Overview
This is a mana-stacking Arc Totem played on a Gemling Legionnaire. Spell Totem does all the casting, so the whole rotation is dropping totems and walking; Arc chains far enough that loot often drops from packs that never appear on screen. The Gemling ascendancy is the reason the build exists — Advanced Anatomy pushes gem quality high enough that Arc, Spell Totem and Arc Mage all gain large chunks of damage from quality alone.
The build scales from an unusually wide set of stats rather than one big multiplier: skill level (weapon, amulet, gloves, corruption, Prism of Belief), gem quality (Arc gains damage per remaining chain, Spell Totem gains cast speed per totem, Arc Mage climbs from 4% to 6% extra damage), maximum mana, and critical chance. Mana is the hybrid stat here, providing both damage through Arc Mage and Arcane Intensity and effective health through damage taken from mana before life.
Eldritch Battery converts the whole energy shield pool into mana, which means maximum energy shield modifiers stop mattering entirely — percentage mana is what the tree and gear should be chasing instead.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Extremely long clear range; Arc chains and splits off-screen while totems hold position
- Very few buttons — place totems, occasionally refresh Mana Tempest
- Damage scales off several independent axes, so almost any upgrade slot is a real upgrade
- Mana Tempest is far cheaper on a totem build than on a self-cast caster, because the totems pay no extra cost
- Mana Remnants gives strong sustain and can overfill the mana pool above maximum
Cons
- Low effective health pool — one-shots are the main death cause, as with most stackers
- Heavily juiced Expedition is the weak point; being chased in melee range is dangerous
- Casting a lot of spells personally while the Mana Tempest buff is up drains the pool fast, and mana is the health bar
- Reaching 100% damage taken from mana before life takes deliberate gear planning across rings, chest, rune and jewels
Key Skills
- Spell Totem — Arc — the core setup; supported with Advancing Storm, Lightning Mastery, Efficiency and Arcane Surge
- Ancestral Totem support — hybrid damage and utility; makes totem placement much faster
- Mana Tempest — a large gain of damage as lightning, and buffed spells split into extra projectiles on the first chain
- Arc Mage (spirit) — most of the damage; run with Lightning Mastery, Astral Communion and Clarity
- Mana Remnants (spirit) — drops mana orbs on elemental/critical kills, the primary sustain tool
- Blasphemy + Temporal Chains — the defensive layer, with Enfeeble, Magnified Area and Ritualistic Curse
Gear & Anointments
The budget starting weapon is a wand totalling around +7 to spell skills (+5 lightning, +1 spell, +1 socket) — craftable or cheap to buy. The showcased weapon is a Runic Fox sceptre, and it must be the Rune Master version, because that is the roll carrying the implicit chance for spells to fire two extra projectiles, turning Arc into a three-projectile clear tool. Runes in that weapon apply at triple effect, so the two skill-level runes are the priority.
The chest is a Fettered base for the implicit that takes 10% of damage from mana, with a Get Wolf rune adding another 15%, plus spirit and spirit reservation efficiency as the important explicit mods. Rings should be a mnemonic base for percentage maximum mana, with damage taken from mana before life in the prefix — the showcased pair contributes roughly 1,700 mana together. The amulet wants spell skill level, gem quality and spirit; the sceptre wants spirit and mana. Gloves want level of all projectile skills plus critical chance and damage. Jewels want spell or elemental damage with critical chance for spells, plus whatever damage-taken-from-mana is still missing to reach 100%. Prism of Belief with +2 or +3 to Arc is the strongest single jewel upgrade, since spell damage per level scales exponentially.
Endgame Notes
The tree starts as Mercenary but travels to the Templar area to place a Split Personality jewel with the “starting from Templar” modifier, after which the Mercenary-side points can be refunded. Two mana-defense routes exist: Mind Over Matter, which most players use, or stacking damage taken from mana before life to 100% across passives, rings, chest implicit, rune and jewels. The second route costs roughly seven extra passive points but roughly doubles effective mana regeneration, which matters because mana is both the health bar and the Mana Tempest fuel.
The next planned upgrade is Ravenous Touch in the helmet to enable instilling, taking the Thaumaturgic Generator modifier for timed power charge generation, which in turn supports Charge Regulation for a much more reliable critical rate — at a cost of 30 spirit.
Credits & Source
Build credited to ShafP. See the source video for the full build’s gameplay footage + voice commentary: 0.5.5 โทเทมปุ่มเดียว Arc Totem Gemling Path of Exile 2 | Build Guide.