Lightning Golem Crescendo ♫ All Content / HC Focused / Not Casual-Friendly

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ChronoSquare wrote:

Woo! Welp, I'm finally "finishing" this build - after some beachhead rotas, got to lv 92, so it *should* be all I need, except for maybe 1 more level, since I need some clarification on things.

Hey, I'll try ♬

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In order to use Victario's shield, do we have to take Necromantic Aegis?

Yes. Well, technically no. But, yes. The golems don't want to wait for you to try to generate charges for them. :P

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The golems kill, they generate frenzy charges for each other? That how that works?

Yup. The frenzies actually come on hit.

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Did you talk about fighting Minotaur in your guide anywhere?

Yup. I go into more detail on boss fights in the video descriptions on the Youtube pages. For HC, I recommend cheesing Minotaur with Stone Golems. It's safer because if you stack enough HP on Stone Golems and avoid too many damage mods, you can usually do the fight while hiding around the corner. The same principle works for other golem types, but Stone Golems have the most HP and therefore are far less likely to require resummoning during the fight. Bring Frost Wall as a way to keep enemy golems away and direct your golems toward Mino. You might need to practice a few times to get the hang of it and learn how to do staggered retreats/regrouping on the opposite side of the arena from Minotaur in case things break down.

This can be done relatively cheaply with any 4L Helm RRBx ideally with +2 to minion gems.

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Chimera I didn't know the fight so I used up all the portals learning it & dying to the smoke phase

Yeah smoke phase is annoying. One thing you can try is slotting in Enduring Cry for a longer Immortal Call.

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Currently rockin' Steppan Eard & Vertex masks as an alternative to better-in-slot rare gear... I've no idea how to properly approach buying for these slots, since I only have so much currency (like 5 ex total to buy new gloves, helm, belt, and shoes; maybe a ring), not including I don't have a 6-link body yet. I feel like I should move on to something other than The Covenant, but aside from going straight up to Atziri's Splendor for pure ES at something like 3ex just for the ES w/o even being a 6-link... idk what to do :'D ^^;

Hmm... it really depends how much you want to min/max. If you just want to clear Shaper/Uber, you're already ready. All of your gear is more than enough for endgame. Even on a 5-link it's not a problem once you're familiar with the fights. The reason I stress (excessive?) caution in the guide is because I intend it for HC. You really don't need to wait until 90+ with bling bling gear to beat the last boss(es).

If you do want to min/max though, I think it's more about the market at this point in the league. Obviously, you should be able to find boots or a helm with more Life. But as for which to upgrade first? That probably depends on availability/pricing. You can easily spend 4 or 5 exalts for endgame boots, but it's also possible to get them for under 50c. If you're patient, I recommend setting live searches for each slot you want to upgrade. Set ES and Life (and MS for boots), but not resists (since those are easy to supplement) to get more hits. Let the live search do some window shopping for you while you play. Who knows? You might see something you like and stumble on a bargain. At the very least, you'll get a sense of what the market has for you.

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P.S. For anybody else interested, I uploaded some new videos 🎥🎥

▶ Chayula Breachstone
- considered many ways to beat this without GMP
- finally gave up and just tossed in GMP+Pierce
- cleared more easily than expected

▶ T11 Racecourse using GMP+Pierce
- clears about as fast or faster than your typical Flame Golem setup
(Not really my style, as I prefer strong single-target over AOE/clearspeed, but in case people want something to reference, the clearspeed focused option is available to you.)


Also, had an extra one of these lying around and figured why not? And sure enough:

Weee :P

Welp, managed to do the no-hit challenges with your fun golems. It took some tries to hide behind enough stuff, but I avoided that cursed king! (I've been running ice wall on cwdt, no idea if that would've prevented the projectiles/hitboxes)

Now to master myself so I can get that damn Minotaur dead... I've got as many mazes as the other guardian maps combined, aaaand... WELL I GUESS I should level up Stone Golem & Minion Life before trying again! I thought I was doing OK, then by the time I die & Mino roams over, "oh look 3% damage damn"

Empower really needed to get that extra HP boost? I've got one gaining xp, just hit lv 2 w/ it the other day.

P.S. the racecourse / GMP link goes to a 2.6 High Gardens video, don't think that's the intended link!

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ChronoSquare wrote:

Welp, managed to do the no-hit challenges with your fun golems. It took some tries to hide behind enough stuff, but I avoided that cursed king! (I've been running ice wall on cwdt, no idea if that would've prevented the projectiles/hitboxes)

Awesome :) (I'm not sure myself if FW can block spectral wolves.)

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Now to master myself so I can get that damn Minotaur dead... I've got as many mazes as the other guardian maps combined, aaaand... WELL I GUESS I should level up Stone Golem & Minion Life before trying again! I thought I was doing OK, then by the time I die & Mino roams over, "oh look 3% damage damn"

Yeah, getting gem levels up is good regardless of the situation. If you don't mind spending a some chaos, you can grab the following:

<1c: Helm with +2 to minion gems
<20c: Relatively high level/quality Stone Golem
<20c: Relatively high level/quality Minion Life

The rest you can fill with whatever you have on hand or can get from vendors and do a few maps to get the levels up a bit. Can also just buy all the (likely corrupted) gems you need and toss 'em back on the market when you're done, like a rental basically.

Oddly, I also end up with more Mino maps than the others. Not sure why. :o

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Empower really needed to get that extra HP boost? I've got one gaining xp, just hit lv 2 w/ it the other day.

You don't need Empower, but I dunno if you can do more than 1 damage mod on the map with only Minion Life. You also might want dual Clayshapers instead of a shield for the extra golem life bonus. Ideally, you want StnGolem-MinLife-Empower-Fortify. If you want to go overboard, you can even find a cheap corrupted 6L chest (RBRRxx) and toss a couple more gems into the mix (Multistrike/AddedAcc/MinionDmg/whatever).

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P.S. the racecourse / GMP link goes to a 2.6 High Gardens video, don't think that's the intended link!

Oh, poop >< Sorry, fixed! Thanks for letting me know.



11/30 Edit:
Another video I kept forgetting to upload:
T16 Vaal Temple Trio

3.1 Build Update

Passive Tree
Basically no changes.

Minor note: I ended up dropping the Death Attunement cluster in the latest iteration. The four points to get there are better off spent on another Primordial Jewel or more ES/Life. Can now hit 10,000 EHP without MOM, possibly 11 to 12k with a ring swap and GG gear.

For pure golem builds that use 3 golem types, you basically want to skip all minion nodes in general because Primordial jewels are just better overall in terms of both offensive and defensive value. Even the Gravepact cluster provides only slightly more DPS than a Harmony/Eminence (and none of the juicy regen or armor).


Equipment
Also no changes.

The new Elder/Shaped rares are cool and all, but the build is already fine offensively. And since this is an HC-focused guide, I'd rather have more EHP for now. Might re-evaluate later.

Cool toys nonetheless and I look forward to somebody putting together a 5-golem build with a crazy minion Helm and The Hungry Loop, even if it's just for the memes.


League Progress
Ripped at 94 with Bisco's and a 6L Shav's (watching Youtube with an open Abyss on a T12 with Vuln and extra damage... yeah, that was dumb). Not feeling particularly motivated to reroll just yet. We'll see...


Old Content
Re-geared an old character for almost pure single target DPS (has barely 5K EHP) for kicks. Managed to do a sub-5-minute Shaper run with it.


New Content
Tested out the new Elder and Elder Guardians. Took a while to spawn Elder in a red tier map (T12). Not sure if there's any difference between T11 and T15 Elder or if it's just white/yellow/red. Recorded it for reference though in case anybody's interested:
Red Elder and (mostly) Red Guardians

Also added a video of one of the new maps:
T13 Park (AHC)

Hey dude, love the guide, very well written with great explanations. I've done the Flame Golem version of this and liked it so looking forward to the Lightning Golem version.

One question, can you give tips about which Pantheon powers to take? Couldn't see it in the original post.

Thanks!

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Lafortezza wrote:

One question, can you give tips about which Pantheon powers to take? Couldn't see it in the original post.

Thanks :)
Updated ♬

I'm really curious about your choice of ascendancy. Is 1 more golem that much worth it ? As far as I know ele damage from your ascendancy don't affect your minions, so it's more or less 6 wasted ascendancy points don't you think ?


Also, you are saying that the increased duration gem is a huge multiplier on longer fight. While this is 100% true, isn't it better to just take the increased duration node on the tree and drop that gem for another one ? Or maybe those nodes don't work on minions ?


It's really difficult to find accurate info on lightning golems, so I'm kinda stuck ...


Edit : Oh and what about proj weakness for an easier time clearing maps ?

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Mennphis wrote:

Also, you are saying that the increased duration gem is a huge multiplier on longer fight. While this is 100% true, isn't it better to just take the increased duration node on the tree and drop that gem for another one ? Or maybe those nodes don't work on minions ?

For anyone wondering, just found that those nodes (and those on the necromancer ascendancy) don't affect the duration of the orb.

Now I have to find if the orb of golem number 1 can be triggered by golem 2, and the multiplier behind the orb.

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Mennphis wrote:

I'm really curious about your choice of ascendancy. Is 1 more golem that much worth it ? As far as I know ele damage from your ascendancy don't affect your minions, so it's more or less 6 wasted ascendancy points don't you think ?

Hmm... there's a few answers I can provide:

re: Elementalist Ascendancy Passives
As far as pure golem builds go, Golementalist has a higher practical damage ceiling due to Harmony damage stacking. You're right about the Ascendancy passives not contributing any other damage. I wouldn't say all of them are wasted though. Paragon of Calamity gives you 8% reduced ele damage taken if you've been hit recently. If you combine that with the Solaris/Vaal Pantheon, that's about the same as +2% max ele resistance. Not a huge deal, but still a nice little perk. Anyway, that's still not really the biggest draw for me...

re: benefits of golem elemental immunity
The DPS boost is nice with Harmony stacking of course, but I find that the elemental immunity for your golems gives you a lot of value in terms of passive tree flexibility and peace of mind during the megaboss fights.

On a Necro tree, I tend to grab at least a few of the minion survivability nodes (like Herd the Flock, Gravepact/Minion Life Leech). Others sometimes spec into even more (like the Lord of the Dead cluster). On a Golementalist tree though, I skip all of those because Harmony regen combined with ele immunity is enough for every fight in the game. This can save you anywhere from 5 to 15-ish passive points.

During boss fights also, I don't really think about what my golems are doing, much less how to help them stay alive. Your golems can be offscreen fighting the boss and out of range of your auras and still be just as tanky. Also, no worrying about mis-timing Convocation to shift golems away from something like Uber Atziri's double flameblast. All you need to do is worry about yourself. In that sense, I find it a bit more stress-free to do bosses as a Golementalist. I'm not saying it's difficult as Necro or Ascendant, and Uber Atziri-type fights aren't something you'd be doing all the time. But this build is meant to do all content in HC, so I tend to put a premium on anything that reduces variables and/or simplifies endgame fights. If HC's not really your thing, then honestly, it becomes an exercise in splitting hairs. All of the golem/minion Ascendancies are decent choices.

So yeah, even if you think the other 6 Ascendancy points to be wasted (I don't), it's more important to consider how much value you are getting overall and not oversimplify it as an 8 vs. 2 comparison.

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Also, you are saying that the increased duration gem is a huge multiplier on longer fight. While this is 100% true, isn't it better to just take the increased duration node on the tree and drop that gem for another one ? Or maybe those nodes don't work on minions ?

As you've already discovered, tree nodes only apply to you unless they specifically say "minion".

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Edit : Oh and what about proj weakness for an easier time clearing maps ?

Haven't gotten around to trying it yet to be honest. I'll give it a shot next weekend and see. That said, I would say that the type of map you run has a far greater impact on your overall enjoyment of mapping. If you're running ranged minions (Flame Golems, Lightning Golems, Sentinels, Solar Guards), you ideally want to be running linear maps with few obstructions/obstacles/walls (i.e. Mesa, Racecourse, Strand, etc.)

The reason curses don't help much when mapping solo
As long as your gems are leveled, you can basically just sprint through most of a map without bothering with curses. You can see in the linked video that I pretty much only stop to cast a curse occasionally (not even for the damage, but to tell the golems where to shoot). I might as well not even be running curses for the most part. Once you get to a certain point in terms of build completion, casting just slows you down. Abysses (and other league mechanics) are an exception of course, but those change your pace by design.

Hope that helps and sorry for the late reply! ♬

Thanks for the reply !

I've started the build this weekend (I destroyed act10 kitava, it was rather impressive) and find it really nice.

I'm trying another variation of the build because I'm trying it with scion. I really don't like energy shield (even when it was meta xD) so I'm also only building life, which lead to a lot of differences in the skill tree.

In the end, I don't really benefit too much from the other scion ascendancies, so elementalist could be the way to go (for those who like ES).



I'll develop here what I got in mind with my version of this build. Maybe I can bring you new idea, and you will be able to help me with mine.

First, you have to keep in mind that I'm playing softcore (but I really don't like dying :p), so sometime (example : for cursing), I chose offense > def

1) Projectile weakness, the false good idea :



2) The supports :



3) My planned passive tree :



4) Random thoughts :



Ok, I think that's everything I have to say for now xD Great build overall, impressive single target dps too.

Hope that I will eventually help you to make this build even better ;)



Ps : I saw that a golem MTX has been datamined on poedb ... WTB this MTX, GGG please


Edit :
Ok, real thought here. I can spend 10ex+ on a 6L offcolor Lioneye's vision, but if I can do the same thing cheaper, I'll gladly choose the other option. Maybe I can take



and play again with projectile weakness ? (so I don't have to take lioneye just for the piercing effect) But I'm loosing some hp doing that ... So I don't know ... I will have to try