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

Good changes for specs overall IMO. Removing a lot of the hassle of where and when to re-summon them will make me much more likely to use them going forward. I hope they haven't moved the +1 Spectre from the tree but I guess we will have to wait and see.

I'm thinking I may well start as an elementalist with 8 golems using double clayshaper. Then have either solarguards or TV specs as backup to add clear / boss damage as required. May depend on pricing of helms as to which one I end up sticking with! I normally run fairly low tier maps anyway so having a lot of boss damage / tankiness may not really be needed for me this league. Especially if there is no "endgame boss" to face this league.

I'm liking the changes to necro quite a bit. Definitely feels well rounded without feeling like you have to be necro to play certain summons like zombies / skeletons / Spectres. May not get round to playing one this league if the elementalist works out. Going by GGG's usual cadence I expect it will be OP this league and then over-nerfed next!!! I'm happy to stick with my dumpster-tier Elementalist which can surely only get better in the future!

On the downside I guess this league will make level 4 empower's extremely expensive!! Last league you might have only wanted one of them for ED. Now you might want several for various minion summons :(

https://pastebin.com/raw/kS2CPnFt
last baeclast

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SUMMONER STUFF
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-they don't want to make animate weapon good because It AFFEcTs The theME oF THe SKilL

-animate weapon is not going to be viable in blight at all, confirmed by Neon, monsters aren't gonna drop weapons

-if you're targeting an enemy when casting srs, that enemy now becomes the default target of the srs when it is summoned, it might help focus fire bosses etc.
the change has some overlap with deathmark, but it was made before they made the support, and it seems kinda good so it stays

-it feels kinda off that if you want to play a summoner you have to pick necro
as a solution to that, necro is still the best and you're totally gonna pick that but idk at least they mentioned it during the podcast

-they don't want to force players to use multiple minions, say you want to do skeletons, you should be able to just use skeletons
exception being the new golem, you're probably gonna use it on minion builds cause it buffs minions

-the reason necro is getting some not-summoner support with gem levels, so you can get higher level corpses for detonating, is that they don't want to make a 1-build ascendancy

-they're MAYBE removing desecrate cooldown

-VD is just better DD, tough shit, Neon couldn't really disagree

"

DrHarvey12 wrote:

Good changes for specs overall IMO. Removing a lot of the hassle of where and when to re-summon them will make me much more likely to use them going forward. I hope they haven't moved the +1 Spectre from the tree but I guess we will have to wait and see.

I'm thinking I may well start as an elementalist with 8 golems using double clayshaper. Then have either solarguards or TV specs as backup to add clear / boss damage as required. May depend on pricing of helms as to which one I end up sticking with! I normally run fairly low tier maps anyway so having a lot of boss damage / tankiness may not really be needed for me this league. Especially if there is no "endgame boss" to face this league.

I'm liking the changes to necro quite a bit. Definitely feels well rounded without feeling like you have to be necro to play certain summons like zombies / skeletons / Spectres. May not get round to playing one this league if the elementalist works out. Going by GGG's usual cadence I expect it will be OP this league and then over-nerfed next!!! I'm happy to stick with my dumpster-tier Elementalist which can surely only get better in the future!

On the downside I guess this league will make level 4 empower's extremely expensive!! Last league you might have only wanted one of them for ED. Now you might want several for various minion summons :(

Hello :)

I think you mean 9x Golems as we get extra Golem from skill-tree now? ;)

Seems like boss damage is not most important aspect at least while mapping, so the extra Spec with 2x totems should become pretty effective tower defender.

My guess is that Necros will still be far from tier 1 builds clear-speed and don't really need much nerf expect maybe some defenses. Giving near-capped block to char that has low aggro already and can keep distance seems hard to balance.

The Pledge of Hands -Elementalist has been very fun to play and deals huge boss damage while clearing maps at good speed. It's not very expensive to gear if you can get you hands on 6-link Pledge somehow. I can recommend trying it out in standard when earlier league ends.

Yep, I also think that Empower and +3 minion level helmets will be very expensive this league. Might be good chance to do currency by rolling +3 elder helmet.

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https://pastebin.com/raw/kS2CPnFt
last baeclast

Hi :)

Pretty interesting stuff. I wonder if they will drop Convocations cooldown somehow as Necro loses the 50% reduction.

Detonate corpse should be fun and I guess we will be seeing a lot of them this league. Desecrate cooldown removal would be very nice!

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2627116

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Some uniques have been changed to apply modifiers to global gem levels. This is mostly the case on caster weapons, but some specific minion items like Bones of Ullr have also received this treatment. Bones of Ullr now grants +1 to all Raise Zombie gems and all Raise Spectre gems, instead of affecting the maximum minion count, as the additional maximum spectres modifier was too much power from a single item. Now, raising the level of these minion gems to a high enough level will grant additional maximum minions, so these modifiers are still useful. All of the changes will be shown in the patch notes.

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Minions

We've made a large number of additions and changes to Minions to improve build diversity and give players the option of having more control over their armies. You can read about some of these here.

Almost every system in the game that touches Minions has been reviewed and rebalanced or changed. Here are some of the more notable changes:

All minions have had their Accuracy increased. The result of this is that a level 20 Raise Zombie, Summoned Skeleton or Raging Spirit will have an 80% chance to hit a level 84 enemy, if you have no minion accuracy modifiers.

Golems have all been reviewed and adjusted, to make more varieties of golems have competitive levels of power. Chaos, Lightning and Stone Golems have been improved in various ways to make them more competitive with Flame and Ice Golems, as well as the new Carrion Golem. As an example, Chaos Golem has more Area of Effect on its Cascade, has 100% Physical Damage converted to Chaos, and its ongoing chaos storm now has "Spell Damage modifiers apply to this skill's damage over time", in addition to damage adjustments.

If you're targeting a monster when you cast Summon Raging Spirit, the Raging Spirit created will attempt to attack that enemy first. If it can't reach the enemy or the enemy dies, it returns to its standard behaviour. This is still overridden by the Deathmark Support.

The Minion and Totem Elemental Resistance Support has been changed to Elemental Army Support. It no longer applies to Totems, but lets supported minions apply a -10% Exposure based on their highest elemental damage dealt, and grants them More Elemental Damage. At higher levels it also grants more maximum elemental resistances.

Convocation's cooldown has been shortened, now that the Necromancer no longer has a notable that grants cooldown recovery to it. Its life recovery is now a percentage of maximum life, rather than a flat value, letting it scale to higher levels a little better.

Desecrate has had its cooldown removed, and now has a shorter cast time. It has a shorter duration and a lower corpse limit now, but this will make it a much more reliable tool for both Minion builds and builds that explode corpses.

Offerings are now more reliable and easier to manage. They now have a higher base duration, gain an additional second for each corpse consumed, consume half as many corpses, and they have an ongoing marker over the player rather than on the ground, so you'll always know when they expire.

The Dead Reckoning Unique Jewel can now turn up to 15 skeleton warriors into mages, up from 5 and is now limited to 1. Using multiple copies of the jewel was an unnecessary cost for the power provided, and this should make the build more accessible as well.

There have been many changes to crafting modifiers that affect minions, including:

A new Atlas-specific base type, the Convoking Wand, which has an implicit that lets it roll new Minion modifiers.

Essence of Fear has been changed to match other minion bonuses, which means it grants higher values of increased minion damage on weapons.

Incursion item Minion modifiers have been changed and improved.

A new Elemental Resistance and Minion Elemental Resistance crafted modifier has been added.

A new craftable Minion Movement Speed modifier has been added.

Do you think chaos golems have a shot to be viable? I've always wanted to do it, but they didn't have the dmg, clear speed, or spectre synergy. They still have awkward skills to support, so it still feels unlikely.

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mika2salo wrote:

Hello :)

I think you mean 9x Golems as we get extra Golem from skill-tree now? ;)

I still think it will be 8.

2 from Clayshapers
2 from Anima Stone
2 from Elementalist
1 from Skill Gem
1 from Tree

9 would obviously be better though so if I'm missing one somewhere let me know!!!

I see they mention in the dev manifesto that Elementalist is getting some changes:

The Elementalist has had its Golem path adjusted, providing much more power to the player on an invested Golem character, while no longer being the only way for a character to get additional golems outside of unique items thanks to a new Golem cluster on the passive tree. It should be a more desirable path for builds that don't rely entirely on their minions as a result. Beacon of Ruin now grants increased effect of non-damaging ailments, to improve its overall power.

Much more power definitely sounds promising!!! Even if Beacon of Ruin gets a little more buffed that might mean I actually bother with it if having good shock time will noticeably buff minion DPS too.

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The Elementalist has had its Golem path adjusted, providing much more power to the player on an invested Golem character, while no longer being the only way for a character to get additional golems outside of unique items thanks to a new Golem cluster on the passive tree. It should be a more desirable path for builds that don't rely entirely on their minions as a result. Beacon of Ruin now grants increased effect of non-damaging ailments, to improve its overall power.

Interestingly changed only numerical values or added new properties?

"

Golems have all been reviewed and adjusted, to make more varieties of golems have competitive levels of power. Chaos, Lightning and Stone Golems have been improved in various ways to make them more competitive with Flame and Ice Golems, as well as the new Carrion Golem. As an example, Chaos Golem has more Area of Effect on its Cascade, has 100% Physical Damage converted to Chaos, and its ongoing chaos storm now has "Spell Damage modifiers apply to this skill's damage over time", in addition to damage adjustments.

maybe we have new meta for golems

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Do you think chaos golems have a shot to be viable? I've always wanted to do it, but they didn't have the dmg, clear speed, or spectre synergy. They still have awkward skills to support, so it still feels unlikely.

Hello :)

I'm not sure yet. The area of chaos Golems "Chaos Storm" is minimal and damage is quite low atm. They have "Cascade" which is medium range attack, but they use it only on melee range.

GGG triple nerfed them few years ago when they were viable and could kill Shaper in seconds with poison. If I remember correctly GGG :

1) Made so that "Minion damage" support didn't affect poison anymore

2) Poison was dropped form 10% to 8% of the original hits damage

3) They lowered the Chaos cloud range that Chaos Golems use?

Problem is not really the damage or random skill-pool, but rather that they don't have movement based attack like Ice Golems / Carrion Golems or projectile attacks. If GGG doesn't give them one, the will most likely remain as boss killers at best.

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I still think it will be 8.

2 from Clayshapers
2 from Anima Stone
2 from Elementalist
1 from Skill Gem
1 from Tree

9 would obviously be better though so if I'm missing one somewhere let me know!!!

I see they mention in the dev manifesto that Elementalist is getting some changes:

The Elementalist has had its Golem path adjusted, providing much more power to the player on an invested Golem character, while no longer being the only way for a character to get additional golems outside of unique items thanks to a new Golem cluster on the passive tree. It should be a more desirable path for builds that don't rely entirely on their minions as a result. Beacon of Ruin now grants increased effect of non-damaging ailments, to improve its overall power.

Much more power definitely sounds promising!!! Even if Beacon of Ruin gets a little more buffed that might mean I actually bother with it if having good shock time will noticeably buff minion DPS too.

Hi :)

I thought that you were going for Primordial Chain rather than Anima Stone while leveling, my mistake.

More choice is Golems would be amazing! I would probably make build for each Golem at that point ^^ Let's hope they make it right.

Elementalist really needs some buff. At least they should the shock for 20%, like Necro has.

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Interestingly changed only numerical values or added new properties?

"

maybe we have new meta for golems

Hey :)

I really hope the rework the skill for most of the Golems rather than just buff damage and convert damage types to match. At least 1x projectile / ranged or movement & attack skills is required per Golem to make them even remotely viable.

I will keep an eye for new Golems. If they seem strong enough, I will start immediately cooking once the PoB is out ;)

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MANIFESTO

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Bones of Ullr now grants +1 to all Raise Zombie gems and all Raise Spectre gems, instead of affecting the maximum minion count, as the additional maximum spectres modifier was too much power from a single item. Now, raising the level of these minion gems to a high enough level will grant additional maximum minions, so these modifiers are still useful. All of the changes will be shown in the patch notes.

Hard to say how this affects total number of Specters or their numbers yet, as we don't know how well extra specs scale with level. I imagine Empower will be used with Specs also. One interesting idea is to swap Specs to armor and Golems to helmet. This way we could get +2 or even +4 level for Specs easily.

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Golems have all been reviewed and adjusted, to make more varieties of golems have competitive levels of power. Chaos, Lightning and Stone Golems have been improved in various ways to make them more competitive with Flame and Ice Golems, as well as the new Carrion Golem. As an example, Chaos Golem has more Area of Effect on its Cascade, has 100% Physical Damage converted to Chaos, and its ongoing chaos storm now has "Spell Damage modifiers apply to this skill's damage over time", in addition to damage adjustments.

This is great if it's done right. Problem was not really the damage or the mix-match of skills but rather how they were designed from the start.

Stone and Chaos golems have no movement skills and they are not projectile based. Unless they add movement skill or projectiles, they will clear with minimal speed. Ice Golems are also physical based, but they have movement skill which is also attack.

My wish is :

Stone Golems -> Physical based archers like the statues. We have now 2 or actually 3 physical main Golems. Adding them more damage wont affect anything and even adding not-spammable movement skill keeps them slower than Ice Golems.

Chaos Golems -> They should have movable area of effect chaos damage circle like Blade flurry. This would differentiate them from other Golems and let them clear with decent speed. The chaos storm they cast has pitiful range and even thou Cascade is ranged ability, they use it only on melee range.

Lightning Golems -> Focus either on projectiles or the orbs. They cant use both with currect supports, and nothing replaces "Greater Multiple Projectiles" in green slot easily on boss fights when Orbs are used.

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The Minion and Totem Elemental Resistance Support has been changed to Elemental Army Support. It no longer applies to Totems, but lets supported minions apply a -10% Exposure based on their highest elemental damage dealt, and grants them More Elemental Damage. At higher levels it also grants more maximum elemental resistances.

This is nice buff for Specters support gems.

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Convocation's cooldown has been shortened, now that the Necromancer no longer has a notable that grants cooldown recovery to it. Its life recovery is now a percentage of maximum life, rather than a flat value, letting it scale to higher levels a little better.

Great news as we can use it in "Cast When Damage Taken" links with all variants.

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Desecrate has had its cooldown removed, and now has a shorter cast time. It has a shorter duration and a lower corpse limit now, but this will make it a much more reliable tool for both Minion builds and builds that explode corpses.

Good stuff, but not sure if it affects builds Winter Orb -> Cast when Channeling -> Desecrate -> Bone Offering any way.

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Offerings are now more reliable and easier to manage. They now have a higher base duration, gain an additional second for each corpse consumed, consume half as many corpses, and they have an ongoing marker over the player rather than on the ground, so you'll always know when they expire.

This is very nice! Being able to see the offering on character makes it much more reliable and the buff to block chance when using Bone Offering is huge.

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A new Atlas-specific base type, the Convoking Wand, which has an implicit that lets it roll new Minion modifiers.
Essence of Fear has been changed to match other minion bonuses, which means it grants higher values of increased minion damage on weapons.

This is nice and new Essence will most likely be used to craft the wands for the build.

"

A new craftable Minion Movement Speed modifier has been added.

This seems very good also.

Hey Mika,

Oh yeah, I didn't go with the Primordial Chain, otherwise it would be 9 like you say without the Anima stone. I never actually league-start as minions preferring to get to maps with the minimum fuss; usually as some kind of generic spell caster.

Patch notes look pretty good from what I could see. Definitely some good QoL changes for elementalist with all golems now gaining elemental immunity so using chaos and stone golems is now going to be a good option. Especially as it sounds like they also buffed the effect of each golem on you which should scale really nicely with the phys mitigation from chaos golems and the life regen from stone golems.

Other good things is that I can't see they have changed the Death Attunment notable on the tree so I assume we can still get +1 Spectre from that. The bad news is that you can no longer craft +1 Spectre summon boots. They will now instead roll +1 spectre level. Even more sadly existing version will be changed to this so no legacy +1 Spectre boots which I think is a shame. Given the kind of nuts items which exist in Std I can't see having one extra spectre being that game-breaking. On the plus side though it sounds like the summon spectre gem will be able to give 3 and maybe 4 spectres if you get the gem level high enough so +1 Spectre boots may still give you an extra spectre if it tips you over a certain threshold. I don't mind these changes overall assuming death attunement still gives +1 Spectre. It feels like getting 3 spectres will now require very little investment and for people who really want to min-max then they should still be able to get out 5 or so without needing to invest in stuff like Midnight's Bargain or Vis Mortis.

And another good thing is that Elemental Equilibrium doesn't appear to have changed at all. I was slightly worried with the minion re-work they might have changed how EE works but luckily it seems we can continue to abuse this mechanic a while longer!

The new Minion Elemental Army support looks pretty good. Higher More Multiplier I think. However the elemental exposure will require your minions to hit so I assume that means TV's won't proc it at all unless they melee as well as casting their totems. And even if they do melee their attack would need to actually do fire damage. I guess this might mean running anger could cause them to proc the exposure from time to time - although I really don't know how often if ever they will use melee attacks.

Looking forward to seeing all the new minion skill gems / support gems and hopefully the new tree tomorrow. Be interesting to see how we build golemancers going forward!

in 3.7 we have 5% minion regen in tree and 2% in Necromancer ascendancy, total 7%
in 3.8 we have 4.5% minion regen in tree and 0% in Necromancer ascendancy, total 4.5%