[3.15 HC] Apep's Forbidden Rite Totems (Hierophant) Solid Budget Early League
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Background and basic stats
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Long ago, during harbinger league, I made a build called Apep's darkpact totems that ended up being reasonably popular. Time's change, skills get nerfed, buffed, and created. Forbidden Rite totems is the modern faster/better/stronger version of that build. Offensively, clear has been solid (for a totem build) running T16s and delving down below 170 (T16 area). CWDT Cold snap provides frenzy charges for added zoom. Single target reaches a little over 4M Sirus dps with some room left to improve gear. Make your own judgments about that stat in our post-3.15 nerf world. Defenses have been adequate so far and include: 1. Around 7800 EHP at lvl 93 with MOM and Agnostic active. 2. Fully leveled steel skin on CWDT worth another 2200 on a 2.5 second cooldown. 3. Fully Leveled Frost Shield on same CWDT as the Steelskin worth another 910 on a 5 second cooldown. 4. Combined Life/mana regen (not counting Agnostic) reaches over 1500/second 5. 3 Seething mana flasks (don't laugh, they're a huge extra margin of safety) 6. Elemental ailment immunity in most cases (not against mobs with increased effectiveness or duration) 7. Full curse immunity 8. Totems taunt on hit 9. 4 permanent endurance charges 10. Decoy totem available for appropriate situations Video:
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1. T13 Syndicate hideout (To give a sense of playstyle) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX6pptBzG4o POB:
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LVL 21: (Just before switching to FR. Shows leveling gear) https://pastebin.com/8m8Ajegw LVL 27: (First branch of tree complete after switching to FR) https://pastebin.com/GB1R9rk7 LVL 32: (Just before taking mom and doing first ascendancy) https://pastebin.com/ckYm7m9E LVL 38: (Shows all pre-soul mantle gems in place at this level) https://pastebin.com/uxic8gYg LVL 43: (Immediately after taking Agnostic) https://pastebin.com/AEQHCuHi NOTE THE HALLOWED SEETHING MANA FLASKS. YOU WILL BE UNHAPPY IF YOU TAKE AGNOSTIC WITHOUT THESE LVL 49: (When switch to SoulMantle) https://pastebin.com/ejN3VZSP LVL 62: (When Equip Apep's) https://pastebin.com/0vcsXa4r LVL 93: (Full build, Yugul Upgraded) https://pastebin.com/ZDZTY2Nj Links:
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Chest: 7L SoulMantle>Forbidden Rite>Greater Volley>Inc Crit Chance>In Crit Damage>Void Manipulation, Conc Effect Boots: 4L CWDT (full level)>Steelskin>Frostshield>Void Sphere Gloves: 3L Wither>Spell totem>Multitotem, Unlinked Flame dash. Helm: 4L Despair>Faster Casting>Inc Duration>Arcane surge (lvl 13) 3L: CWDT>Inc Duration>Cold Snap 2L: Decoy Totem>Multitotem Unlinked: Clarity Couple of notes on the links: Chest: Because of the way FR works, Greater Volley down nothing for your clear, but improves your single target dramatically. Conc Effect is a stylistic choice--best damage, but if it doesnt feel good to you, sub faster casting. Boots: Void sphere is for my own amusement, there may be other better spells to place here. The rest are self-explanatory. Gear
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Not Pictured: 1. Rain of Splinters jewel 2. Self-Flagellation jewel 3. Life/res jewel 4. Large Chaos Cluster jewel with your choice of nodes 5. Medium totem cluster with Ancestral Preservation and anything else beneficial (My first choice would be Sleepless Sentries for onslaught, but that will be hard to craft and expensive to buy. I curently have ancestral reach, and it provides good benefit also). 6. Medium Projectile cluster jewel with Shrieking bolts and anything else beneficial 7. 2 small cluster jewels with flexible sentry. That node can be found on both block and ele res small cluster jewels. I am currently using 2 ele res jewels to make capping resistances easy. Late game, you will want to upgrade the rings to fully catalyzed shaper or Crusader rings like these: Bandits
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I killed all, but a solid argument could be made for helping Alira, as the build will make full use of all of her gifts. Pantheon:
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Major: Brine King
Minor: Yugul IMPORTANT NOTE: It is the UPGRADED soul of yugul that provides the last 20% curse reduction that the build requires to use soul mantle. If you have equipped soul mantle prior to upgrading your soul of Yugul, you will need to temporarily spec three skill points into Asylum (top left of tree) to provide that effect. Ascendancies in order:
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1. Pursuit of Faith
2. Divine Guidance 3. Ritual of Awakening 4. Conviction of Power Leveling Advice:
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1. Early Leveling: Use whatever you find easy. My personal go-to is smiite>Ancestral call. Proceed on the tree directly to Ancestral Bond, but I recommend continuing to use your early skill of choice and waiting to take it until level 20.
2. At level 20, add as much of the following equipment as your budget allows in order of importance: a. Any two Berek's rings (I use a pass and a grip for rezzes) b. Tabula/Goldrims/Wanderlust if available c. Hrimsorrow gloves d. A pair of Axiom Perpetuum Sceptres (spell damage/cast speed wands are fine here) d. (Bonus) Replica Prismweave at lvl 25 By lvl 30 or so, if you used axioms, trade them for a pair of wands with spell damage and cast speed. From there to lvl 49, thats all you will need offensively. Leveling links for forbidden Rite prior to soul mantle: FR>Spell totem>volley (upgrade to greater at 38)>Controlled Destruction>Conc Effect>Faster Casting. We don't go crit until significantly later in the game, and we don't use void maipulation at first to get full benefit from the added ele damage gear. Once you take MOM, you'll want to try to maintain your mana at around 43% of your life total for maximum efficiency. After your second ascenscion, try to maintain it at 2/3. Once you take agnostic, you'll likely be happier if you maintain that 3 seething mana flask set-up I recommend. These are less necessary to make the build function, and more acting as cheaper, faster refilling versions of the seething life flasks you may be used to. With 3, you will hardly ever run out of charges and be able to instantly top off your EHP pool almost anytime. As you level, I recommend this rule of thumb: Take defensive nodes until your EHP (Combined life and mana if in proper ratios) is roughly at least 300 per act, then take offensive nodes. This may be varied, of course, by taste. Recommend trying for around 4k ehp for white maps, 5k for yellows, 6k for early reds, 7.5k for T13+. These are obviously not hard and fast rules. 3. At lvl 49 Swap out the rings for kikazarus, swap the tabula for a soul mantle, slot the self flagellation jewel and swap spell totem for Void manipulation. Trade the Axioms for ordinary wands with spell damage and cast speed. Trade in the belt on something with life/mana/res and adjust to cap your resistances, wince you just lost some fire/cold res and gained a bunch of lightning res. 4. At lvl 62, trade up for two Apep's rage wands. You can craft better later, but these will provide a solid damage boost for a long time. 5. When you are ready to go crit, Controlled destruction and faster casting swap for crit chance and crit damage. I will typically do this after my final ascendancy when I pick up four permanent power charges. I expect I will continue to update the guide as questions come in and as I learn more. I hope many of you have as much fun with it as I have. -Orion Last edited by Orion72 on Aug 15, 2021, 4:50:32 PM Last bumped on Oct 22, 2021, 6:00:01 PM
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nice guide. Just one thing to point out that forbiddemn rite has huge flat damage from totem's life, so apep helps by just a bit. If you switch to rare wand with spell crit and cast speed, it will boom dmg by a lot.
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How many currency should I have to switch to this build from another?
2-3ex or more? |
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Re: Flat damage from totem life: I think you may be underestimating the effectiveness of the Apeps. Unequipping them cuts overall damage for the build roughly in half. A number of leagues back, GGG nerfed totem life significantly while at the same time nerfing totem damage taken. A different league, GGG dramatically buffed the added damage on the Apeps. That said, if you know where any solid current totem life numbers are, I'd love to look at them--I am always happy to learn more. (As an aside, the Apeps also have the advantage that they are usually dirt cheap compared to a rare wand that would provide comparable damage)
Re: Currency required to switch to this build: It gets by for a long time (well into red maps) on nothing more than 2 Apeps, a 5L soul Mantle and 2 kikazarus. Budget to get started is well under an ex. higher end gear (starting with a decent self-flagellation) can be farmed up with the build (which is how I have been doing it) -O Last edited by Orion72 on Jul 31, 2021, 3:01:00 PM
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Speaking of farming higher end gear, I was finally able to craft a pair of upgraded rings, shown here as an example of something to shoot for late game (though one of them could still use some harvest love to get better prefixes)
-O Last edited by Orion72 on Jul 31, 2021, 9:14:15 AM
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I just started this last night, I'm having a great time so far! My only question comes to the wither totems, how often should I be using these? While running through areas I'm just plopping down 5 FR totems and even on bosses it seems the 5 FR totems outperform any mix that includes the wither totems so what might I be missing?
*Never forgetting how good this game looked at 32:9 instead of 1/3 of my screen being black bars.* Last edited by weveran on Jul 31, 2021, 11:22:27 AM
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First, very glad you are having fun! That's the whole point.
Re wither totems: At this point, I use them mostly in stationary situations: boss fights, ordinary expeditions etc. They are also good for spamming up curses, since they summon and die two at a time. The math on using wither has them adding a 90% more multiplier--it is not possible to reach the same level of damage without then. Also, how are you getting to 5 FR totems? My set up reaches only 4. If you are doing it by using multitotem as a support for FR (instead of conc effext or void manipulation) math seems to say you are giving up a ton of damage. -O Last edited by Orion72 on Jul 31, 2021, 2:40:52 PM
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Re: Apeps vs. rare wand.
After some crafting and experimenting, my conclusion is that it is possible to find rare wands that add more to dps than Apeps, but they will require a very high level of inc spell damage, cast speed and crit modifier. Worth looking into late game, but Apep's remains a solid, inexpensive option that is superior to all but the very high end rare wands. -O | |
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you only need wands with cast speed and spell crit to beat Apeps. You already have a ton of flat damage from FR.
Here are my wands, basicly t1 cast speed and high crit wands, with trash prefixes using crafted spell damage. And if I plug it into your pob, I get ~10% damage per wand. can find the two suffix base for ~ 20c on SC at least, although you might need to use harvest reroll to get open prefix Last edited by Stealthyy on Jul 31, 2021, 11:18:39 PM
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" Sorry, you're right. I only have 4 FR totems. I was thinking it was 5 because I can get 5 totems if I use 4 FR totems + a decoy totem, I didn't realize they weren't the same limit. Been playing the build a lot more today and the limit is obvious to me now :P *Never forgetting how good this game looked at 32:9 instead of 1/3 of my screen being black bars.*
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