Poison Slam Totem Theorycrafting with Wilma’s Requital and Whisper Coil tech in Path of Exile opens up a unique approach to maximizing attack speed, poison application, and overall totem effectiveness for melee builds. This design leverages the synergy between Wilma’s Requital helmet, which transforms cast speed increases into attack speed, and the Coiling Whisper ring (sometimes referred to as Whisper Coil), which enables permanent Soul Eater buffs and drastically boosts totem performance PoE 1 Currency.
The foundation of this theorycraft involves utilizing Slam attacks, such as Tectonic Slam, via totems. By equipping Wilma’s Requital, any acquired cast speed from your passive tree, gear, or buffs acts as a direct multiplier to your totem's slam attack speed. When combined with the Coiling Whisper ring, which grants immense attack and cast speed alongside Soul Eater bonuses, the overall speed at which totems deploy and attack increases dramatically—potentially reaching over 450% attack speed in optimal setups.
To effectively scale poison, you’ll need to convert a large portion of your physical or chaos damage to poison over time. Common sources include the Chance to Poison support gem (40% chance), Herald of Agony (20%), and additional modifiers from jewels or tattoos for minor increases. Weapons like Iron Mass can bring extra utility by providing Unholy Might for chaos conversion and enabling Wither stacks to further amplify chaos (and poison) damage, though high-physical two-handed weapons may offer better raw slam damage and thus stronger poison potential for endgame gear.
A typical support setup for maximizing poison application on totems includes Multi Totem Support to summon more slams at once, Multi Strike Support for repeated hits, Chance to Poison Support, and any relevant slam-specific supports. Defensive linking, resistances, and survivability become a challenge due to many uniques being tied up in prime slots, so plan additional gear and passive nodes accordingly to maintain balance between offense and defense.
Skill tree planning revolves around the Ancestral Bond keystone, as it allows the summoning of two totems at once and disables direct player attacks. Investing into cast speed nodes (which translate to attack speed thanks to Wilma), poison or chaos damage, totem life, and damage-over-time multipliers yields strong scaling. Supporting gear and cluster jewels can provide further multipliers to poison and totem damage, while a Hierophant ascendancy can often offer more totems, better Arcane Surge uptime, and improved mana management.
Testing and feedback from the community suggest this setup is sufficiently powerful for handling endgame content like Elderslayers and mapping with high DPS, even with modest investment. However, it does demand careful balancing of unique item slots and justifies further optimization for bossing versus mapping. Dropping Iron Mass and focusing on more streamlined two-handed options might result in a smoother play experience and higher achievable poison DPS against single targets.
In summary, Poison Slam Totem builds using Wilma’s Requital and Whisper Coil tech present a compelling blend of high attack speed, potent poison stacking PoE buy Currency, and the strategic advantages of totem play. With careful gearing, support selection, and tree routing, the archetype is capable of tackling significant Path of Exile content, offering both a novel gameplay experience and solid effectiveness for theorycrafters and build enthusiasts.