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

Its so annoying to have skeletons up while clearing trash, they are basically always on the other side of the screen. Should i just summon skeletons for bossfights?

Yeah, skeletons for boss fights or tougher rares seems to be the way to go. You can fully commit to skelly nuking all the things, but as you discovered if you want to stop using skelly nuke you have to wait for skellies to despawn or you can end up in trouble. I've played both ways: skelly nuking everything, or just hopping with flame dash like a madman and saving nuke for bosses. Skelly nuke seems safer, but slower.

re: Arcane Surge. I've been thinking about switching to the hiero ascendancies for arcane burst and switching to lightning warp for movement. Would have to give up the mini-MoM and extra mana, though; has anyone given this a shot? Strangely enough, playing this build in 2 leagues now has made me more accustomed to flame dash, but I still kinda hate it.

Yea i wont summon skelis for trash anymore, it almost killed me 2 times already because the skeletons were focused by the totems and the trash hit me to like 10% life

Forgive my noobish question if I missed it, but what is it that enables you to have 4 totems at the same time?

The keystone ancestral bond in combination with the ascendancy keystones pursuit of faith and ritual of awakening

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deinernst123 wrote:

The keystone ancestral bond in combination with the ascendancy keystones pursuit of faith and ritual of awakening

Yeah, found it.

Thanks for the reply.

Had Ancestral Bond, it was the ascendancy that I hadn't figured out.

Was looking for something new to play and found this!

Great build, thanks so much Orion, fun to play, really enjoying the interaction with skellies.

Quick query, has Cherubim's been considered? I'm sure it has, I'm late to this build....

I've moved on to other ideas for the moment, but for a quick comment on best variant for SC if you dont care about dying periodically and want really through the roof dps on 5 totems:

6L soulmantle
2 kikazaru
self flagellation
devotos
dream fragments
repentance

I can't think of another variant of the build that will compare to the dps output of that setup. It's just kinda squishy for hc.


Re: Cherubims--6L Cherubs with the right colors has been tested by several folks and is an excellent high end HC chest piece.

-O

Just a quick mention that this build works really well for newer (mainly casual) players too (SC, not HC). Beastiary will be my first full league, but I'm already enjoying T9 to T12 maps with 2 guardians down, furthest I have yet been.

I have concentrated on HP and mana for the most part, though I am using a Trolltimber shield, and a pseudo 7L Soul Mantle with an Iron Will gem in place of the spell totem gem (lots of Str, it seems to scale it well). I'm having an experiment with Illuminated Devotion and Arcane Blessing rather than Divine Guidance and Sanctuary of Thought as well at the moment, it drops the mana pool a bit, but does provide a DPS boost and a life leach boost (as well as freeing up the Arcane Surge gem setup).

As my first totem build, its been awesome, and I've made the most progress into the Atlas that I've done to date. (Also never done guardians before either). I may switch back over to the Sanctuary of Thought ascendancy at some point, but the loss of mana pool is slightly offset by the fact that I'm back to 30% of damage from mana pool, not 40%.

Great build anyway, I can see this or a variation of it being my league starter for a while!

(Speced back to Sanctuary of Thought, the loss of the mana/ES isn't worth the small'ish damage bonus. I'll just learn to get along with Flame Dash!)