[3.1] Volatile dead totems

This is my first time ever writing down a build I came up with, because mostly they don't work. This one does however so far, so I thought it might be interesting to see what suggestions people have for improvements.

The idea is simple enough:
- get totems to cast Volatile Dead
- get other totems to make sure there are corpses to explode using Unearth
- run around and try not to die

The build uses four totems, one extra comes from Soul Mantle and the other one from the Hierophant ascendancy.

Level 70 tactics:


At the moment I always do one Unearth then three Volatile dead and the Orb of Storms. It's hard to see, but I think this gets the best screen melting results (and stuff in range offscreen is also dead).

Gear and tree level 70-ish:


Current gear and gem links, level 86. Mostly small upgrades, but also a 5-link Soul Mantle now, yay! I also tried Kaom's Roots, but I did not like how slow they made me.



Current skill tree, level 86

As said this is the first time I write something like this, so any suggestions are welcome.

Edit 21-12-2017: The character is level 86 now, updated gear and gem links and added current skill tree and tactics update.

Hi

I had the similar build in my mind, so after some google search I found your thread. Also did some modification on my hierophant (4 frostbolt/freezing pulse spell totem) to test a similar build. He is now modified to put 2 x uneart and 2 x volatile dead totems at the same time.

But according to my observations, maximum number of volatile dead orbs summoned is limited to 9-10 or so. Have you noticed a similar thing?

Fun to see someone else try this! It's still working well for me up to T10 maps at the moment (highest I found so far), Uber Labyrinth was a piece of cake once I finally found the last trial.

It's a bit difficult to see, but I'm pretty sure that I get more than ten orbs at a time. Corpses are consumed as fast as they are created I think. Also I'm generally only putting down one Unearth at the moment because that seems to be enough and there's a maximum of ten corpses for Unearth anyway (I replaced the added fire damage on unearth with faster casting).

hmm no additions in a while, looks like this is a failed build.

Surviveability, doesn't look promising. Seems like it would be a
super glass cannon, if it could get to be a cannon at all.

You're right. I'm stuck at T13 and not going anywhere with this build, damage is good, but survival isn't. Apart from a decent pool of life and energy shield, there's not much defense. And it's not enough for the dificult stuff.