Totem Warrior (Warbringer) Feedback on Lvl 1-52

TLDR: slow and tedious

My goal was to run 3 totems with Warbringers Answered Call Key-Node. I picked up some lifereg and armor at the start, some 2h damage and attacl aoe, went to more 2h damage and then for 3 of the totem clusters in the tree (to get +max totems and placement speed).

The damage output from totems is horrible. And even worse was the Answered Call minions (and i tried them with picking up 2 clusters of minion dmg nodes too). They are pretty bad for being an ancendency exclusive (less dmg then the totem, and unreliable due to rng combination of warrior/mage/monkey/turtle).

What worked best was priming tragets for stun with Shockwave Totems and then boneshattering them. Later i used Sunder too, wich is ok-ish but borderline dangerous to use at times (cast time and being stationary).

Boss fightes turned into battles of attrition with slowly grinding away their hp with 3 totems and running circles(i died less than with my sorceress) and some armor breaking and sundering here and there.

And finally i got the Ancentor Warrior totems. They are as bad as Shockwave in term of damage (tried with Sunder and Earthshatter), and are actually worse because they arent as effective with priming.

Totems rely entierly on gem level (because they use their "own weapon") and passive tree nodes (i went for 3 node clusters, and a 4th one partially).

I made it to lvl 52 without too much trouble. But it was more and more tedious the higher level i got (instead of getting better with having more skillpoints invested). Playing with Sunder isent really fun either, the slow animation makes this sluggish and even dangerous to use. Dropping a giant hammer is cool, but the cooldown is just way to long (even with halving it).

And mind you: this was my second character, so i had some decent weapons stored and plenty gems.

So I was just looking for some info about totems, because I unlocked the Ancestral Totems and was thinking about possible combos. But was disappointed.

So my plan was to use AT either for Volcanic Fissure or Sunder, but one thing doesn't work with them and I don't see reason why. When you give AT Sunder gem, AT can't proc fissures from Volcanic Fissure, while using Sunder.

I tried putting Volcanic in AT to proc it myself, but then I can't proc fissures that AT created.

If this is intended because of some sort of balance, than it just feels bad. I don't see the reason why I couldn't proc something that my totem created.

So typically early in leagues you want to use spells with high flat damage bases because it's easy to scale them. Totems provide exactly this and I'm not sure there is a better or more powerful league starter then a totem build.

If you're struggling, you just need to update your knowledge. It's a little unfortunate the extent in which "+ to all melee skills" matters for us, as it turns the game a bit more flask dependent early on but the power... the power is definitely accessible.


Start by following my guide and report back here or my thread if you're struggling, I'll try to help.
Totembringer: From campaign into endgame maps 2H + Shield huge AOE and 400k+ dmg wep swap spec