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

"

R4yDeN1007 wrote:

Hey Milky, amazing guide, i have been inactive for almost 2 years and came back recently since the 3.0 is comming soon; i never played as a templar and i wanted to try him with this build, as a hierophant.
Is it worth to try the character with a MoM variant instead of going pure BM life? I read nearly everything on the guide, but as 3.0 may change some nodes, i was wondering if its viable, and if its not to much to ask, i would like to know some tips, and which keystones are must. Picking the hierophant i would be able to place 2 totems more if i am not wrong, that way is it necessary to go for ancestral bond? Thanks in advance

For 3.0 i would say MoM is the way to go. Slap in a manaflask for emergency manarefill and its good to go.

Tukohamas fortress will be the only reason to use Blood Magic.

Hierophant has a chilled time leveling with pseudo 5 link gloves, but later on many nodes are close to useless.

The MoM branch is good for a higher effective healthpool, the rest is shit for the build (later on).

The extra totems are really bad since it just decreases the singletarget dps a lot and even for clearing. I wouldn't use iz at all (tested it... and its shit).

So if you wanna try hierophant i would pick both nodes on the bottom, dmg on kill and the charge generation since the rest is useless later on.

the charge generation at least grants a higher chance to trigger Elemental Overload and some endurance charges from time to time.

Devoted Illumination would be my first node, but respecced once a 5 lonk is aviable

Awesome, Milky. Thanks a lot for the quick and detailed answer to my questions!

I'll be sure to check out those ziggy videos you mentioned. The uniques I listed as "too expensive for me on a cheap league starter" were only the ones that I knew were costly, but you have put my fears to rest! I shall be starting 3.0 with this build, and actually noticed that just with the 14% from the Sovereignty cluster, that we could run the 3 purities, making it much easier to push damage on our gear, especially with the new mods you mentioned. I'll likely do your orb of storms with curse on hit setup that you suggested with 2 curses. EE, EO and 2 curses with 1 skill makes me drool :P I also really appreciated all the Path of Building links. I used this opportunity to really learn the software with those and they were super helpful.

Ah, here's a quick follow up for you (Yes, I've read the whole guide, a few times now actually :P) so I know your opinions on zerk vs chieftain, but I'm just curious - what will you be making for your league starter? I'm leaning toward chieftain myself, only for the reason that I won't have to deal with warcries to generate endurance charges since we have so much to do in a fight as is, the fire immunity and extra defense the totems will get should be worth the sacrifice for me.

I am not sure yet, with the buffed MoM the warcry refilling both hp and mana is pretty strong. However i wanna go for uber atziri/shaper early and in those fights i like to have long lasting totems to dodge their stuff easier, which speaks for the chieftain.

there are 2 weeks to think about it tho :p

currently i am having fun in turmoil with some sweep champion dude which i would like to recreate with currency made by rf totems :p

Right on, man. Hopefully you figure it out for yourself in those 2 weeks. I also wanna push some end game content and hopefully farm a bit in the first week or so, and I'm typically more casual than most people I see on the forums, so Chieftain it is for me!

Enjoy the rest of your Champ's turmoil and thanks again for the awesome, crazy detailed guide!

First of all, big thanks to Milkyslice for the detailed guide :) And now a quick question: is this buid viable without Elemental Equilibrium? I wanna try it as a starter build for the next league, and that means I'm gonna be using Ancestral Bonds. It also means that I won't be able to proc Elemental Equilibrium with OoS, and I absolutely hate the idea of using traps for that - it's just too many skills for me. So, if I do a minimalistic version of the build with Ancestral Bonds, RF totem as the main source of damage, decoy totem for bosses, a movement skill (haven't decided which yet) and OoS to trigger Elemental Overload and apply CoH, will it be viable? Or do I absolutely need to throw traps in the mix to trigger Elemental Equilibrium? Or maybe there's some other way to minimize the number of skills used while taking advantage of both Elemental Overload and Elemental Equilibrium?

And another question, while we're at it. You mentioned Scorching Ray several times in your guide. Can it be used as an active skill instead of OoS to trigger curses/Elemental Overload? Something like having Scorching Ray on your LMB and RF totem on your RMB, and placing totems first and then frying the enemies within the totems' AoE with the Scorching Ray to debuff their fire resist, apply Flammability and trigger Elemental Overload. Would a setup like that work?

"

Andizlack wrote:

Right on, man. Hopefully you figure it out for yourself in those 2 weeks. I also wanna push some end game content and hopefully farm a bit in the first week or so, and I'm typically more casual than most people I see on the forums, so Chieftain it is for me!

Enjoy the rest of your Champ's turmoil and thanks again for the awesome, crazy detailed guide!

thank you.

Chieftain is overall more relaxed while berserker is rewarding if you play perfect (totem cycling on bosses, using enduring cry when needed etc).

i am normally a lazy dude which makes errors :p

ele overload cannot be triggered by scorching ray.
It could use some cast while channeling on top, but thats even more clunky.

With the 3.0 bosslife buffs i highly recommend Ele Equilibrium since its a huge dps buff for singletarget.

You basically just use a trao on beefy essence monsters and bosses and nowwhere else, its not that bad ;)

The laziest way is to use Soulmantle and respecc ancestral bonds.

This way you still have 2 rf totems/1 rf + decoy and searing bond ofc and OoS will procc EE, EO and Curse enemys, all in one. Vaal lightning trap when its needed, but thats basically it!

ive got a playstyle section, if you read it you will notice that you will only use RF totems most of the time for mapping. The rest is only needed on bosses, some beyond duded and other stuff that survives longer than a second ;)

Hey DGTLDaemon, I'm with ya on wanting to do a relaxed playstyle and not wanting to deal with a ton of skills. That said, what my plan on doing is just what Milky suggested above: soul mantle for the +1 totem. That way I'll be able to do an orb of storms with curse on hit and 2 curses (assuming I don't need increased crit to reliably proc the EO), that I'll save just for bosses. I'll probably grab the +1 curse from the skill tree so I can run 2 Kikazaru's, but honestly, two RF totems should be enough for me since they don't stack and I'll have quite a bit of increased area. Another cool thing I'm planning to do with this to even further lazify my gaming (and gearing!) is take sovereignty and run the 3 purities. This should help me to add more uniques and not worry about resists, stuff like the Hrimnor's Resolve and Ngamahu Tiki.

Chieftain it is for me! With 3 types of totems (4 with decoy?), relying on orb of storms on bosses, and everything else, I don't want to even mess with warcries. I'll probably keep it on my bar just for panic'd endurance charge generation during long bosses, but other than that, I don't plan on hardly ever using it.

Edit: You know what, now that I think about it, planning on running the 3 purities like that would justify taking berserker a bit since that damage increase on elemental resists will hurt less... Milky, what do you think, is it possible to avoid most one-shots as a berserker with crappy gear and NO endurance charges up? I'm planning on running a basalt and granite (maybe a rumi's), one of which will most likely have another increased armour during effect mod.

Edit #2: DGTLDaemon, just to be clear, since we need orb of storms to proc EO anyway, combining that with 2 damage curses and EE makes my RF damage in path of building go from 139k to a crazy 461k. I only have the barebones setup gear wise just to give an idea of % scaling, but as you can see, this becomes an insanely powerful boost.

"

Another cool thing I'm planning to do with this to even further lazify my gaming (and gearing!) is take sovereignty and run the 3 purities. This should help me to add more uniques and not worry about resists, stuff like the Hrimnor's Resolve and Ngamahu Tiki.

sure why not, but resists are not a problem later on since the hardcap is reduced with kikazarus (153/4 instead of 169).

Never had resist problems except while leveling the first character ofc (where puritys help a lot). max resists are never bad tho.

ngamahu tiki has for me the problem that dex can be an issue, besides that its fine ;) If you can handle it i would think about biscos collar for mapping :p

adapt it like you want

@Milkyslice, Andizlack - thanks for you replies, guys :) Gives me something to think about. I really wanted to run this build as a low-budget league starter, so I wanted to avoid any mandatory uniques, but since Soul Mantle appears to be the best option... A couple more questions:

- The guide states that Soul Mantle build "Has to use curse removal flasks OR 2x Kikazaru". Does it mean that you never have to use curse removal flasks if you have 2x Kikazaru? I really don't like the idea of gulping a flask all the time :)

- Andizlack, you said: "I'll probably grab the +1 curse from the skill tree so I can run 2 Kikazaru's". What do you mean? You have to take the +1 curse node to equip two Kikazaru's?

- And finally, I know no one has a crystal ball here :) But based on past experience, what kind of prices for a 5-6 link Soul Mantle and Kikazary can be expected during the first couple of weeks of the league?