[Retired Thread] Wallach's Hierophant Holy Flame Totems (Old)

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myprism wrote:

Hey! I feel like the damage on my build is kinda low. Having trouble in red tiers. What should I upgrade? Thanks!

To be honest, I don't see any reason in Path of Building that you should be feeling like you have low damage (assuming we're talking about the character BetterBurns). You are doing close to 400k Shaper DPS per totem without flasks up already; your totems should be pretty much walking over red tier maps at this point. You're also only level 83 which means you're going to naturally get a bunch more damage just from skill points.

How do you have 4 totems?

Edit: nwm i didnt see the shield

One more question about the enchantments from the Lab:

Which ones are the best in your oppinion?
Just got the Helmet enchant "Holy Flame Totem has 30% increased projectile speed", ingame calculation doesnt change the damage at all, but the enchant must be a huge buff, right?

But would you rather prefer anything else in terms of min / maxing? E.g. like the 40% increased Holy Flame Totem damage or the one you used while Uber-Elder?

Thanks for the build at this point, it's my first totem character and it is awesome so far :)

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Pfefferminzkaugummi wrote:

One more question about the enchantments from the Lab:

Which ones are the best in your oppinion?
Just got the Helmet enchant "Holy Flame Totem has 30% increased projectile speed", ingame calculation doesnt change the damage at all, but the enchant must be a huge buff, right?

But would you rather prefer anything else in terms of min / maxing? E.g. like the 40% increased Holy Flame Totem damage or the one you used while Uber-Elder?

Thanks for the build at this point, it's my first totem character and it is awesome so far :)

Personally the two enchants I think you should choose between are the one you have for 30% projectile speed (assuming it actually works in this patch, it still just says Flame Totem last I looked which is the old version of the skill) or the 9% more damage to enemies within Holy Flame Totem consecration. I still think I favor improving the build's boss killing ability with the 9% more damage, but it is true that the 30% projectile speed will be beneficial on a much wider range of content. Helm enchants are not so impactful on this build that I would worry about it much either way, so my advice would probably be to keep the enchant you have and put your currency towards other upgrades.

Wanna give a try totem Hierophant build, but cant decide between this and THIS ONE Purifying Flame totems

Can smn compare in terms of speed, mapping, bossing? Only what i see that Purifying Flame totems deals more dmg overall and better base crit.

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omgree wrote:

Wanna give a try totem Hierophant build, but cant decide between this and THIS ONE Purifying Flame totems

Can smn compare in terms of speed, mapping, bossing? Only what i see that Purifying Flame totems deals more dmg overall and better base crit.

I actually talked about Purifying Flame totems a bit earlier in the thread, because ultimately it's just a couple gem swaps if you want to try it really. Obviously if you decide to build around Purifying Flame you want to tweak the tree a bit more to get area of effect and such but the general setups are nearly the same.

My feeling after trying it was that Purifying Flame totems suck pretty bad for clearing. It's not that stuff lives too long, it's just that the time it takes for a totem to activate, cast, projectile travel, detonate and shockwave is way out of line for how stupid totems are at targeting. Spell totem having a big cast speed penalty does a lot of additional damage to the general usability outside of bosses.

I'm not really saying that to talk ill of anyone else's build; heck, I'm literally leveling a Purifying Flame Chieftain right now because when I was doing that testing I felt like there was way more potential with that skill in a self-cast scenario (and reading Ankobr's thread the other day inspired me to go through with it for my next character). I took my HFT Hierophant to level 98, which I've never done with any other character and I sure as hell would not have with Purifying Flame totems. To me, playing totems in the first place means you are looking for something that hits a decent balance between mapping and bossing and doesn't have some narrow specialization in terms of content. Purifying Flame totems felt like something that would specialize in boss killing, and I can definitely think of better builds than any kind of totem for that particular goal.

Edit - On the plus side, you can absolutely try Purifying Flame totems for yourself and if you wind up feeling the same way, just switch because the cost will be pretty trivial.

Wallach, thanks for the deep answer!

Was sitting here eating dinner and reading some random threads when I saw a longer discussion on Mind Over Matter and realized I never took into account the additional 10% damage taken from Mana from the final Hierophant node. Essentially it means I really didn't plan on taking nearly enough mana to properly cover the health pool and was leaving a fair amount of eHP on the table.

I plan to trade off some damage from where I am at to actually boost up my eHP and make better use of the 40% MoM than I was previously. Not all of it, as some will be coming out of existing life nodes to pick up more of the mana notables. I'll probably also try to switch to two Circle of Anguish rings with buff effect and mana reservation affixes.

If it sounds like overkill - basically since we have a 40% MoM instead of 30% like normal, we actually need 66.6% of our life to have mana protect the entire pool instead of 42%. That means for my ~5.5k life pool I'd need almost 3.7k mana to match the ratio. So I was pretty far off this before.

This isn't something you actually need to do yourself but it was unintentional on my part and just a big oversight, so I'll be adjusting my existing level 98 build to compensate. I'll update the PoB and other elements once I have it sorted out fully (since the choice of when to take more mana nodes for eHP purposes will be tied to what point you take the final 2 Hierophant ascendancy nodes and upgrade your MoM ratio).

It really is a bit of a challenge to get that much mana... looking forward to your adaptions :)

Alright, I've updated the Path of Building link and website skill tree for how I've changed the skill tree at my current level (as well as the skill tree breakdowns for each set of Ascendancy points).

I've also updated the gear to just use my existing gear set to give a clearer idea of endgame type stats. My character at 98 is doing about 740k Shaper DPS per totem with flasks (or 950k per totem with VRF up with flasks) and has over 9k eHP thanks to our Mind Over Matter adjustments. It's definitely possible to get a good chunk more damage if you are willing to sacrifice eHP (like dropping Mind Over Matter altogether for aura reservations) but I don't feel it is worth it when we can hit solid levels of damage without resorting to that.