How's totem builds?

I tried spell totem and found it kinda clunky.

Unless you have a guaranteed way to generate endurance/power charges, it is just very inconsistent. And your options for power/endurance charge generation is fairly limited.

you can do spell totem easily with cultivated redflare conduit and the resonance keystone

The closer PoE1 totem feel I've played in PoE2 was a Lich ED/C supporting her own Dark Effigy totems. You basically play ED/C against mobs and cast totems against bosses. This is what I played last league, some of the mods on items are outdated or not available anymore and the tree is bugged due to updates. You want your weapon swap dedicated to totems and you main dedicated to applying chaos DoTs.

They're still not the most fleshed out mechanic in PoE2, spell totems where just introduced now in 0.4, I think some people have made them work tho.

But yeah physical totems are the more dominant variation since people are more used to build them in PoE2.

I’m gonna run totems in PoE 3.28. Now I just gotta decide which one…… 🤔

Spell Totem has a few functional builds, but it looks kinda wonky.

Shockwave Totem has some cool interactions with Bear form. It's a slam so it triggers volcanic fissures.

I tried to make a totem build and pushed it to the end game but I found it difficult to balance between defensive and offensive. Here is some game play

https://youtu.be/UsJYhSojgYQ?si=GfCTbywcF7zGD282

I could be wrong but at 0.4 totem actually share character’s offensive state including unique weapon effects. That got me going with nebulous, “the always crit mace” but I couldn’t find a good way to build defensive layers. If I need damage I have to use 2 maces one for always crit one for totem levels and flat damage. Then I would be quite squishy. But if I use a shield, high end shield wall build feels better than totem…. Other builds are more fun so I gave up…