[Retired Thread] Wallach's Hierophant Holy Flame Totems (Old)

Primary damage links in order of priority:

Holy Flame Totem -> Elemental Focus -> Fire Penetration -> Infused Channelling -> Controlled Destruction -> Added Fire Damage

Pretty straightforward, these are the highest damage supports you can link to your Holy Flame Totem. Infused Channelling claims to not apply its Infusion buff effect to totems (even though visually it shows them gaining Infusion for some reason), but even without Infusion the 39% more damage multiplier does work for totems, which is a larger damage increase than any of our other supports except for Elemental Focus.

Once you have more than 20% Physical as Extra Fire Damage on your gear (i.e. affixes on both your weapon and your amulet), you will find that Added Fire Damage value falls to where Combustion is the better support gem. You can see this for yourself in the example Path of Building link; until you have such gear, though, stick with Added Fire Damage support.

Offensive support 4-link:

Flammability -> Arcane Surge -> Increased Duration -> Spell Cascade

This should be your priority for your first spare 4-link. Remember to level your Arcane Surge gem such that the mana cost of Flammability is equal or higher than the trigger for Arcane Surge to grant its buff effect. You want Flammability to grant Arcane Surge every single time it is cast; maximum uptime is worth more than slightly increasing Arcane Surge's buff effect. Spell Cascade allows you to both increase Flammability's cost (to give you more room for a higher level Arcane Surge) and allows you to blanket a much larger area without increasing Flammability's cast time.

The reason this gem link does not contain Faster Casting is that it is intended to be socketed into Shaper gloves that contain the affix "Socketed Gems are supported by level 18/20 Faster Casting" on them. Until you have such gloves, feel free to drop Increased Duration for Faster Casting.

For late-game purposes, Projectile Weakness will actually prove to be a stronger curse damage-wise than Flammability, with two caveats; a much lower mana cost (making it harder to consistently trigger high-rank Arcane Surge) and a very high Dexterity requirement (155 Dexterity required for rank 20). As such, I recommend you stick with Flammability from the outset and only in endgame once you have the flexibility and currency to start refining gear for minor stats like +Dexterity, consider switching to Projectile Weakness. Just remember to keep an eye on your rank of Arcane Surge; you generally want to trigger that buff within 2 casts of your curse so that you are never without the Arcane Surge buff. Personally, I plan to just stick with Flammability.


Utility support 4-link:

Steelskin -> Cast When Damage Taken -> Increased Duration -> (Your Choice)

I've actually started running Steelskin over Immortal call as of late; even though we do generate Endurance Charges in this build, we have a low base amount of physical mitigation, and do not rebuild our Endurance Charges that consistently after Immortal Call eats them, which can leave us a bit vulnerable to physical damage once Immortal Call wears off if we are not fully out of danger. Steelskin doesn't consume our Endurance Charges when it triggers, so we get to keep the additional physical mitigation at all times. The downside of Steelskin is that it requires a much higher rank of skill gem to really be useful later, so you'll want to level up Steelskin and Cast When Damage Taken to relatively high levels. I personally run a level 17 Cast When Damage Taken and a level 19 Steelskin, which allows Steelskin to absorb up to around 2k damage during its buff effect.

The final link here is yours to decide; Vaal Righteous Fire would be my recommendation as it is a big damage increase when available. Just make sure whatever you slot here is high enough rank that it is not triggered autoamatically by Cast When Damage Taken unless you want it to be.

Movement links:

Flame Dash -> Lightning Warp -> Faster Casting

Not much to say here, you just want your movement skills to cast as fast as possible. If, like me, you can't stand using golems, you can use your spare 4-link specifically for Lightning Warp in the following links:

Lightning Warp -> Faster Casting -> Reduced Duration -> Swift Affliction

This will give you the fastest possible Lightning Warp by further reducing the duration of the teleport effect. This also opens up your Flame Dash 3-link for something like this:

Flame Dash -> Faster Casting -> Portal

Just to save you some Portal Scrolls in the long run.

Essence Worm ring sockets:

Herald of Ash

Even though Herald of Ash is not considered an Aura gem and thus does not gain the +2 levels from Essence Worm, a level 20 Herald of Ash still increases our damage significantly more than a level 22 Anger, so Herald of Ash takes priority.

Zealotry

Once you have a second Essence Worm up and running, Zealotry should be the second aura slotted. This is a big increase to both Critical Strike Chance and Spell Damage, and will allow your totems to create additional pools of Consecrated Ground when hitting Rare or Unique mobs.

Pursuit of Faith -> Ritual of Awakening -> Conviction of Power -> Divine Guidance

Not much choice here for a totem build. Luckily all four of these nodes are very strong and make Hierophant the standard bearer for totem builds.

Disciple of the Slaughter - This notable grants +1 to minimum Frenzy charges, meaning you'll have a permanent Frenzy charge that grants 4% more damage and 4% increased cast speed at all times. It also grants you 5% increased damage per Frenzy charge, and a 5% chance to gain a Frenzy charge on kill (which works for totems since it does not specify "when you kill"). Even without considering the low chance to gain Frenzy charges, this is a very good raw damage node for the permanent Frenzy charge, and would probably be my primary pick for a purely offensive anointment.

Heart of Fire - Another raw damage notable, this one is will grant more base damage than Disciple of the Slaughter, but doesn't grant you the chance to gain Frenzy charges on kill for clearing speed. Still, I'd consider this one roughly tied with it as our most desirable notable option through anointment.

Throatseeker & Heartseeker - Both of these notables grant the exact same bonus of 30% increased critical strike multiplier, which is a very strong damage gain for our build. They aren't quite as strong as either of the above nodes in my opinion, but they are great damage nodes nonetheless.

Soul of Steel - This is probably our premiere defensive notable option. The armor and physical damage reduction really help with our biggest defensive weakness of physical damage, and the +1% to maximum elemental resistances works out to about a 4% reduction in elemental damage taken. It also won't require any adjustment to your life or mana pools in terms of maintaining your Mind Over Matter ratio to get full effect.

Constitution - This is another great defensive choice that grants the single largest life increase of any notable on the passive tree. The only real downside is that it may require you to shuffle some investment around to ensure you can cover the additional life with Mind Over Matter, but we are connected to plenty of good mana nodes in the passive tree if that is needed.

(Major) Soul of the Brine King - We don't get any stun immunity in this build, so Brine King helps prevent us from getting totally stunlocked in bad situations. The reduced Chill effect is also good for fights like Uber Elder where your Freeze flask can run out leaving you very vulnerable to Chill.

(Minor) Soul of Shakari - Honestly the Minor doesn't make too much of a difference in this build. I often leave Shakari on for the Poison immunity (once upgraded). Especially useful to be immune to the poison from dart traps in the Labyrinth. In the end, though, just use whatever you're most comfortable with here.

Help Alira (5 Mana Regenerated per second, +20% to Global Critical Strike Multiplier, +15% to all Elemental Resistances)

Especially as a league starter, helping Alira is simply too beneficial to this build to take over 2 passive skill points. The resists and mana regeneration are super useful at the start of the game and remain good bonuses all the way through Uber Elder, while critical strike multiplier is weak early but the strongest offensive stat available to us at endgame. At the high end of things you can only get slightly more damage out of 2 passive skill points; the sacrifice of resistances and mana regeneration simply isn't worth it in my opinion.