[3.11] Brittleknee’s SRS Necromancer - Reliable, Beginner-Friendly. All content. Harvest Ready!

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JamieRmusic wrote:

Thanks for creating the guide. It's highly informative and well written. I've always wanted to make an SRS char and this league felt right. Your guide made me take the leap.

Currently the char is 91, but the build doesn't feel that smooth to play. Out of mana a lot of the time, and not enough attack/cast speed as vaal haste is not on 100%+ uptime. On another note the char has killed atziri and two guardians, but it feels super squishy. Can definitely take down shaper with it, but I want to make it play better before doing anything more challenging.


Would greatly love any tips or ideas. My profile is open if that helps.

Thanks!

You can't really leech or get a significant regeneration and you're not playing as Occultist, so you rather need to make sure you don't get damaged too often in order to allow energy shield recharge to keep going.

You use Necromantic Aegis, so you don't have any chance to block - I'd respec it unless Victario's Charity is going to be used. You could further improve your block by using Rumi's Concoction. Shaper shields also can have 'recover (3-5)% of energy shield when you block'. Giving up on The Scourge could hurt the damage noticeably, but Advancing Fortress is another source of block.

You can invest into evasion - get a jade flask with increased evasion mod, es/evasion shield (you can have cast speed on it), one or two ghastly jewels with a chance to blind on hit for your minions.

You could also try using Hale Negator, it seems to be useful as a defensive helmet. Edit: my bad, it requires your life to be removed, so not useful for you.

You didn't allocate Zealot's Oath, so you don't benefit from your golem, but I don't think it would be that useful anyway.

You can get some more attack/cast speed by getting passives down to Righteous Decree and it looks like it would solve your mana issues - do they happen without vaal haste active anyway?

Appreciate the time taken to look through and come with ideas!

* Removed Hubris, switched to Heretic's Veil > added temp chains to it.
* Took the attack speed nodes along with Rightous Decree.
* Added -7 mana on ring, rather than es recharge speed.

ES dropped by almost 1k, compared to having Hale Negator (from 90-100 flat es abyss jewels), but like you said it would only work for life. Also considered Alphas Howl and other ways of getting in more Auras, but that would require some serious rework and I'm comfortably cruising through T15s at the moment. Aegis for ES on block looked interesting as well, and would add a lot of es. It would give a mega hit to the dmg output so it didn't seem like it was worth it, when Temp Chains makes enemies so slow they barely do anything, anyway.

Thanks you once again :)

Nice guide.

One commont though: The "Aura Effect" node in the Sovereignty mana reserve cluster is a significant DPS boost, yet you didn't take it on the tree.
Perhaps you might look into this.

EDIT: I'm currently testing haste in essence worm ring to be able to run arctic armor.

don't you use any source of poison/bleed to maximize melee physical dmg sup?
or maybe i'm missing something? XD

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Bad_mezcal wrote:

don't you use any source of poison/bleed to maximize melee physical dmg sup?
or maybe i'm missing something? XD

Raging Spirits in the current main PoB version usually deal 85%-90% elemental damage (depending on enemies' resistances). As the only sources of elemental damage have some form of conversion from physical damage (natural 50% conversion to fire and Hatred), Melee Physical Damage boosts both types of damage with the same proportions, ~9:1. Looks like any source of poison/bleed would cost more than it could bring in this case.

Also, separate applications of bleed do not stack cumulatively and only the one with the highest damage per second will cause damage, so I don't think SRS would work really well with it in any case.

Hello everyone!

I am currently, at long last, going to be doing a full guide update/facelift! My goal is to have it done by Wednesday.

Here are some things to look forward to:

A completed leveling section with a guide of what gems to grab when, and how to progress through the acts, and even what rewards to prioritize.

Streamlining the main guide to be an overview, with a full guide available to download. Some complaints in the past included the guide being too dense and overly nested.

Clarified gearing section, as it will no longer be broken down into 3 sub-types. I'm dropping support on the ES SRS variation because, despite testing, I don't think it was a stable enough build to recommend. I may in the future look towards taking what I learned and rolling it into an Occultist SRS / Hybrid Support.

Thanks! Looking forward to Synthesis!

<3BK

Before league wraps up, I was wondering if someone might look at my current build to see where I went wrong?

Build was great up until lvl 88, where I have just slammed face-first into an absolute wall. Probably ground out about 300% of the XP requirements to make lvl 89 over the past few days, only to die over and over and over.

I more or less followed the build as proscribed, with a variation where I took the Rippling Thoughts over the Scourge and took a few nodes for some MoM, plus a total -25 to cost of skills for nearly free SRS (leaving my mana more available for tanking hits).

I've essentially taken a different path to get to 6.7k effective life, yet this simply is not enough to survive any major high-level encounters.

I thought maybe I should look at the Scourge again, but the damage simply isn't the issue. If I can live and cast SRS, the damage is there. The problem is living long enough against higher level bosses to do so. Too much simply one- or two-shots me through the full 6.7k fast enough that I don't even have time for flask recovery.

In fact, I've clawed back on a jewel socket just to go back and finish the mana nodes behind MoM (which I was working on, but stalled out because I cant get above level 88).

Really don't know where it's all gone wrong or what I can do, but I am feeling very, VERY squishy right now, in spite of trying to desperately squeeze as much defense and life as possible out of my gear and gems.

EDIT: I've been going back and forth between my last jewel socket and the two mana flask nodes. The flat life (and damage) added by the jewel just seems to win out out over flask efficiency. I need to be able to take the hits in order to spam flasks enough to win through.

EDIT 2: In the midgame I used to use a Granite flask, eventually upgrading to a Lionheart's Roar. Might try dropping my Distillate and going back to something like that as it doubles the physical damage reduction. Perhaps a Rumi's Concoction, or a Granite Flask of Curing.

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FramFramson wrote:

Before league wraps up, I was wondering if someone might look at my current build to see where I went wrong?

I think it's a lot about managing movement & flasks, especially that life flasks are your basic source of recovery.

If by bosses you also mean the Syndicate members, they still can out-stand difficulty of red maps they spawn in and it doesn't help that Raging Spirits will not focus entirely on them. Unfortunately, it may be the best to skip them for now.

Usually you can cast SRS before the map boss becomes active, how does that work for you?

Check if Rumi's helps you, but in boss fights investing into evasion may pay off better. Raging Spirits are fast, so ghastly jewels with a chance to blind on hit work well in that regard. [edit] Physical damage reduction in the character sheet usually represents some typical but not constant value, due to how armour works. The more physical damage you take, the less effective armour is, so sometimes you're better off putting your bet on evasion and risking taking it all anyway vs taking nothing.

You can also try some Curse on Hit or Blasphemy setup, so that enemies get cursed before you get hit.

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Aeui wrote:

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FramFramson wrote:

Before league wraps up, I was wondering if someone might look at my current build to see where I went wrong?

I think it's a lot about managing movement & flasks, especially that life flasks are your basic source of recovery.

If by bosses you also mean the Syndicate members, they still can out-stand difficulty of red maps they spawn in and it doesn't help that Raging Spirits will not focus entirely on them. Unfortunately, it may be the best to skip them for now.

Usually you can cast SRS before the map boss becomes active, how does that work for you?

Check if Rumi's helps you, but in boss fights investing into evasion may pay off better. Raging Spirits are fast, so ghastly jewels with a chance to blind on hit work well in that regard.

You can also try some Curse on Hit or Blasphemy setup, so that enemies get cursed before you get hit.

It was never the smaller encounters that were the worst. Sure, sometimes I'd get beat down by an ambush encounter which (as it does for many people) would drop FPS and response time to something like 1 per second if that. All you can rally do there is would just shield charge around and mash flasks and pray. They WERE a problem for a time, but I poured a lot into squeezing more DPS and life out of my gear and tree and that helped take them down fast enough to keep me alive.

It was the boss fights which really did me in. Catarina, Apex, etc. all just wrecked me. Never did beat them as I would simply run out of gas with no mobs to refuel my flasks.

Blindness on hit may help too. That's not a bad suggestion.

It was really tough to come by top-tier Ghastly Eye Jewels this league as I noticed a lot of them ended up in the hands of a few hoarders asking for 40+ ex for them. I did eventually manage to acquire a few with the crucial combination of 40-45+ life, physical damage, and +% damage if you've used a minion skill recently, but getting a useful affix after those three was nearly impossible, and in some cases I had to make do with a cold damage boost instead of a physical damage boost (which may actually work out in the long-run as they're changing Hatred to favour cold-boosting more than physical boosting, ha).

I just discovered that Aul's Uprising is a thing, so there's that.

A bit on the pricey side, but if I can shuffle around some resists, that'd effectively give me another 1000 hp, as well as a significant flask recharge boost, without sacrificing any life bonuses.