[3.14] Flame Golem 101 - Complete Guide To Golemancy, ✔️All Bosses Down, ✔️Necro, ✔️Elementalist

Hi

I really love the build so far. I have a question about shield & necromancer Aegis

I have just bought Vuctario's charity shield but bit reluctant to use Necromancer Aegis as I would die easily...(I have not tried yet)
Would it make much difference if I dont use Necro Aegis ?



Also, is Winter orb best option for this build ? or do you have any other skill you recommend ?
Thanks

"

Hey Mika,

Thanks to your input I cleaned up my tree a bit, so I can reach 191% life and still have 9 sockets, which should give me sth around 6k/6,2k-ish life lategame.

Rumi's still missing which will boost the defense more, also no Vaal Molten Shell yet (which is busted this league with the armour stacking I do). Also added Flesh and Stone for some Blind action in melee range and less damage from afar. I'm not happy yet bc of my relatively low life pool, but this will change as soon as I gain higher levels.

What I'm still missing is Fortify. I don't see myself using Animate Guardian (I heard Legion mobs are killing it quite often) and I barely used Leap Slam with Fortify anyway so I removed Fortify - Phase Run is simply more fluent while mapping.
I'm thinking about Vigilant Strike, but I won't have enough points for another socket for The Vigil. What is your view on the survivability of Animate Guardian this league? It seems the easiest way to fit Fortify in my approach to your build.

/edit: Another question: do I have to take Sacrifice in the tree to cap my Flame Golem resistances? Looks to me that way in PoB :(

Hello :)

I don't have enough currency yet to buy lvl 20 Animate Guardian gem yet, so can't say much about it's survival yet. I would guess that especially with your setup high level AG should be able to survive as you run Bone Offering instead of Flesh Offering. I would however not recommend trying AG before you can get access to lvl 20 gem. If you want to try AGs survival first, you can replace Kingmaker with Dying Breath (1 alch) and -fire res helmet with leer cast (1 alch).

Yep, your minions are not capped atm (around +40%) and especially AG needs capped elemental resistances to survive. It's quite tricky to cap minions resistances if you don't take elemental resistance nodes for them. You could run purity of elements or socket some rare 10% ele res jewels for minions as quick fix.

I may not be able to comment much about the tree as it's so different to what I'm used to run, but I will happily answer if you got questions about mechanics or other parts of the build :)

"

I recently got this

can I still use it with Solar Guards even with Conc Effect or is the reduced AOE way too extreme?

Hey :)

You can run Solar Guards fine in the helmet. They don't have much area to start with, so conc effect doesn't affect them that much. I have been happy with my Solar Guards tearing down Legion packs so far in mid tier maps, so I can recommend at least trying them.

If you run Combustion with Golems, you can find some helmets with Immolation support in them. It adds 4th support for SGs as Golems will ignite enemies for them and Solar Guards will hit burning enemies and get the extra damage.

"

In the section for Animate Guardian you mentioned that you can use it to applly elemental weakness, If you go that route, what do you usually replace it with in your gear setup.

Hi :)

Elemental Weakness by Animate Guardian is meant to apply curse to enemy when your too far for your own curses to affect it. AGs elemental weakness won't override your own curses, so it can hit enemies when they are in your curse range and apply its own solo curse when you are kiting endgame bosses across the screen.

AG hits so few enemies that I would not completely replace self cast Elemental Weakness.

"

Hi

I really love the build so far. I have a question about shield & necromancer Aegis

I have just bought Vuctario's charity shield but bit reluctant to use Necromancer Aegis as I would die easily...(I have not tried yet)
Would it make much difference if I dont use Necro Aegis ?

Also, is Winter orb best option for this build ? or do you have any other skill you recommend ?
Thanks

Hi and thanks for support ^^

Victario's Charity gives about 1.5x DPS boost and makes map clearing lot faster thanks to added movement speed for minions. The loss of block chance and EHP (HP + ES) is noticable, but if you are good at kiting you can prevent most of the deaths. However it's always trading safety for speed, so if you are still leveling I would wait till you reach level your are comfortable to stay a while.

Now that Cyclone is channeling skill, it opens up some interesting opportunities. Other channeling spells to trigger EE are less effective in my mind as they wont keep on triggering it once you stop casting.

However Cyclone may open up some new possible links. It wont trigger EE straight away on it's own, so ring needs to have added lightning / cold damage. Once that is fulfilled any Cast when Channeling -> Spell 1 -> Spell 2 should work. I just started testing it today, but found nothing very effective. There may however some good combo with Shaper / Elder gloves that have good supports.

Hello Mika

I got a question about the Jewel setup.

I have been away for a bit and since i last played this build it seems that you did add an "Watcher's Eye".

Right now i have one Jewel slot less.

So Iam not sure if i should use a 7th Harmony or only six Hamonys and a Watchers's Eye.

My six Harmonys have 43, 44, 45, 44, 44 and 43 inc cooldown recovery speed atm and iam sitting on ~2.8kHP and 7.1k ES.

Thanks for any advice - and thanks a lot for this build. Before i played this build i only played "direct damage" builds, but this one was a true eye-opener. :)

Has anybody tried the New Pledge of Hands with Flame Golems?

"

ondoki wrote:

Hello Mika

I got a question about the Jewel setup.

I have been away for a bit and since i last played this build it seems that you did add an "Watcher's Eye".

Right now i have one Jewel slot less.

So Iam not sure if i should use a 7th Harmony or only six Hamonys and a Watchers's Eye.

My six Harmonys have 43, 44, 45, 44, 44 and 43 inc cooldown recovery speed atm and iam sitting on ~2.8kHP and 7.1k ES.

Thanks for any advice - and thanks a lot for this build. Before i played this build i only played "direct damage" builds, but this one was a true eye-opener. :)

Hello and thanks for support ^^

Golems work very well even with 6x Harmonies. Using less Harmonies lowers their DPS only somewhat, but boss damage comes mostly from Tukohama Vanguards. As long as Flame Golems are cleaning map at movement speed, you have enough Harmonies and minion damage.

There are some really Watchers Eyes that work well with the build. Optimal would be :
1) Energy Shield from clarity

2) 2x of these three :
- Energy Shield regen from Discipline
- Energy Shield Recovery rate from Discipline
- Energy Shield faster recharge rate from Discipline

Good Watchers Eyes can however be extremely expensive and there is no way to craft one as they are totally RNG based.

League also has new legion jewels that can add huge damage boost to minions, but I have not seen any in use yet.

"

livejamie wrote:

Has anybody tried the New Pledge of Hands with Flame Golems?

Hey :)

I have also been wandering about how new Pledge would work with Flame Golems. I don't have access to one myself, so maybe someone could post results here?

PoB doesn't have stats for new Pledge of hands yet, but I found this thread :
https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/bye5z5/how_is_the_new_pledge_of_hands/

It seems that each cast has added area of effect and damage multiplier. This could make cast animation last long enough for Golems to get new charge before old one of spent. This could in theory prevent them from going to melee range with weaker spells.

Setup would have one less Golem and no charges, but should be worth testing.

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PS,



I actually got generous donation form guild member and did some testing with it on standard :

FLAME GOLEMS
- Golems cast 4x times with Greater Echo and Spell Echo, you also cast 4x Golems at once
- Golems will cast longer, which makes they stay in one place which wont let them go to melee spells so fast
- Golems don't move in animation lock, but you can force teleport them near you so this is not big minus
- Damage starts slower as you lose 1x Golems, but ramps higher as last Orbs deal much more damage
- With Inc AoE instead of Combustion, Flame Golems can clear larger areas. They gain 50% increased AoE per repeat, which ends with ability to clear 1/2 screen per volley, orbs also overlap so this could be small DPS boost

Best Flame Golems links were :
- Flame Golems -> Minion Damage -> Echo -> GMP -> Ele Focus -> Cont Dest
as Pledge cant have +1 level to gems and Empower is not that strong in it.

Flame Golems felt pretty similar to what with ClayShaper + Victarios Charity. Clear was bit slower at first, but when they got to 4th cast DPS was buit higher. Both setups are viable and I did test with Necromancer, so I had only 4x Golems. Maybe Elementalist with even P.Chain would benefit more from it as there would be much more Golems shooting.

LIGHTNING GOLEMS
- Lightning Golems lay orbs much faster
- Orbs don't get benefit from echo or greater echo
- Pledge could work with Elementalist with P.Chain against stationary bosses like U Elder, U atziri or Shaper

I also tried Lightning Golems for fun as I test them from time to time and they seem to get nice boost from Pledge.

Best setup I could find was :
- L Golem -> Minion Damage -> Echo -> Added Lightning -> Ele Focus -> Cont Dest.

They could also work much better with Elementalist with P.Chain as losing 4x golems to 3x golems is pretty big DPS loss.

Overall Pledge was very fun to test and worth trying out if you want to do something different.

All legacy pledged in standard were rerolled to be new Pledges, so you can buy any 6 link pledge for 4 exalt in standard. Spell damage doesnt matter as its your damage and not minions.

Hi Mika

Question, why are we stacking harmonys vs jewels w/ min life + min dmg + min res/block? i mean considering that the latter affects both golem and tokuhama where as the harmonys only affects the golems.


Thanks!

"

msterry wrote:

Hi Mika

Question, why are we stacking harmonys vs jewels w/ min life + min dmg + min res/block? i mean considering that the latter affects both golem and tokuhama where are the harmonys only affects the golems.


Thanks!

I think you usually go for 5 or 6 harmonies. That should be enough to get the cooldown on their fireball spell pretty low. Plus it will give your golems a lot of regen making them close to unkillable.

Then you can definitely start trying to get the rare jewels with the affixes you suggest.

"

msterry wrote:

Hi Mika

Question, why are we stacking harmonys vs jewels w/ min life + min dmg + min res/block? i mean considering that the latter affects both golem and tokuhama where as the harmonys only affects the golems.

Thanks!

"

I think you usually go for 5 or 6 harmonies. That should be enough to get the cooldown on their fireball spell pretty low. Plus it will give your golems a lot of regen making them close to unkillable.

Then you can definitely start trying to get the rare jewels with the affixes you suggest.

Hello :)

Rare elemental resistance jewels were meant to be make sure that Golems or Animate Guardian wont die on boss fights. Necromancer wont need them as much, but as it raises Tukohama Vanguards damage and they are dealing most boss DPS running maybe one is good practice if it has good stats for you also.

Golems have to deal enough damage to clear at movement speed and have low enough cooldown to constantly cast the orbs. They will deal less damage at bosses anyway, so raising their damage is not most important and you can run Watchers Eye or rare / Abyssal jewel with good stats instead of all Harmonies.

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UPDATE

POSSIBLE ELEMENTALIST VARIANT CHANGES



I have been testing "Pledge of Hands" with Elementalist + Primordial Chain now for few days with excellent results. I'm thinking of converting whole Elementalist variant to use both Pledge + Primordial Chain and dropping Tukohama Vanguard Specters with Elementalist.

Path of Building does not have new Pledge yet, and also Elementalist Ascendancy nodes seem to be broken. Lot of developing has to be done by trial and error. There's also some tweaking I'm working on that seems to affect Flame Golem AI making them better at boss fights. Also have to make Youtube video of map run with Pledge.

You can check my lvl 97 char in standard if your interested in checking the development. There's very nice and effective setup coming put in near future ;)

Seems Pledge Golementalist would become boss killer with the new setup...

"

crossroader wrote:

Seems Pledge Golementalist would become boss killer with the new setup...

Hello :)

Yep, I have been doing more optimizations with the setup and I'm surprised at how fast if clears packs and kills endgame bosses. Larger bosses die even faster as the orbs can overlap creating shotgun effect.

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PLEDGE OF HANDS -ELEMENTALIST

CHIMERA BOSS RUN

https://youtu.be/c_YLeI3n0Jc

CHAYULA BOSS RUN

https://youtu.be/m7hh5pAHIpA

I decided to record Chayula run with the current setup, as it represents the situation in league where you need to kill large packs of enemies in short time. Chayula run is considered hard overall, so it also shows the variants defenses well.

Here's list about what this variants benefits :
- Massive damage and amount of projectiles (6x Golems shooting 5x projectiles 4x times per second)
- Golems are immune to elemental damage (Can do reflect maps)
- Golems projectiles will knockback, hinder and blind enemies
- Character is totally immune to chill, freeze, ignite, shock, bleed (Hinder, silence, maim, corrupt blood if counting jewels)
- Chaos damage does not bypass Energy Shield
- Debuffs enemies with Temporal Chains, Aspect of Spider, Elemental Equilibrium (And debuffs from Golems projectiles)

Setup is still experimental as I have to PoB -data, but pakcs / bosses die extremely fast and setup feels pretty safe. 4x Magma Orb repeats per cast seems to keep Golems at one place, so they don't go near boss and start using weaker attacks. Knockback from Projectile Weakness and all movement debuffs makes sure that any enemy wont get close enough for Golems to engage in close range fights.

Most important rule seems to be keeping 1-to-1 ratio between 4x cast speed and cooldown for Magma Orb. If Golems cast faster than cooldown ends, they will go in with weaker spells. If they cast too slow, charges accumulate and DPS is lost. With 10x default jewels cast time for 4x orbs is roughly 1.2 seconds and cooldown is close to that, so that's good place to start. Best way to increase DPS is to cut down both cooldown and cast time for 4x casts with 1:1 ratio and not increase Golems damage directly.

Overall this variant should work well in legion league as fast clear is needed there more than extreme boss damage.

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PS

Added second video as Chimera boss run. Fixed my recording software settings and got finally smooth gameplay recording. It's not as colorful as usual, but fps is now much better.