Level 53, But Clueless on Ancestral Warrior Totem

I'm a level 53 Warrior and finally got a level 13 skill gem to use. I decided to try out Ancestral Warrior Totem since I haven't used any minions to this point. after setting it up and taking it out to test it in battle, the thing does absolutely nothing (literally). It might as well be my pet rock because all it's good for at this point is wasting a little mana. I have been (and will continue to be) a two-handed mace wielding Titan. Is it possible to even use this minion skill with my build? I'm not sure what I'm doing wrong. Thank you for any info or feedback anyone can provide! 😊

You need to add a mace skill to your Ancestral Totem gem (like a support gem) in order for it to use the attack. I would suggest either Molten Blast or Sunder. Don't expect it to do much without proper investment though.

If you wanna use Ancestral Totem effectively you will have to spec into it pretty heavily, you can't just slap it on any warrior build and expect it to work. In order to start a totem build you need at least the following things:

Ancestral Totem uses its own weapon that scales with the level of the gem. This means that almost all stats on your weapon are useless. The main stat you want on your weapon is +x to level of all Melee Skills.

Aside from that you need to get more totems from your skill tree. There are 2 nodes which increase the number of max totems by 1. If you get both of those that effectively triples your totem's dps.

Most importantly think of what you are trying to do with your build and commit that. Doing one thing really well is much better than doing alot of things poorly.

@Bardharr#3094 Thank you for the thought-out response, much appreciated. I don't want to commit many (if any) points into the passive skill tree to transform my build into a duel-wielding pet caretaker. 😉 I thought it might work if I could use it as a little more DPS to my very "Grok"esk build, sounds like that isn't a real viable option though. Thanks for the input, I guess I'll try out the other level 13 gem skill...Hammer of the Gods. 😏

@Bardharr#3094 Actually, I'm gonna test out the Ancestral Warrior Totem one more time with a level 12 Molten Blast & Persistence (40% longer duration of skill). Is that what you would pair with Molten Blast? Is there anything else you would recommend more to pair with it?

*edit* Would "Heavy Swing" be a better pairing you think?

As a dual-wielding pet caretaker myself I take offense to that statement ;)

Better to add some damage rather than duration to it. Heavy swing won't work because Molten Blast is actually a ranged attack, so melee damage supports won't affect it. Adding Fire Infusion, Primal Armament, Elemental Focus or Martial Tempo would be a place to start. Martial Tempo Is probably the best of the four of them, I don't know which of these you are already using in other skills however.

The actual time for the totem being out and fighting for me felt too short, so I ended up trying out that 40% extra time gem. So far things are going as well as I could have hoped I guess. The only thing slowing me up is finding a new "comfortable" rotation when sh...stuff starts hitting the fan. 😉

i play shockwave totem, level 87 currently ,

ancestral with sunder + conc effect + 25% phys to cold is enough to oneshot most of the normal monsters in t14 maps, my gems are level 30 ( 18 + 6 weapon + 2 amulet +2 gloves )

curious to see how much damage then do with a 6 links :)

I also ran in the same problem, i got rage, font of rage,persistence on ancestral warrior totem but it is not auto attacking like i have seen the totem do for other people. What am i doing wrong?

Again, you need to link a mace skill to Ancestor Totem in order for it to attack with that skill. Also, if you want to use Font of Blood/Rage you're better off linking it to Earthshatter since the spikes it creates can't be destroyed by enemies.