3.8 New Queens Escape + Baron - super fast physical skeletons + zombies

Thank you for the answer. It is what I thought.

It is the end of the season and I have been experimenting with raging spirit on the Zombie 6 link.

My go to setup for this season was :

I tried to replace each gem with raging spirit and I did not see any improvement in clear speed or boss kill time. Of course, I replaced brutality because Raging Spirit convert 50% of damage to fire. Did you experiment with Raging spirit with this build and got good result?

Honestly, the best situational changes I found are with the Raise Spectre choices. Flame Sentinels is the best clear, 1x Diabolist is great against big one-shot kill, Slave drivers are good against bosses and ok with map clearing.

I tried too to have poison on the Zombies to see if they can build the poison stack for Herald of Agony. HoA is one of the best damage and clear speed dealer. But it does not work.

Thank you

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HoA is one of the best damage and clear speed dealer.

Yup HOA is the broken skill that works with any ascendency, gets millions of DPS with all investment into defence, and easily gets thousands of life gain on hit from a really safe distance while the immortal minion does everything. But it needs more clicking than I care for, that's why I refuse to play it.

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Did you experiment with Raging spirit with this build and got good result?

Every league I test at least 3 raging spirit builds! I have a soft spot for that skill, even though skeletons have been waaaaaaaaay better in almost every way for a long time now. Trust me, there is a huge gap between SRS and skeletons. Any SRS build will have about half the clearspeed of this one because you are always standing still casting!

The skeletons can be cast forward, cast way faster, move fast enough, last longer, don't have that awful fire conversion, and do at least double the damage of SRS in almost any combination of builds. Standing still in any end game content is death, but you must stand still to cast SRS. (I've tested dozens of SRS totem builds but totems do 60% less damage than self cast.
SRS is a levelling skill for noobs, or a niche skill for the people who love to min/max, spend insane amounts on top tier gear, and grind like hell to 100.

All that being said, I've found that SRS can be a good single target option for soulwrest builds. Here's a meme physical SRS build (it can use brutality!) that would be viable, but I haven't made it yet.

https://pastebin.com/1AkUXF0i

Thank you very much for your answer. It is nice to have such a clear to my question. :)

I've just added you to see if you've got any advice on what I should upgrade to improve my build, I hope you have time to drop me a message when you're on :)
http://poe-profile.info/profile/Diseasedcrow?realm=pc

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I've just added you to see if you've got any advice on what I should upgrade to improve my build, I hope you have time to drop me a message when you're on :)

It looks like you're as full build as I ever like to get. I don't like to grind excessively for corruptions or suchlike. The only thing you might like to try is the more defensive options, since skeletons mow down anything without needing much damage help. This will make you almost unkillable as it has much better resists, life regen, and you get max block, and more armour: https://pastebin.com/Ac1d8QpW

I just got my first ever uber elder kill with this build. I'm still kind of stunned that I actually did it.

Thank you so much!

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Minions

Overall, the diversity of Minion builds as a result of the 3.8.0 minion review has been positive, but there are a few mechanics that are sitting above where we'd like them to be. The following changes have been made:

1- The weighting of Minion modifiers on Convoking Wands have been lowered, making it harder to roll a great Minion wand.
2- Minion Movement Speed increases on the passive tree and Necromancer have been lowered.
3- Both the damage and the buff from the Feeding Frenzy support have had their values lowered, as the support was providing too much damage; Even if a player didn't want Aggressive minions, the support was too powerful not to use.
4- Raise Zombies had too much damage and life for a small investment. They've been lowered in power slightly in several ways: lower base damage, lower area on their Slam, no life multiplier per gem level and a longer Slam cooldown.
5- We felt Raise Spectre was too easy to get a third Spectre at gem level 21, especially with Necromancer’s Unnatural Strength passive. The third Spectre is now granted at gem level 25, giving a more challenging threshold for characters to strive for.

1: Is not an issue. I was able to do all content with the 2H or a mediocre 1H + Shield.

2: I guess they will hit ravenous Horde and Mindless Aggression. Honestly, I have no idea why they did that. With all speed nodes and the staff, Minions were still slowing me. I wonder how much it will cut the DPS.

3: I swapped 3 different gems : Minions life, Feeding Frenzy and meat shield. Honestly, Feeding Frenzy did not feel that it was giving much DPS overall. The
white/yellow kills were the same and bosses kills just a little bit faster. I do not think it is an issue.

4: This is THE bummer one with high end bosses. It will be mandatory now to have Minions life and probably Elemental Army support.
QUESTION here: If we need to take Elemental Army support, with which gem should we replace brutality?

5: This is a bummer here. I loved to have 5 (with staff) or 4 (with wand) spectres flame sentinels for fast map clearing. For end-game-bossing, I loved to have a diabolist and 3 slave drivers.
QUESTION: Without a wand +1 level to all minions gems or the staff, will only corrupted level 21 only option? I use my chest piece to grant me life and % resistance usually.

Thank you

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1: Is not an issue. I was able to do all content with the 2H or a mediocre 1H + Shield.

2: I guess they will hit ravenous Horde and Mindless Aggression. Honestly, I have no idea why they did that. With all speed nodes and the staff, Minions were still slowing me. I wonder how much it will cut the DPS.

3: I swapped 3 different gems : Minions life, Feeding Frenzy and meat shield. Honestly, Feeding Frenzy did not feel that it was giving much DPS overall. The
white/yellow kills were the same and bosses kills just a little bit faster. I do not think it is an issue.

Queens escape or minion speed support gem are now the only sources of really fast minions. Sort of a buff for this build relative to other minion builds.

I recommend not taking meatshield - it will mean you have to pay more attention to where you position yourself.

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4: This is THE bummer one with high end bosses. It will be mandatory now to have Minions life and probably Elemental Army support.
QUESTION here: If we need to take Elemental Army support, with which gem should we replace brutality?

Yes this sucks, but we will not need elemental army support. Brutality is sort of key to this build, and we get enough resists on minions from the tree and from purity of elements. So if zombies need survivability, go with minion life and empower level 4. This build is designed to work well with the old flimsier zombies. Remember we are running enfeeble, which is a huge buff to their survivability.

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5: This is a bummer here. I loved to have 5 (with staff) or 4 (with wand) spectres flame sentinels for fast map clearing. For end-game-bossing, I loved to have a diabolist and 3 slave drivers.
QUESTION: Without a wand +1 level to all minions gems or the staff, will only corrupted level 21 only option? I use my chest piece to grant me life and % resistance usually.

Seems like the spectres will need too much investment to get level 25 to be worth it.

The real killer, which will be a huge nerf, is the extra armour on monsters:

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Monsters throughout the game now have more armour, from 33% at level 1 up to 2762% at level 84.

combine this with general boss buffs and we might all have to give up physical minions and switch to elemental builds!

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grimlock9999 wrote:

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combine this with general boss buffs and we might all have to give up physical minions and switch to elemental builds!

I sure hope not. I was thinking about starting with this build again (after a few seasons of breaks). Fortunately I'm out of town until the middle of next week so I can gauge if it will work by the time I get home (hopefully).

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I sure hope not. I was thinking about starting with this build again (after a few seasons of breaks). Fortunately I'm out of town until the middle of next week so I can gauge if it will work by the time I get home (hopefully).

At least it will be cheap. Even with half the league buying necro items in 3.8, Queens escape or femur of the saints were still some of the cheapest 6 links around.

With fights looking like they might last longer, I actually think giving up queens escape is looking better and better. Armour/block has been creeping in as almost mandatory defences, and Femur of the saints offers incredible block and life regen.

I ran this last league, and was AFK speed running red maps on a 2-3 Ex budget:
https://pastebin.com/PYnJZEH5

The nerfs will hit the damage of the build, but not the defences, which were incredibly satisfying, and may be needed more than minion movespeed vs the metamorphs...