[3.21]Dconnic's Forbidden Rite Totem Hierophant

For the defensive Layers there are alot of moving parts so I'll do my best to explain them but when you have them in place you can do things like eating Shapers slam like I do here https://www.twitch.tv/videos/1810080620
The first layer you'll have access to as a Hierophant is Mind Over Matter(MoM), this increases your health pool by 40% if you have enough mana to take the damage. we're gonna be taking Arcane Surge from "Arcane Blessing" ascendency and 10% damage recoup as mana along with 2 kikazaru's to give ourselves enough mana regen to sustain totems as well as serve as a pseudo Life regen to soak up damage

Then we get 4 endurance charges for free from ascendency which equates to 16% physical damage reduction and 16% elemental resistances.

Immortal Call - We take immortal call on a Cast when damage Taken (Anomalous quality for duration) for a further 35% physical damage reduction, and 36% elemental damage reduction(both are less multipliers so very powerful)

Now we have decent reductions but we can still get One shot to prevent Cast when damage taken from proc'ing. To combat this we go our most important Anti-One-shot layer before progenesis(And it honestly makes progenesis optional and not at all mandatory) the unique flask Forbidden Taste with "Use when you take a Savage hit" enchant, a savage hit being described as a hit that removes 15% of your max life.
You might then wonder why we take a flask that makes us degen 25% max life as chaos damage/sec for 6 seconds and how we even survive the flask effect let alone the one shot. To explain I will use an example, Lets ignore the degen for now and focus on how the flask works. In an instant you recover 100%(max roll) of your max life, if you have 4k hp and say you take a 6k hit, you should die but in the same game tick it reads as a savage hit and uses the flask healing you for 4k which essentially makes you eat that 6k hit with 8k hp survivng with 2k left to regen also activating immortal call after for damage reduction making you very tanky for the next 2 second giving you time to reposition or react.
Now for dealing with the chaos degen on even -52% chaos res like my character has we are using a templay hidden ascendancy named Searing Purity which grants "45% of Chaos Damage taken as Fire Damage, 45% of Chaos Damage taken as Lightning Damage" giving us 90% chaos damage taken as elemental damage also giving us a near poison immunity as coverted damage do not contribute to poison damage. We allocate this ascendancy with forbidden flesh/flame combo which once allocated makes the degen from the flask hit get reduced by elemental resistance and immortal call, when paired with life regen from out build we heal up very quick but you might also experience your mana not refilling fast enough during this period which leads us to our next mechanic.


Vaal Clarity is rarely used but very useful in certain situations, because we use MoM we can sometimes end up in situations where we just have 0 mana and because we are taking damage we cant regen it but we also cant cast spells, that is when to use Vaal Clarity as it makes your skill cost no mana for it's duration allowing us to place taunting totems to draw fire from ourselves and regen mana as well as actually dpsing and killing them, You know what they say a good offense is the best defence.

Life Regen - we get most of our life regen from our double Kikazaru ring setup giving us over 600hp per second at level 100 along with curse immunity while allowing us to still receive curses for more damage with Self flagellation. We also look for more life regen on gear as we use 10% of life as cost with the "+1 level of chaos skill gem" Chaos mastery Node

Curse Immunity - Because of the downside of Soul Mantle we want to make sure we have at least 100% (150% if you have coward's legacy belt) reduced effect of curses which we get from double kikazaru rings and 30% from either a jewel or pantheon(jewel being the preferred method as you can also get crit and spell damage with this)

Evasion and Spell Suppress - When the above layers are in place we opt upgrades with spell suppression and evasion, because we already have damage reductions for phys and elemental damage we instead want to focus on avoiding hits and reducing spell damage further rather than spec'ing into armor, you do not need 100% spell suppress with the lucky spell suppress mastery which gives you more suppress chance when on the lower side of suppress chances. If you do get to 80-100% suppress chance you want to switch the mastery to Ailment immunity and switching up your flask Ailment immunity and/or pantheon.

Totems - The most underrated defensive layer of the build would have to be having 6 totems with taunt chance, capped elemental res, 70% chaos res, 2.3k-3k hp each drawing fire from you and giving you 6% life regen and 3% mana regen while up through ascendency.

Soul Mantle - This should be your first upgrade goal as the spell totem mod frees up a support gem slot for more damage

Totem Life - Early on the most cost efficient damage scaling you can get would be totem life as this also scales forbidden rite's damage allowing us to take ironwood as our first Amulet anoint which is very cheap to get

+1 totem Shield - Increases our max amount of totem by 1, which allows us to have 6 Fr totems

Coward's Legacy - This belt gives us a very big powerspike when used in conjunction with Pain Attunement permanently giving us a 30% more spell damage multiplier at the cost of 50% increased effect of curse which we have to account for in our defense section.

Self-Flagellation - When paired with curse effect immunity and soul mantle gives us a 10-20% increased damage mod whenever any totems die (replacing totems also counts as totem death).

Rain of Splinters - According to the community you can only have about 5 overlapping projectiles deal damage reliably to single targets so we run with Volley support gem till we get this damage spike then we switch from Volley to awakened added chaos damage

Medium Projectile Cluster Jewel - Getting shrieking bolts and repeater will also be a decent damage spike as well as allowing your totems taunt even after being spawned

Militant Faith Timeless Jewel - Getting this allows us to pick up the notable passive Inner conviction which gives us 15% more spell damage with 5 power charges. Note: you do not want a version which overwrites any allocated passive completely

Level 30 Forbidden Rite - You can get this in many ways, recommended is level 21 Fr, +1 mastery, +2 wand, +2 amulet, +4 soul mantle. Other sources include +1 shield

Righteous Fire- Adding RF to this build is strictly for it's more spell damage multi which ends up being really high and a good add when looking for more damage, keep in mind with this you should unspec from MoM and follow the skill tree for RF and Switch the Skill section too

Large Cluster Jewel- getting one of these with any of the 30% increased chaos damage node passives in a bottom node is also pretty good for our damage too (biggest passive node for damage is Unholy Grace)

For bossers consider getting a despair on hit wand, whispers of doom anoint and punishment/assassin's mark self cast.