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

wonderful guide, enjoying my character so far. i have a few questions. i'm at 87, chain running t10-14 maps currently, and my golems' dps is sometimes really unimpressive on bosses. if i'm reading pathofbuilding correctly, my golems are at ~20k dps (https://pastebin.com/zugLtruE). what's the best way to improve them right now? they're at 19/20 with +1 from the robe, and 5L with echo, gmp, damage, and penetration. i just read that controlled destruction is preferred over fire pen, so i'll swap those out. i'm currently running dual clay shaper (clear speed has been no issue) with 4 fire and 1 stone. i imagine i'm making some critical mistakes, so i hope somebody can find them for me.

what's your opinion on heretic's veil instead of vertex mask? it sounds like it would be great, and would free up a gem slot too. is the mana reduction on vertex too important to pass up?


what do you think of essence surge and other energy shield recharge rate skills? right now half my deaths are to 1-shots (i just need more eHP) and half are to not recharging my energy shield soon enough. essence surge sounds really potent for just 4 skill points, but you don't include it in your build so i was wondering why.


on an unrelated note, people seem to say that at t13+ you should be chiseling, alching, and vaaling all your maps. i've been doing this for a while, but it seems to give very meager returns, and is blowing through all my currency very quickly. feels like i'm getting the same loot in a t14 100% IIQ map as i was in a t2 20% IIQ. at this point i've run as many red maps as i have yellows/whites but i've seen 4 exalts from whites and 0 from reds. is it just a streak of bad luck?

When I drop a totem it shows golem fire pen going from 39 to 64. Mod adds +25 pen.

Unless im missing something it looks like it works to me?

NS

Edit Char section shows it works. Tool tip shows different.

Just trying to get through boss fights faster by throwing everything I can at them.

"

mika2salo wrote:

"

Nightstone13 wrote:

If your elementalist MOD gives you 25% penetration. Right now with a totem down im at 64% pen. The totem is linked to greater multiple projectiles. Each zap has a 25% chance to enfeeble off my shield. Add to that flammability curse ( -43 right now ).

2 totems blasts out a huge amount of balls of lightning. free enfeeble keeps hits I take down.

Its a win/win all the way around.

Dropping totems and traps as you move is easy and safe.

The fire trap also benefits from from the totems and mod. Its a 9k initial hit with 5.5k a sec for 8 seconds. Burn baby burn. Also herald of ice gets a boost when traps go down.

Its all about getting stuff to work together.

NS

I would really love to see your game-play video if you can record it. Sounds very fun :)

Its very different from passive 1-click pillow-fort style that I play, but some players might appreciate faster paced variant of the build ^^

However the Elementalist mod doesn't give any penetration to Golems, It affects only your damage. Only the liege of primordial does anything if you go for Golems only.

All Guardians/Shaper Clear.

Gear



Rip Animated Guardian

Thanks a lot for your quick answers. Your guide is literally a godsend.

Any chance you can make a neat PoB guide with leveling sections? Not that it's really that important, but will save some time while leveling!

Cheers

Hello!

I've been using this guide for a while now, and I'm pretty impressed. I am running into a problem, however.

Somehow, as I am playing, my stone golem from my clayshaper is being triggered and is killing one of my flame golems (I only have two golems, maximum, right now, so this is a pretty big hit in dps). Does anyone have any idea why this would happen?

EDIT: Sorry for the waste of time, I looked on the forums and apparently this was happening because I had my CWDT in my Clayshaper. Apologies!

Four more questions:
1) Is Infernal Mantle really worth it?

You get a +1 to golem level, but with a Vaal Regalia you could fit:
- an extra curse/aura e.g. Flammability (for a lot more dps) or Enfeeble (for a lot more survival).
- about 130 or so additional base ES
- possibly a resistance or two on the Regalia

Is the +1 to golem *that* good?
Or do the +fire damage and fire-to-chaos conversion apply to minions?

2) Once you have a Primordial Might and two Harmonies, should you keep adding Harmonies? Or should you slip in one or two Eminences for 20% Cast Speed?

3) Is Controlled Destruction better than Fire Penetration?

Controlled Destruction 20 gives 44% MORE damage, but it also gives 5% less chance on +50% damage (a crit), for a total mod of 41.5%

Fire Penetration gives 37% Penetration

If a monster has 0% fire resistance, this is equivalent to 37% MORE
If a monster has 75% (or higher) fire resistance, this is equivalent to 100% MORE

So for weak monsters it is about the same, but for fire resist maps, fire-using mobs and bosses, fire pen does a LOT more. And you need dps most in the latter case....

4) If you are double-Blasphemy-cursing, how about Sentari's Answer for the Animated Guardian?
- It casts EleWeaknesses on those pesky spellcasters
- It casts Punishment on melee mobs (I'm often in a party with a melee guy)
- It casts TemporalChains on missile mobs (not always relevant, but it does effect them when they are out of range of your aura
Best of all, these curses ignore the curse limit, so enemies can get three-cursed.
In addition, Sentari is one alchemy while EleWeak gloves are 20 chaos+, making the entire Guardian almost laughably cheap.

"

Zaole wrote:

wonderful guide, enjoying my character so far. i have a few questions. i'm at 87, chain running t10-14 maps currently, and my golems' dps is sometimes really unimpressive on bosses. if i'm reading pathofbuilding correctly, my golems are at ~20k dps (https://pastebin.com/zugLtruE). what's the best way to improve them right now? they're at 19/20 with +1 from the robe, and 5L with echo, gmp, damage, and penetration. i just read that controlled destruction is preferred over fire pen, so i'll swap those out. i'm currently running dual clay shaper (clear speed has been no issue) with 4 fire and 1 stone. i imagine i'm making some critical mistakes, so i hope somebody can find them for me.

what's your opinion on heretic's veil instead of vertex mask? it sounds like it would be great, and would free up a gem slot too. is the mana reduction on vertex too important to pass up?


what do you think of essence surge and other energy shield recharge rate skills? right now half my deaths are to 1-shots (i just need more eHP) and half are to not recharging my energy shield soon enough. essence surge sounds really potent for just 4 skill points, but you don't include it in your build so i was wondering why.


on an unrelated note, people seem to say that at t13+ you should be chiseling, alching, and vaaling all your maps. i've been doing this for a while, but it seems to give very meager returns, and is blowing through all my currency very quickly. feels like i'm getting the same loot in a t14 100% IIQ map as i was in a t2 20% IIQ. at this point i've run as many red maps as i have yellows/whites but i've seen 4 exalts from whites and 0 from reds. is it just a streak of bad luck?

Hello and thanks for support :)

You need to check from configuration
- Do your minions use power charges?
- Do your minions use frenzy charges?
- Enemy was hit by lightning damage? (For Elemental Equilibrium)

Your Golems are doing actually 47k dps per Golem which is not that bad in 6 link. Controlled Destruction gives more damage if you have EE active. Running 4 Flame Golems and Virtarios Charity is most effective setup for Necromancer.

Mana reduction from Vertex works only on active skill cost, not reserved cost. However swapping vertex would mean you lose next things :
- Huge chaos resistance
- Tons of Temporal Chains effectiveness as free +1 level to Enhance.
- Enemies can leech your mana, so with infernal mantle you will drop to low mana

Phase run, Offering and Temporal Chains makes sure that there is always time to kite long enough to recharge ES back. When Phase Run kicks in don't spam totem immediadly. You are almost invisible for 9 second if you dont activate any skill. Run around and let ES recharge. Taking recharge nodes seems like waste of points as build is not made for tanking or front line aggro anyway.

Maps are game of luck. I usually buy tons of t11 maps when they get cheap and just build from there. It takes few days alching all, but at some point you cross the border of too little maps -> too many maps.

"

When I drop a totem it shows golem fire pen going from 39 to 64. Mod adds +25 pen.

Unless im missing something it looks like it works to me?

NS

Edit Char section shows it works. Tool tip shows different.

Just trying to get through boss fights faster by throwing everything I can at them.

I searched for other sources and found this :
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1667910

"

All Guardians/Shaper Clear.

Gear

Gratz! ^^

As your build is pretty identical to mine, you can actually start "Hall of Grandmasters" carry / farm for "Atziri's Disfavour" from "The Last One Standing" -divine cards if you want to.

Most important node there is surprisingly Necromancers "Beacon of corruption". Masters charge at Golems, kill them extremely often and then the dumb AI just lets them stand in the spot they killed the Golems. Now "Beacon of corruption" leaves huge chaos damage cloud per Golems and it melts the Masters. Golems will die anyway, but you will have huge "on-death" effect on them to finish them off.

Check my video about GM -run and how to deal with few "cast when damage taken" builds with Scorching Ray, and you can do GM to your hearts content ;)

R.I.P AG, brave little trooper.

"

Thanks a lot for your quick answers. Your guide is literally a godsend.

Any chance you can make a neat PoB guide with leveling sections? Not that it's really that important, but will save some time while leveling!

Cheers

Thanks for support :)

What do you mean by Pob guide? copy-pasta of my final tree / gear from Pob?
I haven't used Pob much, so I have no idea if you can make guilde in step or phases there. Any guide with such would really help as it gives example of wha to do.

"

Hello!

I've been using this guide for a while now, and I'm pretty impressed. I am running into a problem, however.

Somehow, as I am playing, my stone golem from my clayshaper is being triggered and is killing one of my flame golems (I only have two golems, maximum, right now, so this is a pretty big hit in dps). Does anyone have any idea why this would happen?

EDIT: Sorry for the waste of time, I looked on the forums and apparently this was happening because I had my CWDT in my Clayshaper. Apologies!

Hi, glad to hear you like it!

Yep, the Stone Golem killing Flame Golems is exactly caused by CWDT on chayshaper. Just switch it with Shields slots and its fixed ;)

"

Four more questions:
1) Is Infernal Mantle really worth it?

You get a +1 to golem level, but with a Vaal Regalia you could fit:
- an extra curse/aura e.g. Flammability (for a lot more dps) or Enfeeble (for a lot more survival).
- about 130 or so additional base ES
- possibly a resistance or two on the Regalia

Is the +1 to golem *that* good?
Or do the +fire damage and fire-to-chaos conversion apply to minions?

2) Once you have a Primordial Might and two Harmonies, should you keep adding Harmonies? Or should you slip in one or two Eminences for 20% Cast Speed?

3) Is Controlled Destruction better than Fire Penetration?

Controlled Destruction 20 gives 44% MORE damage, but it also gives 5% less chance on +50% damage (a crit), for a total mod of 41.5%

Fire Penetration gives 37% Penetration

If a monster has 0% fire resistance, this is equivalent to 37% MORE
If a monster has 75% (or higher) fire resistance, this is equivalent to 100% MORE

So for weak monsters it is about the same, but for fire resist maps, fire-using mobs and bosses, fire pen does a LOT more. And you need dps most in the latter case....

4) If you are double-Blasphemy-cursing, how about Sentari's Answer for the Animated Guardian?
- It casts EleWeaknesses on those pesky spellcasters
- It casts Punishment on melee mobs (I'm often in a party with a melee guy)
- It casts TemporalChains on missile mobs (not always relevant, but it does effect them when they are out of range of your aura
Best of all, these curses ignore the curse limit, so enemies can get three-cursed.
In addition, Sentari is one alchemy while EleWeak gloves are 20 chaos+, making the entire Guardian almost laughably cheap.

Hey!

1)
Infernal mantles +1 level gives Golems huge health / damage buff.

It also has high ES and is very common item. This means that finding +1 level corrupted Infernal Mantle will be easy, as its so common item to Vaal. Finding high ES rare armor with +1 level is extremely hard and they cost tons. This is pretty relevant if you really want to min-max the build.

Conversion doesn't apply to minions. For the sake of 1-click playstyle all levels are needed to make Golems almost immortal :P

2)
Charges from Victarios Charity give Golems 45% cast speed. You can't speed that much anymore even with adding Eminences. Also losing regen is huge downside and Golems start to die on high level boss fights.

3)
Most white trash / rares / exiles die in few shots anyway, so raising damage against them doesn't seem beneficial. Fire pene works all the time against bosses, even if EE totem gets destroyed or you forget to put one. Its a matter of preference, but for 1-click playstyle fire pene gives more dps against bosses even if EE is not active all the time.

4)
It would work, but Animate Guardian would lose tons of spell block and life (10% increased maximum Life) and be on real danger of dying. Curses are pretty random and not very beneficial. It could be tested, but I think Rathpith would end up keeping AG alive much better.

what major/minor pantheon buffs are you guys using?

89 in the league now. Kicked back over to necro ( so easy now with the new lab ). Health and shield is down to 4500. Should have chaos for infernal in a few days.

Did a quick courtyard run to let the boss have at the minion horde. Zombies vaporized pretty quick lol. The two humanoid junk specs actually lived. So I think im good now.

Golem DPS is up...

Heading for t13-14 maps now.

NS

Build is rocking once again... Took out a t13 gorge breach with a xoph kill. Then waxed goat boy. Getting that flame golem gem to 20 made a bit of difference.

Happy with how its running now...

NS