Poison Zambos?

Hi all,

Now that the league is near over, and my build ideas have fallen on their face, I was hoping to pry some more experienced brains. Sorry if it's tl;dr.

Got back into PoE because Feeding Frenzy makes minions not completely dumb. Their general lack of aggression made me put the game down in 2018.

Before that, I thought a build with poison zombies/minions would be cool. United in Dream was new at the time, but was prohibitively pricey. I tracked one down this league and it was pretty fun. Had no issues clearing into the low teen maps, and most bosses. Basically put everything into minion damage, buffed them with chaos when possible.

My minions did good dmg and never died, but I sure did later on. I tried to incorporate Eldritch Battery+MoM+Devouring Diadem and CWDT+desecrate. Allows to reserve all mana for auras for commander of darkness, and that regen is great (if the enemies don't burst you down).

It didn't work too well, partly because I specced into it late, partly cuz I was also trying to maximize chaos damage (to add to poison from United in Dream) by using grip of the council + vis mortis... a combo that does you no favours in the survivability dept.

That said, I do like the idea of EB + MoM b/c of aura spam. With a big life pool, devouring diadem would prob be autistic fun.

tl;dr:
My question(s) are:
1. Are poison minions even really viable to complete the game/atlas? I heard it doesn't double dip anymore, so it kinda sucks. Ie if you don't spec into damage over time/poison then its not worthwhile, which takes away from minion dmg. It seemed to be doing the trick for me but im not sure.

2. Is Devouring Diadem + MoM really all that viable? Is it viable while trying to do the poison thing? Things like Femurs of the Saints or the Baron seem like they'd have a much bigger impact on both damage and survivability.


Thanks for letting me pick your brain(s).

Multiple problems with scaling minion poison outside of gem links:
1.) No +2 to minion levels with Convoking Wand when using United in Dream
2.) Physical/Chaos damage for poison is hard to scale outside of gem links.
3.) Elemental equilibrium

Physical damage and Cold conversion are the ways to go nowadays.

IMHO best option for poison minions is Animated Weapon. You pimp the low base damage with Added Chaos Damages Support (and probably Lesser Poison Support => 100% chance to poison) and Envy (with Generosity). Minion Damage and Vile Toxins Support for nice multiplier. Then scale attack speed with Multistrike and some Auras (Haste, Envy, Purity of ...) with Commander of Darkness.

Zombies with Withering Touch as support minions will increase the Chaos Damage taken by up to 90%.

I do not know if that is enough to compete against Minion levels + Cold + Hatred + EE.