[3.22] (Dead in 3.25) Forbidden Rite Totems Chieftain | 20 Mil+ Pinnacle DPS

------------------------ 3.25 Update ------------------------
The Arohongui ascendancy notable from Chieftain got removed so this build isn't possible anymore.

Hierophant and maybe Occultist are now the only options for Forbidden Rite totems but probably not nearly as tanky.
-------------------------------------------------------------------


Explanation

In 3.22 Chieftain got reworked and gained "Recoup 25% of Damage Taken by your Totems as Life". Recoup works on hit damage and since the damage taken from Forbidden Rite counts as a hit we fully benefit from it.

By stacking totem life tattoos, using a Forbidden Shako with lvl 30+ spell totem and allocating some totem wheels, we get extremely high totem life.

On my build the totem's life is 20771 and thus the totems get hit for 6646 damage after chaos resistance. With 4 totems and 1.93 cast rate, we end up having 6646 ⋅ 0.25 ⋅ 4 ⋅ 1.93 = 12826 life recouped over 3 seconds (using the recovery mastery) which means 12826/3 = 4275 life per second.

Well what do we do with all this recoup?

We use Anomalous Petrified Blood which is a great defense layer that also allows us to be low life and thus use Pain Attunement from a keystone tattoo.

We also use Rathpith Globe which gives us a lot of damage, even more than a perfect +1 totem shield.

Any other defenses?

As a Chieftain we get 90% max elemental res, 68% phys taken as ele (or 83% with Taste of Hate) and a decent life pool.

On top we use Spirit of Kaom tattoo which gives "15% of damage from hits is taken from nearest totem's life before you" for 12 seconds when a totem dies near a unique enemy (resummoning counts as the totem dying so we will have the buff up).

This Spirit buff gets 20% increased effect per Ngamahu tattoo and with 26 allocated Ngamahu tattoos it means we get 93% of damage from hits taken from nearest totem before us for the first 12 seconds of every boss fight.

If everything fails and you are in danger then summon a totem and distance yourself from the enemy. The totems will taunt the enemy, like a decoy totem would.


How is the playstyle?

Our totems can survive about 4 self hits which means we regularly resummon them, getting totem chaos res would lower our recoup and leech doesn't help them much.

So we shield charge around, cast despair, summon totems and make sure we have mana flask up to cast haste. Remember we need a totem to attack to get the recoup so don't jump in packs of enemies and then summon, summon first instead.

Not completely mindless playstyle but easy to get used to.


Can I league start this?

No, Forbidden Shako is necessary for this Chieftain version. Without it the recoup will be minuscule in comparison.

A Hierophant or Occultist version with Soul Mantle could work early on but the defenses will be questionable.

If you really want to league start this, start with a flamewood build instead and switch when you get the shako.


Is it cheap?

Sort of.

The most expensive necessary item will be the Forbidden Shako. For mine I paid 6 div because it also has Cruelty. However the prices have increased since then and the market is limited so prices will vary.

I am also using an Unnatural Instinct jewel, if you can't afford it you can sacrifice some life passives and allocate max fire res tattoos instead.

Other than that I am also using a Progenesis flask which in my opinion is optional and isn't needed, I just had extra currency and decided to use it. You can use Taste of Hate instead.

Finally there is also the keystone tattoo gamble, you can get lucky and get Pain Attunement after a few tries but you can also be down 30 divs and not get it. If you don't want to bother gambling for it you can it ignore it or you can replace Lightning Coil for a Skin of the Lords with Pain Attunement at the cost of survivability. The following keystone tattoos are also usable: Eldritch Battery, Glacing Blows, Solipsism.

The rest of the gear is cheap or can be crafted easily.



Video Showcase

Minotaur Map: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wWuA-PVRZa0

Shaper: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4lV18WMHLpI

Veritania (with and without Pain Attunement tattoo): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLpKVrpjyY4

Facetanking Shaper Slam and Beam (without Spirit of Kaom)


Facetanking Shaper Bullet Hell (with Spirit of Kaom)


Path of Building

Updated Version: https://pobb.in/efaFa_a4faoO (Similar damage, more QoL and eHP)

Old Version: https://pobb.in/P3CrdnXe79mU

I have set wither stacks to 15 because Balance of Terror grants us wither on hit and with 4 totems with 5 projectiles each they will hit the wither cap instantly.

Gear Explanation

Gear


Helmet


Forbidden Shako with level 30+ Spell Totem is necessary. Totem life scales a lot with gem levels.

For secondary support gems the following are good but make sure to check PoB: Void Manipulation, Hypothermia (if you run skitterbots), Increased Critical Strikes, Faster Casting, Cruelty, Culling Strike (remove it from shield charge), Faster Projectiles.

Do not take Sacrifice support, even as a regular level 20 gem it isn't worth it because Forbidden Rite has low added damage effectiveness and it will just make our totems die faster.


Weapon


Imbued Wand is preferred because of the low int requirement compared to other bases.

Get one with fractured T1 cast speed and slam "increased spell damage" essences till you get at least 2 of the following: +1 to Level of all Chaos Spell Skill Gems, +1 to Level of all Spell Skill Gems, 70%+ increased Critical Strike Chance for Spells, +25% to Global Critical Strike Multiplier, 34%+ increased Projectile Speed.

Alternatively get one with fractured T2+ increased spell damage and slam "increased cast speed" essences, note that this fracture tends to be more expensive.


Shield


Rathpith Globe gives a lot of damage and outperforms even the best +1 totem shield.

For corrupt implicit focus on: 8% of Physical Damage from Hits taken as Fire/Cold/Lightning Damage.


Gloves


Breathstealer with allocated Shaman's Dominion is the best item in slot in terms of damage, outperforming unnerve gloves (we already have a lot of increased damage taken on enemies through wither and shock from skitterbots so unnerve is weaker for us).

For corrupt implicit focus on: +(0.5-0.8)% to Spell Critical Strike Chance or (8-10)% increased Cast Speed.


Boots


The reflect damage from Torchoak Step triggers every time the totems self damage however don't expect this damage to do much, we don't invest in minus fire res on the enemy and it doesn't scale with spell damage.

These boots however have a lot of totem life, totem placement speed and are very cheap to get good corrupt implicits.

For corrupt implicits focus on: (8-10)% increased Movement Speed and +2 to Level of Socketed Aura/AoE Gems.


Body Armour


Lightning Coil provides a lot of physical damage reduction and since we don't invest in armour/evasion this is almost necessary.

Cloak of Flame is a very good alternative. It doesn't have minus lightning res and instead has added fire res so it allows us to invest into some chaos res instead on rings/amulet.

If you didn't get Pain Attunement from keystone tattoo but still want it and don't care as much about defenses you can use Skin of the Lords with Pain Attunement.


Amulet


The main focus on amulet should be fixing attributes, resistances and getting life. Invest into some damage mods if possible, notably "+30% to Global Critical Strike Multiplier".

Make sure you allocate Whispers of Doom so you can have Assassin's Mark and Despair on enemies.


Rings


Same as on amulet, focus on fixing attributes, resistances and getting life.


Belt


Arn's Anguish gives us a lot of damage, fire res and life.

To get endurance charges we run Enduring Cry with Call to Arms and take a Warcry wheel for the minimum power mastery.

The Magnate is an alternative where instead of bothering with a warcry we just take the Utmost Might wheel for the required strength.


Flasks



Use Taste of Hate for the 15% of Physical Damage from Hits taken as Cold Damage. If you have currency to spend then use a Progenesis instead.



Quartz flask is nice QoL for the phasing. For mana flask make sure you get "Effect is not removed when Unreserved Mana is Filled" and "26%+ reduced Mana Cost of Skills during Effect" to use Divine Blessing Haste.


Jewels

• Unnatural Instict under Barbarism, gives us 12% increased maximum life and +3% maximum fire res.

An alternative is to use a rare jewel with increased maximum life and totem life and sacrifice some life passives to allocate max fire res tattoos instead.

• The Balance of Terror with "Inflict Withered for 2 seconds on Hit if you've cast Despair in the past 10 seconds".

Easiest way to apply wither on enemies and more consistent than withering step.

• Watcher's Eye with "+#% Critical Strike Multiplier while affected by Precision" and "10% of Physical Damage from Hits taken as Fire Damage while affected by Purity of Fire".

Good damage and survivability in one jewel, alternative mods are "You have Phasing while affected by Haste" instead of the Precision mod and replacing Quartz flask or "#% increased Cast Speed while affected by Zealotry".

• Rain of Splinters gives us 2 extra projectiles for cheap.

• Large Cluster - Chaos Damage: We take Touch of Cruelty, Unholy Grace and Unwaveringly Evil or Wicked Pall.

• 2x Medium Cluster - Totem Damage: We take Sleepless Sentries, Snaring Spirits, Ancestral Echo and Ancestral Inspiration between the two clusters.

• Rare Jewel with increased maximum life, increased totem life and fixing resistances/attributes.



Common Misconception

Don't use Greater Volley/Multiple Projectiles/Dying Sun to get more than 5 primary projectiles for single target. Enemies have various hitboxes and smaller enemies won't take any extra damage from more than 5 primary projectiles because the extra projectiles will miss. You can get around this with AoE investment but just staying at 5 is easier in my opinion.

PoB doesn't account for this and shows any source of extra proj as damage but that isn't always the case.

Mana on bosses

Edit: Check updated PoB, we are now running max level clarity along with other QoL so you can ignore this section.

On Pinnacle bosses you will likely run out of mana flask charges. Thankfully the Warcry wheel for minimum power isn't needed against bosses so you can allocate Battle Rouse or Arcane Capacitor instead. If you don't want to bother refunding points or don't like those methods you can swap Skitterbots for Clarity.


If you have any questions feel free to reply to this post or ask me ingame.
Last edited by L7mon on Jul 26, 2024, 2:55:36 PM
Last bumped on Jul 26, 2024, 2:47:53 PM
So I spent some amount of currency on this build (20 div). Unfortunately, only reached about 5 million DPS (I don't trust this because of a point I'm going to make in a moment.)

Haven't managed to get Pain Attunement as a random keystone, but that aside, this build has a lot of problems going for it at the amount I spent.

First, you need some mana cost reduction on your rings if you don't roll some mana mods on your gear.

Second is Righteous Fire sustain is pretty sketchy since you're relying on totems recouping life to you and they don't recoup to you unless you are near an enemy.

Third, DPS seems to be pretty low if you cannot burst down a boss. Got a Veritania boss fight once where I was constantly chilled and thus my DPS went down considerably and the fight took a few minutes due to it.

Of course, you would think managing to snag a cheap lvl 35 Spell Totem Forbidden Shako would be the key to making this build function, but it is not the core of the build. The core of the build are the totem life tattoos and being LL and getting Pain Attunement without pathing up to the upper right of the passive tree. This is not a cheap build at all. This build costs way more than 20 divines at least.

As it is right now, I don't see a compelling reason to play Chieftain Forbidden Rite Totems over Forbidden Rite self-cast as Occultist, FR totems as Hierophant, or wardloop FR as Pathfinder or Ascendant. The recoup is not worth it, IMO. Plus, Chieftain gets no damage nodes either. You have a dead node whose only purpose is to fix your strength requirements since you lose your strength nodes on totem life tattoos. The other two nodes I guess you could argue are to sustain Righteous Fire more easily, but as stated, RF sustain is still spotty unless you recoup during a fight, and other ascendancies can sustain RF too anyway.
Last edited by HealNForget on Oct 5, 2023, 9:08:54 PM
"
HealNForget wrote:
So I spent some amount of currency on this build (20 div). Unfortunately, only reached about 5 million DPS (I don't trust this because of a point I'm going to make in a moment.)

Haven't managed to get Pain Attunement as a random keystone, but that aside, this build has a lot of problems going for it at the amount I spent.

First, you need some mana cost reduction on your rings if you don't roll some mana mods on your gear.

Second is Righteous Fire sustain is pretty sketchy since you're relying on totems recouping life to you and they don't recoup to you unless you are near an enemy.

Third, DPS seems to be pretty low if you cannot burst down a boss. Got a Veritania boss fight once where I was constantly chilled and thus my DPS went down considerably and the fight took a few minutes due to it.

Of course, you would think managing to snag a cheap lvl 35 Spell Totem Forbidden Shako would be the key to making this build function, but it is not the core of the build. The core of the build are the totem life tattoos and being LL and getting Pain Attunement without pathing up to the upper right of the passive tree. This is not a cheap build at all. This build costs way more than 20 divines at least.

As it is right now, I don't see a compelling reason to play Chieftain Forbidden Rite Totems over Forbidden Rite self-cast as Occultist, FR totems as Hierophant, or wardloop FR as Pathfinder or Ascendant. The recoup is not worth it, IMO. Plus, Chieftain gets no damage nodes either. You have a dead node whose only purpose is to fix your strength requirements since you lose your strength nodes on totem life tattoos. The other two nodes I guess you could argue are to sustain Righteous Fire more easily, but as stated, RF sustain is still spotty unless you recoup during a fight, and other ascendancies can sustain RF too anyway.

Can you link your pob? 5 mil is way too low.

Mana cost reduction on rings is nice but not necessary, a mana flask with 26%+ reduced mana cost is good enough for mapping. If you find yourself with no mana flask charges left then you can replace skitterbots with clarity. If that's not enough then replace some life nodes with the Tireless wheel.

Righteous Fire doesn't rely on totem recoup. With the regen + max fire res (make sure you have it at 90%) you can sustain RF. Regarding recoup, no you don't have to be near an enemy to recoup, your totems do. So you can summon totems near the edge of your screen and let them attack to get recoup. Once they attack you have 3 seconds of recoup so it's safer to jump in packs. If you are jumping in packs and then summoning totems then of course you will have no recoup up and will die since petrified blood is the main defense layer of this build.

Veritania should not take a few minutes to kill. Please link your pob you are doing something wrong.
Here is the Veritania fight with and without Pain Attunement (20.8 mil DPS vs 16 mil, had clarity instead of skitterbots): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bLpKVrpjyY4

Pain Attunement tattoo isn't necessary as I mention, damage is still decent and without it. Totem life tattoos are dirt cheap and the most expensive part of going LL is the level 3 enlighten which right now costs 30c. The core of this build is the shako, the rest of the gear is easily replaceable or cheap.

For FR totems Chieftain provides a lot of recoup which converts to defenses through petrified blood and damage through Rathpith Globe. The Chieftain max res nodes aren't just to make sustaining RF easier, going from 75% max res to 90% provides significant damage reduction and Chieftain makes that a lot easier. Going Hierophant might end up being more damage despite losing Rathpith (and maybe RF) but defenses will be lacking (maybe I am wrong though, I haven't played much with MoM). Comparing to self-cast and wardloop is pointless IMO as those are different archetypes.


Here I made a semi-budget version at about 12.88div for all gear + tattoos (ignoring gems but gems are also cheap since no awakened or expensive alt quals are used). After a few cheap bench crafts it ends up being 13.6 million Pinnacle DPS.
All gear is from trade: https://imgur.com/a/qEI7TmV
PoB (and price calculation under Notes): https://pobb.in/x2RR4ZeHAvhO
Last edited by L7mon on Oct 6, 2023, 10:39:53 AM
Hi. Last I seriously played was at Ritual league , looong ago. Want to try this , what bandit do you choose on this build?
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2844110
"
kikeuy wrote:
Hi. Last I seriously played was at Ritual league , looong ago. Want to try this , what bandit do you choose on this build?

Hey, I chose Eramir (kill all for 2 passive points).
"
L7mon wrote:
"
kikeuy wrote:
Hi. Last I seriously played was at Ritual league , looong ago. Want to try this , what bandit do you choose on this build?

Hey, I chose Eramir (kill all for 2 passive points).


Thanks! It was my 2nd choice but this time Oak was lucky , will use the recipe to change later.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2844110
How do you feel about Barrage + Withering touch + Ballista totem being a poor´s man option for The balance of terror?
You can have the main 4 totems + 1 ballista or 4 totems + 3 ballistas if you also link Multiple totems.
After you get The balance of terror you can swap Withering touch for Faster attacks if you want.
The Barrage ballistas last long , are surprisingly tanky and cost very little mana to cast.
Loving the build so far , thanks!
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2844110
"
kikeuy wrote:
How do you feel about Barrage + Withering touch + Ballista totem being a poor´s man option for The balance of terror?
You can have the main 4 totems + 1 ballista or 4 totems + 3 ballistas if you also link Multiple totems.
After you get The balance of terror you can swap Withering touch for Faster attacks if you want.
The Barrage ballistas last long , are surprisingly tanky and cost very little mana to cast.
Loving the build so far , thanks!

Yeah Ballista totem with Withering touch should work. I think the balance of terror is worth it since we already self cast despair (and its only 1 div) but this should be fine for a poormans version, just be careful not to oversummon thus replacing the FR totems with ballista ones.
Glad you are enjoying the build!
how do u get 90 fire res ?
Ign:
Brokthefearless
Tofastforme
Deadismyfriend
Coldshoulder
i feel like i have no dps ?

https://pobb.in/4V0irI02XE6r
Ign:
Brokthefearless
Tofastforme
Deadismyfriend
Coldshoulder

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