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

Update; maven and uber elder cleared.

I like the dps on this build.

The one gripe I do have is with the veterans awareness, like it is a nice budget way of achieveing pseudo immortality for a few seconds, but because I have a bit more currency to my name, Im thinking of going CI + Aegis + Melding for very big dick defense. Gonna have to do some omega POB planning though..

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TheRebirthed wrote:

Update; maven and uber elder cleared.

I like the dps on this build.

The one gripe I do have is with the veterans awareness, like it is a nice budget way of achieveing pseudo immortality for a few seconds, but because I have a bit more currency to my name, Im thinking of going CI + Aegis + Melding for very big dick defense. Gonna have to do some omega POB planning though..

You can check out the 3.16 PoBs we used which were designed to farm Wave30 Sinulacrums.

It uses Auls Uprising to fit Vaal Grace and Tempest Shield + Bone Offering to cap spell block. It's a super tanky version that don't sacrifice too much dps.
It sacrifices speed though as you lose Flesh Offering, Silver Flask et.c. which reduces your clear speed and in turn, currency generation.
But some people prefer to be tankier to level up rather than farming money so it's perfectly suitable.

As you said, Veterans Awareness is primarly for low budget survivability. You're supposed to build out of it at higher budgets. It's super strong during league start as it's a 1 chaos jewel.

I made a few updates to my gear, gems and skill tree. I‘m pretty confident with everything, except my mana problems. That is the reason why I have problems with the uptime of the offerings. I think I have ~160-170 mana left. Is the solution for the problem to get a tainted oil for charisma on the amulet or is there something else, I should do?

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Drathy wrote:

I made a few updates to my gear, gems and skill tree. I‘m pretty confident with everything, except my mana problems. That is the reason why I have problems with the uptime of the offerings. I think I have ~160-170 mana left. Is the solution for the problem to get a tainted oil for charisma on the amulet or is there something else, I should do?

To fix your mana issues you need mana regen. I solve this by running Mystic Bulwark for 75% mana regen and Arcane Will for flat mana regen. This makes sure I always have mana to cast everything.

I suggest that you remove your points in Sanctuary and get Glancing Blows + Mystic Bulwark. Try it out. Not sure if it messes up your resist though.

For your AG. Do you think a shaper helmet with nearby enemies take more elemental damage better than Crown? You can craft 10% area of effect for your AG too. I use Anomalous AG. The AOE of exploding feel way more better

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Deadandlivin wrote:

To fix your mana issues you need mana regen. I solve this by running Mystic Bulwark for 75% mana regen and Arcane Will for flat mana regen. This makes sure I always have mana to cast everything.

I suggest that you remove your points in Sanctuary and get Glancing Blows + Mystic Bulwark. Try it out. Not sure if it messes up your resist though.

Ok, thanks, I'll try that. I have to get new boots and a new ring with resis either, so it should be possible to fix resis with it...

Some Build Updates:
I'll start of by talking about the reintroduction of Hyrosphere and Divergent Melee Splash into the build. As all 3.16 gamers know, we used to run this combination in Scourge League because it literally doubled our single target dps. The effect is clunky to use, but extremely broken. GGG nerfed and removed this interaction in 3.17, or so we thought...

I came across a buildguide video on youtube of a person running Animate Weapons with Hydrosphere and I was scratching my head asking him why he still used this mechanic after it got removed. He claimed it still worked which I thought was odd since it was confirmed to not work by many PoE players.
I decided to do some testing and came to the conclusion that, it does inf act still work. However, only for minions, not players. GGG once again managed to mess up a change and forgot to add minions to their coding so minion damage don't make Hydrosphere immune to damage.

I made a video of it and spread it to Ghazzy to let the minion community know that we still can abuse Hydrosphere, which we should.

So in short, I run Hydrosphere again for double dps.

Testing Occultist Summoner:
After farming currency for a week I decided to invest what I had farmed into some high budget items and do some new theory crafting. This league I didn't bother buying a Mirror Tier helm since I've gotten one of those every league since Harvest. Since I'm so late to the league also, Mirrors are super expensive. Not only that, even Exaled Orbs are super expensive which kinda sucks.

Instead I decided to convert my crap and buy a Mageblood and a new shield.
I wanted a Mageblood to experiment with running an Occultist instead of a Necromancer, mostly for the memedream with tripple explodey. The idea was to run BV + Frostbite ring working like a psuedo Blasphemy Aura to apply curses. This would enable Profane Bloom to procc.

Also, when my AG exploded things he would apply EW from his gloves in an AoE. This in turn would also trigger Profane Bloom which caused ridiculous chain explosions all over the screen. The reason why I needed a mageblood to do this is kinda hillarious, but I needed a mageblood to cap resistances. Losing 30% from Command in Darkness aswell as resistances from my ring getting Frostbite was just unplayable.

Going Occultist also allowed me to get +60% chaos res from a node which is certainly helpful. To switch from Necromancer it was also imperitive to get the new Forbidden Flesh/Flame jewels for +2 to minion skill gems. The primary reason we play as necromancer is because of minion survivability. +2 to levels is very important to keep AG and zombies alive.

I had a problem with running Occultist though, and that was minion resistances. Without Commandment in Darkness minions weren't capped and Zombies would drop like flies in juiced maps. Even Crushclaws and Golems would die since they now only had 63% all res with Indomitable Army. This was a huge problem and I was forced to run Elemental Army support on my minions which was a huge dps loss.

Further experimentation:

However, that's not where the experiment ended. I continued to theory craft, and this time running an Elementalist. And for high budget I'm now convinced that all elemental conversion minion builds should run Elementalist summoner, not necromancer. This is however predicated on running the Forbidden Jewels cause you NEED the +2 levels to make minion builds feel good.

Downsides compared to Necro:
The downside from running a Necromancer is that you lose Mistress in Sacrifice (50% increased duration is huge) and 30% elemental resist to your minions. This means we can't run block as an elementalist since Bone Offering doesn't apply to us any longer. The minion resistances are also present the same problem as with Occultists. Elementalists however, come with an advantage.

Golems in Elementalist builds are immune to elemental damage and they respawn automatically if they somehow die. This means I can completely disregard the survivability of my Golem and Skeleton links. Golems won't die due to immunity and Skeletons are resummonable and all they need is Blessed Rebirth from medium cluster to do their job. This meant we're able to swap Empower for Awakened Melee Phys to gain more damage and free up a link on our other minions still keeping Intimidate in the build.

There's no saving for Zombies and Spectre unfortunately and they have to run Elemental Army. It's not all bad though, it still provides 20% damage and allows them to inflict exposure on targets you're not running through with BV which alteast provides some sort of utility. But running an Awakened Gem obviously would be better on them.

Overall, we also lose 100% increased minion damage and 16% minion attack speed. This however gets outshined by what the elementalist provides.

Upsides for Elementalist:
The upsides more than make up for it when swapping ascendency though. Especially since the problems can be worked around. First of all, we gain -25% extra cold penetration on our Exposure which is a massive dps increase It far outweighs the 100% increase to minion dmg Necros get alone. Especially against bosses as we're now able to put bosses far into the negative resistances.

We also get +2 Golems which speaks for itself. The plus to additional Golems is nice, but not the biggest dps increase since we spread out our minion damage so much. However, the 250% increased to Golem buff effects is MASSIVE for our overall dps. This buffs the phys damage aura from our Carrions which buffs Skellies, Zombies and Spectres immensely. These 3 factors combined, -25% ele pen, +2 golems and 250% buff effect makes Elementalist do more damage than Necromancers.

And now for the far biggest benefit: The increase to defenses.
As an Elementalist we gain access to Elemental Bulark, a passive shield that absorbs 2500 elemental damage. This is basically like a 70% increase to our HP pool versus Elemental damage which again, probably is the most dangerous damage type in the game.

Ontop of that, I also decided to include a Stone Golem into the build to finally get some Regen into my build. This means I lose 1 Carrion but in turn I get a whooping 1300 life regen/sec which is HUGE.

I don't have to run a Life Flask any longer and can instead run a Bottled Faith for more dps aswell as 5% life regen for our minions and 50% reduction of curse effect on ourselves.

Conclusion:

For higher budgets if you got enough money to buy Forbidden Jewels, Elementalists are superior to necromancers in most concievable ways. The only situation where Necromancers are better are for high defense approaches to cap block.

Since Elementalists also gain 18% ele res sorting resistances is much easier compared to Occultist so Mageblood isn't a requirement. This endgame version is definitely possible to build without a Mageblood. You just need the Jewels and alot of levels to fit two Large Clusters.

Here's a video and a link to my Elementalist PoB:

Elementalist PoB:
https://pastebin.com/E5ttz6SF

Full Simulacrum Showcase:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0D4DWr80uU8&ab_channel=HenrikSwanstr%C3%B6m

Very cool update, interesting experimenting.

Im done with the league now, but I wonder if elementalist would be a feasible starter with this build haha.

Despite hating the veteran's awareness jewel earlier, I am now a devoted fan of it. For all forseeable leagues, almost regardless of the build Im playing I think I will continue using veteran's awareness for some easy but extremely powerful defensive options.

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TheRebirthed wrote:

Very cool update, interesting experimenting.

Im done with the league now, but I wonder if elementalist would be a feasible starter with this build haha.

Despite hating the veteran's awareness jewel earlier, I am now a devoted fan of it. For all forseeable leagues, almost regardless of the build Im playing I think I will continue using veteran's awareness for some easy but extremely powerful defensive options.

Yeah, you just have to learn how to play around it.
Meaning, when the duration on Molten Shell gets close to 1 sec, be more careful with what you facerush into.

As I'm writing I'm looking into running something like PoE skills overlay just to make keep track of Molten Shell better. I think it's legal to use too.

I'm gonna try design an Elementalist version of the build too for lower budgets.
Not sure how to do it exactly though. Would have to run Frost Bomb to apply Exposure and take advantage of Mastermind of Discord.

But I'm afraid pressing Frostbomb, Curse, Flesh Offering et.c. might feel too spammy. Maybe just link them all to Arcanist brand?
Will have to see if I'm able to conjure a decent build.
But I think Necro will still be the best early game.

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Deadandlivin wrote:

Yeah, you just have to learn how to play around it.
Meaning, when the duration on Molten Shell gets close to 1 sec, be more careful with what you facerush into.

As I'm writing I'm looking into running something like PoE skills overlay just to make keep track of Molten Shell better. I think it's legal to use too.

I'm gonna try design an Elementalist version of the build too for lower budgets.
Not sure how to do it exactly though. Would have to run Frost Bomb to apply Exposure and take advantage of Mastermind of Discord.

But I'm afraid pressing Frostbomb, Curse, Flesh Offering et.c. might feel too spammy. Maybe just link them all to Arcanist brand?
Will have to see if I'm able to conjure a decent build.
But I think Necro will still be the best early game.

Yeah, well for mapping purposes if the dps is sufficient, it might not be necessary to press all those keys. I played a build where you basically just dash spam atk in maps, but at the boss you have the option to use vaal rf,totems and all sorts of good stuff to sky rocket dps.