Spell Totem

Thanks for the reply Mark. Glad you are looking into it. I have no qualms with totem summon range/distance, just its aggro range. I still like my totem to hit things that come into my screen, not wait for mobs to come near me or near the totem.

Edit 1: Actually, the totem is incredibly sluggish and i've tested it a few more times. It doesn't aggro when mobs enter my screen. It only starts to attack 50% of the range into the screen from the distance of the totem. In my opinion i have always thought of the totem as a sentry, not a defensive turret. By reducing the range, you are limiting the viability of the totem in terms of offensive capabilities, and as a whole, limiting the number of flexible builds in the game; especially those revolving around 2 totems.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

The totems have always had a range to put an upper limit on how far away they can attack (effectively, this is used to set their aggro distance). It was never intended that they could hit things screens away.

The range stat was being implemented incorrectly, and as such not having any effect - this was fixed a while back and the fix went into 0.9.12 (or so I believe).

This does not cause totems to have tiny ranges - the smallest totem range I'm aware of is as far from you as you can summon the totem. They can (and do) still target monsters a noticeable distance from themselves.

I'm not sure what's causing the reports of totems not attacking really close monsters or monsters that are hitting them, as I've been unable to replicate this locally after a lot of testing. Works every time for me. I do know it happens as one of the Alpha testers posted a video this morning recording the behaviour, but for now we're not clear on what specifically causes the totems to sometimes do this. We're still looking into it.

thank you, from the bottom of my heart. i sware to god i was paranoid or something. this information is greatly apreciated. hope the oddity is sorted out on that 9.12 patch. unless your tests are using the fix already...

someone was able to show a video? where?

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Mark_GGG wrote:

The totems have always had a range to put an upper limit on how far away they can attack (effectively, this is used to set their aggro distance). It was never intended that they could hit things screens away.

The range stat was being implemented incorrectly, and as such not having any effect - this was fixed a while back and the fix went into 0.9.12 (or so I believe).

This does not cause totems to have tiny ranges - the smallest totem range I'm aware of is as far from you as you can summon the totem. They can (and do) still target monsters a noticeable distance from themselves.

I'm not sure what's causing the reports of totems not attacking really close monsters or monsters that are hitting them, as I've been unable to replicate this locally after a lot of testing. Works every time for me. I do know it happens as one of the Alpha testers posted a video this morning recording the behaviour, but for now we're not clear on what specifically causes the totems to sometimes do this. We're still looking into it.

I've noticed that my ice spear totems now don't attack anything further than ~1/3-1/2 screen away and often don't attack things right next to them as Ezciel has reported. I personally feel that the ONLY thing limiting the range of a totem should be the skill it's using. If I equip a totem with a projectile spell, it should fire that projectile at any mob within range of that projectile, not within some arbitrarily defined limit. If you absolutely insist on an arbitrary aggro range limit, at least make the base range > one screen away and provide multiple range boost passives. As it stands now, projectile totem builds have gone from being something worthwhile to being completely useless. This is about as bad as the nerfing y'all gave firestorm a while back.

So the aggro range and attack range were nerfed to hell on minions and totems but the absurdly long aggro and attack range on enemy mobs and totems were left the same. How is that fair?

I am also very disappointed with the changes to support totems (intentional or not)

duo totem projectile builds have been my favorite since seeing the 1st build-of-the-week, and honestly one of my favorite activities is going out to an open field and casting a totem, chasing the projectiles to the target off-screen, killing them, planting a second totem, and chasing wherever thos projectiles go.. etc. until the board is cleared, then off to the next zone.

seriously entertaining-- I have no idea why.
But now, I only rarely get off-screen aggro and have many of the same problems as others are listing: short aggro range in general, non-responsive to attacks, often won't target nearby monsters...
I don't think any of this is what was intended, so I'm sure y'all will fix it and get us back up to combat speed in short order.
PLEASE allow long-distance aggro to remain in effect! I LOVE chasing projectiles!

awesome game! Best money I've spent in a LONG time!

Hmmm, I was thinking of having a dual firestorm totem behind frost walls. I guess it won't be as effective anymore?

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Whoaness wrote:

Hmmm, I was thinking of having a dual firestorm totem behind frost walls. I guess it won't be as effective anymore?

Frost Wall duration gets nerfed by 50% and Totem Range by 99,9% so it´s look bad for this build :/

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Whoaness wrote:

Hmmm, I was thinking of having a dual firestorm totem behind frost walls. I guess it won't be as effective anymore?

as long as you are self-casting the wall and devoting both totems to the storm (as I assume you intend) ... that still works pretty well.

I had little issue last night other than range aggro for the totems... so just drop em close to the target and the storms should be fine.

The fact of the matter is that i built my witch to be dependent on my two fireball totems. Someone prior had posted his build as such and i thought it would be interesting.

I only do around 700 dps on my fireball and i already cast slow like hell. My totems deal around 500+ each so in theory with my two totems i should deal 1.7k dps - that is if they aggro correctly and share potential vision and range of me, the player who is controlling the witch.

Sometimes i place my totems ahead of me so they can draw aggro first. Sometimes i place them behind me as support sentries so that i can go ahead and they will still be firing fireballs when i go up close to mobs and spam fireballs.

I finally went through the skill tree again and noticed a "increase totem range" node so far away that 2 totems + range buff on the totem would be so horrible i would be branching out into no-man's land trying to incorporate a sensible build that accomplishes nothing and contradicts itself.

With the old totems i had the confidence to run hard maps but now i've retired my witch because i can't reset my entire tree because i allocated points for a nerf that did not appear in the patch notes.