[3.22] - the definitive Chieftain Torchoak Step reflect galvanic arrow ballistas guide
 Do you like meme builds? Are you thrown off your chair when you feel like starting a meta character? Do you hate your framerate with a passion? This setup might be just for you! ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Build Concept:
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The concept is tried and true. With the quite recent changes to Torchoak Step boots, totems can now reflect 100% of their life as damage taken instead of just 25%. This is quite literally a baseline of 75% increased damage. "This is a buff" (no sarcasm!)
We build around that very line in the item: Totems reflect 100% of their maximum life as fire damage to nearby enemies when hit. With 100% chance to ignite, Stormfire to cause lightning damage to ignite (and allowing us to use EE) and Eye of Innocence, our totems will continuously take 100 fire damage as a hit to reflect their max life as damage around them. There are multiple ways to scale the build's damage:
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- totem life -> higher the level of ballista totem support = higher base totem life. We also go chieftain due to the accessibility of high amounts of +10 str nodes to tattoo our entire body with +6% totem life tats. At the same time, we do not have to ever worry about resistances. We also get access to some free jewel sockets, where we look for these stats: attack speed, max life, max totem life (one of the jewels will also need to have 5% ignite chance; more on that later)
- totem count -> we get up to 9 totems with Watchtowers notable anointed, or 8 if we go Whispers of Doom as the anoint. According to my calculations, an extra totem = more damage than ele weakness on gloves - projectile count -> depending on your Shako (yes, we absoloutely have to use a Forbidden Shako to get the most out of the build), we get up to 10 or 14 projectiles per totem. This means that Galvanic arrow will hit the same enemy twice with a single arrow when using Barrage support. According to my tests, a returning projectile with the ability to pierce that split off via Sniper's Mark will hit the same target again with the cone while returning. You can also use Dying Sun for boss dps boost, but I opted in for more tank - attack speed -> extremely important. We look for attack speed everywhere we can; jewels (including abyss jewels in Replica Shroud of the Lightless), buffs (rage/onslaught), vaal haste, items (Quill Rain is BiS for the build). We also craft a pair of rare gloves for pinnacle bosses that cannot be knocked back with BiS for gloves would be T0 AS, Veiled AS while focused as suffixes and eldritch implicit attack speed - enemy resistance modifiers -> we use a flammability on hit ring with curse either as a suffix or an implicit that also grants us the remaining 25% ignite chance and Elemental Equilibrium for 25% exposure. Corrupted gloves with Elemental Weakness on hit can also be used instead of Sniper's Mark - damage taken modifiers -> we use Infernal Cry for Covered in Ash, as well as to generate rage with Forbidden Flame/Flesh combo for Berserker's War Bringer Current items/PoB:
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The up-to-date items used by me can always be found on https://poe.ninja/builds/ancestor/character/Ydoum/KEKtain
https://pastebin.com/ZMYC5BMD Damage calculations:
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Unfortunately PoB w/ community fork doesn't have the ability to calculate the damage yet. We have to do it ourselves. In my setup, it would look like this:
tl - totem life tc - totem count pc - projectile count di - damage instances as - attack speed rm - resistance modifiers dtm - damage taken modifiers =(tl*tc*pc*di*as)*(rm)*(dtm) where rm is dependent on the monster you're fighting With my current setup I am comfortably dealing roughly 30mil dps. Note: remember that any modifiers to "Your" damage will not affect the reflected damage! Ignite chance:
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We absolutely need to be able to ignite with every hit. We achieve this with:
- 60% ignite chance from the tree - 25% ignite chance from Flammability - 10% ignite chance from Eye of Innocence - 5% ignite chance from a jewel Avoid hexproof and elemental ailment avoidance map mods! Leveling:
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Forget about trying to level with this. You need at least 68 to get going effectively with this setup.
Just get these items and enjoy a relaxed walking simulator experience: Earlier on we use: Before swapping to Replica Shroud, we can use something as simple as Kaom's Heart Again, note the fire damage on it does absolutely nothing to our damage. Doable content:
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Endgame content that I was able to complete so far in a melty fashion:
- 10-ways - various special invitations, e.g. elderslayers, formed, forgotten - maven - eater - exarch - sirus - cortex - shaper - elder Map content that the build works great for: - ritual - beyond - essence - harvest - expedition - breach - abyss The build is also suitable for some tota gameplay, even with enemy knockback resistance. I still haven't done uber elder, but I don't see why it wouldn't be able to blaze through it. I am also pretty optimistic about the build being able to do uber bosses with some gear/tree changes towards survivability. Various mechanics:
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- Sniper's mark causes extra projectiles to split from the target that's been hit. According to my tests, a returning projectile from a split can hit the same target again.
- Frenzy with manaforged arrows that is fired when we place a totem. It generates free frenzy charges for us. It's also what trigger sniper's mark with mark on hit support - rage generation via war bringer for extra attack speed and covered in ash via infernal cry. technically speaking you can use berserk here as well for a massive but short attack speed boost. more testing needed, if it's better in long term than vaal haste - the reworked totem ascendancy for chieftain grants us insane recoup amounts as our totems are masochistic in nature - reverse knockback via Empire's Grasp to vacuum everything into the damage of your totems. We absolutely do NOT need The Siege for 100% knockback chance; the tree provides sufficient amounts. This also unlocks the ability to pierce which is really, REALLY good. - "%increased armour if you haven't killed recently" is a super strong abyss jewel affix since "we" never kill. We cannot even deal damage with our frenzy since we use Ancestral Bond, so we have a 100% uptime on those modifiers. Future/possible upgrades:
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- Mageblood
- Synthesized Flammability on hit ring to open up a suffix (in progress) - better mana sustain via affixes, e.g. life+mana regen prefix, mana cost reduction suffix on jewels - double-corrupted Shroud with crit damage reduction and %life WARNING!
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This build requires a powerful PC. Even in my rather high-end setup, my frames can drop way below 30-20 (any normal build I played allows me to stay above 120fps).
Moreover, the code behind reverse knockback is poorly optimized. It often causes actual server lag; especially when trying to pull packs of monsters through obstacles. I was able to kill instances with it, so be aware! Videos: Sitting in HO spamming alts for 4 hours straight is peak PoE gameplay. Thanks, Chris. Last edited by Ydoum#5726 on Sep 23, 2023, 2:09:43 PM Last bumped on May 4, 2024, 8:07:48 PM
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Great idea! Put on list
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" It's like you know me personally. This made my shortlist of fun ideas. |
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so question, how did you get that shako?
cuz i cant seem to find one like yours. |
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Hey, great idea, I might league start this, just have a couple of questions:
Would it work as a lower budget to use a mokou's embrace to get more attack speed than you get with your jewels from the body armour so you can have a body armour with stats on it? It would also allow you to 6L the totems so you can use faster attacks (in spite of the ballista support level, yes) and you could have a rare helmet too. I can understand that the tradeoff for a rare ring with -mana cost and a good synthesis implicit is a little much, but it would be so much cheaper. I also don't really understand the point of stormfire - now that small ignites are not discarded, can't we just take avatar of fire or some minimal conversion to fire somewhere and open up the stormfire slot to a rare ring? |
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Trying out this build for 3.23. Tinctures can give all damage can ignite, which fress up the ring slot. Not sure what we can do with that, but its pretty much the only thing that seems useful, unless you can get some busted charms with like elementalist ascendancy on it.
One question - why didn't you take the enemies explode node on chieftain? Does that not work with totem reflect? |
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" Not OP, but the challenge with mokou's embrace is that you don't ever apply ignites yourself due to ancestral bond. You need to deal at least 1 damage to ignite. As such, you don't hit yourself with eye of innocence, which means no ignite on yourself from mokou's. You'd have to do some other wonky tech like putting in something like forbidden rite to be able to hit yourself to get the self-ignite working. " The ideal version always wants to use a Shako. The HP gain on the totem for using a high level ballista totem is too much value. Torchoak Step reflects damage based on the HP of the totem, and a high level ballista totem adds too much base HP for any other helm to be worth it. Potentially some sort of bow with massive +gem scaling might be able to compete, but it would have to be a ridiculously minmaxed version to boost the gem level high and give up the attack speed of quill rain. " The point is elemental equilibrium. You need to deal non-fire damage for EE to trigger the 25% fire exposure. However, you need to deal fire damage to ignite. Stormfire allows the base lightning damage from galvanic to ignite instead of needing fire, so the lightning hit triggers a fire exposure for -25% resistances on the enemy. This league though I think the tinctures enabling ignite might solve this problem instead |
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" What about solving EE using an added cold or lightning damage mod somewhere? Would that apply to the totems? |
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" That wouldn't solve the ignite. Galvanic arrow already deals base lightning damage. The issue is that without any other mechanic, the only damage type that triggers an ignite is Fire damage. If your attack deals fire damage, then you would remove Fire Exposure and add Lightning/Cold Exposure, which is bad. So you need the attacks to do two things: * Deal only non-fire elemental damage to trigger Elemental Equilibrium for Fire * Trigger an ignite on the enemy The only way to do that is to get a mechanic that enables another damage type to ignite. If ignites are tied to fire damage, then you'll be stuck removing the fire exposure. The guide uses stormfire to get lightning damage to ignite. That would allow the base lightning on galvanic arrow to ignite, meaning you get the ignite (triggering Eye of Innocence and then triggering Torchoak's Step), but since you don't deal fire elemental damage, you also get the fire exposure. However, in this league (3.23), its possible we no longer need Stormfire. That's because both tinctures and charms have a mod that reads 'All damage can ignite'. This should means that non-fire damage can ignite (including the base lightning damage on galvanic arrow), so as long as you're either using the charm or the tincture. I haven't tested it yet, but in theory it should work. I just got my build up and running and I'm running into some weird issues with affliction empowered mobs taking way too long to kill. Last edited by Jenos#5437 on Dec 11, 2023, 10:37:06 PM
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" Just a side note on this point: there is a minimum amount of damage the ignite has to do or it will still be discarded (maybe 1 damage per second?). I am playing a similar build with blast rain and I notice that mobs with high fire resistance and damage reduction fail to get ignited. Adding some flat fire damage mostly fixed the issue, and for those that remain, I momentarily move my awakened fire pen gem into the ballista link. |
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