had it cast on yourself? The answer is no it does not because Righteous Fire is not an attack or a spell it is a degeneration effect based on your total Life/ES value. (or in this case your Spell Totems life/es value)

Spell Totem can be bought from Nessa in Act1 after completing The Caged Brute.
Righteous Fire can be bought from Yeena in Act2 after completing The Root of the Problem.

That is all you need for now, your totems will die very fast but it doesnt matter as you can cast them for free!

Once you have completed Lost for Love in Act3 you can grab
from Clarissa
This will make your totems last longer and has the added benefit of boosting your own fire resistance as well.

After completing A Fixture of Fate the side quest in the Library in Act3 you are able to purchaseto make your 3Link

If you have a 4link at this point in time/before you have killed Malachai you can go back to Yeena and purchasewhich although it makes it harder for your totems to hit mobs it will cause them to melt rares and bosses.

Finally once you have used the Rapture Device to enter the Belly of the Beast you are able to getwhich you should swap out Conc Effect for and that is your 4 link for the rest of the game sorted.

(If people want to see the damage of this build head to the bottom of the page for maths as the tooltip value will display nothing :)


Edit
The skill gem Rapid Decay works when linked to RF and Spell Totem as Spell Totem applies the duration tag to the skill. This means that a 6Link is fully viable while using Rapid Decay, however the problem is you will need 110 Dexterity if you want to run a level 20 one.

For 5Link use RighteousFire-SpellTotem-IncBurnDamage-Rapid Decay and then Inc Aoe for trash or Conc Effect for bosses.

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Other Skill Gem setups
With the 2.1 update the support gem was brought into the game, with this we will link the 2 curses
Note without the keystone Whispers of Doom only one curse will effect mobs so until you get that keystone I recommend using Vuln instead of Flam.
Also Blapshemy can be purchasd from Clarissa in Act2 after completing A Fixture of Fate

Aside from the gems that I have listed above there are no other requirements in gems/skills to make the build work for leveling.
However, here are some reccomendations.

Chaos Golem: It provides flat %reduction on physical damage taken, you dont need to link this gem to anything to get the benefits of it but I have it linked to Minion Speed, Minion Life and Blood Magic.

Enduring Cry: Can be used by itself or linked to blood magic. I find its easy to cast this in between dropping totems and each endurance charge gives 4% physical damage reduction and if your using the CWDT setup below it will drastically increase the duration of immortal call.

A movement skill of some type, this can be either Lightning Warp, Flame Dash, Leap Slam or Whirling Blades. Depending on what weapon you are using to level with will determine what skill you prefer to use. I personally use Leap Slam and link it to Fortify, Blood Magic and Faster Attacks. If I had a dagger I would be using Whirling Blades instead with the same link setup.

A Cast When Damage Taken setup, this uses the gem Cast When Damage Taken linked to Immortal Call and Increased Duration to provide a brief window of physical immunity when a certain ammount of physical damage is taken.
Dont level CWDT as much as you can because the higher its level the more damage you must take in order to activate it, this holds true for IC as well if you level it to high CWDT will no longer go off.

Here are the skill trees for leveling, when you begin maps and the finished build
If you want a more in depth description for the trees head to the youtube video for this build where I discuss the passive point allocation.

For those wanting to do this build with a Templar start there is a poebuilder link listed at the bottom of this post :)

Leveling 50points spent


Starting maps 80points spent


Full build 112 points


There are still spare points if you want to take this build to 100, you can choose to grab extra endurance charges, fill out the rest of the totem wheels or grab more %Maximum life from the marauder are and near Mind over Matter.

If you are wanting to do Atziri with this build (and have seen the current skill tree that is on my profile) I suggest grabbing Elemental Equilibrium near the scion Start. (It is 3 points away from the regen notable Shaper) To proc it Lightning Trap is recommended. It is in no way required for low-mid tier maps as it will not increase your clear speed in any meaningful way due to the lack of pierce Lightning Trap has and the fact it is one more cast you would be trying to do on each pack.


Bandit's

Normal. Help Oak for +40 life
Cruel. Kill all of them for +1 passive point
Merciless. Kill all of them for +1 passive point or help oak for +1 endurance charge if you want longer IC duration.
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Gear Choices

On armour pieces you want to look for
Life
Resistances (until capped and possibly overcapped when entering higher maps)
Some dexterity if you intend to use a Carcass Jack see below

For weapons because RF only scales off your totem's life and then elemental/fire damage most conventional spell damage weapons are useless but if you would like to use one look for
Elemental Damage
Fire Damage
Added damage to spells will not effect RF damage in anyway

Jewels

This is covered more in the video but jewels that you want to look for contain
%Totem life
-this should be on every jewel you use as it increases the base damage of RF
followed by
%Fire damage, %Area Damage, %Damage Over Time

For defence orientated Jewels
%Max life
%Elemental Resistance

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Uniques for more power

These are uniques that I used after wanting to bump up effectiveness of the build, they are by no means necessary and are more like putting icing on a chocolate gateau cake... A burning chocolate gateau cake...


Spire of stone gives great totem life for little investment, if you pick one up you can place it into the jewel socket above the life notable called Devotion for an extra 21% totem life.


Windscreams are a great optional unique if you want to manually cast a third curse. 2 curses on blasphemy and purity of fire reserve 93% of your mana so you still have enough spare mana to cast a 3rd curse when needed.
The benefit of using Windscream is it gives you more choice for the 3rd curse
You can use Temporal Chains to slow down enemies forcing them to stay in your totem range for longer and making it very easy to kite them
You can use Enfeeble to reduce enemy damage and accuracy making the build even safer
Lastly you can use Elemental Weakness to reduce mob resistance even further note this wont do much V white mobs but is noticeable on rares and bosses



Having used a pair of these since about level 24 I can say that they are great weapons for extremely cheap being common and rarely go over 1c for high rolls. They provide increased life to you, and more aoe and damage to your totems.



An expensive chestpiece for sure usally going between 2-5 exalts but it provides increased AoE and damage to your totems while giving life and all resists to yourself.



This weapon allows ridiculously fast Leap slaming which when linked to fortify increases the defences of this build even further and lets you stay away from mobs very easily. Use with temp chains to make yourself feel like the flash! OR the hulk on crack! or.... something like that anyway :)

And finnally the late game I WANT TO DESTROY ALL unique

This only drops from the Queen Bitch herself (Atziri) but provides an insane ammount of damage due to it having increased elemental damage not spell damage as the roll on it, with up to 110% increased elemental damage you really will be cooking with gas with a pair of these on. These are stupidly expensive (10+Exalts) and I dont recommend aiming for them its just if you want the power increase. Note your totems will NOT leech from them and RF cant crit either.

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Time for some fun facts related to maps and this build

Elemental Equilibrium is your friend, because your never hitting the monsters it will never activate, free pack size yippie!

-Max Resist usually the bane of RF builds but because your totems are going to die anyway you dont care, more pack size so sweet deal.

Player life and mana regeneration Oh look another mod that makes it practically impossible to run RF and cast spells, but we dont care because our totems are free and RF isnt on us! Additonal bonus... it provides more pack size. see where this is going

Essentially this build is not limited to certain map mod. Yes lethal combinations e.g. -Max Resistances and mobs do x/y/z extra elemental damage will require you to be more careful but there is no combination of map mods that are impossible for this build to run.

As a side thing, throwing totems around corners or at choke points is a great way to deal with harder packs of mobs or particularly painful rares.
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This provides the basics for using this build and getting into maps with it. I have tried to make it as clear and easy as posssible for people to follow and get some great enjoyment of burning things to death without burning yourself.

If people have any questions regarding the build or gear choices etc head to my twitch page and I'll hopefully be able to answer any questions you have about it.
http://www.twitch.tv/thraxeus

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And now for those interested in damage here is the MATHS! WARNING NUMBERS AHEAD

At level 81 and using 0 uniques
Lets take a spell totem of level 19 (because thats what im currently using)
It has a base Life of 4589
I have 71% increased Totem Life from the passive tree and a further 45% from jewels giving a total of 116% bonus life.
So
4589 * 2.16 = 9912.24 base life
RF's DPS is life *.5 + ES *.5 (but because we have no ES we can ignore that)
RF's base DPS is then 9912.24 * .5 = 4956.12
4956 for simplicity is the base DPS of RF then, without any damage modifiers so lets add those in.

From the passive tree I have:
70% Increased Burning Damage
58% Increased Totem Damage
55% Increased Fire Damage
30% Increased Area Damage
26% Increased Elemental Damage
for a total of 239% bonus damage from the tree

From gems I have
67% Increased Burning Damage (20% quality level 18 Inc Burn Dmg)
10% increased area damage from 20% quality Inc AoE
for another 77% increased damage

this gives me a total of 316% increased damage
So 4956 * 4.16 = 20616.96 DPS

Ok so thats decent damage but we can take it a little bit higher. With vulnerability on mobs (33% increased damage taken from damage over time effects) it acts as a 33% MORE multiplier so ill times my previous damage by 1.33 to get the new value

20617 * 1.33 = 27421

Note this value is not technically correct as you cannot take into account mobs fire resistance but I can guarentee you there resistance will be negligible as by the time you are in maps you will have the Whispers of Doom Keystone and mobs will be cursed with both Vulnerability and Flammability.

So sweet as then nearly 30k AoE dps for a build that costs practically nothing and can run horrible map mod combinations.

A final word about the build, if you want to crank some insane damage numbers and invest currency into it. Level spell totems in your off hand weapon set and corrupt them to get a level 21 spell totem. Buy (or make!) a 5Link chestpiece to have + 1 to all gems. This will give you a level 22 spell totem which has a base 6444 life with a 5link you can put Concentrated effect in for 60%MORE damage (level 20gem+1 from chest)


if you want to complain about the brackets feel free i know its not pretty lol

This gives you
((((6444*2.16)*.5)*4.16)*1.6)*1.33=61609 dps

That is WITHOUT any uniques still so if you picked up a couple of minimum rolled doryani's for even more damage its

((((6444*2.16)*.5)*5.96)*1.6)*1.33=88266 dps

We're still only getting 45% increased totem life and no damage modifiers from 3 jewels so this build can break 100kdps if you want to go there

Anyway thats all folks Hopefully you enjoyed the build guide and look forward to the next one I do.

Good luck, stay safe and enjoy the burning!

Regards,
Thraxeus.

P.S. This is my first build guide and first video ever so any feedback would be greatly appreciated!

Edit:
Here is a Templar tree that achieves nearly the same results kindly done by forum member RediusMaximus

For reference, Rapid Decay does work with RF totems since spell totem adds the duration tag.
Tested it on alpha a week+ ago, so hopefully they didn't change it on live.

{RF + Spell Totem, +Inc AoE, +Inc Burn, +RapidDecay} is an awesome 5L, and Faster Casting rounds out the 6L pretty well.

I'd be sure to emphasize the fact that it costs 0 mana, so you're free to reserve everything with auras. Similarly, Elemental Weakness is better than Vulnerability since it helps out a lot more against fire resistant enemies which are the only thing that can withstand the damage.

Taking EE and using something like an Ice Nova Trap isn't the worst idea, but is only really needed for fire resistant and curse immune enemies.

gl;hf with the build -- I'm not far behind you. :)

HI, ty for build.
This build is non crit?

Not an alpha memeber so couldnt test that I just based it on how the mechanics of the game currently worked which was that suppoprt gems couldnt support other support gems.

Also why would you put a faster casting on as 6link?

Vuln+flam drops mobs faster then flam+ele weakness during the tests that I was doing

You already reserve 93% of your mana using 2 curses and purity of fire so cant run any other auras.
Cheers for that though but a bit late for me to edit the video lol. Being able to put a 6link on is rather helpful if you want to scale the damage even further then.

Regards,
Thraxeus.

Looks cool. Im gonna run this in Talisman!

Gonna try RF totems on HC talisman with this build

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwEAA3UEBwSzBg4J9gthDjwQzBJpFCAUcRZvFxwZLho4Gj4abB0UJKonLyftKS4qjSu2LKc1kjbYNuk6WDrYOuE8BTwtPV89_EbXSRtMs03jUEdSU1XGVw1YY1h3WOVaK18EXz9j_WZUZp5o8nF5cYVyD3hpeuZ8uIIHgpuDX4PMg9uFe4xGjM-PRpBVkSuUb5eVmjuboZ2un9-iAKPyplesmK2Nr2y3PsMTxPbGrsbYz37QH9Ih1HzYvdlh2Xzhc-Nq7DjsVe8O73zv6_Af8WzxrPJB8kX2SPau99f4k_rS_gr-jw==

can drop 15-20% life for double curse too.

"

Thraxeus wrote:

Also why would you put a faster casting on as 6link?

Cast speed is doubly effective for RF totem builds.
It increases the speed at which you summon the totem and it increases the speed at which the totem casts RF. The latter is super slow with a base 1s cast time.

Getting a good amount of cast rate really helps with clearspeed and, primarily, it lets you damage enemies while kiting a little bit better.

"

pneuma wrote:

For reference, Rapid Decay does work with RF totems since spell totem adds the duration tag.
Tested it on alpha a week+ ago, so hopefully they didn't change it on live.

{RF + Spell Totem, +Inc AoE, +Inc Burn, +RapidDecay} is an awesome 5L, and Faster Casting rounds out the 6L pretty well.

I'd be sure to emphasize the fact that it costs 0 mana, so you're free to reserve everything with auras. Similarly, Elemental Weakness is better than Vulnerability since it helps out a lot more against fire resistant enemies which are the only thing that can withstand the damage.

Taking EE and using something like an Ice Nova Trap isn't the worst idea, but is only really needed for fire resistant and curse immune enemies.

gl;hf with the build -- I'm not far behind you. :)

I remember reading that Mark said Rapid Decay wouldnt work with RF but i cant find the link.

EDIT: Damn that took some digging but i found it: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1480460/page/2#p12067527

RF doesnt have a duration tag, so it should not be affected by Rapid Decay. If it is, awesome but they might fix it soon. Was thinking of running this build or similar, can someone confirm it works atm?

Even though its difficult because it shows no numbers I am failry certain Rapid decay currently works after doing some janky testing in cruel coast. the tag also does appear on the skill so I believe it is currently a bug and not intended as mark said originally (and why I did not bother including it in the build design ^^)

Cheers for finding the post Noburu I believe it is a bug that currently allows RD to support RF totems

Regards,
Thraxeus.

Does Leo's increased Damage over Time mod affects RF?