(Retired Thread) Wallach's Hierophant Freezing Pulse Totems

There is one more idea I remember from my arc totem character, gear that was fairly competitive to soul mantle but way cheaper initially.

Something like this but with cold instead of lightning:


You buy 6l shaped eclipse staff for few c, and essence craft it with +2 cold gems (shrieking essence is enough). You wanna hit some good spelldmg mods and power charge on crit, which grants 4% more damage per power charge. You can even roll chance for double damage, there is many good mods these staves can hit.
This opens use of rare chest with +1.5% crit, you can buy it, because links are in staff, links don't matter.
You can use whatever rings you want with that setup. You also drop Self-Flagellation jewel because we are not relying on damage per curse mechanic.
I remember for ARC this was very competitive dps to soul mantle at least early on. Especially for clear. On bosses, now when you can get +1 totem from shield, and another from soul mantle, additional totems will add up over time vs bosses and beat it I think.
Staff route is interesting option to get fast, instead of buying for example tabula rasa. You can even use non shaped staff and +1 gem essence, will already be decent.

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aerial wrote:

You buy 6l shaped eclipse staff for few c, and essence craft it with +2 cold gems (shrieking essence is enough). You wanna hit some good spelldmg mods and power charge on crit, which grants 4% more damage per power charge. You can even roll chance for double damage, there is many good mods these staves can hit.
This opens use of rare chest with +1.5% crit, you can buy it, because links are in staff, links don't matter.
You can use whatever rings you want with that setup. You also drop Self-Flagellation jewel because we are not relying on damage per curse mechanic.
I remember for ARC this was very competitive dps to soul mantle at least early on. Especially for clear. On bosses, now when you can get +1 totem from shield, and another from soul mantle, additional totems will add up over time vs bosses and beat it I think.
Staff route is interesting option to get fast, instead of buying for example tabula rasa. You can even use non shaped staff and +1 gem essence, will already be decent.

In 3.8 +X levels to gems is now a global mod that you cannot get from Essences. Also there is no way a staff even remotely close to that one is anywhere near as cheap as a Soul Mantle will be, that thing is insane.

I have a hard time seeing that base being "a few c" but if somehow it is I guess you could alt spam and pray for a lucky Regal to get the + gems and PCoC, then craft 1 more mod on it. This might be cheaper than a 6L Soul Mantle depending on the cost of the base and how lucky you are. Certainly an interesting alternative that is worth looking into depending on prices.

This staff obviously is very good, but you can get somethign way worse and it was still decent. When I crafted that it was cheaper than tabula, essences were cheap too.
Ofc as you said, many things changed since that version, so it is no longer that good. The whole trick was you could spam +2 gem crafts for like 3-4c at that time. And nobody played staves, I remember buying non shaped 6l eclipse staff 1st day for 6 chaos orbs. Couple of days later shaped ones got very cheap too.

Any changes in 3.8 ? buff, nerf ?

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

Excellent guide and build!

In your latest video, you mentioned tweaks. Here are mine, from some late Blight testing on PS4:

* The one flat-out ERROR in the guide is to support Steelskin with Increased Duration. Steelskin blocks a limited amount of damage and doesn't recover cooldown until duration expires; keeping a weakened Steelskin buff around longer actually makes you more vulnerable to damage, because it's increasing the delay before going back to full buff effect. Indeed, one might consider a Less Duration support, to more quickly dismiss a lingering buff and sooner return it to full strength.

Furthermore, you're deliberately underleveling ypur Steelskin setup to "combo" with Vaal RF, even though they should share zero supports; instead, delink from Vaal RF and IncDur and level Steelskin to max.

Hey thanks. I love posts like this, because it's cool to see how people think about build adjustments. I feel pretty strongly that anyone that picks up a build from somewhere engage in this kind of thinking to better fit the build to your play style.

I will say that I disagree on this point of Steelskin. While Steelskin has an effective damage cap, it also has a base duration of only 1.5 seconds. So even linked to a max rank Increased Duration, we can only extend this window to about 2.5 seconds. In the cases where we would have Steelskin naturally expire, regardless of how much buff effect remains, we know that no incoming damage occurred in the additional window, which implies that we're probably no longer in danger anyway. I think I prefer the slightly extended immediate window for Steelskin to find a hit to absorb (as well as the freedom to socket our cooldown skill here) than I would favor getting Steelskin back on cooldown slightly faster.

As far as the gem level conflict there, sure, we are giving up about 200 damage on the buff effect for that. Personally I find that acceptable for the gem link room but if you're already shuffling gems around, then sure, bumping back up to max rank makes sense. I actually just wound up removing Vaal Righteous Fire entirely for my 98-100 stretch in favor of Vaal Haste even though it was a weaker total damage increase, due to no longer having to consider the timing of when I hit the cooldown (in terms of safety). Use your own discretion.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

* The "Trigger a Socketed Spell when you use a Skill" crafted suffix for weapon should be at least mentioned as a play-preference option, and I would consider a hard requirement on console (where you are limited to 8 active skills and need to hold down "Shift" to access half of those). Frost Bomb and Purifying Flame (Consecrated Ground 100% inc crit chance generator) can both be automated this way for maximum single-target DPS, as can Cold Snap, which is particularly nice for random Frenzy charge generation and maintenance while clearing (because you don't have time for hard Snap casts).

This is a pretty neat idea. It's unfortunate that this is a suffix instead of a prefix, as I'd prefer to drop flat damage to cold spells from the multi-mod for this, but I think it'd wind up having to be global critical strike multiplier. Even then it seems like a pretty reasonable idea that would bring something like Cold Snap into play much more consistently.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

* I've been trying out Siphoning Trap with Bonechill, Hypothermia and Advanced Traps (eventually planning on a Shaped helmet to 5L Hypothermia and a level 4 Enhance). This allows for a Bonechill bonus above 10% (ground effects don't benefit from increased chill effect), up to 23% guaranteed chill with that 5L alone and scalable to the full 30% with boot/amulet/ring crafted suffixes and Flash Freeze via oils. It's utter trash for clearing, but great against the highest health targets, particularly those who start with a lengthy immobile invulnerable animation at the start of the fight (e.g. Izaro, map bosses based of Act bosses, Shaper). The big drawback was missed triggers due to boss mobility, but this will improve in Blight due to the huge cooldown recovery buff to Advanced Traps, making "whiffs" less punishing.

Yeah, there are certainly some damage increases to be had if you are willing to fit traps into your gem links. I've mentioned this in the past in regards to Charged Traps support being an option for Frenzy charge generation. I personally just don't care for leveraging traps in terms of moment-to-moment gameplay, but this sounds like another reasonable way to introduce traps into the build.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

* I think it's worth it to flat-out travel to Whispers of Doom (4 point path — an extra passive point and -15% curse speed isn't worth it for -2% cold resist and +2% freeze duration vs Shaper) for a 4L Bane setup with Enhance support. Although TBH I've just been using Windscreams as a relatively cheap boots DPS option — I'm not sure whether it's better to use Blight oils to get Whispers or just plain travel there.

Yeah, Whispers of Doom comes up a lot. I think one could argue you could even just replace the Cold Snap weapon link with a second CWDT curse and probably get good value out of it. My bigger issue with a second curse tends to be trying to rationalize it through a curse on hit function, which I often find too annoying in practice when it costs some kind of significant QoL on one of our other debuffs (like losing a bunch of radius for Frost Bomb or something).

I think if I was going to leverage Whispers of Doom I'd lean towards trying to get it through anointment, though from their table it does look like they're going to make you pay quite a bit for it (which is reasonable). Pathing to Whispers of Doom for 4 points feels pretty bad to me since you are going through two minors which have such low value compared to going the 5 point route (which is then harder to fit into the routing altogether). Still, a second curse is really powerful if you can work it into the gem links in a simple way... I feel like most of the time I drop the idea, it's because it's usually only an effective gain in boss fight damage, which I've talked about before as feeling pretty unrewarding to modify for in practice. For my part I'll probably consider it more seriously when the wider scale of content sees more adjustment relative to player single target DPS, which I think might happen in 4.0.

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

* Arcane Surge is fine on Flame Surge edit:Dash with Increased Duration (7 second Surge) and Faster Casting support, using the 51 mana breakpoint to trigger on a single cast. In a pair of Shaped gloves, Arcane Surge can share links with Vaal RF. I feel like you're working a little too hard for at best the equivalent of a single Frenzy charge, which is what 8 gemlevels of Arcane Surge is, especially since cursing is usually inefficient whereas clearing while Dashing at least once every 7 seconds should be automatic regardless of content.

You definitely aren't the only person who is comfortable running Arcane Surge on Flame Dash. For what it's worth, the linking of that to Frostbite (or Projectile Weakness) came from the other direction, in that I found it most comfortable to simply self-cast my primary curse in practice. After I came to that decision, it made more sense to link Arcane Surge there to get more effectiveness out of the buff. If you're already making considerations to where you want to get the curse application somewhere else instead of self-casting, I think it makes sense enough to move Arcane Surge over to Flame Dash.

Edit: Nvm. Longshot modified attack damage.

Although Longshot as an amulet anointment could provide lower damage closer to the totem and more damage further from the totem. The 20% projectile attack damage part is useless tho. Humm. Humm... Did you find that you were placing your totems beside packs or further?

You could use this tactically casting totems close to you creating a physical wall against non-piercing projectiles and still maintain damage (in fact greater damage than flash freeze if enemies are further away).

In the end probably best to stick with flash freeze. Even if we average the damage bonus of longshot it is still 20% and flash freeze is 24% + chill duration.

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Wallach wrote:

Hey thanks. I love posts like this, because it's cool to see how people think about build adjustments. I feel pretty strongly that anyone that picks up a build from somewhere engage in this kind of thinking to better fit the build to your play style.

You're welcome. :)

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Wallach wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

* The one flat-out ERROR in the guide is to support Steelskin with Increased Duration. Steelskin blocks a limited amount of damage and doesn't recover cooldown until duration expires; keeping a weakened Steelskin buff around longer actually makes you more vulnerable to damage, because it's increasing the delay before going back to full buff effect. Indeed, one might consider a Less Duration support, to more quickly dismiss a lingering buff and sooner return it to full strength.

Furthermore, you're deliberately underleveling ypur Steelskin setup to "combo" with Vaal RF, even though they should share zero supports; instead, delink from Vaal RF and IncDur and level Steelskin to max.

I will say that I disagree on this point of Steelskin. While Steelskin has an effective damage cap, it also has a base duration of only 1.5 seconds. So even linked to a max rank Increased Duration, we can only extend this window to about 2.5 seconds. In the cases where we would have Steelskin naturally expire, regardless of how much buff effect remains, we know that no incoming damage occurred in the additional window, which implies that we're probably no longer in danger anyway. I think I prefer the slightly extended immediate window for Steelskin to find a hit to absorb (as well as the freedom to socket our cooldown skill here) than I would favor getting Steelskin back on cooldown slightly faster.

The way I see it, Steelskin is for mitigating burst damage — basically multiple hits all in one instant. After a whole second, should already be flasked up. Considering that average human reaction time is 0.25 seconds to visual stimuli, 1.5 seconds should be plenty.

The one thing that doesn't flask is ES, and in hindsight I guess that is a consideration. I imagine it depends on some extent on how much ES is on gear, vs Armour. I think higher Armour in exchange for lower ES is preferred, but they'll be some ES regardless.

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Wallach wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

* I've been trying out Siphoning Trap with Bonechill, Hypothermia and Advanced Traps (eventually planning on a Shaped helmet to 5L Hypothermia and a level 4 Enhance). This allows for a Bonechill bonus above 10% (ground effects don't benefit from increased chill effect), up to 23% guaranteed chill with that 5L alone and scalable to the full 30% with boot/amulet/ring crafted suffixes and Flash Freeze via oils. It's utter trash for clearing, but great against the highest health targets, particularly those who start with a lengthy immobile invulnerable animation at the start of the fight (e.g. Izaro, map bosses based of Act bosses, Shaper). The big drawback was missed triggers due to boss mobility, but this will improve in Blight due to the huge cooldown recovery buff to Advanced Traps, making "whiffs" less punishing.

Yeah, there are certainly some damage increases to be had if you are willing to fit traps into your gem links. I've mentioned this in the past in regards to Charged Traps support being an option for Frenzy charge generation. I personally just don't care for leveraging traps in terms of moment-to-moment gameplay, but this sounds like another reasonable way to introduce traps into the build.

I concluded Charged Traps was non-viable in Legion after some brief testing. The problem with it is that the chance to Frenzy is quite low, so you have to use Traps constantly to prevent Frenzy charges from expiring, especially with no charge duration modifiers. Actually, worse than that, because you have to have the enemy trigger it, and with mobile enemies you're going to whiff often. This made Charged Traps a lot of work to keep a single Frenzy charge up only sometimes.

However, the Advanced Traps buff in Blight might make this viable (replacing Enhance), as the final cooldown of Siphoning will go from 3.2 seconds to 1.9 seconds in Blight. That's going from realistically 2 chances at 31% each, to 4 chances — that's going from a 52% sustain rate to a 77% one. That's perhaps enough to get 2-3 charges up, often enough, to satisfy.

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Wallach wrote:

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ScrotieMcB wrote:

* I think it's worth it to flat-out travel to Whispers of Doom (4 point path — an extra passive point and -15% curse speed isn't worth it for -2% cold resist and +2% freeze duration vs Shaper) for a 4L Bane setup with Enhance support. Although TBH I've just been using Windscreams as a relatively cheap boots DPS option — I'm not sure whether it's better to use Blight oils to get Whispers or just plain travel there.

Yeah, Whispers of Doom comes up a lot. I think one could argue you could even just replace the Cold Snap weapon link with a second CWDT curse and probably get good value out of it. My bigger issue with a second curse tends to be trying to rationalize it through a curse on hit function, which I often find too annoying in practice when it costs some kind of significant QoL on one of our other debuffs (like losing a bunch of radius for Frost Bomb or something).

I think if I was going to leverage Whispers of Doom I'd lean towards trying to get it through anointment, though from their table it does look like they're going to make you pay quite a bit for it (which is reasonable). Pathing to Whispers of Doom for 4 points feels pretty bad to me since you are going through two minors which have such low value compared to going the 5 point route (which is then harder to fit into the routing altogether). Still, a second curse is really powerful if you can work it into the gem links in a simple way... I feel like most of the time I drop the idea, it's because it's usually only an effective gain in boss fight damage, which I've talked about before as feeling pretty unrewarding to modify for in practice. For my part I'll probably consider it more seriously when the wider scale of content sees more adjustment relative to player single target DPS, which I think might happen in 4.0.

Even with only a single curse, Bane+Enhance is arguably the right call. Bane gives .5% Curse effect per quality, and Enhance also supports any curse Bane triggers. If you changed your gloves right now, then lowered ArcSurge until it triggered on two casts, you'd be trading 3% damage and cast speed of Surge buff for an extra -10% cold resist and 34% freeze duration on Frostbite (although enemies with 66% less curse effectiveness, e.g. Shaper, would limit that to -3% resists and 11% freeze duration). The freeze duration increase is slightly bigger if you have Atziri's Reflection.

Enhance+Bane is even stronger on ProjWeak, as it gets .5% increased projectile damage taken per quality. So if you're running Atziri's Reflection and no further Dexterity, that's an 87% Projectile Weakness, or 29% vs Shaper. That's 26% more damage vs cursed Shapers (assuming a 10% Bonechill from Cold Snap). Seems worth it for 4 passive points and moving ArcSurge somewhere else.

Instead of spending 4 points you could spend 5, but 10% increased effect when you already have 43% isn't worth it. Or just run Windshrieks, and save the 4 points too, while getting big curse AoE for QoL. I'm leaning towards just thinking that Windshrieks are better than rare boots.

What i dont understand is the second First Snow jewel when there is no 40 intelligence within radius.

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Sazzbot wrote:

What i dont understand is the second First Snow jewel when there is no 40 intelligence within radius.

It just has to be within radius, you don't have to have points invested in that Intelligence.

im having pain leveling this build ( even with reading the guide)
when do u think i should change to totems?