[3.13] Skeleton Nebulomancer | Sirus tank&kill on a <5ex budget, NO AURASTACK ! Beginner-friendly

Great build - the mana flask is super important for smooth gameplay, but I tend to run out of mana at bosses. However, I have not gotten my cluster jewels yet, so I hope for better dps.

Have you tried with the phantasmal summon skeletons (archers...)? Could perhaps be better at clearing? POB gives me a small dps decrease, likely due to the quality.

Will try it out when my heist gear is transferred to standard.

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Elithraldor wrote:

Great build - the mana flask is super important for smooth gameplay, but I tend to run out of mana at bosses. However, I have not gotten my cluster jewels yet, so I hope for better dps.

Have you tried with the phantasmal summon skeletons (archers...)? Could perhaps be better at clearing? POB gives me a small dps decrease, likely due to the quality.

Will try it out when my heist gear is transferred to standard.

Hi! I'm glad you enjoy the build so far.
Indeed, when you face late endgame, skeletons will often die shortly after being summoned, resulting in both very low DPS and huge mana spending. It should be fixed as soon as you find a medium cluster jewel with Blessed Rebirth (4s damage immunity for freshly summoned minions).


As for skeleton archers, I didn't try them. It definitely should be a thing to consider, but afaik PoB doesn't support the phantasmal quality on summon skeletons. As I never player ranged builds, I'm not sure what support gems would be best; what's sure is it will require several green sockets in Loreweave, but probably no more than 3, so we can craft that.

If you (or anyone) wants to try it out, remember that multistrike and melee attack damage support won't work, and PoB won't warn you as it doesn't consider quality on the summon gem. If you just changed quality in your PoB, your actual DPS is three times lower than expected !

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Indeed, when you face late endgame, skeletons will often die shortly after being summoned, resulting in both very low DPS and huge mana spending. It should be fixed as soon as you find a medium cluster jewel with Blessed Rebirth (4s damage immunity for freshly summoned minions).

Yep, helps alot. I'm fiddling a bit around with the build. You can save 2 points by going for vigour instead of death attunement and Cruel Preperation, and still get the same hp. You have to sort out int though, which I did on my amulet. Let's me skip the shaper belt with CDR on (since it's ridiculously overpriced in standard). I actually have cyclone-fortify-mana leech now instead of leap slam, works nicely, and I like it for delve. But yeah, just fiddling around with it :-)

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As for skeleton archers, I didn't try them. It definitely should be a thing to consider, but afaik PoB doesn't support the phantasmal quality on summon skeletons. As I never player ranged builds, I'm not sure what support gems would be best; what's sure is it will require several green sockets in Loreweave, but probably no more than 3, so we can craft that.

If you (or anyone) wants to try it out, remember that multistrike and melee attack damage support won't work, and PoB won't warn you as it doesn't consider quality on the summon gem. If you just changed quality in your PoB, your actual DPS is three times lower than expected !

I think we can substitute multistrike with GMP for mapping and Vicious Proj for bossing. Will try it out. I hope that the archers will level out the dps loss by not having to move around when the boss does - can we just have Heist transferred to standard already! xD

On another matter - how much does your spectres die? I'm delving at around depth 205, and they perish with the first run into the darkness. Also when doing beefed up tier 16's they also die quite a lot. For now, I'm just not using them since I don't bother to resummon them all the time. I actually specced into Sacrifice (the long route) to get regen and life leech (+ I have some on my jewel), but it helps little on keeping the spectres alive.

Besides, since we should resummon skellies every 4 secs for max dps, will the chieftans actually have enough time to buff the skellies with frenzy and power charges? I don't really feel like I'm loosing dps doing tier 16 without the spectres... Of course the POB will tell you that it's a huge dps loss, but well, theory and practice :-)

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Elithraldor wrote:

I'm fiddling a bit around with the build. You can save 2 points by going for vigour instead of death attunement and Cruel Preperation, and still get the same hp. You have to sort out int though, which I did on my amulet. Let's me skip the shaper belt with CDR on (since it's ridiculously overpriced in standard). I actually have cyclone-fortify-mana leech now instead of leap slam, works nicely, and I like it for delve. But yeah, just fiddling around with it :-)

I'm not sure to see the benefit of this. You do gain 2 passive points, but you lose 60 int for strength and dex, and you gain some charge duration instead of 28% minion damage + 8% minion life. I don't think 2 points can boost minion damage/at speed more than this.
Maybe it could be worth considering for the 1.6% life regen, which is huge, but I think the dps loss would be too much for the QoL gain.

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On another matter - how much does your spectres die? I'm delving at around depth 205, and they perish with the first run into the darkness. Also when doing beefed up tier 16's they also die quite a lot. For now, I'm just not using them since I don't bother to resummon them all the time. I actually specced into Sacrifice (the long route) to get regen and life leech (+ I have some on my jewel), but it helps little on keeping the spectres alive.

Besides, since we should resummon skellies every 4 secs for max dps, will the chieftans actually have enough time to buff the skellies with frenzy and power charges? I don't really feel like I'm loosing dps doing tier 16 without the spectres... Of course the POB will tell you that it's a huge dps loss, but well, theory and practice :-)

That's true. I didn't push above T17 maps, and without %delirium the mobs die too quickly to kill the spectres most of the time, but above 40% delirious maps, they get killed regularly. In big boss fights too, as we can see in the videos I posted (Uber Elder and Sirus killed one).

But anyway and as you pointed out, the main issue is charges stack too slowly for melee skeletons, who tend to die before having charges, let alone 3 of each. So the good call probably would be to change spectres completely. Lately, I tried They of Tul and Arena Masters (2 of each), but I wasn't that much convinced. At least Arena Masters are quite tanky and didn't die at all. Maybe cursing monsters would be a thing ?

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PoitelMarto wrote:

I'm not sure to see the benefit of this. You do gain 2 passive points, but you lose 60 int for strength and dex, and you gain some charge duration instead of 28% minion damage + 8% minion life. I don't think 2 points can boost minion damage/at speed more than this.
Maybe it could be worth considering for the 1.6% life regen, which is huge, but I think the dps loss would be too much for the QoL gain.

I agree. Thought it would be cool to use the extra two points for a small cluster jewel, but the offensive impact is nothing, while the defensive impact is small at best. Probably not worth it. Might be worth it for the extra dex, if I try out the archers. Time will tell.

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That's true. I didn't push above T17 maps, and without %delirium the mobs die too quickly to kill the spectres most of the time, but above 40% delirious maps, they get killed regularly. In big boss fights too, as we can see in the videos I posted (Uber Elder and Sirus killed one).

But anyway and as you pointed out, the main issue is charges stack too slowly for melee skeletons, who tend to die before having charges, let alone 3 of each. So the good call probably would be to change spectres completely. Lately, I tried They of Tul and Arena Masters (2 of each), but I wasn't that much convinced. At least Arena Masters are quite tanky and didn't die at all. Maybe cursing monsters would be a thing ?

Last night I tried with They of Tul and the Reanimators that use enfeeble. Actually none of them died, quite surprised. However, the Reanimators overwrite Assassin's Mark, which is a significant dps loss imo. The Reanimators also summon zombies, which is nice for some extra cannon fodder. I ended up just running all They of Tul - but I don't really feel like I need the extra defense, even though my char is totally unbalanced atm. Oh, and They of Tul makes an incredibly irritating sound when in your hideout! I seriously turn off my sound when in my hideout now.

I'm not really sure what other spectres would be clever to use? Perhaps just chieftains for whatever dps they give, and they are relatively easy to get again when they die.

On the other hand, what other skills could we use instead? Doing something with buffing flesh offering? Running enlighten and going for another aura? Ah, well, then it is not really budget anymore. Zombies? Meh...

Did we survive the nerf hammer?

I prefer waiting for the actual patch notes, but Skeleton builds still should be playable. Ascendancy changes only end up to -20% to damage increase, which is unpleasant but manageable, and strictly none of our notables has been nerfed; Skellies seem to be unaffected; Spectres got butchered, but as the last comments here stated, they weren't used to their full potential anyway.

I'm much more concerned with the cluster notable changes for Rotten Claws and Renewal. Impale is one of the min ways to scale damage for bossing (around 10% more damage), so nerfing it would hurt as much as, maybe even more than, the whole ascendancy rework. It's roughly the same with Renewal , so twice the loss as we got a pair.

PoB dps will get largely lower because we'll lose spectres, but as most of us noticed, it wasn't actual dps anyway. Real dps should be from 5% to 20% less, depending on the cluster notable nerf. Defensive layers are apparently untouched - that's the most crucial point, as the core of the build is strong survivability for little investment in currency.
So somehow weaker in terms of damage, especially bossing, but still as tanky.

I'm working today on a rework, essentially finding something to replace Spectres completely. It may be that using Triad Grip for damage conversion is something to explore if Rotten Claws gets nerfed too hard.

Bex_GGG said spectra wil get 2x more hp :)
also they say skeleton mage will get buff maybe use them?
but we need the patch notes to be sure what is nerfet or buffet

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JuhlDk wrote:

Bex_GGG said spectra wil get 2x more hp :)

where? o.O

https://www.reddit.com/r/pathofexile/comments/kvdynz/ggg_please_reconsider_monster_level_nerf_for/

GGG Comments in this Thread:
[Bex_GGG - link, old] - I spoke with the design team about this and asked if they'd consider reviewing the nerf. They explained that even after the nerf, spectres have more life than basically every...