Storm Call Totem plays an important role in this build.

This build is very safe, and the range of Storm Call makes them even more so. What's more, it have a good damage on bosses and great range and coverage, even with Concentrated Effect. So this build is your great choice for poe league starter.

 

Quick Jump

• Pros & Cons

• Skill Tree 

• Gems Setup

• Gear Setup

• Leveling

Pros & Cons

Pros

• + Hierophant buffed! Now much more damage, survivabilty, quality of life and smoother gameplay. These buffs mean that you can make a working build with very basic gear at the moment, making it a great choice of poe leaguestarter.
• + Totems are very safe playstyle, and the range of Storm Call make them even more so.
• + Great range and coverage, even with Concentrated Effect. 
• + Good Damage on bosses. 
• + Can do any map mod, however no mana regen feels horrible and you need to have some mana flasks to run these if you choose to.
• + Really nice Regen, both mana and HP, as long as your totems are up.
• + Uberlab viable.

Cons

• - Finding good gear in SSF might be tricky for a crit build. 
• - Slight delay between cast and damage
• - Low HP, even with MoM and any other defenses we stack, this is not a 'tanky' build. 

 

Skill Tree 

Ascendancy

Pursuit of Faith & Ritual of Awakening are mandatory, the other 2 are your choice depending if you want more damage, tankiness or quality of life.

Bandits

Alira or Kill All

Passive Tree

 

Gems Setup

Main DPS Setup

• Storm Call
• Spell Totem
• Added Lightning Damage
• Less Duration
• Concentrated Effect 
• Controlled Destruction

You might also want to level up

• Lightning Penetration
• Increased Critical Damage

CWDT Setup

• Cast When Damage Taken lvl6
• Immortal Call lvl8
• Summon Golem lvl8 any golem you prefer
• Increased Duration

Enfeeble is nice for mapping if you do not want to self cast curse, for bossing you will probably want to self cast conductivity, so golem is better.

Mobility Setup

you have some choice here depending on your weapon setups

• whirling blades + faster attacks + fortify
• shield charge + faster attacks + fortify
• flame dash for gaps / lightning warp + faster casting + less duration for staff or wand users if you want another movement skill.

Curse & Arcane Surge setup

• (choice of curse)Enfeeble or Conductivity
• increased AOE or Spell Cascade
• Increased Duration
• Arcane Surge (level 15/16 recommended)

The support gems can be added to up the mana cost making Arcane Surge more reliable.

If you want Arcane Surge to activate on every curse cast you can use a level 12 Arcane Surge from around the time you enter maps, and you may be able to push it a little further as you fully level your curse gem. For one surge every 2 casts, you should be easily able to maintain a level 15/16 Surge. However casting 3-4 curses over 6 seconds to maintain a level 20/21 Surge is doable as a totem build if you really want want to push it. 

Other Gems

• Vaal Lightning Trap
• Vaal Haste
• Increased Duration
• Searing Bond

Quality of life gems, for more boss damage and clear speed respectively. You can craft these by vaaling the base gems in SSF, but it is quite expensive at the start of the league.

It may be worth farming aqueducts (act 4) or blood aqueduct (act 9) for humility cards, and the vaal side areas contained within for vaal gems to make the vaal orb vendor recipe (7x Vaal skill gems & 1x Sacrifice Vaal Fragment = 1 vaal orb)

Searing Bond gives us some more totem bonuses from ascendancy.

 

Gear

In this Build, for the leaguestarter, the choice of gear is not the first priority, you should focus on the stats .

Weapons

• Daggers: % Spell dmg, % Lightning dmg, flat Lightning dmg to spells, crit chance for spells (normal crit suffix applies to attacks only), Crit multi, attack speed 
• Spirit shields: Life & resists, % Spell dmg, % Lightning dmg, crit chance for spells, mana & regen, cast speed, chance to block / spells
• Kite Shields: Life & resists, % Spell dmg, % Elemental dmg, mana & regen, cast speed, chance to block / spells
• Wands: % Spell dmg, % Lightning dmg, flat Lightning dmg to spells, crit chance for spells (normal crit suffix applies to attacks only), Crit multi, attack speed 
• Staves: +2 Lightning gems, +1 socketed gems, Spell dmg, % Lightning dmg, flat Lightning dmg to spells, crit chance for spells 

Amulet

• Life + % spell/lightning dmg, crit & multi, cast speed, mana regen, all resist are good things to look out for

Rings

• Diamond rings: Life + % lightning dmg, crit & multi, cast speed, mana regen, all resist. maybe attack speed for map clear speed

Jewels

Look for life and damage stats such as Totem damage, crit multi, lightning damage, area damage etc

 

Leveling

Drop totems, run fast, stay underlevelled for your zone. Not much more to say.

I will stress something for new players or slower players that your leveling speed through acts 1-10 has very little to do with how many monsters you kill. This seems strange in a game all about killing thousands of monsters, but your exp can be effectively measured by where your feet are on the ground. That is to say if you are over-leveled in any way, the time you spend to kill the monsters is time you have wasted. Totems actually suffer less from this, as you can often just drop 1 totem and keep running and waste very little time. Try to keep an eye on what level the zone is and stay under that if you can. Look for movement speed on boots, from vendors or buy them from other players, and do not be afraid to just skip lots of monsters, particularly annoying ones! Do you hate killing crabs in submerged passage? Just run past and let those poor suckers live.

If you are struggling on bosses because you are used to over-leveling them, try this little tip (if you are in normal league, not in SSF) look in the group finder for people doing that boss, or if you know the maps leading up to it and you see a group close, jump in the party. Often you will get a portal right to the boss and a quick kill from some over-geared or over-leveled people.

 

POB link: https://pastebin.com/uE4sba7J