[3.21] Cold Conversion Summoner | Build guides for all budgets | (Ghazzy Zoomancer)

[3.14] Post Patch Notes - What has changed?

Huge patch notes and one of the biggest slaughters I've seen in a long time.
Literally all meta builds were basically destroyed or straight out removed from the game. Builds like Selfcurse, Selfpoison, Bowcasters were straight out removed from the game.
Aurastackers (ESPECIALLY Carrion Golems), Bleedbow Glads and all BV builds were basically destroyed. Other strong league starters like Toxic Rain, Generals Cry(The oneshot build) and Bladefall/Bladeblast were heavily nerfed but will still be playable.

So how does this affect our build?

Summon Carrion Golem
The Golem's Cascade skill now has a 6 second cooldown (previously 4 seconds). The skill now also travels a shorter distance and has less area of effect.
Summoned Carrion Golem now deals approximately 11% less damage at all gem levels.

Verdict: This doesn't hurt us at all. It's a minor dps decrease. The cascade nerf is a big nerf to pure carrion golem builds as it has big effect on AoE dps and the clearspeed of those builds.
Fortuantely for us, we use spectres for clear, not Carrion Golems so we don't care.

Frost Bomb
Cold Exposure now applies -15% to Cold Resistance (previously -25%).

Verdict: Minor dps loss. We'll still be using Frost Bomb though but not in a main link but in a weapon swap for bosses if we can bother.

Abyss Jewel Changes:
Physical/Chaos Jewels got their T1 maximum damage nerfs.
Elemental Jewels got all tiers of damage buffed.

Verdict: Neglible.

Vengeful Commander:
The Cluster Jewel notable Vengeful Commander now causes Anger, Hatred and Wrath to have 15% increased Aura Effect (previously 20%).

Verdict: We lose 20% Hatred Aura effect in total. This effects medium budget and higher versions of the build. It's a dps loss but nothing detrimental.

Renewal:
The Cluster Jewel notable Renewal now causes Minions to have 5% chance to deal Double Damage while they are on Full Life (previously 6%).

Verdict: This only affects medium and intermediate budget versions of the build since those builds run renewal in their large clusters, high budget versions don't.
This should barely be noticeable.

Blade Vortex:
Now has a base duration of 4 seconds (previously 5 seconds).
Now has a radius of +2 at gem level 20 (previously +4).
Now has added damage effectiveness of 20% (previously 25%).
Now deals 86 to 129 Physical Damage at gem level 20 (previously 101 to 151).

Verdict: My fear of the duration and radius being slashed unfortuantely came true. These changes alone aren't too bad though. The radius thing is annoying but we're already running at everything in melee range so not much loss here.
The duration buff is the biggest nerf since it'll affect our BV uptime, especially with the trigger craft nerf.

Trigger Craft:
Trigger a Socketed Spell when you Use a Skill, with a 8 second Cooldown (previously 4 seconds).

Verdict: An absolutely MASSIVE nerf to quality of life. This nerf together with the BV nerf will reduce the uptime of BV from 100% to 50%.

I do think I have a solution for high and medium budget versions of the build though.
First thing we'll do is swap out Frost Bomb for Increased Duration which increases the duration by 75% of BV taking it to 7 seconds. This means that we'll have a ~85% uptime of BV.
If we want to make sure that BV has a 100% uptime, we'll also be swapping Bone Armour to Mistress of Sacrifice which gives us 40% increased skill duration and Offerings give us 50% of their affect.

This opens us to run Bone Armour with Rumis for 40% block chance with Necromantic Aegis which is kinda busted. We can also keep running Flesh Offering for a passive 15% movement speed buff which buffs our clear even more.

The biggest loss of running this setup is that we lose some tankiness and our minions lose alot of HP. That being said, with the nerfs to end game content the meta shift seems to be towards running normal maps without delirium fog. In these types of maps we don't have to care about minion survivability at all pretty much. It's only in 100% delirius content that we're afraid of losing the Animate Guardian, maybe in gigajuiced The Feared invitations.

With these things in mind, we'll still be running Frost Bomb though, atleast for high budget versions.
I will be experimenting with equipping a trigger wand in my weapon swap.
In this setup I will have Desecrate - Flesh Offering and Increased Duration socketed into my trigger and Forst Bomb + Skitterbots + Inreased duration in my offhand.
This will allow me to weapon swap - Press Frost Bomb once - Which will trigger Desecrate triggering Flesh Offering - instantly swap back.

A bit of a mechanical solution but to be completely honesest, we only really care about frost bomb for big single target bosses like Sirus anyway. This is pretty much a 2 button combo that allows us to get a long duration Frost Bomb and Flesh Offering for longer boss fights like Sirus.
We do lose out on the ability to level up gems though which is only why I'll consider doing this on high budget versions where I stop leveling gems anyway because I can't bother to buy Enlightens/Enhance off trade.

Conclusion:
All in all, it sucks to be nerfed. Fortunately, it doesn't seem to bad and I might have found solutions to the biggest hits being the trigger issue.

That being said, imagine wanting to league start as a bleed bow character or wanting to farm end game with BV or Explodey based builds.

"

Vulgarny wrote:

Wrong. Those 2% nerfs are easy offset by using either aura effect chest or glorius vanity. Its nowhere near 50%. Its 24% that can be offset pretty easy tbh. You didnt even use all aura effect skill points you could allocate most of time. Also quick question: socketed gems have +3% spell crit works on minions gems, does global +2%spell crit mod works the same ?

Yeah, the spell crit on helm works for the minions.
Summon Carrion Golem is considered a spell so it gets the 3% crit chance.
A global +2% spell crit should technically work aswell.

If you're thinking about your Bottled Faith (Guessing that's where the 2% number comes from) it doesn't work however. The 2% bottled faith crit is given to you, the one who used the flask.
I also thought it made my Consecrated Ground give 2% crit before but that's wrong. It makes it so when I attack someone on consecrated ground I have 2% more crit chance. Atleast I was confused about this before.

Naah more in line of is it better to slam global spell crit to spells in chest or benchcraft 25int/18% quality :)
EDIT

Vaal Regalia

Quality: +30% (augmented)
Energy shield: 632

Requirements: Int: 194
Level: 68
Item level: 88

12% increased Intelligence +1 to Level of Socketed Intelligence Gems 30% increased effect of Non-Curse Auras from your Skills +96 to maximum Energy Shield +9 to maximum Energy Shield +21 to maximum Life 77% increased Energy Shield +25 to Intelligence (crafted)
+18% to Quality (crafted)

Redeemer Item Shaper Item

Only using new harvest rules...still quite easy to do it LOL

"

Vulgarny wrote:

Naah more in line of is it better to slam global spell crit to spells in chest or benchcraft 25int/18% quality :)
EDIT

Vaal Regalia

Quality: +30% (augmented)
Energy shield: 632

Requirements: Int: 194
Level: 68
Item level: 88

12% increased Intelligence +1 to Level of Socketed Intelligence Gems 30% increased effect of Non-Curse Auras from your Skills +96 to maximum Energy Shield +9 to maximum Energy Shield +21 to maximum Life 77% increased Energy Shield +25 to Intelligence (crafted)
+18% to Quality (crafted)

Redeemer Item Shaper Item

Only using new harvest rules...still quite easy to do it LOL

Have you tried doing it on PoB to see if it works?
Maybe that mod is restricted to yourself in some way. I think spectre builds would have gotten spell crit on their chests otherwise.

Loving the detailed guide and all the budget options! I've read through pretty much the entire guide and once again plan on doing carrion golems (have done aura stacking the last 2 leagues). I noticed in your leveling guide we go Ele and switch Necro once we get the medium budget together. When you league start do you think you'll go the slave drivers route since we get them earliest? Do you only swap to carrions once we have access to SO? Thanks in advance!

"

Morbidbeast07 wrote:

Loving the detailed guide and all the budget options! I've read through pretty much the entire guide and once again plan on doing carrion golems (have done aura stacking the last 2 leagues). I noticed in your leveling guide we go Ele and switch Necro once we get the medium budget together. When you league start do you think you'll go the slave drivers route since we get them earliest? Do you only swap to carrions once we have access to SO? Thanks in advance!

I adapted tytykiller's run https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TRr8MirbDK8 to fit carrion golems and it seems to work out fine.

Been practicing the league start for this build, and I find that I like switching to carrion right as I finish first lab for the +1 golems and spec golem commander on the tree. Really important to get a +1 to level of minion gems helmet as well (use the vendor recipe of a life flask of animation and then sell it with a magic helmet that's 4 linked and easy to color 2r-2b for carrion, minion damage, multistrike, and melee phys). I use the frenzy/power charge spectres once my spectre gem is lvl 13 for 3 spectres, and use skeletons the entire way till maps. Important to spec some minion survivability nodes before switching to spectres so they don't die constantly. Once you get SO then you switch to using spectres in your main links instead of skeles.

One thing I haven't tried yet but might is using kitava's heralds spectres once the gem is 13 so I can get rid of skeletons and full lazy mode the build, but skeletons add too much damage during levelling, so not too keen to try it.

Awesome! Thanks for the quick detailed answer. I'll take a look at tytykiller's run and take your advice on running skeles/carrion until SO.

"

FNRTJ wrote:

One thing I haven't tried yet but might is using kitava's heralds spectres once the gem is 13 so I can get rid of skeletons and full lazy mode the build, but skeletons add too much damage during levelling, so not too keen to try it.

Exactly what I am going to do. I think Kitava's Heralds are a bit underrated as they have very good AI

Do we strictly need 100% BV uptime and can’t settle for 85%? Both curses and EE have durations longer than the 1 sec downtime so I would imagine the impact won’t be material as long as they are refreshed frequently?

"

Morbidbeast07 wrote:

Loving the detailed guide and all the budget options! I've read through pretty much the entire guide and once again plan on doing carrion golems (have done aura stacking the last 2 leagues). I noticed in your leveling guide we go Ele and switch Necro once we get the medium budget together. When you league start do you think you'll go the slave drivers route since we get them earliest? Do you only swap to carrions once we have access to SO? Thanks in advance!

I've done some practice runs prior to league start and tried all of them. If you're late to the league or a slow player I highly urge you to go Phys with Operatives ASAP. It's completely broken.

I think I will be going Lightning with Slave Drivers when I hit act 5. It's the smoothest and the slave drivers are easy to get. The only problem I had with Slave Drivers were that they died like little b**ches before I got indomitable army. This was very annoying. The slave drivers are obnoxiously squishy and likes to run into melee range. The -4 levels to all spectre nerf they did in Heist destroyed Slave Drivers.

I'm thinking about, maybe going Fire for this reason. Since Flame Sentinels are ranged we wont have the problem of them dying and later upgrading to Solar Guards who're a pretty godmode spectre in the campaign. This build lacks single target though as both Flame Golems and Solar Guards are mainly used for clearing. But we're talking about leveling so it doesn't really matter.

No matter what path we choose we want to swap to physical AS SOON AS WE CAN.
It's leagues ahead of both lightning and fire which are only bandaid options until someone starts spreading SOs in the global 6666 chat.

I asked Ghazzy on his stream how long it usually takes for the first hero to raise this spectre and he said ~6 hours. So at 6 hours after league start, be ready in global boys!