Always wanted to try a ballista totem build (that wasn't Toxic Rain/Explosive Arrow) and a non-mine Power Siphon build, so decided to combine the two together and try to make a tanky build out of it. I also wanted some way to use the new and broken Svalinn shield, and it proved to be a great fit for the build.

This is the highest EHP non-Mageblood Ballista Totem Hierophant on poe.ninja, and probably highest max hit as well, though the difference in ele max hit is not that huge.

poe.ninja: https://poe.ninja/builds/settlers/character/WvrLight/LightPrimarch PoB: https://pobb.in/QO_W3FNeWK5D

The build is a typical Archmage manastacker and cursestacker to serve as its main way of building damage and defenses.

Svalinn is the core of the build's defenses, allowing it to survive a lot of things it really shouldn't with its fairly low max hit. Especially in Ubers where I could "tank" several Uber Maven fireballs when only 1 is enough to one-shot (because I'm bad at dodging). Block is definitely better suited as a mapping-focused defense, but with the build's damage, it's enough to comfortably and quickly defeat Ubers.

We use Indigon instead of Wilma's Requital because we need to path towards the Ancestral Bond area anyways to safely allocate Corrupted Soul. Also because Haste is not used. Also because Indigon just shits out so much damage for the build.

We use Purity of Elements instead of Haste because capping res on this build is extremely difficult without Mageblood. I would still recommend using Haste instead of Purity. However, needing more ele res suffixes would mean sacrificing a lot of chaos resistance that is already lacking in the build.

Because armour is also tough to fit in, Doppelganger Guise fixes a massive hole in our defense that is both phys and chaos max hit. A rare ES chest is way better when it comes to damage and max hit besides physical, and I'd honestly recommend it over Doppelganger, but I really don't like having low phys max hit.

Our recovery relies on mana regen and flagellant life + mana flasks. We make use of Sorrow of the Divine to have our life flask also recover our huge ES pool, as well Indigon's life on mana flask use to help with life recovery. We also have 20% chance to regain ~700 mana per skill use from the mana mastery and a Watcher's Eye to help with mana sustain.

Optimal DPS is clunky in that you need to time your buffs correctly. Playstyle is to drop an Arcanist Brand (and Sigil of Power/Frost Shield for bossing), activate Arcane Cloak and spam ballistas to charge up Indigon's spell damage. We occasionally use Frenzy to generate frenzy charges for free damage. We can reach to around 40M DPS, but will in most cases fall under the 20-30M range.

Budget is around ~130 divines. The wand is probably worth 50 divines or more, and the +2 doppelganger costs about 30 divines (not worth it, but it's a decent damage increase).