[3.14] Tanky boss killer that works on a budget. Summon Skeletons + armor stacking, CI , max block.
 1. Introduction: [3.15] Average dmg per skeleton for non-sirus monsters was 866 666 in 3.14 and now is 492 853 - a 373 813 dmg decrease or 43% dmg decrease. 3.15 is an amazing patch.... I could probably shift some gems to cover for 2-3% dmg increase given that now the old support gems are a joke, but come on: 40% dmg decrease. Also skeletons mana cost went from 56 to 96 and i have 80 mana left unreserved. Actually may not be that big of a deal for the end game variant as you can just double cast the skeletons and have tons fo mana regen, but leveling is going to be a pain. This is the main build that I played during the Ultimatum league and I may consider it as a league start build for the next league too because it is very cost-efficient and can go online with very low investment. The build is unique for now ( only I am playing anything close to it according to poe.ninja ) so small chance of nerfs and also the build is quite good at killing bosses and has an "ok" clear speed that can be quite good if certain gems link configurations are used. The build has a very enjoyable playstyle with only 3 buttons that you will use and only 2 of those are combat buttons, 1 for movement, but you can even only use 1 button for combat if you are lazy. No need to manage spectres, no need to manage anything really, just go and kill Sirus, Maven, Uber Shaper, Uber Atziri, and "the feared" invitation all while just dodging skills and casting skeletons every 5 secs. If you get hit - well, who cares lol, you are tanky enough to not care for most hits. You can be killed by a few select boss skills: maven's memory game, Atziri double ( can tank 1 ) pizzas, shaper's beam ( if you stay for a few seconds and do not have Vaal discipline ), and some degens made from bosses, but for the most part: we do not get killed by 95% of boss' skills. Good damage also means that we kill bosses very fast. In maps, 99% of things cannot kill us, and if hits are weak enough even heal us. there are a few notable exceptions of things that can kill us in maps, but with average investment, we can do 100% of the content in the game easily. 2. Pro's and Con's:
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Pro's: - Can work on a budget of 1ex if you start in the middle of a league and 2ex-3ex for a league start. - Good boss dmg – around 0.7m Sirus dmg per skeleton on average, 11 skeletons. Around 1.3m for non-bosses. - Can reach 10k es on a witch with good gear, even more, if you invest a lot, probably one of the tankiest witch builds you can do without sacrificing dmg a lot. - 75% attack damage block, 62% spell damage block if you go for dmg, 75/74 if you lose 1 skeleton (1m dmg less). Can be 75/75 with the use of flasks. - ES on block: no flasks: 500es min, flask up: 1000es on block min - 90% physical dmg reduction during flasks, 76% with no flask - Dmg scaling is mainly based on gems, the only items in my build other than gems that give minions dmg are my wand and amulet. Boots are Alberon's Warpath so cheap ( Rainbowstride can also be used but are also cheap ). On a league start, you will only need 2/3 items to bootstrap the build and they are relatively cheap even on league start ( around 3 ex for those 3 on league start and 1 ex in total later). - CI: you are immune to chaos dmg. - 75/80/76 max resistances with the option of going 77/82/78 if you are willing to sacrifice some dmg. - An almost min-maxed version that can clear rare "the Feared" invitation for 120ex, most of which is in awakened gems and 40ex goes for the wand. - Currently, I am the only one playing this build meaning that in 3.15 it is highly unlikely it will be nerfed. Con's: - Good boss clear but not the best clear speed. It is not bad, but cannot be compared to the clear speed of top clear speed builds. You can improve the clear speed, but then you may have to swap gems/armor before boss fights, the improvement would also not be enough to compete with better clear speed builds. - We are tanky, but not immortal. The main thing that can kill us is AoE dmg that cannot be blocked. 3 main threats here: Maven's memory game: not possible to survive on a witch, possible as a guardian with the same setup, ultimatum's laser bots on any map that has mods with reduced max res, and Baranite Thaumaturge's aoe skill. The main problem here is the ultimatum ones and maven. - If you want to run 3 big auras: Determination, Zealotry, and Discipline, you will have to play around with synthesized items, specific corrupts, and amulet mods... it can be annoying. Also because not many people would care about synthesized gloves with "determination has 10% mana reserved" mod, the price can be between 1c and 2 ex. I would say you have to be able to craft items on your own because other than the wand, other items would be best if crafted yourself. - Not enough gem slots. Sadly we are missing auras, animated guardian, and other useful abilities because every gem slot is taken and important. - Ultimatums can be a bit annoying if you do not get a setup for clear speed. In general, you may have to have 2 different chests and change them for bossing/clear speed, otherwise, you will have problems with ultimatums and 100% delirious maps. You may as well, just get a clear speed body armor in the start and only for big bosses change it... or just go with what you have, it would be 20% less dmg but you may not even notice it. 3. Videos:
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perfect kill Maven https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q3DVV7DvHVI Shaper kill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecAFH9Mj2CA rare "the feared" invitation https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JUyaIHe148 Shaper kill shared - I do the killing for others in a group https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jl4n3uqely4 shared Maven kill - I do the killing for others in a group https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c98vnGiGXHM Uber Atziri https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9K3NeRzSZ_0 Cortex https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OzkuglaMrlQ charged Chayula solo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5UfVu7qvuA a bad run of a juiced map https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftjhvFHKTcA Veritania kill https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9LkiIP5Rxk4 Uber Elder https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GRmaot0vB24 Sirus https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1PXEx7EQuEY Drox https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1Br_hcwPZQ juiced tier 16 map https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZzRiVaspU9A methamorph https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOhhiheLTFI 4. Gear:
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Main hand:
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At league start you can use a lot of alternatives to this wand: You can also craft a cheap version of it via selling 40% sum of quality of physical gems and any convoking wand and then crafting the "trigger a socketed spell when you can a spell with 8 sec cooldown" mod. Alternatively you can use or and there are like 3-4 other cheap unique options that are mostly going to make you a bit tankier, but I would heavily recommend you to go for a +2 convoking ward with a 4-sec trigger cooldown later. It will be the most expensive item in your build starting at 20 ex mid league and in early league, you better try to craft it yourself. Can be crafted via delve crafting displayed in https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xJDPK9J7MsQ with 1/12 chance to get +2 mods combo and also you then need Aislin slam that is around 4ex but may not give you the trigger so there is a chance of failure. If you craft it yourself you may get lucky and do it in around 5ex, otherwise, it is around 20ex min. Helmet:
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Early league this is a 1ex base, mid league it is 5c. The enchant is important and you will probably need to try to get it yourself early in the league. 1 week after the start it can be found in the 2-3ex range on trade and mid league is less than 1ex. Try to get good rolls, my rolls are even not that good, but passable. Body armor:
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Either this or 5 blue - 1 green or 4 blue - 1 green - 1 red versions. This is almost the best body armor in the slot and when corrupted with a +1 implicit it is really hard to outperform. The best possible corrupt is +1 to socketed gems and +2 to socketed duration gems, but almost no chance of finding it on trade. Still, bear in mind that I have seen rare chests with more +1 to socketed gems mods than the skin of the loyal/lords and it is possible to craft a rare chest better than this. It will however cost a lot of delve faceted fossils and a lucky warlord exalted slam. It is a very hard/expensive craft and a skin of the lords/loyal is almost always just as powerful at the fraction of the cost. Early game you can go for any 4-5 link chest or tabula. Rings:
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You would need 1 ring with a socket and "The Pariah" is almost always the cheapest option to get a lot of ES. Crusader moonstone ring and unset rings with good es rolls and mods are also quite good. Gloves:
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You can use as an alternative, paired with , but synthesised gloves with "Determination has 10% reduced mana reserved" mod is best in slot for both dmg and survivability. On the actual gloves, you should try to get dex and es mods, as high as possible. Dex you can get on rings too, but if you can get it on gloves you should be able to get better rings and more overall ES. Belt:
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Either go Crystal belt or Stygian vise: , Darkness entroned is also a possibility , but Crystal belt should still be best in slot. You only care about high ES mods, armor/mana ( we convert the mana to armor, so it is the same thing here), and resistances mods. Boots:
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Either go Alberon's warpath for dmg or go Rainbowstride for spell block. Rare high ES boots are also a possibility , but keep in mind that you will need a "+1 to socketed gems" corrupted implicit and this is much easier to find on the trade for unique items. Rainbowstride and Alberon's warpath should both be cheap even with the corrupted implicit. Amulet:
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The perfect amulet may not even exist sadly. There is a pool of mods that we want for our amulet but they are all shared between different influences and it is not possible to get the mod combinations we want. What we want is a combination of "+1 to maximum summoned skeletons" elder mod, "+1 to level of all intelligence gems" hunter mod, "reduced reservation of skills" redeemer mod, and "determination has 25% reduced mana reservation" conqueror mod. In other words, we have to choose 2 out of 4 and in almost all cases the amulet would be expensive. I went with because I got it on a discount from a friend, but it does not have ES and it is not even the best amulet i can get. The anointment should be "Whispers of Doom" ( 3 golden oils ) which is a bit expensive anoint so you will probably not have it in a league start scenario. For league start, you should go "Deflection" ( 1 teal oil, 1 opalescent oil, and 1 sepia oil ) instead - much cheaper and not bad at all. Another option here is - much cheaper and also quite good. Shield:
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The first item at the start of the league that you have to find from trade is this shield. It is honestly, the most important part of the whole build and the one part that is truly essential. The head can be changed, the body armor can be changed, but unless you do a lot of build changes, this shield is essential. At the start of the league, it was 1ex, sadly, but it is really essential so save all your currency to buy it asap. Mid league, i have seen it for 3c. It is dirt cheap and you only care about rolls and corrupted implicit: either almost perfect with 30% quality from beast crafting or almost perfect with 28% quality from the syndicate but with "physical dmg from hits taken as chaos damage" as corrupted implicit. This would be an expensive and rare implicit but worth the money. Flasks:
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Flasks need to be mostly defensive and the only offensive one is Bottled Faith. Bottled Faith is however quite expensive and not a requirement. I have done Maven, Uber Atziri, and "the feared" without it and it should only be considered as the last item you add to your build when everything else is done. However, it is quite important that you have a granite flask with the "of iron skin" suffix. You need the +3000 armor and 60-100% increased armor during flask effect. Other flasks should only give you ailments prevention ( anti-ignite, anti-freeze, anti-shock) and bleeding prevention. If you want to go 75 spell block chance you can use also. Jewels:
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You need it for the spell block chance increase. Put it on the spot over Glancing blows. "gain 9-10% of maximum mana as extra maximum energy shield while affected by clarity" is really, really important, but try to combine it with "extra armor while affected by determination", "additional physical damage reduction while affected by determination" or "spell block while affected by discipline". We are going to use zealotry so as a 3rd mod you can look at some dmg related one to zealotry. This jewel alone can be quite expensive even with only the clarity mod, 4-5 ex for 2 relevant mods and 50ex for 3 relevant mods. Put it over the witch starting location. You absolutely need this and it is the first jewel you need to find on a league start. Put it over EE It gives a lot of ES when placed to the left of the "Melding" life/es cluster. Also, the easiest and cheapest jewel to get both "corrupted blood cannot be inflicted on you" and "reduced reservation of skills" corrupted implicits. There is a divination card for double corrupted energy from within jewels, so it is cheap to find a good corrupted implicits combo. Just a typical dmg minion cluster jewel. "renewal", "feasting fiend", "call to the slaughter" and "vicious bite" are quite good. Either stats or resistances for 4th mod, but stats are better. "Blessed rebirth" is really important here. Put it to the right of glancing blows. You need it for the dmg it gives you and it can be replaced by other options too, but it is the jewels that will give you the most dmg possible on its own. Try to get "Energy from naught" and stats/armor/es/mana here. 2 point ones are better. 5. Gem links:
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Lots and lots of gems are needed by our build but sadly we are not going to fill all of them because of not enough space. You will need 2 specific 4 links in the end game version, 1 of these can be a 3 link at the start, also in the end, I would argue that the gems in the wand and shield are best in slot meaning that you only have 4 "free" slots and in those 4 slots, you need to have a carrion golem ( good if supported by feeding frenzy) and some movement skill (good If supported by second wind support). This means that really the only gem that you can "change" is before you have an awakened hextouch and only 1 spot, in which I would put an animated guardian if I had the choice. Your gem links are: Main skill:
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Bossing setup ( expensive ) :
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Vaal summon skeletons 20% quality – awakened elemental focus support – awakened minion damage support – empower – awakened spell echo support – awakened controlled destruction support Just so you know, Vaal summon skeletons lvl 21 0% quality is 6-7c, Vaal Summon skeletons lvl 21 20% quality is 12ex. The other gems are all in the 5-10ex range and ironically empower lvl 4 is the cheapest one. This means that on a league start you will probably use the next setup: Clear speed ( less expensive and optimized for league start):
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Vaal summon skeletons 0% quality - elemental focus support – minion damage support – spell echo – empower – pierce Empower lvl 4 is better than controlled destruction 20/20 but empower lvl 3 is worse. You can go with 5 blue, 1 green or 4 blue, 1, green, 1 red skin of the lords on league start depending on prices and what gems you have. Empower lvl 4 is a bit slow to get on a league start so probably a 5 blue 1 green setup is more important. Getting a high summon skeletons level is important as the higher the level the more you summon at once, the more max skeletons you can get, and also they are tankier and generally much more useful. I would argue that this is something you will have to adapt to depending on your budget, drops, which vaaled gems will hit, and so on. Do not forget that you also will need blessed rebirth and death reckoning to make the skeletons not weak. Main aura 4 link:
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Enlighten – determination – discipline – zealotry But if you do not have enough reduced mana reserved or reduced determination mana reserved, you can go Enlighten – determination – discipline – summon skitterbots If you have even less go: Enlighten – determination – displine – vitality And on league start: Determination – discipline – vitality With the idea of a free socket and no need of links. You will have to get the talent tree nodes next to sovereignty fast so you will have the auras online early. Enlighten must be lvl 4 and even lvl 5 in a "+1 to socketed gems" corrupted implicit. Main curse 4 links:
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If you have awakened hextouch support, but are not lvl 99: awakened hextouch support – conductivity – elemental weakness – stormbrand If you have awakened hextouch support and you are lvl 99 or 100: awakened hextouch support – conductivity – elemental weakness – wave of conviction If you do not have awakened hextouch support: hextouch support – elemental weakness – stormbrand and a free slot for animated guardian. Wand triggered skills ( you will have to cast them yourself on league start )
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Flesh offering, desecrate, sniper mark The pariah socket:
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Clarity Head 4 sockets ( 2 2-links, or 1 4link ):
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Feeding frenzy – summon carrion golem Flame dash – second wind support Shield 3 link:
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If you take the "Bone Barrier" Ascendance skill point: Enhance – lvl 1 divergent tempest shield – lvl 1 cast when dmg taken If you take "Plaguebringer" Ascendance skill point: Version 1: Lvl 1/lvl 20 cast when dmg taken – lvl 1/lvl 20 molten shell – increased duration Version 2: Any lvl Cast when stunned – Any lvl molten shell – increased duration You can use vaal molten shell too, but honestly, the benefits are small and the price increase is not worth it. 6. PoB:
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No flasks and dmg is set to Sirus - a very resonable default scenario https://pastebin.com/S9WxKGzm Flasks up and some settings that increase your dmg but are also true are checked: https://pastebin.com/BfsRYT0Y Link 2 is more close to reality, link 1 is for when you just are too lazy to use flasks and even do not want to resummon skeletons on time. I would not put a link with dmg set to map minions as this would be cheating but because of our curses, it is 3 times bigger than the Sirus one. 7. Bandits:
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Kill all. In general these days it seems like 99% of builds go with this option mainly because of cluster jewels and the general weakness of the other options. I have taken all 3 other options in the past in different builds but this was when I needed some very specific mods/builds. For a summoner in general, skill points are far more powerful than anything these bandits can offer. 8. Is the build unique enough to be unlikely to be nerfed any time soon:
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I was actually surprised to find that I were the only necromancer running the core part of this build. A similar build is run by some guardians, but here comes the big explanation about necro vs guardian and why I think that it is a mistake to go Guardian unless you want to focus on tankiness alone. I would argue that going guardian is only going to be good for 1 ascendancy skill point - "Radiant Faint" and everything else provided by the guardian skill tree is mediocre in comparison to the necro skill tree. Radiant Faint is amazing - it gives you around 4k es and it makes it possible to tank the maven's memory game hit. it also adds a buffer of dmg you can take that makes it basically impossible to die in maps. Still, you cannot tank everything - Atziri pizzas do 8-9k dmg each, and 2 of them will require you to have 18-19k es, not even a guardian can reach that normally. With good gear, you may reach 15k, but more is going to need major tree changes, major gear changes and require some very expensive items. As a necro, you can reach 10k es, probably 11k with some crazy amulet. I have no es on the amulet and my current es is 9986, but I am lvl 98, some of the items are not perfectly rolled, and I expect to get the missing 14es either from gear changes or just from leveling. But why go necro? If guardians have 1 node that gives 4k es alone then really, what does necro gives us that can compete? Well: "Unnatural Strenght" alone gives you around 30% more dmg as a necro, "Commander of darkness" + "Mindless Aggression" outperform the rest of the guardian dmg giving nodes and also you get a choice of "Bone barrier" or "Plaguebringer" - the first gives you a free socket slot and easy way to get 90% physical dmg reduction, while the second gives you even more dmg and some dmg reduction. Necro, gives you far far far more dmg than Guardian and this would show in clear speed and even bossing killing. Killing bosses fast is important. during the uber elder, shaper, maven, cortex, and "the feared" invitation there is ground aoe degen that increases the more the fight goes on. You cannot just spend 1-hour killing bosses unless you really have enough regen to outregen the degen. Maven with 6 pools of degen on the ground is easy, but maven with 15 pools of degen on the ground will kill you easily. Sure you can tank the maven's memory game, but what use does it make if you die to the degen? Also at some point in league, you may do boss carrying/sharing services: if you do the maven with 3 people and it is your maven key, you get 150% more loot - A smart way to both get loot faster and also help others. The maven must die asap in such case. Map clear is another scenario where necro's 30% more dmg means that you clean faster. Yes, you may fail some ultimatums on a necro and succeed on a guardian, but I would still choose to be able to do maps asap. Necro's "Unnatural strength" also makes it possible to reach key levels of the summon skeletons skill faster, meaning that you can summon 10 skeletons with 1 click without great gear costs. Anyway, I still have key differences in talent tree points when compared to the other builds. I am still much more different than them. But even if we ignore that you should note that currently if you filter for items as "Aegis Aurora", "Memory Vault", "Dead Reckoning" and skill being "Summon-Skeletons" on poe.ninja you get only 5 people playing a build like mine (I am the lone necro - Taua) https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds?item=Aegis-Aurora,Memory-Vault,Dead-Reckoning&skill=Summon-Skeletons .  ( screenshotted in case things change in the future ). Also if you see the tree heatmaps, you will see that there really are big differences:  . This is not a bad thing as it seems that different people focus on different stuff and the build is really "off-meta". The character playing the most similar build to mine is "PipPop" but he still has some big changes  like him going for avatar of fire, with the idea of using it for Strom brand and EE. I personally would have gone wave of conviction, avatar of fire, EE combo, and also I have no idea how I have even more es than him, while I play a necro. All and all, I do not believe that we will get a nerf anytime soon. The only part of our build that can be nerfed is the dmg of Vaal summon skeletons and that would suck a lot because it is currently the best skill for dmg for summoners without heavy gear investments. 9. Quick disscussion about leveling and league start setup:
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I am not that good at fast leveling, but I am probably even worse at writing a detailed guide for it. In short: every time I level from 1 to 60 I try to just move all the time and just kill enough monsters to refill quicksilver flasks. You are a witch so in the start you will probably level with aoe elemental dmg skills like freezing pulse and some of the aoe dmg traps. You can use minions for damaging bosses and you should put some summon skeletons gems for leveling in your second inventory. Try to do labs as fast as possible as "Unnatural strenght" is an insane dmg boost. There are other people who have special guides about leveling and I do not think I can tell you much more about leveling from 1 to 60. I do not think we need to farm for a tabula and at lvl 60 you should have a 5 link rare body armor and some "ok" other items that at the very least cover your resistances. You also get +30 to all elemental resistances from "Commander of darkness" and also like 10-15 more from some talent tree points. it should not be too hard for you to be 75/75/75 at lvl 60 after killing Kitava. The first items that you buy should be the aegis aurora shield and dead reckoning jewel. At league start, this may cost you around 1 ex and 10c. You then start doing maps and try to buy a memory vault and a skin of the loyal. Everything else is secondary. You should reach red maps only using that setup. For Sirus you need more than 5k es and a jewel with corrupted blood immunity for everything else, you do not need anything special. try to reach A8 before going for endgame bosses and I would advise to try to reach lvl 96 as a minimal level for maven, uber elder, uber Atziri. Also, you have to get a good wand and start buying awakened gems for endgame content. 10. Discussion about other possible build configurations:
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Idea 1: no Glancing blows
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I am lvl 98 at the time of writing this guide but when I reach lvl 99 I would get Avatar of fire and combine it with wave of conviction for a fire-based EE that also has exposure to fire so you do not miss a lot of fire dmg from your skeletons. When it comes to ascendancy points, you have 3 choices, 2 of which can be used with almost the same gem links setup and the 3rd one is a bit special: We use "commander of darkness" - "mindless aggression" - "unnatural strength" - "bone barrier" and no molten shell, but you can go "commander of darkness" - "mindless aggression" - "unnatural strength" - "plaguebringer" and molten shell. The 3rd option is a bit special: you go "commander of darkness" - "mindless aggression" - "unnatural strength" - "mistress of sacrifice" and change some of the jewels to either or and change for with the idea of removing the "Glancing blows" keystone. The idea is to reach 75/75 pure block and not get the 65% penalty from Glancing blows. You will also have to use Rainbowstrides so you lose some dmg but the main benefit is that you actually gain a lot of tankiness against many hits. You see: usually with our build we get "healed" by small hits but a large amount of big hits in a swift sequence can kill us. usually, if a hit that is lets say 1000 dmg hits us, it will get reduced from resistances or physical dmg reduction and armor by either 75% or around 90%, and the hit itself will then be reduced by 35% more when we block, meaning that the actual hit should be around 100-200, but because of Aegis Aurora we hit restore es equal to 2% of our armor, so really, the hit of 1000 will heal us for 300 es min and with flasks - 800es. Sounds good but what if we get hit by a 5000 dmg hit? After reduction, it will barely be covered by the es replenish from aegis aurora. Naturally, we have life regen and Zealoth's Oath and we can sustain 5-8k dmg hits with no problem - this is the reason why Sirus cannot kill us unless we either stay in a degen field during the fight or we are unlucky and do not block a series of hits. The chance of not blocking 1 hit is 1/4, the chance of not blocking 2 hits in a row is 1/16, 3 hits in a row - 1/64, and in a fight against Sirus we basically have a 63/64 chance to ignore his hits without problems, just dodge the meteor and you should be fine. The problem is really that some hits are either coming too fast or too big for our dmg reduction scheme: in an ultimatum, you may get by a total of 20 monsters, each of which has map mods and also is empowered by ultimatum mechanics. This means that 1: your es on gain will at some point not be high enough to nullify the dmg and heal and 2: you may have a large number of hits that you do not block. For each strike from those 20 monsters, 15 you will negate and heal slightly and 5 will hit you. This is a problem and a reason why I have died in some very very very juiced maps where the monsters hit get empowered by 8 map mods. The proposed solution to this problem is simple: if you go for pure 75/75 block, you will actually block 65% more dmg by removing "Glancing Blows". This would resolve in a lot more healing from strikes and blocking dmg - in the previous situation 20 monsters hit us, and 15 of the hits heal us, 5 of the hits deal dmg to us - it will make you actually absurdly more tanky for mapping. Well, it sounds like a good idea, right? Why not implement it? Problem is that even if you do this and solve the downsides of or ( which are easily solved ) you will still not be able to block the "real" hits from bosses that kill us and you will also lose a lot of dmg. You cannot block Atziri's pizzas, and you can naturally tank 1 of them, but by removing some jewels which grand us es you will actually lose the ability to tank single pizzas. I also do not think we can block the maven's memory game and it is also a skill that actually kills me frequently. In short, it only makes us a bit tankier for mapping while not making us really tanky for other content, and also the loss of dmg is a bit downside. I have considered this idea but also considered the downsides and thus did not invest the currency into trying it. Idea 2: Anointed flesh, Crystal skin anoint, Leadership's price, and 6 points less in dmg.
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By not taking "Rightouts army", the points leading to it, and the strength point leading the "fortress covenant" jewel spot you can free 7 points that can be invested in getting Whispers of doom ( thus freeing the anoint spot) and "Anointed fresh". Then by using a well-rolled "Leadership's price" and anointing Crystal skin we can get +5 to all max resistances. This would let us go 80/85/81 max resistances without using any purities. Should make us a lot more tanky to elemental dmg, but I am really unsure if you want to lose the dmg. If I was playing on Hardcore - sure I would strongly consider it, but .... for softcore, I would rather get the dmg especially when a very large portion of our build is pretty defensively focused anyway. If I have to imagine an actual use of this idea it would be to go guardian, use the idea and go as much defense as you can so you can make videos about how you can tank any hit in the game with uber Atziri's double flameblast being the only hit I can imagine to be deadly to you. Idea 3: using Aul's uprising with "determination cost no mana reservation"
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You can do this but then you have to get a different enchant and also will have to go shaper's touch for gloves and find a spot for the vitality aura. It is a very expensive amulet so only consider it if you want to give 25 ex for it. My gear solution is cheaper. Idea 4: not using summon skeletons but herald of purity or heralf of agony.
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Personal opinion: "Herald of purity" is more annoying to play and has lower clear speed, "Herald of agony" has better clear speed but bad boss kill speed. "Herald of agony" is really cheap to build, even cheaper than Summon skeletons on league start, but I would rather go with something more enjoyable to play and also better against bosses. I experimented with herald of agony and let me tell you this: it took me 30 minutes to kill Sirus because he teleports all the time and I lose stacks on him. Summon skeletons is killing Sirus in 10 seconds per phase. Map clear speed is almost the same if you use pierce for Summon skeletons. "Herald of purity" needs Arakaly's fang to have anything close to a reasonable clear speed and has a boss killing dmg that is good but needs you to strike the boss all the time. If you do it via cyclone, it can lead to a bad boss clearing experience, if you do via storm brand, it is fine but then map clear speed is reduced. I personally like my current build more than the herald based builds. Last edited by Xelnect on Jul 23, 2021, 12:35:18 PM Last bumped on Sep 16, 2021, 3:59:29 AM
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Hey man, thanks for the build, running a poor man's version of this (shaper's touch + astramentis) in standard at the moment. I have a question: I don't (and likely never will) have awakened hextouch, which basically means that I have to drop one of the curses. Since I want to focus on boss killing, I've just dropped the mark and apply conductivity and ele weakness using orb of storms. But now, I have an open socket on the trigger wand. What should I do with it?
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Hi there, Stoyicker. If you do not have awakened hextouch it is not really that much of a problem for boss killing. You see, awakened hextouch applies 2 curses that are both most useful for clearing speed, and awakened hextouch is only different from normal hextouch with the "Supported Skills can apply (0-1) additional Curse" mod. Basically, my build can apply 2 curses normally, but awakened hextouch applies 2 curses instead of 1 for these 2 curses spots. because hextouch does not work with marks, it cannot be used with Sniper's mark and it is used with elemental weakness and conductivity. Because you have skeletons of 3 types elemental weakness is a much more important curse than conductivity and the only bonus of conductivity is that it increases your chance to shock. If you do not have awakened hextocuh, you can use a normal hextouch with elemental weakness alone. Remove conductivity. I would still leave Sniper's mark for boss dmg on the wand spot because it numerically gives us the most dmg vs bosses of any of our curses.
In numbers: Against non-bosses removing conductivity affects only our lighting skeletons and dmg goes from 1 200 000 to 900 000. Against bosses dmg goes from 500 000 to 400 000. If you remove the sniper's mark: dmg against bosses goes from 500 000 to 350 000 for our lighting skeletons but the other 2 types of skeletons are also affected, so really it is a much worse change. Instead of conductivity, I would consider animated guardian - with just a few 1c items it will give you even more dmg than the curse and the only problem is keeping the guardian alive. Cheap items for animated guardians are Leer Cast, Southbound, Victario's Flight, Dying Breath and a redeemer body armor with blind aura. If you really want to free the spot in the wand, I am unsure of what could be a good replacement for the sniper's mark. Probably raised zombies to boost the dmg of our carrion golems and use them as meat shields. But yea, in short: conductivity is a good dmg booster, but not really all that important and can be cut if you do not have awakened hextouch. Just drop conductivity. Last edited by Xelnect on Jul 6, 2021, 7:41:25 PM
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Aaarg I didn't know the mark doesn't work with hextouch, that's an issue :/ However, I'm considering to still skip it regardless so I can leave the socket open on the wand, move tempest shield to it and then do raise zombie-ele army-feeding frenzy on the shield, since the zombies are probably easier (and cheaper) to keep alive. I'll do some testing and see how it goes. Thanks for your advice!
Last edited by Stoyicker on Jul 7, 2021, 1:14:02 PM
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hi
thinking about playing this build next league order or Ascendancies? Pantheon? | |
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what would be the best way to level this char?
Sorry just saw you proposed some leveling skills Last edited by Snowbliz on Jul 9, 2021, 4:38:09 PM
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Order of Ascendanices: "Mindless Agression" -> "Unnatural Streght" -> "Commander of darkness" -> for the last one there is a choice of a few nodes but the best one overall is Bone Barrier.
You need to rush "Unnatural Strenght" - do normal and cruel labs while leveling so that you get the dmg increase from "Mindless Agression" and "Unnatural Strenght" as fast as possible. The 30% to all elemental res from "Commander of darkness" is very good when you start mapping. Pantheon: For major nodes, I went with "Soul of the brine king" for the stun and freeze protection nodes. For minor nodes, there are a few situationally good nodes and nothing that is really important to take: "Soul of Gruthkul" is what i usually use, but I switch to "Soul of Abberath" for some maps. You can also take "Soul of Garukhan" if you want to move a bit faster. | |
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thanks for fast answer.
Wouldnt it be better to run more minions like Zombies or Spectres? | |
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The answer that I can give you is that it is indeed a good idea to run spectres and even zombies if possible but they will die far too often and need to be supported by "Minion Life Support" and even then they do die quite more than I like. You could remove some of the curses and make space for raise zombies and raise spectres and if you have a "Minion Life Support" even include an animated guardian. The problem for me really is that the minions would always die when I do have life support both in talent tree/ascendance points and a support gem. Spectres can be supporting and there are spectres with auras/frenzy/power charge generation and are a really good supporting group for our skeletons, but when some of them die, you have to resummon and it is annoying for me. I get that it is not going to be a problem for other people and if they want, they can remove the curse links and go with spectres/zombies/AG, but I just decided for myself that the best experience I get is when I only have to resummon the Carrion golem from time to time. This is more of a personal experience and is not really a matter of min-maxing, if you want you can go the other way.
While spectres and AG are really easy to include when you replace the hexes with them, zombies will have to be put in the wand and trigger casted. Still, do not expect that they will be very tanky, do a lot of dmg, and honestly I do not see them as all that useful. Spectres/AG are both able to support our skeletons and can provide tons of dmg and are actually really useful. |
