[3.0] [kungFoomoo]Meatball Totem | Video Guide | all map mods T15 | HC | SSF | BUDGET

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mattmo wrote:

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kungfoomoo wrote:

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I generally start a Templar, get magma orb from town then buy 7 (find some wisdom's ofc) then mule them to start levelling them right away in order to lessen the cost of a 21/20 gem later.

Can you please clarify this part for me? If I understand correctly, you equip 6/7 of these in alternate gear set to level, and of course 1 of them in main setup. Then when they are 20/20, vaal them, trying to get the 21/20. Is that correct? How important is this to the success of the build?

It takes a lot of time to get 20/20 and buying one is a bit expensive, so curious on the importance of this.

I mean it depends on how far you'd like to take the build. TBH I picked up a lvl 21 Magma Orb last league for next to nothing. Levelling 6 in your off set and putting aside 6 vaal orbs isn't a lot of effort anyway ^_^

Sitting at level 43 right now. My friend ripped at Kaom's so I'm back to solo play. Did normal lab and in general I just feel kind of weak. Yeah I kill stuff but it's too slow. I have spell totem/firestorm/fire pen in a +1 fire gem sceptre but the damage doesn't seem to be there. I've neglected a lot of spell damage nodes to rush AB then blood magic after regen in the templar area though, having gotten Ironwood notable with my latest level.

I'm not sure if it's worth it to move from the +1 fire 3L to a 4L, and this early in the league I don't have the currencies to experiment lol.

I've learned that Decoy Totem is god damn OP in normal. Both Life Gain on Hit and now Decoy Totem completely trivialize norm diff, it's kind of funny. Really looking forward to doing cruel lab and getting Tukohama.

I've been using an near equal mix of flame totem and spell totem. Kind of wondering if there's really a point to using spell totem + magma orb/firestorm/any other fire spell. The damage on flame totem so far has always stayed pretty close to firestorm, it's a little easier to use since there's no startup delay too.

I don't know when I'll be switching to magma orb, the damage just doesn't seem to be there without extra proj but lmp would just make it bad. (hold the phone) just saw the Inevitability jewel which adds an extra proj to magma orb for free. K time to switch to morb lol.

[Edit] Ignore all of this. Traded for a perf 15% Inevitability jewel (threshold jewel for morb) and am now running 4l morb/fpen/iron will/spell totem. Does pretty good damage. 551 dps in +1 fire gem wep, 550 dps in 4L.

[Edit 2] Got my second perf Inevitability jewel. The overlapping and increasing AoE of morb is quite good, doing pretty decent damage now. Only thing I wish was faster was the totem placement speed and the speed at which it starts to cast. Will test FCR as 5th link first. Not having to do something weird with two other jewels is good, but I've had to get the jewel nodes by AB and by MoM in order to get them active.

So far so good though the placement of morb totems can be a bit annoying. I'm thinking this will be fixed when they taunt and when they place and cast faster. A third totem's coverage also seems like it'd be really good.

So that char ripped but I liked magma orb so I still wanted to do something with it. After being annoyed enough with totems not covering trash mobs the way I wanted them to with morb, I decided to play a morb blood magic mara caster. Just ripped a few minutes ago at 78 to ele reflect because GG auranecro beside me gave me too much cast speed haha.

Was pretty good though, berserker for leech with pledge of hands. Did quite good damage for my level with morb and the new Inevitability jewels. Was slightly above curve for dps compared to other random builds from level 50+ or so.

Ele reflect is a bit of a nuisance, might go back to totems and more morb or rf or something.

Got some totem and magma orb oriented uniques in SSF HC and decided to give this build a try (with some modifications). Only level 82 so far, but it looks pretty solid overall. Got some questions:

1) Any reason for not taking Elemental Overload? I noticed Ball Lightning is pretty unreliable at procing EO, but I easily spared 2-3 link for Orb of Storms + Inc. Crit +/- Inc. AoE/Faster Casting and it's working splendidly. It's just 2 points for 40% more damage, seems like a waste not to grab it.

2) Why not 2x Inevitability jewel instead of Rain of Splinters? I'm crunching numbers and it looks way better on paper for only 2 additional points of investment.

3) According to Magma Orb's wiki page in the LMP/GMP section "the explosions from Magma Orb's splashdown do not overlap, meaning that each time the orbs strike down at the same time, damage is dealt only once to any given enemy."

Your SKILL FUNCTIONS section states otherwise:

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kungfoomoo wrote:

SKILL FUNCTIONS

Spoiler

So we are utilising magma orbs ability to overlap, similar to how glacial cascade and firestorm work. For this to happen we need to use either the Lesser or Greater Multiple Projectiles Support Gems or preferrably the Rain of Splinters jewel.
What you end up with in theory is something that looks like the image below



This overlap coupled with the skills in-built chain cause a high level of dps and great clear speed (for a totem build).

Is wiki outdated or your assumption wrong? From what I've read in other magma orb threads, this skill is all about overlapping subsequent chains of projectile, not multiple projectiles of same chain.

Because of this I've been running Conc. Effect, with proper positioning and bonus AoE from Inevitability jewels it looks like you can make first and second bounce hit the same target even with 30% less AoE.

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So far I'm enjoying this build. Even with pretty bad SSF items and Essence Worm it looks pretty good defense-wise. Damage/clear speed is more than sufficient and considering I'm still on 4L, single curse, 4 ascendancy points, level 19 gems and, again, pretty bad items, future prospects look promising. Considered going for 4th totem with Soul Mantle, but loss of HP and armour seems like too big of a sacrifice for life build.

Will see how it goes in higher tiers, but up till this point I'm glad I gave it a try.
Cheers.

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at3r wrote:

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He hasn't updated his guide when Inevitability came out, it is much much better than what we had access to before. Of course you run 2x. You should be able to see just by playing, but morb will not overlap in the same chain, but each bounce/chain will do damage so you can hit enemies with multiple bounces.

I actually think they came up with morb because they wanted a fire projectile spell that could overlap after global mechanics changes to overlapping.

I switched from totem morb to selfcast morb and when you have good control over where the first and second bounce are, you basically permanently double your dps since with Inevitability and the few +aoe nodes you get in the tree it's almost impossible to not hit things with at least 2 chains.

Inevitability is also amazing because the AoE near the edge of your screen gets so huge that everything gets covered and dies.

Say I get a 6L Soul Mantle, which is effectively a 7L, what's the best gem set up for magma orb?
Then say I finally get the (very expensive) Tuko shield. It seems that then I would have 4 full-strength totems (unlike the 8%-crippled totems from Hierophant Ritual of Awakening). At this point, would it make sense to drop Ancestral Bond, still have 3 totems (I think) but regain the ability to do self-cast damage, and respec the 4 AB skill points?

I think I answered my own question, but weigh in if you're still monitoring this post.
I outfitted Soul Mantle and left AB selected at first, for 3 totems in all.
KFM says parenthetically that a curse isn't that bad -- maybe not, if just one, but since the totems don't die in sync and deaths overlap, you can easily have 5 different level 20 curses on you at once -- and that's extremely annoying. Sure a warding flask will dispel all the curses at once but they'll be right back as the totems live, fight, and die. It would take superhuman timing and multiple warding flasks to stay viable -- an edgy and uncomfortable proposition.
To complete the test, I dropped AB, and going with just 2 totems helped a bit with the curses but not enough to stay with the Soul Mantle. Getting self-casting back with the existing gear and gems didn't make much difference -- I would need to outfit another high-damage skill to be worthwhile over totem-only play. So I went back to AB and will wait until I get a Tuko's to test again.

Thanks to Jazriel above re Inevitability! I didn't know of its existence and bought one right away. With my gems all at level 20 and buffed to 20%, but without a +1 chest or +3 Empower, I was about to give up on this build due to inadequate damage but this jewel restored my confidence to keep going.
I'll be able to buy a Tuko's in a few days and look forward to seeing 3 totems splattering 4 orbs each all over Wraeclast.
A note about Vaal Lightning Trap -- it seems rather ineffective to me. As an alternative, I swapped in (with the same support gems) a 20% Vaal Summon Skeletons that I got for Volatile Power cards and ran up to level 19 so far. This tactic creates a huge diversion with 35 skeletons for up to 35 seconds, with fast projectiles flying everywhere and even doing a respectable amount of damage. It's saved my Chieftain many times in boss fights, particularly when enfeebled with buffed-up dual bosses, although some strong boss skills can one-shot nearly the whole army.

It looks like no one is posting here now so maybe I'm talking to myself, but just in case you check in, here's my status and questions.

On the positive side, I've gotten further with this build so far than any other, but I still haven't done my first red map. However, it's difficult to assemble gear with simultaneously enough Int, Dex, life, and resists, and if including Tukohama's, it isn't actually a "Budget" build. I'd love to use my expensive Seven-League boots for speed but I just haven't been able to get enough stats on the other gear.

I've duplicated your gear as much as possible: Tukohama's, Inevitability, Rain of Splinters, Clear Mind, Essence Worm (Anger), and Level 3 Empower. I have a decent rare sceptre with 40 Ele + 40 Spell plus Added Lightning Damage to Spells and 98% Inc Crit Chance.

These may seem like stupid questions but no, I don't understand the game mechanics very well.
Q1. Before I got Tukohama's, I had two rare wands with a total of 210% increased spell damage and so a magma orb DPS of about 25,000. Outfitting the shield dropped the DPS way down to under 20,000. Is that 3rd totem really going to make up for a drop of over 5000 DPS?
Q2. With the rare sceptre instead of the wands, added lightning damage shows up in the tool tip for magma orb as "239 to 4867 lightning damage". So even though magma orb is a fire AOE spell, does the lightning damage apply and is it effective?
Q3. Controlled Destruction makes modest crit chance improvements nearly worthless. With the gear I have, if I drop Contolled Destruction, the spell crit change doubles from 5% to 10%. Is that worth making a change, and if so, what would I use instead in that socket?
Q4. Tukohama's includes Blood Magic. Is that global or local to the shield gems? If global, does it make sense to respec the Blood Magic notable cluster in the skill tree, and if so, to what?
Q5. Earlier in the comments you seem to advise against Ele Focus because of losing ignite chance, but your posted gear includes it, so what's the logic? and an alternative (preferably blue since my 6L chest has good stats but is corrupted).

I'm not the OP but I think I can answer some of those...

1) Going for the shield instead of two wands or sceptres is a drop in DPS per totem, but the shield gives you some defense and I dare say the three totems give some too, as the taunt, which is very important for boss fight safety in this build, is somewhat more likely to proc. Obviously, casting the third totem takes some time too but it should be worth it. 3*20k is much more than 2*25k.

2) If the damage is in the tooltip it does work, but remember lightning damage will not be scaled with any "increased fire damage" you have in tree or gear.

3) Modest crit improvements are generally not worth it anyway. If you go crit, you want to have both high crit chance and multi %, initial investments give little return. I'm sure, if you switch your controlled destruction (which gives "MORE" damage) to an added crit chance support, you will see from the tooltip that it's definitely not worth it in terms of DPS tradeoff. Yes, the tooltip DPS does reflect crit chance and multi changes.

If you use elemental overload, crits do help, but you should use another skill like orb of storms to proc it.

4) Tukohama's blood magic is global so it has the same effect as the keystone, but the keystone is pretty close to the marauder area and it has those very juicy life nodes behind it, so I would still take it.

5) I would use ele focus in this build, maybe try to swap it for conc effect for bosses?

Finally, you say you use rain of splinters, I recommend instead using 2*inevitability, should be an overall boost to both damage and aoe.