[3.6] Milky's Scorching Ray Totems (updating process)

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Philliam wrote:

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Brian9824 wrote:

Holy crap

Hey Milky - think this will effect totem damage?

12% more fire damage is easy to understand. However, I don't think that the overkill part of Herald of Ash will do anything because of the way that we kill mobs. When you degen a mob to death, there probably isn't any overkill damage at all.

Is 12% more fire damage worth reserving 25% mana?

Only the quality bonus (20% fire dmg) would affect all skills in the build.

The more fire dmg would benefit scorching ray totem.

The burning dmg is only working for herald of ashs overkill dmg.

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HoA can be a tech choice for endgame bosses where i would use mainly SR Totems anyway. Curses are less effective in those encounters anyway, so turning off the defensive blasphemy curse (and add one in OoS) while using HoA can be useful.

Since we swap scorching ray in the chest and have no real use for RF totems in that scenario... there are free 4 gemslot to play around with.

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Is there any chance for Ascendant to be viable for this, or will Hiero be so much better it's not even worth trying anyway ?

Short answer: No

Long answer: Hell no

Hiero offers: 2 totems, 90%! totem placementspeed, a shitton of manaregen and liferegen, 10% mom and flat mana, power and enduring charge generation, some freed up gemslots, a good chunk of dmg on kill and tankier totems since they regen some part of the degen.

There is nothing the ascendant can compete with in terms of survivability, utility and dmg.

So in short:
Hiero > Chief > Scion
right?

Nice, it really seems like the more info that trickles out the stronger we get with stuff

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TherionPrime wrote:

So in short:
Hiero > Chief > Scion
right?

Hiero is in the current form just vastly superior, no need to rank em. Everything else is around the same strength or a bit stronger than before.



Some leaked 3.2 gameplay for ya

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I've been considering this and a selfcast rf + sr totem templar (without ancestral bond). It's been a while since I played RF though, not sure if it'd be too hard to set up along with SR totems (use RF for trash, totems for tougher mobs).

Play what you would enjoy more :X Havent seen any great RF sr totem version yet tho

Hiero makes it harder to pick the build, playing that ugly templar is definitely not the most exciting thing ever, ew. Tough choice.

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Axylxys wrote:

Hiero makes it harder to pick the build, playing that ugly templar is definitely not the most exciting thing ever, ew. Tough choice.

It's more about min-maxing and less about dem

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A E S T H E T I C S

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sry m8 :(

In the gems section, "Four Link 3" (scorching ray) there is no spell totem linked (SR - efficacy - elem focus - burning damage), with SA for elder boots.
I'm assuming it should have spell totem there, so in that case we skip the burning damage on normal boots and use burning damage on elder boots (and never using SA)?

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tesken wrote:

In the gems section, "Four Link 3" (scorching ray) there is no spell totem linked (SR - efficacy - elem focus - burning damage), with SA for elder boots.
I'm assuming it should have spell totem there, so in that case we skip the burning damage on normal boots and use burning damage on elder boots (and never using SA)?

thanks for pointing that out, will fix it in probably the next hour! Efficacy should be the 5th gem if elder boots are used.

edit: fixed

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Added/edited the following section:

Untested, potential Endgame Boss optimizations -advanced-

We have the option to turn on RF ourself with just Rise of the Phoenix equipped. Not to clear, but as a extra singletarget boost for 4x scorching ray totems.

In my PoB test is had 652 liferegen and 500 manaregen with totems active.
With RotP and selfcast RF on still 54.7/54.4 without any flask or pantheon active.

The build is not made to run maps with RF on (since any harmful mapmod will destroy the regen), but for stuff like shaper its possible to sqeeze more dmg out this way.

258k to 345k dps per scorching ray totem IS a difference!

Will try it out in 3.2 for Endgame bosses

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Like mentioned in the skilltree section, you can always use Ancestral Bond. I don't feel the need for it while regulary mapping. Hell it's pretty annoying to use traps just for Elemental Equilibrium ;) having a extra SRT for guardians/shaper/etc however can be pretty powerful for 1 skillpoint (can specc and respecc for 1 regret so what).
If we turn on rf like mentioned above we even gain more regen with whooping 345k dps (in that setup).

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Additional options to swap are:

Turning off Blasphemy + Temporal Chains. With -80% curse effect on guardians/shaper the effect isn´t that noticable. Even swapping it with Despair isnt that impactful. I tried in PoB to use coh + oos + flammability + despair and a lvl 6 arcane surge was better.

Using Purity of Fire instead of the blasphemy can make the selfcast rf substain easier if you choose using it OR the new Herald of ash which grants 12% more fire spell dmg for scorching ray.

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switching crit with arcane surge (lvl 5 or 6) adds a good chunk of extra dmg to Scorching ray totems.

Since we don´t need the 4link in which scorching ray was anymore we have some sockets free for other shenanigans. either the RF setup with supports for it (roughly 100k dps) or only the rf gem for the buff or something else like:

despair + arcane surge + duration. this would allow a higher lvl arcane surge with a better duration, you could benefit from the 2nd curse if you deactivate temporal chains for Purity of Fire or Herald of Ash and still keep the crit gem in OoS for better EO proccs.

Currently squeezing out even more boss dps in PoB with just some small changes!

2.327.696 shaper dps atm (SRT + SB)

https://pastebin.com/5UxZhj3E

Note that i turned on Frenzy charges to simulate the 12% more fire spelldmg for SRT, but turned em off for SB dps

So what did i change from the regular rf totem setup:

1. Swapped out RF + AoE in the Soulmantle. Added SR + Controlled Destruction instead.

2. Now i had a free 4link (the old SRT setup). I added RF + Lightning Trap + Decoy Totem + Herald of Ash (alternative Purity of Fire). It has the same colors as the rft setup. Decoy totem can be useless or great in some fights, could be swapped out for a stone golem in the shaper fight for excample.

3. skilled ancestral bond for +1 totem, thats why i added the lightning trap

4. Weaponswap setup to Doryanis catalyst (or some rare weapon) + Rise of the Phoenix OR Saffels Frame. This alone lets us substain selfcast RF thanks to the 40% mom and big regen from the tree/totems/kikazarus etc. for a big dmg boost, but we barely regen life/mana back like its used to.

5. Despair + Arcane Surge (lvl13) + Duration and the movementsetup are used in the weapon/shield. Despair is a little bit stronger than ele weakness, arcane surge good for SRT and duration for more manacost and longer arcane surge duration.

6. Temporal Chains as blasphemy is out for the despair since its barely noticable on those endgame bosses anyway (well also could be used instead of despair :X) and herald of ash reserves some mana instead. like i said, alternatively purity of fire for better regen and lower dmg


With all this i end up with 441.694 SRT dps x 5 totems + 119.000 SB dps with those buffs/debuffs up.
A lvl 21 SRT is almost 500k dps :X


Looking at this i think about even dropping SB, but thats even more to do than swapping the 4l and weaponswap for some bossencounter ;) I also have no idea what could fit in there thats more beneficial.

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Its interesting what you can do with some gemswaps + a weaponswap + 1point in Ancestral Bonds.

This is by far not needed to kill endgame bosses, i always did em with the normal Righteous fire totem setup which totally has around 500k dps. But you could squeeze out 4-5 times the dmg!

JUST! switching RF with SR + contr destruction in the Soulmantle is over 50% more dmg for the bossfights where dps matters