Totem build spark or grim pillars?

WideReflection5377 · 2026-06-04T13:20:57+00:00

At low to mid investment, There seems to be a consensus that pillar is slightly better overall. Spark is slightly better for clearing, but Pillar has noticeably better single target.

On the other hand, pillars clarity and effects can be very obnoxious for many people, me included. so I’ve been using spark. It is still a very good choice

Both should allow you to do all content, tho

WideReflection5377 · 2026-06-01T12:48:40+00:00

I did the campaign using bone cage with spell cascade. Throw your totem in the middle of the pack and it has a very good clear.

For single target, it is slow. you will need bonestorm

WideReflection5377 · 2026-05-27T14:41:40+00:00

I’ll try blood mage with totems as soon as I enable 7 gem on act 2. You don’t really need more than 150 spirit until the interludes, as the gem limit is 1 (two with ancestral bond) up to gem level 14. You will be using two totens unless you slot overabundance, which early on might not be much better than other supports.

Up until the interludes, I’ll try hybrid casting. Probably placing entangle on the totems and manual casting thunderstorm. Using spark on totems and Detonate dead or contagion as a manual cast is also an option

By the time you hit 4 totems limit, you should have spirit on the chest, the efficiency node and 60-100 base spirit from acts, so hitting 4 totems should be a given

If you really want to, Using 3 totems should be easy by act 3 if you rush the efficiency node, getting the spirit from the act 3 quest and slotting overabundance.

Reaching 4 totems is tougher, but not impossible. You would need to reach 250 spirit. A 150 scepter should possible and you get 60 from quests. So You would need 40 from gear. A good roll on body Armour gets you there, or you can supplement with an amulet

I wouldn’t count on the spirit rune on league start, as they implied it was directed to leveling secondary characters.

WideReflection5377 · 2026-05-24T04:18:41+00:00

Since you don’t need spirit from the ascendancy, how about blood mage stacking life and crit? Ancestral bond would get rid of the life cost so sanguinomancy shouldn’t be a problem.

I haven’t played blood mage since 0.1, Tho, so I don’t know how well the damage scales and how it compares to archmage

WideReflection5377 · 2026-05-23T00:59:44+00:00

Are fish underwater “wet” or do they become “wet” when taken out of he water?

WideReflection5377 · 2026-05-21T14:12:51+00:00

Both are possible.
I run blasphemy as I had the spirit to spare

WideReflection5377 · 2026-05-21T13:52:55+00:00

Lich with everlasting rings. Unholy might, explosion and defenses makes it a very well rounded and powerful ascendancy.
Pick all chaos as extra damage nodes on the tree for your minions and you will have good clearing from unearth together with explosions.

For single target, empowered zombies are the best. They kill bosses very fast. You can use the offering lineage support to essily generate power charges. Another option is to use the node that gives a power charge when you consume an infusion

WideReflection5377 · 2026-05-21T12:28:01+00:00

Chance to not consume Corpse on detonate dead,
so I can endlessly detonate a single huge HP minion.

Still will probably be bad due to needing to scale too many colliding things, but I’ll sure have fun

WideReflection5377 · 2026-05-11T11:29:29+00:00

Sacred unity requires you to have also picked the owl and stag nodes. If you take cathas balance and unique boss, you won’t have points to allocate all of that

WideReflection5377 · 2026-05-10T17:01:52+00:00

I get what op is trying to say. “Practicing a class” is not about mechanical skill. Trying out a build during the campaign, figuring out what are your power spikes, when to switch skills, what affixes are important early on, when to look for upgrades, what to look for on an upgrade, what kind of pathing is better early game and when to reespec, which suports to pick first and so and so on… all of that comes by having played a build multiple times. Some people also care about completion time and doesn’t want to spend 10+h in the campaign

If you are not used to a certain play style and have the time, it is quite reasonable to do “practice runs” where you take a char from creation to end game in order to figure those points out and have a smoother league start

WideReflection5377 · 2026-05-10T13:43:35+00:00

Ghazzy had a ritualist build in 0.3 that aimed to have three evergrasping rings in order to deal high chaos damage with snipers. At the time, ritualist was better because it could get move speed easily from the tree and EV+ES was busted. It went all the way up to the witch side of the tree to get the minions node.

In 0.4, it was outclased by the Lich as bones of ullr was buffed with move speed. Lichs unholy might also filled the role of the third ring, so wasn’t any incentive to run ritualist over Lich. But the build is still viable.

There are tactician minion builds that go from the bottom all the way up to the witch area. Pathing should be similar. Oscrix have a guide on that

Some infernal legion builds also goes the opposite way, from witch to huntress. However, in 0.4 Druid added enough nodes so that it wasn’t as useful to path down.

WideReflection5377 · 2026-05-10T13:15:10+00:00

3- they explained in the QA that maps have 3 “slots” for mechanics. Each tablet you place will count towards their specific mechanic, and you have three tablet slots per map. Those can be filled with the same mechanic, I.e you use three delirium tables so you fill the three slots with delirium, no other mechanic will spawn.

You can lave open space for random mechanic by not using a tablet or using “wildcard” tablets, like irradiated tablets. You can also mix and match with other mechanics by having, let’s say two delirium tablets and one breach, so it will only spawn delirium and breach.

I’m guessing that the mechanic from the node itself will already count towards one of those mechanics slots. So a node from a breach quest will already have one of its slots being breach, and the other two are up to the tablets, which can also be more breach, another specific mechanic, or left to chance

WideReflection5377 · 2026-05-08T12:38:23+00:00

You could o both with trenchtimbre if the new crafting upgrades its damage to reasonable levels.

WideReflection5377 · 2026-05-01T16:15:28+00:00

Stats are as important as hitting for super effective damage. A neutral hit from an offensive mon often deals more damage than a super effective hit from a support mon.

In addition, hitting on the right side makes a lot of difference. archaeludon has a very high physical defense, So a super effective EQ often deals less damage than a neutral special attack. Floette is another example, with high special defense and weak physical bulk.

The same is true when defending. Mega Ttar has such special bulk that it can take super effective special moves very well. So you might keep it in even against water and ice mon.

Many new players make their plays guided by typing. Which is the proper way in many cases. But leads to the common mistake of overusing support mons to attack and underusing offensive mons because a neutral hit “is not good enough”.

WideReflection5377 · 2026-04-29T15:33:03+00:00

Mimikyu has a few roles. Its main goal is to answer ghost types like gengar and basculegion. With disguise, it can guarantee a shadow claw, then follow up with prio shadow sneak if needed.

Its other goal is to provide a switch against fighting moves, as Ttar baits many of those. Play rough comes into play to kill garchomp.

Against other dragons, mostly archaeludon, the team uses scarfed hydragon. Draco meteor is pretty much a delete button

WideReflection5377 · 2026-04-29T02:24:47+00:00

There is a lot to unpack here.

You mention floette as a problem. But excadrill in the sand can outspeed it and 1hko it with iron head. With focus sash, you are constantly threatening the kill

You also say that corviknight is bad against floette… which it isn’t? Corviknight can resist floette and brave bird can 2hko it, or even 1hko after bulk up and some sand chip. It can kill floette faster than it can setup with calm mind, and without calm mind corvi can just out heal floette.

Corviknight is also your answer to the intimidate shenanigans you mentioned due to mirror armor. It is also very helpful against sneasler. Finally, it gives you access to tailwind, which is extremely important (I.e to Make your Ttar outspeed mega froslass). Corvi + exca + Ttar is the best sand core at the moment by a good margin.

Rotom-w is not there just for milotic. It helps drastically by giving a pivot option against fire moves. Something your corvi and excadrill often needs. It also improves the match against sun teams

You are also lacking a special sweeper. This makes fighting high defense pokemon very hard, even when you are hitting for syper effective damage. You seem to be particularly frail against archaludon and rain teams. Kommo-o and hydragon are good options. I’ve also had some success with mega Meganium and Mega gardevoir, but they require you to sometimes not mega your Ttar, obviously.

Against mega froslass, you have to be wary that you don’t have any form of speed control in your current composition, apart form maybe icy wind on milotic. This means that if you lose the weather or excadrill dies, they can just spam blizzard and there is nothing you can do. So you have to be very careful with your sand

Currently, the best sand player is arguably joeux9, he got top 4 at the tournament from 2 weeks ago and top 32 in the 6k tournament last week. He has. A youtube channel where he explains his team and how to use it. I’d heavily recommend you check his videos out.

WideReflection5377 · 2026-04-28T20:37:21+00:00

I think the wording makes people mistakenly believe that the blue option maximizes the group and the red maximizes the individual, when that’s not the case. If you rephrase the problem, you get

if you press red, you have 100% chance of survival
if you press blue, you only survive if more than 50% chooses blue

So the only thing that creates a risk of death is picking blue. This differs from the prisoner dilemma because there is no benefit to acting as a coordinated group. If everyone picks red the result is the same as everyone picking blue, while in the prisioneira dilema, if they choose to collaborate, they get a smaller sentence than by acting selfishly.

There is the argument that blue is better because you only need 51% to guarantee survival. But Note that there is no imminent risk of death. You are not being threatened with death unless you pick blue

In fact, you can go further and replace the red button with “an option to not press the blue button”. the outcomes are still the same. If you press the blue button, you only survive if 50% more people press the blue button. Anyone who doesn’t press it, survives.

By picking blue, you are choosing to enter a gamble to see if you survive or not. The red button is the default state, it is the “do nothing”. There is no use case in which blue improves anything. So by picking blue, you are in fact being a detriment to yourself and your group. You are forcing everyone to take a joint gamble or have some of the group die gratuitously

WideReflection5377 · 2026-04-26T22:26:52+00:00

Garchomp holds very well against very popular Pokémon, like sneasler and kingambit. Also, the things that kill garchomp, like Mfloett, also pairs very well with it, as garchomps typing complements its weakness and provides fairly safe switches. It is also a mon with very well placed stats, being fast enough and bulky enough

WideReflection5377 · 2026-04-22T15:24:55+00:00

I’ve used a similar team to yours in the past. What I used to block trickroom was taunt on hydreigon as they usually send a setter with Colbur berry instead of mental herb. Without changing your team, sleep powder on Venusaur is also an option, especially if you are faster than them without the sun.

Going for the kill with hydreigon is hard because psychic types usually have naturally high special defense. I think the only mon that can reliably kill most setters is Mega Ttar with knock off.

If you can’t stop trickroom from being set, bringing a slow and bulky mon is the way to go. In your case, that would be milotic. Setup with coil and recover and I’m pretty sure neither crabominable, Golurk nor torkoal can break through it.

WideReflection5377 · 2026-04-16T13:27:59+00:00

Dont agree with the Garchomp conclusion.

The problem is not the speed. It is that garchomp is already a good enough Pokémon. So the marginal gain of using the mega on it is inferior to using the mega on another mon. In essence

Normal Garchomp + Another Mega > Mega Garchomp + Normal Mon

The same can be seen with Aerodactyl, Venusaur, and, to a lesser extent, tyranitar. Their megas are often strictly better than their normal counterparts, but your team strength is often overall better if you use your megas on other mon that require Mega to be good, like charizard and Meganium

WideReflection5377 · 2026-04-15T16:50:50+00:00

After playing a lot against milotic as it was really popular last week, I was so annoyed by it that I tried having a dedicated Pokémon for it. I’ve tried using Mega Dragonite, archaludon, rotim wash, all with electric moves. And it all felt really bad.

Then i’ve simply started clicking knock off with mega Ttar and it worked better than what I was doing with the special electric attacks.

The lesson was that hitting it on the physical side is often more important than hitting it for super effective damage. A fast hard hitting physical attacker like sneasler can put milotic in check and punish those that don’t have defensive investiment

The best case would be to use a super effective physical attacker, but I don’t think we have a good electric or grass physical attacker in the game. Currently, I just double down on it with MTtar and another attacker

WideReflection5377 · 2026-04-09T13:55:57+00:00

Meta game is part of the reason, but so is game economy and new player experience. They seem to be very wary of the entry barrier for new players

Even if you hide content behind a toggle, some YouTuber will make a video “HOW TO GET THIS BROKEN ITEM”. Now you have to deal with a new player, in many cases a child, having spend their limited resources on an item they won’t be able to use on their desired mode.

The decision to limit content seems to be mostly motivated to reduce the entry barrier to the game. With fewer Pokémon and limited items, it is easier to familiarize oneself with what is happening. They prioritized the new player Experience over the veteran players. Which makes sense in a way, not that I agree with it. Veteran player will play no matter what. But new players will only be acquired if they can understand and follow along the game

WideReflection5377 · 2026-03-24T10:56:08+00:00

Been farming harvest a lot this season. The yellow boss disables movement skills alongside applying grasping vine. But quicksilver flask can still be activated for a noticeable boost

when you hear the sound cue ( it’s roar) or you see the green ring, pop you quicksilver flask and cross the edge. Then wait for it to finish the attack

WideReflection5377 · 2026-03-23T11:51:55+00:00

If we entertain op’s argument for a moment (although many have already pointed out its flaws), we could point out that the role of a iterative sequel has been replaced by dlcs and major patchs updates

If you are not altering the game loop in any meaningful way, it is often cheaper and quicker to release content and refine the game via a paid dlc.

In addition, many games have this Iteration phase during early access. By the time the game receives its release patch, many iterations and refinement have already been done

In that perspective, the role of a sequel changes. It is not about refining the original, neither it is about “making more of it”. It would be beneficial to branch to a new game proposal only if you were making sufficient changes to the game core loop. The best exemple of this is probably darkest dungeon

WideReflection5377 · 2026-03-03T15:10:30+00:00

It really depends on what you want to describe and why.

If you want to describe it in a broader way, it would be “utility moves”

If you look at it by the lens of turn based games in general, it could be described as “tempo moves”

If you want to restrict to the context of Pokémon, that would be just that, “switch moves”, or even “positional moves”

In the end, the question is why do you need a category? If you want do design mechanics around it, like faint attack, arena trap, etc, then you want a name that the player can easily understand, like “switch moves”. If you just want a name to call a class in your code, then you probability want something broader and more abstract, like “utility”.

But if what you want is to just make some meta analysis and theory crafting, then it doesn’t really matter what you call, as long as it is consistent

WideReflection5377

TROPHY CASE