Totem

Totems are a type of creature. Totems appear in the game as monsters, and also as allies created by certain skills. Like any other creature, totems have life, and they will be destroyed if their life drops to zero. Totems do not leave exploitable corpses. Totems cast by players use their skills according to the player's stats, including modifiers from charges and buffs (like auras) affecting the player.

Totems as monsters
Totems appear in some areas, such as the Ancient Pyramid, and are just like any other monster, except that they usually cannot attack1 or move2. They are commonly found projecting auras that affect nearby monsters.

There are several unique totem monsters, for example Kuduku, the False God (who always appears in The Ledge), Puruna, The Challenger, the boss of and the totem bosses of.


 * 1 In map with modifier, some totems cast skills for example, the.
 * 2 Except totems.

Totems as allies
Certain skills allow the player to summon a totem ally. Depending on the skill, totem will then attack, cast spells, or project an aura for the player. It will continue to cast until it is destroyed or its duration expires, unless using an offensive spell (including minion summoning), in which case they will cast until there are no enemies in range (and start again if enemies enter their range). These skills have the Totem gem tag.

The act of summoning a totem can be sped up by modifiers. As of version 3.0.0, base totem placement time is 600 milliseconds, and base ballista totem placement time is 350 milliseconds

Totems allies are not considered to be minions, and are therefore not affected by minion-specific modifiers such as and Minion Instability.

Totems are also not considered party members.

Any auras projected by the totem will affect all of the player's allies, including minions and party members. Auras and aura-like effects can affect totems (this includes degeneration effects), summoned totems are only affected by auras that affect defensive properties, summoned totems still use their summoner's skills. In order for an offensive aura to have an effect, it must affect the summoner, not the totem.

Active totem limit
By default a player can have only one (1) active totem at any time. Summoning a totem with the maximum number of totems active will cause the oldest living totem to be destroyed. This is a global limit among all skills, for example if the player has a active, and then casts, the Rejuvenation Totem will be destroyed and a Decoy Totem will be created.

Totems can have different maximum active totem limits. If a totem is summoned at the maximum limit of totems, it will destroy the oldest totem without breaking the totem limit.

The following grants additional global totem limit:
 * Ancestral Bond
 * Ascendant's Hierophant passive skill
 * Hierophant's Pursuit of Faith passive skill
 * Shaper shields with the mod
 * Shaper shields with the mod
 * Shaper shields with the mod
 * Shaper shields with the mod

The following grants additional local totem limit:

The Runebinder keystone applies -1 to maximum totems.

This allows for a theoretical maximum limit of 5 of any type of totems, not including local totem limit increases.

Totem range
Totems have an aggro range which determines how far they can "see" for the purposes of targeting enemies with attacks and spells. Totem range is not considered an area of effect, and will not be altered by AoE modifiers. Divergent quality grants 1% increased Totem Range per 1% quality on Spell and Ballista Totem Supports and 2% increased Activation Range per 1% quality on the Ancestral Protector and Warchief skills.

Skills cast by totems
Skills used by totems are affected by the player's passive skills, equipment, and linked support gems. Skills used by totems use the player's weapon when applicable. For example, Ballista Totem may use Frenzy if the player has a ranged weapon equipped.

Totems use the player's own skills as though the player had cast them. Therefore, buffs and charges (except Endurance Charges) on the player will apply to totems. Totems themselves have a maximum Power Charge and Frenzy Charge limit of zero. Any charges generated by the totem are simply discarded, and will not transfer back to the player.

Note that the totem casts the player's skill, meaning that the skill is paid for with the totem's mana (or life if it is affected by Blood Magic), and any reflected damage will be reflected onto the totem, not the player.

Totems will follow the skill's cooldown and stored number of uses.

Kills made by totems are credited to the creator of the totem for the purposes of experience gain, but effects such as life gain on kill will not affect the player.

However, totems can benefit from some on-kill effects such as explosions (e.g. caused by Haemophilia gloves or Gladiator's bleed explosions). Even though those effects specify that they will work when you kill the enemy, they do function when your totems are credited with kills. Another working effect is application of on-hit curses granted by corrupted implicits on gloves, unique explicits (notably Temporal Chains on Asenath's Gentle Touch), or influenced/delve rings; totems will apply them as if you applied them (tested and confirmed Dec. 2020 using Ballistas).

Any Minions created by the totem are treated as if they had been cast by the player, and are subject to the same maximum minion limits, will get the benefits of Necromantic Aegis, and so on.

Unlike and, Action speed modifiers on a character will not affect the speed at which their totems cast or attack skills. Individual Totems each have their own action speed modifiers and they can be altered by things like slipstreams and chill.

Totem stats
While skills cast by the totem are affected by all modifiers affecting the player, the stats of the totem itself are not. The totem will not benefit from passive skills or gear that increase life or energy shield, will not be affected by Chaos Inoculation or increased resistances, the totem is not considered to be wearing the player's armour, and so forth. Totems have a standard 40% elemental resistance and 20% chaos resistance, regardless of any resistance penalties applied on the player.

Generic modifiers will not affect the lifetime of totems.

Totem buffs
Ancestor Totems can give a maximum of three buffs on the character at once. One for each totem.

Totem skills
When a Trap, Remote Mine, and Totem skill are all linked in combination, the result is a skill that lays a mine. When the mine is detonated, it lays a trap. When the trap is sprung, it places a totem, which then can cast the linked skill.

Therefore totems can never lay traps or mines. Totems can not be made to place other totems.

Totems do not work with trigger gems. They can not be summoned by them nor trigger any further effects.

Passive skills
There are passive skills that grant bonuses to totems.

Damage
These passive skills increase the damage dealt by totems cast by the player.

Attack and Cast Speed
These passive skills increase the attack speed or cast speed of totems cast by the player.

Critical strike chance
These passive skills affect the totem's critical strike chance.

Critical strike multiplier
These passive skills affect the totem's critical strike multiplier.

Placement Speed
These passive skills affect how fast the totem is summoned by the player.

Generic increased cast speed will not affect how fast a totem is summoned.

Life
These passive skills increase the totem's maximum life.

Elemental resistances
These passive skills increase the totem's elemental resistance.

Physical resistances
These passive skills increase the totem's physical damage reduction.

Duration
These passive skills increase the totem's duration.

Cluster Jewel passive skills
The following Cluster Jewel passives are related to Totems:

Miscellany
These passive skills are related to totems, but do not fit into any other category.

Ascendancy passive skills
There are Ascendancy passive skills that affect totems.

Achievements
If you manage to have 3 totems at one time, you will be rewarded the following achievement:

Version history

 * Made improvements to Totem AI for skills that have some sort of prerequisite for use (such as blades for, or corpses for ).
 * Fixed a bug where totems played both the old and the new versions of the arrow launch effect at once.


 * Summoned Totems are now deleted when the player moves very far away from those totems. This caused issues with the Hierophant skill "Ritual of Awakening" where you would receive less damage per active totem. Those totems would be very far away and unable to attack or cast yet would still penalise the player's damage.
 * Fixed a bug where players could have multiple Offerings active at once through the use of traps, totems or mines.


 * Totem placement can now be sped up with a new Totem Placement Speed stat. Cast speed no longer places totems more quickly. Base totem placement speed is faster than the cast speed used to be.
 * Base Totem Placement Speed has been increased from a placement time of 800ms to 600ms.
 * Various other changes to Totems.
 * }