Path of Exile Gems PoE Builds, PoE Currency guide and other guides
Intro & build description
You like high damage, huge AoE skills but elemental reflect messes stuff up for you? Well, this build solves this issue for us – when using totems they take reflected damage instead of you. Totem builds are inherently very safe due to the fact that you don’t have to get close to monsters – your totems deal with them. This build is inspired by “Pizza sticks” build that I have played previously and enjoyed very much, hope you do too.
Build Pros
- Can do every single map mod
- Huge damage due to the fact that we utilize critical strikes
- Can EASILY do all the endgame content (Shaper, Uber Atziri, Guardians etc)
- Has huge AoE and great clear speed; bosses also get killed in seconds
- Perfect starting build in new league
- Can be done properly even with 0 unique items
Build Cons
- Some people do not like totem builds, if you do, well, there are no real cons then :)
Passive tree(s) and Path of Building
Skill Tree [113p]Bandits
| Bandits Quest Choice |
| Help Alira |
Ascendancy skill points
| Labyrinths | Skill point choice |
|---|---|
| Labyrinth 1 | Righteous Providence |
| Labyrinth 2 | Inevitable Judgement |
| Labyrinth 3 | Augury of Penitence |
| Endgame Labyrinth | Instruments of Virtue |
Skill gem setup
Helm
Flame Dash
Flammability
Faster Casting Support
Lightning Warp
Body Armor
Spell Totem Support
Flameblast
Increased Area of Effect Support
Faster Casting Support
Increased Critical Strikes Support
Elemental Focus
Gloves
Summon Flame Golem
Anger
Vaal Haste
Boots
Ice Spear (LVL 1)
Power Charge on Critical Support (LVL 1)
Faster Casting Support (LVL 11)
Greater Multiple Projectiles (LVL 10)
2h Weapon
None
1h Weapon
Whirling Blades
Blood Magic Support
Faster Attacks Support
Offhand weapon / shield
Level 3x Flameblast gems to 20 and then Vaal them for a chance to get lvl 21 gem
Build uniques / Example rare gear
Tip: Click on the item to view it on PoE Wiki or to view similar rare items in poe.tradeHelmet
The Brine CrownGreat item for the build – armour, life, mana regeneration and immunity to freezes.
Body Armour
Cloak of DefianceAfter nerf to Energy shield, this build utilizes Mind over matter (MoM) for a lot of the defense – Cloak of Defiance is excellent choice if you can get it, but alternatively you can use Carcass Jack, rare energy shield chest piece with high life and resists and even Tabula Rasa if you’re on a heavy budget.
Carcass Jack is great damage chest for the build – it gives us life, energy shield, AoE and area damage along with some resists but less defense.
Another alternative chest could be rare Energy shield chest with as high Energy shield and life as you can find.
Gloves
Fingerless Silk GlovesLook for Fingerless Silk gloves with as much life, energy shield and resistances as you can.
Boots
Sorcerer Shoes / Two-Toned BootsLook for boots with some Energy Shield, high life, at least 25% movement speed and resistances.
Left Ring
Two-Stone RingOn rings look for cast speed, life, mana regen and some resistance. Mana is great bonus if you can get it.
Opal Ring due to its implicit would be another great choice for base item but it’s quite expensive.
Right Ring
Two-Stone RingOn rings look for cast speed, life, mana regen and some resistance. Mana is great bonus if you can get it.
Amulet
Turqoise AmuletOn amulet look for cast speed, critical strike chance, critical strike multiplier and life.
Energy Shield, resistances or spell damage are nice bonuses.
Belt
Leather Belt / Stygian ViseLook for Leather belt with at least 90 life and some resistances.
Stygian Vise with well-rolled abyss jewel will outscale Leather Belt base.
1Hand Weapon
Platinum KrisOn your daggers look for cast speed, increased spell damage, increased critical strike chance for spells. Cast speed is pretty hard to roll on daggers, so you can have 1 dagger and 1 sceptre.
Great affix to have is added damage to spells (ideally fire) but can get expensive in combination with aforementioned mods.
Make sure you choose platinum Kris or Golden Kris base for its implicit.
Jewel
JewelsOn your jewels mainly look for cast speed, life and energy shield – we already have tons and tons of damage, cast speed will help tremendously with clearspeed.
Extra survivability also is extremely useful for any build.
Flask
Flask Setup1.) Divine Flask with instant recovery and bleed removal is ideal as 1st flask.
2.) Divine Flask with instant recovery and freeze removal.
3.) If you can afford it, get Rumi’s Concoction, if not, get Granite flask with increased armor.
4.) Basalt flask is great defensive option / Silver Flask is great offensive option – choose whichever you feel will help you the most.
5.) Resistance Flask of your choice – curse removal option would be great on your resistance flask.
6.) Atziri’s Promise is a great damage flask for any build so you could also consider it
Or even better just don’t use life,…. and instead of ice spear an “orb of storms”.
Yes, you can go CI as well, just needs some tree adjustments. The reason we use ice spear is to gain power charges – it has higher base crit chance (7%) than the Orb of Storms (5%).
I think orb of storms is better, with PCoC, CoH and temp chains. If you’re using GMP with ice spear (which is probably necessary to generate enough charges), then you don’t get to curse on hit at the same time. With OOS you get both charges and curse at the same time, plus the orb continues to generate charges for you on it’s own after you place it. Temp chains helps alot for both keeping mobs off you and holding them in place so they stay inside the blast zone.
Hi, I’m intrested by your build for starting the 2.6.
It’s a life base build with ES equipement ? no armour , no eva, only dodging that’s it ?
Hi! Yes, it’s a life and energy shield hybrid build. Due to that fact, build will have very large effective life pool that will prevent oneshots. You will also have 2 instant life recovery flasks if you do get hit by something strong, Granite and Basalt flask combination (that should give you at least 50% physical mitigation when active). On top of that totem builds are inherently very safe to play so you should be good 🙂
Can u update link to skill tree? I dont get it because its not full?
Can u update skill tree? its not full
It should be fine now.
Hi was wondering if you had a leveling build for this i wanna try it for the new league.
Just take a 50/50 mix of damage and defensive skill points, use some leveling uniques and you should be fine. It’s entirely possible to even get to Merciless without allocating like 10 points, leveling uniques are far more important.
Ok, ty.
Can you tell me wich nodes in the three I have to prioritize ?
In the beginning get some life/mana nodes, Heart of Flame in top of the tree and some AoE nodes, at the beginning it’s really not that important which nodes you prioritize – put bigger focus on leveling uniques. Btw, Firestorm is good skill to use while you get to totems.
Where do you get all the dex for the items? :p
Turqoise Amulet and dexterity on rings should be enough.
Is this possible to do with 4 link? I’ve always had a problem getting more than 4. I’m not talking endgame content, just wondering if I could make it anywhere without the 6 link. If less than 6 is doable, what order should I prioritize support gems? Thanks
Yep, a lot of builds are doable with just 4 link, this is one of them, although I’d suggest you get 5-link (they should drop in price to few Chaos orbs soon and I think you should be able to afford that). You can see gem priority in the build page, but here you go 🙂
1.) Spell Totem Support
2.) Flameblast
3.) Increased Area of Effect Support
4.) Faster Casting Support
With tukohama fortress would change the build?
Yes, that would change the build and skill tree would have to be adjusted.
What’s the lightning warp for?
Movement. If Flame Dash is enough you can put whichever gem you’d like there.
I see thanks for the response, and I assume that ice spear lvl 1 is to cut down on mana usage just for generating power charges. While whirling blades is extra damage after totems are placed?
Pretty much, however Whirling blades is also more for quick movement, do not use it as damage skill – totems have advantage of being ranged so going into melee range is not advised.
Wow ok so flame dash, lightning warp, and whirling blades for movement. That seems like overkill. I’m not the expert though so I’ll give it a go. Thanks
Hi, thanks for the awesome, detailed guide. Just a quick question, do you take elemental overload while leveling and if yes, at what point do you respec out of it? Also, can you explain a little bit more why you chose that particular order of the ascendancy nodes?
Thanks a bunch glhf
Hi. I personally did take ele overload while I didn’t have any ascendancies but already had some crit chance. I did spec out of it when I started taking crit multiplier nodes and when I got first 4 ascendancy points. Just play around with it when you have some crit, check the damage and how it feels, it only costs 1 point to respec out of it 🙂
Hi. Which weapon you recommend for witch? The same like for inquisitor?
Yep, pretty much the same.
How many Totems does this build account for and is it vital/negligible to get +Totems items?
What should I change if I wanna use chaos inoculation? You just mentined there would be “something” to change
Are there any cons to it?
Why use controlled destruction when you have righteous providence? Doesn’t that make crit not possible?
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/3ypivk/for_many_critical_based_builds_controlled/
Thanks FireFly
Would it be possible to play as a Witch instead of the Templar, or are the Inquisitor Skills that important for this Build to function?
This build is specifically created around Inquisitor Ascendancy but Flameblast Totem can be played as Witch too, however it would probably build a bit differently in passive tree.
Ok, thanks.
Stupid question (maybe), I am using your build as a basis because I have just started play POE again after 2 years. My question is if you have passive Ancestral Bond, how do you do anything with your Ice Spear? I am so confused and I am sure I am missing something. Please help me out. 🙂
That’s a good question, people have been discussing that before on reddit and forums. Yes, Ancestral Bond renders all of your skills to deal no damage – Ice Spear will not be able to chill/freeze enemies, but it will still be able to crit (however with no damage) and will generate power charges for us.
OHHHH! ok that makes more sense to me now. Thank you so much for your help. I was a little confused before. 🙂
I was questioning myself with this as well.
There’s only 1 Energy shield node and there are few life nodes, the surivability isn’t the highest but why would you want this many ES modifiers on items? wouldn’t it be better to go Armor+Life instead of Hybrid Life ES?
Also why no Immortal Call?
Where do you get the stats in this build?
specifically dexterity
more details about the build this is based on can be found here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1730745
Hi there! Love your build guide!
Got a question. How would you change the build using tukohama’s fortress?
Hey, thanks!
Added Tukohama’s tree to the guide.
I do understand why it’s useless to level up ice spear but can you explain why Power Charge on Critical Support stays LVL 1, Faster Casting Support LVL 11 and Greater Multiple Projectiles LVL 10 ?
any particular reason why not level some three gems?
How to wear Carcass Jack? It needs 93 DEX… We only have 22 DEX???? Pls help me…
You should be able to get enough DEX on Jewels, Rings and Amulet – pick some that have dexterity and you should be good.
What cast modifier is usually at a comfortable level? I’m at +83% atm (on flameblast) and was just wondering.
What cast speed is at a comfortable level for flameblast? im at 83% atm and was wondering.
From experience somewhere around 110% – 130% is optimal. Silver flask is good option to boost it as it gives you onslaught.
How many Life/ES do you have with optimal gear?
And what adjustments should i do for CI?
Any tips on what jewels to use for this build?
On your jewels mainly look for cast speed, life and energy shield – we already have tons and tons of damage, cast speed will help tremendously with clearspeed.
Extra survivability also is extremely useful for any build.
when tree?
Tree is up now but Path of Exile page is down for maintenance.
Hi,
First thing’s first : i like the idea of this build and trying it right now 🙂
Then, i do have a some questions :
1) Why Inquisitor and not hierophant ? hiero can place 2 more totems, and even with the damage reduction, 4 totems should still inflict more damage than 2.
2) Why choose flameblast? the casting time is not that great even with faster casting… wouldn’t firestorm + spell echo be more efficient ?
thx
Hey!
1.) This build is going in crit direction therefore we go for Inquisitor ascendancy. Most of the game you don’t need 4 totems, because what we have is more than enough to clear and kill everything.
2.) For smoother play you need to get as much cast speed on gear as you can, not only on gems. Rings, ammy, daggers, jewels – all should have cast speed on them. Firestorm might work, but we have not tested it in this particular build.
ok thanks 🙂
But does the cast speed affect the flameblast coming from the totem ? cause what i’m “having problems” with is the time needed for the totem to cast flameblast. since i’m moving all around, by the time the casting’s complete, me and all the mobs are outside the blasting radius :/
thus the question (for clarity) : does “+% cast speed” affects the casting speed of my totem ?
Yeah, cast speed affects how fast your totems cast the flameblast 🙂 Thats why it’s important to get as much of it from gear.
*oh and btw, why flame golem if we’re going for cast speed? lightning golems give cast speed
It doesn’t actually matter that much which golem you choose, I chose Flame because I already had enough cast speed.
Just a question from a noob here, why both discipline and anger? Theres barely any mana left which obsoletes MoM, no? Also, MoM prios life over ES. I dont understand this part of the build
Hey. You are right, that gem setup part was still left from the older non-MoM build, put Vaal Haste in place of Discipline; also, Anger can be turned off in sketchy situations when you need more mana and survivability.
Hi,
Very intrigued by this build, it will be my first totem build.
Just a question… Why Oak? Surely Alira or all would be a good choices for this build.
Thanks
Hey! You are right, it seems like we overlooked it when updating the build, it should be Alira which is now fixed.
Hey, dumb question but how do you make sure you don’t kill the monster if it’s the totem casting flameblast?
i mean we’re supposed to capture them (with bestiary league and all…)
You can throw the net on monster when he is full hp as well!
Hello! Shall i take the Hiero ascendency over the Inquisitor in the new league? Why?
You could try, permanent Arcane Surge looks very strong, plus more totems for you.