Monster Lightning Totems: Working as intended but unbalanced or a bug?

Hi folks,

I've been doing a rebuild of StunningPriceOfLiberty, a L93 Juggernaut, as the DPS was on the low side. Once I got Avarius in A10 under 5 seconds, I thought it was time for a DPS check in a T13 Arid Lake blue map with a 23% increased damage modifier. A fully enraged Rhoa Arid Lake boss isn't dangerous to this character and is a good test dummy since *somebody* won't let us have programmable test dummies in our hideouts.

Let's take a look at what should be the relevant defensive stats:

- Life: 4789/5022 (running Vitality reserves Life)
- Lightning Resistance: 75% (83%)
- 23 Fortify stacks
- Spell Block: 21%
- Immune to Shock
- 7 Endurance Charges + Nebuloch for 35% elemental damage reduction
- Molten Shell
- 2.98% Leech of physical attack damage + LGOH from a Mark
- Sulphur Flask automatically triggered on Rare/Unique resulting in life regeneration of over 1,000/sec even if my Stone Golem is instantly killed (which it was)
- Enemy crit reduction of 30%
- 2 Eternal Life Flasks for 2080 over 2 seconds (yes, I didn't improve them, sue me)


So, in the Arid Lake boss room after tagging 2 of the nests but before activating the boss, I ran into a Rare Rhoa with the Lightning Totem (or whatever the name is) and proximity shield affixes and got slaughtered even after triggering my Life Flasks.

I wasn't cursed and I think my tank is fairly reasonable. So, perhaps you folks might consider reducing the damage output for this affix as people have been complaining about it for years?

Now, the reason I'm wondering if there might instead be a bug issue is that in the same map a few minutes later, I got tagged with the Flammability curse and about 3 ordinary (i.e. not Rare) skeleton mages nearly toasted me. Even with a 40% reduction, which should end up with me at 41% FR, the rest of my tank is in place so this seems unlikely. I suppose all of them *could* have had a max damage crit but what are the odds of that?


Assuming that there's not a bug issue with elemental damage, or the RNG, or the 23% damage increase map affix, maybe taking a look at the damage output of the Lightning Totem affix (and reducing it) would be a good idea.

I have noticed that those lightning totems are way too quick to follow you around, appear too many at a time and are generally a pain in the wotsit. They need tuning down a bit. It's almost as if the previous nerf of them was stealthily unnerfed.....

I'm wondering if it might be a problem with trying to cut down on damage calculations.

With this same character, I've been power-leveling a skill gem in A10 and while doing so I decided to test my tank by intentionally standing in the explosions for monster packs with the Minions [elemental] Explode on Death affixes.

Most of the time, there's barely any noticeable damage. A couple of times, however, I took massive damage and it looked like each of the explosions was dealing similar damage. Which made me wonder whether they programmed it so that the explosion damage was rolled once for the entire pack instead of for each explosion.

If that's the case and something similar is programmed for the Lightning Totem minions then that would explain it. Instead of a new roll for each hit which would normally flatten out the damage output, a single roll at the start for max damage + crit would create a huge damage spike once all 5 totems are in place.