3.8 New Queens Escape + Baron - super fast physical skeletons + zombies

Is it crazy to get a 6-link chest and put both Zombies and Skeletons in it? They share 3 support gems. This saves ~10 Ex for a 6-link queen's escape and frees up the weapon for lots of utility or we could add Summon Raging Bees.

Zombies, Skeletons, Minion Damage, Melee Phys, Brutality, Minion Life / Maim / Melee Splash

I'm strongly considering buying a white 6-link and hitting it with a Fear essence.

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Is it crazy to get a 6-link chest and put both Zombies and Skeletons in it? They share 3 support gems. This saves ~10 Ex for a 6-link queen's escape and frees up the weapon for lots of utility or we could add Summon Raging Bees.

Zombies, Skeletons, Minion Damage, Melee Phys, Brutality, Minion Life / Maim / Melee Splash

I'm strongly considering buying a white 6-link and hitting it with a Fear essence.

It's not crazy, it's a great idea! Holy moly, this is the missing piece in making a max block version!

The essence of fear on the rings will keep the minion movespeed and allow us to run advancing fortress, stone of lazwar, spellblock shield. We can also run 3, or even 4 minion types with enough health to survive if we put the essence of fear on a body armour. Here's a sample: https://pastebin.com/evwqNfKR

Leaving us with a reasonably cheap, max block, max spellblock fast clearspeed, relaxed playstyle tank.
That max block increases our EHP to 40K according to this calculator: https://jsfiddle.net/p7pe80jx/39/embedded/result/

And it gets close to 100K if we account for enfeeble/temp chains and vaal grace. The best part is any 6 linked body armour will do!

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It's not crazy, it's a great idea! Holy moly, this is the missing piece in making a max block version!

I contributed!

So I went ahead and did this. Didn't get great rolls on my essence but it's fun so far.


https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/lord_emperor

Hey! I'm back! Any changes and upgrades to the build?!

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Hey! I'm back! Any changes and upgrades to the build?!

Hey Sighlight, what's happening in your builds?

I'm playing around with max block and spell block at present. Pob link is a few posts back. Grinding out some decent items first.

So I'm trying this build out in the SSF Incursion event and other than a small user error I've really enjoyed it. My user error was finding Earnedel's Embrace in Act 4 and equipping it and then getting Brutality in Act 6 and equipping that and then playing through two acts wondering wtf happened to my skelly dps*, lol. Here's my gear (no laughing, I'm mapping easily):



I just found a Queen's Decree last night but I'm a long way from being able to 6S and 5L it. I also need to figure out how to get The Misunderstood Queen prophecy. Anybody have any tips on farming that? Is there a specific level where it would be easier? I posted this question in gameplay help too. I think I waited to long to try and farm the proph.

Overall the build is pretty strong. I mean, I'm totally comfortable attempting uber lab with the gear I have now. I just haven't found all the trials yet. I also haven't done any maps beyond t1 because I'm still farming t2's but I'm really not worried. I'm confident I could be doing t8's and t9's if I was ready. SSF is the only thing gimping my progress. If I was playing in the regular league I'd probably be a lot further along. But overall I'm having fun.

*-For those that don't know, Earendel's Embrace gives skeletons Avatar of Fire but Brutality removes all elemental damage, hence zero dps from skelletons. Why did it take me two acts(!) to figure it out? I replaced Multistrike with Brutality so I figured my DPS had just dropped off due to a level 1 gem. My zombies and spectres were doing adequate damage so I just figured it would catch up. It wasn't until I started failing incursions around act 8 that I decided to figure out what was going on. Pretty stupid, huh?

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SSF is the only thing gimping my progress.

LOL at the brutality in the unset ring. SSF is for a special kind of adventurer!

Is the increased duration linked to elemental weakness? That will make your mana reservation higher. Change that, then you'll likely need no atziri's foible. Otherwise, a Tabula Rasa will get you deep into red maps. Good luck

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grimlock9999 wrote:

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SSF is the only thing gimping my progress.

LOL at the brutality in the unset ring. SSF is for a special kind of adventurer!

Is the increased duration linked to elemental weakness? That will make your mana reservation higher. Change that, then you'll likely need no atziri's foible. Otherwise, a Tabula Rasa will get you deep into red maps. Good luck

Yeah, I just needed another red slot and that was convenient. I wasn't even using any CWDT set up yet. I wasn't actually running purity of elements yet (not elemental weakness). Just leveling it up. I was actually running vuln+blasph and arctic armor at that point. A lot of gems I had slotted weren't really being used, just didn't want to get too crazy with coloring yet and waste chromes. I've cleaned up my gem slots quite a bit. No more AA, running purity, CWDT+IC, etc. Still haven't been able to proceed to t3 maps (still grinding for a burial grounds before I can move up a tier) but now that I've got CWDT rolling I feel much safer. I've actually only died 3 times and all three were during the acts, twice in incursions when I was doing zero skeleton DPS and once to Aberrath when I had 8% fire res and stood inside his fire pool for a half a second. So basically all three were totally avoidable by slightly smarter playing.

I also found a belly yesterday so now I just need to 5L that and my sword. Probably another week of grinding to do that. I'll miss leap slam with my brightbeak though, lol.

Ok, now that my gear is cleaned up a bit I wanted to provide a final update on what I think of this build. Basically, it rocks! I had never played SSF before so I wanted a build that was a) powerful enough to handle all content and b) flexible enough that I didn't need to sweat getting specific uniques or enchants. Even though this build says that Queen's Escape is "required" that is a soft requirement. I'm up into yellow maps and still melting things like butter. I haven't failed to clear a single incursion either, a feat which my kick ass jugger can't claim. I did take a few options in the tree to increase my zombie life (I hate recasting) and I also jumped over to Grave Intentions to get up to 10 zombies (5 with Montregul). Right now my tree is complete except for picking up extra life nodes. I have nearly 5k EHP right now at level 86 and I'm still using a tabula. I also haven't done uber lab yet. Still haven't found all the trials.

I've played a summoner (SRS and spectres) as a league starter almost every league except this league, which I started as a self-cast arc mage. Just got bored with summoners. This is a new summoner play-style for me and it feels super safe and has been a lot of fun, even SSF. I plan on using this as my league starter next league. Thanks for the build and the clear guide showing all the options.

Here's my current gear. Definitely a flexible build from a gearing standpoint. I can't wait to see what happens when I finally get Queen's Escape going. I also haven't found any better gloves. I crafted the helmet by chaos spam.

Thanks for a great and super fun build!

I have played this build as my main in Incursion SC and reached all my goals I can be bothered with. At the moment Im just fooling around with random chars in Flashback while I wait for the next league. I have decent gear in Incursion SC to give away to anyone who is playing this build and need upgrades. I rather give items to a player who need it as an upgrade. So dont bother if you just want to sell it.

The items I have to give away is equipped on my char Bluudtzuckah. Whisper me in game or message me here.