UPDATE:

None of these are the world's greatest exhibition of a build, but for the budget (~30 div) this is a pretty good build. The build can do all Ubers and Sim30, can do them reasonably comfortably (I actually lost a portal to misclicking stash in that Simulacrum run and it was my only attempt), and can still map reasonably well.

Uber Sirus - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SE44YC6_RTo

Sim 29 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zy9dnNKijFs

Sim 30 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvojzF0Eqsw

Newer PoB: https://pastebin.com/Cb3TRTDn - swap Enduring Composure small cluster for anything you want.

At this point, I think poison is flat out better than cold for anything other than no-hitting Sanctum. It's just easier to build defenses, the build is cheaper, and upgrades are easy to get. There is no item that you are dependent on to start finishing the build i.e. Ashes/Divergent Shockwave. The only caveat is that cold will scale further.

TLDR at bottom.

A long time ago I made a post about shockwave totems and it completely changed the meta. It took 12 months and Mathil playing a totally separate version of the build (and making it his build of the league) for that to happen but I’m pretty sure it was all me. Not Mathil.

Almost everyone converts ST to cold and the most popular version right now is sadly nothing to do with mine and is definitely Mathil’s. That version is pretty flawed to me, and isn’t really player friendly unless you have god-gamer reflexes. It also ballooned in price by about 500% versus what I paid a long time ago and I get a lot of questions about it.

I wanted to make a poison Shockwave Totem build for a long time, but the problem was always Wither. The Balance of Terror solves this incredibly well and enabled the build, so I made this version to solve some of the problems I see with current ST builds. This has: 35M DPS, 100% spell suppression, ailment immunity, 30K armour, 5K evasion, 5% of life on kill, some other stuff. It's cheaper than most builds out there.

PoB (current budget ~20D, lots of room for improvement): https://pastebin.com/VkbpLGEQ - budget notes in NOTES (edit: fixed, thanks to poster below).

Low Budget PoB (5-10D: https://pastebin.com/4Kurgkgz

Hypothetical maxed out DPS glass cannon: https://pastebin.com/HinWz9fC (this is an extremely bad build that has literally 0 purpose than trying to instant Ubers and you should not build this – due to DoT capping, etc…)

Videos:

60% deli Mesa - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BsbvvP2BjVw - I am a lazy showcaser and should go faster.

The Feared (Deathless) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO7lZOwnU1E

Uber Shaper (not deathless) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCcH-detEpY – I actually did my first kill Deathless but had like 5 lag spikes and a few of them resulted in DC’s so the video is crap.

Pros vs cold:

Much higher theoretical DPS. You can build 200M DPS with this setup for shockingly little (see above) This is, in practice, not as big a pro as it might seem. There is a long ramp-up time. I don’t want to get into it too much, but all poison has a ramp time, and it’s fairly long with this build even when I don’t build towards it. The end result is that although my value looks higher, it might not feel that way. There is also a DoT cap of ~36M DPS. Uber content’s -damage multiplier makes poison and cold much closer in value.

Cheaper: It’s a lot cheaper no matter what. Even if you halve the DPS values you see here, then there is nothing in this PoB that is more than 4 div and it outcompetes any cold based shockwave totem at the same investment level. Even if you can magically generate a PoB that has more DPS, I would doubt it also has the same level of defenses. Don’t get baited on a super max Circle of Anguish, just find something decent, these items are cheap. The second cluster isn’t even needed, you can build almost the exact same thing on tree but without some armour/evas using the totem node by Scion.

*Better defenses:…*There are many cold versions around, most of them have shitty defenses. This build has 30K armour, 100% spell suppression, 4.5K life, a bit of evasion, some block etc.. It is stun immune or gains the 10% less damage from hits if you go that route on occultist. It uses temp chains. You can build into tempest shield too.

…Particularly for mapping: All of the life gain on kill stuff is huge. You just regenerate massive chunks of life constantly. The sustain on this build versus cold is massively better while mapping.

Cons vs cold:

All poison PoBs are kind of bullshit to be honest: Poison ramp time is like 10s. Focus is on and a big part of the damage. Flasks. Etc… I didn’t do that on purpose, it’s actually easier to figure out what to do next though. All the same, there isn’t a reason to NOT build around longer poisons when ailment duration on the Diadem, Temp Chains, and Unbound ailments don’t have reasonable competition. Like you don’t take Vile Toxins over unbound ailments, its less DPS even if you omit extending poison times. You could use punishment, but Temp Chains is actually quite nice for mapping too. I killed Uber Shaper with Faster Casting on the first time and it went about the same. I tempted to just remove woke UA from the build, but leaving in for now. Proof is in the pudding though, and the DPS for Uber+ content is definitely there even without some big spending.

No freeze: Particularly for newer players, freeze is arguably the best defensive layer in the game. Don’t get hit, don’t worry about defenses. Ultimately lets you down versus bosses and hard content though.

DoT cap: You can’t do more 36M/s over time. So, whatever goes over 36M is just pissed away. This build is intermittently over, so why would I do that? It’s rare you have everything going at once. I built towards around 45-50 assuming that I would rarely get more than 80% of my DPS. I can easily hit that with a bit more investment.

Your sustain is finicky: I built enough to do other content that isn’t constantly proccing kills, but you can make Quis version with substantially higher constant regen. I also always use two life flasks, and that’s essentially 100% of builds I play. 1 instant + 1 instant on low life + some flask bonuses is so much stronger than what most folks would guess.

If your totems die, you can run low on mana. Only really relevant for very end game content as totem deaths are basically only a result of either 1) your DPS is bad or 2) you are fighting an Uber. Investing in totem life for all non-uber content is a bonafide mistake, just get more DPS so things cant kill them. Also I think Totem Taunt is probably the worst mastery in the game.

Not as good for Sanctum. Freeze is great for Sanctum but I’ve killed Lycia on this build so it’s fine.

FAQS:

Why are you an occultist: It's good for this. I made a lot of mistakes in my initial thoughts on the build. Hierophant might be better with The Balance of Terror. Depends on how well Eb/MoM does but I am not going to test it.

"I have a hierophant and I want to do this instead." Sure, I am happy to help, but you should be aware it is basically a completely new set of gear. I'd start here:https://pastebin.com/hfYTMsu1 or here https://pastebin.com/SeWkPCzS and I haven't tested it. Potentially a lot to be gained from EB/MoM. Potentially you constantly run out of mana.

WTF is this thing you did. Just ask, I can probably explain or maybe you know something I don't.

I don't like your PoB settings: Me either. It works. Watch the videos.

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TLDR: https://pastebin.com/VateJFWq You can build poison shockwave totem cheaper than cold and it's better at certain content. It has a lower top end due to DoT cap, but easily hits DoT cap so we can invest in more defenses.