[3.4] ARC totem hierophant. End game bosses ready

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Valmar wrote:

Great guide!
Level 85 and great so far, even with crap gear.

I got some questions:

1) I find I have some spare links. What do you think is good for a 4L if I want some DPS vs bosses? Any of this can help?

a) Searing Bond + Increased Burning + Elemental Focus + whatever
b) Bear Trap + Trap Damage + Brutality + Culling Strike
c) Adding culling to the golem


2) Is Inpurity of Lightning worth it?

3) What about Lightning Golem?

4) About helm enchantment, are the others arc enchantments useful, or is there a cheaper second option?

Thanks!

1) A culling strike setup + vaal lightning trap somewhere.
2) If "ignores" works as Inquisitor ascendacy node (the resists are considered zero) I would say no because you lose conductivity + lightning penetration bonus.
3) Good choice for DPS. I prefer Stone for life regen (traps, general degen).
4) Chain enchant is a QoL, it's not mandatory. You can replace with damage or +150% increased bonus of golem (this would be my second choice).

Thanks! I've been following this thread and your replies. Appreciate your contribution and the time you've taken to respond to all the good questions.

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Gegemo wrote:

Many questions answered in the F.A.Q. section.

Not my build, but very fun joke, lol.
It happens that we all play similar builds, I'm just a guy hanging around, learning from others, and trying to be helpful :)

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Valmar wrote:

Great guide!
Level 85 and great so far, even with crap gear.

I got some questions:

1) I find I have some spare links. What do you think is good for a 4L if I want some DPS vs bosses? Any of this can help?

a) Searing Bond + Increased Burning + Elemental Focus + whatever
b) Bear Trap + Trap Damage + Brutality + Culling Strike
c) Adding culling to the golem



2) Is Inpurity of Lightning worth it?


3) What about Lightning Golem?

4) About helm enchantment, are the others arc enchantments useful, or is there a cheaper second option?

5) Worst problem so far, the immune totem / rare, my arcs totems cant reach him. Any ideas?


Thanks!

1a/ Back in 3.2, I rarely used this for anything, now dps is even better, fights should end very early, I won't even bother using it, 1 less button to press - just my opinion.
1b/ Bear trap is for kiting/slowing bosses, not for damage, Culling Strike is not very good for this case (nobody wants to aim for the boss to cull, then throw the trap, and he teleports away LoL)
1c/ Yes :D because even when it dies, we can just resummon and it will auto-cull the boss :D suitable for lazy person like me :D and it's what I do :D

2/ Another button to press, bursting, but not very reliable, for tier 15 or less no need, tier 16 and up bosses have high hp so not that helpful, but if you want min-max the build and want another button to press, another cooldown to look at, then go for it! It's personal choice, aftr all!

3/ Personal preference, if you want it, use it, no need to ask anyone :D

4/ Arc enchants or golem enchants, you pick.

5/ We will all be swearing in this situation, but here's my take:
5a/ try placing totem at another place, for example, run to the back/sides of the pack and place it, hoping to get the kill
5b/ kite him/them backtrack, kill those that is out of his range 1st, few by few, and him next. It depends on the rare and the adds, both slow -> annoying, I'd rather skip, fast-rare/slow-adds or slow-rare/fast-adds -> easy, run fast to get the faster one off the slow one, then kill
Fun thing is that I always try to get the kill, because it pisses me off :P

First - great guide. Arc was the very first skill I started with and fell in love with when I started the game. Naturally, I failed miserably due to no game knowledge and going lolpuredmg. After many years of playing the game, i'm very happy to see that it is a viable build finally.

Some tips and thoughts on the build as well as questions I've been seeing here:

MAKE SURE TO HAVE CURSE REMOVAL ON QUICKSILVER FLASK. I cannot stress this enough. You should have quicksilver up 99% of the time, due to this fact you will not even notice the curses on your chest piece.

If you are super rich and really do HATE the curses, you can drop the dual wand approach and go more defensive and get the new prophecy atziri's mirror. It makes you immune to curses and gives lot of other juicy buffs. It's called atziri's reflection: https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Atziri%27s_Reflection
It doesn't offer life, but does offer a nice chunk of ES which isn't a bad thing.

Shimmeron's are very expensive currently due to not many running elder yet. The price should eventually get lower, until then moonsorrow wands are plenty fine and dual wielding them will easily take you into red maps. They also cost 1c for a perfect roll, so use them. Pick up wands and scepters along your way in the event you get a lucky drop like I did.

Don't worry about getting a 6l, heck even a 5l too fast. Get the chest plate as cheap as you can and 4l it for now. Seriously, mine carried me to t10 on a 4l, i'm pretty sure I could have gone higher.

A lot of questions asking about using inc crit instead of ele focus. It's really up to you. Shock doesn't work well in high tier maps because you don't hit hard enough to shock stuff. Crit will most likely make mapping a tad smoother though so it's really up to you if you wanna swap them. I did a self cast arc build last league and used the same crit setup and it worked fine.

At what level did you guys start using only totems and not self cast?

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eminem wrote:

At what level did you guys start using only totems and not self cast?

Like as soon as I got a 4l up and going. It just made.....EVERYTHING more enjoyable. So I believe it was around the time I finished my first set of labs and could summon 2 totems. On the tree, I took my life nodes and rushed the 3rd totem on the left side of tree. At this point, it was snoozefest cruise control all the way to maps.

I used spell totem > arc > light pen > up to you faster/controlled/ele focus. Faster makes it a tad smoother when blasting through zones. I would personally do faster, you don't want to drop your crit even more and you kinda wanna shock while leveling as it's pretty easy to shock the lower level stuff.

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coaa wrote:

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eminem wrote:

At what level did you guys start using only totems and not self cast?

Like as soon as I got a 4l up and going. It just made.....EVERYTHING more enjoyable. So I believe it was around the time I finished my first set of labs and could summon 2 totems. On the tree, I took my life nodes and rushed the 3rd totem on the left side of tree. At this point, it was snoozefest cruise control all the way to maps.

I used spell totem > arc > light pen > up to you faster/controlled/ele focus. Faster makes it a tad smoother when blasting through zones. I would personally do faster, you don't want to drop your crit even more and you kinda wanna shock while leveling as it's pretty easy to shock the lower level stuff.

thanks for your fast reply. What kind of jewels should i be looking for?

could someone tell me why the passive tree have so much crit % and crit multiplier %, but the support gem we use is controlled destruction with 100% reduced crit chance?

I am so confused.

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boozee wrote:

could someone tell me why the passive tree have so much crit % and crit multiplier %, but the support gem we use is controlled destruction with 100% reduced crit chance?

reduced chance is inverse of increased chance; e.g. I have something like +400% increased in my current tree/gear so -100% means it is just +300%; I think out of the box I have 25% critrate right now without power charges or other bonuses. In the wild it is 35%-ish I think.