A brief guide to my take on Explody Totems

Build summary**:**

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EDIT: here's a showcase of a 10div budget version of the build https://youtu.be/iYQJO6xHsZE

Wave 30 showcase: https://youtu.be/1Y7t4Nf7mXQ

TL:DR (PoB) - https://pobb.in/QKyaNWT7ndTY

The basic premise of the build is to use the new totem explode plus traps and poison to deal damage, this scaling is so broken that we can fully invest in tank using transcendence + loreweave and still be at dot cap on ubers. We take the Pathfinder ascendancy for flask abuse and poison prolif with free wither effect and chance to wither on hit.

Part One:

Offense**:**

The important thing about this build is how we scale damage, the totem explode is not a spell or an attack so we have to use generic scaling damage which is why poison is the way to go. If you look at the tree we pick up very little damage, just some poison chance and clusters and it's still overkill. This also allows us to only run HoA as our only offensive aura which will help fit in all our defensive ones later.

Poison brings up one problem we have to solve which is the chance to poison and it needs to be a global chance since our explosions are not attacks nor spells. I am doing this with one wheel on the tree, a divergent HoA (with additional quality from ashes), and poison chance against cursed monsters mastery. To scale our poison damage we use chaos DoT multi and poison DoT multi as well as %chaos damage on our clusters. As a supplement to the damage we slot a ming’s heart to give us 70% of phys as extra chaos which as you can imagine is a lot of damage. Another upside of how we scale is our totems have no less multipliers to their damage so our hit dps is still very respectable, as well the dps of a single poison is extremely high so clear with the pathfinder prolif + plague bearer is very comfy.

To avoid the pain of actually placing totems we use traps, also because of how totem explode works we are not affected by the downsides of trap support gems. I am running Devouring totem (has the best life scaling with quality), trap support, multi trap, cluster trap, multi totem (each trap summons two totems), and empower. Ideally you’d socket these in a plus one all gems loreweave but i’ve yet to get around to double corrupting those.

The last part is the weapon, because of how I built my character I am using the redblade gladius with 600% explode. This enables us to use a dawnbreaker as a shield which will become important later, but this is non-replaceable for how I built this character.

Mana:

We also use the slavedriver in our glove slot to solve the problem of mana and also allows us to scale cast speed to improve our trap throw speed, admittedly the price of the gloves is a bit out of reach for many players but for this guide i will be going over how i built my character which is certainly not budget friendly and also certainly overkill in many aspects. The problem we need to solve with these gloves is regen and i chose to use vitality on arrogance plus some regen on the tree, this alone is a net negative while throwing our traps so we abuse the new master surgeon plus a saturated divine life flask to have near perma uptime on its recovery.

We also pick up the life mastery for 30% converted cost to life for more flexibility in casting our flame dash and molten shell, as well as our curses.

Part Two:

Defense:

The way I built this character is very similar to transcendence builds of the past, we stack armor plus Loreweave to get as much damage reduction as possible. The problem transcendence presents us with is now our armor no longer applies to our physical damage taken to mitigate this we need to convert as much physical damage taken to elemental damage. I am currently at 99% taken as, and the closer you can get to 100% the better. The build can start running this tech at around 85% and feels amazing at 90%+ in no way do you need to get 100% it is certainly overkill for 99.99% of the game. The way we achieve 100% taken as is in 4 ways: helmet, shield, flask, and watcher's eye.

Helmet:

For our helmet we use a delve mod fractured helmet with 10% taken as (element), i spammed loathing essence until i got a decent life mod and some evasion with an open prefix to craft plus to AoE gems. Then you need to get 8% taken as as an Eater of Worlds eldritch implicit, this needs to be conflicted from 7% so may take a couple tries, if you have questions on how to efficiently to that im sure there is plenty of guides on youtube for how to use conflict orbs.

Shield:

For our shield we use a 20% physical damage taken as fire Dawnbreaker that has a crucible tree for an additional 3% and a double corrupted implicit for an additional 16%. The easy part of this is getting the crucible tree on a 20% shield, the very pain champ part is spending all day double corrupting 20% Dawnbreakers until you hit two physical taken as implicits. This took me over 120 tries and 70 divines until I finally hit a 7% taken as fire, 7% taken as chaos. ideally those would both be fire lighting or cold instead but i couldn't be bothered to run anymore temples. If you're trying to do this yourself I suggest befriending someone that's farming the big red boy since they'll likely have an excess of these shields. It's also important that you corrupt a 20% physical taken as fire shield, cause you'll be big sad if you hit big on a 19% shield. After you get the shield double corrupted you can add the crucible tree to it for the additional 3% taken as which shouldn't take too long since it's a mod on the first passive of the tree.

Flask:

For our flask we use a Taste of Hate with 15% taken as cold, this with all our flask effect brings us to 22% of physical taken as cold. The important thing to note here is we need 100% uptime on this flask. I am grabbing two flask wheels and a mod on my belt to have 100% uptime with the “use when charges reach full” enchantment. I will talk more on this when we get to the flask section.

Watcher's Eye:

For the last bit of taken as we run a double mod watchers eye with %taken as element while affected by purity of elements, i am currently running a 10% taken as lightning, 12% taken as fire. If i divine this to (12%, 11%) I will reach 100% physical damage taken as elemental damage.

Summary of taken as:

Helmet- 18%

Shield- 37%

Flask- 22%

Watcher’s- 22%

For a total of - 99% physical taken as elemental

Auras:

The next part of our defenses is our aura set up. Currently I am running grace, determination, defiance banner, purity of elements, and arctic armor. To fit all of these on one character we need to fit a lot of mana reservation efficiency into the build. I use the mana mastery, two aura wheels, a 12% ashes as well as a three passive 35% increased effect mana reservation cluster. You could probably save some points and drop AA but I think it fits well into the build as we take a lot of our damage as fire plus the new Vaal skill is a great “get out of jail free” card. We also use iron reflexes to convert all our evasion to armor. This makes our transcendence a lot more effective while also being nice for a tech i'll explain later but cast when stunned is super comfy and we will be abusing that for additional recovery and curse automation. Purity of elements is also essential for this build as it gives us elemental aliment immunity and the condition for our watcher’s eye.

Flasks:

Our flasks are a very important part of our build and should be rolled in a specific way to get the most out of them. I am currently running a taste hate, a topaz, a ruby, a quicksilver, and a divine life flask. You can opt into running a different flask instead of the quicksilver if you’d like depending on the content you’re running, but I like the movement speed it provides and our defenses are already so strong a granite or jade seems overkill. For your flasks the most important mod you roll is Flagellant’s on your topaz, ruby, and flex. We are picking up the mastery for 4% recovery on flask use so it is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT that we have this mod on the flasks, we don't have any evasion so if your standing in a pack of mobs they need to a significant amount of damage to even move your HP pool. Make sure you quality all your flasks and run a flask effect belt with charges gained as this will improve this interaction and allow for permanent flask uptime on your elemental flasks which is important since we need them to resistance cap our character. For our life flask I am running a saturated divine life flask of sealing. You can swap the sealing mod if you run an armor helmet and have CB immunity on a jewel. The saturated mod also has nice synergy with the master surgeon as it gives us so much recovery per second.

Suppression:

Another layer to our defense is going to be suppression we get almost all of this on our tree and 12% on the boots, i am honestly not sure if suppression is even necessary with the amount of damage reduction this build has but it does make a difference in some uber boss fights allowing us to take large boss slams that would otherwise kill us

Stun Tech:

We are using a tech with the new bloodnotch jewel and immutable to reduce our stun duration as well as the ES mastery to base stun threshold of ES instead. This gives us an additional layer of recovery and also allows us to run our curses on cast when stunned to automate them for free while mapping. You should still swap to arcanist brand for bosses since you need them cursed for 100% poison chance.

Part Three:

Summary:

In conclusion build slaps, uhhhhh idk i think i explained almost everything. This build archetype is so overpowered we barely need to invest in damage to hit dot cap and can full send our defenses to make one of the most well rounded characters i've ever played. It’s surely no map blaster like CF or Tornado Shot and it isn't going to oneshot a boss (at least how i built it) but i can certainly say this shit is op and fun as hell to play. Traps definitely aren't for everyone but if you want to play a build that can allow even someone as brain dead as me to kill all the ubers this is certainly up there on the list.