[3.13] Skeleton Nebulomancer | Sirus tank&kill on a <5ex budget, NO AURASTACK ! Beginner-friendly

Looks very nice build. Waiting for the final update for the new league. Thanks for the big effort! :)

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krimuri wrote:

Looks very nice build. Waiting for the final update for the new league. Thanks for the big effort! :)

Aaaaand here we are !
The build has been fully updated, with new gems and gear for cold conversion. Furthermore, the levelling section has been improved, with the PoB displaying several versions of the passive tree from act 1 to endgame.

Now, most endgame encounters have been recorded and displayed in the video section. I lost my recording of Simulacrum encounter - succeeded deathless, just have to reiterate this league :)


If you feel any section is missing info (or too long to read), please tell ! And of course, your feedback and ideas are most welcome.

Enjoy !

So, how is everyone doing ?

After day one (European player, started acting this morning), I beat Kitava and managed to finish Merciless Lab with no disconnection ! I managed to buy well-rolled Kaom's signs, Deidbell and Redblade Banner.

Determination being useless early on, I put Purity of Elements instead for now. I also picked the Deep Breath node to have 100% buff uptime on Enduring Cry even with my low level, no quali support gems; as they get better, I'll respec these in life nodes or Cluster jewels.

I'm super fine defensively, with high HP, tons of regen (when you count EC) and 6 endurance charges with full uptime. Offense is OK against bosses, but skeletons die quite much during big fights such as rituals. It should be better when I get a 5 links, or if I manage to buy a medium cluster with Blessed Rebirth.

No curse used for now, but I should use Vulnerability or Enfeeble as long as I don't use Triad Grip.

PoB link: https://pastebin.com/BaknwR5X

Had a bit of strugle as i did not take any Minion life nodes, the skeletons died too fast.
Was leveling as Skeleton/Zombie sustaining them with Vitality.


I don't use Deidbell, not sure if i will use so many uniques.
Using Hatred (without Triad) and Frostbite

Making Blessed Rebirth took me about 125 alts.

Left Enduring Cry at lvl 2 for lower mana cost and i think it will stay there.

Is it anyway to make it mages?

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ThalCup wrote:

Is it anyway to make it mages?

This would probably require significant theorycrafting rework.

I've been watching this thread and accumulating gear for the switch from traditional skelemancy into this build, but there are couple big issues:

First, you have to socket Dead Reackoning on your passive tree, which means giving up one of the sockets currently used for resists, or pathing to another socket, which eats passive points.

Second, skeleton mages come in three flavors that do cold, fire, and lightning spell damage. None of them do physical damage, so this renders your Triad Grip gloves mostly useless, although the gloves will still convert physical damage from your other minions. With this setup, hatred will only buff 1/3 of your mages--the cold ones. One option is to replace hatred, and the next best Auras according to pob are zealotry and haste. Those at least both affect all mage types equally, althought zealotry won't buff your zombies and carrion golems).

(Another approach could be to adopt what Odif does in his skelemancer build: craft the gloves into GGRR. Then you use lightning to proc EE, and buff cold and/or fire with auras. This way all your minions will be doing elemental damage. I'm not sure if this is any better or not. That's where the theorycrafting comes in).

Third, you will need different colors on your chest. The links for skeleton mages are 4B/2G with vaal summon skeletons, minion damage, elemental army, greater multiple projectiles, spell echo, and pierce. Green is off-color for loreweave, so it may take a lot of chromatics to get to 4B/2G.

The good news is that skeleton mages are less likely to die in combat because they are ranged, so you might be able to replace blessed rebirth with a damage notable on the clusters.

Having said all that, I'm playing skeleton mages and just love the way they fill the screen with colored projectiles. They are smooth for clearing, too.

GERWARIC summed it up quite well !

What is original (for a necromancer) in this build is the defense layering, combining loreweave, transcendance, Nebuloch and endurance charges via EC; but the offensive part can be actually whatever you want.

I personally tried skeletons last league, was OK with them, and saw that most minions were nerfed but not skellies so I stick to them. But in theory, you could go with anything; simply, as you use quite some gear for defense, you won't have much to boost offense, so (for example) zombies won't be very strong. But SRS, melee skeletons, skele mages and even Spectres are options that can be tested.

If you want to go with mages, you should completely drop Triad Grip and Hatred, and try scaling criticals via Zealotry and cluster jewels. As mages die far less than regular melee skeletons, charge generation is a good option, so you should use Host chieftains (x4) for maximum power charge uptime.

I do think that for Rituals, due to the tons of mobs spawning, Blessed Rebirth is mandatory even for ranged skeletons. Besides, I think that phantasmal skele archers will scale better than mages, thanks to Hatred being superior to any other aura and EE far more efficient; but that is only an opinion, as I tested neither for now.

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Kyrushi wrote:

Had a bit of strugle as i did not take any Minion life nodes, the skeletons died too fast.
Was leveling as Skeleton/Zombie sustaining them with Vitality.


I don't use Deidbell, not sure if i will use so many uniques.
Using Hatred (without Triad) and Frostbite

Making Blessed Rebirth took me about 125 alts.

Left Enduring Cry at lvl 2 for lower mana cost and i think it will stay there.

Indeed, during Rituals, skeletons die very quickly; I must say I didn't ancitipate that. Luckily I put my hands on a medium cluster with Blessed Rebirth yesterday, but if you don't, you should path to Sacrifice, and use the life nodes to go to Pain Attunement.

Deidbell is useless if not fated; however, Deidbellow probably is best in slot when EC cooldown goes under 4s, as it gives +20% movespeed to both you and your minions, huge help for clearing. (and some atkspeed on top of it for bossing, which is around the same dps buff as a +1 skeleton crafted mod). So unless you can't cap your resists without a rare helmet, you should switch to Deidbellow asap.

I prefer levelling EC for the huge life regen burst effect, but escalation in itself is great, so a low mana cost EC is a reasonable option.


For now I don't have put in the Nebuloch, so I proc EE with a Storm Brand; maybe I will stick to it even after instead of Shield Charge, and link it with Hextouch-Frostbite for QoL.

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PoitelMarto wrote:

GERWARIC summed it up quite well !

(...)

If you want to go with mages, you should completely drop Triad Grip and Hatred, and try scaling criticals via Zealotry and cluster jewels. As mages die far less than regular melee skeletons, charge generation is a good option, so you should use Host chieftains (x4) for maximum power charge uptime.

I'm on my way to playtesting the skeleton mage variant of this build. I've got most of the gear, but I don't have 6L on my loreweave and I still need a bunch of regrets and some time theorycrafting in pob.

UPDATE: I switched over from my traditional skelemancer to skeleton mages in a transendence loreweaver setup: huge drop in damage but she zooms and tanks like a pathfinder with Hardened Scars and a quicksilver flask of adrenaline. (The damage loss is due to the fact my loreweave is only 5L, I gave up two gem levels that were coming from my wands, and I haven't sorted my new gear to fit an EE trigger/curse). I will test melee skeletons with this setup and see how they feel--even thought I will miss the look and feel of the mages.

Question: Why is Nebulochx2 better then Nebuloch + Shield?