Just a little background on me. This is my first season ever in POE and I am completely obsessed. I actually play on Xbox because I was able to get about 5 other friends to all join in with me. I helped kickstart the Animate Guardian discussion and I want to do the same thing for something that hasn't really been tackled much by the group... Spectres.
Everyone seems to mostly assume that 2 Carnage Chieftains and 2 Host Chieftains are the best option since that was originally recommended. How many people have actually did any testing? I know Spectre's are a lot more complicated and people may be avoiding testing them because you can't just plug in changes in POB. I will do some testing over the next couple days. But one thing I saw in an early post that caught my eye was the splash damage on Slave Drivers. It may be worth just running 4 of them and dropping the Melee Splash Gem for good form all builds. If anyone else has any insight on Spectres or want's to do any testing feel free to chime in.
I've done some testing of Solar Guards as well as Slave Drivers. They do work just fine. I also messed around with the Vuln cursing Necros. They were interesting but ultimately unreliable.
I ended up back on the Host & Carnage chieftains just because the damage from them didn't feel noticeable enough to me on a 3 link even switching them over to Feeding Frenzy. I mean if you wanted to dedicate a 4 link to them on a piece of gear like gloves that could have some additional support that's possible.
I've been messing around with "Supported by Level 18 Blind" gloves for my zombies. It's possible that you could use Faster Attack Gloves with the spectres to boost them.
That said the thing that I always keep coming back to in this build is that the focus for me is the Skeletons and making them as strong as possible. There's seeming a million ways to boost other minions like the spectres, carrion golems, zombies, so on but the core of this build are the Skeletons so I just tend to stick with that theme and use the others as utility.
That's just my focus, but of course there's nothing wrong with messing around with the other minions too.
I remember a while ago you talked about POB Pride corrections. Browsed and saw others question the POB calculation but could not find any precise information regarding it. Care to elaborate?
Mine looks okay to me so I am a bit confused:
Pride should give you up to 41% more Phys Dmg 'as they stay in the aura for 4s'. Currently PoB has no way to my knowledge of showing that full 41% more dmg, it only shows the base +20%. So I did another jewel edit to take that into account in my PoB.
Ahh, okay. I guess that overestimates the damage when mapping and is more correct on bosses.
Just a little background on me. This is my first season ever in POE and I am completely obsessed. I actually play on Xbox because I was able to get about 5 other friends to all join in with me. I helped kickstart the Animate Guardian discussion and I want to do the same thing for something that hasn't really been tackled much by the group... Spectres.
Everyone seems to mostly assume that 2 Carnage Chieftains and 2 Host Chieftains are the best option since that was originally recommended. How many people have actually did any testing? I know Spectre's are a lot more complicated and people may be avoiding testing them because you can't just plug in changes in POB. I will do some testing over the next couple days. But one thing I saw in an early post that caught my eye was the splash damage on Slave Drivers. It may be worth just running 4 of them and dropping the Melee Splash Gem for good form all builds. If anyone else has any insight on Spectres or want's to do any testing feel free to chime in.
I've done some testing of Solar Guards as well as Slave Drivers. They do work just fine. I also messed around with the Vuln cursing Necros. They were interesting but ultimately unreliable.
I ended up back on the Host & Carnage chieftains just because the damage from them didn't feel noticeable enough to me on a 3 link even switching them over to Feeding Frenzy. I mean if you wanted to dedicate a 4 link to them on a piece of gear like gloves that could have some additional support that's possible.
I've been messing around with "Supported by Level 18 Blind" gloves for my zombies. It's possible that you could use Faster Attack Gloves with the spectres to boost them.
That said the thing that I always keep coming back to in this build is that the focus for me is the Skeletons and making them as strong as possible. There's seeming a million ways to boost other minions like the spectres, carrion golems, zombies, so on but the core of this build are the Skeletons so I just tend to stick with that theme and use the others as utility.
That's just my focus, but of course there's nothing wrong with messing around with the other minions too.
What about if we remove culling strike from the link with Carrion Golems since the Animate Guardian provides us with it if you have Kingmaker. Then if we use spectres that don't need blood magic we could have 3 extra gem slots to now play with.
Since buffs of multiple golems of the same kind don't stack (according to https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Golem) and our build don't rely on golem damage, running another golem seems more beneficial. And since we don't need Culling strike when running AG and Kingmaker, using a Chaos Golem gem (for our second golem) instead could be an option, for the 5% physical damage reduction (requires gem lvl 22 which is easy with our build).
Also, I was under the impression that a level 20 Carrion Golem adds 20% damage to minions, but according to POB that is not the case. Which is weird since I'm used to interprete the wording "damage to minionS" as all the minions - not just the golems. Another example of the wording being used without giving a buff to all minions is Decree of Reflection (https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Decree_of_Reflection). Such a glove enchant granting 400% to all minions would be insane. That the wording has multiple meanings is a bit confusing, but hey.
One last thing.
I've been experimenting with the Intuitive Leap Jewel (https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Intuitive_Leap). I've put it here:
I did this to gain points for more life. The bottom line is I lost:
20 intelligence
2% change to block spell damage
5% increased maximum mana and
58.000 dps from a jewel and increased golems buffs
I gained 5 nodes and used them om 25% (5x5%) life. Not for everyone, I know, but for my build life is currently more important than dps. I guess the important thing for other people is if they can find 5 other nodes more important than the above loses.
Last edited by varmemester on Jan 13, 2020, 6:57:16 PM
What about if we remove culling strike from the link with Carrion Golems since the Animate Guardian provides us with it if you have Kingmaker. Then if we use spectres that don't need blood magic we could have 3 extra gem slots to now play with.
Yep that's a possibility as well if you want to dive deeper into spectres. Mess around with it and see if you can come up with something you like. I'd be happy to hear if anything good comes of it.
Had a go at crafting one of those nifty duel influence necklaces since I'm getting around to truly min/maxing this build.
The process was actually really simple. I bought a Jade amulet (ilvl 82 minimum since it's needed for intelligence skill gem mod) with an elder influence and +1 to maximum skeletons on it for 10c. Make sure that this is the only "Eldritch" or "Of the Elder" mod on it as we want to maintain the skeleton mod.
I had an ilvl 83 Hunter influenced Lapis Amulet lying around. I alt+aug spammed until I hit the +1 to all Intelligence Skill Gems mod. This took a little bit as that one is a little more rare but no more than 200 alts so I got lucky. You need to make sure +1 to All Intelligence Skill Gems is the only Hunter mod as well.
I then used an Awakener's Orb to transfer the Hunter influence on to the Elder amulet. This is done by right clicking the Awakener's Orb, then left clicking on the Hunter amulet, then left clicking on the Elder amulet. This rerolls the other mods on the Elder amulet, but keeps one Elder mod and 1 Hunter mod from each piece. That's why it's important to only have 1 of the Elder mods and 1 of the Hunter mods on each piece. I was left with an amulet that had this:
"
+1 to Maximum Number of Skeletons
+1 to All Intelligence Skill Gems
+blah blah Physical Damage to Attacks
10% to Lightning Resistance
I got a little brave here and Annuled the Physical Damage to Attacks. I figured I had a 50-50 shot of removing stuff I don't care about so why not.
I then crafted on "Prefixes Cannot be Changed" and scoured to remove the Lightning Resistance and was left with a rare amulet with just +1 to Maximum Skeletons and +1 to Intelligence Skill Gems. I then multimodded and crafted on life and minion movement speed. I exalt slammed for the final prefix and got some crap all res, but you can't win all the time.
Finished with some divines, blessings, and fertile catalysts and was left with this:
Pretty painless process if a little expensive. Not a bad outcome though. Just did a little bit of napkin math and looks like it added about 146k dps per skeleton or around 2 million dps across all skeletons. Pretty silly but kinda fun too =)
Last edited by Solanales on Jan 13, 2020, 7:15:35 PM
So I think the direction I'm leaning towards taking with a new guide thread would be a "Choose Your Own Impale Skeletons" style build that is a bit modular. The direction this thread has gone, there have been a lot of options and I think it would be remiss to lose out on that going forward. Basically keep it new person friendly.
Have several budget options as well as more offensive, defensive, and options for life or MoM based. Core would be Impale based skeletons with Dread Banner & Generosity. Everything scales off of this. Here's the "modules" I am thinking of thus far:
- +2 Dual Wands
- +2 Wand & Ahn's Heritage
- +3 Staff
- 4 Link Zombies
- 3 Link Zombies & Animate Guardian (Several AG options)
- MoM Build
- Life Build
- Doryani's Jewel
- Pride Options in Essence Worm or Mana reserve with Life Build
- Host & Carnage Spectres
- Slave Driver Spectres
- CwDT Spirit Offering
- Flesh Offering
- Flame Dash Movement
- Shield Charge Movement
I'll probably try to include some crafting guides and the like so people can have information on how to make some of the gear that's used. If anyone has input on other "Modules" that could be included, let me know and I'd be happy to work with it.
Okay my only problem if you start the guide anytime soon it maybe obsolete when 3.10 comes around. I have just a feeling they are going to do something to Skeletons this coming patch. They been too good for too long. I would love it actually if they didn't touch them but they are most likely going to do something. We just have to hope it isn't completely gutting them.
My gear I linked back a couple of pages ago took me like 5 or more Exalt to get it to where it is at with PoB Total DPS including Impale: 730951.8 If they cut that in half I don't think many people will play it. And they have been known to overcompensate so it could happen.
I just wanted to throw that out there to make sure you thought about it. I would hate to have the guide sometime in February and come beginning of March it no longer be usable.
Just a little background on me. This is my first season ever in POE and I am completely obsessed. I actually play on Xbox because I was able to get about 5 other friends to all join in with me. I helped kickstart the Animate Guardian discussion and I want to do the same thing for something that hasn't really been tackled much by the group... Spectres.
Everyone seems to mostly assume that 2 Carnage Chieftains and 2 Host Chieftains are the best option since that was originally recommended. How many people have actually did any testing? I know Spectre's are a lot more complicated and people may be avoiding testing them because you can't just plug in changes in POB. I will do some testing over the next couple days. But one thing I saw in an early post that caught my eye was the splash damage on Slave Drivers. It may be worth just running 4 of them and dropping the Melee Splash Gem for good form all builds. If anyone else has any insight on Spectres or want's to do any testing feel free to chime in.
I've done some testing of Solar Guards as well as Slave Drivers. They do work just fine. I also messed around with the Vuln cursing Necros. They were interesting but ultimately unreliable.
I ended up back on the Host & Carnage chieftains just because the damage from them didn't feel noticeable enough to me on a 3 link even switching them over to Feeding Frenzy. I mean if you wanted to dedicate a 4 link to them on a piece of gear like gloves that could have some additional support that's possible.
I've been messing around with "Supported by Level 18 Blind" gloves for my zombies. It's possible that you could use Faster Attack Gloves with the spectres to boost them.
That said the thing that I always keep coming back to in this build is that the focus for me is the Skeletons and making them as strong as possible. There's seeming a million ways to boost other minions like the spectres, carrion golems, zombies, so on but the core of this build are the Skeletons so I just tend to stick with that theme and use the others as utility.
That's just my focus, but of course there's nothing wrong with messing around with the other minions too.
I was also if I ever rolled a map with Area contains Sea Witches see if I could get a Mervell's Retainer since they are supposed to be able to cast a higher than a Gem Level you can get like Level 30 or so Vulnerability Curse. It is also supposed to cast the Curse frequently. But I never got to try it.
