Ranged Attack Totem

Its truly a restriction in the use of the support gem - but logical: spells are magic and dont need any specific thing (beside mana) to be casted... but you (of course) need a weapon to determine the damage of attacks, and this means to have a bow equipped for (this) ranged attack skills.

Only possible solution would be to have inherent damage values on the support gem, but I doubt this will happen.

I've been playing a Puncture totem Marauder. The idea was to use Chance to Flee and the fleeing effect from burning status to keep enemies milling around so that the totems would switch targets often and Puncture multiple enemies. I chose Marauder for easy access to the extra totem, burn duration, and buff/effect duration passives.

Things aren't going very well. The crowd control aspect is somewhat successful but the totem performance is disappointing. The speed and damage penalties of the totem support, combined, completely kill the effectiveness of any skill it's used with. One or the other would have been more than sufficient. In the case of my build, the speed penalty prevents the totems from switching targets as often as they need to and the damage is too anemic to kill an enemy before the Puncture expires. Every one of the skills that I'd intended to use as support (e.g. applying burning with Fire Trap) completely eclipse the totems themselves.

I think you need to decide whether totems should be useful as primary damage dealers or merely to supplement traditional builds. If you intend for us to really build characters around this support gem, then you need to remove one of the penalties or reduce both. Additionally, you need to reduce the level requirement to around 19. There is no good reason to make us wait until level 31 to use a build-defining support.

Thanks for reading.

the 50% as reduction is definately overkill.

Just started using this. Pretty useless, and imo the second worse gem in the game. Only reason Haste trumps this is because it has an excessively prohibitive mana reservation for little benefit.

The double whammy means I can't even use this for crowd control, it attacks so slowly that I've found I do better not wasting my time casting it and instead just kite. It does so little damage the status effects don't last long at all. I wager I'd do better with Spell Totem + Arctic Breath than I would with this + Ice Shot, at least it'd cast the spell again before the ground ice dissipates.

41 Ranger, have been using the totem for the last 10 Levels. I am actually very, very happy with the way the totem has been implemented. Combined Lightning Arrow + Totem + Lesser multiple projectiles, and found both the damage output and the rate of fire quite worthwhile (I tend to use fast-firing bows, if that affects the totem).

Granted, several other combinations did not really work out for me (e.g. explosive arrow), but given the low manacost and fair casting speed it has become my favorite skill.

The biggest limitation, so far, is the lack of accuracy. Totems will rarely hit moving targets with a single projectile, so you might want to pick multishot/aoe skills. Also keep in mind that the biggest bonus of totem is its infinite mana pool, so the more support gems you stack in there, the better.

that would mean poison arrow will get good use via totem.

I'm disappointed :( The gem uses your current bow, I would have liked it using the bow you're using at the time of casting, so that you can swap for another bow while the totem is still using the first one...

For some reason when I try linking in a ranged attack tote skill gem, my character casts the spell instead of summoning a totem that casts it.

Spell?
You'll need a spell totem for that.
This Totem is indeed for ranged attacks.
We still lack a melee attack Golem^^
As far as I know, Poison Arrow and RoA don't work with this yet.