New Totem Passive Nodes Out in Middle Of Nowhere... >.>

Ok Im glad that there are more totem nodes as much as anybody else, but why on earth are they seemingly plopped in the middle of the skill tree with no rhyme or reason at all? Anyone who wants to use them in conjunction with the other totem passives has to waste a lot of skill points to get to them no matter how you slice it,anyone else agree?

Totems should be nearer to strength for sure. Decoy, Rejuvenation, and Shockwave are all strength gems, and the totem support is both a strength gem and level 31.

As for the distance, totems are incredibly strong. +1 totems is effectively 100% more damage so it should take a considerable amount of investment (read: 15+ skill points) to get there. Moving it any closer (namely to Witch) would make it way too strong. I'd be even more a fan of moving it deeper into strength territory (such as swapping it with Whirling Barrier (11/12 for temp/mara, 19 for witch), which conveniently puts it nearer to the other totem cluster).

You also don't need to get both totem passive clusters. The center is a good place for those nodes, since totem life/range/duration is nice to have and helps off-class builds, but isn't integral.

I guess you don't need 2 sets of the totem nodes.
The far West one gives +1 totem, which is very enough.

The other set is meant for Blood Magic or STR/DEX built. You don't have to take all those totem / minion nodes to be effective, probably mix things up can be more versatile.

Well seeing as most builds using totems as a primary skill are trying to get as much damage as possible to bounce back from the 40% dmg redux from the totem support, and some weird changes that have happened in the newest patch, it just seeems like my build is no longer viable, and if you havent noticed already over conversations in the forums, minion-combos to ofset builds are becoming obsolete because of the new micro management that needs to be done constantly of minions (because they die so much more often, I play a successful pure summoner build post patch so I know what Im talkin about here) Here is the build on my templar,

If you don't think that's viable then I don't know what is. I run a very similar Templar totemancer with less skill points and likely worse gear and have no problems clearing maps.

Just because your build got balanced does not mean it was made non-viable. Conversations on the forums following every balance patch to date have cried out for the death of their build and how terrible the new patch is, and then weeks later their builds are doing just fine.

Funny to see people getting CI all the way from Templar (since I found it not worth it to get CI).

I think the issue is lack of defense. Being a hybrid class and not able to make use of STR attribute. They probably need more work on the tank aspect of Templar, instead of fixing totem.

Anyways, I see totem has no issue, but Templar itself, which doesn't seem to survive in melee as a tank class.

He just wanted Chaos immunity, probably because of maps. It's not a problem of "tankability".

None of those passives are new and were introduced with Totems a long time ago. If you want the ones in the middle, any class can easily access them. If you want the ones by the Templar, plan a Templar build.

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Vold316 wrote:

He just wanted Chaos immunity, probably because of maps. It's not a problem of "tankability".

Hmm, not sure, but I think he thinks it is better to take the top right nodes for defense (CI and ES). If he wants to increase his crit, he could take Bloodthirst already and go insside the Witch path for 55% crit, instead of taking it longer for 60% crit.

Similar built - No CI, but all the HP nodes around. +18% n spell damage, -5% critical damage.

That leads me to think he believes CI and 1/4 of ES nodes are better than 3/4 of HP nodes around, which means either the HP nodes are not effective, or Templar is weak in surviving.

Noting your first comment about CI and realizing the amount of HP nodes around I tried to put em all together and I looked and heres what I found My build Gives 99% Energy shield and CI, and your build Only gives 94% to max life, and I know that I can add armor for damage reduction and such but my strength is sort of low and Im not sure I can wear the heavy duty armor I need to.