Shockwave Totem

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stkmro wrote:

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grogor wrote:

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stkmro wrote:

for those players who think that this skill should be nerf......

this skill only works for fighting normal mobs...

it totally suxs for fighting bosses... merveil on ruthless totally tears this totem apart in 1 or 2 hits before it can even dish out any dmg...

Going to disagree. I've used mine on every boss. They're not immune to the knockback and the totem is spammable should it go down from stray aoe hits. It makes brutus a complete joke, even more so then temporal chains.

this skill makes brutus a complete joke is becos brutus has only melee attk and ground slam. in fact any range classes/skills will render brutus helpless with hit/run tactics.

back to this totem: any range mobs/bosses will make this totem a complete joke.

u haven't yet seen merveil cold snap on the totem immobilising it. 2nd cast broke it into pieces :)

Actually I have. As I said I've used it on every boss. To give you an idea of how much I've used it against merveil(sp?) I've knocked her off the map with a current knocback bug and had to do her again in cruel. So yes it does work on bosses, even ranged ones. Like I said, the totem is spammable.

This totem seems to damage itself when I use it. I have watched it lose life with each pulse until it destroys itself.

Tested it while it was firing with no monsters hitting it. I went to Cavern of Woe drew in a couple monsters, put the totem behind me on the bridge close enough so it would trigger but used myself to block the monsters from getting to it. With each damaging pulse the totem lost life. It seems to average about 5 pulses before it kills itself.

Is this the intended behavior of the totem?

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evilvassago wrote:

This totem seems to damage itself when I use it. I have watched it lose life with each pulse until it destroys itself.

Shouldn't be happening. Did you attach it to a Blood Magic support gem?

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bingobill wrote:

anyone scaled this?

Leveled it you mean? Yes. The damage seems to scale okay with increasing monster levels up to Act 1 Ruthless (I'm there now, and powered one with Hatred).

Methinks the skill will help a player fight bosses, and not useless.

I had Shockwave totem completely alone in an unlinked socket.

I do however have the Blood Magic ability in my passive skill tree.

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zharmad wrote:

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evilvassago wrote:

This totem seems to damage itself when I use it. I have watched it lose life with each pulse until it destroys itself.

Shouldn't be happening. Did you attach it to a Blood Magic support gem?

This seems to be an interesting side effect. I did some additional testing based off of your suggestion. I used one of my respec points and removed Blood Magic. I went back to Caverns of Woe and did the same test. The totem no longer damaged itself.

I put the skill point back and the behavior came back.

It looks like the totems share your blood magic ability if you have purchased it from the passive skill screen. And that there is a hidden mana cost to the abilities they use. Speccing into Blood Magic causes them to pay that cost with health which makes them very short lived and not worth using.

Not sure if this is the intended function, but currently it seems that totems do not mix well with the Blood Magic skill.

I think this skill especially given it's duration and area of effect is overbalanced. Adding support gems that increase damage with things like electricity made my templar all but overbalanced.

It's potential for exploitation as a ranged weapon is absurd.

I would think this skill in particular could benefit from reduced area, reduced damage, increased cost and probably a limit to the number of times it fired.

Also, when casting fire traps, frost nova etc to support the totem it got a little, excessive.


Don't get me wrong, I like the skill and the concept, but once employed it was pretty much a case of "Can I get this in the room and sit back while it annihilates everything in there?"

Kind of like an overbalanced guardian in D1.

When I get it for my ranger, adding the whole rain or arrows thing, will make it pointless to stay awake during combat.

like what i have previously said, some people think that this skill is overpowered... that is because they have not yet played at the higher lvl gameplay like merciless lvl.

you guys just go ahead and try planting the totem in an area of mobs at merciless lvl and see what you get...

the mobs there will tear this totem apart in 1 or 2 hits, before the totem can even dish out any damage.

this skill only allows 1 totem to be cast at a time and even if the totem is spam-able, it is of no use. by the time you spam the 2nd totem up after the 1st totem dies, the mobs will be chasing after you and ignoring the totem.

and you gotta run away to another area because most people cannot afford to just stand at a stationary spot and expect to survive more than 2 or 3 hits by a mob.

and also... ranged mobs and mini map bosses in merciless lvl completely makes this totem a joke.

i also want to add that this totem works best on spiders, zombies, skeletons, and any slowing moving mobs with slow melee attacks.

when use against packs of fast moving mobs like hellions in the maps "the rocky climb" and "the prisoner's gate", this totem doesn't stand a chance against the lions.

The damage on shockwave totem is very high, and cast speed seems to affect it strongly. With some spell damage, added fire damage, and faster casting it absolutely destroys mobs.

I'm in Ruthless now with zero problems in either survivability (again, faster casting means more knockback) and damage (3-4 hits the average mob, and those waves come out fast).

Will probably do a post-mortum after I get to chaos, but I'm expecting it to be a cakewalk.

EDIT: Farming fellshrine, level 52 and currently at ~1400 dps.

Was pretty OP before the patch; now, I'm not sure what to use it for. Biggest issue is that mobs can kill it in just a few hits, so it doesn't persist long enough to do any good. Too many smacks with the Nerf Bat, methinks. =0[.]o=

I would have to agree, the range, durability, slower attack speed and damage nerf make this very weak even though I have all the passives in the skill tree for totems. 2 of them at a time does not help much.


It was a step in the right direction but I think the patch overneutered them.