[3.13] Peak life Necromancer -- 12k life, 7k+ regen/sec, delete everything
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THE AUTHOR
Napz has been playing Path of Exile since Legacy league with more than 5000 hours logged. He has played well over 100 builds over the years, some by other players and some he created on his own. Whatever build you can find on PoE Vault, chances are he has tried it. Out of all the builds he has played, nothing gave him as much fun as his current build in 3.13 Ritual, and so he felt the need to share his secret. Orginally he started 3.13 with Cyclone impale slayer, and while the dps and clear speed were over the roof, it just didn't fit with the Ritual mechanics. Spinning around the ritual circles chasing down mobs one by one got really exhausting, not to mention having to deal with the sneaky mobs that have achieved lvl 99 in hide and seek. It led him to reroll a necro and honestly, the smoothness of necro/minions in ritual is second only to ED Contagion back in 3.7 Legion. Build Summary and Playstyle  Usually if you tell someone you have 11k life (12k at lvl 100) they are guaranteed to go "oh another rf player", then you are going to say no and they will go "wait not rf? 11/12k life? Can you even kill Hillock?". Then you go to whatever map they are in and a few seconds later you will find their chin on the ground among the loot pile. Not only is this build insanely strong on its own, it also fits the Ritual mechanic. Minions will seek out and run down mobs in the ritual circles and you will have a very smooth experience in 3.13. However, you might find Legion a bit sluggish. This build is based around The Baron, allowing us to summon 2 extra zombies (1 per 500 strength), as well as giving half our strength to our zombies to substantially increase their damage output. Where it truly shines though (and why this helmet is irreplaceable) is you gain so much life per second from zombie leech. Currently at lvl 95 with 11k life the zombies will leech 2200 life to you per second, with your own life regen and the ascendancy Bone Barrier, you are going to recover more than 4000 life per second, with 20% quality Blood of the Karui, that's a total of around 7000 life. regenerated. every. second. So you run around with 10 zombies to delete things for you, an animate guardian to provide buffs and debuffs, a carrion golem to empower your zombies and provide feeding frenzy support and a few spectres to assist you in whatever style you perfer. For your own character, you will be using two active skills: The reason we go with Convocation instead of an offering skill is because: 1. We don't take the offering nodes in ascendancy so they can't realise their true potential. 2. Convocation is the key to longevity of this build. The biggest con to minion builds is almost always going to be the play style -- you sit back letting minions do every thing for you. Some people find that tremendously boring. With Cconvocation#, you run into a pack of mobs, summon your minions to your side and they obey your order. This gives you a sense of accomplishment; you feel that you are the one who killed those mobs because you use a skill and boom they are all dead. It's a physchological thing. Without the skill gem, you have to wait until your minions turn their attention to the mobs you want dead, and you just feel you are the servant waiting passively for things to happen. With it, you will feel in control - you make things happen, and you will find playing this build (or any minion build) much more fun. Convocation also works really well with pride because your minions will be called next to you, and therefore they will fully execute damage buff provided by pride as you will have mobs next to you. Otherwise you would have to follow your zombies everywhere so your Pride can get in range. Zombies lose a lot of dps without Pride. If that doesn't apply to you then by all means you can switch to an offering skill instead, or you can find an unset ring to run both skills, but an unset ring with the stats we need can be extremely expensive or simply not exist on the market. Without an unset ring, we have limited sockets and using both skills is impossible without losing some of our core functionalities. We will also be using Kaom's Heart on our chest for the insane life pool. We use three auras : Vitality will help you regen even more life per second, and because we have such a huge life pool, such means of regenerating life cannot be overlooked. Our zombies will have Impale Support linked to them and therefore Dread Banner is essential to boosting their damage. Pros & Con Pros
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+ Good aoe damage, even better single target damage - you kill most bosses in 1-2 seconds.
+ 11k life and 12k at lvl 100, as well as more than 6k life regen per second along with fortify, you will find dying a bit hard. + Good league starter (albeit a bit slow before you get minion damage support at level 8), core item The Baron is very affordable, and Kaom's Heart isn't urgent. + Budget friendly. You won't need more than 1ex to get it up and running. Min-maxing mainly increases your hp/survivability. The biggest wall will be 6-link maul and lvl 4 empower support, but you are ok with 5-link for the timebeing. + Scales very well with level. You will feel immensely more powerful with each level you gain. + You won't feel lonely. + Necro is argubly the best character for new players, and this builds makes it even easier for newcomers to get familiar with the game, but the downside to that is --- Cons
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- New players using this as their first build might get the wrong idea that this game is extremely easy. - Mediocre clear speed. Unfortunately good damage does not imply good clear speed. Minions aren't smart enough to fly across the map, do what they should do and avoid what they shouldn't do. - You will find legion really sluggish to the point where you just want to ignore every monolith you come across. - Minion play style. Minions isn't for everyone, but Convocation will mitigate that for a lot of players. For others however, letting others do the job for you simply doesn't click no matter what. - Physical reflect will be annoying to deal with. Passive Tree & Path of Building
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Here is the current tree at lvl 95
"Path of Building()":https://pastebin.com/TLUgKs2Z At lvl 100 we can put another 5 points into life nodes and achieve 12k life. Jewels: Efficient Training and when you can, with the "Corrupted blood cannot be inflicted on you" mod. Thread Of Hope to help us save points for the Ravenous Horde node. It's a rather important node and I don't recommend skipping it. It makes quite a difference and even if you do skip it, later on at lvl 93+ you will want to come back to this node because you will feel like there is no better way to spend your skill points. Also two other rare jewels with +strength, + strength and dex/int and 7% increased maximum life. Bandits: 2 skill points (kill all) Ascendancy: 1.Commander of Darkness (either 1st or 4th depending on if you are just starting and cannot craft yourself enough res to finish story) 2.Mindless Aggression (this goes 2nd to prepare for the 2 nodes it branches to) 3.Bone Barrier ( this goes 3rd because it makes everyone including you that much tankier) 4.Unnatural Strength (This goes last because you won't feel the true power of +2 until maps) Gear # Head:
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The Baron
# Amulet:
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Rare amulet with +strength, %increased strength, life and res
# Chest:
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Kaom's Heart (with 5% increased maximum life implicit mod, when you can afford)
# Gloves:
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Rare gloves with armor, +strength, life and res
# Boots:
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Rare boots with armor, +strength, life, res and increased movement speed, or an open prefix slot for you to craft movement speed. To do this you can go to "official trade site(1)":https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Ritual, click "ADD STAT FILTER" on the right side and type "empty prefix"
# Belt:
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Rare belt with +strength, %increased attributes, life and res
# Rings:
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Rare rings with +strength, life and res
# Weapon:
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Ideally a two hand imperial maul with implicit %increased strength, for example:
 Before you can afford such weapon, Queen's Escape is a good alternative. # Levelling unique:
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Wanderlust,Sidhebreath,Tabula, all quiet cheap
# Flask:
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Blood of the Karui , Quicksilver
Gems and Minions Gems: 6-link weapon :
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* raise-zombie (level 21 when you can) * brutality support * melee physical damage support * multistrike support * impale support * empower support (level 4 when you can) If you don't have a 6-link you can drop melee physical damage. Switch to the awakened version of those gems when you can. Awakened Multistrike Support is the pinnacle item of our build. it's just... busted, is all we can say. Once you obtain it your zombies' dps will soar. 4-link The Baron
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* raise spectre (get level 21 as soon as you can for an extra spectre) * animate guardian ( level 21 when you can) * meat shield support * minion life support or blood magic support The reason we have these gems on our helm is because of the +2 level to minion gems on it. By putting level 21 Raise Spectre on it along with Unnatural Strength ascendancy, you will have exactly the required level to summon a 3rd spectre. We use meat shield support because we want our animated guardian to never die and to always stick to us so we have the buffs he provides. When your guardian dies it loses all its equipped items, and you really don't want to spend the effort and currency to purchase another set. (Note that the guardian only loses its items if it dies, so if you, for example, take the gem off your helmet, it still keeps them) For the 4th link, if you use mana hungry spectres such as host and carnage chieftains, you will want a blood magic support. Otherwise, go with minion-life support. As aforementioned, you will want your guardian to live forever. With both minion life support and meat shield support, you guardian's health bar will never move an inch. Same with your spectres. 4-link Rare Gloves:
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* generosity support * Dread banner * Flame Dash * Pride Pretty straight forward here, Dread Banner does not affect you so you want to pair it with generosity support for it to have a greater effect on your minions. You can put convocation here and put Flame Dash on your boots, doesn't matter. You will want to put Pride here because our 3rd aura, Vitality, cannot go with generosity support, as it needs to affect us too. 4-link Rare Boots:
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* convocation * summon carrion golem * feeding frenzy support * Vitality Again you can put Flame Dash here instead of Convocation, up to you. We pair summon carrion golem with feeding frenzy support here because in this build the carrion golem acts as a support/buffer for our zombies. It doesn't do too much damage on its own, especially after its nerf in 3.13. So we just want to use it to raise the damage output of our zombies with its innate passive and feeding frenzy support. We won't need to worry about its survival because it's quite tanky and if/when it does die, it's just a matter of a single buton to resummon it. Our last aura vitality goes here to massively increase out survivability. We do not need enlighten support nor do we need any aura-related nodes on our tree. Even after reserving these three auras raw we will still have plenty of mana to spam convocation and flame dash. Minions: We get 10 zombies through raise zombie and the baron with 1000 strength. They are the primary damage dealer for this build. We have a carrion golem to buff our zombies with its passives and feeding frenzy support. For spectres, honestly it's best if you see a guide on spectres, such as :https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2849809 We also have an animate guardian to act as our bodyguard and buffer/debuffer. It's our best friend and our favourite minion. For its weapon, nothing beats Kingmaker for our build. This is a build that prides itself on its superb survivability, and therefore fortify is a must. On top of that, there is culling strike, item rarity and more crit multiplier to boost your zombies. The rest of its gear is up to you. You can visit "the wiki(1)":https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Animate_Guardian to see the suggested gear for animate guardian. Just two notes here though: 1. For boots, Victarios flight might be best for our build because the biggest con in our build is its clear speed. By having more movement speed you will no doubt clear the maps faster. 2. For body armour, any chest with "Nearby enemies are blinded" is extremely useful. Again, our build prides itself on survivability, and making nearby enemies blinded will increase that drastically. However, once you have enough currency and your level is high enough, you practically become unkillable, and you will cease to see any effectiveness in this mod. So: use this mod if/when you are not that tanky, and when you are, feel free to drop it and switch to another body armour; or you can keep using it, your choice. All in all, Kingmaker is the only required gear for guardian, rest is flexible, giving you a sense of freedom. Levelling and Mapping: Levelling
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Tabula is your best friend, and will remain so for quite some time. If you are just starting and don't have a Tabula don't worry, any 4 link gear will do. Tabula for levelling will be zombie - minion damage - minion speed - melee physcial damage - brutaility - multistrike. 4 link : zombie - minion damage (swap to brutality when you can) - minion speed (swap to multistrike when you can) - and melee physical damage You can equip The Baron as soon as you hit level 26. Life isn't that important in story. When you start priortise minion nodes, and when you reach about level 40 start to get ready to focus on life. I suggest that you simply branch to as many nodes as you can at that point but wait until you are about level 65 to actually spend points in them. This will make you feel noticeably stronger every time you level up past level 65 because levelling won't be as fast as before. Imagine you grind for days and finally hit lvl 90, but you spend that hard-earned skill point on an intelligence node in order to path to those life nodes you want. No, do that when it is easy to level. After level 65 we want to make sure that every single point we spend makes us noticeably stronger. If you are fresh starting grab Commander of Darkness as your first ascendancy from normal lab to help with resistances, if not you can easily craft yourself enough res to finish act 10. Mapping
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Drop Tabula when you obtain a decent 5-link weapon, OR, you can keep wearing it until you obtain a kaom's heart. Early mapping you won't need that much hp - about 3k or 4k life will do, so you can keep wearing the Tabula for 6 link for faster clear speed and therefore faster progression. Tabula for mapping: Zombie - melee physcial damage - brutality - multistrike -empower - impale There are two mods that will hinder you in some way: 1. Physical reflect. You can still do them but they can be very annoying to deal with. 2. No regen. You can deal with this mod but you won't be able to run into a million mobs and survive like you normally would. So basically you will just have to let your zombies stay close and walk as they clear. However, if you are fully equipped and overlevlled, and are attempting white/yellow maps, you won't find a problem with it. Very Important things to know
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1. Your first goal should be to reach 1000 strength for 2 extra zombies, also at 1000 strength you give your zombies 500 strength which makes them hit very hard. 2. After you reach 1000 strength turn all your attention to max life, while maintaining maxed res. The higher your max life is, the more life you regenerate per second, and the more leeched life you get from zombies per second. This means the tankier you are, the tankier you are. 3. When you boss make sure you glue yourself to the boss(Pride aura) and have all of your zombies on it. Use Convocation as soon as the boss is available for attacking so all your zombies turn their attention to the boss instead of chasing other mobs. 4. All gem qualities should be at 20%, and all minion gems should be at level 21. 5. Get as many Blood of the Karui as you are comfortable with; you may even want to have all 5 slots occupied by it if you need. Depending on how severe the situation is, you just spam press 1, 2 or 1 2 3, or 1 2 3 4, or 12345. The more BotK you have equipped, the harder you can spam drinking it, the harder it is for you to die. Their effects don't stack, but having more of them ensures that you don't run out of flasks to recover life from for a while. In some cases if you just have one BotK equipped and it runs out of charges, you are going to wish you brought more. Conclusion As mentioned at the start this is the most powerful build out of the 100 builds the author has played ( well at least it's that way for the author.He might be a weirdo though). Once geared well enough and your level is high enough, walking around with 11/12k life you will feel like you have conquered the world. At this point there really isn't anything anyone can do to you. Your layers of denfese are so thick that dying will feel almost impossible. On top of that you will be dealing insane dps-- melting most bosses in 1-2 seconds, especially when you obtain an Awakened Multistrike Support. you can do 99% of the content with your eyes closed. At the time of writing we are in 3.13 Ritual. This is a league where necro shines due to having your minions auto-complete rituals for you. According to Poe Ninja Necromancer sits at the top of the chart with 14% of the playerbase playing it. We are not sure what will happen in the future but right now, our 12k Baron Necro build will trivialize the game/league for you like no other. Any questions feel free to leave them in the comment section below and the author will endeavour to get back to you as soon as possible (usually within two hours unless he is sleeping or too busy at work). Good luck! Last edited by Napzzz#7513 on Feb 7, 2021, 12:42:36 PM Last bumped on Sep 3, 2021, 7:35:23 AM
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hey man, thank you for your interesting guide!
Could you please add a section about possible map mods? How does your build deal with no reg/phys ref mods? Is it worth going for synthesized implicits with %str on belt/rings/weapon? Last edited by feeltheaxeofaxe#4337 on Feb 3, 2021, 11:40:07 AM
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" Sure I added a levelling and mapping section. The first goal is to get 1000 strength, it's up to you how you achieve that. After you get 1000 strength you will want to focus on life and regen for the rest of the league, while maintaining capped res. Last edited by Napzzz#7513 on Feb 3, 2021, 1:10:35 PM
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hi iwas play baronmancer in blight even better gear(bow+quiver) just not with kaom barealy reach 7-8 k that kaom make that diff?
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Swapped to this build just now and somewhat quickly from my previous as I was looking for a boss killer to compliment my assassin mapper. I have been struggling on boss dps, and not sure why besides buying an awakened multistrike (out of my budget atm). Also do we not run aspect of the avian. Taking that wont let me have the mana to reserve vitality or cast raise zombie. I also noticed there is no way to resummon dead zombies here, am I missing something? Fairly new to necromancer builds. EDIT: Forgot those apes exist in act7 that give power/frenzy charges so I grabbed those and it seems to be better. The second boss I tested this on was uber atziri so that was my mistake lmao, the zombies just got destroyed and gave me a bad impression. Just did cortex and uber elder now, and it went well. Did run into a small issue of my zombies dying in uber elder and I gem-swapped desecrate in to resummon. Still need to manage mana, right now I am taking the mana reservation cluster and using a lower level vitality, but I may try the saqawal chest and lose some life. Last edited by BlRTH#2887 on Feb 3, 2021, 11:51:18 PM
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" A few things here for you to check: 1. Your Raise Zombie gem should be level 30. 21 (on its own) + 1(weapon mod) + 6 (lvl 4 empower boosted by weapon mods) + 2 (Unnatural Strength Ascendancy). Zombie level matters a lot. Your dread banner should be at 20% quality. 2. When you boss make sure you glue yourself to the boss(Pride aura) and have all of your zombies on it. Use Convocation as soon as the boss is available for attacking so all your zombies turn their attention to the boss instead of chasing other mobs. 3. Make sure you have grabbed the necessary minion nodes (you can copy my tree on PoB) and make sure you have done labs. I tend to forget lab sometimes. Lastly, make sure you have at least 1000 strength for 2 extra zombies. The Baron makes zombies hit hard because with 1000 strengeth you will give zombies 500 strength, which is quite insane. " Aspect of the Avian was never meant to be part of our build, it's just that the weapon you are using happens to have it. It doesn't really make a difference, and you defenitely shouldn't end up not having enough mana to reserve Vitality. " Your zombies shouldn't be dying. At gem level 30 zombies should have about 60k life, and with the minion life regen nodes zombies bascially never die. You can get minion damage leech on one your jewels, but personally I've never found it necessary as my zombies never die. Last edited by Napzzz#7513 on Feb 4, 2021, 12:33:44 AM
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Hi
I saw your build in Poe.ninja :) https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/NightNapz/NameIessCharacter?i=0&search=skill%3DRaise-Zombie%26sort%3Dlife I have 6L an Imperial Maul with 19 fusing :) I try to craft with Essence Shrieking/Defeaning of Fear, but I dont have +1 gem. Can you explain how to craft an Imperial Maul with +1 gem and Minion Dmg ? Thks Ten Thousand Ways To Die ...
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" Unfortunately this isn't something I can teach you. The only thing you can do is pray to rngod. Keep trying with Shrieking/Deafening Fear until you get +1 to gem and minion damage together at the same time. This can be consuming however, so you might be better off buying a maul with those two affixes already there, as well as two open suffixes and one open prefix, then craft "Can have up to 3 crafted modifiers" mod (note that the mod itself counts as one of the modifiers, so you can only craft two other mods after it). You can find it in The Pale Court. The %strength increase implicit on the maul isn't necessary for you to reach 1k strength, also you can drop the minion damage affix and just search for +1 to gem and the open affixes, makes it easier that way. Last edited by Napzzz#7513 on Feb 4, 2021, 5:06:35 AM
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