[2.2] Loate's Bullet Hell Heaven build AKA Malachai's Revenge AKA The Funpocalypse

"What the actual f*** is wrong with you?" -Hathar

"Your build is like if cancer and aids had a baby, and then that baby grew up and married Hitler." -Mors (probably)

"I can't stop laughing." -Xedralya

"This build is yuuuuuuuuuuuge!" -DonaldTrumpsSmallCoC

If you suffer from epilepsy or seizures, I would highly recommend you NOT watch these videos.

The funpocalypse! More specifically, you watched a build based around three things - the unique staff Sire of Shards; the Hierophant ascendancy class; and the Int threshold jewel Rolling Flames. Sire of Shards allows our totems to shoot 5 projectiles at once in a nova (7 with Rain of Splinters); Hierophant allows us to have 3 totems out while still doing damage with our own abilities; and Rolling Flames increases the AoE of Fireball by up to 50% depending on how far the projectile travels (and you'll be socketing three of them). Add in copious amounts of cast speed, some AoE nodes, and a pinch of elemental damage, and you've got a recipe for partytime*!

*Your friends may or may not agree on your definition of "partytime"

Well, yes, actually. The fun thing about stacking so much AoE, is that the explosions overlap, and when you light off the totems in an enclosed space, in the immortal words of the Shadowrun 5th edition handbook, you get the "chunky salsa effect." When you combine that with Elemental Equilibrium procced by Ball Lightning and Orb of Storms, Elemental Overload, and various "more" modifier support gems, you get rolling pretty quick. Obviously having a level 21 Fireball and a level 4 Empower linked is super helpful, but I was running T6 maps with a level 17 Fireball without too many problems, so I wouldn't worry about it too much. Besides, DPS is only a secondary benefit. This build focuses mainly on FUN!

Not nearly as bad as the 1k Arrows Totem build, that's for sure! You want to focus on building out the branches of the tree during the leveling process, which you can use just about any spell for with a +1 gem item of some sort. Once you get access to Sire of Shards at level 49, I would hold off on going full totems until you unlock the Ritual of Awakening ascendancy node with your 4th point, which is what allows you to have 3 out at once. After that, prioritize life/mana if you're worried about survivability, DPS nodes if you want to go full YOLO.

Here's the tree of my current character at level 80.

Here's the ideal mid level 90 build.

Resists, life, mana, and then cast speed and spell damage if you can afford it on everything that will hold it. Grabbing dexterity on a couple pieces is recommended if you want to use Carcass Jack for even more AoE, otherwise you can use a Kaom's or rare chest. The only required unique is Sire of Shards, but Winds of Change is a pretty nice DPS boost if you want to throw it in.

Oak or Alira normal (since you're using Mind over Matter either one works), Alira in Cruel, skillpoint in Merciless (unless you can figure out some sweet way to get charges without gimping everything else).

Pretty good. Kaom's will obviously make you tankier, Carcass Jack will give you more DPS, but even with Carcass Jack I'm currently around 3500 hp and close to 1800 mana unreserved, with a 40% MoM conversion, which means, yeah, I'm not gonna sit around and facetank stuff, but that's what the totems are for anyway. Fun note - Zerphi's Last Breath is a fantastic flask for this build, since your totems cost close to 200 mana to cast. As long as Zerphi's is up, every time you drop a totem it's like a free Seething pot restoring 1600 life. Like any totem build though, your main defense is going to be not getting hit - let your totems do that.

No. Enjoy the build!

So your main skill is obviously Fireball combined with Spell Totem. Your 4l should be Fireball / Spell Totem / Faster Casting / Fire Penetration. If you have a 5l add Elemental Focus, and for a 6l add the Empower. Your secondary skill is Orb of Storms, linked with Increased Crit, Curse on Hit, and Flammability. Whenever you drop totems, drop the Orb of Storms right next to them - you'll immediately proc Elemental Overload due to the massive crit increase from the Shaman's Dominion cluster (+100% global crit for 4 seconds after you drop a totem) combined with the base crit of the Increased Crit gem. In addition, the Orb will constantly be triggering Elemental Equilibrium by chaining lightning damage to everything that gets close to the totems. All of that together is a huge DPS multiplier, by adding another "more" multiplier into your damage calculations, as well as dropping the enemy resists by 50% for essentially both damage sources.

FURTHERMORE, most enemies are going to be getting hit by multiple explosions at once, because the AoE is so big with the Rolling Flames jewels (generally 3 fireballs per totem will overlap on a pack approaching from the front on an open map), so your tooltip dps is really based on the terrain of the map you're playing on, and how closely you can get your explosions to go off next to each other.

What this means, is that indoor tilesets, like Catacombs, Necropolis, Spider Lair, etc., are INCREDIBLY good for this build, because you're getting damage from almost every fireball each totem shoots out. If you can get a boss into a hallway or small room (or use Vaal Glacial Hammer to create your own room), they will die. Rapidly.

Also, if you decide to go the Carcass Jack/rare chest route, you can now slot in a Ball Lightning combo to add even more damage - remember, this isn't Ancestral Bond. You still get to damage stuff (which means you can trigger Corrupted Blood blue mobs, thorns, reflect, etc., as well as the occasional on kill effect), but in practice, you'll likely only want to spam Ball Lightning on bosses and high health yellows - everything else will die too quickly.

Defensively, you don't want to take too many big hits in quick succession, because MoM can only do so much, but it's an incredibly potent barrier when combined with Zerphi's while your mana holds up (and once you start getting high level Clarity and finishing out the tree, your mana regen is going to easily hit 200+ per second). Every time you drop a totem while Zerphi's is refilling your mana, you heal for roughly 1200 hp. Instantly. And Zerphi's lasts for 10 seconds. Essentially, if you feel like you're in danger, back away (your life and mana will likely be dropping at that point anyway), pop Zerphi's, and then reposition your totems to instantly get back to full life.

Beware, though, Zerphi's is not meant for facetanking - every hit you take is taking away 40% of damage in mana, and once your mana goes out, you can't drop totems, and thus can't use the massive heal potential the flask gives you. It's almost more important to keep an eye on your mana over your life - if mana starts getting super low, run away for a bit and let it regen so your totems can keep you alive. You can also panic flask if you're taking degen damage, but you'll need to start casting totems FIRST, then trigger Zerphi's, then keep casting totems, otherwise your mana regen will hit you back to max too soon and the effect will end.

For gem quality, you want quality on everything but the Fireball - you're using Elemental Focus so you don't care about igniting things, and the little bonuses add up on all the other ones (particularly increased placement speed on Spell Totem to keep you mobile).

Any other questions feel free to ask!

After testing, I've come to the conclusion that Elemental Weakness is superior to Flammability for the build. We don't care about ignites, so the quality on Flammability doesn't do anything for us, and Elemental Weakness allows our Ball Lightning and Orb of Storms to hit harder. Use Elemental Weakness in you CoH setup!