Decoy Totem

Greets, my suggestion for DECOY TOTEM skill:

reedit that enduring cry visual effect to a more subtle and mild style,

the non stop glowing circle it generates hurts my eyes really much.

dunno if i'm the only one feeling it?

thank ya :D

Was suggested on last page and yeah it's too graphic intensive atm considering how often it spams the effect and the size of the effect. It needs to be toned down, like a ton of stuff really. At this point I think someone should basically go through all the skills and tone them all down regardless, then adjust from there. Basically, give everything the Spark treatment, the new spark is nice.

I love decoy totem and have used it on a number of occasions. It seems to scale pretty well (I've used it up to lvl 70 on my bow duelist on hc) though I do agree the graphics could be toned down a bit... if you get in a party with a couple people, or even 1 person tossing that out.. it's rough.

But then again I run 10-20fps, so.

lvl 19 decoy totem with 16% quality here, its way to weak imo, got overnerfed

"

Speckmuetze wrote:

lvl 19 decoy totem with 16% quality here, its way to weak imo, got overnerfed

I'm thinking it's kinda meh right now too... My Shockwave totem does a better job taunting... Deals damage AND pushes things away.... Feels like it has more or less the same hp too.... And when I use Warlord's mark it even gains endurance charges making it really tanky lol

"

Speckmuetze wrote:

lvl 19 decoy totem with 16% quality here, its way to weak imo, got overnerfed

Yep, decoy needs much more life imo. I mean, why should my flame totem should be able to tank more then my decoy totem? Not that they should nerf flame totem life (it already is to weak if it comes to damage output), but they should think about increasing the life of decoy.

Your flame totem isn't outtanking Decoy, unless it has Blind on it.

Decoy works fine, but it definitely benefits a lot from taking one of the 2(or both) passives that increase life totem. Other than that, it tanks a couple of hits then die, which is still worth it if you have faster casting on it so you don't lose much time resummoning and you have high enough dmg to kill stuff during the small amount of time it's up. If you want a sustained diversion because your DPS isn't very good or you want to tank bosses with, you should be using skeleton totem. Decoy is for grouping mobs and blowing them up quickly. For example on my Explosive Arrow char it works perfect, all I need is 1second and a half to stack 5EA on a mob, and since they all converge toward decoy, even though decoy dies in like 3secs, it still serves its purpose since everything dies instantly.

A lot of people completely misunderstand the purpose of the Decoy Totem. It's a DECOY, not a TANK. Judging from the replies on this thread, a lot of people are expecting a super minion tank that AE taunts everything on the screen. For that just use Summon Skele - Totem - Minion life instead.

Here are things you should know to help you better understand this totem (which imo is awesome utility). For the record, I use both Decoy totem and Summon Skele totem to completely lock down and control monster AI behaviour (but not dual totem build so i switch between the two).

Combination of Decoy + Summon Skele Totem for 100% AI lockdown for casters
1. Monster AI is 99% of the time 'initial proximity' based. You know what I mean, monsters always aggro the closest player or minion within their attack range, after which, they will lock on to this target or occasionally switch to another closer target. Once this aggro target dies, the monster will seek the next nearest target.

Knowing this, how you lock down monster AND Boss AI is you use your Skele Totem to draw the pack to your skeles. If all aggro is on your skeles, good. But sometimes, new adds will come into the screen from from other directions and aggro YOU instead if you are closer to them. When this happens, you drop your Decoy (unsummons your Skele totem but your skeles are still up) and the new adds will be locked to your Decoy. Right after moving slightly away, you drop a new Skele totem next to your Decoy totem (this unsummons the Decoy). However, the monster AI is now reset and they will now aggro the newly summon Skeles.

Most people I've seen simply try to resummon skele totems next to monsters that are locked onto them while they run around, this DOES NOT work until you've run far far offscreen as monster AI does not work like this. Decoy Totem works as a reset for you to lock down monster threat completely.

2. As one of the above posters has said, Decoy is also meant to be placed far away offscreen to 'bunch up' monsters away from you, where you then throw 1-3 casts of your AEs as opposed to AEing a very spread out pack.
Myself, I am a heavy Fire Trapper build. So I completely lockdown monster positioning and Fire Trap one shot them down between Decoys. This would not be possible unless I kite them in circles and round them up but that's monkey business and a waste of time, and not always possible in tight spaces.

3. If you are a Temporal Chains user, get creative with it. Place the Decoy at the back of the screen and nuke the snared monsters as they slowly walk back towards it, when the decoy dies let the monsters get a bit closer to you before resummoning the totem behind them. Basically you ping-pong snared monsters between yourself and the totem. This is handy for Frost/Ice Shot/Cold dmg ranged. Why kite like a noob when you can control monster behaviour most of the time with Decoy?

4. If you are a DUAL Totem build (which I've tried for some time), boss fights should be a breeze and groups will love you, because you are a better 'tank' than any player.
Easy fights - drop your DPS totem and recast Decoy every 1-2 hits. Yes it's lame but the pay-off is that you are COMPLETELY safe.
Tough boss fights in groups - spam your Decoys non-stop as they get one-two shotted. Yes it's lame but you will be amazed at how much easier it makes things when the rest of your group gets free hits in without having to worry about running around.

All that said, I will definitely concede that baseline Decoy Totem is about 25% health short of where it needs to be. I am currently specced into 1 x 22% totem health and using 14%Q Decoy and it works wonders for me, but really I think 1 x 22% node or a Q decoy will be enough.

only wanted to say that "agro" depends on prox then "what is hurting me" then who knows what or everything else, but likely nothing left.