[3.15] Elemental Hit Ballista Totem Hiero | Budget Friendly | League Start to Endgame

This build is pretty cool so far. Using it to farm white and yellow for my next build. Went hiero, standard totem stuff. Biggest pain is keeping the golem up. I'm tempted to take the dps loss and just get another standard ring. I went more offensive without the skitters for now, I have not had an issue with survivability yet. Thinking about getting a Doryani fire slink boot if I want to invest that much into the build. A lot of it was made with drops and ritual finds.

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Bentley813 wrote:

This build is pretty cool so far. Using it to farm white and yellow for my next build. Went hiero, standard totem stuff. Biggest pain is keeping the golem up. I'm tempted to take the dps loss and just get another standard ring. I went more offensive without the skitters for now, I have not had an issue with survivability yet. Thinking about getting a Doryani fire slink boot if I want to invest that much into the build. A lot of it was made with drops and ritual finds.

Yea i took off the Malachai set-up too. The golem dies way too quick to do anything meaningful. Even shittier when this dude don't have regen or leech either, so he will die eventually. Just stresses me out trying to keep this fool alive re-summoning. This golem set-up seems good on paper/POB, but terrible execution during play in my opinion.

So I want to play this HC and I notice that it had only 160% inc life. Is this enough even lategame, or should I be taking more life for less DPS?

Seems like feedback wasn't too good for the Malachai's Artifice + Summon Lightning Golem combo so I've removed from the main setup and added it to "31. "OneShotKill" Edition" as an optional option in case someone want to use it for bossing which is its strength also.

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chronovt wrote:

So I want to play this HC and I notice that it had only 160% inc life. Is this enough even lategame, or should I be taking more life for less DPS?

I don't play HC so I am not sure if that is enough defensive wise.

Though if you play HC and want to go for the best defensive Ascendancy option, that would be Ascendant(Chieftain/Slayer)

- It can reach near 8k life with 229% inc life if you take all the life Passive
- It has Totem Leech Life to you
- Can Spec into Vaal Pact Keystone for the double life leech which is not removed since Slayer has "Life Leech effects are not removed at Full Life", so all the life leech from totems stacking on you ensuring your health goes up very fast when you take a hit.

Here's a POB Pastebin for reference : https://pastebin.com/nbhYKUuv

This is a very defensive approach to the build if one wants.

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Vei wrote:

I don't play HC so I am not sure if that is enough defensive wise.

Though if you play HC and want to go for the best defensive Ascendancy option, that would be Ascendant(Chieftain/Slayer)

- It can reach near 8k life with 229% inc life if you take all the life Passive
- It has Totem Leech Life to you
- Can Spec into Vaal Pact Keystone for the double life leech which is not removed since Slayer has "Life Leech effects are not removed at Full Life", so all the life leech from totems stacking on you ensuring your health goes up very fast when you take a hit.

Here's a POB Pastebin for reference : https://pastebin.com/nbhYKUuv

This is a very defensive approach to the build if one wants.

Thank you so much for this. This seems to be so much more sturdy.

I will make my char to follow this build :)

I see that you haven't been getting good feedback for Lightning Golem because it dies very often. What do you think about using "Summon Holy Relic" in the ring, and using a single Abyssal jewel to give it Added Lightning/Cold damage. Since it isn't targetable, it should definitely last a bit more than Lightning Golem

So far it's a breeze for me. Reliably doing T15/16.

Still missing :

Corrupted frostferno.
Corrupted Kaom's Heart

and then only minmaxing wiht expensive stuff like Bottled faith, +level gems ammy etc.

Bottom line is:

With Hiero you don't feel loosing +1 totem drop. Mana is not an issue if you are not using Grace.
With really basic gear, so normal frostferno, kaom, lethal pride you can do T16's without issue.
To be clear - I am not using grace, so my defences are basic.

Ritual is tricky, so Berserk/Lethal pride on juiced T16 is a must.
So far did maven with 6 bosses and it was not easy.

Small feedback about other ascendancy choices:

Playing Ascendant(Chieftain/Raider) - phasing in ritual is awesome and leech increases survivability a lot. Don't sure how you guys play whithout phasing there.
Only one issue is mana, but I've temporary solved it by using clarity. Don't have frostferno yet(still need to run map) but damage is nice.

Doing Ascendant and also love leech+phasing for Rituals. I am glad I made this choice:).

Also, just got Frostferno, so ditching Tabula. I was lacking funds for any proper chest armor, so I looke through my Uniques and found Death's Oath. It is armor based, so defence upgrade is small (although still got 1400 armor out of it, nice vs small fast hits). But then, it gives nice HP boost, some all resist plus 10%+ attack speed. It boosted my dmg by 12% :).

Mana not an issue, I'm using BloodMagic/Mortal Conviction and it works great.

Another tip for Blood Rage. If Ingite from totems kills enemy, it refreshes Blood Rage and has a chance to give Frenzy Charge :)

Oh I had a question. On the Hiero POB you have Avatar of fire in the skill tree. I thought we only did fire damage as it is because of the combat focuses? I'm not familiar with Elemental Hit though so I'm not sure.

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Bentley813 wrote:

Oh I had a question. On the Hiero POB you have Avatar of fire in the skill tree. I thought we only did fire damage as it is because of the combat focuses? I'm not familiar with Elemental Hit though so I'm not sure.

You only deal fire damage, but the cold and lightning damage is still there on the gem. Meaning with avatar of fire, we convert 50% of that cold and lightning and add it to our fire damage. Huge damage boost.