[3.10 HC] Apep's Darkpact Totems are BACK (original build 3.1-3.3)

And what you swapping out for the either minions cwc and min life? What 4 slots

"

Merlins_r_soul wrote:

And what you swapping out for the either minions cwc and min life? What 4 slots

Currently lvl98 doing the beachhead grind to 100, see gear and such in spoiler below.
Popular armors to use after tabula is cloak of defiance, soul mantle, cherrubims, covenant or any decent rare 6l. Mostly by chance that I got a cherrubims myself.

I had an idea back on p37 or something of going rare armor with better jewels for dmg... that hasn't panned out since the jewels simply doesn't exist on hc. I've had instantsearch up for any potential combos of jewels for 2weeks now without a single hit so I've dropped that idea.

Guardians is fine with the exception of hydra as people mentioned before, that splitarrow thing can be dangerous!

Quickstats:
10.9k+1.5kes (7.5khp 3.4kmana)
750lifereg 510manareg (while enchant active)
10stack wither in PoB, 4totems up: 785k skelecasting (bosses), 287k totems (general mapclear)
52k tooltip surge up

Last update, mission accomplished for this league. Mostly the same as above update. I've tried to find worthwhile upgrades but nobody is selling it on HHC. At this point the upgrades I could do would be swapping around a bunch of stuff only to get slightly higher stats somewhere, too much hassle for barely any gain. The one perfect rare piece I wanted to build around never showed up :(. I even have like 3-5 different pair of gloves, boots and chaosdmg rings crafted with various different combinations prepared... but, it never materialized. I should probably sell a bunch of stuff and tick another box this league which is to finally become an owner of Headhunter.

Conclusion for this variant of DP totems:
Excellent league starter build, powerful on a budget as we've read from previous accounts in the thread. No real uniques that's hard to come by. Easy to gear since we don't need to reach certain gearchecks. Can be built for lots of dmg or as in my case lots of defense.

Playstyle is fun and has a nice flow to it. I've played totembuilds before but always rerolled around lvl85 cause it felt off for some reason. It looked like this totembuild would be the same at first but once we discovered how well witherskele funtions with DP it became a complete different ballgame. it solved singletarget and it t barely felt like a totembuild anymore!

Versatile! It can do any map mod if you come prepared, I'm lazy and reroll noregen and dangerous -maxres. Clears endgame too! Only content I haven't tried is uber atziri.

Drawbacks? The only thing I could nag about is our lack of choice for mobility skills, we can't compete with superhigh attackspeed whirlingblades/shieldchargers.. but then again who can? Rebalance of mobility skills please? Still, I didn't have any problems keeping up with the HH wanders zooming around in beachhead rotations.


Final DPS via PoB, with 10wither stacks:
4totems up: 860k skelecasting (bosses), 315k totems (general mapclear).

Dps would've easily gone past 1million if I dropped dual curse and better rares existed.
I would guess a scion 3totem crit variant with soul mantle and immunity to curses would've probably sailed even further with the downside of slightly less defenses. 1.5m? More? Maybe.

Pictures below is with stonegolem, boot enchant and arcane surge running.



Main setup:




Swap during easy mapping:
Remove curseneck, coh and tempchains add


PoB link: https://pastebin.com/pZfWTh1s


Edit for Turmoil 10days:
Leveled as: Don't remember! Pick anything you like to lvl with until you get DP, preferably spell based if you don't have twink gear. At all points, during lvling especially, use a Decoy totem! It helps majorly versus any sort of icky fights.

Skilltree: Go towards MoM, finish out the mana cluster behind it and then head towards Ancestral Bonds. Grab some nice clusters on the way until you get DP and can go dual totems with it. Eventually get a secondary 3link with cwcwitherskele to use on bosses, if possible add minionlife. At this point it's smooth sailing and you can chose what you feel you need the most. Once you get 4totems you shouldn't have any issue at all, especially not once you equip dual Apeps.. then it gets a bit silly how easy it is to progress. Bandits should be 2skillpoints and as for Pantheon I chose Lunaris and Ralakesh

Gear: During lvling, no real requirements. I'd get a Tabula or any other crap 6l with the correct colors and stack res/hp and some mana on the other pieces. I didn't care about offensive stats during lvling since at that point it's mostly based on gemlvl and the flatdmg from Added Chaos and the Apeps. Get Apeps equipped as soon as possible, lvlreq62. Compensate with some resist auras if you're really struggling on gear.

Wanted to say only that it is most gratifying to see the build taken to it's full potential. Well done!

-O

Do you think a 5L cherubim would be better than a 6L yellow? The ~75% chaos damage is prob better than faster casting support right?
Have you tried empower instead of faster casting? any comment on that option? just got a 6L cherubim but im having some trouble with the colors

opinion about flameblast build and this ?

To Orion the OP; I have thoroughly enjoyed your build. I have referred to your write up and the comments many times during my leveling process. This is the first HC character that has made it to maps. Compared to many other players it is a small accomplishment. To give you a hint to how many attempts I have made, the character’s name is EmthonHC_twentythree. Between your guide and POB, I was able to get through all content, including my merc Lab, with relative ease. I must admit that my final Kitava fight was nerve-wracking at 69! I had to port out 2 times due to how much my fingers were shaking... it was both funny and horrifying! :-) Still, I got the bastiche down and ran a map for good measure afterwards.

I have been playing POE for about a year and mostly SC. I figured I needed more thrill and thought, “How hard can HC be compared to D3 HC?” Well, for me, it was a cruel learning experience. I RIP’d some early characters at Malachi’s and Dominus’s fights. However, the really painful part was ripping some great characters at about lvl 70 on either Kitava (bastiche!) or merc Lab.

The highlights for me with your build:
1. Clear path towards getting dark pact up and going early in the game.
2. The importance of 6-link for DP and how strong it was. I used TempChains for control and extra deeps. Worked really well, early!
3. Working towards Apep’s and getting them at 61... EmHC23 just cruised through the content from that point! Izaro was a real pushover!
4. I went to wither/CWc/ML/SK before reading about it... I had used it on another build. So, it was totally awesome on clear.
5. Having an IAE taunt totem is an excellent QOL for bossing, along with CE gem on DP. As long as I don’t stand in LOS of any ranged attacks that go towards the taunt totem!
6. The boss dps was so strong that quite often I would not need/forget to pop Vall Skeletons!

Thanks, again, for helping the community (me) with such a pleasant build. GG!

Emthon an OFG

The only thing i hate about this build is *Wither* ability, you can never use it unless the targeted mod is retarded and dosent move,

currntly im looking for ways to replace wither and dash, both useless in 90% of the time.

I'm playing Frostbolt Hierophant in SSF HC, clearspeed is awesome but single target dps is pretty bad, and harder bosses can get lethal and tricky because of that. I still havent found Apep's rages, so would this build work with some other uniques, or maybe rare wands? I see Apeps is like perfect for dark pact totems, but just wondering if anyone is playing with some other weapons...

e: +2/+3 chaoms gems staff could be another option too?

I really appreciate the work you guys have put into this build, i plan on playing this during the 10 day races.

Any chance you would be willing to take the time to copy some of the newer data, specifically page 27 and 39 as you discuss? It would make things much simpler for someone to follow the proper build.

Aside from that, really, thank you.