All Totems have an inherent poison damage that increases with the item quality.

These items are equipped in the shield spot, and offer low blocking, but can have inherent bonuses to individual Necromancer skills, and magical bonuses to his skill trees or even all skills. Totems were originally known as “Shrunken Heads” and you can easily see why with a glance at their graphics. Necromancers get Totems for their class-specific items in the Expansion. This is in contrast with magic items possessing class-specific Skill Level and Necromancer Skill Tree prefixes, which may be used by classes other than the Necromancer without benefiting from the skill modifiers, and Wands, which can possess inherent bonuses of +1-3 skill points to up to three Necromancer skills from any of his skill trees. The real difference is that these items can only be used by one character class, and they can have random bonuses to individual skills, much like the ones you see on wands/ staves/ scepters in Diablo II. They have a variety of stats and types, can be found magical, Rare, Unique, and sometimes in Sets as well. Unique Necromancer Items are much like other items.

Shields are also an excellent source of resistance, when socketed with gems or various runes. They work to block all physical and many types of elemental attacks, completely negating those attacks when successfully blocked. Shields are incredibly useful items in Diablo II.

Diablo 2 legendary shako hat