Totemancer XIV

Totemancer XIV


Introduction
Have you ever wanted to annihilate the enemy in the blink of an eye (or minion)? Fancy A hybrid style class that lets you do as you want? If so this build may be for you. Have fun!!



Skills:

Totem tree:

Fireheart Totem:
This totem channels fire spirits from the ambient air, launching an endless barrage of scorching firebolts at the totemcrafter’s enemies.

Creates a totem from a corpse that spews out fire bolts at a massive rate (try counting them for some fun). Points to invest- 20

Stormeye Totem:
More mechanical than magical, this totem employs a running belt of silk that builds up an electrostatic charge on the sphere, causing sparks to fly when an enemy enters the area.

Creates a totem from a corpse that unleashes a continuous barrage of lightening blasts at the enemy. Points to invest- 20

Other Totems:
Prerequisites only. Points to invest- 1 in Deaths fury Totem, 1 in Ice fang Totem and 1 in Howling Totem.  

Utility Tree:

Embalming:
Burial rites were created to preserve the integrity of the deceased's body and empower its soul on its voyage to the plane of the dead. These are properties any warrior would die for.

Boosts the Life of you and your allies, also increases your mana regen rate.
Points to invest- 20 NOTE: This skill does not effect Totems

Sacrifices:
The ends justify the means. The Cult of Rathma has its own underground prison and regularly raids Zakarumite temples for those times when a spell happens to require fresh blood.

Summons a number of prisoners that are promptly slain with fire damage, providing you a means of reanimates and corpses for totems, soft points increase number of prisoners and decrease timer
Points to invest- 1

Bend the shadows:
The necromancer links his mind with one of his undead summoned spirits, manifesting at the location of the spirit along with the rest of his army. This crucial ability keeps the undead army on the move and on the offensive.

Teleports you to target minion
Points to invest- 1



Melee Tree:

Massacre:
The right alchemical mixture can turn even a frail priest of Rathma into a fearsome warrior, provided he does not mind occasionally waking up in an orphanage in a pool of blood with the militia banging on the door.

5 very rapid attacks (just like CloD Zeal) even faster in death knight mode
Points to invest 1, +skills do the rest for AR if you decide to use this skill can be one of two main LMB skills

Angel of Death:
The death knight takes flight on black wings of fury and descends upon his cowering victims, cleaving them in half with a devastating swing of his scythe or hexblade.

Huge poison damage added to weapon very strong against single targets and is our other option for the LMB skill
Points to invest- 1

Famine: Prerequisite only 1 point

Parasite: Prerequisite only 1 point

DeathLord:
Wearing heavy full plate mail is a privilege reserved for the strongest fighters of the realm. The Rathma priests found a slightly different solution: an enchanted set of armour animated by the spirit of an ancient warrior.

Morphs you into a death knight granting you huge stat increases, defence and increases your speeds
Points to invest- 20+ Put as many as need here to wear you equipment, you wont need any points in strength or dexterity with this skill.



Summon tree:

Shadows:
The ghosts of heroes past take the fight to the forces of hell, their presence at the other side of the veil of time strengthening the faith and fury of their living comrades.

Your bread and butter summon, Demon Aura boosts elemental damages and increases your life. Note that your totems double dip from this and burning vale due to their spell damage being calculated of your own then being boosted again.
Points to invest- 29


Uber skill:
Death Ward:
Runic tattoos and enchantments protect the mage with a permanent warding spell that turns aside weapons or causes them to pass through harmlessly as if he were a ghost.

TCD and avoid whats more to be said?
Points to invest- 14

Grave yard:
The deathspeaker establishes an aura powered by the emanations of a demon's wicked thoughts, conjuring torture equipment and striking the demon with the punishments it desires most to inflict upon humanity.

Shoots  punishers at a rate of slightly less than 2 per second
Points to invest- 1

Attributes:

str.: 0 we have Deathlord
dex.: 0 ^^
vita: 0 necro has awful returns on vita (1hp per point) flat life is much better
Energy: Everything

Items:
Weapon of choice:

+ skills and resists not much else, reanimates can come in useful, use one of these until you are lvl 51 and have a mal rune, then replace it with:





This makes your AoD very deadly!!


Alternatively you could craft something like this:



Here you would use massacre instead of AoD as you main attack (especially after BrC)


Armor of choice:

Early game go farm K3BA until a rare full plate or ancient armor (ilvl60) drops reroll until +2 skills, uptier it as available and you can have a T6 by the end of hatred



Late game craft something like this:




Helm:
Early game farm a rare dex based helm in k3BA again (circlet, diadem etc) reroll until you get +2 skills



Late game crafts are your friends




Shield:


Energy factor, spell damage, and resists on offer here pretty good all round Shield

Late game crafts are good



Or if you have one of these use it



Belt:

Plenty of +spell damage, energy and resists you all round favourite caster belt.







Alternate Belts
Good craft:



Or this


If you have one

Gloves:
Early game honorifics are very usefull use this to boost your  –%enemy resists and spell damage



Alternate gloves
Crafts are good here:



Or for those with lots of SU:


Boots:
Early game Honorifics same as gloves and later a good craft





Rings: rare +skills with MO upgrades and spell damage





Or if you have some of these


Amulet:
Rare with +skills and spell damage



or if you get a good roll on one of these:

[



Socketing
Through hatred and terror difficulty resists wont be that much of a problem, however at about Act3 Destruction a lack of resist will hurt lots, ITH craft jewels solve this problem for the majority (you can get 20%+ on up to 3 resists on one jewel) and don’t have an extreme lvl requirement, spare sockets not used for res fill with PTopaz to boost energy and damage or Lum runes for MF%, your shield should have PTurquoise for MF% at all times 



How to play:
Activate deathlord and open your inventory notice all your gear is still red even though you have the requirements to equip it, remove and replace you armor (or anything in you inventory) and it will refresh your gear making sure you are at full strength.
Summon your shadows and buff yourself with Burning Vale (your innate skill) cast sacrifices and summon your totems (personal preference is 3 lightning and 2 fire) since totem damage is calculated off your spell damage at the time of summoning you want this to be as high as possible, when summoned totems will now be affected by your shadows aura directly boosting damage further and can have burning vale place upon them as well if you want too (why you wouldn’t I do not know) and finally buff with Graveyard.
Move your tower stack by using BtS on a shadow, and be careful and watch shadow and totem numbers, replace as required (when replacing totems make sure all your buffs are on) Use AoD on single targets and annoying enemies (like shamans or Shdow gate totems) or if using a craft like the one shown above use massacre and burn their sorry smelly asses!

Challenges
LC 1 – tempt zons toward you using shadows and BtS slowly, try to stay behind totems as they have a lot more life than you, Shadows die very quickly but don’t worry as they are cheap to summon. Besides when they die the zons come for you and if your totems are in the way they die just as quick. DON’T JUMP INTO BIG PACKS OR YOU WILL DIE.

Black Road-
Trial of greed- get 666666 gold on your person and cube class charm (you can do this on hatred)
Trial of fear- Hole level 2, summon him and keep him occupied with shadows, when his pentagram appears, BtS about 1.5” behind it so it is between you and him, where your shadows rush to meet him is right in the center of the pentagram and he dies very quick to your totems when his resists are gone.
Trial of contrition- summon Koth an kill him, Fortresses hurt so keep BtSing around.
Trial of knowledge- Ah Fauztinville, the biggest issue here is Neon fiends as your totems seem to target them instead of what isn’t immune (dumb machine/magic things) crafted knife with balefire wipes them pretty quick tough, don’t pull a big pack and progress to collect the 5 robot brains. (you can use AoD if you have the patience of an ancient monument)
Trial of blood- Back in Tran again, use only light totems here and go find lightning priestess first (so you wont kill her) drag her back to near where you start (that bit near the gold chest is good) and leave her behind, summon two fire totems when you know she isn’t following you, and go find ice priestess, if while fighting your way into her arena you see a frost nova (and gain swirls) BTS back to where you left sparky and melt her ASAP and cube your charm (this challenge is hard with a bit of forward planning)

Congratulations, cube your class charm with 4 victims hearts and enjoy graveyard


Uber quests

Key to difficulty:  Easy  Medium  Hard  Silicon Carbide hard  Not yet tried
Summoning Ubers
The Butcher  Nice and simple, will probably be your first Uber in destruction, just use the same technique as you did in terror
The binding of Baal again not hard this one, do as you did in terror for LC2
Assault on Mount Arreat No problems here, use the pillars to your advantage, back off if to many fortresses appear, same as terror (again)
AkaratSummon him in the room on the left hand side, keep you army outside, as his mob runs at the door your totems will shred him and his followers, Difficulty of medium here due to occasionally being bummed by an invisible hammer time and his insane regen/life. you may need to summon him twice to get the charm (for more followers)
Jitan Two choices here, summon him in Nihlithaks porch or in his garden, either way you will be in the other place, be careful of mass fortress spam on his part keep BtSing about to dodge the majority of it and avoid the singularities they pop on death!
Legacy of Blood not hard here either, you can do this in one of two ways 1) don't stand in wychwind or totem pile and spam shadows like they are going out of fashion, alternatively use Qouv Tsins dagger for reanimates, spam sacrifices a few times and as soon as you see a wychwind leave and re enter. (thanks greg for the tip    )
Judgement day Part one clear out the cloister, you don't want any distractions, keep spamming shadows until one of the avatars spawns and dies to your totems, lure away edyrems pick up charm.
Judgement day Part two Same as above but hope that both avatars spawn very close together, has not happened for me yet   
[color:1a9d=#3333ffSecret Chrysaor
Secret MarcoNecrox
Brother Laz
Inarius's Revenge


Uber Levels

Kurast 3000 BA What to say really, you've been here before, and its still the same, just don't get mobbed, skellies hurt now! Shadowgate totems can be a pain as they can avoid now.

Island of the Sunless Sea not hard this one, your shadows are magic immune and seem to soak up most of the shiny balls that the revellers throw at you, since they pierce don't stand on you totems as you will get shredded quickly. use you shadows to distract while totems pound them, distracting malics homing balls of death (he should really wash them!) with shadows makes him easy to approach and obtain the six angel bag, lucion however has an aura that makes all enemies near him immune to all (not himself though) draw the larger crowds away from him to deal with them and then go back to kill him and get the sunless crystal bird.

Khalimgrad Huge numbers of easily killable zealots here, the difficulty come from those bastard lantern archons, they end up as a large stack (sometimes invisible) and you die. killing the avatars is a bit harder as they heal when a minion is slain nearby.

Tran Athulua Third time in here not much has changed except that the now hurt you, watch out for arrowside, it will shred your army. there is a flash of green when this happens though giving you a chance to retreat for a second or two, thereby avoiding most of the carnage, good farming area here too.

Fauztinville

The Triune

Ghosts of Old Bremmtown

Chrysaor's Sewers

Yshari Sanctum

Kingdom of Shadow

Brachyceran's Lair

Duncraig



TBC

Every new guide deserves a cookie.

just some things:
- add some pics makes much more desireable
- its not needed to post stats of t1-t6, t6 is enough

Str0b3l wrote:just some things:
- add some pics makes much more desireable
- its not needed to post stats of t1-t6, t6 is enough

Agreed. At the very least, add lines in between the tiers. It'll help make it look less like a wall of text.

Otherwise, this is a great idea. Can't believe I never thought of this type of build.

For Christ sake guys he only posted it this morning and ther is a big old work in progress sign down at the bottom. Give him a few minutes. Sheesh

Fixed text wall, tried to cut and paste table from the docs didnt work   , have reduced it to only T6
Have added pics now am on game PC

AoD isn't really necessary for this build. Totems are more than enough to do the job. This opens up many alternate weapons that can be used to boost spell damage and resists.

For untwinked, I do realize Rerolling is better, but you can include TUs(It's not hard to eventually make all of your TU gear at level 50 or so). Hell, you can even make do with Honorifics to be perfectly honest.

I have nothing else to suggest except change the text color from Yellow to something else, hard to read text with Yellow. Great guide for now.

I almost think honorifics are stronger than TUs in many slots, for most builds. For this particular one we can get F/L spell damage and -res and %TCD on them. They're also much easier to make. TUs can be more 'fun' though.

One TU I've found that's very powerful is Hellspeak (TU necro shield) which has Devil's Fang Totem as an oskill. I'm using it on my Death Shards/Fireheart Totem build. DFT is a totem with a 10s timer that casts Sacrifices 5 times and every single corpse reanimates as an Asratuar (regular Gothi). So it's basically a 2.5s timer Sacrifice with 100% reanimate as a monster to tank for you (worse than Rathma Priests though). The neat thing is that if your totems kill the sacrificial victims you get totem reanimates which are much faster (but seem less tanky), and you get life on kill for each of them.

The minion spam is invaluable for tanking in many ubers. A3 Sewers becomes a breeze, for example.
You can almost do it naked (except for the TU ofc). And if you cast Bend the Shadows in between casts of the totem (about 1 cast of Sacrifices per second) you can teleport around the screen and fill it with minions.

Updated minor layout details, added some Ubers   

waiting for a video keep going no comparison to first version