[3.17] Wallach's Hierophant Freezing Pulse Totems (No Further Updates)

Added a new video talking about league starter thoughts for 3.16, including this build's state. I've also updated the main PoB link to include leveling trees for each act like before (for using the Holy Flame Totem setup in the leveling guide). I should be able to update the leveling guide text section tomorrow.

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deimudda69 wrote:

Its a shame what GGG is doing with their "balance around top 1%" philosophy. I dropped this amazing guide since the hiero rework with the fcked up totem nodes for no reason. (was that 3.13 or 3.12? cant remember anymore.)

I played alot of other starter builds since then, but they were all inferior to this one, so i make a decision now based on your answer:

Can this build still realibly and efficently farm up to, lets say, T12 maps and the stuff that will be in it (Legion, Breach, Blight etc.) with just the basic gear that i was used to leagues ago (2 +2 skill wands as damage, the rest plain life, mana, resis) without stuff like Pandemonium? (I dont consider a ~300c item as "league start", sry)

If you say yes, absolutely, np, then i will play my baby again and need to somehow resist the urge to throw currency on it. Just barely enough to farm T12 maps for currency and the rest with some meta +100ex bs that will come up this league.

Can't imagine you'd have trouble with T12 maps.

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Wallach wrote:

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ExOsc2 wrote:

What changes are you going to implement for leveling? Particularly since avatar of fire is out of the way, is it still worth it to go grab?

I'm looking at changing the routing slightly for HFT leveling to something along these lines:

https://pastebin.com/6VFgwhp7

Should still beat up the campaign pretty easily.

I've been using your guides and playing totems since I started poe back in Beastiary. I was looking at your HFT pathing and had a few questions.

-Is there a reason we don't go Elemental Overload for HFT?**You answered this in video/I saw the video after sorry.
-Is Spiritual Aid worth getting? Especially if we path out of our tree on minion/phys damage nodes?
-Divine Judgement seems like a strong node we miss?

I also generated a proposed tree with the same point investment. It does miss some life and blood siphon in particular, but I'm not confident it matters for the potential damage gain.

https://pastebin.com/hQepAaQ4

I'm sad you aren't running Freezing yourself this league..is there a guide for your league start?

Thanks as always!

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Crashbug wrote:

I've been using your guides and playing totems since I started poe back in Beastiary. I was looking at your HFT pathing and had a few questions.

-Is there a reason we don't go Elemental Overload for HFT?**You answered this in video/I saw the video after sorry.
-Is Spiritual Aid worth getting? Especially if we path out of our tree on minion/phys damage nodes?
-Divine Judgement seems like a strong node we miss?

I also generated a proposed tree with the same point investment. It does miss some life and blood siphon in particular, but I'm not confident it matters for the potential damage gain.

https://pastebin.com/hQepAaQ4

I'm sad you aren't running Freezing yourself this league..is there a guide for your league start?

Thanks as always!

Yeah, EO may wind up in the leveling suggestions provided it actually works with totems now. We switch over to Ancestral Bond in A4 so if it doesn't work with totems, it's probably not worth considering at all since it's too far to matter by then.

I've never been a big fan of Spiritual Aid since you basically get equivalent value in the early game out of taking the elemental / spell damage and it takes 5 points to hit. It helps to get far enough to the right to pick up Blood Siphon right before you're killing Kitava, so we're already pretty tight on points to reach that life early enough.

Elemental Judgment is solid node and you can pretty much choose either that or Dark Arts. They should both be around ~3.5% damage per point. Since we run Elemental Focus on Holy Flame Totem, the point of travel just before Elemental Judgment is very weak, which is what saps some of the value out of the line while leveling. It's still strong enough that you can choose either one, though I wouldn't choose both as like I mentioned above you do want to finish your reach into the right side of the tree on time as you're closing in on maps.

As long as you're taking decent damage nodes you can't get too far from the median per-point here either way.

I played this in 3.14 and easily cleared all content. Thinking about playing it again for 3.16 with the passive changes, but I think I will add Tornado for bossing. If you position the totems and tornado well the projectiles will hit the boss and the tornado, giving a large damage multiplier. This will only really be needed for end-game bosses. It could be used with an ice spear swap too, but totem distance would be really important. Should be fun to play around with either way for the new uber bosses.

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KevoTMan wrote:

I played this in 3.14 and easily cleared all content. Thinking about playing it again for 3.16 with the passive changes, but I think I will add Tornado for bossing. If you position the totems and tornado well the projectiles will hit the boss and the tornado, giving a large damage multiplier. This will only really be needed for end-game bosses. It could be used with an ice spear swap too, but totem distance would be really important. Should be fun to play around with either way for the new uber bosses.

Nice idea, but you have to take into consideration that you will be (probably) using Ancestral Bond, which will make your Tornado do 0 damage.

One thing you could try is to link Tornado with Spell Totem, Multiple Totem and maybe something else. That way, you get 2 extra totem for the Ascendancy regen + damage and one of the two totem will place a Tornado directly on top of the enemy.

From what I saw in "Path of Exile: Scourge Livestream (October 2021)" video, Tornado doesn't have a cooldown and can only have one alive, so it will spawn a new one non-stop. It might be a slight DPS increase, but you won't be able to stack up the buff onto it properly and I don't know if it will even have the time to actually tick onto the enemy.

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loloppe wrote:

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KevoTMan wrote:

I played this in 3.14 and easily cleared all content. Thinking about playing it again for 3.16 with the passive changes, but I think I will add Tornado for bossing. If you position the totems and tornado well the projectiles will hit the boss and the tornado, giving a large damage multiplier. This will only really be needed for end-game bosses. It could be used with an ice spear swap too, but totem distance would be really important. Should be fun to play around with either way for the new uber bosses.

Nice idea, but you have to take into consideration that you will be (probably) using Ancestral Bond, which will make your Tornado do 0 damage.

One thing you could try is to link Tornado with Spell Totem, Multiple Totem and maybe something else. That way, you get 2 extra totem for the Ascendancy regen + damage and one of the two totem will place a Tornado directly on top of the enemy.

From what I saw in "Path of Exile: Scourge Livestream (October 2021)" video, Tornado doesn't have a cooldown and can only have one alive, so it will spawn a new one non-stop. It might be a slight DPS increase, but you won't be able to stack up the buff onto it properly and I don't know if it will even have the time to actually tick onto the enemy.

Good point. I brain farted and forgot about Ancestral Bond! Linking with another totem wouldn't work for Sirius phases anyways, so the idea is shot. Thanks for the reminder.

I might end up copying Wallach and playing Ballista totems after theorycrafting it tonight. Defences are much better and it does a lot more damage for less investment. The high-end is MUCH higher too based on this build: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/Loremastered/Ksilo?i=5&search=skill%3DSiege-Ballista

hey, would ptefer to start your ballista over toxic rain champ, is there any chance u have a rough guide out before leagueatart? im too bad to plan it myself :/
appreciate you thx

Big thanks Wallach for updating everything and even putting in some effort for the leveling guide! :)

Alright, I think I've updated the leveling guide section fully, and did a bit more clean up in the main body of text (like adding more info on Ice Spear swap for single target). Let me know if you see any typos, errors, or confusing bits that weren't updated properly!

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Schnubbel_ wrote:

hey, would ptefer to start your ballista over toxic rain champ, is there any chance u have a rough guide out before leagueatart? im too bad to plan it myself :/
appreciate you thx

Well, I don't have any great way to level this yet, but this is my rough "try to be here at end of first week" type PoB for it (including a possible leveling tree for CA/TR with TR ballista):

https://pastebin.com/92YjM20L

Fair warning, I don't have any great leveling method for that build. CA/TR may work out okay but even that will be pretty scuffed in the campaign compared to something as good as my Holy Flame Totem leveling guide. Once you have the second labyrinth completed it should feel a bit smoother though.

Wallach, do you think you can make a sketch in POB of an ideal lvl 95 FP totem for this league before launch? Just so I can have an idea of where to go when I reach high level. Please, that would be awesome.

@edit never mind just checked you already changed it for this based on your ultimatum character. thanks