[3.25 Update] Stone Golem Necromancer, all content + Uber viable ~90mil DPS

[3.25] Update:

All PoBs have been updated. The rework of Dread Banner cost the build around 25% of it's dmg.

Reworked the life based ultra high budget so it no longer relies on Guardian's Blessing Support.

Intro:

Hi everyone,

I want to show you my Stone Golem Necromancer which outperformed my expectations by excelling in various types of content including mapping, (AFK-)Blight and Simulacrum as well as doing a decent job at killing Uber bosses.

Basics:

The SGs are permanent minions that have three abilities: The default attack, slam and roll. The slam is an AoE attack with high damage and 4 second cd and the roll is a vector based attack with low damage and 6 second cd.

The SGs can perpetually slam as long as you fit the attack speed to the cooldown of the slam. This can be achieved by increasing cooldown recovery via quality of the gem (2% cdr per quality with the Stone Golem of the Hordes) and 20-30% additional quality from ashes of the stars in the medium budget and onwards.

Class/Ascendancy:

You want to play SGs on the Necromancer so you can grab Commander of Darkness, Mindless Aggression, Bone Barrier and either Mistress of Sacrifice or Plaguebringer for increased damage, elemental resistances, minion&player survivability, skill effect duration, Offerings applying to the player as well as Minions leeching life to the player.

Bandits & Pantheon:

Kill all bandits for the passive points.

Use Soul of the Brine King for freeze immunity and reduced chill effect as well as Soul of Abberath for burning ground immunity and reduced ignite duration in the ES based and the Low Budget version.

In the Life based versions (except the low budget) you want to use Soul of Lunaris for defences and Soul of Ryslatha for flask charges and increased life flask recovery on low life.

Leveling:

The base skill gem can be accessed after the quest 'Breaking the Seal' in act 4 but is initially only used as an auxiliary minion in combination with zombies due to the limited number of golems available to the player.

Once you get access to two clayshapers you can start using them as main minions in theory. However I do recommend playing something else like Absolution until you can get your hands on the Clayshapers and a set of primordial jewels (3 p. harmonies + p. might).

The Stone Golem of the Hordes is a transfigured gem which you can access via lab or trade and should be used instead of the base version asap.

A skill guide for the campaign and passive tree progression can be found in the low budget PoBs.













Miscellaneous:

Crafting guides for most of the items and additional SG Necromancer content can be found in the description of the video guide. A skill guide for the campaign and atlas passive tree progression can be found in the Low Budget PoB.

Enjoy!

Hi do you think this will still be viable for 3.23? I wanted to try it out. I did exploding golems this league but they were not that good. I'd rather keep them permanently up and see how it goes. I also was Elementalist which was bad no damage really and lack of survival.

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Shaddrak wrote:

Hi do you think this will still be viable for 3.23? I wanted to try it out. I did exploding golems this league but they were not that good. I'd rather keep them permanently up and see how it goes.

Sure. Not being able to use tattoos makes the build a bit weaker but it's of course fully functional outside of that.

"

Shaddrak wrote:

I also was Elementalist which was bad no damage really and lack of survival.

The Elementalist is a pretty bad ascendancy for minions because it doesn't scale them directly.

The +max number of golems isn't too crazy either (6 vs 8 golems with clayshapers and primordial jewels early on; 5 vs 6 golems with forbidden and primordial jewels later on) making Necromancer the top ascendancy for physical golems and the Ascendant the ascendancy of choice for golem builds that deal elemental damage.

Awesome thank you for the feedback appreciate it. I'll totally be doing stone golem Necromancer. I already added the POB's you have for all 3 different levels. I think a lot of people are missing out on this gameplay. I don't see many playing golems at all and if they do it's mainly Carrion golems and not Stone Golems. I kind of think of it as almost being AFK and just letting them do the killing for you most of the time. Just be aware of surroundings.

I was going to also ask what do you think are good Atlas Trees to follow for making currency with this build? I'm sure it can run a lot of the content on the tree but what is an easy to follow one after I get all the map quant I need? Maybe you have an atlas tree I missed?

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Shaddrak wrote:

I was going to also ask what do you think are good Atlas Trees to follow for making currency with this build? I'm sure it can run a lot of the content on the tree but what is an easy to follow one after I get all the map quant I need? Maybe you have an atlas tree I missed?

The build can do a range of different things including blight, harvest, expedition, simulacrum, delve, etc ...

I usually use currency strategies as exposure for my builds, specifically the mapping portion of them. However I didn't have a lot of time to play last league so I didn't end up making a currency strategy video because it was already very late in the league. My currency strategy was Packsize Harvest/Expedition and looked like this:

https://poeplanner.com/atlas-tree/BAAKAIQAXK2W54kR6jViA7L6qe9sma6ltOmLLoa0StBdoP7F8VS4_1qBif48WSFg1LkiKfNbS9-Ug5ZQ-HOMQbVmq00QgM4AXp3OWnyryf2N6pPyqLzMt73a4_NgsuT3J3UOSufZnzskpdcrRsAEP3tgKl7Uj4ed0MaX4tAtTdqCp3jCh1Vw41f8glGAdtJwxKbPR_CA56713rfP0w59tZvGXWulc04botDgDF9KyxfPiTUwkc44v8dd5uiu735AE30LEv21jtjBr-Xs_W3VYv4lw5dXFBc9cQsqtgMwy3IAf3NEM8ao4Nib1WnNliPCqUPk_BGstWNmHz8ItJ7EGJGv6STVOYfU6We51NAoFAAfiwgAAAAAAAADAwAAAAAAAAAAAA==

Map of choice is Mausoleum because of the absent Boss altars and you're pairing it with Eater influence, 4 gilded scarabs and Jun, Sacred Grove, Lifeforce Duplication, Runic Monster Duplication compasses while running Quant as Kirac mod.

Thanks for the feedback.

So does the new summon golem gem change the build at all? or the new raise zombie gem? All the summoned golems except for stone get 20% base life we only get 15% life which sucks. But we do get up to 20% more life regen from golem with quality now which is probably better than the rest.

I'm also wondering about the new skill trees if we can use something from elementalist in there and build like an elementalist necro build? That would be amazing.

"

Shaddrak wrote:

Thanks for the feedback.

So does the new summon golem gem change the build at all? or the new raise zombie gem? All the summoned golems except for stone get 20% base life we only get 15% life which sucks. But we do get up to 20% more life regen from golem with quality now which is probably better than the rest.

To get up to our normal amount of golems we need one of the transfigured gems so that's definetly different from the usual approach. The Stone Golem get's only 15% more life because it has more base life than the other golems so this won't be an issue at all.

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Shaddrak wrote:

I'm also wondering about the new skill trees if we can use something from elementalist in there and build like an elementalist necro build? That would be amazing.

Since the charms roughly give you 25% of the value of an ascendancy notable I severely doubt that we're getting +max number of golems from them.

With the nerfs to the Zombie clear speed Stone Golem definetly looks good, especially in the medium budget and onwards.

Anima is nerfed too.

Animate Guardian:
No longer has 0-76% increased Minion Maximum Life, Minions deal 0-76% increased Physical Damage with Melee Attacks, or causes Minion's Attacks to deal additional Physical Damage. It now has 0% more Minion Maximum Life and more Minion Damage at gem level 1, both scaling up to 38% at gem level 20. Animated Guardians now have roughly 11% more base Life inherently, and now have 2 to 6 added Physical Damage while Unarmed.

Yeah AG is going to hurt and might die a LOT more often. We are losing almost 45% life on it which will make it very hard to keep alive but then again there are new Animated Guardians available apparently. Like with that new showing of the smite one.


The Anima Stone Unique Jewel no longer has "+1 to maximum number of Summoned Golems", though existing versions of this item are unaffected by this change. Golem builds should now be less dependent on this Jewel to be effective, and instead have Transfigured Skill Gems available that serve a similar purpose.

This also kinds of screws things up but it does say transfigured skill gems will serve a similar purpose who knows what if we gain +2 golems instead?

"

Shaddrak wrote:

Yeah AG is going to hurt and might die a LOT more often. We are losing almost 45% life on it which will make it very hard to keep alive but then again there are new Animated Guardians available apparently. Like with that new showing of the smite one.

It literally says "Animated Guardians now have roughly 11% more base Life inherently" lol