[2.6] Assophant Stickpeople or a guide to Crit Staff Warchief Totems

Sadly the build lost damage with 2.6. The improved staff nodes help, but they cannot compensate for the loss of 0.5% base crit on Judgement Staves. The AoE nerfs also hurt a little but not as much as you would expect, since a lot of the area clear potential is based around Weapon Range for WCT, which is not affected by the AoE nerfs. It shuffles the gem setup a bit though. I would recommend WCT - Increased Critical Strikes - Conc Effect - Added Fire in most cases now. Refer to the gems section for alternatives.

I still expect the build to be able to do all content but do not expect to face roll it unless you happen to have a godly staff available.

Not much changed for the build. The two things that affect us are the Less Duration and the Voidheart nerf. The later was optional anyway and we did not invest much into double dipping so the impact is rather small. I did do some maps without Voidheart late in Prophecy and was hardly missing it. You can still use it though, it is not a bad item choice if you have room for it.

Less Duration will simply be replaced with either Added Fire or Melee Physical Damage on Full Life. If you do not want to change socket colors. If you can go for 3B1R BoR Increased Critical Strike Multiplier is the superior option. (It is even better than Less Duration pre nerf.) I updated the gem section accordingly.

As you can read on the second page of the thread dandan88 took the build to Level 92 and T14 Maps in Essence Hardcore. So I think it is still viable for almost all content.

+ Good Single Target Damage (around 100k per totem)
+ Decent map clear
+ Can do all Map mods (some do hurt though *cough* chain *cough*)
+ Decent HP Pool (currently 5.5k you could do more at the expense of damage easily)
+ No need for a 5l

- General phys defense is not that amazing
- Entry level gear to get the build running might not be that cheap

Endgame Tree (112 Points - Level 89)
My current tree. As you can probably see, you have a lot of options in what you pick up. Life Clusters are just one travel point away. Defensive nodes as well as more offensive nodes are connected directly to the current tree. So you can customize as you like. Everything else should be an obvious choice.

Bandits: Oak - Kraityn - Power Charge

For Cruel you can also go with Oak or Kill it does not matter that much.

For leveling I simply went RT till I hit 68 and could equip my Hege’s Era. In the early levels I used Molten Strike and Sunder. Later a bit of EQ until I picked up Ancestral Bonds and switched to Ancestral Warchief.
Get some of the Leveling Two-Handers and you are fine.

Main Skill in a Bringer of Rain:
Ancestral Warchief - Increased Critical Strike Chance/Weapon Elemental Damage - Concentrated Effect/(Increased Area of Effect) - Added Fire/Melee Physical on Full Life

Weapon Elemental Damage should be slightly better than Increased Critical Strike under the assumption that you run Added Fire, Hatred and Herald of Ash. Personally I would still go with Increased Critical Strike for better consistency on freezes and its slight edge in scenarios with high resistant mobs.

To be honest you can now leave Conc in all the time. The 30% less area are about equal to 14% less radius combined with the overall nerf to AoE and especially the Increased AoE Support the deciding factor for clear speed with Ancestral Warchief now is Weapon Range, which does not interact with AoE in any way for Ancestral Warchief.

BoR adds Faster Attacks, Melee Physical and Blind to the setup.

Other links and gems:
Orb of Storms - Curse on Hit - TC - PCoC

Adds some more defense in the form of slow and makes freezing easier. Together with the Maim from Assassin and the Chilling from Hatred it makes mobs pretty immobile. Keeping up power charges greatly improves our DPS.

Vaal Haste - Inc Duration
Leap Slam - Faster Attacks
Hatred
Herald of Ash
Ice Golem

You can add a CwDT setup and a Warcry if you want but I am just to lazy for this and frankly I do not miss it.

Helm: Bringer of Rain no other options here but it is usually cheap. Bad Rolls are like 1c and that is enough to start. You can always switch to a better one later. Rolling 2 Blue and 2 Red costs an average of 80 Chromes with Vorici 1 Blue. So save them while leveling.

Chest: BoR blocks the chest slot so nothing here.

Weapon: Any Crit staff. Hegemony’s Era is an obvious choice, since we do not need links on it, you can pick up a good one (~500dps) for below 2ex in Prophecy. Otherwise any rare staff with decent dps and a local crit roll will do. Exact Crit chance on the staff does not matter too much as long as it is above 7.5%. We add a lot of base Crit via Assassin subclass and Increased Critical Damage Support.

Ring: If you can get a Voidheart but it is not needed. You will only notice it on single target on things like Izaro. You can map perfectly fine without it. Skipping it also makes it easier to sort your resists on the rest of your gear for the start.

Gloves: Facebreakers for damage or Empire’s Grasp for Utility are viable Unique options. Personally I use nice pair of rares though.

Jewels: I grabbed some with %Life, Crit Multi and another useful stat.

Boots: Try to get the "Increased Critical Strike Chance if you haven't crit recently" for us it is basically always active.

Rest of the gear: Cap your resistances, get flat life rolls and flat accuracy. Crit Multi on the Amy is a nice bonus. You also want to pick up Dex on a piece or two for Vaal Haste.

My Gear

Place totem, watch totem kill mobs, move to totems position, place new totem.

That is basically it, you can very liberally place totems, as they are cheap and we have excellent summoning speed. WCT does have a few quirks though they take about half a second to activate once placed and they deactivate if you move too far away, which is roughly half a screen, you basically need to have them on screen for them to do something. Also for the first activation you need to have Line of Sight of them.

Something else to keep in mind, is that you can spam totems to generate power charges for bosses i.e. but do not do so mid combat because the totems will not attack because of that activation period.

It is pretty safe to play as long as you keep an eye on the mobs and your totem placement. It no auto pilot build as we rely a lot on kiting mobs and actively evading to avoid damage.

For Map Mods you should be very careful with chain, as projectiles chain from the totems and the golem to you, which causes huge damage spikes. Phys and Ele reflect both are annoying as they require constant resummoning of totems. For Ele reflect you can turn of Hatred to make your life easier. Otherwise Enfeeble hurts our damage a good deal but since we have plenty it is not too bad. Same goes for mobs taking reduced damage from crits. Since we rely on a Mana Flask Less Regen and No Regen is not an issue.

Everything here is with 2.3 Less Duration and legacy Voidheart

Hatred, Ice Golem, Increased AoE, Totem Up, No Power Charges


Hatred, Ice Golem, Conc Effect, Totem Up, No Power Charges


Hatred, Ice Golem, Conc Effect, Totem Up, 4 Power Charges, Vaal Haste


You could push this further with Lion’s Roar and Atziri’s Promise but for me that feels unnecessary.

Defense:

2.3
Normal Atziri
Death and Taxes
6 Keys Uberlab
Uber Atziri