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

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sacoroto wrote:

I dont get why you say FF is nerfed, doesnt it still give you the buff? you slot it with the golem or zombis and the skellys still benefit from the buff? at least i read it as the gem doesnt have the " minions supported by this gem have 25% more damage" and the buff still working as before.

Now gives minions from supported skills 25% chance to grant Feeding Frenzy to you on hit at gem level 1, up to 44% at gem level 20 (previously 25% at all gem levels). No longer causes minions from supported skills to deal more damage while you have Feeding Frenzy.

Keep in mind, the goal of a minionmancer is to give the minions more power or damage. The 'general' having more power or damage is not the goal, and it does nothing but put the general in danger.

In other words, minions gain zero from the gem now. Having the minionmancer herself gain the buff is like having teets on a bull. Cute, but useless.

So LocalIdentity updated the fork of PoBwith the passive skill tree. This is NOT the skill gem update so damage remains the same.

But what did change is:
1. I lost 32.8 Life Regen.
2. Energy Shield went up by 9.
3. I lost the res I had I now need more resistance to cap again. With my gear I went from 75 Fire and Lightning down to 50 of each. So if I want to continue this character in standard I'm going to probably need to drop some Chaos res to get back to 75 of the others.

That is the only changes that the skill tree brought. No we just need to wait for the skill gem changes to see damage change.

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Ardenwolfe wrote:

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Now gives minions from supported skills 25% chance to grant Feeding Frenzy to you on hit at gem level 1, up to 44% at gem level 20 (previously 25% at all gem levels). No longer causes minions from supported skills to deal more damage while you have Feeding Frenzy.

Keep in mind, the goal of a minionmancer is to give the minions more power or damage. The 'general' having more power or damage is not the goal, and it does nothing but put the general in danger.

In other words, minions gain zero from the gem now. Having the minionmancer herself gain the buff is like having teets on a bull. Cute, but useless.

don't minions still get the actual frenzy buff (10% more minion damage, 15% increased movement speed, 15% increased attack speed and 15% increased cast speed)?

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Warrewal wrote:

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Ardenwolfe wrote:

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Now gives minions from supported skills 25% chance to grant Feeding Frenzy to you on hit at gem level 1, up to 44% at gem level 20 (previously 25% at all gem levels). No longer causes minions from supported skills to deal more damage while you have Feeding Frenzy.

Keep in mind, the goal of a minionmancer is to give the minions more power or damage. The 'general' having more power or damage is not the goal, and it does nothing but put the general in danger.

In other words, minions gain zero from the gem now. Having the minionmancer herself gain the buff is like having teets on a bull. Cute, but useless.

don't minions still get the actual frenzy buff (10% more minion damage, 15% increased movement speed, 15% increased attack speed and 15% increased cast speed)?

As far as I know, no damage increase means no damage increase. But I guess we'll see for sure in a day or so. I could live with it if it still meant everything you said as well as the aggression for the skeletons. Don't hold your breath, though.

Edit: The gem updates are listed. Yes, it does show the minions are still aggressive. Still not sure about the rest, but maybe there's some hope after all.

In case of nerf to Feeding Frenzy.
From patch notes:
"No longer causes minions from supported skills to deal more damage while you have Feeding Frenzy."
From poe WIKI:
"While you have the Feeding Frenzy buff, all of your minions have 10% more minion damage, 15% increased movement speed, 15% increased attack speed and 15% increased cast speed"

According to this - i understand that: If we support Summon Carrion Golem with FF - only carrion golem won't take dmg benefits from FF buff (As only supported skills won't deal more dmg while i got FF). Skeles and Zombies propably will still have 10% more minion dmg, 15% mvn speed, 15% inc. att. speed.

Few last weeks of the league i was playing w/o FF on Skeles, and it was smooth too. In version with Impale - it still should be ok.
It is only theory. Sorry for my english, it is not purrfect ;)

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Now gives minions from supported skills 25% chance to grant Feeding Frenzy to you on hit at gem level 1, up to 44% at gem level 20 (previously 25% at all gem levels). No longer causes minions from supported skills to deal more damage while you have Feeding Frenzy.

The change is quite simple as far as I interpret it. The key words here are: SUPPORTED SKILLS.

There were 2 damage buffs, one from the gem (which only applied to the supported skills linked to Feeding Frenzy) and one from the buff.

The gem damage buff to SUPPORTED SKILLS is gone, while the buff still works the same way as before. The most optimized version of this build was already running Feeding Frenzy out of the main 6-link so there will be no change to your main skill damage for those using Impale.

I am pretty sure I am going to league start this build again tomorrow. I know it will (probably) no longer be super OP but it should still be solid.
I used the impale version with the usual 4 spectres. I had dropped FF from skellies already so no loss there, otherwise skellies with impale are still pretty damn good. Carrion is still going to be good, they only nerfed it's damage and we were not really using it for damage. Zombies should still be ok as well, I had been using FF on them to actually make them get into the fight to help out. I will start still using FF but may switch to meat shield.
With the loss of spirit offering and bone armor we will be more squishy but I am going to try out some variation of bone offering, molten shell or the new arcane cloak skill.
I think flame dash linked with faster casting and second wind will be fine for movement (didn't go shield charge).
Again I think it's going to be a good build and should still be more than viable.

It should still be a great starter and be fine for A8. I'm only expecting the damage to go down to around maybe 450,000 to 550,000. Maybe tomorrow we find out for sure.

Just some quick thoughts from someone who played the build in 3.9 and will most likely use it as league starter tomorrow, mostly regarding the damage nerfs and how it measures in the end-game. Obviously since I'm using only approximate values this might not directly translate to the actual values, but it should be pretty close.

Since we know that base skeleton damage is getting nerfed around 40%, I took base damage (without any links or tree) of my skeleton gem level (29), then tried to find gem level damage that was closest to 60% of the original value (which was 24). I then reduced gem level by 5 in my original build to see approximate value of 40% base damage nerf. It goes as following:

Damage in 3.9: 1.77m per skeleton, 13 active minion limit

Likely damage in 3.10 if figures add up as in patch notes: 1.11m per skeleton, 11 active minion limit

I used a craft for extra zombies/skeleton on my chest which isn't available anymore, that's why I'm down two total minions.

This is obviously not counting other minions like zombies or golems, which don't add that much total damage in my build since I mostly use them to clear trash mobs, but you could potentially use staff and run two 6 links to maximize your damage.

I don't think any other nerfs are that relevant, bone barrier resistances don't mean much since you basically have 4 rare slots that you can purely use to get as much life/res which should be more than enough to cap them. Most people here weren't using FF in their main link, and you can still use it with either zombies or golems to gain buff that affects all your minions. Baron and Shaper's Touch nerfs obviously don't apply here, and if you were going full phys flesh offering provided more dps than spirit offering. New notables could potentially be good, but due to not knowing how rare and viable to get they will be, I haven't commented on them.

So if anyone is still reading this thread and trying to decide if they should play this build in Delirium, this build will still be very strong.

I thank everyone that chimed in on this build and the changes from 3.9 to 3.10. I'll be swapping out my Skellies for SRS and a few other minor changes. I'll keep a Skelly gem in the alt weapons to level up and try at some point.