[3.25] Holy Flicker Strike Necro [League start > All content] All content is done. PoB updated
Introduction
Hello everyone! Inspired by a great guide of
"I decided to try it out and path more towards the Necromancer. The build I ended up with, I'm having lot of fun for several leagues already. So I decided to share it with you. Compared to Guardian, it is a little bit more demanding on starting items but can provide you with a little bit more damage on a long run, due to Necro ascendancy, while still keeping that survivability high. Also on a side note, excuse me for any grammar mistakes in advance, english is not my native language. Feel free to point them out so I would fix those at once.
Build concept
The build core concept is activating Holy Relic minion triggerable spell Holy Nova with an attack. Holy Nova activates every time your character hits something with any ability that counts as an 'attack' Triggering Holy Nova results in a Physical Damage AOE Explosion coming from your Relic minions. For the purposes of triggering the Holy Nova we gonna be using Flicker Strike, as it provides a lot of utility in a form of fast teleports, move speed buff, and frenzy charge generation for even more speed. Flicker Strike is a strike skill that also can't miss because the enemy moves 2 pixels away from you. That makes it one of the safest sctivators for Holy Relics, as you only need to hit once for everything around you to die, and then you can teleport to the next pack. The downside comes from a high cooldown that can, however, be overridden by consuming a Frenzy Charge. How do we generate frenzy charges? We don't. All frenzy charge generation will come fully from Flicker Strike alone, supported by Multistrike and Ancestral Call. Multistrike and Ancestral Call makes it so when you teleport into a pack of mobs and hit something, you also hit 2 enemies next to it, and multihit for a total of 6-9 hits before your Holy Nova even procs. Each of those hits has 15% to generate frenzy charge for the next pack. This, however, will not work on solo bosses, that why we use Static Strike as a supplementary attack for the single target. Every time Static Strike beam hits an enemy it counts as an 'attack' hit.
Pros and Cons
Pros ✔ Durable. Max Attacks and Spell Block (No Glancing Blows), Endurance Charges, 3-4k life + 1k ES, 10 Fortify, high/capped Chaos resist, Basiton of Elemnts (if you wish to invest into jewels), high recovery. ✔ Good damage. Can scale up to 40M boss DPS. 70 if you wishto use unrealistic setup. ✔ Easy to play. Easy to league start. ✔ Great feeling of progression once you start getting those core items. ✔ Gear is relatively cheap. ✔ Decent at killing bosses including uber bosses. ✔ Clear speed is pretty fast. ✔ Well rounded biuld, can do any content Cons ✘ Rounded biuld, can do any content - but doesn't excell at anything. ✘ Not too friendly to new players - lots of hidden mechanics. ✘ Vulnerable to Phys Reflect/No Regen. ✘ Increased cooldown, less block, life as energy shield - doable but annoying. ✘ Can feel cluncky at the begining. Can't level with relics, need a trigger weapon for smoother gameplay. ✘ Playstyle if different from your typical afk minion builds. Check videos in Gameplay.
PoB
Updated to lastest finds of 3.25 https://pobb.in/7GoLzxNwARTa Updated to end of the 3.22 https://pobb.in/1fomnMb9tqvH Updated to 3.20 https://pastebin.com/0auFzk0N 
Discord server for your questions and talks
Gameplay/Videos
3.25 Day 0 Day 2 clear T16 Clownnade (week1) 3.24 70 quant invitations 70 quant feared T17 with Volcanic fissure 3.21 Feared Elder Guardian Map Clear And just a regular map clear Endgame gear Map clear Uber Eater Uber Clown 100% Quant Feared Uber Maven (skipping game) 3.20 Day 0 mapping. Day 1 mapping. Crit version map clear Uber Maven Uber Cortex (easy mods) Uber Eater Uber Sirus 80 quant Formed 3.19 Map clear T16 Mesa with Harvest clear 3.18 T16 map clear Maven Elder Uber Elder + Maven Feared
Skill gems
Here is my curent set up for gems. All of the listed active gems will be marked with #, while supports will be mrked with +. Gems hilighted by yellow text are optional and can be used at the start of the game, but should be swapped out later on. Gems listed below are listed in priority. If you lack gem slots, use gems in the listed order.
Main Setup (Chest)
# Summon Holy Relic + Brutality + Increased Critical Damage + Increased Area of Effect + Minion Damage + Meat Shield Support + Empower Simple as that - more damage = more fun. Use Area of Effect support for extra clear, swap for Meat Shield for bossing.
Activation Setup (Boots)
# Static Strike + Ancestral Call + Multistrike # Flicker Strike I highly recomend you using Flicker Strike. It will speed up your clear, reduce the chance of you dying to map packs and give you extra move speed and attack speed after you kill enemies. Use Static Strike to kill bosses. However, if you really hate Flicker Strike there are alternatives that you would have to explore yourself. Such as:
Alternatives
Full Static Strike setup
# Static Strike + Increased Duration Support + Maim Support + Ancestral Call Gives you extra DPS, more beams uptime, but you will have to walk around with slowly.
Shield Charge
# Shield Charge + Faster Attacks Support # Static Strike + Ancestral Call Similar to Flicker Strike - but its a shield charge. And of coruse there is Cyclone, but I never used it in deapth so can't say anything about it, other than its slows you down and hard to get attack rate right.
Utility Setup (Gloves)
# Flame Dash # Molten Shell + Cast when Damage Taken # Desecrate Yes, you do need 2 desecrates up till you can get Grand Necromancer specter.
Utility Setup (Weapon)
# Spirit Offering# Desecrate# Bone Offering This skill set will trigger your bone offering, giving you block and Spirit offering giving your relics lots of crit chance. The order of gems is VERY IMPORTANT. You want it to be exactly like that. Spirit offering, then desecrate, then bone offering. Bone offering must go AFTER desecrate, or else you risk to not have it up 100% of the time.
Aura Setup (Shield)
# Determination # Pride # Summon Skitterbots # Zealotry Use Level 1 Skitterbots up to the point till you get 'Shock nearby enemies when you focus' craft on one of your rings. Make sure to have enough mana to summon relics when they die and Trigger the Bone/Spirit offering. Note that using activation attack consumes mana too. You need to have a bit more mana than cost of your triggered skills for them to trigger.
Animate Guardian/Specters Setup (Helmet)
# Raise Spectre + Meat Shield + Minion Life # Animate Guardian Use specters early game before you get equimpent for your Animate Guardian. Make sure your specters no longer die before starting to use Animate Guardian. List of usable specters and where to get them:
Spoiler
Hairy Bonecruncher
Spoiler
A surprise to no one - its already in the guide. The first specter you might consider summoning. Its durable, it taunts, it has self healing.
His taunt is on 8 second cooldown with a 4 second duration, making enemy deal 10% less damage. You can get him super early - from act 2. Overall - not that useaful of a specter, but can give you a good help at the league start. Carnage Chieftain
Spoiler
AKA Frenzy charge monkey.
Gives Frenzy charge every 6 seconds. Thats 4% more DPS per charge, as well as smoother Flickering. You can get them early - in act 2. Surprisingly this monkeys are rather tanky. But to feel their value you need to have at least 2 of them if not 3. Ruins Hellion
Spoiler
The forever bugged specter.
Has a massive debuff. Every 8 seconds it performs a warcry. It buffs everyone damage a little bit (about 2%, not too relevant). And taunts enemies. While enemy is taunted it deals 10% less damage. On top of that, his skill line states "Enemies Taunted by you deal 30% less Damage with Hits and Ailments against other targets" Effectively causing enemies to deal 40% less damage with hits against you. That is insane. Its like having 2 unnerfed fortify effects. You can get him early! It should be really good for leveling and white maps. Comes from act 8. However this specter comes with heavy downsides. 1) This specter can not be desecrated in zones. That means to get it, you have to first find this enemy, kill it and summon the specter of it. 2) The specter have very little HP. Twice less than a monkey. It is very squishy and will often die. 3) Taunt. Default taunt duration is 3 seconds. So its not clear if you get 40% damage reduction for 3 seconds, or for a full duration of the buff (8seconds) Now to the monsters that are harder to get. They of Tul
Spoiler
AKA rip FPS.
Has great ability - creates a big stationary safety zone. While in it, you have 15% chance to not take damage from hits. Also spawns up to 2 totems that can act as a meat shield as well. Can only be obtained from map breach event, or from Tul Breachstone. You must find, kill and swiftly summon him from the dead body, as those corpses dissapear very fast. This specters are rather squishy. Even squishier than Hellion, but the damage dodge makes up for it. The spell they use has 100% uptime, but its stationary. Move way from it - and all effect is lost. You can have full value from just 1 specter! But its nice to have 2 or even 3 to move between safety zones. Blackguard Chaplain
Spoiler
AKA - im paranoid and don't want my AG to die!
Has ability to fully heal damaged minions and totems on a 4 second cooldown. That's it. Is just a heal spammer. Anything (including specter itself) will be healed to full on taking damage. Heals % of max HP, so its doesn't matter who it heals. The heal also stay up for 2 seconds. Can only be obtained from sextant mod "Areas contain 4 additional packs of Monsters that Heal". You need to find the mob in the map, kill it and summon it. The problem with this one, is that it wastes the healing on ANY damage. Your 80000HP AG takes 50 damage? Time to put heal on 4 second cooldown. It can only heal 1 target. So once it waste a couple of heals for nothing, it might just die. Demon Harpy
Spoiler
AKA the most damage there is.
Has ability that makes enemies take up to 40% more physical damage for ~8 seconds. Has 9 second cooldown. It has massive AOE, so its perfect for map clear and solo bosses at the same time. Two harpeis stack their debuff up to 80% more physycal damage, but this is a cap. No reason to have 3 harpies. To obtain this specter you need to roll map mod or use map crafting option that spawns Beyond monsters. Then, you need to get lucky and have it to spawn. Kill it, and make a specter of it before its body dissapears. What specters should you use: 1 slot - Demon Harpy 2 slot - Frenzy charge monkey(early game)/Power charge moneky(late game) 3 slot - They of Tul 4 slot - Demon harpy How do you get all of them? Option #1: Use Global 6666 channel and beg other people to share them with you. Option #2: Use our discord and beg holy relic cultits to share them with you. Option #3: Get them yourself from places listed in the tab above. And suffer.
What items to use on Animate Guardian?
Starting AG Gear Helmet - is there with you till the very end game. Body armor combined with Shield makes even low level AG close to immortal as it will have 75% block and every time he blocks he creates concecrated ground and start to heal like mad. With all the healing - the weapon can freely transfer elemental ailment from you to AG. Midgame AG gear Removing Shield and Body armor make your AG squishier. Make sure you cap his elemental AND chaos resistances with gloves and boots. Weapon provides a fair bit of block. Look for gloves with Culling Strike - very nice for bossing. Look for boots with 2% hp regen enchant. Body armor will make you crit immune - amazing for farming simulacrum and across all the game. Uber AG gear Switching from Dying Breath to Kingmaker makes your AG even more squishy from losing block. Make sure its max level (21/20 gem) and properly supported. Since weapon gives culling strike - swap to Corrupted Blood imunity gloves. Just to be safe from Sirus/random CB rares or exiles.
Unset Ring 1 and 2 setup
Gear
Leveling Gear For leveling you can use pretty much what you can find. Its not very important what gear you have up to the point of ~lvl 68 where you can start using some core items. Mid Game and Early Mapping Gear There are few core items that will make this build feel much better once you get them
Mid Game and Early Mapping Gear
Shield
Those two are good to start with, but try making your way to Magna Eclipsis as it provides the most survivability.
Helm
Adds extra relic to your summon limit. Double relics - double damage!
Body Armour
Any 6-link will do but Tabula most flexible in terms of gem swapping.
Gloves
The best you can get is gloves with Rampage. It will double if not tripple your clear speed, provie you with massive healing and won't cost you an arm and a leg. Aim to get one of those as soon as possible.
Weapon
Any one handed you can get with Trigger Socketed Spells. This should be your main priority even over getting a second relic from your helm. Getting this craft means you will no longer have to cast Bone Offering and Punishment manualy. Bonus points if you can get Alva mod with minion damage. Important: Never aim on getting weapon with slow attack speed. Anything below 1.5 feels unaplayable. Only get it if you are out of other options, because you will have to replace it.
Boots
Your regular rare boots with moves speed, life and resist. Bonus points if you can hit that life regen enchant. Tip: Aim on getting boots with high armour as it will not only contribute to your damage mitigation, but also will make your gem sockets red for that Static Strike setup.
Amulet
Rings and Belt
Your regular Life and Resist items.
Cluster Jewels and Jewels
About between Mid and End game you will be able to have enough passive points to slot in some cluster jewels. Here is what you looking for. Feasting Fiends on a large cluster jewel. This one is high priority as it will boost your relic survivability by a ton, as well as help keep things like Renewal active. Rote Reinforcement - on a small cluster jewel gives you much needed attack block AND generates endurance charges. Glorious Vanity with Corrupted Soul - exepensive jewel, but it gives ~2000 energy shield, boosting your survivability even further beyond. Important to notice that it also consumes ALL you intelligence/stregnth nodes in radius. It can render you unable to cast your abilities due to lack of stats. Use with caution. End Game Gear and Crafting Tips. Mid game gear is enough to push you to red maps. But if you really wanna go further and feel comfortable farming t16+ your next upgrades will be (listed in order of getting them):
End Game Gear and Crafting Tips
Body Armour
Skin of the Loyal by itself will provide you with extra layer of protection. You can push it even further getting that sweet sweet +1 to socketed gems by upgrading it to the Skin of the Lords. Be careful though, as Skin of the Lords can only use corrupted gems in it. You can upgrade Skin of the Loyal into Skin of the Lords by using Blessing of Chayula on the item. This will result in you getting +2 to levels chest with random keystone. There are total of 41 keystone. 16 are harmful, 21 neutral and 4 are really good. So if you would make Skin of the Lords yourself by gambling Skin of the Loyal and a blessing, you have ~60% chance of hitting a usable one, 40% to brick the item (can still sell it to someone), and a 9% chance to win big.
Value of keystones
Blood Magic ---- Harmful keystone
Eldritch Battery ---- Harmful keystone Eternal Youth ---- Can be interesting, but for the most part harmful. Ghost Dance ---- Harmful keystone Ghost Reaver ---- Harmful keystone Glancing Blows ---- Harmful keystone Mind Over Matter ---- Harmful keystone Mortal Conviction ---- Harmful keystone Runebinder ---- Harmful keystone Solipsism ---- Harmful keystone Supreme Ego ---- Harmful keystone The Agnostic ---- Harmful keystone Vaal Pact ---- Harmful keystone Versatile Combatant ---- Harmful keystone Wind Dancer ---- Harmful keystone Zealot's Oath ---- Can be interesting, but for the most part harmful. Acrobatics ---- No harm no benefit. Maybe a tiny bit of harm in case you somehow got a spell supression on your gear. Ancestral bound ---- No harm very slight benefit if you are using taunt totem. It lets you spawn 2 of them. Arrow dancing ---- No harm no benefit. Avatar of fire ---- Slight harm no benefit. Reduces damage of your Asenath explosions. Call to Arms ---- No harm, somewhat beneficial. Can put enduring cry on left click. Conduit ---- No harm no benefit. Crimson Dance ---- No harm no benefit. Doomsday ---- Harmful keystone Elemental Equilibrium ---- No harm no benefit. Elemental Overload ---- No harm no benefit. Iron Grip ---- No harm no benefit. Iron Reflexes ---- No harm, very slight benefit. A tiny bit of extra armor Iron Will ---- No harm no benefit. Lethe Shade ---- Best one to have Magebane ---- No harm, very slight benefit. A tiny bit of extra spell supression Minion Instability ---- Little harm no benefit. Can cause your Animate Guardian to die. Pain Attunement ---- No harm no benefit. Perfect Agony ---- No harm no benefit. Point Blank ---- No harm no benefit. The Impaler ---- No harm no benefit. Unwavering Stance ---- No harm? good benefit. Makes you immune to stuns, letting you take different pantheons and no worry about vaal flicker being stopped. Divine Shield ---- No harm, good benefit. Grants 1-2 passive points in value. Imbalanced Guard ---- Harmful keystone IF you are using Determination. Resolute Technique ---- No harm, great benefit. Grants 1-5 passive points in value. Wicked Ward ---- Second best to have
Shield
Gloves
Null and Void is a good upgrade that will provide you with a good chunk of life as well as phys damage imunity. But whats better than Rampage, giving you speed, blowing up corpses and exploding your enemies? Something that does it constantly. A heavy price for a maximum clear speed And naturally you gonna need a boss killing gloves on swap. Look Vixens with high ES roll. And if you get them corrupted with Vuln - this is your BiS uber endgame.
Amulet
If you got a bit of extra money +1 amulet with Whispers of Doom anoint is your BiS before you get Ashes. (Yes I'm aware this one doesn't have Whispers of Doom. I will update it this league)
Boots and Rings
You want boots with some resits, move speed, life. If you wanna do reflect maps - you can look for a ring with 50% reflect reduction. Another 50% will come from swapping Pantheons. Making your Relics somewhat immune to reflect. Another ring can be just life and resists, but it would be nice to have extra curse reduction if you can afford it. Flasks
Spoiler
Slot 1. Flasks to restore your HP.
Spoiler
At the league start - any life flask will do. Look for a Seething flask or the Bubbling for instant healing Later on you can grab It will heal you twice and helps dealing with early DoT damage you might encounter. As you max out your Chaos resist you might wanna grab Instantly heals you to full HP. Be careful with things that reduce your chaos resist (for example altars) as you will take massive damage from this flask if your are not Chaos res capped. Slot 2. Defence utility flask.
Spoiler
Extra armor helps a lot during early game, and you can look for bleed removal too, as you need a way to deal with Corrupted Blood before you get immunity to it. Gain charges when you are hit is also a good way to make sure flask is always ready to be used. Slot 3. Flexible slot. More defence and utility.
Spoiler
Early league you can grab Basalt flask as one of your quest rewards. You can use that for a bit of extra armour till you replace it. This one is a great addition to the protections as it will help dealing with Physical and cold damage. Great for big hits against bosses, good synergy with Elemental Aegis (if you ever grab one) This one will provide you with effect similar to permanent Guard Skill. Massively reduced damage during mapping. Not that great against bosses. The price of it may vary. Last 2 leagues I had it for 10 c. Now its worth exalts. If its cheap - grab it. Slot 4. Attack speed flask for smooth Flickering.
Spoiler
A recent addition to the build Grab one of those as your quest reward, try looking for attack speed mods. It will make you zoom zoom faster, miss your static strike less, and even deal with slow attack speed weapons if you have to grab one due to the lack of what you want on the market. Slot 5. Speed flask. For zoomies.
Spoiler
Nothing special. Just a peed flask. You might wanna look for reduced effect of curses mod (helps a bunch with tempo chains, ele weakness, vuln). Its nice to have. But you might also fill it up with w/e you feel like. Maybe remove ignite? Or poison bother you? Maybe you want more moove speed? Uber Endgame items Ends game items are normally enough to do any content you want. But if you wanna push the build to absolute limit...
Spoiler
Body Armour
Lithe Shade is prolly the best keystone you can get for uberbosses and mapping. Imbalaced Guard is okay all around granting you extra ~8 phys reduction against HITS. I vote for Lithe Shade as degens of any kind is one of the only things that are dangerous for this build.
Helm
Lab enchant for 40% increased damage of relics. Hope to buy one, or be a real man(or a woman) and go farm it yourself in labyrinth. You poor unfortunate soul...
Shield
You are looking for Minion Damage, Minion Crit, Block, Life, and maybe recover life on block. This one will be updated this league.
Amulet
Ashes gives you about 60% more damage AND unlocks you some mana to include third aura gem. It also increases your clear speed, giving you more frenzy charges from your flicker. Anoint it with extra curse so you don't lose DPS when swapping from the Anvil.
Weapon
You want to have +1 all gems AND UNVEILED Trigger (must have 4 second cooldown, 8 will not do). Its a bit tricky to get. Best way - fractured +1 gems. Costs a lot. 4 second trigger means you have 100% uptime on both Offerings. How to make - spam Veiled Chaos Orbs on Fractured +1 scepter till you hit Veiled Suffix. Unveil Trigger. Annul mods that stops you from crafting. Craft Multimod + Hits can't be evaded + Minion damage. And let God have mercy on your soul. 3.25
My current gear
Passives
Ascendancy Necromancer. It will provide you with high block chance, healing on block and some extra damage boost to your minions. Very similar to guardian bonuses with a bit less defence and more offense. The order would be: - Mistress of Sacrifice - to get your block and healing going. - Then path to Commander of Darkness - This will make your minions much tankier, adds some damage and helps you with gearing up with chaos resist early. - Mindless Aggression - just a passing point. Grants a little bit more damage. - Bone Barrier - protects your AG and specters from dying. Gives you a nice way to recover life. You dont NEED it but it feels very good to have so grab it sooner rather than later. Pantheon Soul of the Brine King - just because it saves you 3 passive points on a tree letting you not take Unwavering Stance. You need stun immunity or you can just get chain stunned. Upgraded vesrion will gives you pseudo Chill immunity. Soul of Abberath - helps a lot. Burning grounds are VERY common, and upgrading the soul gives you ignite reduction. As it no longer can provide you igine immunity, you will want to swap it later for... Soul of Yugul- helps dealing with reflect and reduces curses effect on you. This potentially can be big. Bandits Just kill all. You have no need in extra protection bandits provide, and having 2 passive points means 10% extra life, that combines with your protections so well.
FAQ/Important little things
Spiritual Aid on a passive tree is an important node to take, because it amplifies damage done by effects caused by your gloves. Be it rampage corpse explosion, or Asenath's explode on kill effect, the damage scales massively from that node. Brittle ground on boots isvery important as it provides a lot of crit to Relics resuting in about 20%+ DPS boost. Get it as soon as possible but ait to get at least 3 sconds or more. 2 seconds it a bit uncomfortable to use (but will do if you have no other options) No regen/Phys reflect maps. You can potentially do them. It would require you to have "damage taken gained as mana" craft on ring - for no regen maps. I personally find it too bothersome to care and just reroll the map. Later on, you can also craft rings with reduced reflected damage taken and solve the problem once and for all. Minion Instability great keystone to carry you through acts. Using Holly relic from lvl 1 may not be the best idea, especially since you don't have access to Static Strike. Summon Raging Spirits with Infernal Legion and Minion Instability can push you through first few acts till you get to better gems. Minion Life Leech a good way to keep your relics alive. If you can't find cluster jewel with it - grab it on a passive skill tree or on Abyss jewel. It really helps with keeping relics alive and fully healed. Weapons with slow attack speed avoid at all costs. 1.5 attacks per second (or more) is what you want. Take Dexerity nodes on the tree if you have to, but don't go below 1.4. Unless there is legit no other options. Animate Guardian If you never played with Animate Guardian before - don't do it. The build doesn't need it too much. And if you don't know how it functions - best not go all in on it. Read up what it does, check out gear, make sure your specters stay alive before using it for the first time. How to activate Holy Nova faster/How to maximize DPS This depends on your gear and your Holy Relic gem. Use this Spreadsheet to pick the right Static Strike setup for your current build state. How to sustain frenzy charges You don't. If something stay alive after few novas causes by your initial Flicker, you finish it off with Static Strike, then flicker to a new pack. You can also use frenzy monkeys to make it smoother early on.
Interaction with league mechanics for plannig your Atlas Passive Tree
League mechanics
Shrines
Spoiler
7/10
Extra enemies in a tight space to blow up is always good. Shrine effects add a lot of speed early to mid game. Pretty good mechanic to have or even spec into. But adds no valuable loot. Essence
Spoiler
6/10
There can be some value in this, but mind you early league the damage is not high enough to deal with max passive essence monsters. You still can do it because you can tank them rather well, but it will just take a lot of time. That being said - you can farm low level maps and that would work nicely, but doing so will stop your progression. Essence is deemed as early league money maker, but I find expedition to be much more 'punchy' in that regard. Legion
Spoiler
8/10
Its resonably hard for this build to clear the map encounter (especialy at the start of a league), and its almost impossible to do reasonable amount of kills in 4-5 way. However with just a bit of investment and addition of shield charge - you can comfortably full clear the map encounter for all the juicy chest rewards and generals. It was my prime farming method in 3.21. Just the ammount of rewards and rare monster you can kill give insane value in terms of drops. Blight
Spoiler
6/10
Becomes doable after you get Athenas. Athenas is fairly common item nowdays. You can farm blight fairly easy but you can't afk in it and rewards are rather mediocre. But if you like making early money with oils - that could be nice. Hardbringers
Spoiler
6/10
You gonna need burning ground immunity. The Proximity Shields that often spawn are annoying and rare mosnters might get too tanky to deal with early on. The Beachhead map is annoying to do because of too much open space but adding shield charge will let you do it fast. The boss fight itself is easy. They add a fair bit of map drops but generly slow down your mapping by a noticable amount. I only take them if I really struggle with map sustain or want fractured orbs Breach
Spoiler
5/10
Tanky rares hard to kill early on. Bosses on other hand - an easy target. Not a threat even at the start. Breachstones are super free to farm, but very boring. Invitations might need you to gear up a bit. In terms of loot - there is some value in breach uniques, but its really hard to get breachstones nowdays and droprates of uniques were nerfed to the ground. Breach is in a very awkward spot right now. Abyss
Spoiler
3/10
Both encounters and Abyssal Depth are easy to do. But you barely need anything from that for yourself. Lots of enemies for your explosions but nearly no rewards. Takes too much time to bother with it. Bestiary
Spoiler
6/10
Easy to do, the more enemies spawn in a tight place, the better for this build. You don't need any crafts so everything big you get is for sale. You obviously can't compete with beast sharing parties, but its a free lazy way to add more monsters on the map. I would not spec into it but throwing a master mission on the map or a scarab seems good to me. Much faster paced than Alva Incursion
Spoiler
6/10
Early encounters are rather hard to do. Temple, on other hand, is super easy to do. And on top of that almost every room that temple gives is valuable to progress this build. Minion room - gives Alva mod scepters (if lucky) - those are worth 30-2c Gem corruption room - for level 21 relics Pools room - %life jewelery Coprruption room - +1/+2minons corruption on chest Takes too much time tho. Delve
Spoiler
9/10
Delve feels pretty damn nice. I hate the mechanic personally, because its easy to do but also easy to die to the darkness. The amount of bosses they let you fight is huge. And this build can handle all the bosses very well. Even with spooky mods. Huge profit, but no items are needed for the build. Betrayal
Spoiler
7/10
Betrayal recently fallen out of favour because there are more rewarding mechanics. Still, its easy to do, and there is a lot of stuff you need from it. Trigger craft, white sockets, gem xp, breachstones upgrades, crafting unlocks. All the good stuff. You can simply take passive points from atlas tree to passively accumulate Mastermind encounter and do it once in a while. I use this to get craft early on and maybe get lucky on 1-3 mastermind fights. Then respec out of it. Synthesis
Spoiler
-/10
Deleted from the game by GGG in 3.20 Metamorph
Spoiler
4/10
Lack of single target damage early on. You still can tank the boss well, and you can get some value from early catalysts, but nothing is needed from the drop pool, and rewards from metamorfs are pretty weak as a farming strategy. Delirium.
Spoiler
9/10
This one is a tricky one. Mirror of delirium – can be pretty hard to get full value out of it. Its very much depends on layout of the map, and generally too random. You can do it fairly well, but you are not blowing up 4 screens ahead and need to run from pack to pack wasting time. Delirium orbs – super free. Up to 100% delirium, no problem at all with a full build. Maximum juice for massive amount of splinters. Simulacrum – you can reliably farm it to the wave 30, but only if you invest into your Animate Guardian to get rid of critical hits and you gonna need Skin of the Lords/Loyal + Aegis Aurora combo. Before that? Wave 25-27 should be doable. Harvest.
Spoiler
8/10
Its pretty hard to do map encounters if you are undergeared. You rarely even need anything from those. Bosses are easy though, but might take a while to kill them. And even with full gear some random oneshots still happen because of aurastacking. Its rare – but it happens. More of a mid-late game mechanic. Heist
Spoiler
7/10
Heist is really good. You are safe from dying, you can run through traps with blok, you can even xp farm enemies there, but some HH bow character would do that 10 times faster. The rewards are great. The problmes is - its not maps. You don't get to boss dusring heists, you don't get to progress atlas. You don't get all the juice of random league machanics maps have. Ritual
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8/10
Tight space, lots of mobs. Fair bit of value. If you like farming those, you can put as much juice as you want, including the hardest bosses. Ice beams are tedious to do, so be careful. Expedition
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10/10
Perfect for relic build. Ward gets removed by static/flicker strike, then relics deal full damage. Bosses are fun and manageable. You can’t just mindlessly pick every mod. There are some dangerous ones including phys imunity that bricks the build. Tujen makes so much money early on and Rog is pog - grab unset rings and bone shield from him when you see them. Boots will do too. Bossing
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8/10. You gonna need some gear first, after a certain point you can do most of the bosses, including feared and ubers.
Guardians, Elder Slayers, Breachlords, Maven, Uber elder. New bosses. Anything can be done. There are, however, some mods that can make encounters very unfun to do. Mainly extra Energy shield. Searing Exarch is nearly impossible to do unless you log out every ball phase. Uberbosses require a fair bit of gearing to be able to do them. Kirac farming
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7/10. This is a new addition to from the atlas skill tree. You can reroll his maps, get insane value of reports, get super juicy rewarding maps to farm. And you can do it for pretty much free, there are very few mods that can stop you.
Leveling
Now here is a weak part of the guide. I'm terrible at making leveling guides. So instead here is a fresh post from Vennto " If you do have any question - bully him, not me! https://youtu.be/kJNy4fCw9Yk - Playthrough of speed leveling Absolution Witch character. The tree is very similar and won't require a lot of regrets to respec to Holy Relics. Its something I might try at league start instead of SRS that I usually do. Even though I hate Absolution mechanic of having to spawn it on bosses. Last edited by Fire_Archer on Sep 13, 2024, 1:41:46 AM Last bumped on Sep 8, 2024, 2:58:20 AM
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 23.07.24
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Ahoy Mateys! Its that time again! New league! New patch notes! New picture!
Gonna keep it short this time. Build didn't not change significantly. Still... There are things in patch notes that needs to be pointed out And lets start with the NERFS
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"Might not seem like a big deal, but this was a go-to way to use an early claw. Will be missed. "Careful with Skin of the Lords! "Pretty big hit to tankiness. While we were not using it too often, it was REALLY nice to have. "Pretty sad with that one. Early mana issues are real, but perhaps 15% will be enough. "20 less life. Not a big deal, still a nerf. "We lose 10k armor from this resulting about 10% phys mitigation loss. Its not a huge deal, but since build is mostly uniques, you can't fully recover from such a hit. "It may actually be dificult to res cap even as necromancer now. "Makes one of the core items of the build entirely usless. Back to 2x armor flasks. " BUFFS!
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There are two HUGE buffs to the build. "This is insanely broken. It works on hits , so relics fully take advantage of it and it will make early game so very smooth. No longer 60-90% phys reduction monsters from expedition, ultimatum or just from map rolls will ever be a problem! "So this is basically: +1 gem slot from freeing desecrate, +1 specter from freeing Grand Necromancer, +15% attack and cast speed from adding third offering. All that at the cost of anoint. Sure sucks to lose +1 curse, but its only like 10% dps for all that massive utility. "So this is interesting because there is a specter that uses Enduring Cry. If they coded it to work, you will have free endurance charge generation with constant life regen AND your minions will get endurance charges that are now much more powerful than before. " OTHER CHANGES
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"Hopefully this means you can't be stuned out of vaal flicker. "Could be interesting to get crit to 100%, but I doubt it. "War banner could be used early game for a slight damage boost, but not anymore. "While 20% more damage and 20 less damage taken seems great, but its clearly a bait. Wording 'up to' means you need to be standing directly on enemy for it to work. Very much not worth. " "These two means easy block cap. However, we already had easy time capping block. This can be rather interesting for dual scepter option that I might experiment in a future. "Counter attacks were sometimes used as a way to auto trigger relics on block/hit. I removed them from the main build but it still was nice utility in certain cases. RIP TL;DR No big changes, build with perform more or less the same as last league. Expecting smooth sale with league start and a decent end game! It may feel a bit squishier with determination nerf, removal of some core masteries and very little source of resists. However, there is a lot of block you can get early on and life leech will now properly work unlike last leagu. The damage gonna feel A LOT better at early stages because of new minion mastery. Attacking with slow weapons will feel better too. Mechanis to take advantage of in league content.
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Recombinator. Duh. Finally a chance to make a good weapon since removal of Veiled Chaos orbs. Simply smash +1 gems with minion damage and trigger skills together and boom - uber boss killer ready. Runes. Some interesting enchants there. +1 curse, minion damage, maybe something else fun. Afterword I think its gonna be a great league for the build. Even if less tanky, the damage should make up for it. You not gonna need a lot to keep it going to the red maps and from there... well... You can always decide to swap to something else. Poison relics perhaps? Maybe Elementalist? Or maybe you stick around with this one to the very end. Regardless what you decides - Discord is always open for everyone and Im happy to give tips and look over your build. I plan to update the PoB as soon as we get a tree and skill gems update. And, of course, I plan to start the build day 1 and push it to the limit. Some of the progress will be tracked, but most talks will be in discord. Hope to see you all on league start. And wish you all smooth sailing. Last edited by Fire_Archer on Jul 23, 2024, 12:46:44 AM
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3.13.0 - Path of Exile: Echoes of the Atlas
The wave of impactful changes has passed, so lets counts the losses and gains. Losses
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1) Necromancer ascendancy got nerfed a little bit.
-5% increased damage from every small passive node, resulting total -20% increased damage. Not a big deal. On this build it reflects as ~4% DPS loss. Considering how hard other summoner builds got hit its nothing, but its still a nerf. 2) Renewal passive from medium and Large cluster jewels - power got cut in half, now granting 5% for minions to do double damage (previously 10%) That hurts, especially since this build was using 3 Renewals. Each 5% loss reflects in this build as a 4% DPS loss, for a total 12% DPS loss. 12% is a lot. For a comparison 12% DPS is value of having War Banner or Vulnerability. But there is a way to mitigate that damage loss, replacing Renewal with other cluster passives that I will talk about down below. Gains
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1) Change to the Mistress of Sacrifice ascendancy notable Gives up 10% more skill effect duration at cost of reducing minions duration by 30% A tiny bit of a buff for our build. We don't summon minions that are non-permanent. So nerf to a minion duration does nothing, 10% extra duration makes Static Strike and Bone Offering a bit better. 2) Static Strike duration buffed. Static Strike now has +1 second to its base duration. Another little buff to QoL for this build. 1 second is not much but with all the extra duration from gems and tree you get a total of ~6 seconds uptime (previously ~4 seconds) to move from pack to pack before you would need to activate it again. Making mapping that much smoother. Changes to the build
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The build stays unchanged for the most part.
The only thing to conciser is swapping some cluster jewels around. 1) Large cluster jewel. It stays unchanged. Renewal is STILL the best DPS option from a minion cluster jewel. And you want to have minion cluster jewel as Large, because of the small passives that give +10% increased damage to minions. 2) Medium cluster jewel. With Renewal nerfed that are lots of valid (or even better) options for cluster passives. Such as: -Effect of non-curse aurar medium cluster jewel with Master of Command You will be using this one for a while anyway. Might as well keep it as it now provides similar DPS as Renewal. -Curse effect medium cluster jewel with Master of Fear and Wish for Death Master of Fear makes enemies take 10% more damage if they are cursed. Wish for Death gives you culling strike against cursed enemies, effectively reducing enemy HP by 10% Both notables are great for a boss farm, and having them on just one jewel might save you some points. Just to be clear each of this notables is BETTER than nerfed Renewal. The downside is - unlike Renewal, same notables does not stack with itself. So you can't have 2xMaster of Fear or 2xWish for Death. Conclusion. From the looks of it 3.13 is going to be a great league of relics. Not only we managed to dodge the nerf waves aimed at summoner, but also the league itself looks like a perfect time to play relics. Both new boss fight AND league mechanics from ritual will lock you up in a tight circular arena. From the looks of it both arenas will be just about the size (or slightly bigger) of Relic Nova explosion, letting us over it fully with damage;. Build also provides a massive survivability against boss encounters. Some tweaks should be done to cluseters, I will try to update PoB shortly. Last edited by Fire_Archer on Jan 13, 2021, 2:10:55 AM
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Hey there! I promised to take a look at the PoB a long time ago and never got around to it, so I thought I would share my thoughts here. The build is looking really good in my opinion. Capped block without Rumi's Concoction active is really quite an achievement. The build all around looks like a great take of Summon Holy Relic Necromancer. The relics are also really tanky in this version which is very nice.
Here's a couple of tips to make it even better: 1) Spiritual Aid is not doing anything for your relics. I think it is a wasted point 2) You have a lot of over-capped elemental resistances. You can probably find a way to pick up more chaos resistance on your gear. 3) Following from the previous point, a higher chaos resistance will allow you to use Forbidden Taste instead of Blood of the Karui for instant full life recovery with minimal downside. 4) Divergent Bone Offering and Tempest Shield can give you a little bit more block chance. 5) Since there are only a few good flask choices, I would recommend re-optimising the build to be at full block chance only while Rumi's Concoction is active. This could open up some more options. Hope this helps! Here's a PoB with a few changes: https://pastebin.com/a1nkFXu8 Last edited by Moosseolini on Jan 13, 2021, 5:30:33 PM
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Looking good. I did Moosseolini's guardian version in Harvest and I was eyeing it for this league also, but I think I'll try this for a change.
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" Thank you so much for spending your time reviewing the build. It means a lot to me since you were the one who game me inspiration to try and modify relics as well as stea- errr borrow the carcass of the guide. Now to the tips 1) Spiritual Aid is actually a HUGE deal, since I am using rampage effects/Asenath explosion from gloves. Spiritual Aid makes your OWN damage scale globally from any minion damage node you take. And you take a lot of those. And all the effects coming from your gloves are scaled as well. Massive difference between blowing up packs of mobs offscreen vs doing nothing but 1% of their hp as damage. The clear speed becomes that much faster with it. 2) Absolutely true, you can cap chaos resist, but its not as easy to do, especially since you don't take resist notable in ascendancy AND you have to fit Thread of Hope that lowers your resist. On top of that, resists shown in PoB also boosted by the fact that you have 3 endurance charges, and that is not always the case. Also its very nice to have overcap resist in case you get ele weakness cursed. That being said, capping chaos res is doable, I just used gear I could find during the game, and it was not enough. 3) I have mixed feeling about Forbidden Taste. Its more of a personal preference but, I see it like that. You have high block and essentially if you take a big hit, the chances are you gonna get hit again is low (famous last words). That means that by the time you get hit again, the regen from the BoK will heal you up and IF you get hit again, you gonna get fully healed with BoK special effect. So its kinda like healing twice for one flask use. On top of that, most things that hurt me is degen effects, and having heal over time is what I use to negate them. That being said, Forbidden Taste is a valid option and if you prefer having instant panic heal, use it instead. I will add it to the guide, as it also provides phasing and dodge, both being good defensive layers that will add up to the survivability. 4) Never thought about those ones, its seems like a great area to explore. I will add them to the guide. Also Anomalous Reckoning - reducing enemy damage by 10% is super nice to have. 5) This is also a personal preference, but I feel like relying on the flask is not something I should do. You should be pretty much immortal against regular enemies even if you don't have block capped, but what it comes down to for me is bossing. If you have to relly on the flask to have your block up in a boss fight, you prolly run out of it and die. But if you feel like you can go on with using flasks you absolutely can drop some block and put more points in life or minion damage. For me, who plays with 5 fps and 300 ping, I try to make a build as much idiot proof as possible xD |
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A little update on how build doing this league - I'm having fun.
Took down Sirus, Shaper, Elder and chilling in T16 maps. Not gonna lie, I do feel the damage nerf. So far its manageable, but it will certainly be a problem when Maven spawns in Cortex or something. Current gear
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Current PoB https://pastebin.com/rP2vCvdR With insane scepter like that I would be around 6M dps in previous league. Here I'm just at 2M. I might have to drop the amulet and get +1 to skills amulet at cost of not having spell block capped. Last edited by Fire_Archer on Jan 21, 2021, 7:56:28 AM
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Hi, mate!
You posted very interesing build setup. I was impressed with some ideas that you use and copied couple of them to my build. I was playing Holy Relics from the Heist League, you can still find my character and it's tree in chars list, but it was cost me a fortune to fully optimize it. Block/Spellblock 75/75, all res, chaos res 75, Armor 15k w/ Flasks, defense from Corrupted blood and very nice ES and HP regen. I was capable to do everything in Heist but the build was expensive. Usually I don't have a lot of currency to invest and looking for a build that is cheap, has good defense and damage. This league I 'm playing Holy Relics as well and was able to achieve almost same layer of defenses, spending around 300x in total. The only thing is left for me, to replace Empower lvl3 to lvl4 to get damage boost necessary for Tier 16+ maps. Now I'm playing most of the time T13-T14 and it feels very comfortable. Besides that, I'm using 5link body ATM) which I can also upgrade in the future to get even more damage. You can compare trees of both builds to see what's the difference and may be you can find interesting ideas to copy to make your Holy Relics even better. Thank you very much for your post. Last edited by Helmsman527 on Jan 27, 2021, 2:17:22 AM
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Oh boy, here we go again.
Let me start with showing off how my Ritual league went with this build. (Its literally just a show off, feel free to skip that part)
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Road so far The build itself https://pastebin.com/cqYmt2nT and all the items I got. Challenges - 36 - all solo. Atlas - fully cleared. Maven - very much doable. Witnessed bosses - all. Oshabi - easiest fight. The only thing that I was not able to do was The Feared invitation. Reason being - Atziri. Atziri is already the hardest boss in the game for this build due to reflect and one-shot skills that demolish relics. She kills them faster than you can summon them. And as a bonus The tweaks I made to the build during Ritual league.
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1)added this little guy to my flasks. Not only it helps mitigating cold degen zones (one of the only things that does damage to us with this build) but it helps with phys damage EVEN further. Great flask to have. 2) As reminded me by "this gem exists. You don't really need it, but later on you can grab it instead of Arcane Guarding cluster, getting extra elemental resists, that in turn lets you cap your Chaos res better. 3)Megalomaniac is an interesting one. Basically, since we only need 1 notable from our usual cluster jewels, why not use Megalomaniac that has one node from each and save some points? And because notable we need are not rare or too desired, you can find one for pretty cheap. Here is another version of what you can get. 4) Frost bomb socketed in weapon instead of Vulnerability were doing lot of work reducing Maven's healing. 5) Jewel with onslaught on kill boosts clearing speed even more. NOTE that you don't get the kill if relic kills the enemy. So it really only works if you have Athenas. What to expect during Ultimatum league.
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Well the wave of nerfs was not too harsh for us. There are only 3 things that affected the build. 1) Trigger craft nerf - cooldown boosted to 8 seconds. This is not a problem because base duration of abilities we trigger is more than 8 seconds. In fact, maybe it will be cheaper to get this craft early league now. 2) Renewal nerfed by 1 %. We lost some damage. Not a big chunk like last time, but still feels bad man. 3) Corrupted Soul nerf. The 5% reduction converts into loss of 400+ energy shield. This hurts. Now Divine Flesh might be a better option as before they were pretty much even. Overall things are looking bright, especially with enchants being more accessible, we surely can make up for all the damage lost from before. The legue mechanic itself looking to be a perfect fit for this build, just like Ritual was before. Plans for the future.
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Build didn't really change at all since two leagues ago. I'll try to update it for the new tree EVENTUALLY...
Also planning to add two new sections. Boss Kill Difficulty - where I will list the bosses this build struggle with List of Priorities - where I will list items you want to grab the most as soon as possible. Hope everyone will have fun next league despite the salty taste of blood it seems to be providing. Last edited by Fire_Archer on Apr 15, 2021, 9:44:53 AM
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I'll be league starting this in ultimatum, looking forward to see how it performs! Thanks for putting the build together, it's very comprehensive.
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