Holy Flame Totem

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Mitch420 wrote:

You will also get it as quest rewards for Witch.

Oh wow, that's actually pretty neat. (now I have reason to get my Witch to Cruel...)

On a different note, I've finally got my hands on a Flame Totem skill, and I'm impressed.

Seeing how Faster Projectiles increases the range of Flame Totem, I believe my setup for this skill to be like this:

Flame Totem + LMP + Faster Projectiles + Iron Will

This will hopefully keep the cost down since Flame Totem + LMP already costs a whopping 96 mana. I also use Fire Traps to protect the totem, so double the fire! :D

Edit: I socketed Faster projectiles with Flame Totem, and I didn't really notice an increase in range. (Remained at 120 according to tooltip.) I thought FP should increase range, no?

Really like this totem but I feel it is currently too mana expensive to be worthwhile.

On a side note, are there any plans to make the flamethrower a skill gem? I would love to use something like that and it would go somewhat to countering freezing pulse in terms of AOE. Fireballs don't pierce by default and I feel my fire witch doesn't have the same 'kill a whole pack at 1 time' ability that my frost witch does.

Something like the flamethrower (i'm sure you can come up with a better name) could maybe be widened by area gem & length with faster proj...WIN!

I'll have to agree with lethal_papercut that the mana cost on Flame Totem is very high and for builds without a high pool of mana, this kind of skill is inhibitive for players to use them.

I feel like the starting mana cost should be somewhere around the 40-50 range instead of 62. In fact, Flame Totem is bar none the most costly skill ever made at lvl 1. That needs to be relooked at. (auras not included)

Understandably the functions of this skill should make it costly as the skill is quite unique for what it does. The problem, however, is that the life/duration of the totem is small and the pauses between each gout of flame is too long, making it very vulnerable to attack. If the two flaws are to remain, then the mana cost should go down. If these two issues were to be fixed, then the mana cost would be reasonable. Otherwise, this skill will see little use.

Reduction to damage from multiple projectiles support is not apparent on tooltip, probably because the support doesn't reduce it judging by the silly increase in damage output.

Spell damage and iron will bonuses work too, funny because they don't work for shockwave totem, not really logical.

I was thinking that Faster Projectiles would increase the range because the speed of the projectiles allow it to travel faster to its destination according to what was written in the Faster Projectiles page. Mark mentioned that since the speed of the projectile is increased, the original distance it would have covered with that speed is now increased with the same amount of time due to that speed.

But I believe you're right that the totem range might have to do with target acquisition than anything else.

And raic000 also mentions that the multiple projectile damage and # of projectiles isn't mentioned in the tooltip, which is also something I noticed.

I believe faster casting increases the rate of fire of the flame gout, but I need further testing to prove this. EDIT: this has been confirmed, Faster Casting Support increases the rate of fire the flame gout shoots at.

However, it doesn't change the fundamental issue that this skill is way too costly for what it does.

I've been primarily using this ability and have a bit of feedback.

Level: 45
Difficulty: Ruthless(nearly at the pyramid)
Class: Templar
Other Supporting Abilities: Fire Trap, Molten Shell, Elemental Weakness, Decoy Totem.

My Build:


My totem's support gems:

(Note: I switch between iron will and item quantity depending on my damage output at the time.)

I dual wield sceptres for the additional elemental/spell damage. My armor is pretty junky, I just use whatever has the right sockets.
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My tooltip says my flame totem does 376.5 dps but I'm fairly sure it's at least twice that amount when it's firing at point blank. I've noticed it does have a significant damage drop off when targeting enemies farther away from it though. At point blank range a rare enemy without fire resistance dies within seconds, while at maximum range even a normal skeleton archer can take several seconds to kill because so few of the projectiles reach it.

My flame totems easily kill enough enemies to justify their mana cost. I use three mana flasks and the only time I've ever ran out of mana flasks is when fighting exceptionally high hp rare enemies who have both hp regen and extra fire resistance. Most of the time I never use more then 1 and a half of the flasks.

However I also feel like lesser multiple projectiles is required to make the totem worth it's mana cost. Without LMP the totem does significantly less damage and has trouble killing enemies who near it, resulting in it getting stunned from being hit.

Unfortunately the totem has a pretty significant bug that causes it to randomly stop firing. In any area that has spider enemies the bug is VERY noticeable, making the totem almost never fire. In "The Weaver's Chamber" on ruthless I had to actually just give up on flame totem and start using other skills to kill things. During the fight with the giant spider boss the totems found it nearly impossible to target her. I had to use fire traps and molten shell to kill her because the totems just refused to fire.

The same thing happens in every other area with spiders too. In the vaal ruins level 1 the totems would just rarely fire, however once I got to vaal ruins level 2 and there were no spiders, they started working near perfectly again.

Overall I think flame totems are pretty balanced so far. You have to build around them and can't just randomly throw one out with any build. Once the targeting bug gets fixed I think they'll be an excellent skill to build on.

Great feedback, grogor. Please keep us updated as you start running maps. I would like to know this skill's end game viability. I know that the totem support suffers a huge dps loss in merciless, making it difficult to remain viable as a main cast.

I was working on a fire build when this skill was announced and was really looking forward to using this, but by the time it was released I respecced as a summoner and am now working on a stun master Marauder, and have a 2H ias Duelist planned for my next toon.. So I really appreciate the feedback :)