[3.16] Forbidden Rite Totem

So it seems like the majority of people on the ladder are using Wand+Shield. Poe.ninja says about 75% of people are Wand+Shield, while only about 20% are wand+wand. Can someone comment on why Wand+Wand is better? I'm only at mid yellows, but it seems like this build doesn't lack in damage at all, so wouldn't the defense from a shield be more beneficial?

"

spartanreborn wrote:

So it seems like the majority of people on the ladder are using Wand+Shield. Poe.ninja says about 75% of people are Wand+Shield, while only about 20% are wand+wand. Can someone comment on why Wand+Wand is better? I'm only at mid yellows, but it seems like this build doesn't lack in damage at all, so wouldn't the defense from a shield be more beneficial?

I use 2 wands. With FR you really don't need another totem (and qol is better) and dmg with two good wands is much better. We use all totem only on bosses and they already melt without +1 totem (including A8 Sirus).

I guess if you go block, you should use the shield, but i am playing t15+ and don't have any issues with survivability. Some one shots here and there, but shield and block (and no other known defense won't save u from that).

Any suggestions what to invest next, except Legacy belt.

"

spartanreborn wrote:

So it seems like the majority of people on the ladder are using Wand+Shield. Poe.ninja says about 75% of people are Wand+Shield, while only about 20% are wand+wand. Can someone comment on why Wand+Wand is better? I'm only at mid yellows, but it seems like this build doesn't lack in damage at all, so wouldn't the defense from a shield be more beneficial?

I personally diverged from this build by quite a bit and went max-block with glancing blows. (Rumi's Concoction helps here along with CWDT Tempest Shield). Can't really recommend this because I am no build maker. It works for me though.

Along with this, I switched to shield charge + fortify. I discovered something I find quite fun by doing that. There's this nice interaction between Soul Eater and Shield Charge. Since Soul Eater bumps your attack speed and Shield Charge goes faster with attack speed, you end up zooming through maps at incredible speed when your Soul Eater stack is up. So on top of doing a ton of damage you also move very quickly and smoothly through maps.

"

FrunkBear wrote:

Hello pro fr totem players.

Have low time this league, thus progressing slow and invested all in this build. Made this till this moment: https://pastebin.com/e2PwBjSh
Still can't do Sirus 8. What I did wrong? Can anyone help plz?

Nothing really. Keep upgrading, the Maven helmet without enchant only is 20-30c worth now, so you have space for aura ring + good magic ring. Next step is Zerphi's amulet which helps A LOT. And after all Sirus is more a mechanical rich boss, keep dying and train :-)

Couple things that have made me feel tankier and helped with survival that I haven't seen mentioned here before:

Forbidden Taste flask with a Savage Hit instill. I've got about 36% chaos res, and the flask will do about 1300 damage over four seconds, in exchange completely mitigating a nasty hit that easily could be a oneshot. I do run another health flask for general "I'm not topped up" moments, but this saves my life for the big ones. Basically never trigger it manually, it's entirely an automated "oh crap" button.

Lavianga's Spirit Mana Flask. Often when I do get myself in trouble, I'm stuck because MoM totally drains my mana and I can't dash or get a totem down. with Lavianga's, not only does my mana recharge very quickly, it also makes casts free during its use. So if I get in trouble, I can hit it and know 100% that I can dash/charge away, or get a totem down.

In addition, some stuff that's already mentioned:

Shrieking Bolts is pretty great for keeping stuff off you.

I run a shield, not really for block, but rather for +1 totem (that's 25% more damage by going to 5 of them!) along with being able to shield charge linked with fortify. No cooldown zipping through maps, plopping down a totem feels pretty good.

I'm sure I could trade some of that for more damage, but overall I like dying a bit less.

The challenge I had with shield charge and building a block/elusive build in general is bosses or hard solo mobs. I'd rather have totems that kill 50% faster and just dodge or run out of the way than chance it with a charge into the boss. I really wanted to stay true to the playstyle of the OP and it's working great. It took me a while to get over the fear of getting one shot but at 94 now, I don't really care about XP so as long as I keep portals up to complete the map, I'm good. I found QOL through understanding rage building using Sinvictas and setting my flasks to auto-use helped a bunch. I still need a few key items but that's only because I'm new to end game farming and have ~11ex so far. I bought a nice Zerphi's but to use it is going to require a ton of rework and planning since my dex/str are well below where they need to be, and the cost of jewels/gear with both on them is high, coupled with the fact that we have 5 gear slots locked with uniques that have zero or bad stats.

"

solomanstone wrote:

I found QOL through understanding rage building using Sinvictas and setting my flasks to auto-use helped a bunch.

How do you set up flask to auto use? How does it work? Every few seconds?

The way flasks work now is that you can use an instilling orb to set an implicit on the flask that activates it when something happens, e.g. you get frozen = activates your anti-freeze flask (and whatever other flask property). Check out my current flask setup for example. Its not 100% yet since I have more xp to do with it but very useful not having to smash flasks. I only manually hit 1/2 for life/mana.

Ok this is crazy :o I'm coming back after break for few leagues so this is new, thanks for information!