Storm Burst Totems Hierophant [PoE 3.26]

This was more of a side/fun-project during an SSF event and I had a lot of fun with it! I made two Lv 99 trees: they are pretty much the same but one has a little more EHP and crit reduction. Bossing and survivability are very good. Mapping is okayish; it's not the fastest mapper but can do T17s just fine. This of course depends of what type of content you enjoy. Any content that is limited in time like (breach or legion) is not optimal for this build. I mean, you can do it but you won't get the most out of it. Ubers are also doable but require some investment in both offence and defence. You'll struggle the most against bosses that move a lot (such as Sirus and Maven), deal big phys hits and create degen zones (totems will get killed quickly). On console, placing the totems right can be difficult; I'm sure it's a bit easier to fight Ubers on PC. (I set shock effect to 40% but you can actually hit 50% on T17 bosses) Playstyle: Place all totems (decoy totems give more damage). Pop Sigil of Power under your totems. Use Assassin's Mark for single targets. While the totems do their work, you can focus on dodging (boss) mechanics or spam skills to get more Sigil stages. The biggest problem during boss fights can be the survivability of the totems. Placing them right is important. Take harvest as an example: don't place them right between the mobs and don't pop the decoy totem next to your spell totems. Also, use tattoos to increase their life! Defences: - Life-based (5-5.5k) with energy shield (1-2k) - 5 endurance charges for 20% phys and ele damage reduction - Taunt (after summoning totems) - Decoy totems & totems in general (which lets you focus on dodging mechanics) - 10-18% of phys taken as elemental - 76% ele res & capped chaos res - 100% spell suppression - ~ 60% evade chance (without flask) - Life regen - 5% life recovered on block - 66% block & 75% spell block chance with Glancing Blows (which means we take 65% from the hit) - this is primarily to trigger life recovery on block - Steelskin - Shock, bleed and corrupted blood immunity - 25% reduced ailment duration - Pantheon: Freeze immunity, 50% less chill effect, unaffected by burning ground, 60% less ignite duration (which gets further reduced to under 1 sec) - Flasks (poison immunity, evasion, consecr. ground, regen, phasing) Crafting: 1. Amulet: Get a rare one with +1 to all skills and no suffixes. Catalyst with attributes (intrinsic) Make sure prefixes are not full. Craft Multimod + prefixes cannot change + cannot roll attack mods. Harvest add/remove lightning (costs 15k), this guarantees +1 to lightning skills. After that, there's multiple options to proceed: 1.1: If 'prefixes cannot change' is still on the amulet, you can use harvest reforge speed for cast speed, chaos for chaos res, crit for crit chance or crit multi or caster for cast speed or spell damage (life is also an option but there's a lot of life mods that we don't want). Reforging may fill up any other mods with random ones. 1.2: You can craft (block) one mod and gamble/fill up with exalts. 1.3: Same as 1.2 except you want 1 open stat and then slam a shaper or crusader exalt and pray 1.4: Finish via multimod 2. Ring 1 (Vermillion): Catalyst with life (fertile). Craft with fossils or harvest reforge until happy. Bench craft +1 to minimum endurance charges. Make sure there's only one open prefix. Slam crusader exalt. There's only one dead mod, so chances to get something good are very high. 3. Ring 2 (Amethyst): Get one ring with crusader influence and one with elder influence. Use alterations or harvest bench to get crit multi and lightning damage against shocked enemies. Make sure these are the only influence-exclusive-mods! Use Awakener Orb to slap them together. If the outcome isn't great, you always can recraft with the harvest bench by reforging crit or lightning. Catalyst with resistances (prismatic). 4. Belt: Get a Stygian Vise with desired mods and one open prefix. Catalyst with life (fertile). Use a Hunter or Elder exalt (Hunter has a better weight of %life and less mods to hit). If it doesn't hit %life, you can either gamble with harvest reforge life or use fossils to craft. 5. Weapon: Use a Rune Dagger with crit implicit or a Wand with cast speed, spell damage or added lightning damage. You want the following mods: +1 to all spells, +1 to lightning spells, spell damage, added lightning to spells, cast speed, spell crit, crit multi. Your best bet is either the recombinator or getting one with 3 mods and multi-mod the rest. Harvest enchant elemental damage. 6. Shield: This can be a little bit tricky. +1 to max totems only rolls on shaper shields. Life on block is available on shaper and warlord (tho shaper has a much higher weight to roll). So, there's different ways to craft one but this can get expensive depending on the method and how much luck you have. For our base, we either want an Archon Kite (ele res) or a Supreme Spiked (suppress). To start with, you can get one with all the stats you want + one open prefix and then slam a shaper exalt. This guarantees +1 totems as it is the only shaper prefix. Just make sure it doesn't have any resistances, attributes and suppression so you don't have to change your other gear pieces later (we can't control the outcome of suffixes on the totem/life on block shield). For the totem/life on block shield, there are multiple options (don't forget to divine to 5% when finished): 6.1: Harvest reforge life or life fossils: this gives you a small chance to hit the life on block mod. But you can't control anyting else. You just need to reroll until you hit both mods. 6.2: Alteration orbs (+aug/regal): as one is a prefix and the other a suffix, there's a very small chance to hit both mods. If you do, don't forget to create imprints!!! When hitting one mod, regal and pray. If you hit the 2nd mod, finish the craft with multimod (or craft one mod and gamble with exalts). If not, back to alteration orbs. 6.3: Awakener Orb: Get one shield with warlord influence and one with shaper influence. One of them needs to be a Archon Kite or Supreme Spiked shield. Use alterations to roll totems on shaper shield and life on block on the warlord shield. Make sure these are the only influence-exclusive-mods! Use Awakener Orb to slap them together and hope for the best. 6.4: Make prefixes first: This can take a lot of tries and get expensive quickly but at least you'll end up with good prefixes. Harvest reforge life (don't use fossils because this will lock you out of getting defensive mods) until you hit max totems, high life and defences or block chance. If you want to go further, you can also do this with a double-influenced shield. Either shaper + elder (for %life or damage) or shaper + hunter (%life). If you get a shield with life and decent block chance, you can respec Sanctuary and put the points elsewhere. If suffixes are full, annul and pray. Craft 'prefixes cannot be changed'. Harvest reforge life. You'll either get life regen or life on block. If you hit regen, repeat. If there are any suffixes left, craft whatever you need (attributes, resistances, cast speed, suppress or beast-craft a Lv 30 Aspect). 7. Helmet, Gloves, Body Armour & Boots: Overall, they shouldn't be too hard to craft. Focus on suffixes first. We want high spell suppression on every piece. You can't force it as this is a tagless modifier. Make sure the item level is high enough in order to be able to roll T1 suppression and also its base defence value has a good roll before you start. I think the easiest way is either by harvest reforging chaos (or any ele res you want) or using the recombinator (with items that have somewhat similar mods to increase chances). Once you're done with the suffixes, you can use Eldritch currency (Exarch needs to be dominant) for prefixes. Alternatively, if you have full suffixes, you can craft 'suffixes cannot be changed' and harvest reforge life or defence (or speed on boots). Look for fractured bases to make things easier. For 6-linking your body armour you either use the crafting bench or the Black Morrigan beastcraft. Also, you don't want any life modifiers on the body armour so you can make use of the 15% life mastery. Lastly, roll the implicits. Important: if you don't have Lv 5 Awakened Lightning Pen, you need lightning exposure on hit on your gloves (Eater mod). >>>>> You don't need the exact same items or item-bases as shown in PoB. Just use what you get, cap your resistances, suppression and get enough attributes! <<<<< Jewels: - Rare Jewel: life, crit multi, damage, corrupted blood || look for the following additional mods: attack block, cast speed, reservation efficiency, crit chance, attributes, resistances, energy shield, max res, totem life, - Abyss Jewel: life, added spell phys/lightning, reservation efficieny || look for the following additional mods: energy shield, regen, mana, attributes, resistances, cast speed, crit chance, pen, hinder, increased effect of lightning ailments - Watcher's Eye: We reach around 75-80% crit chance without the Watcher's Eye (90-95% with Ass. Mark). You can get capped with one that has crit chance while affected by Wrath but that isn't necessarily needed. Just look for one that has any damage mods with Wrath & Zealotry. - Thread of Hope: Large Ring Tattoos: - 2x reduced ignite duration (red) - 7x increased totem life (or as much as you can get) (red) - 1x reduced crit damage taken, chaos res or hinder (blue) Important Information: - Until you have a Lv 5 Awakened Lightning Pen, you need lightning exposure on your gloves (Eater mod). This can be replaced with phys converted to lightning or spell suppression later. - You need 10% of phys damage converted to lightning. You can either get this as an Eater mod or craft (prefix) on gloves. - Until you have a Corrupted Blood jewel, get CB immunity on your life flask - We need 1x +1 to min endurance charges (suffix) crafted on one of the rings or amulet - Mana: You want around 70-100 free mana. This depends on your level and if you get mana on your gear. You can get additional reservation efficiency on jewels, run a lower level Sigil of Power (or drop increased area of effect) or get the life mastery that converts 15% of mana cost to life cost. If you get your hands on an Enlighten Lv 4, you probably can change the reservation efficiency on the helmet to phys taken as. - Do NOT link Automation to Phase Run because this will consume your frenzy charges. Phase Run is just for emergency / to go faster. Additional Information & Tips: - The reason why we run Grace over Determination is because of the Evasion mastery (and how armour/phys reduction works) - Because of evasion-based gear we need a good amount of dex which in return gives us spell suppression by allocating Magebane - On boots, there aren't any implicits that are absolutely necessary, just use what you get - If you're missing dex or str, change the pathing at the top of the tree and take a +30 dex or str node. Alternatively, use lower level skill gems (Decoy Totem/Steelskin) or item-bases (Necrotic Armour requires 173 dex for example). You also can get attributes on the (abyss) jewel - If you have trouble capping resistances, here are some options to help you out: change the bandit choice to Alira for 15% ele res || Tattoos each give 6% fire/cold/lightning || get the jewel slot in the middle of the tree next to suppression for 18% cold and lightning res || you can get resistance as an Exarch mod on boots or on the (abyss) jewel || respec 'Divine Judgement' (4 points) and get 'Ash, Frost and Storm' instead for 6% ele res. You can also run Purity of Fire, Ice or Lightning (replace it for Herald of Purity). You probably need to get the mana reservation mastery to be able to run it. Also, change the 'phys taken as' on body armour to the corresponding element you run (you can reach up to 83-84% of a specific resistance with Purity, Sanctuary, Unnatural Calm and 2% on the jewel). - As we can't deal damage ourself, we can't leech and only can regenerate/recover life, that's why life on block on the shield is very important - Frost Bomb is only used to reduce life regeneration rate (for Maven or consecr. ground), you can replace it for Vaal Haste or anything else you want - You can replace the Sulphur Flask for Atziri's Promise, Bottled Faith, The Wise Oak or a Gold Flask - For even more defence: see alternative tree version. If you got block chance on the shield, you can respec Sanctuary and get Faith and Steel + reduced crit mastery instead. You can also use a few attack block tattoos (red) to cap block chance. You can use Enfeeble or Temporal Chains instead of Assassin's Mark. Or you can replace Herald of Purity for something more defensive like Arctic Armour, Flesh and Stone or an Aspect Merc/3.26 exclusive: - You want a merc that has Grace as an aura. Equip him properly with items giving evasion, suppression, resistances, life and life regen. You can also give him any supporter uniques for increased aura effect, a Perquil's Toe (lucky damage) and Elevore (suppression/recovery). - Eldritch modifiers: Body Armour: Exarch - Aura effect / Eater - Grace aura effect || Boots: Exarch - drop brittle (or sapped) ground || Gloves: Exarch - extinguish on hit - A better one has two auras; either Grace & Haste, Grace & Aspect of the Spider or Grace & Malevolence (you can get bleed immunity with Malevolence on your Watcher's Eye but it isn't necessarily needed because of Steelskin) - Without the merc, drop Zealotry and use Grace instead