I'd like changes for totems and brands

It's been some time since we got any relevant change to the mechanics, is it possible to see some love for them too? They're beloved mechanics. Not just moving numbers, but new notables, in theme uniques, some support for totems...
Just leaving it here as a reminder.

Totem Placement speed now also scales the speed at which Totems emerge. Ranged Attack Totems now have a base placement speed of 0.5 seconds (previously 0.35).

This was something. Especially for hiero spell totems.

I was working on cooking one up with frostmage and i realized archmage cant be used for totems and i shook my head.

You have an ascendancy with mana + totems and you cant even use the mana related skills. Make it make sense.

To me that would be like berserk being unusable on berserker, kind of how it was on behemoth before they fixed the no spells thing.

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Lonnie455Rich#2087 wrote:

Totem Placement speed now also scales the speed at which Totems emerge. Ranged Attack Totems now have a base placement speed of 0.5 seconds (previously 0.35).

This was something. Especially for hiero spell totems.

I was working on cooking one up with frostmage and i realized archmage cant be used for totems and i shook my head.

You have an ascendancy with mana + totems and you cant even use the mana related skills. Make it make sense.

I'm unsure about that change as I think the speed is basically unchanged for anyone not investing heavily in placement? Placement was never an issue for hiero too.

I'm more more interested in mechanics changing and getting more ways to play totems, more ways to scale them and experiment.
The last attempt they tried was cadigan's authority, needed you to have multiple types of totems, but let's be honest that was annoying to use.

I'd like slam totems to come back without being exclusively linked to a 4 slot boots.

I'd like some way to scale damage for totems and brands that is not linked to self cast, so you can balance both by themselves.

Archmage totem support seems like an obvious support to make.
Maybe something that scales on totem life? Give damage to totems as % of their life, so that scaling totem life has some meaning.

Self cast already has a bunch of gems that can't be used on totems or brands, that probably need buffs as self cast isn't very popular. I don't see why we can't have more totem/brand skills. Small note, may want to make them not trigger and make them even stronger, I think very strong restrictions and effects give you more control on the knobs.

I think the iron commander bows have the best design for totems items, you get more totems and damage by scaling DEX or STR. You invest in something and get rewarded so that you progressively have a better build and it's very satisfying.

The low hanging fruits are probably:
You could make a version for spell totems scaling on INT.
You could make an accuracy scaling ballista totem item.

Support for explosion on death totems, that was very liked by a small niche.

I would also like a discussion about spell totems vs arcanist brands, which can fill a very similar niche and a bit redundant.

There are so many things you could design for totems and brands, it's just that the mechanics seems to be forgotten...

Its not necessarily the placement speed im looking at here. its the speed at which totems emerge. It technically gives you more dps to get placement speed up since totems are using their skills faster. So just being hiero with 0 nodes otherwise your totem emerge speed is inc by 100%. Im not a dedicated totem player but when i played slam totems the time it took them to emerge then was exhausting some times