Level 95 Holy Flame Totem Ascendant^3.21

Notes

Build from guiorioli, and thanks for  Tatiantel2 (www.twitch.tv/tatiantel2) shaper of totems, for all the help with the build as well.

Link to this build in PoE forum -> https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3146104

This build is based on the interaction between Scion's Chieftain and Hierophant ascendancies, giving her +1 Totem, a lot of fire damage and Life Leech from totems, which is quite unique.
It also takes advantage of Holy Flame Totem's skill description, which deals Physical Damage and converts to fire, so we can use some tricks to get extra damage.

How to use this POB:

This POB got 2 slightly different builds, depending on your budget or game mode (both HC viable):
 - Default - good budget or leaguestart build for SC Trade or good go-to build for SSF
 - Trade - more expensive and higher end build.

>>> To cycle between them, you need to change select the corresponding option in "ITEMS", "SKILLS" and "TREE" tabs. <<<


Leveling Trees:

In "TREE" tab, you can find leveling trees.


Leveling gems:

In "SKILLS" tab, you'll find a session called "Leveling Gems". They are there to guide on how to level, but here are some more details:

The first thing you need is a Holy Flame Totem (HFT) and getting to level 4 to use it. 
If you are in SSF, you need to start a Witch and get past "The Mud Flats", come back using the waypoint, and you can buy HFT. 
 - This is very fast.
 - Get Flame Wall from quest reward, to give it to Scion.
 - While you are at it, you can keep Witch's Arcane Surge at level 1, and use Freezing Pulse to advance. You can buy your Scion a Freezing Pulse as well, to use until lvl 4.
 - You can also kill Hailrake in Tidal Island if you want an extra Quicksilver
If you are on trade, maybe you can ask someone instead.

You can get Sniper's mark after going through Mud Flats now, since 3.21. Use it until you get Flammability in act 3.

Then, as soon as you kill Brutus, you can buy Added Fire Damage and Added Lightning Damage to link your HFT
You can also buy Clarity and Vitality

In Act 2, first quest you should do is killing Fidelitas (in The Chamber of Sins), so that you can get Wave of Conviction and Herald of Ash
This is a HUGE boost of DAMAGE.
Use Wave of Conviction as a self-cast until you get Ancestral Bond, and then, switch to Wave of Convictions Mines.

Then, you will be wanting to kill The Weaver (in The Weaver's Chamber, found at The Western Forest).
This will allow you to get Controlled Destruction (CD) and Elemental Focus (EF).

You can change EF for Combustion as soon as you do Library in act 3, with Siosa

Once you get a 4-link, use HFT + Added Fire + Combustion + CD

In act 3, get Flammability. These are the skills you need to finish campaign.

If you manage to get the mana for it, you can run Determination and Defiance banner, but isn't crucial for the leveling.


Item progression:

To go through campaign, this build requires very little amount of items. 
First of all you need a wand with some of these, ordered by priority:
 - +1 to all fire skills
 - cast speed
 - +X to +Y fire damage TO SPELLS (to spells is important)
 - +X% increased Spell damage
 - +X% increased Fire damage

Then, you need any gear that gets you links to use your spells.
These should have, preferably, some of these, ordered by priority:
 - LIFE
 - RESISTS
 - armor
 - attributes
 - cast speed

To be able to use your gear and level your gems, you may require attributes. 
The best item to get attributes on is an Amulet, with has implicit attributes already, and can roll them often.
You'll want one of these during most, if not all, of the campaign.

Remember to use your crafting bench to fix your resists or add life to every piece of gear you got.


Explanations:

Mana Sustain
This build uses a lot of auras (as most builds do these days). Having the mana to sustain their reservation and totem cast cost may be tricky.
Before you get all reservation and mana nodes, you'll have to choose which aura to use, but, as a general guideline: 
 - always have Herald of Ash, for it's too much damage to pass.
 - I tend to always have some level of clarity and vitality during campaign, makes things easier. 
   You don't need to level them to max, at ~level 6 they are already pretty useful
 - Use Inspiration support, it greatly reduces totem mana cost and is just a small loss of dps compared to other options
   You can decide if you want to use Inspiration or Cruelty when you have a 6-link too
 - Picking the Life Mastery "Skill cost Life instead of 30% of mana cost" 
   This makes a skill that costs 100 mana, for example, to cost 70 mana and 30 life instead.

Arcane Surge
Ascendancy makes Arcane Surge grant 10% more damage. This means that nodes that increase AS effect also increases this.
We get Arcane Surge (level 1) from hitting enemies, from Hierophant ascendancy. 
It's still worth it to use a higher level Arcane Surge gem to get a bigger effect, if slots allow this.

Exposure/Mines
Wave of Conviction applies -15% exposure. Before Ancestral Bond, use it as self-cast.
After you get Ancestral Bond, it deals no damage as self cast. This is why you link it to High-impact mine (which also gives some extra damage)
Then, we take advantage of Charged mines to have Frenzy charges, and of Combustion to apply more reductions to fire resistance.

Tornado
Here comes some wall of math: 
HFT do ~9 cast/sec in this POB, so for 4 totems = 36.
Anomalous tornado has initial duration of 0.9s, so it's 36 * 0.9 = 32.
Since it stops at 20, it's 20/32 = 62.5%.
It deals 10% of this every .25s, so it's 62.5 * 0.1 * 4 = 25%.
But It stays up for 4s and stores for 0.9. so it's up 4 / 4.9 = ~81%.
So, finally it's 25% * 81% = 20% more damage.

BUT this is if you recast it flawlessly every 4.9 seconds, no more, no less. And if you have this exact cast speed. And Anomalous Tornado 20/20
It's a safe bet to assume you can get ~10% more damage out  of it against bosses, so I'm adding 10% due to it.
You can use Culling Strike on Flame Dash if you prefer, that's 11% more damage IF the boss doesn't have phases or regen, and you blink at the right timing.
Or you can use a Lightning Golem instead, and recast it to keep the buff up.

Flame Wall
Holy Flame Totem fires projectiles which go through Flame Wall and get added fire damage.
Arcanist Brand is a nice way to grant that the enemy will always be inside a flame wall

Physical damage, Herald of Ash, Fire conversion
Holy Flame Totem deals Physical damage and converts 50% of it to fire. So, additions to both fire and physical damage works.
Herald of Ash adds damage based on physical damage, so it gets the entire Holy Flame damage (which is physical) and adds more. It's a huge boost in damage.
Finally, we convert all damage to fire through Avatar of Fire, so that all damage is boosted by increased fire damage

Ailments
We use Anointed Flesh nodes alongside with Brine King, a ring with 50% reduced ignite duration and Soul of Garukan
to have Freeze immune, 90% reduced shock, Ignite immune and immune to chill.
Protection mastery, from Anointed Flesh tree, can grant immunity to Corrupted Blood as well.

Shaper Shield
A shield with Shaper influence is the only way to get 1 extra totem, being BIS for totem builds.
Ways to get it range from Expedition (Rog and Gwennen), Harvest (reroll influence) and shaper scarabs.
If you are in Trade leagues, you can usually buy a base for cheap and roll with influences, or buy a finished one.

Wand
It's easy to get +1 fire on act 1 wands, the ones you buy as soon as you get to town, at level 2.
A +1 wand -> aug -> regal -> craft cast speed is enough for the entire campaign.
If you don't get one, good increased spell + cast speed are good enough too
In endgame, I use Heathen wand because Profane wand requires too much Int.

Chieftain
Chieftain is a good ascendancy for HFT for the fire damage, str, covered in ash, and it's unique ability to let your totems life leech.

Aditional Curse and Occultist in SC Trade build
Since there's the possibility of using Chieftain Flesh/Flame jewels, and they are usually cheap, this is a viable tech to get more damage.

Corrupted Blood Immune
The BIS is to have it in a jewel, corrupted implicit. Until you get a good one, you can use "Resistance and Ailment Protection mastery" instead.

Atziri's Step
Atziri's Step is a quite target-farmable unique with huge spell suppression, while still having the other two desired stats we need - life and move speed.

Physical to Elements conversion
Converting incomming physical damage to any element is a great defense against phys, since the damage will be mitgated by 76%