Re: Jungroan podcast interview: Ascendency identity and feel (Totems)

In the Jungroan podcast interview the devs talked about how they try to design the ascendancies so that they don't feel like "If you play skill X, you need to use ascendency Y".

Well unfortunately I really feel that way with spell totems, ESPECIALLY after the 3.28 placement speed change.

I love totems as a gameplay mechanic but I prefer to not play the Heiro. You can kinda get away with doing spell totems on Scion w/ Ascendent speccing into Hiero, but it's not really that great. But with the placement speed changes you're even more pigeon holed into hierophant who gets so much placement speed for free.

I wonder if the devs have any thoughts about changing totem playstyle scaling vectors to be more compatible with other ascendancies? Or even something like just removing placement speed and just using cast speed to scale both? Or maybe a unique to convert the stat, who knows.

I also have this kind of feeling with archmage heiro and the new frostmage for guardian due to the bonuses they get to mana and unreserved/reserved mana. It's just such an obvious combo that it is hard to ignore.

Are there any other ascendencies you feel are virtually a "must" for certain skills or skill types?

I think the disconnect you're having is that "totem" isn't a skill. Spell totems are a way of playing a skill, more analogous to cast on crit or mines.

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ARealLifeCaribbeanPirate#2605 wrote:

I think the disconnect you're having is that "totem" isn't a skill. Spell totems are a way of playing a skill, more analogous to cast on crit or mines.

Well a few things, there are spell totems which are not "Spell Totem" linked. Like shockwave totem or holy fire or searing etc.

But also iirc they mentioned mines explicitly in the interview. So it's clearly something they are about not just at individual spell level but at an archtype level (e.g. mines, totems, etc).