{3.10} Speaker for the Dead | The Mass Minion Summoner | League Starter, Leveling Guide 💀

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Hercanic wrote:

@ FutureFear:

Full Posts

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FutureFear wrote:

full post

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RegulusNorth wrote:

Interesting setup. I dropped Siegebreaker after running a few dozen maps with it because it felt like dead weight. The ground effect wasn't helpful enough to warrant an otherwise-weak belt, I felt.

Are you running an Unending Hunger? I feel like that made all the difference in Fire-raisers surpassing Solar Guards, for me. The Solar Guard laser really holds them back.

I'd like to try the Triad Grip variant, but I bought a Grip of the Council a few days ago and it'd be a waste of exalt to consider replacing it right now. It certainly seems interesting.

I just managed to get my hands on a Glorious Vanity as well as an ES on hit Watcher's Eye... the Glorious Vanity forced me to spec out of the hybrid wheel to the right of our starting zone, so I had to move those points somewhere else as a compromise. Corrupted Soul is nice, but honestly... I don't know if I like it when I have ES on hit from the Watcher's Eye. It feels like it's making me more squishy, not less. Maybe I skipped over something and we're not supposed to run both.

Fortress Covenant is still a pretty heavy lifter for my damage. Right now I'm worried less about improving the already insane clearspeed of this build and worried more about improving my survivability. Popping VSS has a tendency to get me killed.

I can understand the siegebreaker part, caustic ground won't kill on itself but all the extra combined damage output could result in a faster clear speed overall. but it's certainly not the best belt DPS wise, the taunt on the other hand is quite nice, it means I can focus on other stats on ghastly eye jewels...

And yes i'm using unending hunger, bought one with my first exalted... I'v played this for 3 leagues now and it does make some difference, with or without. I could try again with fire-raiser and my current setup, both are fire.

I also have grip of the council somewhere, it's nice for the cold damage, and most effective with frost sentinals ofcourse, sadly triad grips only convert physical and most "good" spectres use elemental/spell damage so not usefull there. -> that's why i want a Vis Mortis for spectres.

I think that the glorious Vanaity trade with the "hybrid wheel" was your downfall for getting the most out of our build. I took the liberty to check your character and tree to see what your glorious vanaity would give but it doesn't seem to do anything usefull?

I don't have a watcher's eye (yet) I also feel I don't actually need one with bone armour as "extra potion". Still In the current setup (without Glorious Vanity) it can only add to the survivability of the build I guess.

I didn't test fortress covenant yet but I'm pritty sure that minions take 20% extra damage is also killing you because we share our minion damage with ourselves thanks to spiritual aid. Yes this does count for ALL minion damage & reductions!
Note that it also says ALL notable passives in radius converted -> more notables = more " extra damage taken" 20-40-60...seems like a suicide jewel for our build.

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FutureFear wrote:

@everyone

For those interested a roundup of some testing with different gear, skills, and a few suggestion for Hercanic to consider to add to the build.

Reached level 92 with some casual leveling on maps, delve,etc.

my gear

Choas & fire damage for the win I'd say with my current setup.

Using "Severed in sleep" with chance to poison + triad grips with 4 white sockets(100% physical converted to choas) and siegebreaker for taunt on hit + caustic ground on death seems to scale quite nice. Especially with spirit offering that gives even more choas damage. Together with mark of submission and despair curse makes it complete.

I could possible scale it even more with a Vis Mortis armour to get extra chaos damage for minions from elemental damage for my spectres & skeleton mages.

It seems to work quite wel so far in red tier maps, shaper & "uber" elder test will follow.

I'm still using the Elemental equilibrium despite it not doing anything for chaos damage, I'm using it for solar gaurds spectres wich somehow seem to have the best clear speed. I'v tested the "best": frost sentinals, slavedrivers, fire-raiser even went for chaos damaging ones like undying alchemist, deadeye,...

Solar guards came out on top for balancing attack speed & damage.

Change in skill setup for OP solar guards:

Shield:
- Hatred becomes anger

Armor:
- controled destruction becomes elemental army
- faster projectiles becomes spell echo

Delve is just like just 1,2,3,5 next...
Mapping is more like I'm borred as hell what am I doing here standing still getting no damage on a blight in red tier maps!

@Hercanic:

suggestions

I'v noticed you've skipped the Enduring bond node in the tree, why? It is quite usefull to spec to, considering it makes (vaal) skeletons up time 43.2 seconds long, and is a large damage boost. I'v traded some health nodes for it, to keep the bonus from our jewels alive. With energy shield & our OP bone armour buff on a potion slot we don't need all 6K health, it's nice sure but the best defense is offense I guess?
It's only 5 points!

My other suggestion is to check my chaos damage variant of your build ofcourse, would it be worthwile, I can't seem to figure it out in POB; because it doesn't allow me to fully check if it's a viable choice because of some stats that don't add/calculate.

If it turns out to be viable I might create a new build guide for it, but a more experienced eye like yours is always welcome if you're willing that is.
Credits where credits are due ofcourse.

Suggestions, help, questions are always welcome.

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I also have grip of the council somewhere, it's nice for the cold damage, and most effective with frost sentinals ofcourse

Grip of the Council has no effect on Frost Sentinels. It does help further incentivize scaling cold damage, such as equalizing Frostbite over Vulnerability, which would then benefit Frost Sentinels.

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I took the liberty to check your character and tree to see what your glorious vanaity would give but it doesn't seem to do anything usefull?

The web viewer will not show what Historic Jewels do, because the jewels operate using a secret algorithm that the website isn't privvy to.

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I didn't test fortress covenant yet but I'm pritty sure that minions take 20% extra damage is also killing you because we share our minion damage with ourselves thanks to spiritual aid. Yes this does count for ALL minion damage & reductions!

This is incorrect. "Minions take 20% increased Damage" is completely different from "Minion Damage".

Spiritual Aid means "10% increased Minion Damage" and "10% reduced Minion Damage" apply to you as generic damage modifiers to the damage YOU deal, not what ENEMIES deal (damage you TAKE).

You're confusing the fact that it has the word "Minion" in it. Take that away for a moment and look again: "take 20% increased Damage". It doesn't say "Minion Damage", just "Damage". Because monsters don't deal Minion Damage.

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Note that it also says ALL notable passives in radius converted -> more notables = more " extra damage taken" 20-40-60...seems like a suicide jewel for our build.

The notables only apply if you have allocated them. As long as you use a jewel socket where you've taken no notables within the jewel's radius, then there's no downside to the jewel.

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Choas & fire damage for the win I'd say with my current setup.

I mentioned this before, but if you're going Chaos then you really want to work in the wither debuff. It stacks up to 90% increased Chaos damage taken, roughly equivalent to 90% MORE damage. The easiest way would be to put Withering Touch Support on Zombies.

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Hatred becomes anger

Anger is really good on something like the Carrion Golem, since it has a very low base damage but a lot of damage multipliers that will also affect Anger's flat damage.

However, all our other minions have very high base damage. Compared to Hatred, Anger is worth:

Solar Guards = 8% more damage vs. 0% for Hatred
Phantasms = 18% vs. 53%
Skeletons = 18% vs. 53%
Zombies = 17% vs. 53%
Carrion Golem = 59% vs. 53%

So you're trading a lot of Skeleton/Zombie/Phantasm damage for a little bit of Solar Guard damage, while the Carrion Golem breaks even either way.

Keep in mind, this build originally used Hatred even before it affected Frost Sentinels.

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I'v noticed you've skipped the Enduring bond node in the tree, why? It is quite usefull to spec to, considering it makes (vaal) skeletons up time 43.2 seconds long, and is a large damage boost.

It costs 5 points, and is worth around 2.5% more damage per point (if you've used a minion skill recently, which is a pain). It's a nice cluster, but expensive, and it doesn't offer us anything unique, defensive, or necessary.

Enduring Bond is worth 9.2 more seconds for Vaal Skeletons, who otherwise last 34 seconds without it. It's nice, but if you're in a defensive situation, like Blight, you'll generally make back the souls before the first batch expires anyway. Most bosses, including Guardians, shouldn't last longer than 10 seconds, let along 34. As for Uber Elder, I'd personally prefer more defenses.

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With energy shield & our OP bone armour buff on a potion slot we don't need all 6K health, it's nice sure but the best defense is offense I guess?

Even with infinite damage, there are still On-Death effects, delayed and lingering effects, ground degens, and all sorts of other things meant to test your defenses. Auras on Rare monsters, map mods, these sorts of things can stack up and deal frightening amounts of damage. PoE is a game where defenses are extremely important, especially in the hardest encounters.

This league mechanic is relatively safe due to most monsters not targeting us so long as we don't block their path. So you could probably get away with less defenses, but for all other content, especially future league content, I would always recommend more personal defenses. GGG is constantly at work thinking of new ways to kill us, after all.

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