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Mummelmann on 22 January 2025
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SvennoJ said:
Mummelmann said:

You have to give the Ancestral Totem a "weapon" in the form of an offensive skill. I use Sunder, the totems get more and more AoE and damage as I level the nodes. The three totems can decimate boss packs all alone in mere seconds now, and then I can Leap Slam into them and kill the rest. I took Giant's Blood and found a weapon that fits well with shield use, my tankiness far surpasses any of the other characters I've gotten into the 70s. I jumped straight into a Tier 3 map for the first one, and then managed a Tier 5 (at level 67). Blocking is incredibly powerful, as it also blocks missile-based spell effects of many kinds.

Found myself this earlier today:

I crafted a weapon with good damage, but it lacks +4 to Melee skills (which also affects my totems). It would increase my damage output though, especially with Fire damage on top:


My resistances are pretty good, but my armor needs more work, and I want 50% block soon. About 2k life, mana isn't an issue since I have about 7% of damage dealt leeched as mana, and most of my damage is pure physical. I also have life-steal 4% for every enemy killed, so jumping into a bunch and slamming their brains out is a good way of healing, as well as dealing great AoE damage.
Anyway; here's the layout right now:


Wow, we suck lol. We never see anything better than 80-120 dmg weapons drop in tier 3 maps. How the heck do you craft a 386-520 mace :o I'm happy to see double digit stats on things that drop, so often it's +6, +2, +8, insulting lol.

My resistances are in the 30s :/, my wife in the 40s with fire at 75. Chaos in the 20s.

We do have life on kill as well from the passives. With Herald of Ice and Herald of Ash the packs are healing potions basically. I freeze them, my wife leap slams into them, pack gone. What saves us is the near instant freeze my monk can do on just about anything, freeze and jump to the next.

We put boneshatter in the ancestral totem, but she only has one totem and it just takes too long to set up. Freeze + leap slam or fire balls is our way to clear zones. Trow a hammer on a mini boss if there is enough time before they melt lol. We could easily do higher lvl maps (instead of fighting 67 at 75) but any lucky shot by the rng and one of us is dead. Especially poison and those purple things that chase you. Chaos resistance needed, hard to find.

Maybe it will go better now with a few ascendancy points.

I pick up good base items and slam them with Orb of Alchemy, it's a bit of a gamble, but I got lucky. Then you add Blacksmith's Whetstone to the mix, upping the quality of the item, and significantly increasing the damage along the way. Lastly, add two sockets and put in two runes with 20% Physical Damage. You can often more or less double the base damage this route alone. I traded one Divine Orb for over 300 Orb of Alchemy (at the Currency Exchange available from Cruel difficulty on) and I've tried with a lot of items, some turned out pretty good. It's a game of both time and chance. 

The balance of resistances is always tough in ARPGs, they almost always follow a linear system where increased difficulty incurs penalties on flat resistance. I try to get high values on a few items rather than medium/low values on many, that way, I'm not as dependent single pieces of gear.

The Ancestral Totems work best with semi-ranged AoE attacks. If you place them at choke-points as well, they can tear up packs in no time. As they scale with Melee Skill level and Melee damage, they can get pretty strong even without lots of nodes in them.

My main issue now is lack of Strength; if I want to progress to the next couple of tiers of weapons to increase DPS, I need over 600 Strength due to triple demands from Giant's Blood. That is, if I want to keep the shield and not become squishy again. Having some left over Spirit on my current setup, I also added a Skeleton Warrior minion. He's just there to draw enemies while I slap them across their heads though, he does no damage to speak of.

Along with Hammer of the Gods, my Titan is surprisingly efficient for bossing as well. The infamous Viper boss (asshole surrounded by soldiers, using them to poke you full of holes in one phase) fell in the first phase under an explosion of physical damage from the Totems, Hammer of the Gods, and my Hammer of the Smack at once. Not even my Monk was as fast in taking her down on my first play-through. I'm a bit stuck right now though; upping the Tier of maps will increase difficulty by quite a bit, especially with modifiers, Breach etc. I can only get incremental upgrades that don't do all that much. Looking to score higher Block first and foremost, and increase Strength for availability of weapons, as well as more Health.