Hey everyone this is Thyworm with a new build for Last Epoch, the Totem Shaman. If you are enjoying Last Epoch content, consider subscribing. Let’s start with the build philosophy.
[build philosophy]
I basically just wanted to see how far a pretty standard totem build would get me without using poison. Totems itself turn out to be not that good, but the synergies you get with them are very decent indeed.
I tried several variations of gear as well, played around with the new primalist set and I explored various options. In the end I landed on a decent build, well suited for arena, where you’re using totems to buff the damage of ice thorns and avalanche.
Some of the Cons & Pros:
Pros:
Very tanky when totems are up, because we have a lot of synergies and get most of our damage and defence from totems
Easy playstyle, just summon totems and cast cold spells. It’s fun to do however.
A lot of damage from Avalanche and Ice Thorns
Cons:
Very squishy when totems are down, which means you need to manage your totems carefully.
Leveling is a little rough, because totem damage early on isn’t amazing.
What I personally like a lot about this build are the synergies. Your totems give us a ton of buffs, our skills work well with totems, and I was pleasantly surprised how much damage your skills do with the totems enabled. I tried a pure totem damage build, without poison, and I had a hard time pulling that off honestly.
But this works well, so let’s dive into the passives.
[passives]
The main stat for this build is attunement. Literally everything scales with that. Mostly I focused on protections and totem synergy, apart from attunement.
Take 8/8 natural attunement, for attunement. I took 5 points in Gift of the Wilderness, for some minion health and my own health. If you want damage, you can also go Tempestborn. Then take 6/6 Wisdom of the Wild, because both us and our totems do spell damage. Rotbane is a nice node, making your totems immune to poison while increasing their health as well.
Everything else I put in Shaman, because there’s a lot of synergy here with totems. More attunement for example, with 8/8 Shamanic Infusion. Take 5/5 totemic fury, increasing cast speed when totems are active, which is always. I took some extra points in Silent Protector, but only after reaching level 75 or so. Take 8/8 Earthern Supremacy, for more attunement, Stun avoidance and % stun chance increase. 8/8 Rune of Awe is a good node, granting you and your minions flat spell damage, which is massive. I took 10/10 protective circle, which grants 50 protections per active totem, and we usually have around 10 totems active, so this is 500 protections across the board. I also took 1 point in Heorot’s path, just to get to 1/5 Eternal storm. I’m really not sure if this node is worth it, but I do occasionally kill frozen enemies. We do freeze a lot of enemies, and a random totem being healed in the arena is pretty decent.
We take even more totem nodes, but first, more attunement. Take 10/10 Elemental Shrines. And then the big damage boost, 10/10 Ascendant Circle, which gives 40% increased spell damage per active totem. Like I said, we usually have 10, so that’s 400% increased spell damage. I finished with 10/10 Ironbark, because it offers a lot of base health for your totems and you want your totems to stay alive, so you keep receiving all these bonuses.
Skills are up next
[skill specialization]
We start with the totems.
Summon thorn totem has 2 main parts. First, we want to directly summon a bunch of totems. Second, we turn these totems into minions that deal cold damage, so they synergize well with the rest of our build.
First, go north. Take 3/3 Forested Expanse, increasing the Totem count. Take ¾ Eternal Forest, increasing their uptime. We don’t need 4 points, because we use idols in end game that spawn thorn totems on hit, and this happens so often that we refresh them before they run out anyway. Take Grove mind, summoning all your thorn totems at once. The idol I talked about will now do the same thing by the way, it summons all your totems at once, with no mana cost, on hit.
Then, go right, and take 2/5 Memories of Eterra, just to get to 5/5 Venom Tipped Thorns. Poison is good, but it doesn’t really synergize well with our build, so let’s take Ice Thorn Totems, turning that poison into chill. Chill reduces movement, attack, cast and throw speed by 12%, and it stacks 3 times, so chilling enemies is really worth it. Take Frost Attunement as well, increasing the chances of completely freezing an enemy.
Our final points I put into 1/3 Torrent of Thorns, for 1 extra projectile, into 2/4 Lethal Thicket, just to get to Unhollow Core, so the totems aim their thorns at least somewhat in the direction of enemies. These 4 points can be spent elsewhere too, I feel.
Then, the Storm Totem, which is the reward from our Shaman Mastery. And that’s honestly the reason I’m using it, because Storm Totem itself really isn’t all that amazing, but we’re using it anyway. In this Build, Storm Totem is very much a buff/debuff unit. While levelling, it provides decent damage.
Go right, 4/4 Lightning Raider, imcreasing cast speed. Take 1/3 Direct Current, just to get to Blizzard, which makes the Storm totem cast this huge blizzard. It doesn’t deal much damage, but it once again has a chance to chill enemies. Increase the area of this a bit by 2/5 Storm’s Reach.
Take 4/4 Limited Resistance, because this build costs a lot of mana and we need stuff to be cheap. Take 3/3 Static Field, which shocks enemies occasionally. Shock decreases enemy elemental resistances by 100, so this help a little bit. 2/2 High Voltage increases the shock effect, so now it’s -160 ele resistance. Overstimulation is decent as well, decreasing enemy movement speed by 20%. Finally, take 2/2 Lightning Protection, for 400 lightning prot to everyone near the storm totem, including you.
Let’s move to Eterra’s Blessing, which we use to heal and to summon more totems. Because the more totems we have, the more damage we deal and the better protected we are.
Go right, and take 4/5 Improved Blessing. Take 3/3 Ancestral Renewal, which summons a healing totem every time you heal a high health target. A healing totem heals, of course, but also counts as a totem. Take tranquil spirit, which allows you casting when you out of mana, which can be a lifesaver and you still summon totems. Take Purge, cleaning ailments. Take Efflorescence, making it a heal over time and finish with Regrowth, straight out of World of Warcraft, healing you again after the heal expires.
We buff ourselves a bit with 5/5 safeguard, granting 250 armor & all protections. And then finally, we want to make sure we’re not healing our totems, but we’re healing us. This skill is really hard to use otherwise, because aiming it is a nightmare. So go south, 2/5 Ardent Touch, just to get to ¼ Binding Heal, just to get to Triage. With this node, Eterra’s Blessing automatically targets the lowest health ally, and that’s usually you. Minions and totems have a lot of health, much more than you, which is why this skill mostly targets the player. It’s great, because you get heals, first of all, you get buffs, and you can determine where to summon the healing totems, because they will spawn on top of you basically.
We move on to our 2 damage abilities.
Ice thorns is first.
We make ice thorns synergize well with totems, by going 3/6 Ritual Briar, for 48% increased hit damage. Take 1/6 thorn shaper just to get to 3/3 shamanistic fury, which gives hit damage per active totem. That’s a lot of hit damage, usually. You could go totem weaver if you want, but I’m using idols to make this happen.
Then, the second part is increasing the cold and base damage. Go north to 4/5 cold prison, for 4 flat cold damage. Take 5/5 Piercing Cold, for 5 flat cold damage, and to make sure that out spell completely pierces the enemies. And finally, farwood Heart, a buff that increases cold damage by up to 100% for 4 seconds, just by using ice thorns. And we’ll be using ice thorns a lot, so this is usually active, providing a very decent buff.
And now for our main damage dealer, avalanche. First order of business is to make this a casting spell, instead of a channeling spell. In general, channeling anything but Warpath is a bad idea, because you’re locked in place, and in the arena that means you’re basically dead. So take Mountain Peak, and then Precision, and then Wild Path, to stop this from happening. Avalanche is also very expensive, so take 4/4 naturally occurring, to reduce the mana cost. Also take 2/4 Unyielding storm, increasing the duration.
Because our whole build scales with cold damage, we want Avalanche which normally does a mix between physical and cold, to only do cold damage. Take 2/3 explosive impact, increasing the impact area, to ¼ Mountain’s fury, increasing the boulder impact area, to Frost, which converts all avalanche damage to cold. It now synergizes with the farwood heart buff from ice thorns and it works well with our idols, which you’ll soon see. The last points I put into some more totem synergy. ¾ Harsh Winter for hit damage, then 3/3 grounding, for 45% hit damage with an active totem. And then finally Storm Slide, granting the skill 10 flat lightning damage whenever a storm totem is nearby, which is usually the case. It’s a neat little interaction, and I took it only because we are using Storm Totem.
Time to look at the gear.
[Gear]
Our gear is focused on defenses and minion stats. There’s not much damage on here. It’s actually pretty straightforward without being all that good. I still need to craft me some close to perfect pieces that multiple characters can use. I’m glancing blow capped, as you should be as well. And I’m immune to crits, by capping the crit avoidance to 100%, which you should do as well if you want to take arena seriously.
I suggest using a shield and a wand. I tried going with a staff and while it’s more damage, you’re also very squishy all of a sudden. I am using the unique relic with the weird name, just because it’s not horrible on this build. You can use anything here however. The idols are worth noticing. I’m using idols that give cold damage per active totem. This adds up rather quickly, because I’ve found 3 of them so far, for 49% increased cold damage per active totem, which is usually around 500% additional cold damage, on top of the 400 we get from the passive tree, and additional bonuses from skill and gear. Make sure to get an idol as well that summons the thorn totems on hit, so you don’t have to do that. You could even remove thorn totem from you bar and get a wolf in or something, it’s really up to you.
[Levelling]
Levelling is a little rough at the start, because there’s no synergy at the start. Ice thorns is a decent skill to level with however, and take thorn totem second. You can make those synergize already and once you do, ice thorn really starts to hurt the enemies. Your mastery gives you storm totem, which is surprisingly effective in the campaign. You could temporarily spec that into a damage totem, focusing on hit damage, area and cast speed. It clears almost entire zones that way. Later, this falls off however. Near end-game, take avalanche and ettera’s blessing and just spec it like mentioned in this video.
Finally, the play style during end game
[play style]
Here’s the build in action.
You want to summon your totems, all of them. Thorn, storm and healing. You should have 5 to 10 totems up at all times, or your damage and resistance will suffer too much and you will die. It’s a good idea to start the damage loop by casting a few ice thorns, granting you the farwood heart buff, and then once everything is in place, you can start casting avalanche, which now does really massive damage. Boulders crit up to 5k and with the right setup, this can really decimate enemy armies.
It does take a little getting used to, and it’s definitely an acquired taste, this totem business, but if you’re interested in trying this, it’s a very decent build.
A pure poison totem build probably tops this in terms of damage, but I’m trying to avoid poison a little bit, as it’s super strong right now and I don’t want to create all these guides only to have the devs nerf poison to the ground, which they might and maybe even should do. This build is a decent concept, it’s far from perfect, but suitable to most totemist needs.
I hope you have fun with the build and that the guide was useful. Thanks for watching and making it to the end. See you all soon! Bye bye.