Totems of the Necromancer | Divinity Original Sin 2 Wiki

Why we should improve our lifesteal and summoning skill together anyway?

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This is situationally an extremely powerful spell. That also means that vice versa, it is situational an underwhelmingly weak spell.

The situations when this is a weak spell is when it would summon less than 5 totems. You'll find yourself depleted for 3 source points and 2 action points and having dealt a measly 4k distributed damage (at 17 summoning, 800 damage per totem). Whereas you could have dealt the same amount or more of concentrated damage (concentrated damage is preferable) with a simple blood infused incarnate.

The main problem is that over 80% of encounters in the game will be limited to less than 5 enemies, corpses included. Which is why you'll see some people adamantly defend this spell - they'll encounter ONE or TWO instances in the entire 200h game where this spell is somewhat worth its action points, and will somehow craft their own obscure theories of how this spell is good, but when you ask them to list specifically by name the encounters where it's good they get stuck at number 2.

This spell would maybe be worthy of its action points if the number of totems scaled with something - e.g. you get an extra totem per corpse at 10 necromancer and additionally at 10 summoning, and then an extra totem at 15 necro and 15 summoning, for a total of 5 totems per corpse at 15 necro/summ. This would give you 25 totems when there are 5 enemies, and it would still STRUGGLE to justify its existence because of how simply dismayingly weak distributed damage is compared to concentrated damage - because of the rule that death is the best cc.

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I hate that you have to be specialized in summoning to utilize so many skills.

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Would be interested to try this with like 3 necro+summoners and one fully specced out 2 hander using Thick of The Fight in a crowd of targets. Loads of totems everywhere, plus bone widows helping out to deal stupid amounts of damage for a turn or two. Not as instantaneous on damage as other builds, but could be quite fun either way.

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Guys, don't even think about this trash. With 15 in Summoning, 5 in Necro, damage is total trash (if there any damage at all, read further), shoots blood, but from what I saw normal blood totem hits harder, and, if enemies are in, for example, cursed fire, these totems instantly crumble on their turn (without making a shot. I used it in situation where Doctor's demons attack you in Arx, there were 5-6 of them, so I used this skill when all of them were in the AOE - they (5/6) were in cursed fire, so only single totem shoot at all, and it was nothing, all other crumbled. I tried this spell multiple times, same story). Costs 3 slots AND 3 Source points. Disappointment. I thought this will be some ultimate Summoner-Necro spell, not this trash. Concept is cool, but implementation is not good at all.

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Wow. This skill is just crazy. Living or dead enemy, it will spawn a totem next to them. They do insane dmg as well, have very high int naturally (not sure if caster's int influences the stat). 5 Necro with gear along with max summoner will see u lay waste. Turns out, u can summon the totems again with apotheosis/skin graft. So it is not just a one time thing. I have a party of 4, all of them summoners. Now i think i will do the ultimate troll and have the other 3 of them pick up this skill as well. Imagine. 8 totems per enemy in the first turn. Lmao.

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This skill is great now, especially on Fane with time warp and skin graft. I had 20 totems out each doing 300 damage with maxed summoner and only went through 5 of them before combat was over.

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You can do some fun set-ups with this by teleporting corpses around before fights begin. The totems also make pretty decent targets to stack magic damage buffs like Firebrand and Venomous Aura onto.

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Bone totem.... I used to dance under that name.

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I think they changed some skills.

I am absolutely positive, that Bone Armor consumed corpses. The particular fight was at the tree on the Bloodmoon Island against the demons. In the fight some guy used Bone Armor, and I tried to summon the Totems - and ended up having 0. After the fight, I noticed that I couldn't target the corpses in question with Source Vampirism, even though they looked normal.

In my current playthrough, though, I could use Source Vampirism on bodies who were desecrated by Bone Armor. So, I would guess that some skills do not 'consume' and/or need unconsumed corpses anymore (Bloating Corpse has never needed unconsumed corpses [which is ridiculous overpowered if used with certain cheesing / suicide methods], though it does consume them).

Still, it does only change its Level from 'completely useless' to 'underwhelming'. I will stick to Blood Storm, which seems to be one of the best Source Skills there is, if you skill Warfare and Intelligence

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It kind of ... feels underwhelming. First of all, you need to spec summoning skills, to make them stronger. Then, you need corpses to cast. If you have these corpses, most of the time, the fights already close to over. Then, it consumes the corpses, or rather, it needs unconsumed corpses. The meaning? An enemy just casted Bone Armor - no Bone Totems for you. Wanted to use Source Vampirism after the fight on the corpses? Well, what a shame.
From what I have observed, brunt corpses are already 'consumed' (explaining why you can't use Corpse Explosion on them), making it even less attractive (since you need to stay clear off fire damage - and a lot of encounters will have the area flaming up)

Has anyone else tested it?

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