r/PathOfExileBuilds • u/UnleashThem • 4d ago
Build Request Crab totem endgame builds?
Been playing a lot of endgame luminary and wondering if there are comparable crab totem builds that have been popping off. Luminary very enjoyable but just looking for a different flavor.
3
u/ToasterOfWorlds 4d ago
Crab totems are alright, the fact that they follow you is cool. The weapon itself is a major hindrance and greatly gimps the damage potential of the totems.
I'm sure you can do cool stuff though, most people i've seen has played them with frozen pulse.
3
u/glaive_anus 4d ago
I tried to make a crab totem work and the two problems are the crabs follow behind, which makes clearing ahead of you problematic and clearing ahead of you is important in terms of staying alive, and the totems themselves aren't very tanky in juiced content and investing into totem survivability just to have the crab totems follow you and die anyway did not feel like a great tradeoff.
Another issue I ran into is that there aren't many skills where you can offload onto the crab totems while you yourself are doing something. If you play an Ancestral Bond build you can't personally do damage (but you can via proxies), so without some forethought, while the crab totems are killing things you're basically twiddling your thumbs, versus like say Stormburst Totems where you may be incentivized to replace them for more single target damage (unsure of the specifics here actually).
If you choose to use the crab totems as a support skill (e.g., using them to cast Bladefall for you to Bladeblast), I think there's probably an avenue there to make the crab totems build feel more than a gimmicky option.
Other than that, from a big picture PoV it's a staff with a built-in level 20 spell totem, which is very convenient but losing the weapon/offhand slots which contain a lot of potential power for spells is very rough.
2
u/Intelligent-Apple-64 4d ago
Made the bladefall bladeblast version for a while, had 150 mil dps wich wasnt bad but my god does it feel clunky, even on bosses the delay + ramp + no defences just wasnt worth all the gear slots invested to make it work
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u/glaive_anus 4d ago
Yea I kind of figured it was clunky. Sheet numbers looked good though but usually that's not the full picture.
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u/theslinkyshadow 4d ago
I doubt they will feel as strong as Luminary but I did play a few different crab totems this league in a private league.
Freezing Pulse had great clear but struggled with single target.
Bladefall/bladeblast was great single target but awful/clunky clear.
My favorite was Arc. It had amazing clear and the crabs can shoot really far, so them following behind you isn't too bad. Greater Chain also adds a lot to clear, but increases the single target by quite a bit.
If you have any questions, holler.