[3.9] Pure Phys Skeletons & Friends Necromancer — Beginner/SSF/Budget Build

i forgot to mention i am using brass dome ( the cant be crit is too good to pass i think) so i got over 80% phys dmg mitigation

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Camaron wrote:

i forgot to mention i am using brass dome ( the cant be crit is too good to pass i think) so i got over 80% phys dmg mitigation

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Camaron wrote:

yes talking about using purities of fire cold and lighting thus using all my mana vs not using them ( thus losing 3 to all res max) and using mom

my char is malefycka in HC incursion if u wanna check it out

Ty

Wow ok your build is a bit all over the place. First off you're not running the pure skele/zombie build this thread suggests. You didn't take the right Ascendancies to make Raise Spectre worth it, and Animate Guardian needs a better support skill setup or he's going to die all the time (costing you his items). And you're manually casting Enfeeble, which is super inefficient.

Secondly you're prioritizing overcapped resists instead of life, which is a mistake. The elemental damage mitigation is too small compared to the amount of life you could have from decent rare items (your helm is the worst offender). At a basic level, life mitigates all damage, while resists only mitigate one type of damage. So unless the resist mitigation is 3-5 times the amount of life you could have instead.... go for life. MoM basically increases your life by accessing your unreserved mana pool, so again, is 6% elemental damage mitigation worth 1000+ effective life? No, not even close.

Also, your movement mechanic is really weird. I can't imagine using boots without 20%+ movement speed. And while the Brass Dome is a fine armor, I would never use it without boots that grant 30%+ movement speed. Your clear speed must be terrible. And why do you need both phase run and flame dash? Shield charge is the fastest movement skill in the game at the moment, and you're using a shield, so....probably switch?

Final thoughts:
1. your glove crafted mod is evasion instead of minion damage
2. you only have two jewel slots in your passive tree - you should have 6 at minimum, 2 for Violent Dead and 4 for From Dust
3. The Puppet Master Ascendancy is way better for skeletons than Commander of Darkness

Ah ty for such helpful tips, gona get mom instead of resists
My helm is for more armor since i got overcaped fire resist
good point on the glove enchant and the other points

Thx again

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Camaron wrote:

Ah ty for such helpful tips, gona get mom instead of resists
My helm is for more armor since i got overcaped fire resist
good point on the glove enchant and the other points

Thx again

Yeah so, there are builds that use armor or evasion as part of their survivability. But none of those builds are summoners. Armor focused builds only work because they also use synergistic mechanics like physical damage % reduction and endurance charges. Here's the link to the armor mechanics:

https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Armour#Rule_of_thumb

Basically if a hit would have done 100 damage to you, you'd need 9,000 armor to prevent 90% of the damage. Compare the amount of armor you'd need (plus endurance charges and flat physical damage mitigation) to the amount of life you could add in the same number of items/passive nodes/gems. You'll find that life again wins hands down.

I love this build and it's the first time I've been serious about POE (been very casual, still am but trying to do a lot that I haven't before) but I have two questions:

1) Why the Silver Flask (Onslaught)? As I understand it it's just for you and doens't help your minions. I could be doing this wrong of course as I've only ever really used mana and life flasks. I run out of mana a lot as I'm using haste and, in all honesty, casting Skeletons too often (working on that part) and think a mana pot would be better.

2) If I understand the build correctly there is a 4L that is "up in the air" so to speak. Why no throw on an SRS link since we already have a lot of minion support passives? (I know it's not the primary damage but more helps, right?)

Thanks for any help.

Hi Kevin,

I hit end game and the build now steam rolls everything in incursion and I don't even have to use vaal haste.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions, most helpful.

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Naggun wrote:

1) Why the Silver Flask (Onslaught)? As I understand it it's just for you and doens't help your minions. I could be doing this wrong of course as I've only ever really used mana and life flasks. I run out of mana a lot as I'm using haste and, in all honesty, casting Skeletons too often (working on that part) and think a mana pot would be better.

Correct, the silver flask is purely for the extra movement speed granted by onslaught (and maybe the cast speed as a quality of life enhancement). Basically when you're at end game (which happens really early for this build) and mowing down mobs in maps, every bit of movement speed you can stack increases your currency per hour. When I play I'm constantly popping my basalt/silver/quicksilver flasks as a single keybind. You ideally want your flasks to have the reduced charges mod (means you can have them up most of the time depending on your clear speed), and some suffix like immune to curses, shock, etc. for an extra bit of defense.

You shouldn't have to use healing or mana flasks at all if you're playing it right. Of course I keep a couple bubbling health flasks for "oh shit" moments, but certainly not mana flasks, as you get way better value from Vaal Haste. You should be able to keep Vaal Haste up almost as often as your flask buffs with a good clear speed and the resulting souls. Regular Haste (and the 50% mana reservation required) cuts into your effective health total (since Mind over Matter pulls a percentage of mana). You need ~47% of your health as unreserved mana to get the full benefit from MoM, so having Haste up all the time is costing you health, which means death, which means low currency per hour.

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Naggun wrote:

2) If I understand the build correctly there is a 4L that is "up in the air" so to speak. Why no throw on an SRS link since we already have a lot of minion support passives? (I know it's not the primary damage but more helps, right?)

There is some room for customization as the core build doesn't use all gem slots. However the last thing you need is to be adding a SRS setup. Your skeletons do soooooo much damage there's no benefit to adding SRS. Really the only option that makes any sense is an Immortal Call (lvl1) connected to a CWDT for the 0.4 second invulnerability after taking a serious hit. This will save your life over and over again. My full gem setup is as follows:



Also, since we're talking about gem setups, here's what you should be targeting for each skill along with the priority with which to get them (Priority:Skill Name-Level/Quality). Priority 1 are core must haves, while priority 5 are quality of life improvements that don't materially affect the build's viability (things like cast speed and movement speed).

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Jaxx2theMaxx wrote:

Hi Kevin,

I hit end game and the build now steam rolls everything in incursion and I don't even have to use vaal haste.

Thanks for taking the time to answer my questions, most helpful.

Thanks! Glad I could help.

man i used your build last league and it was a pleasure really !!

i just swaped body armor and glove for Geofry sanctuary + shaper's touch for more defense (10k ish eHP)

i wanna try a pure skeleton next league but i'm sure i will ended up playing this build again ahah

Hi thanks for the build guide, very nice and detailed, think I will try this for SSF HC Delve.

Any extra tips for a SSF player who is complete noob to summoners? ie which uniques are most important to start chance spamming early / provide the biggest boosts in power/QoL and are reasonably SSF attainable ? Seems like I should save my chaos to spam bone helmets until I find a good Elder helm to spam instead. etc. I guess my primary concern would be the To Dust jewels, I don't think it's unlikely that I could hit 95 without finding one, are they necessary to make skellies playable?

EDIT: 3.4 first look is added to the top of the OP.

Just a quick post to let interested people know that I'm going to start work on updating this to 3.4 tonight. Should be a fairly small update so hopefully will also finish tonight. Will be redoing the tree, testing how much Brightbeak nerf affects us, whether to keep Shield Charge, etc.

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Trentemoller wrote:

Any extra tips for a SSF player who is complete noob to summoners? ie which uniques are most important to start chance spamming early / provide the biggest boosts in power/QoL and are reasonably SSF attainable ? Seems like I should save my chaos to spam bone helmets until I find a good Elder helm to spam instead. etc. I guess my primary concern would be the To Dust jewels, I don't think it's unlikely that I could hit 95 without finding one, are they necessary to make skellies playable?

Honestly all you need to do is farm BA for a Tabula. The 3.4 version isn't even going to use To Dust.