Kinetic Fusillade

This is a ballista totem Hierophant — the player never hits anything directly, the totems do the work. The six-link in the body armour is Kinetic Fusillade + Ballista Totem + Greater Volley + Elemental Damage with Attacks + Added Lightning Damage + Inspiration, planted in groups of four and reinforced by the Rain of Splinters crimson jewel for +2 projectiles per totem. That projectile multiplier plus Greater Volley's arc pattern turns a modest ~194k DPS tooltip into a screen-wide wall of arrows.

The damage identity rides on three keystones that only make sense together. Ancestral Bond forbids the player from dealing damage with hits but grants +1 totem — every attack support in the link routes to the totems. Iron Will converts the 257 Strength the Templar tree picks up naturally into aura scaling for Anger and Wrath, the real elemental multipliers here. Glancing Blows pairs with Aegis Aurora in the shield — doubled block chance for half effect, sitting at 64% attack block + 50% spell block while the shield regenerates the ES pool on every hit.

The ascendancy locks the archetype in: Pursuit of Faith respawns destroyed totems almost instantly and grants +1 totem, Conviction of Power generates power charges and endurance charges on totem kills, and Ritual of Awakening adds another totem and massive cast speed while totems are active. The Fusillade tree notable adds flat projectile damage — with the build's name baked into a passive, you take it.

Defence is Aegis Aurora block-recovery layered over 4,069 life and 68% physical damage reduction from 10.2k armour and 4 endurance charges. The shield's line "+2% to maximum Cold Resist, recover ES equal to Armour on Block" combined with Glancing Blows means every other hit in a pack refills ES and tops up fire/cold/lightning all at 75%. The Yoke of Suffering amulet contributes −19% chaos resist budget pressure (chaos sits at +75 thanks to a well-rolled rare belt here), but exists for its "Elemental Ailments you inflict deal Damage 40% faster" implicit — the totems scorch and shock bosses naturally, and that multiplier is free offensive scaling bolted to a slot that also gives max life.

Stationary and deliberate. The player Shield Chargees into a pack, drops four totems, and the Arcanist Brand + Tornado combo in the helmet auto-applies crowd control while the screen clears. Single-target is slower — you have to replace totems on the boss and stay within their range — but Pursuit of Faith's instant resummon keeps DPS uptime near-perfect. Expect to spend more time running between packs than actually clearing them, which is exactly the relaxed rhythm this archetype is famous for.

The endgame six-link is Kinetic Fusillade + Ballista Totem + Greater Volley + Elemental Damage with Attacks + Increased Critical Damage + Less Duration, with Burning Damage sitting in a 7th socket as a 3.28 Exceptional-support placeholder. Less Duration is the unexpected key piece — totems have a fixed lifetime, and reducing that duration cycles them faster, which combined with Pursuit of Faith's instant resummon means the damage window is always fresh rather than watching a stale totem burn out. The Sniper's Mark + Flame Wall helmet setup is automation: Arcanist Brand auto-applies the mark for +30% projectile damage taken on bosses and drops Flame Wall through which the totems shoot for added flat fire damage.

The gear story shifts toward 3.28 dual-wield totem wands: Abberath's Horn in the main hand (+1 to fire gems, fire penetration) and Ashcaller in the off-hand (triggered Fire Trap on hit). Both are cheap Goat's Horn wands that scale ballista damage through +gem level and flat fire, and the alternating trigger effects give the build a second damage source without taking a link out of the main skill. The Yoke of Suffering amulet persists, but a rare crit-mult two-stone ring has replaced one of the early rings to push crit multiplier over 400%. Divine Judgement on the tree rolls more crit multiplier forward and Sovereignty increases aura effect for the Anger + Wrath + Determination stack, reserving all three through an Enlighten level 3 gem in the boots.

Defence firms up rather than transforming. 43.5k armour + 5 endurance charges push physical damage reduction to 90%, spell block climbs to 75% through Sanctity and aura-effect scaling, and Aegis Aurora still tops up 2,190 ES on every block. Life stays flat at 3,674 — the player is not hit-tanking, the totems are. −19% chaos resist is again the deliberate budget compromise of Yoke of Suffering; the Pantheon (Brine King for stun, Abberath for ignite ground) plus a Quartz Flask for phase-through-mobs keeps the character from getting bodied by chaos-damage rare rolls.

Faster setup, same rhythm. Frostblink replaces Flame Dash for the movement skill, Shield Charge on Momentum + Faster Attacks in the helmet gives a charge-speed engage into packs, and Frenzy is added as a pre-engage button to generate 3 frenzy charges for totem attack speed. Bosses take 4–6 seconds once totems are placed. The build's remaining weakness is the opening placement window on unpredictable mechanics — the first second before the totems exist is the only time the player is actually exposed to incoming damage, and it's where experienced players save their Molten Shell CWDT trigger.

The main link is pared down to its cleanest form: Kinetic Fusillade + Ballista Totem + Greater Volley + Elemental Damage with Attacks + Increased Critical Damage + Less Duration, all at gem level 20–21 with 20% quality across the board. 2.63M DPS at 92.9% crit chance and 565% crit multiplier is the product of three stacking multipliers: Watcher's Eye adds aura-specific crit rolls (Wrath crit multiplier is the target mod), Megalomaniac delivers three corruption-rolled notables in one slot that extend the projectile and crit trees beyond what the passive tree can reach, and Breathstealer unlocks Blight-triggered buffs for an extra aura-effect pulse mid-fight.

The Cast On Critical Strike + Sniper's Mark + Greater Volley + Frenzy setup in the boots automates two critical things — Sniper's Mark is reapplied on boss crit, and the self-cast Frenzy on crit keeps the three frenzy charges topped up without manual input. Darkness Enthroned with two abyss jewels (here rare Searching Eye jewels rolled for life + crit) gives the belt slot two corruption-tier modifier lines. The weapon swap to Archmage's Carnal Sceptre of Euphoria looks strange at first read — this is not an Archmage build — but it is purely a local mod carrier: "of Euphoria" rolls crit multiplier against rare and unique enemies on the sceptre itself, which scales the ballista crits where they matter. Wandslinger and Deep Thoughts on the tree feed that weapon-crit scaling directly.

EHP drops to 13.2k and this is intentional — the build has committed to being a totem glass cannon at apex. Life stays at 3,652, armour crashes from 43k to 9k, and spell block reverts to 50%. What remains: Aegis Aurora block-recovery on 64% attack block, 60% physical damage reduction from 4 endurance charges, and a seething life flask with the "of Sealing" corrupted-blood immunity. Chaos resist at −52 is the steepest trade-off of the entire progression — the expectation at this tier is that the player is not eating hits to begin with. Pursuit of Faith's instant totem resummon means damage output does not pause when the player has to sidestep, and Frostblink on boots + 51% movement speed gives real evasion in motion. This is a "kill before killed" apex playstyle and the numbers on paper understate how safe it feels in practice, because the player is behind the totems, not in front of them.

The apex feel of a ballista Hierophant: drop four totems, watch the screen delete itself, Shield Charge to the next pack. Less Duration's rapid cycling combined with 3.58 attacks per second base and frenzy-stacked totem attack speed means the audio loop is a continuous thunder of arrows. Uber bosses fall in 3–5 seconds once totems are placed — the hard part is the pre-placement repositioning, and Frostblink + 51% movement speed plus Breathstealer's utility on rare kills makes even that phase quick. The only real threats are instant-cast one-shots through a mid-flask window, which Pantheon Ryslatha partially covers.