[3.2] Penta-Totem Ball Lightning Hierophant (3M Shaper DPS)

With indigon and the Aura Buff is kind of big Problem

is hard to substain 5 Totem yet alone 2 totem along need spam with mana pots

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I keep getting 1 shotted by anything y mostly anything ranged, 5k life and 2k, i really dont understand how you guys make your builds work, but this is a squishy build, good damage, ut you are at risk everytime you wanna drop a totem. even with high health and all that,i tryed mostly anything, i have alot of currency and bought plenty of gear, matter of fact my updrages would be to spend exs for 10plus life or 10 plus ES so yeah. careful with this build.


EDIT: forgot to add, its amazingly hard to keep up with mana with MoM most of the time i do something i have problem placing totems because my mana gets drained.
Last edited by Simonizer#7077 on Mar 12, 2018, 12:59:09 PM
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Simonizer wrote:
I keep getting 1 shotted by anything y mostly anything ranged, 5k life and 2k, i really dont understand how you guys make your builds work, but this is a squishy build, good damage, ut you are at risk everytime you wanna drop a totem. even with high health and all that,i tryed mostly anything, i have alot of currency and bought plenty of gear, matter of fact my updrages would be to spend exs for 10plus life or 10 plus ES so yeah. careful with this build.

EDIT: forgot to add, its amazingly hard to keep up with mana with MoM most of the time i do something i have problem placing totems because my mana gets drained.


Get 2 x Kikazaru topaz rings to counter the curses. Soul mantle without a form of curse negation will not work.

Level up Immortal Call and Cast When Damage Taken - you actually have endurance charges to benefit from. My Immortal Call is level 12 and CWDT is 10. And actually link it to Increased Duration. You can link Enfeeble there as well. In fact I got Conviction of power as my second ascendancy in order to get the 2s immortal call.

A Shield Charge linked with fortify can help as well. A Granite Flask of Iron skin (increased armor) can help.

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pro2017 wrote:
With indigon and the Aura Buff is kind of big Problem

is hard to substain 5 Totem yet alone 2 totem along need spam with mana pots


Then don't use Indigon or work on getting mana for it.
For example:
get clarity (might have to give up wrath)
mana flasks
drop elemental focus, work on getting a good chance to shock and get mind of the council(and get more resists from the skill tree).

In any case this build will not be able to face tank. The MoM and the other defenses of this build are not an all purpose "make me tanky" thing. They are just in case you get hit. Try to not get hit and your will not have mana problems. You kill the monsters from a distance. Don't stay in one place. Before combat starts, place multiple totems and after it starts, just place one or two totems (and/or cast Conductivity) and move. The monsters should attack your totems and golem. By doing this you shouldn't have any problems until end game content.

For early game, ball lightning is really bad, damage is very low. Replacing it with Arc (for map clearing and optionally with Storm Call for bosses) will feel much better. Later (after getting AoE and or enough projectile speed reduction) it should be really good for bosses though I am not so sure about clearing.

There is a calculator for Ball Lightning hits here
Having in mind that with Illuminated Devotion you get +25% increased AoE, to get the maximum 15 hits (on a 2 radius enemy), you can either get the -30% (or -45%) ball lightning projectile speed enchant and the Slow projectile speed support (at least level 11). Or the +12% ball lightning Area of effect, the whole Amplify cluster passives(3 points) and level 21 slower projectiles.

I also think that if you have high end gear (most importantly the Shimmerons) going for the third power charge is the way to go and you can get rid of elemental focus and work towards shock chance. With these two changes, the damage gets pretty high.

On paper the damage is: PoB Dps * 5 (totems) * Number of BL hits (15 max) (the logic is not that, but the result is the same provided you get at least 5 hits).
That is like 40000 * 75 = 3M dps. With some changes to the tree(trading defense for offense) it can go over 7M dps (on paper). But that is theoretical, against an enemy that is not moving, whether it works and whether you can actually apply that damage remains to be seen. Having said that keep in mind that Path of Building still does not work with some of the latest changes and it does not display the benefits of Illuminated Devotion correctly, so theoretical damage is yet higher.
Last edited by spiwn#1874 on Mar 12, 2018, 2:43:06 PM
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Simonizer wrote:
I keep getting 1 shotted by anything y mostly anything ranged, 5k life and 2k, i really dont understand how you guys make your builds work, but this is a squishy build, good damage, ut you are at risk everytime you wanna drop a totem. even with high health and all that,i tryed mostly anything, i have alot of currency and bought plenty of gear, matter of fact my updrages would be to spend exs for 10plus life or 10 plus ES so yeah. careful with this build.


EDIT: forgot to add, its amazingly hard to keep up with mana with MoM most of the time i do something i have problem placing totems because my mana gets drained.


Ok I looked at your build, you really need to buy two Kikazaru rings. The catch of the Soul Mantle is that you get a random level 20 curse put on you every time your totem dies or expires. Really need that 80% reduced curse effect for this build to work well. Additionally if you are still feeling squishy, I'd spec out of Ritual of Awakening and spec into Divine Guidance. Once you unlock your uber lab then take ritual of awakening again. Gives you a lot of mana and upgrades your MOM from 30% damage to mana to 40% mana. That should take care of your squishy feeling. Consider picking up Deep Thoughts on the passive tree it's a really good node for MoM builds.

Maybe you want to keep two ring slots, I see that you are using a shield. You can look into the Atziri's Reflection that makes you uneffected by curses. But yeah your squishy because you are not mitigating those curses.

As for sustaining mana, that is a bit of an issue for me if I get walloped by a boss or a red mob but i mainly have great mana sustain. I have a lvl 13 clarity on to help me with that.

Hope this helps.
Last edited by Fenndor#2418 on Mar 12, 2018, 2:49:32 PM
My build so far is working as a charm... will make some videos too...soon :D I think OP is concentrating in his lightning tendrils alternative, might make a guide of my own which is based on this setup soon
Last edited by TheoZ777#2209 on Mar 12, 2018, 3:52:46 PM
I'm super confused -- where are you getting 3mil dps from? none of the average hits or total dps are indicating this, even with totems forced on.

I guess I don't really understand a mainly text-based guide.
"Bonus points if it is Scion/Witch because they have nice knees. Ranger has ugly knees and other characters are men so playing them would be homoerotic." - CAKE, 10/20/21
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TheoZ777 wrote:
My build so far is working as a charm... will make some videos too...soon :D I think OP is concentrating in his lightning tendrils alternative, might make a guide of my own which is based on this setup soon


Can you give access to your characters or share a PoB?
check my profile it's all there.. still testing obviously haven't leveled up yet but been doing T12s already without any problems... you need the 30 dex node it's a must have unfortunately.. will focus now on area of effect nodes I think.. The low dps numbers don't tell the truth with ball lightning spell. I tried the lightning tendrils one, it gives more "dps" but actually those slow moving balls I think they do as much or even more.. the dps shown to me are very little but thing is that each little ball does that dps so they add up making a very nice damage (but can't prove it with numbers) it's just how ball lightning balls work.
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TheoZ777 wrote:
check my profile it's all there


I dont see a characters tab in your profile
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darciaz wrote:
I'm super confused -- where are you getting 3mil dps from? none of the average hits or total dps are indicating this, even with totems forced on.


Calculating the dps of Ball Lightning is different from most other things, so neither the tooltip in game, nor PoB show the truth.

In order to do that we must understand how Ball Lightning works:
Spoiler
The spell launches a projectile(a ball) that travels in a straight line with a constant speed, that "pierces" through enemies. The ball exists for 3 seconds. Every 0.2 seconds the ball deals damage to all enemies that are close enough to it (within its radius). If you have multiple balls (from different casts) that are close to the same enemy, they will all hit it.

What PoB shows as Dps is the dps if you had 1 totem and each Ball Lightning hits an enemy only once.


There are four things that you have to consider when figuring the theoretical dps:
1. The average hit damage
2. The number of totems
3. The number of balls of lightning that will exist at the same time, hitting the same enemy (being in range of it)
4. The number of hits each ball lightning will do on the same enemy for 1 second (since we are calculating damage per second)

If you multiply all the above you will get your total theoretical dps:
<Average Hit> * 5(totems) * 6 (balls) * 5 (times/second)
So if you average hit is 25000, you get 25000 * 150 = 3750000

Explanation:
Spoiler

Now to explain how we get those numbers:
The first one is easy, just look at PoB (not 100% accurate at the moment, but close enough). For the example let the average hit be 25000.
Second one -> 5 totems (1 base, 1 from Ancestral Bond, 1 from Soul Mantle, 2 from Ascendencies)
Third one is where it gets wierd. First we must figure out how long each ball of lightning will stay in range of the same target. For that we can use this spreadsheet. The number we are looking for is "Dps duration per cast" (or approximate it by multiplying 0.2s times the "Hits per cast"). The maximum is 3 seconds. So we have to figure out how many more balls of lightning we(or our totems) can cast in those 3 seconds. To do that, take the cast rate of Ball of Lightning of your totems and multiply it by 3 seconds. So if you have 2.0 casts per second cast rate. And 3 seconds of "Dps duration per cast". You get 2 * 3 = 6. So each of your totems will cast Ball of lightning 6 times before the first one disappears ( or gets too far away).

The forth number is easy as well. Ball of lightning hits 5 times a second.
Spoiler

Side note:
If your ball of lightning travels too fast or is too small (or both) it might not be within range of the enemy for a full second. This is when "Dps duration per cast" is less than 1 second. If that is the case then substitute 5 with the "Hits per cast" number (it will be less than 5).


So in other words if your totems have 2.0 cast rate of BL. Each of your totems will have 6 BLs existing at the same time, hitting the same target. Since you have 5 totems, you will have 30 BLs hitting the same target at the same time. And since BL hits 5 times a second, you will get a total of 30 * 5 = 150 hits per second. If you your average hit is 25000, then your theoretical dps is 3750000 (3.75M).

To simplify this we can represent it as PoB Dps * 5 (Totems) * 5 (hits per second) * 0.2 (BL damage time) * 15 (Ball Lightning Hits per cast) = PoB Dps * 5 * 15 (BL Hits per cast)

And that's it.

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