[3.9] Pure Phys Skeletons & Friends Necromancer — Beginner/SSF/Budget Build

Sirus killed with this build, (sadly not very cheap build but killed anyway), heres my gear:

Killed Sirius with this build for the first time after I analysed his mechanics and positions. One of the most least bosses I've had ever fought rather than Uber Elder.

"Convocation" gem is very important skill to add your summoner build for Sirius fight since it allows you to move away with zombies/carrion and spectres from tornado storms or they will die easily within a minute.

Honestly, It was an unsatisfied feeling for real.

I've killed sirus @ awekening level 8 about 10 times already, and 0 times a single zombie/golem/spectre died during these attempts, without convocation. Even when I died, they lived. So not sure about needing to use that. With proper gear they are very hard to kill.

As for the fight, there are some crucial mechanics ppl don't get and that causes them trouble. For example, if you die during any phase except last one, he creates additional storm, which makes fight way harder.
Second thing - if you dash out of the circle by accident even for a split second = he creates new storm. So avoid that above everything else.

If you really struggle, you can suicide into stationary storm and wait till moving storm floats over your body, they still follow you even if you are dead. With quick dash + flask you can save technically bricked run with storm on the door to arena.

Skeletons make is easy to move storm you can use it as decoy.
What worked best for me, is move after first storm spawn in south-west direction to the tent. Then move a bit towards him to start seeing his shadow, it slowly floats in your direction (while storm is stationary). Then you approach him, dash under him and next phase is triggered. It is impostant to not let him float too much towards the tent, because you gonna want to do this again, and if he moves too much, there is no more room to do it. 3rd time you wait for him to float towards stairs area (but still far from them), so the arena he creates during last phase is not touching stair railings, since these get you killed in triple wall meteor phase.
Once you get it down, it is really easy, pretty much 10/10 success rate. Damage is so insane, you hardly need to dodge any mechanics during actual fight because he gets instantly moved to next phase in literally few seconds. You don't even need to know where he teleports around, because skeletons dash to him, AI tracks him down for you, all you need to do is move around to not get hit. If he randomly aims at you, most of the time skeletons taunt him and he shoots in completely different direction.

As for conquerors at awakening level 8, at least with 1.6mil shaper dps per skeleton, they die before they can perform any skills even in T16. They die on the spot before casting anything. At this point I don't think more damage has any purpose. I was tweaking pob with some good items, good gems, you can reach about 2.5mil dps per skeleton without going too crazy with perfect items.. There is just no point, better get shield and spell block instead I think.
I wasn't upgrading gear much, since i saved for headhunter.
Speaking of which - headhunter has pretty good synergy with summoners, contrary to popular belief. Yes you will not get all the projectile boosts, damage to your character, but all the auras you steal it all affects your minions, including gigantic movement speed bonus.

Pretty much what you said exactly I did, except the one where I was stuck and had to forced logged out as there were 3 huge storms and an invisible wall around me so it was kinda hard to move away and tried to find a way to escape through storms even when using my speed flask.

I think it was perhaps my fault that I did mistake something though I went to mainly focus on boss instead of storms but I still enjoyed it anyways. In my opinion, it wasn't a hard fight, it's just a bugged fight I think.

Is multistrike better? I see people in the comment swapping it out for brutality. What about awakening gems, which one should i use it for?

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BlueAriel wrote:

Is multistrike better? I see people in the comment swapping it out for brutality. What about awakening gems, which one should i use it for?

if you go pure physical as guide says order of dps in is:
- skeleton (obvious)
- feeding frenzy (necessary for skeletons to dash)
- brutality - highest dps gem
- impale - second best dps (within 1% from brutality)
- multistrike - only slightly worse than brutality/impale (all 3 gems within 59 and 60% more)
- melee physical damage / minion damage (both same damage % increase, about 9% worse than previous gem)

Now few points. For map clear you want melee splash. And of all those gems it is best to swap multistrike for it, even though it isnt lowest dps support, because it needs 3 hits to deliver this damage. If your skeletons dash around to deliver damage quickly to low hp targets, then they rarely get to swing 3x, to get benefit out of multistrike. So their first hit will be always much weaker than if you had different gem there. This is why I recommend replacing multistrike for melee splash, and put multistrike back for hard bosses, where you know skeletons will stay on target and keep attacking, delivering all the bonus damage form this gem.

As for best awaken gems. Melee physical awaken version is good, because aside from being 3% more damage, unlike minion damage gem, it provides chance to intimidate = 10% more damage multiplier. Unfortunately it is expensive.
Awakened multistrike is next, but it costs currently 60 exalts (lol). So probably not gonna buy this any time soon.

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aerial wrote:

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BlueAriel wrote:

Is multistrike better? I see people in the comment swapping it out for brutality. What about awakening gems, which one should i use it for?

if you go pure physical as guide says order of dps in is:
- skeleton (obvious)
- feeding frenzy (necessary for skeletons to dash)
- brutality - highest dps gem
- impale - second best dps (within 1% from brutality)
- multistrike - only slightly worse than brutality/impale (all 3 gems within 59 and 60% more)
- melee physical damage / minion damage (both same damage % increase, about 9% worse than previous gem)

Now few points. For map clear you want melee splash. And of all those gems it is best to swap multistrike for it, even though it isnt lowest dps support, because it needs 3 hits to deliver this damage. If your skeletons dash around to deliver damage quickly to low hp targets, then they rarely get to swing 3x, to get benefit out of multistrike. So their first hit will be always much weaker than if you had different gem there. This is why I recommend replacing multistrike for melee splash, and put multistrike back for hard bosses, where you know skeletons will stay on target and keep attacking, delivering all the bonus damage form this gem.

As for best awaken gems. Melee physical awaken version is good, because aside from being 3% more damage, unlike minion damage gem, it provides chance to intimidate = 10% more damage multiplier. Unfortunately it is expensive.
Awakened multistrike is next, but it costs currently 60 exalts (lol). So probably not gonna buy this any time soon.

Would you recommend Multistrike over Ruthless for single target dmg? And thanks for your thourough comment!

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varmemester wrote:

Would you recommend Multistrike over Ruthless for single target dmg? And thanks for your thourough comment!

Multistrike, it is almost 10% more damage. And both skills suffer from same "penalty", require multiple hits to deliver bonus damage, which means none has advantage over each other mechanically. Just raw average dps over 3 hits is relevant and multistrike wins.

As for other awakened gems lets sum this up (current prices):

- awakened melee physical - biggest dps upgrade (~13% including intimadate) - 11,5ex
- awakened multistrike - +8% vs normal multistrike, ridiculous price and rarity 60ex
- awakened minion damage - +<3% for 5,2ex, same as aweken melee phys without intimidate
- awakened brutality +3% for 5ex
- awakened melee splash 80c - single target stays same, area damage very small upgrade, but it gains 10% inc aoe and ~15% more splash area, which is quite nice for this price

Another thing worth mentioning. These gems take longer to level than empower.. so count that in. At level 1 most of them are not an upgrade at all. If you don't play a lot it will take forever to get them to level 5.

Hi guys, not sure what I'm doing wrong but I am only getting 200kdps on PoB. Would like some recommendations on what I could do to improve gear, I have around 2 ex to spend.

PoB: https://pastebin.com/vWvRuXpz

Cheer! Been having a lot of fun, have just been hitting a wall in red maps

I've killed level 8 Awakener for the first time today, was pretty easy.
Great build dude, thanks

My gear