The HOTNESS. Fire SRS and phantasms. Powerful Synergies in Budget Build. For casual gamers.

Do you find the endless grind in this game kills all the fun? I certainly do! So to get around it I have to find powerful synergies in builds that are quick, cheap and relaxing to play.

THE HOTNESS is one such build using FIRE MINIONS.

key items: Triad Grip, Mark of The Red Covenant, Soulwrest, Stone of Lazwhar.
Key Gems: SRS, Phantasms, Bone Offering
Key defences: Max block and spell block, 6K life with 1K plus regen, 60% physical damage reduction, max resists, 7% less elemental damage taken, Flesh and stone aura (sand stance) for perma-blind and damage reduction, meatshield zombies and defensive spectres who also slow/curse/proximity shield.

PoB: https://pastebin.com/n7z5TpRG

How does it all fit together?


Helmet (Mark of the Red Covenant) = Summon Raging Sprits (SRS) > Combustion > Elemental Army > Minion Speed

Body (Rotting Legion) = Raise Zombie > Raise Spectre > Minion Life > Feeding Frenzy > Minion Speed

Weapon (Soulwrest) = Summon Phantasms > Faster Projectiles > Minion Speed > Minion Damage > Elemental Focus > Fire Penetration

Gloves (Triad Grip) = Anger > Generosity > Flesh and Stone > Stone Golem

Boots (Bubonic Trail) = Bone Offering > Purity of Elements > Flame Dash

Amulet (Stone of Lazwhar) = some nice spell block

Rings and Belt = Life and Resists on a Rare


Mark of the red covenant limits us to 5 SRS, but that's fine, because they now do splash damage + always ignite with nice AOE. This lets them always reduce the fire resists on targets by a whopping 29% through Elemental Army and Combustion. In addition they do offscreen 150K shaper DPS faster than you can run because we also socket them with minion speed.

Triad Grip makes all our minions do pure fire damage to make the best use out of these lowered resists. Socket this with all red gems:
Anger + Generosity (The fast attack speed of SRS make the best use of Anger's flat damage, as does the 20X phantasms with pierce.
Stone golem (nice life regen and taunting)
Flesh and stone in sand stance (for 50% evasion to go with our 75% block and 60% phys damage reduction)

Soulwrest gives us 20 phantasms, a 6 link item without needed to link, cast speed, extra damage for each minion, life regen for us and minions, as well as really nice block stats from item and tree. Winning!

The phantasms do about 600K screenwide DPS. They will also get ahead of you to kill things since we use minion speed with faster projectiles.

Bone offering keeps your minions alive, keeps your phantasms always at 20 summoned, keeps minion/your life regen high, plus adds some block and spell block via the necro ascendency. All said it's one button push every 5 seconds or so that sorts out all your offence and defence.

Ascendency
Necro is the only choice. It is literally double the DPS and minion life of any other ascendency, further, the other ascendencies are conditional on nearby, or recently, etc. while the necro ascendency just gives you all the required stats without fuss.

Take Mindless Aggression > Unnatural Strength > Bone Barrier > Mistress of Sacrifice

Spectres
Using the tree in the link provided, you'll have 2 spectres. There are dozens to choose from https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Raise_Spectre
I personally like slows:
Maligaro's Passion - apply cool AOE slows
Or defences:
Heretical Guardian or undying evangelist - cast proximity shield to give you and minions inside immunity from ranged damage

Playstyle
Summon 5 SRS and walk around. Press bone offering as needed. The stats given in this guide include pressing Rumi's concoction for a bit of extra armour and block.

Questions

I invest so much in defences, the stats look good, but I still die - what gives?
Honestly, most of what is killing players these days are un-counterable mechanics like on death effects, ground effects, terrain killing you, screenwide AOE or so called 'telegraphed skills' that are impossible to see with all the monster whizz bangs on the screen. My solution is to simply play this game less, and complain occasionally on a forum where no one listens. :)

Why no Elemental Equilibrium? Just my preference. I hate the mechanic, I hate having to cast another spell, and I hate pathing to that node on the tree, or trying to keep lightning golems socketed in malachais artifice alive.

I'm now convinced that Mark of the red covenant + triad grip is superb! Why did you not buff the SRS so they can go offscreen and kill things for me?
First - I did, and here is an exciting option if I ever find a new shroud of the lightless: https://pastebin.com/F4x0AxDk
250K X 5 SRS might not look like much, but the simplicity of the play, the speed they fly and the AOE damage would make this a powerful build, just a bit too pricey for me.
Second - I know it's the zoom zoom meta, and has been for years, but I like making builds that pretend defences mean something. I also like to aim for builds that reach their peak sometime this century, so end-game smashing trillion DPS builds using expensive gear are off my radar.

Don't we give up too much if we limit ourselves to 5 SRS?
Hell no. If you've ever played an SRS build before, you'd notice that you very rarely summon more than a few at a time while mapping. Otherwise, you are standing still for 5 second per mob and you take forever to reach the end of a map. There are a few reasons why it's great to limit your summoning time.
First is - it's prohibitive to get much increased cast speed. This stat is very hard to scale.
Second - Even if you scale cast speed you can cast 3-4 per second. That's 5+ seconds of standing still to reach your target DPS. In this game, you were dead after the first second of standing still I'm afraid.
Finally - ramp up damage, no matter how high, is not useful at all in this game. If you do not kill monsters within moments of them being near you, you are dead. Here is where the pre-summoned phantasms are way better with lower damage, than any high DPS, 20 SRS build.

Animate guardian?
for sure, we'd need a 6 linked chest which would make it a costly item, so I didn't include it in this build.

Would love to see this in action, any chance at some videos?

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Would love to see this in action, any chance at some videos?

Nah, I'm almost done with this league - It's very unlikely I'll make it to red maps worth videoing, sorry.

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Powerful Synergies in Budget Build

I think we have different ideas of "budget build" (looking at your rings in the pob).

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I think we have different ideas of "budget build" (looking at your rings in the pob).

Lol, you mean those rings without any top tier rolls, 2 useless mods and no crafting? Sure, we have different ideas of budget, but if you're not just trolling, and really can't find such rings by the time you hit yellow maps, go to poe.trade and buy yours for 1 chaos each. I'm literally looking at a page full of better ones in the second week of a league right now, all costing one chaos.