GhazzyTV - Beginner's Build: Lich Queen Skeleton Summoner [AWAKENER FARMABLE]

Cool, thanks for the reply Ghazzy.

Also, have you thought about trying to somehow fit in a curse-aura setup by perhaps dropping ball lightning, GMP, and maybe fortify in order to get blasphemy going with some curses? Vulnerability, enfeeble, temporal chains are all great options. Perhaps a generosity'd haste aura and/or decoy totem would be viable gem choices as well.

Oh and btw, you forgot to put hatred+generosity in the skill gem setup of the post.

Edit: With a little bit extra budget, one could also then grab a heretic's veil for the curses which seems pretty enticing to me. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on these ideas!

Edit2: I almost forgot- what about running an animate guardian with leer cast and dying breath while linking it with raise zombie and fortify (and possibly minion life)?

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Aetavicus wrote:

That helmet enchantment is nigh impossible to get since I assume ppl would just try to re-enchant instead of selling the skeleton enchant. POE trade has very few listings for that skeleton enchantment. (None have been online for awhile)
Considering how crucial that enchantment is, I find the rarity heavily limits this build unless you do a million merciless lab runs to get the 3 skeletons enchant =)

So getting an enchant on a pre rolled item is pretty much impossible. i have tried to get something even remotely useful for my zombie build and i am at 70 worthless enchants and counting .

you go in only looking at the semi decent enchants but for get the most skills have 1 or 2 useless enchants to their 1 good one that dilutes the pool. like what the fuck is anyone going to do with 40% curse duration... so stupid it hurts .

its hard to tell which is worth keeping and what is worth discarding because of all this crap.

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Zephyx wrote:

Cool, thanks for the reply Ghazzy.

Also, have you thought about trying to somehow fit in a curse-aura setup by perhaps dropping ball lightning, GMP, and maybe fortify in order to get blasphemy going with some curses? Vulnerability, enfeeble, temporal chains are all great options. Perhaps a generosity'd haste aura and/or decoy totem would be viable gem choices as well.

Oh and btw, you forgot to put hatred+generosity in the skill gem setup of the post.

Edit: With a little bit extra budget, one could also then grab a heretic's veil for the curses which seems pretty enticing to me. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on these ideas!

Edit2: I almost forgot- what about running an animate guardian with leer cast and dying breath while linking it with raise zombie and fortify (and possibly minion life)?

curse auras suck. the only reason why people use them on other builds is because their clear speed is too fast to make self casting viable. its kind of a why not situation for them that has no answer.

for summoners this is not the case. for 1 thing we need all of our mana reserved for actual auras like displine hatred and AA. there is no room for blasphemy there.

an alternative then is curse on hit.. (which is the better solution tba) however curse on hit is also unusable for build that have to cast their own spells.. this is a summon skeleton build . thus you are technically a self caster.

for these two reasons no to curses. if you want a build that can really really make use of curses .. then you want a summoner that uses exclusively permanent minions because this frees you up to do a curse on hit setup ( since you dont have a skill to actively cast)


heretics veil is not a little bit extra budget and also cuts into your life pool. also good luck getting the crucial skele enchant on an item like heretics . as i have said already i have been trying to get something useful on my helm for about 60+ uber lab runs so far ... and i am looking for several enchants that could work.


as for guardian. i feel this is not a build that can get good value from the guardian. no curses to use his curse buff and as you saw in the video you would probably lose the guardian during regular play with this build against any of the challenging content.

Cool stuff as usual from Ghazzy. I think added fire should be mentioned as a replacement for empower. That gem is not available for a long time in a new league. Not sure what level empower would be stronger than added fire but level 3 atleast?

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kompaniet wrote:

Cool stuff as usual from Ghazzy. I think added fire should be mentioned as a replacement for empower. That gem is not available for a long time in a new league. Not sure what level empower would be stronger than added fire but level 3 atleast?

you could also argue that a 6l queen's escape is also not available for a long time in a new league unless you get super lucky so this may be an issue that sorts itself out.

you really really want the empower because of how brittle skeletons are. the added levels do help

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Saltychipmunk wrote:

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kompaniet wrote:

Cool stuff as usual from Ghazzy. I think added fire should be mentioned as a replacement for empower. That gem is not available for a long time in a new league. Not sure what level empower would be stronger than added fire but level 3 atleast?

you could also argue that a 6l queen's escape is also not available for a long time in a new league unless you get super lucky so this may be an issue that sorts itself out.

you really really want the empower because of how brittle skeletons are. the added levels do help

Yes that is true. For a 5l i guess drop empower and for a 4l while leveling drop either melee phys or minion damage?

How does this build do on T15 maps? Gonna start this build tomorrow. Prolly will run minion speed even with queen's escape for even more fast clearing :)

maybe replace empower with minion speed on weapon? what u think gaz?
another question, how u deal with traps on trials? i keep dying on long runs that have lots of traps together and no space to breath.

ty.

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LinkslashX wrote:

maybe replace empower with minion speed on weapon? what u think gaz?
another question, how u deal with traps on trials? i keep dying on long runs that have lots of traps together and no space to breath.

ty.

Hey. Gem links are in the guide. You don't need minion speed if you use the fated unique sword because it has up to 100% increased speed built in.

Traps are a big problem for any build that does not have massive amounts of life regen/physical damage reduction. Bring an extra life flask and granite/basalt. Keep up endurance charges. Most traps deal physical damage. I use lightning warp to make it easier for the more nasty trap combinations.

I think there are better builds for trials and lab. I'd skip them. This is just my personal opinion mind you.

That's all i can think of. Maybe somebody else has other ideas.

Is this build viable without the skeleton enchant? I started before reading the complete guide, and already bought the sword. How much of a pain is it without the enchant? Also, how important is the 6L for empower?

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fallen1996 wrote:

i see, thank you. i'll take your advice and get a higher gem and see if that helps

It is undoubtedly the issue you've got :)

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Aetavicus wrote:

That helmet enchantment is nigh impossible to get since I assume ppl would just try to re-enchant instead of selling the skeleton enchant. POE trade has very few listings for that skeleton enchantment. (None have been online for awhile)
Considering how crucial that enchantment is, I find the rarity heavily limits this build unless you do a million merciless lab runs to get the 3 skeletons enchant =)

The build works without, the enchant itself merely speeds up the build in terms of QoL.
There were a lot of +1 skelly enchants on the market before this build release and most have sold since. This build guide has not only skyrocketed the value in Queen swords, but also made the skelly enchant attractive so we should see more people "not rolling over it".

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Zephyx wrote:

Cool, thanks for the reply Ghazzy.

Also, have you thought about trying to somehow fit in a curse-aura setup by perhaps dropping ball lightning, GMP, and maybe fortify in order to get blasphemy going with some curses? Vulnerability, enfeeble, temporal chains are all great options. Perhaps a generosity'd haste aura and/or decoy totem would be viable gem choices as well.

Oh and btw, you forgot to put hatred+generosity in the skill gem setup of the post.

Edit: With a little bit extra budget, one could also then grab a heretic's veil for the curses which seems pretty enticing to me. I'm interested to hear your thoughts on these ideas!

Edit2: I almost forgot- what about running an animate guardian with leer cast and dying breath while linking it with raise zombie and fortify (and possibly minion life)?

Blasphemy auras doesn't provide stacks of "Commander of Darkness" so if you're interested in cursing with any summoner build, I'd recommend using Curse on Hit to not lose out on CoD stacks.
Decoy Totem is always attractive, even for non-skelly builds a Spell Totem + Skellies is very nice to have as well.

Regarding Animate Guardian, he is a very nice addition to almost any summoner build, problem is the lack of sockets the build already have. But on the other hand the build does offer a lot of options to tweak to your own liking.

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kompaniet wrote:

Cool stuff as usual from Ghazzy. I think added fire should be mentioned as a replacement for empower. That gem is not available for a long time in a new league. Not sure what level empower would be stronger than added fire but level 3 atleast?

Cheers <3!
Empower lvl 3 > Added Fire, poison can also be added instead if you want faster boss kills but for mapping Added Fire > Poison due to directly delivering the dmg output.

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Saltychipmunk wrote:

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kompaniet wrote:

Cool stuff as usual from Ghazzy. I think added fire should be mentioned as a replacement for empower. That gem is not available for a long time in a new league. Not sure what level empower would be stronger than added fire but level 3 atleast?

you could also argue that a 6l queen's escape is also not available for a long time in a new league unless you get super lucky so this may be an issue that sorts itself out.

you really really want the empower because of how brittle skeletons are. the added levels do help

The build works splendid without Escape with a mere Decree equipped. But it does force the use of Minion Speed support gem. Which rules out Empower. The life gain they get from Empower is insignificant, it's their base DPS I'm looking for.

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Josh_87 wrote:

How does this build do on T15 maps? Gonna start this build tomorrow. Prolly will run minion speed even with queen's escape for even more fast clearing :)

You barely notice any difference with Escape + Minion Speed, I expected it to be noticable, it wasn't.

Malachai was troublesome, mostly due to my own survival. Abyss was a joke, clearing the trash was ez mode but be careful vs chaos dmg if you dont have chaos res (refering to the minibosses before malachai...)

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LinkslashX wrote:

maybe replace empower with minion speed on weapon? what u think gaz?
another question, how u deal with traps on trials? i keep dying on long runs that have lots of traps together and no space to breath.

ty.

Replace Empower with added fire and/or Poison but minion speed (unless you are using Decree then you must use minion speed).

Regarding traps; Minions are fine, you might feel uncomfortable due to the use of Zealot's Oath, so make sure you have flasks ready and dont rush through the traps unless you know what you're doing. The skellies can handle all the extra shit without you worrying about the minions surviving or not.

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kompaniet wrote:

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LinkslashX wrote:

maybe replace empower with minion speed on weapon? what u think gaz?
another question, how u deal with traps on trials? i keep dying on long runs that have lots of traps together and no space to breath.

ty.

Hey. Gem links are in the guide. You don't need minion speed if you use the fated unique sword because it has up to 100% increased speed built in.

Traps are a big problem for any build that does not have massive amounts of life regen/physical damage reduction. Bring an extra life flask and granite/basalt. Keep up endurance charges. Most traps deal physical damage. I use lightning warp to make it easier for the more nasty trap combinations.

I think there are better builds for trials and lab. I'd skip them. This is just my personal opinion mind you.

That's all i can think of. Maybe somebody else has other ideas.

This build can farm uber lab with all buffs up, but it's far from the best build to do it with. Lab is not "Zealot's Oath" friendly but still managable :)

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Primal21 wrote:

Is this build viable without the skeleton enchant? I started before reading the complete guide, and already bought the sword. How much of a pain is it without the enchant? Also, how important is the 6L for empower?

The 6th link is mostly noticable at t13+ maps and/or boss kills with a second or two slower using a 5L.
The build works without the enchant, it is merely a QoL / clearspeed increaser but one should strive to get one when possible :)