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

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docdocdocdoc wrote:

I've been considering trying this build for a while now and finally got around to it. After the MoM nerfs (plus my personal dislike for it) I decided to ditch it and buff this build with some of the new goodies that have come to the game since it was first posted. I've just killed shaper and I only have 1 death to my name so far. Skeletons are super underrated IMO, courtesy of clear speed meta I suppose

The crab armor, dread banner accuracy debuff, and flesh and stone blind make you feel incredibly safe even in the midst of mob packs. You have incredible physical damage reduction for a witch and most attacks just miss you completely. Needing minimal investment in mana also enables you to invest in more damage or health. I'm going health and at 93 will have 6500 HP plus all the aforementioned defensive layers and fortify access.

Offensively, flesh and stone can be swapped to a maim for maximum burst on bosses and the dread banner aura buffs your minion's impale for even more damage. Even without going full POB warrior it's looking something like a few hundred K dps PER skelly if you account for impale. The synergy in this setup is way better than I realized upon thinking it up and in general I'm super pleased with the build.

Also, thanks to betrayal crafting, you can get to 12 skellies and 11 zombies without a rare chest piece or those unique boots by crafting on your helm.

As others have noted the zombies unfortunately get bodied by shaper, which is a bit disappointing. I wonder if anyone has thought up any clever gem swaps for shaper and uelder to deal with that? Before going to shaper I thought swapping convocate in might be an option but after the fight I suspect they would have died regardless. I'm curious if anyone else has any ideas about that.

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Ideally you want one with an open prefix, allowing you to craft +1 skeleton onto it with Catarina 6.

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docdocdocdoc wrote:

The crab armor, dread banner accuracy debuff, and flesh and stone blind make you feel incredibly safe even in the midst of mob packs

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viperesque wrote:

I'm starting work on all the changes now. It's going to take a couple of days. Advance warning though: I'm going to push this guide much more explicitly into a beginner/league starter/budget space. It already occupies that, but now that there are a bunch of well-written guides for more min-maxed skeleton/zombie builds, I don't think it's that useful to try and make this another one rather than sticking to the original goal of making the build as easy to put together and easy to play as possible.