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

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Karathis wrote:

nevermind i saw your build and it looks quite good. what did you tweak exactly?

From the main build what I personally tweaked (I based it upon most of the skele necro builds on poe ninja at the top):

No MoM, less minion damage on tree stuff, slightly different pathing. Went far south for more life, all res etc. Even with less minion damage on tree, the impale setup boosts your dmg plenty so it's not a big loss losing a few nodes.

Got a +1/+1 wand and use ahn's heritage shield.

Per other suggestions here, dropped feeding frenzy from skeleton link and took impale instead. Use dread banner with generosity. I also use skitterbots for shock and chill, others use pride / vulnerability instead. Up to how you like the playstyle. Personally I like the route I went more. You can very easily not use skitterbots, drop 4 more life nodes (depending on level) and pick MoM back up to get 13-15k ehp. I just HATE MoM personally.

Another thing instead of anointing what the guide states, I pathed to it and anointed death attunement instead. Saved a lot of travel points and allowed 4 spectres, 10 zombies and 13 skeletons. Mainly for me it was the spectre 2/2 split for max dmg and 10 zombies to get the top bonus from our ascendancy for it. It's very important to anoint or take the survival node mentioned in this guide though. The build feels terrible in T15+s without it as minions just get slaughtered. With it though, they have plenty survival and never die.

Wow step away from the thread like 10hrs and there's 8 new pages of guys asking to check their build instead of reading through the bloody thread and doing their own research.
Guys, download PoB, download LocalIdentity's fork if possible, check the initial build, check the most common variations already posted by people on this thread who had success with the build and shared their PoB, compare their setup to yours and stop asking always the same questions. Ideally most of the new messages on this thread should be new ideas on how to improve the build, not 90% of people asking why this modifier is good when they can just Ctrl+C the item, Ctrl+V in PoB and directly check what it adds.

To answer some of the last questions here:
- Yes, you should use Pride, preferably with Dread Banner (and if you can fit it in as well Generosity) but Pride is the main point. If you're unsure about the radius you can actually test it by going near mobs and see when they start to turn a bit red with some kind of glowing/fire effect on them (similar to the colour of the circle around your feet corresponding to the aura). On a 20/20 Pride that effect radius is quite comfortable.
Talking about Pride, even LocalIdentity's fork is severely underestimating its effect as it only includes the initial 20%. On anything that survives 4 seconds (where dps matters) you are likely to benefit from the full 40%, so an extra 16.7% vs what PoB currently tells you.
- No you shouldn't slot Pride in a normal Unset ring. The guy who said a normal unset ring is BiS for this build has no understanding of the build. We spend 10+ passives creating a bulky mana reserve for massive eHP with MoM. If you reserve half of it by not using an Essence Worm with Pride you can switch builds.
- Skitterbots are also advised against for the same reason. Or any other aura reserving too much mana. We take Dread Banner because its mana reserve is tiny compared to the dps boost. In practice as well the dps boost of Skitterbots is never going to be as strong as if you just check "is the enemy shocked?" in the native PoB.
- Aspect of the Avian: see above. Love the idea, especially with Saqawal's Nest, but it's still a rotating effect, and it still reserves too much mana for this build.
- Guy asking what shield to use: Ahn's Heritage. For me it's not such a shocking difference in the build, so you might find some particularly good rare quality shield which would be better, but most people using shield are happy with this one. Great armor, great life, great block chance, great improvement to resistances. The tanky option of the build.
Here's an example of it (I was using this myself until recently):

900k dps per skeleton without even using Spectres (1.1m with correct Pride calculation). 6.3k life/3k ES with Spirit Offering/2.2k unreserved mana/6k armor without flasks/2k bone shield/78% all res/29% block chance/Fortify. Very hardcore friendly, let's say.

Flasks, I think this subject hasn't been touched much. Could be an area of improvement.
- Interesting suggestion of Rumi and Taste of Hate from Karathis. A well rolled Rumi could be a great addition indeed. I kind of dislike the fact that Taste of Hate doesn't actually make you immune to Frozen and Chilled like a regular 'of Heat' flask would, which is important . Also you don't benefit from the phys as extra cold dmg. So this whole flask is just to give you 20%*75%=15% phys dmg reduction. Well thinking about it a Granite Flask gives you about as much, but here the 15% isn't subject to decreasing returns like Armour is. Will think more about it. Currently my Granite Flask of Heat is being very polyvalent.
- Forbidden Taste, I mentioned it already but I'd like to mention again how great it is on a big life pool to go instantly to full health, while also giving 10% dodge attacks/spells and Phasing. Considering adding a second one to my build lol.
- Bottled Faith, one guy mentioned it 2 pages ago. You don't benefit from the +40% dmg. You don't benefit from the +crit chance of the flask. You DO benefit from the +10% dmg taken by enemies on consecrated ground during flask effect (it also shows in PoB), and you SHOULD benefit from the +100% crit chance vs enemies on consecrated ground (the normal effect of consecrated ground) but for some reason it doesn't show in PoB. Unfortunately that's only +5% actual chance to crit (their base is 5%), and with the minions' poor crit multiplier we're talking only 1.2% more dps when I simulate it manually in PoB. So all in all you take this flask only for an extra 10% dps and some life regen for a few seconds. Not sure it's worth it.
- Looking for other ideas...

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coaa wrote:

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Karathis wrote:

nevermind i saw your build and it looks quite good. what did you tweak exactly?

From the main build what I personally tweaked (I based it upon most of the skele necro builds on poe ninja at the top):

No MoM, less minion damage on tree stuff, slightly different pathing. Went far south for more life, all res etc. Even with less minion damage on tree, the impale setup boosts your dmg plenty so it's not a big loss losing a few nodes.

Got a +1/+1 wand and use ahn's heritage shield.

Per other suggestions here, dropped feeding frenzy from skeleton link and took impale instead. Use dread banner with generosity. I also use skitterbots for shock and chill, others use pride / vulnerability instead. Up to how you like the playstyle. Personally I like the route I went more. You can very easily not use skitterbots, drop 4 more life nodes (depending on level) and pick MoM back up to get 13-15k ehp. I just HATE MoM personally.

Another thing instead of anointing what the guide states, I pathed to it and anointed death attunement instead. Saved a lot of travel points and allowed 4 spectres, 10 zombies and 13 skeletons. Mainly for me it was the spectre 2/2 split for max dmg and 10 zombies to get the top bonus from our ascendancy for it. It's very important to anoint or take the survival node mentioned in this guide though. The build feels terrible in T15+s without it as minions just get slaughtered. With it though, they have plenty survival and never die.

MoM doesnt like having auras so there will be no dread banner or pride or skitters sadly. also removing feeding frenzy from skellies, does that not make the clear even worse?

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Dragomirov wrote:

Wow step away from the thread like 10hrs and there's 8 new pages of guys asking to check their build instead of reading through the bloody thread and doing their own research.
Guys, download PoB, download LocalIdentity's fork if possible, check the initial build, check the most common variations already posted by people on this thread who had success with the build and shared their PoB, compare their setup to yours and stop asking always the same questions. Ideally most of the new messages on this thread should be new ideas on how to improve the build, not 90% of people asking why this modifier is good when they can just Ctrl+C the item, Ctrl+V in PoB and directly check what it adds.

To answer some of the last questions here:
- Yes, you should use Pride, preferably with Dread Banner (and if you can fit it in as well Generosity) but Pride is the main point. If you're unsure about the radius you can actually test it by going near mobs and see when they start to turn a bit red with some kind of glowing/fire effect on them (similar to the colour of the circle around your feet corresponding to the aura). On a 20/20 Pride that effect radius is quite comfortable.
Talking about Pride, even LocalIdentity's fork is severely underestimating its effect as it only includes the initial 20%. On anything that survives 4 seconds (where dps matters) you are likely to benefit from the full 40%, so an extra 16.7% vs what PoB currently tells you.
- No you shouldn't slot Pride in a normal Unset ring. The guy who said a normal unset ring is BiS for this build has no understanding of the build. We spend 10+ passives creating a bulky mana reserve for massive eHP with MoM. If you reserve half of it by not using an Essence Worm with Pride you can switch builds.
- Skitterbots are also advised against for the same reason. Or any other aura reserving too much mana. We take Dread Banner because its mana reserve is tiny compared to the dps boost. In practice as well the dps boost of Skitterbots is never going to be as strong as if you just check "is the enemy shocked?" in the native PoB.
- Aspect of the Avian: see above. Love the idea, especially with Saqawal's Nest, but it's still a rotating effect, and it still reserves too much mana for this build.
- Guy asking what shield to use: Ahn's Heritage. For me it's not such a shocking difference in the build, so you might find some particularly good rare quality shield which would be better, but most people using shield are happy with this one. Great armor, great life, great block chance, great improvement to resistances. The tanky option of the build.
Here's an example of it (I was using this myself until recently):

Spoiler

https://pastebin.com/174VQWK6

900k dps per skeleton without even using Spectres (1.1m with correct Pride calculation). 6.3k life/3k ES with Spirit Offering/2.2k unreserved mana/6k armor without flasks/2k bone shield/78% all res/29% block chance/Fortify. Very hardcore friendly, let's say.

Flasks, I think this subject hasn't been touched much. Could be an area of improvement.
- Interesting suggestion of Rumi and Taste of Hate from Karathis. A well rolled Rumi could be a great addition indeed. I kind of dislike the fact that Taste of Hate doesn't actually make you immune to Frozen and Chilled like a regular 'of Heat' flask would, which is important . Also you don't benefit from the phys as extra cold dmg. So this whole flask is just to give you 20%*75%=15% phys dmg reduction. Well thinking about it a Granite Flask gives you about as much, but here the 15% isn't subject to decreasing returns like Armour is. Will think more about it. Currently my Granite Flask of Heat is being very polyvalent.
- Forbidden Taste, I mentioned it already but I'd like to mention again how great it is on a big life pool to go instantly to full health, while also giving 10% dodge attacks/spells and Phasing. Considering adding a second one to my build lol.
- Looking for other ideas...

Thanks for the info, I switched to the impale extra tanky ahn's version recently and am in love. Was using skitters but I like what I see with what you posted. As i'm not using MoM anymore I might need to check out pride. It's a much bigger boost then I was giving it credit for.

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Karathis wrote:

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coaa wrote:

"

Karathis wrote:

nevermind i saw your build and it looks quite good. what did you tweak exactly?

From the main build what I personally tweaked (I based it upon most of the skele necro builds on poe ninja at the top):

No MoM, less minion damage on tree stuff, slightly different pathing. Went far south for more life, all res etc. Even with less minion damage on tree, the impale setup boosts your dmg plenty so it's not a big loss losing a few nodes.

Got a +1/+1 wand and use ahn's heritage shield.

Per other suggestions here, dropped feeding frenzy from skeleton link and took impale instead. Use dread banner with generosity. I also use skitterbots for shock and chill, others use pride / vulnerability instead. Up to how you like the playstyle. Personally I like the route I went more. You can very easily not use skitterbots, drop 4 more life nodes (depending on level) and pick MoM back up to get 13-15k ehp. I just HATE MoM personally.

Another thing instead of anointing what the guide states, I pathed to it and anointed death attunement instead. Saved a lot of travel points and allowed 4 spectres, 10 zombies and 13 skeletons. Mainly for me it was the spectre 2/2 split for max dmg and 10 zombies to get the top bonus from our ascendancy for it. It's very important to anoint or take the survival node mentioned in this guide though. The build feels terrible in T15+s without it as minions just get slaughtered. With it though, they have plenty survival and never die.

MoM doesnt like having auras so there will be no dread banner or pride or skitters sadly. also removing feeding frenzy from skellies, does that not make the clear even worse?

He's doing a different style of build. He doesn't take MoM. He just went for more life nodes and dropped MoM entirely so he's free to reserve his mana without causing issues for life pool. It's just a different way to build.

Removing Feeding Frenzy from skellies doesn't hurt their clear from what I've found. Personally I still run with MoM as it's just my preference, but I've also removed Feeding Frenzy from skellies as it didn't really help much. I just drop them into packs and they kill.

what would be better to do with noob budget? going MoM or just taking more life nodes @solanales

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Karathis wrote:

what would be better to do with noob budget? going MoM or just taking more life nodes @solanales

I personally think it's easier to hit higher eHP with MoM without a high budget as most of your mana pool will come from passives. Some people just don't like how MoM feels though and want to specifically get life so they can reserve their mana for other buff effects.

I'd say your best bet is to just pick one and know that that's your path. You can always farm towards currency for more gear, but being indecisive in your gearing will lead to you having a build that doesn't do either effectively.

Gear with high life rolls is typically more expensive but you're going to want life on your stuff either way so it's kind of a zero sum game that way.

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Solanales wrote:

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Karathis wrote:

what would be better to do with noob budget? going MoM or just taking more life nodes @solanales

I personally think it's easier to hit higher eHP with MoM without a high budget as most of your mana pool will come from passives. Some people just don't like how MoM feels though and want to specifically get life so they can reserve their mana for other buff effects.

I'd say your best bet is to just pick one and know that that's your path. You can always farm towards currency for more gear, but being indecisive in your gearing will lead to you having a build that doesn't do either effectively.

Gear with high life rolls is typically more expensive but you're going to want life on your stuff either way so it's kind of a zero sum game that way.

yeah and having extra int/mana rolls makes it also more expensive right?

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Karathis wrote:

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Solanales wrote:

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Karathis wrote:

what would be better to do with noob budget? going MoM or just taking more life nodes @solanales

I personally think it's easier to hit higher eHP with MoM without a high budget as most of your mana pool will come from passives. Some people just don't like how MoM feels though and want to specifically get life so they can reserve their mana for other buff effects.

I'd say your best bet is to just pick one and know that that's your path. You can always farm towards currency for more gear, but being indecisive in your gearing will lead to you having a build that doesn't do either effectively.

Gear with high life rolls is typically more expensive but you're going to want life on your stuff either way so it's kind of a zero sum game that way.

yeah and having extra int/mana rolls makes it also more expensive right?

It can, but you only really need to maintain a ratio with MoM. Like you're not looking to stack your mana pool super high, just relative to your life pool.

Ghazzy made a MoM calculation spreadsheet awhile back that lets you see if you're effectively using MoM with your HP, ES, and Mana values. You have to make a copy of the sheet to use it, but it's helped me a lot.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bE0mOtgYsmDx-v2G-6iq-bOsiLp7I_yGMFHYHS__dxw/edit#gid=690621205

So for me, my current setup looks like this:



I have 2 plus mana mods on my gear and that was enough to get me in line so it's not like I needed to really spec into it that much to get a good outcome.

That's just my personal preference on the build though.

oh thats not too bad, i remember the ratio being 43% of your life pool. probably spec into mana nodes too. I dont know i have never played with MoM before but might be worth a try.