Intro

I have been playing a Flamewood totem build for the last couple leagues, having seen the nerf to the chieftain CWS style I thought I would share since I put this build together after not enjoying the Chieftain CWS, but wanting to do similar content to what that build was doing.

I had a few people message me in game asking me for advice since they saw me on the Poe.Ninja leaderboards with a set up completely different to anyone else on there. So this is the short write up and share.

Note: This build will not be able to do the grueling trials, as it is a block based build.

PoB Link

https://pobb.in/XDJ8iyNNnwFR

Videos

Average Simulacrum Run (I dropped two large voices, ID both at end)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5OYRboG7qE8

Uberboss Kill (~30 seconds per run)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0DFZdFCbFw4

Purpose

This build is designed to be a cheap way to tackle challenging content, it is optimized for damage and defense on a budget. The clear is acceptable, but not what it was designed to do. It is not hardcore viable, we are statistically tanky, not actually tanky. I clear most maps deathless, but sometimes you will lose a 1 in 100 to a boss and get one shot. It is what it is.

I initially farmed simulacrum until I found out that there was an uber boss fragment going for 5c. Lonely Fragment was extremely cheap and dropped Bound by Destiny which I ID'ed and sold. Int stackers were paying top dollar for these and it is how I made most of my money this league.

Playstyle

We drop totems, wait for them to be hit (usually instantly) and then resummon them. Each fireball they shoot does ~2 million average hit. Each totem shoots 10 when hit. We summon 4 totems.

2 x 10 x 4 = 80.

So we are outputting about 80 mill damage every cycle. This works out to be about 40 mill dps on about a 3-5 div budget.

For Simulacrums we want to try and stack both bosses on top of each other, the main weakness of the build is if we do not take hits for a short period of time. This resets our triple block defense layer, so we want to be getting hit and blocking consistently. The bosses also sometimes stop attacking, which prevents the totem from dealing damage. Stacking them on top of eachother reduces this downtime.

For the Incarnation of Neglect. the arena itself is able to keep our triple block constantly active, as well as instantly proc our totems. This leads to a very farmable and safe boss with this build.

Damage

Black Zenith, Flamewood Totem, Rejuvenation Totem

This build is primarily designed around Black Zenith which gives us additional projectiles and more damage with hits. This usually comes at the cost of cooldown being applied, but the second part of the build Flamewood Support and Rejuvenation Totem being used together bypasses the cooldown. Rejuvenation totem is not a projectile skill and therefore does not have the cooldown penalty applied. Only the skill used by the totem does, this means we summon a new totem which will use the skill and then simply summon another, with little down time.

Enmity's Embrace

The second part of how we scale damage is with Enmity's Embrace which gives us fire penetration equal to our overcapped fire resistance. This is a key scaling vector, as most gear affixes will not give us the ability to scale our totem hit damage otherwise.

Elegant Hubris (Supreme Ostentation)

The third trick this build uses is Elegant Hubris with Caspiro (Supreme Ostentation), which removes all our attribute requirements. This is nice, but allows us to tattoo our tree with totem life nodes, a relatively cheap tattoo that delivers a lot of power. As well as this power boost, we also gain incredibly efficient notables.

There are a few variations, but the one used in the PoB gives us 160% increased damage and 150% added fire resistance. We could spend an additional 3 points or change our pathing to pick up an additional 50% fire resistance.

Beacon of Madness, Delirious Bloodline

The last damage trick we use is Beacon of Madness which gives us all three elemental conflux, allowing us to shock, ignite and chill 100% of the time. This is used with the fire notable, 100% increased damage with hits against ignited enemies.

We then also use You're the crazy one! from the Delirious bloodline. This gives us the Mania debuff applied to enemies, the core debuff is 4% increased damage taken and can be inflicted 15 times. This totals to 60% increased damage taken after 15 seconds.

Defense

Azadi Crest, Triple Block

Triple block. Our core defense is the 1c shield Azadi Crest which has a few stats, but the core one is our lucky and unlucky effects are rolled three times instead of two.

This combined with the Gladiator's More Than Skill which gives lucky block if you have blocked recently. We have an effective block rate of 99.2% and 98.93% spell block. This can be pushed higher on higher budgets.

7 Endurance Charges, 100% uptime

We have 7 endurance charges and maintain the uptime thanks to Enmity's Embrace. It hits us for some fire damage when we use any skill, which we combine with Enduring Composure to gain one endurance charge a second.

Price

The build will initially use Cloak of Flame and Torchoak Step before transitioning into the madness buff. These are both extremely cheap uniques, as well as the one chaos wand Mystic Refractor.

I was able to get this build online for less than 50 c on day four of the Keepers league (I started two days late, so two days of playtime for me) and farm simulacrums. This gave me the currency to upgrade my gear. The main cost for the build is an elegant hubris with the correct stats, use one that is acceptable at first, this is likely the first major upgrade the build will undergo.

I was able to sell all three unique cluster jewels as well as good early bases to fund the character.

Changes for the upcoming league

This character was buffed by totem placement speed impacting how fast they come up. This will mean even less downtime between the skill shooting fireballs and resummoning our totem. It is a major buff.

We will be able to move from a 4 socket to a pseudo 5 socket item, by using the new currency to hopefully add lifetap to our rejuvenation totems. This will result in concentrated effect support being added to our set up.

We also received no other nerfs.

If you made it this far, thanks for reading. First time posting a build. I know that these interactions are known (I actually looked up if anyone else had dropped a guide on this recently before I did this write up and found Yungroan had done something similar two years ago.) I enjoyed putting this together and being able to do challenging content I never had before.