Champion's Worthy Foe works with Totems

So, after reading a lot of back and forth opinions about this, I decided to make an experiment to see whether Champion's Worthy Foe (specifically the "Enemies you Taunt take 20% increased Damage" part) works with Totems. I started by making a fairly crude Caustic Arrow RAT test which seemed to indicate that Worthy Foe was increasing the damage. After getting excited about this, I set out to try whether specifically Warchief Totem works with it.

First, I ran a small data analysis on all base weapons to see what weapon had the smallest difference between minimum and maximum damage. Crude data of this can be found here. Data was gathered from PoE Wiki. Turns out it's Barbed Club. So I proceeded to buy a white Barbed Club to use as a weapon in the experiment.

The most fitting boss for this experiment was Normal City of Sarn boss Guard Captain. He's easy to reach repeatedly and had just the right amount of HP all things considered. Gameplay was to run to the boss, drop a totem making sure every hit of the totem lands on the boss and let it run it's full duration once. After that I snapped a screenshot which was used to determine the boss HP, as shown further. If you're interested in my gear or passive tree during the experiment, check my character tab for Usuno. Worth of note, I of course used Resolute Technique. The experiment consisted of 10 runs without Worthy Foe and 10 runs with it, for a total of 20 runs. Nothing else was changed between the runs. In case I had something near the boss that would alter the result (rare monster with Vitality/Discipline, Shrine etc.) I'd restart the run and not count it.

Here are the results. For the images used, refer to these links: Without Worthy Foe, With Worthy Foe.

For image analysis, I used GIMP. I'm using fullscreen at resolution 1920x1080, at which the health bar starts at pixel 828 and ends at pixel 1091, for a total length of 263 pixels. The chart shows at which pixel the current health stands in, which was used to determine the percentage of HP that the target had left. As we can see, these results are self explanatory and it's very clear that Worthy Foe increases Warchief Totem damage by around 20%. While my resulting % is slightly higher, this is well within the range of expected error, as can be seen when looking at the standard deviation.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

EDIT: If you're interested whether damage reductions of Taunt and Worthy Foe work with totems, check my post in the second page or click here

Thanks for the confirmation! I would have guessed so, but it's nice to have experimental evidence (since Mark_GGG seems busy, too).

Very nice work, bravo. Always good to see some solid empirical testwork like this. And now we know Champion is once again even more busted! :P

This is a bit strange, I tested the same thing at some point and it didn't work.

I'd fire a caustic arrow next to the boss and note how much damage it does for the entire duration. If I taunt the enemy myself you could see the damage difference, and if I let a totem keep it taunted I'd see none.

Maybe it was changed at some point, or maybe it works only for the totem, I haven't tried having totem both taunt and do the damage.

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raics wrote:

This is a bit strange, I tested the same thing at some point and it didn't work.

I'd fire a caustic arrow next to the boss and note how much damage it does for the entire duration. If I taunt the enemy myself you could see the damage difference, and if I let a totem keep it taunted I'd see none.

Maybe it was changed at some point, or maybe it works only for the totem, I haven't tried having totem both taunt and do the damage.

It would make sense for it to only work for the totem. The "you" in "enemies you taunt" is transfered to the totem as totems pretty much act like an independent copy of you, so something like Decoy Totem to increase your own damage would not work.

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keyarchan wrote:

It would make sense for it to only work for the totem. The "you" in "enemies you taunt" is transfered to the totem as totems pretty much act like an independent copy of you, so something like Decoy Totem would not work.

Except that Totems use your offensive stats and only your offensive stats, which is why things like Frenzy Charges and Slayer's Bane of Legends -> Onslaught don't get added to Totems. Moreover, it's a damage taken modifier, which shouldn't discriminate between who's doing the damage.

Perhaps further testing would be useful. Peer-review these experimental results! :P

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keyarchan wrote:

It would make sense for it to only work for the totem. The "you" in "enemies you taunt" is transfered to the totem as totems pretty much act like an independent copy of you, so something like Decoy Totem to increase your own damage would not work.

I think it would be a bug or a description problem in that case. I haven't remembered to try taunting it myself and letting the totem do the damage either, and if that also doesn't work the passive should say 'enemies you taunt take 20% increased damage from you'.

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adghar wrote:

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keyarchan wrote:

It would make sense for it to only work for the totem. The "you" in "enemies you taunt" is transfered to the totem as totems pretty much act like an independent copy of you, so something like Decoy Totem would not work.

Except that Totems use your offensive stats and only your offensive stats, which is why things like Frenzy Charges and Slayer's Bane of Legends -> Onslaught don't get added to Totems. Moreover, it's a damage taken modifier, which shouldn't discriminate between who's doing the damage.

Perhaps further testing would be useful. Peer-review these experimental results! :P

How does this work? Don't Onslaught and Frenzy charges modify your offensive stats?

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raics wrote:

This is a bit strange, I tested the same thing at some point and it didn't work.

I'd fire a caustic arrow next to the boss and note how much damage it does for the entire duration. If I taunt the enemy myself you could see the damage difference, and if I let a totem keep it taunted I'd see none.

Maybe it was changed at some point, or maybe it works only for the totem, I haven't tried having totem both taunt and do the damage.

I saw your test and tried to replicate it, but was unable to because when a low level Flame Totem taunted the enemy, the totem was immediately killed and ended the taunt. Maybe something like stacking lots of Less Damage multipliers (GMP, LMP etc.) on a high level totem and using a heavily customized passive tree with tons of Totem Life could work, but I figured doing the test with Warchief Totem was more productive since that's the skill I was planning on using it with in the first place.

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hokkerd wrote:

How does this work? Don't Onslaught and Frenzy charges modify your offensive stats?

Yes, which is why your character needs to gain the bonuses to allow your Totems to benefit. Like, say you're using a Raider and/or Oro's Sacrifice - if your Totems Ignite enemies, they will attempt to gain a charge, but they can't hold any, so they don't benefit from any damage bonuses. However, if your character Ignites enemies, then you gain Frenzy charges which modify your offensive stats and your Totems benefit. Onslaught from Bane of Legends works similarly.