[1.3.0 HC] Zaun's Level 100 Blood Magic Dual Crit Flame Totem (Atziri HC Capable, 200k+ shotgun dps)

Introduction

I'm GreggZaun and this is the build I used to get level 100 in the 1 Month HC League. It can be built super cheaply, only requiring a Tabula Rasa and a Three Dragons to play, and can do substantial damage from early on making it a good choice for early in a league. Late game presents several higher priced options, such as 6L Searing Touch + Kaom's or dual Void Battery + 6L Infernal Mantle.

Update: Included 1.2 skill tree. Witch and Marauder are very close now although I think Witch is slightly better because I don't want the flat life node at the start of Marauder.

Update: Included 1.3 skill tree. Witch is quite a bit better than Marauder now. I suppose I should be posting this in the Witch forum now.

Why play this build?

- Extremely cheap to play and very easy to start off with in a new league (Tabula Rasa + Three Dragons only required items)

- Substantial damage (5k per projectile early on, can get 25k+ per projectile with endgame gear, x5 GMP, x2 totems, then include shock stacks and crit weakness curse)

- Very safe (totems take the hits or just kill things before even getting close, you are rarely in danger)

- Easy to play / Noob friendly

- Can clear any map mod, especially Blood Magic maps which are free quantity (Elemental Reflect is doable but very painful and I recommend avoiding elemental reflect maps as it just takes too long to be worthwhile)

- Can kill Atziri in Hardcore (refer to the video at the bottom and comments in this thread, courtesy of Tyranastrasz)

Screenshots


Build details

Bandits: Help Oak - Kill All - Help Alira


Passive Skill Decisions

Generally you want to focus on crit nodes for damage and avoid taking increased damage nodes. Fire damage nodes are also not great since ~30% of your damage is chaos damage.

The lowest value points I feel are the 0.4% life regen nodes, and the nodes to the left of Spell Power in Shadow. You could drop them and get several more crit nodes including the Intense Zeal cluster. I ended up valuing survivability more once I was very likely to finish top 5.




You can also choose to get rid of all the Power Charge passives if you're just soloing or playing without a Conduit player and feel too lazy to cast Ice Spear. In solo play the Power Charges arguably slow you down more than they help, but they definitely shine in a group setting especially if you have someone feeding you charges.

Gear Decisions

Early on in a league you want to prioritize getting your Tabula Rasa + Three Dragons so you can run your 6-link: Flame Totem - GMP - Faster Casting - Faster Projectiles - Increased Critical Damage - Added Chaos Damage

As you can see I have a 6L Searing Touch + Kaom's but that's not necessarily the best way to go. A well rolled 6L rare staff will beat a Searing Touch in damage, but it's a lot more practical to get a 6L Searing early in a league. Searing Touch is pretty mediocre for this build.

Chest options are Lightning Coil / Kaom's / 6L Rare Chest for higher survivability and Infernal Mantle for maximum DPS. The Infernal Mantle downside is made irrelevant by Blood Magic keystone. Maligaro's Gloves are the best DPS option here also.

The rest of your gear will be rares w/ life, resists, and cast speed / crit multi.

Gem Decisions

You have some flexibility with how you set up your auxiliary skills after your Flame Totem 6L, but I'll list what I feel are the necessary secondary links and suggested configurations:

- Curse (Crit Weakness - Enhance - Faster Casting)
- CWDT Immortal Call (Level 1 CWDT - Level 3 Immortal Call - Level 5 Enduring Cry - Increased Duration)
- Lightning Warp (Lightning Warp - Reduced Duration - Faster Casting)
- Power Charges (Ice Spear - GMP - PCoC - Faster Casting)

Enhanced Critical Weakness is huge - as it more than doubles your crit multiplier and is also easily castable once you drop your totems.

Faster Casting is preferred in the Ice Spear link since Spell Echo rolls crit chance for both casts at once - so if you were to gain a power charge with the first cast, the second cast's chance to gain another power charge wouldn't reflect this.

With the high damage potential of this build you have the ability to drop Faster Casting and Added Chaos Damage for Elemental Proliferation and Added Lightning Damage. If running Herald of Ice (You can do this by taking Mortal Conviction and using a Level 21 Reduced Mana), you can proliferate Shock, Ignite, and Freeze. Ultimately I don't feel it's really necessary since the damage is already high enough to blow everything up.

Videos

bretty kool

Well written guide, Zaunn. Congrats on 8/8, btw.

Nice build man! Will try this!

nice write up, and congrats!

Nice build, ty for the guide & congrats !

Zaun I'd like to ask about the mechanics of power charge. From what I understand is that casted totem stats depends on the current amount of power charges you have on hand. Let's say you have 0 charges and placed 2 totems down, and then generate 6 power charges via ice spear. If you don't replace the precasted totems, they won't have the 300% increased crit chance right?

There's so much juggling that needs to be done when you move from pack to pack... recast totem within the power charges time and curse, and then upkeep your powercharge while recast totem when you meet rares and tough magics.

Also for us averages, most of us will be going dual wands with cast speed, projectile speed and spell damage (fire). With this we still would like to juggle crit chance and crit multi into the staff stats for optimal damage setup. So if we're going 6link tabula , 3 dragons and 2 wands or wand+shield, what stats would you prioritize? (with non-staff use, we'll skip the Serpent Stance cluster)

Most of us will be aiming for the 100 point passive so there are a lot of options to choose from for a crit totem build.

Also you maintained the static blows circles with only 1 passive investment in it instead of 2. Did you wanted the 20% increased duration only?

Were you able to reliably shockstack map bosses?

And did you ever considered dual curse by adding elemental weakness? Or are you killing fast enough anyway.

What flasks are you using?

"

urbanzen wrote:

Zaun I'd like to ask about the mechanics of power charge. From what I understand is that casted totem stats depends on the current amount of power charges you have on hand. Let's say you have 0 charges and placed 2 totems down, and then generate 6 power charges via ice spear. If you don't replace the precasted totems, they won't have the 300% increased crit chance right?

There's so much juggling that needs to be done when you move from pack to pack... recast totem within the power charges time and curse, and then upkeep your powercharge while recast totem when you meet rares and tough magics.

Im not Zaun, but I started to use this Build recently myself after switching from the Non-crit version.

From experience and Research I could find that Totems react to player buffs dynamically.

Meaning you dont have to recast totems if you want them to benefit from Power Charges.
This is also a Reason why Vaal Haste actually works with Flame totems aswell in real time.
(Just food for thought)

About the juggling: At a Certain Point you will find yourself that the totems kill everything so fast that you dont need to charge up Power charges (Soloplay mostly).

If you actually have to spend time at a pack apart from casting a totem and running to the next pack, the high cast speed of gear gems and passives allows you to cast Ice-spears and curses quckly and feels less clunky.