[3.12] [HC] [SSF] Zombies/SRS Occultist

Great build, I would be damn near 90 without some recent bad luck! Thanks again, has been super helpful with any questions. This will by my go to SSFHC league starter from now on for sure.

BTW anyone else trying the build, give Storm Brand a try with Curse On Hit, works amazingly.

I'm assembling and will test an iteration of this. To continuously alternate damage to keep the passive buff charged, I'm picking an additional aura, Herald of Thunder, and an additional node of reduced mana reserved. The mana will be pretty tight - by my calculations it'll leave me with around 9% mana together with other auras - but I think it will work just fine given the mana recovery rate of this build.

"

iDoomhand wrote:

I'm assembling and will test an iteration of this. To continuously alternate damage to keep the passive buff charged, I'm picking an additional aura, Herald of Thunder, and an additional node of reduced mana reserved. The mana will be pretty tight - by my calculations it'll leave me with around 9% mana together with other auras - but I think it will work just fine given the mana recovery rate of this build.

By the way my iteration won't use Raise Spectre. But will be using Vaal Arc instead of just the normal one.

Hi all. After a few runs in Synthesis, I updated the section about leveling. I put there a ssf starter example shaped by my previous experiences.

I haven't engaged in the league mechanics that deeply yet, but I haven't encountered any big problems for the build in that regard either. It seems that moving around in the decaying memories filled up with ranged monsters puts some additional pressure on minions' mobility though. Convocation may come in handy indeed.

[edit] I'm going to try out a variant focused more on chaos damage, using Bane instead of Arc and switching some gems for minions. Looks promising so far!

You could save 3 passives if you take the jewel socket and intelligent passive going to Elemental equilibrium and take out the 4 intelligent passives and jewel socket on right near melding. The rest would stay the same.

"

SunSetSam wrote:

You could save 3 passives if you take the jewel socket and intelligent passive going to Elemental equilibrium and take out the 4 intelligent passives and jewel socket on right near melding. The rest would stay the same.

Right, this is some remnant of messing around Leadership, Harrier, and Dreamer; it may be worth to keep them close, but the straightforward path is shorter on the left side. I just changed the link, thanks (I used both jewel sockets in the first place though, so that's 1 point saved).

Which weapon shall i use until lvl 68?

"

virusbabyface17 wrote:

Which weapon shall i use until lvl 68?

Doesn't matter that much. If you level up with Storm Brand, any items adding elemental damage to spells or increasing your spell damage will be fine. Make sure you don't add fire or cold damage to your spells after you pick Elemental Equilibrium (and by that start focusing more on minions) though.

Rare items with mods increasing minion damage don't drop normally, but you can get them using Essences of Fear and Bound Fossils or find them in the Temple of Atzoatl.

Regarding uniques, Lifesprig is great to begin with. You can use Aurumvorax to get rid of the resistances problem for a while. A bit later on, Nycta's Lantern is nice for leveling.

[edit; 15 June, 2019] In 3.7 the setup is: SRS + Minion Damage + Unleash.

It likely will be as efficient as a 5-link but with a lower mana cost.

This build totally works, although I now understand the "why" of taking the Blood Magic gem out of the links before summoning, because that ended my life on Act 8. Whoops. =)

Until then however, fastest and easiest I have ever done a character through the first 7 Acts. So this build is win.

Two thumbs up, will make new witch and try again. Lulz.

"

venjenz0531 wrote:

This build totally works, although I now understand the "why" of taking the Blood Magic gem out of the links before summoning, because that ended my life on Act 8. Whoops. =)

Until then however, fastest and easiest I have ever done a character through the first 7 Acts. So this build is win.

Two thumbs up, will make new witch and try again. Lulz.

Sorry for the rip, but happy to hear it worked for you so far :]

To clarify again for the others - if you don't have enough life, it's simply impossible to use a skill linked with Blood Magic. Therefore, you can't kill yourself that way as a CI character, but you need to remove it in order to use the skill.

Before you go CI, it draws your life of course. The cost isn't that big, so usually it isn't a problem. Better to be cautious though.