$$$ Grave Intentions Flame Totem MFarmer: I'm Cheap 'n' Easy $$$

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undyingmoon wrote:

how do you leveling before lv 31

Hi!
I was looking for a build to farm some Dominus and was pretty bored of RF and Summoner so I stumbled upon this.

Must say, it's a pretty cool build!

I'm only level 41 atm, still life based and just swapped to dual Flame Totem and the last couple levels went really smooth and fast!

I leveled till level 39 with Molten Strike and a random 2hander, equipping the best life + res gear I could find and had absolutely no problem with any mob.

If Molten Strike isn't of your liking, use Spectral Throw with a 2hander, since it requires no gear to do well until you swap to flame totems.

Both Molten Strike and Spectral Throw can be gained as 1st quest reward (Marauder/Templar/Duelist and Scion respectively) so even in a new league, it won't be a problem to find them, just roll a character, get to town and drop the gem in the chest.

Switching to totems earlier than Ancestral Bond IMO isn't really optimal, since the totem is pretty squishy without at least a couple levels and the totem life nodes neal AB, so don't rush trying to use it since it'll just esplode before killing anything.

Even at level 6 (as is mine) they're pretty soft but with LMP and Faster Projectiles they can dish out enough damage to kill packs before they get killed, same goes for bosses.

All in all, pretty fun build, looks like it'll get buffed immensly come 1.2 thanks to the early ES nodes in witch tree and the new ES cluster near Minion Instability!

I'll keep you posted, if you're interested! :)

Definitely keep me posted. Early leveling with Spec Throw is great (Shiversting and Voidhome is OP), and you are right - Ancestral bond makes life much easier.

Totem durability has always been #1 on my list. I would suggest supporting your totem with Fire trap up until that point which you get Ancestral Keystone.


%fire/elemental leech makes a big difference.

If you intend on farming Dominus solo, mini-boss and 1st form Dominus is a cake-walk. The only thing you need to watch for, is his cleave attack in 2nd form. You are vulnerable in-part, to a low level Arctic Armour and little in the way of standard defence outside of your ES pool. You can definitely use the flask setup I have illustrated above to fill this gap, but customizing them might make things easier.

Battle tactics are still the same and running circles around him makes this stage less "interesting" :D

Updated my tree for patch 1.2.0

From Willy's stream, the mana cost on Flame Totem has been changed from 32 to 27 at level one, same base damage, tho.

Pretty huge mana cost decrease!

That is really interesting.

However, I can currently chain cast totems in my current setup with level 20 clarity running off life. If they reduce the base cost of Flame Totem, it should even out to the 7% loss in reduced reservation against the increase in base life for the clarity aura.

As long as I can run level 19/20 clarity off life, Flame totems can be spammed. Even with the loss of aura effectiveness.

Once the patch is released, I will do testing on the build and also start fresh in the new league. It would be interesting to chronicle my journey from level 10 to 50.

Hello i wanna try out this build. but i have questions with dual totem node i can still use cold snap traps? what dmg it does with dual totems?
is it posible to run h lvl arc armor with this build?
With starting lvls i shud just go with all skill gems from witch? or do other clases first to get my first skill to lvl up till searing bond?
and is it HC vialable?

what about taking elemental equilibrium < use coldsnap first then f totem?>
spell damage affect flame totem dmg?

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Fri3dchick3m wrote:

That is really interesting.

However, I can currently chain cast totems in my current setup with level 20 clarity running off life. If they reduce the base cost of Flame Totem, it should even out to the 7% loss in reduced reservation against the increase in base life for the clarity aura.

As long as I can run level 19/20 clarity off life, Flame totems can be spammed. Even with the loss of aura effectiveness.

Once the patch is released, I will do testing on the build and also start fresh in the new league. It would be interesting to chronicle my journey from level 10 to 50.

Clarity also gets nerfed quite hard, it reserves like 580 mana at lvl 20 while giving 1.5 less mana regen per second or something like that, someone posted the number from the TW servers.

I'm not running Clarity atm, so I'm having some mana issues, but I'm still only level 64!

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archanilis wrote:

Hello i wanna try out this build. but i have questions with dual totem node i can still use cold snap traps? what dmg it does with dual totems?

Traps don't count as skill casted by you, so they do regular damage, even with Ancestral Bond.

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archanilis wrote:

is it posible to run h lvl arc armor with this build?

It might be, but probably not level 20.

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archanilis wrote:

With starting lvls i shud just go with all skill gems from witch? or do other clases first to get my first skill to lvl up till searing bond?
and is it HC vialable?

It might be HC viable, but you'll need to drop some of the MFing for high ES items to survive, probably using Eye of Chayula or going for Unwavering Stance.

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archanilis wrote:

what about taking elemental equilibrium < use coldsnap first then f totem?>
spell damage affect flame totem dmg?

Spell Damage does indeed affect Flame Totem's damage, but going for EE isn't viable, since Flame Totem hits the enemy (unlike Righteous Fire or Searing BOnd that are degen effects) so the mobs would always have +fire res.

any chance for a video of this build doing 70+ maps and clear speed of 66/67 maps?

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shrinkmaster wrote:

any chance for a video of this build doing 70+ maps and clear speed of 66/67 maps?

Just got Fraps - need to figure out how to optimize and post it :).

All really great questions. I will do my best to answer them.

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archanilis wrote:

With dual totem node i can still use cold snap traps?

You can use Summons and Traps/Mines with the Ancestral Bond keystone passive.

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archanilis wrote:

What dmg it does with dual totems?

It is not for damage, but for Crowd Control. Works great for Devourer packs. Undying Alchemists, Sin Lords, Vaal Totems... etc. It's really a strong defensive skill.

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archanilis wrote:

With starting lvls i shud just go with all skill gems from witch? or do other clases first to get my first skill to lvl up till searing bond?

Start as the Witch - where you get Fireball as your starting skill in the Strand area. Complete the Mercy Mission quest and choose Fire Trap as your quest reward. Stack life and mana and find/buy a Goldrim Cap to get you through Act 1 and 2 Normal. Once you reach Act 3 and complete the Lost in Love Quest, you will choose the Searing Bond quest reward (by level 24). Live in the Searing Bond and Fire Trap camp till level 31, where you will find/buy your Gems that will be your bread and butter for the rest of your farming career.

By Level 31, you should also have attained a decent amount of the basic farming gear (Perandus, Wondertrap, Solaris Lorica, Sadima's Touch, Redbeak, Stormwheel, ES helm and Rings, Eye of Chayula, Rarity, Blood Magic, Discipline and Clarity Support gems.

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archanilis wrote:

Is it HC vialable?

The one weakness of this (and many low-life builds) is your ability to:

#Develop a safe play style and understand the content you are farming.
#Have a sound exit strategy (escape/mobility skill)
#Mitigate or block Chaos damage.
#Avoid the one or two-shot.

With practice in the standard environment, I am pretty confident that I can run this exact setup in HC. It has enough CC and the totems are always up (drawing 99% of aggro), very good mobility/escape, can take a few big hits and of course I can stay at range from any threat. Only bosses I skip are the Chaos Spider Bosses.

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archanilis wrote:

Does spell damage affect flame totem dmg?

Best part of Flame totem damage scaling, is that it can be affected by:

# Spell Damage
# Cast Speed
# Projectile Damage
# Fire Damage
# Elemental Damage

Of course, Chance to Ignite and Increase Burning damage supports and nodes also scale the damage, but they are tied to your low base crit chance. So your DPS would be streaky and tied to hit RNG (ugh), rather than the flat (and predictable) DPS curve of a non-crit build.

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archanilis wrote:

What about taking elemental equilibrium (use coldsnap first then f totem?)

I had considered it, but if I were to go that route, I would use Lightning trap instead of Cold Snap. That being said, I feel it is a less safer play-style as you are more likely to take first aggro while trying to connect the enemy to the trap. Rhoas, Goatmen and Leapers would rape you before you even get the first totem up if you were to try and drop traps to set the EQ modifiers.

This build can certainly take a few hits, but if you are getting hit, you need to evacuate, or find a way to keep your totems up.

Do you have a link to poebuilder tree?