Holy Flame Totem

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CanHasPants wrote:

Great feedback, grogor. Please keep us updated as you start running maps. I would like to know this skill's end game viability. I know that the totem support suffers a huge dps loss in merciless, making it difficult to remain viable as a main cast.

I was working on a fire build when this skill was announced and was really looking forward to using this, but by the time it was released I respecced as a summoner and am now working on a stun master Marauder, and have a 2H ias Duelist planned for my next toon.. So I really appreciate the feedback :)

I ran in to a pretty big wall at "The Rocky Climb" in merciless. Almost everything there was fire resistant and it became pretty time consuming to kill them, elemental weakness basically didn't really help either. I did run to the prison though to see if it was the fire resistance causing all the problems and it was. All the fire skills did just fine against the non resistant stuff, like necromancers. Necromancers practically disintegrated from 1 or 2 fire traps.

I realize my gear is part of the problem, I'm using at least a few blue items and not the good kind. I'm also not using the unique flame staff. I've also realized there are much, much more effective flame totem potential builds then mine. Someone in build of the week mentioned a nearly identical build except he takes advantage of the +20% shock chance from the passive tree, which is brilliant and has to be an enormous damage boost.

I probably won't be continuing the character because of the legacy transfer, unfortunately.

I can't say if the mana cost is perfect, but the totem's potential justifies the amount of mana it cost. You shouldn't be spamming this spell.

GGG, fix the lack of propane in my flame totems. Sometimes the totem will just sputter and stop shooting.

Well, I've been doing some rather decent DPS with my Flame Totem (359 DPS) now that I have a few Fire damage passives under my belt. I'll still be playing the legacy default league and bring my fire Ranger to the endgame since it's such a waste to let it go (with a Chin Sol Markareth bow in line.)

Currently, my flame totem isn't complete. It's still stacked with Faster Projectiles which will be replaced by Iron Will when I can don my lvl 59 chest (with the appropriate sockets/links/colors). I'll post a proper feedback then.

Not having any problems in Maps with 2 flame totems. 1500 dps x 5 with gmp. Fun times

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DoubleSmiggins wrote:

This skill is amazing but I've noticed a few things about it:
1) It gets damage bonuses from items that normally just add some damage onto physical attacks, like Glinting etc. However this is only listed on the DPS hover on the skill bar - in the character screen it is not listed.
2) It will try to attack enemies outside its range. Not sure if bug.
3) Something severely limiting its effectiveness in mass engagements is that it takes a long time to switch between targets.

Fireball Totem is much slower fire rate, with better potential range and individual damage tics.

How can I get this skill? Which pass quest?

This is my current setup with Flame Totem. Passive skilltree looks like this: Build at lvl 61

Note that I take the most essential fire damage passives. I plan on getting the remaining 4 6% fire damage passives.

Flame Totem does 604.3 DPS x 3 flames at a cost of 172 mana. While not the ultimate killer, it does its job well to either weaken or outright kill mobs. As for bosses, it has its use as an additional target while dealing damage at the same time.

Faster casting apparently doesn't affect the speed it takes to cast the totem itself, but the attack speed that the flame shoots its flames out, hence the current setup. Without the Faster Casting or Iron Will supports, Flame Totem only does 359 DPS, a far cry from 604.

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Islidox wrote:

Faster casting apparently doesn't affect the speed it takes to cast the totem itself

It should, and if it doesn't it's a bug.
There've been problems with cast speed and totem summoning speed in the past.

Even unsupported, this totem is pretty effective with a minion build also using elemental weakness. It frequently softens up the enemy such that an exploding skelly or zombie finishes something off. Once I get some non-shit gear with proper sockets, I could see Blind being really helpful here.

Or, Flame Totem + Chance to Flee could be quite interesting with Puncture.

Another powerful synergy with Flame Totem is the Vulnerability curse, which provides an additional 10% chance to stun on hit. Given the base stun duration is 350ms, the base cast time is 80ms and curse's stun chance ignores the target's effective max life, Flame Totem supported with LMP essentially locks enemies into a stun. This combination trivialises bosses like Vaal Oversoul as they just cannot do anything.