[2.2] Orcsalot's Ancestral Protector - Elemental Buzzsaw Totems

just sharing...

using a 2h phys-crit build w/ hegemony, my ancestral totem liked with melee splash and melee phys does 32k tooltip dps w/ aura/golem and up to 50-60k when i get buffs...

Hey guys, I'm back with stuff! So i've been messing around lately with some bladefall trap builds and other junk to make some quick money because I hit kind of a dead zone with the totem build. But I'm right back at it!

So I've come to the conclusion that for this melee-esque build physical damage is just... far superior. And what's the best thing to go with phys damage? but chaos of course!

I found a cool weapon I'm sure you all know of, the Varunastra Vaal Blade. I was thinking that dual wielding these while stacking as much flat PHYSICAL damage as possible (I'm looking at you abyssus) while running some sort of vulnerability applicator and the POISON support gem, that the damage over time can stack up really nicely. You would grab the deadly dillettante circle for that 3x24% damage monster and then just stack up attack seed and as much weapon damage as possible.

I don't even know where to start? What class would this be best on? A defensive one to make up for all the survivability lost on dual wielding and the abyssus? A poison class like herbalist? Right back to scion for extra totems and other pwnage?

Right now I'm thinking scion with Assassin and Hierophant ascendancies. That way you get the extra totem, you go for a crit oriented build as to benefit from the adder's touch passive to apply poison on your hits (which should be pretty freaking hard hits therefore very strong poison given the nature of the build)

but I have NO FREAKING CLUE what I'm doing with this build so I would LOVE some recommendations. Using poison with my trap-bladefall build has really made me fall in love with this mechanic (and I love it with totems because anything dying to your poison causes you to receive any "on death" benefits instead of your totems!)

I want to make this build work but I know with the recent price spike with the weapons they deffinitely aren't cheap. I'd be sticking with swords most likely (so I can take dillettante and the sword/axe circle with some benefit) until I can grab two of those babies and eventually switch over.

I would appreciate some help with auras (would hatred or haste be better for example) and I'm pretty sure I'm going to go with a GMP-lightning ball-CoH-vulnerability curse setup. Again, this is all up in the air and I'm looking for some input!

If the Varunastra really isn't worth it and I should stick with a straight physical with poison support gem then please say so! But I'm hopeful these new monsters could work well in this build.

(Sorry for wall o' text post!)

So here's my first attempt at a build for this silly idea



While wielding a Varunastra It currently has -

174% increased maximum life

469% increased melee physical attack damage

54% increased totem damage

78% increased attack speed

12% increased totem attack speed

115% increased crit strike chance

At 112 points spent (I don't expect to get further than this unless I REALLY love the build.

Bandits



And this is as scion - hierophant assassin

I'm thinking hiero/chief might be better especially with all the physical but I'm not even totally sold on scion. So please post what you will, I'm open to anything!

One thing up front:
This build lacks survivability I think. Maybe instead of going dual Varunastra go with Sword and Shield, giving you access to alot more mitigation options. Damage should come relatively easy with this sword anyway.
My experience with this build so far has been that you take damage more often than I am used to due to always being somewhere in the middle. And especially in the higher end maps just having enough life won't help you.
Fortify + Movement gem sure helps a lot but I've been trying to think of a way to get at least 50% block into the build. This would have you relatively safe.

There are a few choices for characters other than scion that could work out:

Duelist has Gladiator, which could give you max block at a relatively low investment. You could also grab the bleed on hit and with enemies exploding on death node. More AOE is always welcome :D
And duelist has access to many good melee clusters from Duelist start.

Guardian is the standard defensive powerhouse, it's #1 class in HC for a reason xD

In terms of pure damage, I think that the Berserker works really well. You get a free movement speed inbetween packs and once you were hit you get a whopping 25% attack speed. The 40% more damage is insane as well.
But you will have to keep up endurance charges if you want to survive :D

In terms of defense, the Juggernaut is amazing, you can also scrap resolute technique and accuracy nodes and just get the +1000 Accurancy - never think about hitting enemies again. This leaves a lot of points free to put into crit.

Or you could just go actual Chieftain for the 16% more damage boost for physical and fire damage, great survivability and your totems having taunt, which will help quite a bit I imagine.

As for Scion Subclass:
Totems do not give you the Chieftain added fire damage bonus, as I've said before, it seems kind of pointles to take the Chief just for the inc damage and life regen.

Assassin:
Crit, yay.
This is an allround good choice I think.

Gladiator:
Some block and Bleed in hit.
Not sure if the bleed is just a gimmich compared to your poison but worth mentioning.

Berserker:
More Damage, but only 10%.
Universal leech is wasted due to ancestral bond.

As for the on kill benefit through poison:
You have 2(3) totems hitting at insane speed with pretty good damage, chances are high that the last hit will come from them. It would need some testing but I am not sure how reliable you could be getting last hits from poison.

As for the skill tree:
You are only the mixed axe/sword and deadly dilettante cluster to double dip and then go into ranger and shadow. The damage will obviously be insane but since you are always kind of in the middle, I think some defenses are missing.

I think you might be better of investing in the Marauder area a bit and grab the axe damage path for 97% inc damage and the melee crit wheel. This should fill in some of the damage gaps left from leaving shadow/ranger. And then you can grab just as much life around Marauder while also getting all the defensive nodes in this area.




I am currently leveling my Marauder with facebreakers and will try them out on my totems before I invest into going with Hyoans. 6k DPS on a level 50 with barely any investment seems rediculous enough, might as well do some testing once I have my totems :D

I've toyed with some FB totem stuff and the only real downside is the crippling unarmed range on the totems. They get the +16 which is great but then it adds your base range and unless you get the duelist bonus and some Jewel bonuses it seemed pretty hard to clear packs without dragging them into the totems.

I was thinking that maybe I could even go with what the other poster in the thread was going with and go scion hiero/assassin and use the hedge staff for the crazy boost to power charges and crit, etc. This way we wouldn't have to travel far to get all out damage nodes near totems b/c staff is by templar, the block chance is excellent, and now the power charges generated by the hiero subclasses can be utilized to their greatest potential

What I was saying with the whole poison thing is using the Southbound Gloves



The hits from the totems could never kill any enemies, but the poison damage can still finish them off through the gloves guaranteeing you get the kill.

The vaal sword seems like fun and some great damage but using a shield loses a bunch of potential stats on your totem because They don't directly benefit from having a shield equipped.

Now, if going the scion - physical crit staff route, the insane str and int would warrent an easy armor/ES/life with lots of block chance build that could prove to be pretty sturdy. Ofc a Taste of Hate would be very much appreciated by this build, It could easily be substituted by a granite flask and that new phys damage reduction flask.

Good work with the theory crafting ragbasti, I think we're getting close to figuring out the optimal setup for this build!

One last note - As soon as a map has "Enemies' projectiles chain" It feels like GG because the stupid totems just automatically redirect everything back to you, but I'm sure this is a common problem in totem builds

Here's a tree I have set up, and I think I'm going to try and run it. The life/block/armor should all provide some very good defense. I'm considering running hatred aura and blasphemy/assassin or haste. Throw on an immortal call CodT and boom, no problems with survivability. Also, now that we have the potential for a 6L with the staff AND a 6L on the chest, we can have some crazy defensive setups, or even run another totem specifically for single target for example.

Putting our main damage in the helmet really does save us some serious space with the hiero, but I'm considering that the power charges / 3rd totem may not be worth a subclass from elsewhere and getting full utilization out of a 6L piece. (Then again, with hiero, bringer of rain becomes an option once again, and I'm poor so my 6L chest would probably be a tabla rasa anyways) so we can have a 7L set up on our helm essentially with FA - phys dam - blind being added to our totems for free.

Now it's got room for AP - melee splash - (I can't even think of two more, maybe fortify and added fire? Or increase crit chance and damage?)

I definitely think the Vaal sword would be a neat gimick but the staff route seems far superior, especially considering what you were saying about block earlier

Bringer of rain certainly is amazing if you can get all your defenses elsewhere. and 3 totems will always have a slight edge over 2 totems, if you scale your damage properly.
The staff variant should be amazing but I just don't have the budget for a hege unfortunately.


My tree will look something like this

This is intended for use of dual Hyaon's Fury. All my Jewels include freeze chance %, basically making white packs uselessly stand still until they die, which is pretty quick at the moment.
I was thinking of maybe scrapping the Call of the Brotherhood and use Three dragon's instead, altough i would miss out on the shock then. Haven't decided yet.
If Hyaon's ends up being too underwhelming, I can easily respec out of the elemental nodes with the quest respec points and go grab physical.


I also noticed the lacking range with facebreaker, but since I am leveling with ice crash at the moment the totem really just acts as a nice gimmick. I am just starting tu use my corrupted 6L armour though.

Nothing amazing but I get the links I want and somewhat decent stats to start with.

With CotB I would run
Ancestral Protector - FA - WED - Cold Pen - Lightning Pen - Melee Splash

If I go for pure lightning with Three Dragon's to freeze then the links would be:
Ancestral Protector - FA - WED - Lightning Pen - Melee Splash - Hypothermia

If I end up going phys conversion the links will be pretty much the same as my current ice crash links

Alright, reached level 62 and did some testing.
Call of the Brotherhood is nice but ultimately costs too much damage and gives no defenses.
I am just running Three Dragons now for the freeze chance on my lightning damage and it's been great, really easy going through anything that isn't a rare or unique monster.

I also got a 6% elemental penetration enchantment on my Wake of Destruction, which is 100% up since the totems do the killing, giving me a total of 36% lightning penetration at 14k tooltip DPS. :D



I'll make my way through merciless towards mapping now and see how it goes, picking up some more damage and survivability on the way I hope.
Too bad I currently don't have the time to get through this quickly.

PS:
The Berserkers 40% more damage is freaking insane... I I've done a few solo Crual lab runs after getting it and could Solo Izaro relative well