Shockwave Totems Earthquake
Early Access – Day 13 – December 19, 2024
After so many years of waiting, Path Of Exile 2 is here with its Early Access. It was supposed to be hard, with a lot of boss fights, and a slow game play so I wanted to start with a big beefy boy with some totems. This is my experience…
I loved levelling through the acts, it was challenging, I died many times, mostly on bosses, learnt the fights, got a few more levels and equipment upgrades, and got rewarded with a kill. It took me 1 day and 14 hours to finish the campaign (level 66) with a meager 59 deaths. I levelled with Shockwave Totem and Earthquake slammed manually as soon as possible. I put Earthquake on Ancestral Warrior Totem as soon as I could (level 53 I think) so I could go full totems. I went with the Armour breaking ascendency and I rushed the totems nodes on the passive trees.
A note on Astral Projection, my entire goal was to use this a support to Shockwave Totem but unfortunately, it’s just not working. Not sure if it’s a bug or intended. This makes the gameplay way more difficult as the totems needs to be put on top of the enemy. I almost rerolled when I noticed this wasn’t working but I was so excited in discovering the game that I pushed through.
Mapping was slow but fine, I scaled my DPS by using 2 big two hand maces with the mod +6 melee weapon and the second ascendency to break armour past 0. I just relied on my health pool, a bit of armour, capping my resists, and hiding behind totems to survive. It went fine in white map, no deaths. I died 5 times in yellow maps, so I guess it went fine. But I died 3 more times in T11 and T12 and I could feel the ramped up in difficulty.
I tried a T14 and T15 which I was able to complete but it took me forever and the buttocks were clenched.
Single target DPS is great but mapping clear is attrocious and dangerous. Maybe going back to 1 two-hander and a shield to get some block would be better. Maybe changing to some other totems like Molten Blast as Tatiantel2 did would be smoother to map. I tried Stampede totems which was better to map but not amazing neither. Anyway, I reached the end of my patience with the totems game play and I’m excited in trying other builds so I draw the line before respeccing. I might come back…
If you want to play this build, which I don’t know if I should recommend as this is the only build I have played, I would recommend to follow Zizaran’s video below and guide on Maxroll which is pretty close to what I did, and probably better.
- Patch 0.1.1 (January 2025) – They fix the bug that Astral Projection was not supporting Shockwave totems. Also armour has been buffed but it’s probably not enough. I have respecced this character so I can’t try. I might when levelling a new Warrior?
| Bossing | ★★★★ |
| Defence | ★★ |
| Mapping | ★ |
| Budget | ★★★★★ |
| Overall score | 12 |
What I liked
- High single target DPS – if positionned correctly, rare and boss melts
- Cheap – can be put together for probably less than 1-2 div
What I disliked
- Astral Projection Support does not work – Need to put the totem on top of the enemy or no DPS.
- Slow – Movement speed and map clearing
- Not tanky enough – Life and Armour is not enough
- Visual Polution – Between the shockwaves, earthquakes and jagged ground, hard to see some on-death effects
Would I play it again?
Not really unless Astral Projection Support is “fixed” to work with Shockwave Totems.
Path Of Building and stats
Sorry POB is not yet available
| Hard Core? | NO |
| Solo Self Found? | YES |
| League starter? | YES |
| Levelling skill | Same but Earthquake manually before totems |
| Budget | Probably less than 50 ex |
| Death count | 67 (see description for more info) |
| Level | 84 |
| Played | 3 days |
Please visit this Google Sheet to see the main information and POB data I kept track of. You can more easily compare with other builds.
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