St. ELMO's Fire (Dual Totem, Dual Curse, EE, Fire Trap Templar) NERFED :( RIP build

noob question
doesnt 2nd totem passive prevent you to damge with traps?
cos it says "with your skills" not spells
caonfused :/

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doesnt 2nd totem passive prevent you to damge with traps?

Nope. The trap is casting your spell. Just like a totem. Which is the same reason you don't take damage from reflect.

*note.
I have found its better to not use clarity. I pretty much doubled my kill speed from just being able to throw more traps without waiting for clarity to regen. Using my flasks regenerates mana fast enough.



with the increased charge recovery, I pretty much always have full flasks.

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YeahPete wrote:

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seem like fire trap going to be nerf at low lv.

whered u hear that from?

from what it going to be on next patch notes on announcements section.
also I have no problem with my mana while using clarity

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YeahPete wrote:

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I have found its better to not use clarity. I pretty much doubled my kill speed from just being able to throw more traps without waiting for clarity to regen. Using my flasks regenerates mana fast enough.

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YeahPete wrote:

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doesnt 2nd totem passive prevent you to damge with traps?

Nope. The trap is casting your spell. Just like a totem. Which is the same reason you don't take damage from reflect.

I was going to ask a question, too, but I figured it out. I might as well explain it so other people can understand it better.

The Fire Trap is casting the explosion spell and the resultant burning area on the ground. So this damage is not cancelled by Ancestral Bond. It doesn't trigger Elemental Equilibrium either, because you're not the one doing the damage. So, the monsters never get a Fire Resist buff as a result of being hit by fire damage. Instead, they have a constant -50% fire resist due to being hit by lightning damage from Arc. Even though the Spell Totem is casting arc, it must count as damage from you or else EE wouldn't do anything at all. :D

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Gems & Supports (Ideal) Arranged in order of importance

2.) Fire Trap + Fire Penetration + Iron Will

Iron will is the most important support gem here.

If Iron Will is the most important, then maybe you want to list it first.

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If Iron Will is the most important, then maybe you want to list it first.

I changed it because I think fire penetration is now more important than Iron WIll.

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YeahPete wrote:

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If Iron Will is the most important, then maybe you want to list it first.

I changed it because I think fire penetration is now more important than Iron WIll.

But it still says "Iron will is the most important support gem here.", which is confusing.

Either way, I'm using R-R-G-G gloves with both of them linked to two fire trap gems. My other two gems are in a +1 Fire Gem wand with no support.

However, I'm currently only using 3 of the trap gems at the moment. I put Summon Skeletons on a second Spell Totem, and I find that I use 1 Arc totem and 1 Skeletons totem more often than I use 2 Arc totems. The skeleton totem really enhances both my survivability as well as the Arc totem's survivability. If I use just Arc totems I find that some mobs will take them down really fast then come straight after me. I'm using Zombies, too, but they are slow to summon and if they get killed I'm pretty much naked. Especially is there are no corpses on the screen yet because then I can't even summon any.

Here are how my encounters generally go when there is a group of monsters:

1. Ideally, have 3 zombies from previous encounter.
2. Drop Skeletons Totem as soon as I encounter monsters. It immediately starts spamming skeletons and gives the monsters something else to attack besides my totems, or me.
3. Drop Arc totem. It starts zapping away.
4. Spam Elemental Weakness curse to cover every monster on the screen.
5. Carefully, but rapidly throw fire traps from my two supported gems to avoid overlapping their explosions too much and to get even coverage of burning area on the ground.
6. If there are still white monsters left alive, I just let the burning ground kill them. You can watch their life just melt away, and it saves traps.
7. If there are blue or rare monsters, I'll throw more of my supported traps, and, if needed, I'll throw traps from my third trap gem.

If there is a really, really tough rare monster with high Fire resist, I'll sometimes swap my hotkey from the third trap gem to the fourth so I can throw three more traps. The skeletons will have him occupied, so I have plenty of time to do this.

I'll refresh the two totems as needed.

Since the Arc totem hits three monsters and I'm supporting it with Elemental Proliferation, if any shocks occur, lots of monsters get them. The damage from the Arc itself is actually pretty low because of the +25% resist they get from it. It's the -50% to fire resistance that's important. In my experience it doesn't really help to have two Arc totems zapping away. A monster only needs to be hit once to get the Fire debuff, and having a ton of skeletons helps with survivability so much more.

I haven't done any serious testing on bosses to see if using two Arc totems makes a bigger difference. I can imagine that using two totems will cause Shocks to stack, which will multiply damage a lot. However, for groups of ordinary mobs, I think using the two different totems is better.

Plus skeletons die so fast and they explode, doing more fire damage, albeit less than zombies. I actually had trouble fighting Cruel Oak because you run out of zombies, and it turned out that spamming skeletons was much more effective than trying to spam fire traps and dodge him. It kept him from leap slamming my Arc totem, or me. At the time I didn't have dual totems, so I was casting the skeletons manually. After that experience I used skeletons more and more, and they've been a huge help.

I just reached Merciless, and cleared Fetid Pool and Tidal Flats at level 51. Way below the level of those zones, which is 58. My Elemental Ranger struggled so much clearing those areas solo, but with this templar build it wasn't bad at all. Thanks so much for posting this!

My resists in Merciless at level 52 are 80/80/79/-39 :D

(It's also a lot more fun than my ranger who just holds down right-click to spam Lightning Arrow, and drops Bear Traps sometimes. She's good in groups, and great for farming Ledge, but very bad solo.)

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Urpo wrote:

5. Carefully, but rapidly throw fire traps from my two supported gems to avoid overlapping their explosions too much and to get even coverage of burning area on the ground.

This is an interesting point I've never seen mentioned before. Is there a disadvantage to stacking traps and having them explode at the same time? I just figured it was higher burst damage and stacked burning effect, but is that an incorrect assumption?

Should we be spacing and timing our FTs instead of stacking them? Perhaps this is a mechanic many people have overlooked.

Thanks!

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Feesticles wrote:

Is there a disadvantage to stacking traps and having them explode at the same time?

The explosion damage definitely "stacks", so to speak. Each explosion deals separate damage. If you're fighting a rare monster, or even a group of blues, spam away. But I don't know for sure if the burning ground damage stacks. My impression is that it does not. It's tricky to test, but should be possible if you watch how fast their life meter goes down. Just make sure you don't use the totems during testing, because that just confuses things. I'll give it a try tonight.

I just prefer to cover a wide area so that every monster is standing in it after each one got hit with at least one explosion. Think of skeleton archers on Ledge. They can stand in very wide groups, and there can be two or more groups. Spreading out the burning area makes sure they are all getting hit by it.

Also, I rarely stack traps on top of one another. I throw them directly under the monsters and they explode instantly. There's never a chance for them to pile up, so I've never had a chance to validate my belief that each explosion will do separate damage, but it makes perfect sense that it would. It would take extra programming for that not to be the case, so it's the default. However, I can easily see it being the case that burning ground could be programmed as "Is this monster standing on burning ground? If so, apply a DOT". Then again, if you throw more than one trap from two different level gems, which burning damage would the game choose to apply? Maybe that does stack after all. Testing is definitely in order.

I'm not positive how the burning ground DOT interacts with Ignite burns from critting or Chance to Ignite, but for regular burns only the highest burn value takes effect at once, and then when it expires if there was another lower value burn proc, that one would take effect (but not for a full 4 second duration, only the remainder of the duration from when it actually hit).

That was how I was understanding stacking the traps and what my experience had suggested as well. I throw them at their feet too when possible, and the explosion damage definitely stacks.

The explanation about the burning ground DOT also makes sense. I'm curious to see if both of your tests find that it stacks or just takes the highest one first.

Thanks for the help and discussion. It was educational.

I'm level 45 and finally think I have a 4L RBBB to give the dual totem spec a shot. If anyone has any old hand-me-down gear they'd like to pass on, let me know. I sure am ready to play this build!