Holy Flame Totem

I'm sure most of these have been covered before but I'll post them anyway. So far, 48 levels in with a Dual Flame Totem Templar:

1) Flame Totem has horrible targetting. Most often times I find the Totems targetting far away enemies that they barely reach instead of enemies right next to them. Doorways and placing the totems too close to structures also cause this problem. For some dungeons, it's almost impossible to get around that.

2) The built-in range is also a problem. Literally every ranged mob in the game has more range than flame totem. I'm sure if I reskilled the passive and ran 1 totem, at max range, I'd be putting out more damage from just staff-whacking.

3) Whereas other totems are reliant on their linked spells and thus don't exactly have a built-in range, Flame Totem is a skill by itself and should at least be able to compare to the range of other skills. As it is right now, there's no real benefit to using Flame Totem compared to Spell Totem + GMP + Fireball.

4) Mana Cost. Oh dear God, the mana cost. As I understand, GGG added Flame Totem to be a DPS-support skill of sorts, adding a little bit of extra DPS for high HP targets. With Flame Totem + GMP + Reduced Mana, it's barely lower than 200 mana per totem.

5) Damage Scaling is also a problem. I'm not quite sure how the damage on Flame Totem is calculated but Spell Damage plays no part in its damage. Testing with Doedre's Tenure gloves, I actually achieve higher DPS without them. Probably because of the cast speed but, ironically, spell damage amulet/rings don't add any damage either. This should probably be fixed since, despite its shortcomings, it's technically still a spell and should scale off something more than pure fire damage mods.

6) Graphics. GMP + Flame Totem is pretty graphics intensive, especially with Added Lightning Damage linked to it.


Aside from that, this build has been a lot of fun. It's funny to watch mobs run away from the totem only to die from ignite damage anyway.

I am currently having an issue with Flame Totem not casting flames. At first I thought it was an issue with a mob not moving so it would not start casting. Then I watched three mobs walk up to the flame totem and melee it to death without it casting a single flame. If I see it is not working and cast a new totem the second one will immediately trigger flames.

This seems to have just started as of Feb 8th. I do not have the second totem keystone. The following has changed on my character in the last few days. I supported FT with LMP (removing LMP did not fix the issue). I have a second flame totem gem leveling (Which I have not removed to test). I moved from Merciless Act 1 to Merciless Act 2. I will try to find some time to see if removing the second gem and going back to Act 1 fix the problem.

Edit: I went back and ran Flooded Depths and Merveil and had no issues with flame totem. I then went to Val Ruins which is where I had the most trouble earlier and it went back to acting the same. I think it has to do with doorways and rocks on the ground, as if I dropped FT in the middle of a doorway it would not trigger any flames. In another room there were medium sized rocks, which I could walk over, on the ground and it would not fire past them. I also had this issue in Chamber of Sins, River Crossing and Weaver's.

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casval776 wrote:

5) Damage Scaling is also a problem. I'm not quite sure how the damage on Flame Totem is calculated but Spell Damage plays no part in its damage. Testing with Doedre's Tenure gloves, I actually achieve higher DPS without them. Probably because of the cast speed but, ironically, spell damage amulet/rings don't add any damage either. This should probably be fixed since, despite its shortcomings, it's technically still a spell and should scale off something more than pure fire damage mods.

That's pretty odd considering the response here:
http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/125420/page/1#p1207488

So how do I keep this thing alive for more than a few seconds? Any tips?

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Telzen wrote:

So how do I keep this thing alive for more than a few seconds? Any tips?

57 flame totem temp here
my advice...run nigga ruuuuunnn

so projectile speed bonuses apply to the totem?

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wengweng805 wrote:

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Telzen wrote:

So how do I keep this thing alive for more than a few seconds? Any tips?

57 flame totem temp here
my advice...run nigga ruuuuunnn

so projectile speed bonuses apply to the totem?

Yes projectile speed increases the range of the flame, however the target acquiring range of totems is capped at about 1screen in height distance, so even when the flame reaches longer than that it won't fire until the mobs enter the aggro range. It's still pretty good though and the flames will go further hitting mobs out of the aggro range since it pierces. One way to keep the totem alive is adding Blind to it. First it basically blinds everything, which is very strong and second since everything is blinded, they tend to miss the totem a lot. Also 22% totem life passives are good, if you can grab them.

I also have the problem with flame totem. If it stands near doorway it doesn't do anything.

After some testing, I found out that flame totem doesn't benefit from the life leach support gem.

Also I think it would be great if flame totem did weapon damage instead of spell damage. There already are tons of totems that deal spell damage and flame totem would synergize well with + weapon elemental damage builds.