[On Hold] Glacial Cascade Totems [ALL Content in the Game]

I didn't even catch the trickster changes until seeing Harness the Void here. Was looking at possibly doing a GC totem build in the upcoming league. If it doesn't get changed I could definitely try it out.

Since HoA is now working with spells as posted today (so 15% phys > extra fire and 12% more fire spell damage) including the overkill damage, it would be a pretty good consideration instead of curses like you were looking at, no?

Assuming trickster goes live without any change to damage conversion mechanics, an interesting feature will be that shaper weapons with phys->cold will likely be much more valuable than phys->lightning ones. Obviously the high budget GG ones will have both, but phys->cold gets to pass through an extra conversion (cold to fire), and should be a lot more in demand.

I suppose theoretically there's call of the brotherhood, but total lightning conversion builds aren't too strong base compared to cold.

Well, patch notes are up, and no surprise:

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Added a new notable - Harness the Void: Grants your hits a 25% chance to gain 25% of Non-Chaos Damage as Extra Chaos Damage, 15% chance to gain 50% of Non-Chaos Damage as Extra Chaos Damage and 5% chance to gain 100% of Non-Chaos Damage as Extra Chaos Damage.

They cut harness the void by more than half (now 18.75% average). No mention of fixing the underlying chaos conversion mechanic though. Still probably a big enough nerf to make heirophant or inquisitor more attractive than trickster for us. I'll theorycraft it once PoB is updated, too lazy to do it manually.

For comparison, you can get 13% non-chaos as extra chaos on an elder amulet.

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3.2 saw a huge revamp to Hierophant and it's quite exciting for totem builds. I have chosen to stay Inquisitor as it remains the top tier choice for single target. The Hiero changes greatly benefit Dark Pact Totems (totem life is a more important stat for them) and while having 2 additional totems and totem placement speed is nice for mapping, I still think Inquisitor is the better ascendancy due to the way resistance melting works with crits. It would be remiss of me not to mention the buff to Pious Path for Inquisitor which allows for more creativity with flasks if you go that route since immunity to ailments on consecrated ground is nice quality of life. Overall 3.2 saw few changes to this build and will still perform well as a league starter and an all content build.

Hi, wanted to start saying how i enjoyed playing this build in the 3.1 abyss league even if for a short while, felt its power, i started with a flameblast inquisitor build and couldnt do endgame bosses with it, and changed to this and all was possible, with some dieying along the way..... but would have thaught Hierophant to be a better choice this league 3.2, with soul mantle and ancestral bond plus ascendancy you can have 5 totems up at a time right ? wouldnt that comepnsate for the lack of elemental penetration and crit compared to Inquisitor ?

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Jbem82 wrote:

but would have thaught Hierophant to be a better choice this league 3.2, with soul mantle and ancestral bond plus ascendancy you can have 5 totems up at a time right ? wouldnt that comepnsate for the lack of elemental penetration and crit compared to Inquisitor ?

It actually doesn't quite compensate (against the toughest bosses), no. Inquisitor provides insane damage boosts. That said heirophant should be far and away smoother for general purpose mapping because of the massive totem placement speed it gives, as well as of course the ability to have so many totems out at once (drop 1-2 totems, slide forward, drop 1-2, no need to wait for packs to die). Hierophant also offers stronger MoM which is pretty nice.

I think you can make a valid justification for going either way in 3.2. I'll probably be doing heirophant just because it is something different.

NVM Got it!

PoB has been updated. Did some quick calcs using my gear from abyss league (vs shaper):

Basic inquisitor: 392k dps x 3 totems = 1.18M dps

Heirophant without any other changes: 178k dps x 5 totems = 890k dps

Changing my shaper items from lighting to cold, and changing faster casting for cold penetration in links, heirophant gives: 217k dps x 5 totems = 1.08M dps.

Replacing my granite flask with a wise oak: 244k x 5 totems = 1.22M dps

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Now there's other potential changes that could be done to optimize for heirophant (don't have any penetration on anything gear wise). Long story short, heirophant will be competitive against bosses (though inquisitor should still win at the highest gear levels, because GG shaper weapons are mixed element). But since heirophant will give dramatic mapping improvement while offering competitive boss damage and stronger MoM, it seems like a no-brainer to me.

There is the fact that we lose IoV. It won't effect me much, since I use lightning warp in my variant of the build, but for people who don't, that's certainly a consideration.

Daaaaamn yo, no changes to GC this feels so good. Yeah, Hiero is in a really nice spot, are you testing it with 2 daggers? Or wands? Cause a downside is always Soulmantle, with 5 totems will it get a bit more annoying? I don't really know, I suck at theorising stuff, but if you could do another test with weapon/shield (Atziri's fated?) I'd be so glad!

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Daaaaamn yo, no changes to GC this feels so good. Yeah, Hiero is in a really nice spot, are you testing it with 2 daggers? Or wands? Cause a downside is always Soulmantle, with 5 totems will it get a bit more annoying? I don't really know, I suck at theorising stuff, but if you could do another test with weapon/shield (Atziri's fated?) I'd be so glad!

I'm using my actual gear from last league. Dagger mainhand, scepter offhand.

Atziri shield is a big damage loss compared to dual kikazaru + shaper scepter. Two rings can't compare in damage contribution to one offhand shaper scepter, I'm afraid. Although going that route does give more life, since rare rings can have life on them. Also makes resists easier and such things as that.

As for whether 5 totems will be annoying, I don't see why, especially since you get 90% increased totem placement speed from heirophant. You don't need to drop them all every pack.

Good points, all of them. What worries me is Elder/Shaper rares going up in prices since when I've read "Maps that contain The Elder no longer contain additional monsters or provide Elder rare items from monsters other than The Elder.". But I can't find the Shaper counterpart of this, so we can still get Shaper rares from mobs?