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

Took a few leagues off, anyone care to chime in on how the expensive animate guardian does in today's game?

So I am feeling kinda stuck and not sure where to move on from here. This is my build so far:

https://pastebin.com/0Ki5bWJc

The thread of hope jewels are allocating Cruel Preparation, Ravenous Horde, and Soveignerty.

I got bottled faith to drop a week ago or so and I am thinking I should sell it and upgrade multiple things, but not sure where to go. I know my wands need to be +2 each, and maybe a better body. I have a hunter influenced Turq Amulet iLvl 83 that I can work on for better +1 int, unless crafting is not worthwhile. I also have some issues with dying, which is player skill and my PC is a potato so I play at like 10FPS and really low graphic settings. But I still feel like I melt sometimes. Is my health regen supposed to be really low? And I take it minions can't leech life onto you can they? Thanks for any help!

"

Tricen wrote:

So I am feeling kinda stuck and not sure where to move on from here. This is my build so far:

https://pastebin.com/0Ki5bWJc

The thread of hope jewels are allocating Cruel Preparation, Ravenous Horde, and Soveignerty.

I got bottled faith to drop a week ago or so and I am thinking I should sell it and upgrade multiple things, but not sure where to go. I know my wands need to be +2 each, and maybe a better body. I have a hunter influenced Turq Amulet iLvl 83 that I can work on for better +1 int, unless crafting is not worthwhile. I also have some issues with dying, which is player skill and my PC is a potato so I play at like 10FPS and really low graphic settings. But I still feel like I melt sometimes. Is my health regen supposed to be really low? And I take it minions can't leech life onto you can they? Thanks for any help!

I'm just glancing quickly, but there are a few things that will be a huge help if you want tankiness:
- way more Chaos Resistance - you will be absolutely bursted by chaos damage with -50% resist. This will help a lot. Your rings especially can be upgraded via trade for a handful of chaos each to give you more life and resistances. You can even find some with two good suffixes and use Betrayal crafting recipes to make an open suffix into chaos resist
- you don't use warcries, so I would personally avoid going down to the lower Bloodless / Soul of Steel clusters. I pathed to Righteous Army and Redemption instead. Though, with your Thread of Hope, you can probably just take Righteous Army and pair it with the Tireless cluster and Purity of Flesh cluster. Check PoB and play around to see what works best.
- swap two of your weaker jewels out for one Taunt ghastly jewel and one Blind ghastly jewel. You would be surprised how much tankier you feel with that.
- The amulet you have is fine. Crafting a new one is a much more expensive option for now. You can do all of the above cheaply.
- Doryani Glorious Vanity will give you 20% more effective life. This is a ton of tankiness for around 100c. The guide describes it well.
- Yes, upgrading your wands to +1/+1 will help with damage.
- If you are dying a LOT, bone offering over flesh offering offers a lot of spell block and healing - especially if paired with other block effects like Rumi's Concoction. It will cut your damage though.
- Life regen is low, yes. I don't know of a way to leech via minions - considering their quantity and dps, it would probably be OP. But I like how you think.

@Tricen Jewels with "Minions have x% chance to taunt on hit" and "Minions have x% chance to blind on hit" also help quite a bit with survivability.

Made some changes such as Doryani Jewel and a couple reroutes in the tree. One of my nodes from the Timeless Jewell is 20% increased effect of area skills, 14% increased effect of non curse auras. It would be 4 nodes to get there though, which I could probably do if I bought another large jewel cluster where the vicious bite isn't on the other side of the node, which would save me 2 points + I can take 2 points off of the constitution wheel?

I will definitely look into getting the abyssal jewel with taunt and blind! Thanks all :)

How does this compare vs physical impale skeletons ? And by how much damage does more/less is it ?

Cold conversion for higher budget, but impale on a lower budget ?

Starting to think of what I want to start next league. Last few leagues my starter has just been a currency machine to get to my real build. Thinking of concentrating on a single build next league.

Ran a carrion golemancer this league so thats out. I think Specters are going to be nerfed into the ground next league so thats out.

That leaves this build. :) Hopefully if the collateral damage from the specter nerf isnt too big this might be viable.

It'd be nice to see a physical impale Tree and the transfer to the cold/aura tree. I mean I think I can figure it out myself but it might help some peeps.

Slow replies - been busy and my wrists are pretty shot unfortunately. I'm trying to not play PoE or type all too much for a little bit.

@AebLincoln - The tree should give 6k to 6.5k life depending on how many cluster jewels you have. Those jewels are good, but it appears the top tier ones cost tens to hundreds of ex even with deterministic crafting.

@DanMister - That's a very nice jewel even without going into the additional notable. Hope it finds a home!

@Sisren - Renewal is actually better than VB even. VB is only useful once you have an AG and multiple sources of crit (crit sucks unless you scale it).

@PowerCrazy - It's a good wand, but it's probably hard to hit hatred since it has no tags. The only option to hit hatred is +- influence, but I believe that is quite expensive. You can get frostbite on a ring, so I'd say exposure is better since then you don't have to run elemental army or the frost bomb/avatar of fire combo.

@wordyman - You need to swap to redemption sentries (the items and tree can be the same) with feeding frenzy support for afking blighted maps. For non-afk, as long as you build towers, the build can handle T16.

@Raskotrug - AG was cheap last league, but is expensive again this league (just kingmaker). There are nice budget options though, at 10c apiece.

@Tricen - AebLincoln's advice is good. My take: Sell the bottled faith - it's one of the last things to pick up and is purely a luxury item. I'd advise a granite flask in its stead for defence. With the 8 ex, you can pick up two +1/+1 wands (think they go for 3-5 ex each).

Life regen is unfortunately based on flasks. However, enduring cry (with instant warcry node) is a great option that I used this league as well. I'd say sell your amulet and try to buy one with just int skill gems only (dex/int base). You will want to fill suffixes with resistances and then try to +- life until you hit a decent number. Alternatively, awakener orb it with a +1 skeleton one and try to weedcraft it.

Agreed with SKRslash as well.

@KingKendrick - Damage is pretty similar last I checked - I even had a 3.10 tree but ran out of time to post that one. Impale is cheaper since the cluster jewel just needs renewal/rotten claws. It's very strong as well, but has a lower top end.

@ElectroHarmonix - Skellies works well for both. I league started it in blight, metamorph, and delirium, and took it all the way to the end game in each. I think redemption sentries will be nerfed. Previously it was pretty balanced between the three minion types (zombies had survivability, skellies had damage due to cold scaling, and spectres were convenient and could be played one handed), but giving spectres cold conversion was too much.

For the impale tree - pretty much leave the EE section, and for clusters, add a renewel/rotten claw large (third being call to the slaughter), as well as a life/rotten claw megalomaniac to get impale chance to 100%. Gloves would be life, res, minion damage.

This build is nuts he carried me to 40/40

Thanks for all the help! This is my first time playing a necro character, so I am kinda slow on the uptake with some things. I have killed A8 Sirus twice now, and now I am 2/3 on awakener orbs. 1 of them I turned into

that I will try to seed craft a little more. My next step I think is to upgrade my gems. I bought a weird wand that I have no idea if the extra ability is relevant, but it's kinda neat I guess.