Ancestral Totems Dead? How do we think they'll implement the change?

Sadly, this is the kind of decisions GGG often gets wrong.

Ancestral Warchief and Protector gave you a combined buff of 20% MORE Attack Speed and 18% MORE damage, even more with the Vaal version. With Clustrel Jewel buffs and Panopticon, we're talking around 50% MORE damage and attack speed. That is in practice double the damage of any melee build. It goes without saying that all melee users felt forced to use them.

Now, will GGG give melee a 100% MORE damage buff? Of course not. I sadly suspect they won't be buffing melee at all, other than a few buffed notables on the tree, giving you a bandaid "increased damage" buff here and there. But it's pretty clear that they WILL remove the totems, or at least the buffs.

What should they do? Well, they shouldn't give melee a 100% MORE damage buff, that would be too much. But a 20-30% MORE damage multiplier across th eboard would be fair in my eyes. But one of the best actors in history said it best in one of the greates movies of all time: "This is just a shitty pipe dream".. They will sadly fuck this one up. And if not? Well, color me surprised.

I dont want to be the doomer in this thread BUT it will likely end up like this: ancestral totes get removed, instead you get 2 new warcrys, Warchiefs Cry - your next 3 STRIKE SKILLS deal 40% more dmg now , Hyriss Cry - your next 5 attacks have 20% increased attack speed

my reasoning for this is that ggg never gives something without taking something else, just look at bandits, they couldve left bandits as is and just change the passives the way it is, now you have 2 useless bandits for sc trade and ssf (not sure how it will be in hc) not even niche anymore as alira will always be worse from now on, even on leaguestart, and oak is "only" 40 hp, lifestackers maybe, but will never be better for average builds , so its 8% ms or another passive,

to come back to warcry/totem, ggg want you to use your sockets so you are forced to warcry now, thats my prediction, atleast warcrys dont die

sounds all bad and all, but dont worry, i am excited for the next league, i can handle nerfs, i was there when the auras got changed massivly and i will be there when totems got killed, i will still play because despite the nerfs, its an absolute banger game!

I predict totems getting a slight nerf and their buffs only applying to totems, not players. To compensate we get more damage from quality on weapons, changes to aura reservation and buffs to warcries.

I'm also feeling some Gladiator buffs but that is mostly copium.

id be happy if they got rid of it.

when i roll melee it's to be a badass, not to drop totems at every fight.

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Ulsarek wrote:

I predict totems getting a slight nerf and their buffs only applying to totems, not players. To compensate we get more damage from quality on weapons, changes to aura reservation and buffs to warcries.

So an overall nerf in the grand scheme of things? Because the only melee-specific change here, is warcries? I wonder how much they'll buff warcries to compensate for 30-100% more damage.

I swear, if warcries are their solution to overall melee I'm going to cry. Long and hard.

I just hope it's not some complex web of changes that results in an overall nerf. I don't want to have to invest more sockets, passives and masteries as this will ultimately restrict the freedom a build has and take from other aspects of it.

If it's a nerf, please let it be simple. And remember, nobody likes totems except those who make totem builds.

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Terspet wrote:

...instead you get 2 new warcrys, Warchiefs Cry - your next 3 STRIKE SKILLS deal 40% more dmg now , Hyriss Cry - your next 5 attacks have 20% increased attack speed...

This reads like you copy pasted from the official patch notes from the future. Truly terrifying

They will no longer be totems but become ancestral spirits that surround your character attacking nearby enemies while also buffing you.

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CanelayAzucar wrote:

All melee skills has some sort of "totem buff" relative to the skill
Added damage increased as well as percentages to scale
Most niche/particular skill tree nodes reworked to work more in a general sense as well as spell/elemental does
Nerf cleave/reave range because [TOMATO]
Nerf cyclone aoe and movement speed penalty because funny thanks for nerf! lord have mercy
Nerf Spark again because why not

You mean nerf Molten Strike Meme?

I don't think any general melee "compensation" is really needed, nor would it make much sense. These were something you only dropped during boss fights to make it go a little faster, for the typical melee user they were far from an integral part of their performance and just a little extra added "because why not." People feeling obligated to use them "because why not" has been a common frustration, so I expect the response here is to answer the "why not" question and provide a reason to not use them, like mana reservation as somebody else mentioned. I can't see them being fully removed or changed into something fundamentally different because there is MTX for them.

I would generally rather spend 20% longer killing a boss than pressing extra buttons to bring out a totem and keep it out, so I rarely used them to begin with and had no issues with that. Adding a reservation cost to them wouldn't feel like a nerf to me. If you had focused in totems and were using both of them with significantly increased effect, then you'd probably want to keep using them even with a mana reservation cost, maybe the totem themselves will be buffed to compensate for builds like that losing an aura, and/or maybe there is some QoL mechanic to auto-summon the totems so you don't have to keep dropping them like with Elementalists and golems.