Searing Bond

not sure how far it'll go, but enfeeble and maybe temporal chains (for a "salt in the wound" effect). then of course the totem resistance support and the passives.

this results in 16% physical resistance, 46% (47% to fire or to all if +2 or +1/+1 lv gem mods) elemental resistance, the monsters deal 35% less damage and successfully hit less often, and monsters take longer to do stuff.

if someone with a max lv purity could test if totems take less damage from elemental damage, that would be nice even though i highly doubt they can get its effect. they only get effects of the three damaging auras because its on yourself and the related skills would have been able to use them.

I'm fairly sure that ones own resistances do not influence totems. As there is no aura that surrounds them when onesself or a party member with an aura approaches, ones auras probably do nothing.

I wish there were some way to know the actual specifics of the totem. "+x%" health really doesn't say much.

Can someone please confirm Totem Damage, and keys like Shamanistic Fury, do increase the burning damage from Searing Bond. Earlier in the thread, Mark stated Totem Damage nodes did not increase the burning damage from Searing Bond. This was because Searing Bond is a DoT.

With the updates, do the damage nodes now increase Searing Bond's burn damage?

Saw Tidez2013 said it does, but I'd like a second opinion since no one else confirmed this.

Totem Damage modifiers do work with Searing Bond now. I confirm.

If you'd like an explanation: You'll notice that in the post you refer to, Mark also mentions the refactoring of DoTs to benefit from generic damage modifiers scheduled for 1.0.2. That change has already occurred, in fact it predates the buff to the skill itself (which is the real reason why people have been discussing SB recently). Totem Damage is a generic damage modifier: It affects all damage that totems do, and Searing Bond is no exception.

Here's the formal post, for your information.

"

Non-specific "increased damage" modifiers will apply to damage over time. Type-specific modifiers will apply as well. For example, "increased fire damage" modifiers will apply to fire damage over time.

Awesome. Thank you much.

After taking my old searing bond character and respecing to use arc and searing bond combined, I really gotta say the skill is in a much better place than before. Especially with totem placement speed passives. I really hope this doesn't eventually get nerfed back down in some way beyond some scaling at early levels.

Meanwhile, it'd still be nice if there were more supports that worked well with SB. If the small AOE around the totem and player were given an AOE tag to allow for supports and passives to effect it, that'd be great. Though not necessary. Just great.

Currently levling a dual totem templar, i must say that this spell is ridiculous at this level, im pushing out 2.5k dps at level 40 basically one shotting everything, the only concern i have is the late game scale. I'm not sure how i can push out more dps since the only support gem this spell has is increased burning damage..
Hopefully they will scale it a bit better late and weaken it abit early but as it seems now i have to rethink a build for when i reach 60+


edit: Empower is a really nice addition to the spell, just takes a while to level

This skill gem seems to work very well with melee-centric characters. I'm currently using it on a Melee Splash/Infernal Blow Avatar of Fire witch, and I've got to say, it speeds up my mob kill times considerably.

Standard practice is to drop a SB totem behind me as I run into melee combat so I can take advantage the small degen AoE it places on my character. Using it this way protects the totem itself, ensuring that I get its full lifetime's worth of DPS, and it pumps out so much damage to everything I'm close to that even magic and rare monsters are generally dead within a few seconds of burn time. Against particularly tough monsters, act bosses, and rogue Exiles, SB has proven to be an excellent kiting tool as well, allowing me to drop one and then focus on dodging and flammability cursing while I keep the boss in the beam.

Overall DPS is just short of 4000 at the moment on a level 15 gem supported by a level 15 increased burning damage support and the fire/burning damage nodes in and just to the left of the witch tree. The AoF character itself is level 63, just about to push into Merc act 3, and its kill times are still pretty amazing. Will it be a viable end-game skill? Well, if used as a primary attack skill for a totem specialist I'm not so sure. When used to supplement damage output on a melee character like this, though, I can see it remaining useful forever.

"

Manfred_von_Wolfstein wrote:

Standard practice is to drop a SB totem behind me as I run into melee combat so I can take advantage the small degen AoE it places on my character. Using it this way protects the totem itself, ensuring that I get its full lifetime's worth of DPS, and it pumps out so much damage to everything I'm close to that even magic and rare monsters are generally dead within a few seconds of burn time. Against particularly tough monsters, act bosses, and rogue Exiles, SB has proven to be an excellent kiting tool as well, allowing me to drop one and then focus on dodging and flammability cursing while I keep the boss in the beam.

My approach is similar, although Searing Bond is intended to be my main skill. I'm basically playing as my Totem's tank using AA and (when I get a Cloak of Defiance) MoM. I use Arc and Lightning Warp to proc Elemental Equilibrium. For enemies particularly annoying for totem survivability (like Arcmages) I'm currently using Flameblast, though I might switch to something that is more single-target and demands less time standing still like Fireball.