💀3.15💀 iLL3aT’s Cold Skeleton Warriors/Archers/Mages ❆ League Starter ❆ All Content ❆

Hey iLL3at, thank you for the guide. It looks really interesting and it will be my next build.

I have one question: appart from life flasks, you have no particular ehp recovery system, right? I expect that with an endgame build this is no problem, but what about early to midgame? Don't you starve for life recovery?

@bluu_94 - While not optimized compared to the specialized zombie builds who utilize the Baron, you can just swap out the skeletons gem for a zombies gem, since they can use the same links. This is more if you would like a change of pace and just want to try out zombies. They may be pretty fragile though, so you may need to swap a few mediums to hulking corpses/renewal.

@Rootsmann - I used two life flasks until I got my end game flasks - one instant recovery and one long duration one. Now I just use a bubbling, which I get three uses out of. If I am low, the three taps gets me between 50-75% health, which is enough to get out of harm's way most of the time. While it's no overleech, I personally never found using only flasks too big an issue.

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iLL3aT wrote:

@Rootsmann - I used two life flasks until I got my end game flasks - one instant recovery and one long duration one. Now I just use a bubbling, which I get three uses out of. If I am low, the three taps gets me between 50-75% health, which is enough to get out of harm's way most of the time. While it's no overleech, I personally never found using only flasks too big an issue.

I fully trust you on that. Reading your guide I thought I would need at least 2 bubbling up to the endgame. But to be fair I never played summoner, so I'm not use to have a lot of "friends" to saok up damage for me. So I trust you that two flasks feels confortable.

You just have to dodge stuff well during boss fight to not run out of flasks, but:
- your minions deal the damage so you can focus on that
- with the dps a summoner brings you prolly don't have to dodge for long anyway

All right, full cold skeleton it is then :)

Edit: I could barelly play this league due to life change cutting my playtime by a factor of about 50, but I'm already planning next league since I can't play now :)

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Rootsmann wrote:

I fully trust you on that. Reading your guide I thought I would need at least 2 bubbling up to the endgame. But to be fair I never played summoner, so I'm not use to have a lot of "friends" to saok up damage for me. So I trust you that two flasks feels confortable.

You just have to dodge stuff well during boss fight to not run out of flasks, but:
- your minions deal the damage so you can focus on that
- with the dps a summoner brings you prolly don't have to dodge for long anyway

All right, full cold skeleton it is then :)

Edit: I could barelly play this league due to life change cutting my playtime by a factor of about 50, but I'm already planning next league since I can't play now :)

With another defensive flask, you'll take less damage. Past like level 85, I wouldn't recommend two life flasks. The best part about summoner is that you're out of harm's way more often than if you're melee or a caster even. You want to run alongside mobs so that they miss, make "S" shapes, or run circles (simulacrum).

I pretty much don't use flasks on bosses, short of emergencies, or for certain mechanics.

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iLL3aT wrote:

With another defensive flask, you'll take less damage. Past like level 85, I wouldn't recommend two life flasks. The best part about summoner is that you're out of harm's way more often than if you're melee or a caster even. You want to run alongside mobs so that they miss, make "S" shapes, or run circles (simulacrum).

I pretty much don't use flasks on bosses, short of emergencies, or for certain mechanics.

The only other "weakness" I see in the build is the physical damage mitigation.
I hate dying so on top of Divine Flesh and 88% chaos res to solve non-phys damage, I'm debating going with brassdome and phys taken as cold/fire/lightning watcher's eye mod :D

A watcher with 30-50 chaos res + 9-12% phys as one element while affected by purity of element is 8-10 ex for low rolls (just have to divine it).

That would mean loosing skitterbots with bone chill. Given the dps, I don't think it's a problem but I would still like to ask your opinion. I summarize the stats lost and gained below under a spoiler to highlight the fact that I don't ask for a breakdown from you on all stats but just your general feeling of a loss of dps for a gain on phys mitigation. Maybe having more dps is more beneficial as in "the best defence is offence".



Edit: also that switch relax the mana reservation reduction and opens up Molten Shell as a guard skill... Haaaaa so hard to make a decision :D

Edit 2: congrats on the 40 challenges, it just switched

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iLL3aT wrote:

@bluu_94 - While not optimized compared to the specialized zombie builds who utilize the Baron, you can just swap out the skeletons gem for a zombies gem, since they can use the same links. This is more if you would like a change of pace and just want to try out zombies. They may be pretty fragile though, so you may need to swap a few mediums to hulking corpses/renewal.

Yeah it felt super bad without changing jewels and stuff so changed back to skelies :)

Sirus 8 kill my 10ex animate guardian...
So sad lol

@Rootsmann - Thanks! I was waiting for a friend to make his sword base for me to trash to treasure for the last challenge haha.

There's an easier solution for phys reduction as well - change out Mistress of Sacrifice for Bone barrier, which is a flat 10% phys damage reduction. You only really lose movement speed (though in my opinion, that's the most important stat). Alteratively, you can stick with Mistress, but change to bone offering for block and life on block instead.

Brass Dome could work, but the lack of life on it is pretty painful for a build with some pieces with no life already. It would make for a fat vaal molten shell though. You could also awakener orb a hunter/other conq body armor to have 15% of phys taken as chaos and 15% of physical taken as fire (or cold/lightning, but lightning is best since warlord mods are better in general). With Chaos being 88% reduced and fire as (75+88)/2 = 81.5% reduced, this would effectively reduce about 25% of physical damage. You can then add a taste of hate for another 16.3%. The downside is that it may be expensive and you probably won't hit life since both of those above mods are prefixes.

I like offense as the best defence as a personal playstyle preference though - but the build leaves you room to build more defense if you would like. The best way to play is to build offence until it's "enough" and then go defense from there.

@bluu_94 - Haven't tried zombies myself (they die a lot as supplementary minions), but I find spectres pretty good with the setup.

@Kuplumosk2 - Sorry to hear that. I lost a cheaper one on Sirus earlier in the league earlier. What was yours wearing to make him cost 10 ex?? If you are going to invest a lot into one and consider him a risk, consider one of these if you can find one at a reasonable price: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Delirium/GgeeVDSb

Thanks a lot for the answers iLL3at.

I completly forgot about the %phys taken as element/chaos from body armor. The helmet can also roll the element mod, even though we already want a lot from the helmet so that's probably won't happen.

Just a 15% taken as chaos on the armor is a much better alternative to my purity of element + watcher's eye shenanigans. And it's never a bad idea to slam a Hunter ex on an open prefix armor.

Also I just realized, with 85-88% chaos res and no restrictions on flasks, it's maybe worth to include doedre's elixir for once XD
Coupled to IC, it could be pretty good.
One flask use should do like 90-75 damage, so you can spam the flask while mapping to get 3 endurance charges without even procing a low level IC in a CwdT setup.

I just test it in standard on a divine flesh char with 86% chaos res and 5700 life and it's actually really confortable! I think this will just solve my concern.

If two gem levels is not necessary then you could craft a pretty sick defensive chest. You'd probably want a second born of chaos to go all the way to 90 in that case.

Doedre's would be an issue since it would be another unique flask, and might be going too far. Ideally you want three magic flasks for anti bleed, chill/freeze, and curse, which leaves a speed flask, and one unique allowed - defensively, taste of hate would probably be better. Another option with so much chaos res is forbidden taste - a full heal, and barely any damage due to the chaos res.

But yeah, I was very pleasantly surprised with how tanky divine flesh was - it's just hard to get so much chaos res early on.