[3.5] Soul Mantle Dark Pact Totems - League Starter - All Content

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PiusDominatus wrote:

I took Assasain. Says 20% chance to get a power charge on hit. I don't get any power charges? Because the totems kill for me?

Thanks

Correct (the totems technically gain the charges, but they have a limit of 0 so it does nothing).

First off, this definitely has inspired me to work on a DP totem build with my scion (I haven't played scions at all until this league). I do, for MTX reasons heh (Dragon Spear + Dragon Totems + Dragon armor), want to try this with staves as well as having the MTX for the totems which means sacrificing the 6th gem for Spell Totem. I'd keep the Soul Mantle for the +1 extra totem and the other bonuses.

Playing around with the idea on PoB, I would need to ignore the entire Shadow side in order to cover Serpent Stance and the Staff bonuses for crit chance/multiplier/block and make up the health elsewhere. This is obviously nowhere near as good as with dagger/shield. My tree is looking like this:

https://pastebin.com/hjKDiXfF

Any potential pitfalls?

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poejacleu wrote:

First off, this definitely has inspired me to work on a DP totem build with my scion (I haven't played scions at all until this league). I do, for MTX reasons heh (Dragon Spear + Dragon Totems + Dragon armor), want to try this with staves as well as having the MTX for the totems which means sacrificing the 6th gem for Spell Totem. I'd keep the Soul Mantle for the +1 extra totem and the other bonuses.

Playing around with the idea on PoB, I would need to ignore the entire Shadow side in order to cover Serpent Stance and the Staff bonuses for crit chance/multiplier/block and make up the health elsewhere. This is obviously nowhere near as good as with dagger/shield. My tree is looking like this:

https://pastebin.com/hjKDiXfF

Any potential pitfalls?

Looks fine mostly. 3.1. added a really nice mod for elder staves that you could use:
+x% to Critical Strike Multiplier if you haven't dealt a Critical Strike Recently.

I'm not sure about the Soul Mantle. It does still give a net DPS of ~75% even without the extra link, but it makes the tradeoff a bit worse.
You could use a Shaper/Unique chest and rings instead - and Hierophant/Occultist instead of Guardian. It's up to you I guess. Soul Mantle is likely still the best from a DPS perspective.

This post inspired me to continue with a DP totem build in Abyss, despite the nerf. Here are the equips so far, mostly cheap stuff. Everything was bought for about 1c-40c, well under an ex.



Potions:


On swap I have:

The build was extremely cheap for its investment so far. Now going through the red maps, after doing an Elder white and yellow tier kill. Did Uberlab farming, atziri and xoph as well. ** With a 5L ** :3. Life's around 5.2 k, with 1k ES and 30% taken from 2k mana with lvl20 clarity so she can survive. The build is impressively strong for a non-leech caster, but it cannot facetank so you have to play carefully. Bossfights are very easy and quick. Some things that I've customized over this guide:
a.) Since you have no need to have resists in the ammie, anything goes. I've found Bloodgrip:

to be quite capable of providing really rapid recovery in red maps, almost slayer-leech like, which adds a lot to survivability. It's also quite cheap and fits the budget of the build.
b.) Initially I went for the Guardian ascendancy because of curse immunity, but it was a tad too defensive for softcore. I swapped it for Hierophant, mainly because the instant power charge generation and fourth totem slot for bossfight wither is too nice to pass. The non-immunity in your curses hasn't bothered me so far.
c.) Kalisa's Grace also works well with this build by exploding its crit chance, given that you waste a lot of mana on totems. The flat crit chance they give trigger every 2s if you renew your totems frequently, adding to the overall dps.
d.) I liked Kaom's roots in principle but they rendered me too immobile. I swapped them for Inya's Epiphany and then for some other rare boots with high life + mov speed and didn't regret it. The life loss isn't that critical.
e.) You can get a good helmet with +12% cast speed in Dark Pact quite easily and it's not expensive so that should be a gearing priority for the endgame.
f.) Decoy works wonders for Abyss rares and tough bosses.Just pop it in between 2 DP totems, then pop your Wither totem and watch from the corner as the boss melts ^^
g.) The 4L Wither with CWC and Despair works wonders in bossfights. Kalisa's provides a free 5L.

And that's the normal dps:

and the dual apep's dps:



The only thing I really miss is the leech, and I can't see any way of getting it without socketing the life leech gem.

Again, thanks SHEPUUURD for this great guide! So can you think of any improvements, apart from the 6linking that is - that I don't have the currency for? :)

"

bouziot wrote:

Spoiler

This post inspired me to continue with a DP totem build in Abyss, despite the nerf. Here are the equips so far, mostly cheap stuff. Everything was bought for about 1c-40c, well under an ex.

Potions:

On swap I have:

The build was extremely cheap for its investment so far. Now going through the red maps, after doing an Elder white and yellow tier kill. Did Uberlab farming, atziri and xoph as well. ** With a 5L ** :3. Life's around 5.2 k, with 1k ES and 30% taken from 2k mana with lvl20 clarity so she can survive. The build is impressively strong for a non-leech caster, but it cannot facetank so you have to play carefully. Bossfights are very easy and quick. Some things that I've customized over this guide:
a.) Since you have no need to have resists in the ammie, anything goes. I've found Bloodgrip:

to be quite capable of providing really rapid recovery in red maps, almost slayer-leech like, which adds a lot to survivability. It's also quite cheap and fits the budget of the build.
b.) Initially I went for the Guardian ascendancy because of curse immunity, but it was a tad too defensive for softcore. I swapped it for Hierophant, mainly because the instant power charge generation and fourth totem slot for bossfight wither is too nice to pass. The non-immunity in your curses hasn't bothered me so far.
c.) Kalisa's Grace also works well with this build by exploding its crit chance, given that you waste a lot of mana on totems. The flat crit chance they give trigger every 2s if you renew your totems frequently, adding to the overall dps.
d.) I liked Kaom's roots in principle but they rendered me too immobile. I swapped them for Inya's Epiphany and then for some other rare boots with high life + mov speed and didn't regret it. The life loss isn't that critical.
e.) You can get a good helmet with +12% cast speed in Dark Pact quite easily and it's not expensive so that should be a gearing priority for the endgame.
f.) Decoy works wonders for Abyss rares and tough bosses.Just pop it in between 2 DP totems, then pop your Wither totem and watch from the corner as the boss melts ^^
g.) The 4L Wither with CWC and Despair works wonders in bossfights. Kalisa's provides a free 5L.

And that's the normal dps:

and the dual apep's dps:



The only thing I really miss is the leech, and I can't see any way of getting it without socketing the life leech gem.

Again, thanks SHEPUUURD for this great guide! So can you think of any improvements, apart from the 6linking that is - that I don't have the currency for? :)

Nice post. I'm adding that amulet to the unique options.

There is a way to get leech:
Though this will obviously reduce your damage a bit.

Some thoughts on improvements:
•Your amulet is cheap, so you can get a +1 curse corruption and try to work that into the build.
•Your rares could use some improvements, in particular the dagger (added chaos damage isn't that great). The belt is pretty GG though.
•You seem to have a free gem socket. I'd definitely add Immortal Call to the CWDT setup.
•Get the boot enchant. You can farm this yourself, but I'd probably get better boots before that.
•Since you're Hierophant, you can do some testing on Shimmeron/Void Battery instead of Apep's in PoB.
•Crit multi jewels should be pretty good for you. (Jewels in general are very strong, but costly)

Hey ho,
First of all thanks for the build. I really love it. I am right now at a point dipping into red maps in Abyss but would like to further improve my char. I want this one to also get ready for guardians, shaper, etc... as I have never done them before (still quite new to POE - first time joined end of Harbinger)

Would you mind taking a look (char: Takanen) and give some advice where to focus on? Happy to invest some currency in upgrades (got 800+ chaos available and can work on some more) but want to ensure to do the right upgrades.

Thanks upfront!

"

derSchurke wrote:

Hey ho,
First of all thanks for the build. I really love it. I am right now at a point dipping into red maps in Abyss but would like to further improve my char. I want this one to also get ready for guardians, shaper, etc... as I have never done them before (still quite new to POE - first time joined end of Harbinger)

Would you mind taking a look (char: Takanen) and give some advice where to focus on? Happy to invest some currency in upgrades (got 800+ chaos available and can work on some more) but want to ensure to do the right upgrades.

Thanks upfront!

For 800c I'd get a 6-link and enchanted boots. Your rares could be improved, but they are good enough for guardians in my opinion.
If you're feeling squishy you should probably get some life on your jewels.

If you do that and grind a few more levels your character should be good to go for shaper/guardians.
The fights are a lot harder if you're doing them blind, so I recommend starting out with easy mods.

If you think it's too hard, you can try respeccing into hierophant. You can cheese most fights with the wither totem.

Tree:


Currently level 89 and i have just started t14-15 mapping and i'm having a blast, my life is still quite low at 4600, but with a few more levels and tree nodes that shld fix that np, 700 energy and 2700 mana gives some nice defense on top of that, can stay alive pretty easily honestly.

I do have a question regarding 2 of my gem setups, first of i'm running OoB+PwC+CoH+Despair, what level should i keep Despair? and i might aswell change OoB to lvl 1 yeah?.

Second question is regarding my Cwdt+Imc+enfeeble setup, is there any gem that's really usefull as a 4th?, currently running increased aoe radius, not sure if that's even doing something.

Gearwise the next big step really is to get a helm with Dark Pact damage, the rest of my gear seems pretty solid i would say.

Amulet could use a different craft though, and statwise both the amulet+gloves are not BiS, the next best thing on poe.trade costs 5+ exalts lol, i'm not there yet in terms of currency rofl.

Damage with just golem out:


I'm having a great time with this build so far, so thank you for that!

Ps. that stygian vise setup adds like 7-8000 dps, it's pretty ridiculous.

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Vlammenzee2190 wrote:

....

1.About OoS+PwC+CoH+Despair, u should max lv all gem.
2.Cwdt+Imc+enfeeble, i think inc duration is best.

Quick question, in the guide it gives a tip that you should put 1 jewel with +9 elemental resist to cap totem elemental resist. I am looking at the passive tree and I can only see 26% element resist. How is it by putting a +9% you can max your element resistance ?