[3.21] Cold Conversion Summoner | Build guides for all budgets | (Ghazzy Zoomancer)

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nasiyi wrote:

Hello Deadandlivin and fellow build-followers,
first of all, thank you very much for the build and your discussions to upgrade. Standard player here. Have few comments/questions;
Is it mandatory to put awk cold pen into spectre links? I have put it into shield – zombie/feeding frenzy/aw cold pen. I think it still gives exposure, which golem/spectre will benefit from. Is that right?
After changing amulet from +1/+1 to aul’s, I run both determination and grace, which makes defense so good. No problem about defense.
I have invested ~1k exalts into this build last league. I have zero problem with clearing running with 5 SO. I even did not need to put inpulsa/gravebind on AG. My single target dps criteria is killing a8 sirus before he makes his move in last phase or not (which lasts around 2sec i guess). When fighting sirus, I am changing spectre links to spectre/miniondmg/hypo/edwa/increasedCritDmg/predator. It is not possible to 1-shot him (5-10% hp left). I will try putting 2primal crushclaw and 3SO and try.
As you can see my items are pretty much similar to your first page minmax build (not the mirror tier krangeled stuff). I know i have not very good ring and some updates are available for wand/boots etc, but any suggestion to improve is very much welcome. I can share POB if you need.
Thank you in advance.

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Deadandlivin wrote:

Major Build update:

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New Spectre Gameplay
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Hello guys!
Two days ago I talked some to Ghazzy about the Primal Crushclaws and learned that they have a screech ability which increases cold damage taken by all enemies who get hit by the skill.
To my astonishment, I learned that the ability increases cold damage taken by the insane amount of 50%.

To put this into perspective, Hypothermia support increases cold damage dealt by 30% at max level. This casted spectre ability single handedly increases the damage of a cold damage dealing build by as much as ~2 additional support gems.
When I learned about this I instantly thought of using one of these spectres as a support replacing one of our SOs.
It worked wonders when bosses actually got hit by it. Problem however, was that the ability has a 12 second cooldown and a 6 second duration. So the uptime would be inconsistent.

This got me thinking about completely replacing our Syndicate Operatives with Primal Crushclaws instead to keep the buff up more consistently.
The problem with the current build however, is that Primal Crushclaws are melee minions that scale heavily with things like Multistrike et.c. and currently, phantasms get no benefits from such gems.

I did some light testing however and tried running with the Crushclaws for some maps and bosses and the single target dps increase was insane. You could literally feel how the dps increased by 40-50%. And this was when running in my old Skin of the Lord(3g-3b)

I ran:
- Phantasm
- Minion Dmg
- Added Cold
- Hypothermia
- Cold Pen

This got me intrigued and I started doing some PoBing to see what the numbers would look like. Unfortunately, the gems I used didn't really scale well for the Crushclaws. They really need red gems to do proper damage.
However, their base damage is so much higher than SOs that their damage blows them out of the water with proper gems.

Keep in mind that this is my first itteration of trying this build and I'm currently running with this setup:

My current PoB

How to Solve the Clearspeed:

Spoiler

Playing another set of 4 Melee spectres however comes with the massive problem of severely decreasing our clear speed. This is why the identity of my build always have been to use Golems for single target as melee juggernuts and ranged spectres for clear speed with long ranged projectiles to cover the entire screen. And when it comes to clear, nothing will ever beat SOs, period.

So obviously, this setup is focused more on improving single target while sacrificing clear speed as we're instead running 8 thick melee minions instead.

This posed a massive problem because I still want the build to be a super fast map clearer. The primary identity of the build after all, is to be a mapping build first and bosser second. I noticed however, that my clearspeed wasn't bad. Actually, it was pretty damn insane.
I was still running Inpulsa on my Animate Guardian and when the Fearsome Force(60% increased AoE) was added to the build the Inpulsa explosions started scaling out of control. The problem of slower clearspeed with melee minions was somewhat mitigated by letting our Animate guardian unironically deal with massive clear.

This wasn't as prominent when running him with Ranged spectres because most of the time, the SOs had already cleared most trash mobs before the AG got time to shine. But when every minion is melee based he actually gets to be in ranged consistently to large packs of monsters and instantly blow them all up single handedly.

I continued the tradition of letting the Crushclaws focus more on clear and less on single target during mapping since golems already have enough single target damage. This lead me to running my Spectres with Increased Area of Effect which lead to absolutely massive slams helping bursting down monsters to initiate the Inpulsa chain explosions. The synergy in this playstyle is really satisfying to witness.

I've recorded some gameplay for you to see how this actually looks:

Primal Crushclaw Gameplay

Now for the important question:

Is this better than running SOs with Phantasms?

Spoiler

The answer is that it depends. After playing around with this build the whole day I can say that both versions of the build come with pros and cons.

The biggest pro with running Crabs is the increased single target dps which really feels great. The tankiness of the spectre (Literally immortal) and not having to deal with Phantasms dying on you to AoE boss mechanics also makes it feel very consistent.

The cons is that it simply has less clear than Syndicate Operatives. No melee spectre will ever be able to compete with the clear of ranged spectres, but we can try to do everything possible to get close atleast by adding niche mechanics like Explodey Animate Guardians.
I personally found that the biggest con was survivability.
When running with SOs and phantasms the ranged projectiles are fired at targets before you get to them. This allows the ranged minions to usually kill monsters or freeze them when you get to them. The barrage of projectiles flying everywhere helps alot in keeping everything frozen.

Crabs don't have this luxury. When you're running into a pack of monsters nothing is frozen or killed beforehand and you're running a bigger risk in getting swinged at. However, since I'm now running an Auls Uprising I have 91% evade chance on top of my 82% phys damage mitigation.
I literally feel immortal now.. until I get poisoned and melt in 0.8 seconds with my -60% chaos res. But that's another problem :)

All in all, it depends on your playstyle and what you prefer.
I would say that Crushclaws are better for bosses and SOs better for mapping. Probably? Hard to say since I find that both builds feel really good and smooth to play. Especially when you start to get the gear rolling like I have.

To end this post I'd like to finally talk alittle bit about our favorite body armour, the Skin of the Lords.

As with the SOs, I find this chest central to the build and as before, my choice is to run with Elemental Equilibirum for maximum damage.
The positive thing with this chestpiece is that it's more flexible than the Syndicate Operative one when it comes to colors.

Spoiler

When running this version of the build there's 4 mandatory colors in my eyes:
- 2 Blue (Raise Spectre & Minion Damage)
- 2 Red (Elemental Damage with Attacks & Multistrike)

For the other colors you can literally run with any other combination you want and they all come with their pros and cons.

Personally, I think the "BiS" color uses 3 blue, 2 red and 1 green or 3 blue and 3 red. As with the SOs, I really like Predator for bosskilling as it glues the spectres to the target while you're dodging mechanics. While running 2 blues might actually provide other benefits as adding more "passive" dmg increase gems like Melee physical strike or Cold Penetration support et.c. Predator is simply king for bosskilling early on when we need monsters to stay on top of bosses.

The support gem priority looks like this:

- Blue Gems: Minion Damage > Predator > Increased Critical Strike Damage
- Red Gems: Multistrike > Elemental Dmg With Attacks > Melee Phys > Ruthless
- Green Gems: Divergent Hypothermia > Cold Penetration Support

Basically, follow this priority list when getting one of these body armours.
As an example, if you choose to buy a 2b-2r-2g you simply link:

Raise Spectre - Minion Dmg - Multistrike - EDWA - Hypothermia - Cold Penetration

I know alot of people were tired of running Syndicate Operatives league after league and for you people, maybe this version of the build will be interesting to try out.

It's still the same build, just new spectres with new colors in the chest and some minor changes to the tree. But in principle, it's mostly the same scaling and general idea. It also feels really good and I will personally be trying this out for a while because the playstyle is extremely satisfying with the Inpulsa explosions. My guess is that this might be stronger at lower gear levels when SOs and Phantasms aren't strong enough to oneshot everything with their projectiles. However, at higher tiers of gear I think SOs might pull ahead again because of the sheer screen cover behind their projectiles.

To the lucky few who're first to read this, go buy the EE chests before they start climbing in price. Since I was first I got mine for 80 chaos. :)
Wouldn't be surprised to start seeing Red EE combinations rising above several exalteds like the Green-Blue ones SO uses.

Hoping to get some more feedback around this version of the build, especially how it feels at lower budgets to you guys!

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Dead, thanks for the update! But please, tell me, how do you deal with chaos damage with little to no resist? My biggest suffering right now is chaos damage, and I wonder how you manage to simply not have to deal with that on each and every piece of gear.

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Qwiker93 wrote:

I am currently running 4 SO (can't find harvest with crab yet) Phantasm>minion damage>increased crit>gmp>hypo for clearing.
Is it worth to fill somehow awakened cold pene gem? If yes, I guess that's for GMP?