[On Hold] Glacial Cascade Totems [ALL Content in the Game]

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Lynkeus_ wrote:

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Vreezer wrote:

Hello, can someone explain me why my totems have more dps with my wand than with doryani's catalyst?

I am guessing you are using glacial cascade with Hio

I think it is because it have more damage modifier numbers (physical damage%, crit chance and multiplier %) than Doryani

You might think that "but it have more elemental damage", but if you do not have full conversion, part of your damage comes from physical and it is an important factor for the gem. But I would say it is mostly because of crit modifiers. Need PoB analysis to be more accurate, which I don't have access right now.

Edit: Fixed some context

Physical damage% it's a local modifier, it's for the wand not for your Spell.

For your Spell it should be like the modifier in Rustic Sash's.

The Wand has 70% Spell Damage, 9% Cas Speed, 70% Crit Chance for Spells and 24% Crit Multi.

Doryani's has 126% Elemental Damage and 9% Cast Speed.

So, the Wand still have the Crit Benefits way better than Doryani's and the other point like Vreezer said is if you have full elemental conversion or not.

Thanks for this guide. I've leveled pretty easily so far, but I'm running into a problem evaluating new weapons for the build.

In OP you wrote that for weapons you should look for:

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Stats to look for: Shaper Gain %Phys as Extra* > Critical Strike Chance for Spells > Critical Strike Multiplier > Spell Damage > Cast Speed > Attack Speed > Added Damage to Spells > Resists > Mana > Mana Regen > Dex

So I get this is a spell based build that uses crit for dps boost. I'm confused, however, about why obvious boosts to physical base damage don't seem to result in the gains I'd expect to see. Especially since physical to lightning and added fire are in the mix.

I guess it's math / my grasp on how the DPS is calculated? The conversion of 60% of the weapon's physical stats just doesn't pack much of a punch amid the other bonuses?

When I'm evaluating new weapons, should I be trusting the tooltip DPS guess for GC? (Folks seem to like PoB for checking, but it seems a colossal pain for leveling upgrades that will be discarded in a bit.)

I'm still killing everything in sight as I approach a10 having ascended twice, but every time I get a weapon that looks like it could be an upgrade, it turns out to not be one according to the DPS estimates for GC.

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davebluedevil wrote:

So I get this is a spell based build that uses crit for dps boost. I'm confused, however, about why obvious boosts to physical base damage don't seem to result in the gains I'd expect to see. Especially since physical to lightning and added fire are in the mix.

I guess it's math / my grasp on how the DPS is calculated? The conversion of 60% of the weapon's physical stats just doesn't pack much of a punch amid the other bonuses?

Unless they specifically say "spell" or "global" or the like physical damage increases on a weapon just apply to that weapon's attack damage. So they do nothing for your spells.

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When I'm evaluating new weapons, should I be trusting the tooltip DPS guess for GC? (Folks seem to like PoB for checking, but it seems a colossal pain for leveling upgrades that will be discarded in a bit.)

I'm still killing everything in sight as I approach a10 having ascended twice, but every time I get a weapon that looks like it could be an upgrade, it turns out to not be one according to the DPS estimates for GC.

The tooltip isn't perfect, but it is good enough for evaluating upgrades while leveling. The main things missing from the tooltip are the effects of penetration, hypothermia, and the like. For comparing more ordinary stats like %spell damage, %ele damage, %spell crit, the tooltip comparison is fine.

Make sure you have your temporary buffs up when doing the comparison though (power charges, totem cast in the last 4 sec, etc). If you don't have all the crit from the temporary buffs it will throw off the relative importance of the crit chance and crit multi stats on your tooltip. It still isn't perfect though, since the tooltip doesn't understand diamond flasks.

Any suggestions for good leveling weapons ?

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If you are having problems with sustain, the Trolltimber shield (super cheap this time) will give you pretty much max leech with the amount of damage the totems put out.

You take a damage hit over an offensive shield, or second weapon, but it's an option.

You are the second person to mention this. I'll test this out personally later before potentially adding it to the guide. In my experience you don't die to things with this build that are small spaced out damage (our life flask provides help with this). The things that kill me the most are spike damage (one shots) where leech doesn't help at all. However I do experience times where I am not topped off and can see the merit of this item. Great to see templars experimenting with the build and making it their own!

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Hey OP, is increased cold damage a good stat for gears to boost the GC totem damage?

Cold Damage, Spell Damage, Totem Damage, Generic % Damage from a jewel are all additive with each other. Getting increased damage is fine but the best way to scale damage is crit and crit multi if we're talking about endgame levels of gear.

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For the CWDT setup I always run Phase run over Enfeeble as it makes it easy to get out of packs if blocked in and they have reduced visibility on you.

As far as the curse setup I have always been a fan of Doedre's Scorn with Curse-Inc AoE-Arcane Surge-Inc Duration. I run this everytime I run this build.


As Hiero for GC Totems, should we go so heavily crit since the main thing with crit for Inquisitor was the resistance penetration. Is it still worthwhile?

Very cool phase run option for CWDT - I might try this out later as I'm still kind of messing with my links due to working in Frost bomb, it's worth mentioning that if you have other spells in your CWDT that phase run needs to be LAST in order of the castable skills (where top left is first and bottom left is last). Frost bomb is also great in this league especially since some of the beasts have a lot of regen and frost bomb helps with that AND the cold res!

Scorn is interesting but it lacks a lot of things we need in a helm slot IMO.

Crit is still worthwhile - explained above but crit remains one of the best ways to scale our damage. We commit a lot of nodes to picking up crit and crit multi that you may think are flexible (maybe I can drop all my crit and go EO and reach for scion life and totem cast speed). This isn't pizza sticks. Cast speed doesn't scale our damage nearly as well as crit and multi do.

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Well I'm enjoying the build so thanks, im up to t14 maps and have done yellow elder so far. Running on basically nothing for gear and still destroying content. Sitting on about 8 ex in currency.. great league starter.

Great to hear! I do appreciate the success stories!

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Any suggestions for good leveling weapons ?

Covered in the leveling section of the guide:

No uniques are required as this build is fine for a league start - but if this isn't your first character of the league then these will make the process easier: LifeSprig, Goldrim, Tabula, Wanderlust, Belt of the Deceiver, Axiom Perpetuum, Hrimsorrow (for Hiero), Elreon -Mana Cost jewelry (resists/str/dex a plus!), and buying skill/support gems with quality ready to be socketed in!

NOTE: Templars do not get access to Hatred so buy it on another character or trade for it! All gems are available from Neesa after completing Act 6.

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other item questions

Check the in-depth gearing section for the piece in question. There is more to this guide than the quick reference! Gear advice is going to be pretty specific to what you already have. I do my best to list what I feel are the best value in stats in terms of priority on a specific piece. However, you might be geared in such a way that something with a different priority will effect your tooltip/health/movement abilities in a better way. Path of Building is really the only way to see if a specific piece will work better for you. If you're apprehensive about dropping a lot of currency on a weapon or an upgrade because you're not sure how much better it is I highly recommend using PoB!

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Additional updates to the guide

• Changed all references to "Threshold Jewel" to "The Long Winter Jewel" to avoid confusion.
• Added a "League Start" at the bottom of Tips and Tricks. Hierophants look for Hrimsorrow to allow use of cold pen!
• Added notes in the weapons about going dagger/scepter and how Sambar Scepters and damage pen is now a useful stat for Hiero

Is it really worth running orb of storms setup as hiero?
I feel like you gain more than enough power charges with conviction of power.
I'm running phase run instead of enfeeble on cwdt and use curse (enfeeble/elemental weakness) as active for arcane surge and i feel like it works way smoother

I clean nice tiers 12 but i've low hp i think, or dunno if i've something wrong on my equipment, what would u change from my current eq?

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zern1cht9r wrote:

Is it really worth running orb of storms setup as hiero?
I feel like you gain more than enough power charges with conviction of power.
I'm running phase run instead of enfeeble on cwdt and use curse (enfeeble/elemental weakness) as active for arcane surge and i feel like it works way smoother

Another slightly less obvious advantage of using a curse for your arcane surge is that you can run the "120% increased critical strike chance if you haven't crit recently" boot enchant. You've never crit recently if you don't use any skills that can crit, so that's just perm 120% inc crit.

edit: although the frost bomb explosion (at the end of its duration) counts as a "hit" so if that crits it could potentially monkey with it a little.

Skyforth is good boots for this build?

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zern1cht9r wrote:

Is it really worth running orb of storms setup as hiero?
I feel like you gain more than enough power charges with conviction of power.
I'm running phase run instead of enfeeble on cwdt and use curse (enfeeble/elemental weakness) as active for arcane surge and i feel like it works way smoother

As hiero I don't think PCoC on orb of storm is needed. I never run out of power charges.

I used orb of storm - arcane surge - curse on hit - frostbite (or other offensive curse, with defensive curse linked to cwdt). But in the end I switched to frost bomb.