Tri-Elemental Hit Ballista Totems Slayer – a fun, fast, off-meta, inexpensive, most content build

PoB - https://pastebin.com/5utwHEtX

Overview: Tanky, totem based ~10M DPS with great move speed (up to 225%), overleech, and many defensive layers. Primarily useful for mapping and non-Uber bossing. One of the problems with totems is recovery. There are only a few ways around this with most folks focusing on Chief/Scion for leech or Hiero/Quisitor for regen. This build use ballista totems, wands and Slayer along with a 1 alch unique to get overleech + totem leech so we can stack some non-traditional defense for a totem character and build a tankier mapping character with good clear/movespeed.

Videos:

Altar farming 40% deli T16 with scarabs and Wrath of the Cosmos and a lot of lag. - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MX3e43KQXGk&t=184s . My loot filter is still set on “noob that picks up rares” and not “FastAF video mode”. If I was doing this right, I’d set it to only show mirrors and tear up the whole map which I can pointlessly do in a fraction of the time.

Elderslayers Deathless - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hrtgIY3GxUY`

Leveling in Poorjoy’s (which went really fast even before I started using Kaoms Spirit) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPACuvFoD_U&t=31s

Budget: Conservatively ~15D currently. (Check the NOTES section in the PoB next to config and import/export build.) Less if you are lucky crafting, more if you get Empower 4 which isn’t really needed. DO NOT try to buy all this shit off the market and expect it to be 15D. You should be ready to craft some of the gear, some of it minimally exists on the market (wand in particular), and what is there isn’t really that great for the price. At the same time, most of it is like essences + a base to craft and literally anyone can do it if you can use an essence. Rog is good for rings and amulets here too.

Why should I play this?: You like totems and you are looking to do some mapping for currency or just a general build. You aren’t shooting for Uber content immediately and you don’t like dying. You do a lot of expedition/harvest which this build is pretty good at doing.

Fun/new(er) mechanics:

Berserking around fast: Kaom’s spirit gives great uptime on berserk /rage in combination with Trolltimbre Spire and some basic regen. You can add vitality or some life regen on an item for even better uptime. This gives you really good movement speed (build ruins around +150-225 movespeed depending on berserk, tree, flasks, etc…) and good bursts of offense/defense. You probably have room for putting a Call of the Void self-chill mechanism in place a la Jungroan’s recent Self-chill inquis with CWDT forbidden rite + winterweave + call of the void, but I just never put the work in.

Tankiness: The whole Grace/determination/defiance banner to survive thing is mostly a meme imo. It isn’t bad, it just isn’t the only way to survive in this game and it is ineffective against large portions of the most dangerous damage sources i.e. spells. Regardless, this build uses a lot of other mechanisms. Sap, perma-fortify, brutal fervour, overleech, spell suppression, a bit of evasion converted to armour, etc… and the build feels very tanky while mapping, and is pretty strong against all damage sources. Big physical hits are the primary issue, but you will notice in the 40% deli video I lag hard and don’t die and stand in the middle of expeditions without too much worry. Slayer provides bleed immunity too which is very nice for mapping quickly (and expedition). Totems are a defensive layer of sorts, particularly if you play behind them, but that’s slow and boring so most of the time my projectiles are chasing me rather than the other way around.

Ancestral Bond, Frenzy/Power charges and you!: Sometimes you learn shit while playing and this was a fun one for me. Ancestral Bond means you do no damage. This does not affect whether or not you hit/crit. This means frenzy and power charge on critical strike support both work with Ancestral Bond. This means we can easily maintain both sets of charges using a wand with frenzy. Very cool, big damage boost, widely applicable to any totems build.

Predicted FAQ:

Can this build do Ubers/Sim 30?: I did my keystones deathless aside from memory game which doesn't count. Beyond that: Shaper/Cortex – likely, Elder/Maven – possibly, Eater/Sirus/Exarch – unlikely but possible (better players than me), Sim30 – no. I haven’t tried any of them because I don’t want to waste the currency if I fail it and I don’t really feel like this is an “easy win” type build. Sim30 is a no due to lack of efficacy of alt ailments and insufficient chaos/physical damage mitigation. Could easily do 1-20, probably do 21-25ish.

100 Deli?: Never tried it. My assumption is 40 or 60 is the happy point. 100 is going to feel slow without IL/HH.

Other ascendancies: I haven’t been able to generate anything better in PoB using other ascendancies. I can generate more DPS with inquisitor, but way less survivability. Slayer is actually pretty fantastic for this build.

Avatar of Fire/Leadership’s Price v. Tri-ele?: Too hard to get stats equalized. Avatar of Fire route produces around the same DPS but without sap in my experience.

Use a bow?: You can generate a little bit better DPS with bows, but you can’t generate any regen. You could probably get 25-30M DPS, but without any sort of regen/life its not worth it.

Why totems?: I like totems. Also I’ve always felt like if you play them right, you can be just as fast with totems since they offer you the opportunity to do shit while they kill mobs.

TLDR: Fun off-meta build that is easy to build and highly rewarding if you like totems.