Shockwave Totem

Lol, why would you make the damage not spell damage? just to ensure that no one builds a character around this skill?

I made a build that used this+sweep with the knockback passives. While boring as hell, it was very functional, between the totem, sweep and the fending passive+crit knockback passive, you can generally keep anything melee away from you. For ranged mob, dropping the totem behind them to push them closer to you works well too. It's a surprisingly good totem, damage is meh which I guess is the point but with Faster Casting it does a pretty good job of pushing stuff away.

There's an error with the tooltip, even though I had spell damage the tooltip does increase in DPS but the physical damage remains unchanged.

I am positive I am getting crits with this skill, also I do not understand why this particular totem doesn't scale with spell damage...

Another topic entirely I would love to see totems gain some portion of the players resists anything that does elemental damage trashes totems near instantly.

In fact I had designed a build around this skill (please ignore the fact it is a 120p build, I like an overall picture of what I am aiming for)

Frostwave

Since reading this thread however I am going to scrap the idea... I am not sure why you guys have chosen to make it work like no other totems but there we have it... hell apparently I cannot even use Iron will to boost its damage. Pretty much any other totem is more worth my time. Perhaps you guys could bring it in line with the others?

/sad

So since one of my marauders got a free respec, I am currently trying this out.

Notes:

Shockwave > faster casting > added fire > stun/knockback (your pref honestly) > added lightning (taking shock on hit passives) > concentrated effect.

Working off of this build plan. RnG_Cataclysm Trying to maximize the totems damage and play a little bit of pinball with monsters in the process.

I suppose you could swap one of those out for Increased AoE to lessen the range loss form concentrated.

Running vulnerability and a stun support seems to be working nicely, crit is important but no where near as much as cast speed.

My main question is that on the passive tree will only global crit work for this or will the spell crit passives also work? My theory is that it has to be global because of this quote from the wiki

"

Secondary Damage: Though the totem technically casts a spell, this spell is a secondary damage effect and thus does not get bonuses from your spell power.

Edit: Also I am still trying to work out the most optimal spells to use for my traps and remote mines, I was going to use firestorm or frost nova since i am already buffing AoE damage and radius. I do know beartrap and firetrap will both have a place on my bar.

I loaded up my 59 dual Shockwave marauder (marooned due to low life) to test out the casting speed change in 0.10.4, and if anything's different I sure can't tell. I was satisfied with the casting speed before, and of course I still am. I'm also satisfied with the damage it can do with the right supports and uniques.

My only problem with the skill is that you really can't build around it without uniques. There's nothing wrong with builds being enabled by uniques, but in this case all you're doing is bringing the damage up to a reasonable enough level to depend on, and that's much less interesting than something like melee power charges with Voll's or Cyclone with Terminus Est.

Shockwave Totem's base damage should be increased by 25% to match The Magnate. Alternatively, add an Area Damage passive cluster to the marauder area, in the middle of the stun nodes just below Shield Mastery. Just general Area Damage, so it works with Shockwave Totem.

Thanks for reading.

i personally won't mind if shockwave itself was slow as dirt... as long as it had reasonable range for itself. the 0.10.4 patch made it "attack" faster, not be casted faster, meaning it does better job keeping stuff out of its face.

If you link added fire damage and fire penetration, will fire penetration work?