3.11 - Stress-Free PoE! SLOW-MO ZOMBIES: No Required Items! 1-Button Play! SSF League Start-End!

A wand attack for minion motivation! Good job!
Can I play devil's advocate?
Power siphon is an attack as well AND has culling strike :) you're welcome.
I learned this last league when I went KB to Power Siphon to slomo necro cuz the first 2 sucked! Great for tagging and culling though...

Quite honestly though, with fortify and heavy armor, I had 70%+ phys mitigation flasked as a necro, I felt pretty safe running through packs. I was actually considering crafting +1 minimum endurance charges to rings and amulet.

Jinxed has been used, but that is a great place to get 70+ strength and Dex as well, hard trade off.

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vancemorgan wrote:

I was about to just get rid of Meat Shield for something else when I decided to get an Unset Ring and stick a random spell in there--I used Kinetic Bolt and left it at level 1. I just spam it at a distance, and the kinetic bolt zig zags around the place so it hits a lot of mobs, and the phantasms/zombies attack much more often because I'm actually attacking stuff, and I am safer because I don't attack things with my face.

You obviously already know this but I wanted to mention this for others:

You lose a large amount of damage if you use Meatshield and then let your zombies attack while you stay out of the fray.

The following stat provides a large amount of damage to Meatshield:

*Minions from Supported Skills deal (20-30)% more Damage to Enemies that are Near you


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I have taken a different approach. I have stacked life as much as I can on myself and then I synergize my entire build by rushing in:

* Rush in to pack (my character is fairly fast for a necro so I am always ahead of my gang)
* Proc Fortify
* Proc Holy Relic
* Proc both curses
* Cast convocation
* Cast Deathmark (if needed)

Convocation pulls every one in for a massive DPS burst since it gives the automatic Meatshield damage bump. If my specters are doing their job, this comes with Frenzy and Rallying Cry buffs for all the minions that are yanked into the fray by Convo.

Having a lot of fun with this build. Thanks for this great guide!

Started to play in beta and played on and off. The last time I really played was when the multi fireball caster specters from Solaris were the meta lol.

I started doing T1 maps now, finished the story with like 2-3 deaths due to being stupid so really a great leveling experience. Borrowed the leveling strategy from Kay's guide ;P

Two things I changed but I know for higher map tiers I might need to adjust is:
-no minion life gems (all out dmg build so far)
-got all the dmg / curse passives first now I'm getting life nodes

For leveling it worked great!
I'm only lacking a 6s chest which I'll probably just buy.

Not sure if you added it to the main post and I missed it but which gems are worth maxing quality? I'm thinking curses (For range), zombies...and that's it?

I'm using slave drivers as specters with echo, dmg, and feeding frenzy atm.
Used kitava heralds for a while and they are very awesome as well! There's so many good specters nowadays.

I still didn't try redemption sentries and redemption knights since apparently they are better for mapping.

Some bosses are taking more than 3secs to die, so I suppose in a few map tiers I'll start to run into problems :S everything else dies in seconds!

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darkz0r wrote:

Not sure if you added it to the main post and I missed it but which gems are worth maxing quality? I'm thinking curses (For range), zombies...and that's it?

Depending on what you are using, these will all benefit from quality either for more damage or more survive-ability:

Brutality, Minion Life, Minion Damage, Feeding Frenzy, Meat Shield, Deathmark, Raise Zombie, Vaal Summon Skeleton, Raise Specter, Summon Carrion Golem, and Convocation....check each gem you have, ask if you are not sure about one of them.


When you can afford it, you want to look for level 21 gems for Raise Specter, Raise Zombie and Vaal Summon Skeletons.

Well thought out, and explained very well. I liked how you explained the interaction of this or that, if someone wanted to know. Many times, a person will post a build, and say TADA... here it is. without letting you know why it works. ;)

Keep up the awesome work. :)

Whatt about Blood Offering? It's a skill granted by the unique armour Bloodbond.

Would its effects be applied to the witch, too, if she has Mistress of Sacrifice?

I calculated that she would get more life in return than she sacrifices. But I'm a noob and I suck at maths :)

The effects of Blood Offering sound quite impressive:

"

Base duration is 5 seconds
Additional 1 seconds Base Duration per extra corpse Consumed
Sacrifices 20% of your Life
Minions Regenerate 35% of Sacrificed Life per second
10% more Life Regeneration granted to Minions per corpse Consumed
Grants Minions 50% increased Damage

Is Empower the best 6th gem if you're not going Meat Shield?

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subliminaldelta wrote:

Is Empower the best 6th gem if you're not going Meat Shield?

Empower Level 3 is roughly the same damage as 20/20 Meat Shield(if you stay near target).
Empower Level 4 is more damage than 20/20 Meat Shield

Level 4 is also very expensive. I think a level 4 is between 4 and 5 ex right now.

I am sticking to meat shield with deathmark for now since I don't have the currency to get a level 4 Empower.

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AndyLovesHisBge wrote:

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GrunkleBob wrote:

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AndyLovesHisBge wrote:

I remember from long ago, that if you link Blood Magic with Raise Specter, that specters like Carnage Chief and Ruins Hellions would be much more likely to use their spells (for frenzy and war cry).

Is this still true? I have been wondering if I could replace Elemental Army in my Raise Specter set up with Blood Magic...

Yes if you can fit it in, it is immediately noticeable.
That sounds like an excellent plan as I play my necro with defensive specters.

ok I just added Blood Magic in place of Elemental Army.

The Ape is certainly benefiting from it. Instead of barely 1 frenzy charge, I now see 2 and 3 commonly when mapping.

I do not know what to look for though to see if the Hellion is benefiting. I can't make out in the confusion how often he is war crying but I am going to assume it is working.

I can't tell what the down size of this is yet since I ran out of red maps entirely. I am hoping losing the Elemental Army resists won't be too big a deal for the specters. According to POB I won't miss Elemental Army at all as I have max resists on my specters without it.

OK think of spectres as a buffing army when you are running zombieas as main damage

so, 1x carnage chieftain, 1x host chieftain and 1x ruins hellion linked to 1 blood magic will give you permanent

3x frenzy, 3x power, rallying cry (taunts mob, reduces pphysica dmg by 30% and grants +15% damage buff)


when I run spectres this way usually run 4 link of = raise spectre, animated guardian, minion life, blood magic


hating this league so not playing much but chiping in with info here and there :D

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0nyX wrote:

rallying cry (taunts mob, reduces pphysica dmg by 30% and grants +15% damage buff)

Ok, but how do you know that it gives exactly 15% damage buff? Doesn't it buff the minions based on your weapon's physical damage stats? Or it works differently than a rallying cry gem?