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

This LowBudget and Medium Budget seens more solid and balanced for me, it has almost same damage with more layers of defense that we had before.

Last league I got a lot of stuff early on, like Mageblood and Ashes, but I was dying a lot and I couldn't reach one of my goals which was to get level 100. I was feeling I was strong AF and a trully glass cannon.

Maybe this time i'll go straight to level 100 (or at least trying) before buying 100+ex itens.

"

Yashal wrote:

This LowBudget and Medium Budget seens more solid and balanced for me, it has almost same damage with more layers of defense that we had before.

Last league I got a lot of stuff early on, like Mageblood and Ashes, but I was dying a lot and I couldn't reach one of my goals which was to get level 100. I was feeling I was strong AF and a trully glass cannon.

Maybe this time i'll go straight to level 100 (or at least trying) before buying 100+ex itens.

Yeah, the criteria to get 100 is definitely to get block capped.
I got to 99 with Mirror Helm and Double Convoking Wands, Mageblood last league et.c. I wasn't dying alot, maybe once every 5th map or so. But that's enough to stay permanently at 0% exp at level 99.

Decided to go 100 so respecced to a Life on Block Shield from the tanky low budget setup, got block capped with Bone Offering and Tempest shield and did 99-100 in one day deathless when pushing 600 delve for the Endgame Grind challenge.

Once I got 100, I swapped back to my pure dps setup to do all the Uber boss challenges cause bosses just are easier when you kill them in 2 seconds.

Dead,

How about leveling? Should we keep doing what you recommended on the guide? I was thinking that maybe we could skip FAS and use chieftains with FeedingFrenzy while using zombies as second damage dealear near Act 4-5.

I guess we could have a better "Interlude" that we had before.

Any thoughts?

"

Yashal wrote:

Dead,

How about leveling? Should we keep doing what you recommended on the guide? I was thinking that maybe we could skip FAS and use chieftains with FeedingFrenzy while using zombies as second damage dealear near Act 4-5.

I guess we could have a better "Interlude" that we had before.

Any thoughts?

Honestly, any leveling should work. If you want, you can go the FAS route, you can do gorillas or any other spectre for that matter.

You basically hit the nail on the head. It's basically two options:
1. You run DPS spectres and support Zombies or..
2. You run DPS zombies and support spectres..

After looking through the leveling guide though, I've decided to update it for the release. At first, I thought the old Leveling guide should be enough, which it should.. but it has alot of problems when I think about it.
Some traps from the old guide is:
- It uses Necro Aegis, we should stay far away from Necro Aegis in the future.
- It tells to buy Clayshaper, we shouldn't. Actually, for a twink/early mapping weapon we should buy Bitterdream.
- Some of the pathing is probably wrong and doesn't flow into the new early game setups.

Personally, I think I'll continue with the FAS route. Especially since Frenzy charges are getting nerfed so badly. FAS are good cause we can guarantee getting them during act ~6. I would like to run Crushclaws, but we can only get them later on in mapping. Also, having quasi 8-linked FAS with GMP will hopefully feel pretty good during the campaign.

For leveling uniques, I think running Sidehearths Breath amulet with Bitterdream will be broken during the campaign. The amulet gives ~50 flat cold to all minions which is alot and will synergise very well with our Hatred/Skitterbot Auras.

I'll be adding some Campaign setups to the latest PoB soon so you can check out how it'll look then.

[3.19] Path of Building Finished:

I've now finalized a comprehensive PoB the coming league start.
it includes skilltrees, skillpage and matching gear sets for:

- The entire campaign:
- Finished campaign and early white maps
- Early maps setup(Whites into red maps progression):
- Low budget, this will be the bulk of your progression during yellow maps into the deep endgame mapping and bossing sections.
- Medium budget: This setup is for deep endgame progression.

I'm going to be adding a high budget mirror tier PoB in the later on once I'm more certain of how I'm going to be designing the endgame version of the build.

The biggest difference compared to the previous version which I posted yesterday is that I've now remade the setup for the campaign. There are some skilltree changes, some changes to the skill and support gem setups and we're now utilizing some new leveling uniques. In particular, we're looking to use the Sidherths Breath amulet early on as soon as we can cause it's broken during leveling and flows well into our early mapping before we get our hands on 4-green Triad Grips. During the acts, I'm also suggesting running x2 Bitterdreams if they're cheap. Hopefully, people haven't caught on how strong that weapon is for cold builds early on, especially for minion builds since our minions are passive and don't get affected by the huge manacost multipliers Bitterdream otherwise contributes due to it being a 9-link.

Here's the finalized PoB

https://pastebin.com/h4csK6HH

How to use it:

If any of you guys have time it would be very helpful if you could go through the PoB to find if there's any errors or anything that's unclear in them.
Since there's so many overlapping skill trees and setups I'm destined to have made an error or two.

So if you find anything weird or if anything is unclear in the PoB. Feel free to post about it in this thread and I'll look through it.

Seems decent. Only error i found - wrong crafted shield base. Just pure int - bone, ivory and fossiled spirit shields can roll minion modifiers, so w/o recombs there is no way to get armour shields with minion stats.

Good thing - clearly saw the difference between guardian and necro here: on medium budget guardian has less dps (6m difference, 125 vs 131), lower minion life, not capped minion and character res, and way less spell block.

So, guardian would be harder to build and heavily underperform if it'd use similar approach for building.

Had an urge to start this, but my prototype AW project still lingers in my mind, and it's indeed stronger on guardian for couple of reasons.
Anyway, will return here and go for this build after I totally get pissed by both prototype and AW xD

Have a great league Deadandlivin.

"

Deadandlivin wrote:

"

Yashal wrote:

Dead,

How about leveling? Should we keep doing what you recommended on the guide? I was thinking that maybe we could skip FAS and use chieftains with FeedingFrenzy while using zombies as second damage dealear near Act 4-5.

I guess we could have a better "Interlude" that we had before.

Any thoughts?

Honestly, any leveling should work. If you want, you can go the FAS route, you can do gorillas or any other spectre for that matter.

You basically hit the nail on the head. It's basically two options:
1. You run DPS spectres and support Zombies or..
2. You run DPS zombies and support spectres..

After looking through the leveling guide though, I've decided to update it for the release. At first, I thought the old Leveling guide should be enough, which it should.. but it has alot of problems when I think about it.
Some traps from the old guide is:
- It uses Necro Aegis, we should stay far away from Necro Aegis in the future.
- It tells to buy Clayshaper, we shouldn't. Actually, for a twink/early mapping weapon we should buy Bitterdream.
- Some of the pathing is probably wrong and doesn't flow into the new early game setups.

Personally, I think I'll continue with the FAS route. Especially since Frenzy charges are getting nerfed so badly. FAS are good cause we can guarantee getting them during act ~6. I would like to run Crushclaws, but we can only get them later on in mapping. Also, having quasi 8-linked FAS with GMP will hopefully feel pretty good during the campaign.

For leveling uniques, I think running Sidehearths Breath amulet with Bitterdream will be broken during the campaign. The amulet gives ~50 flat cold to all minions which is alot and will synergise very well with our Hatred/Skitterbot Auras.

I'll be adding some Campaign setups to the latest PoB soon so you can check out how it'll look then.

Since I am also going the golem route I have been thinking about this.

My humble suggestion is that we go with the absolution build up until maps or until we can afford at least 4 or 5 golems with consistent dps on them and then converting to complete golems. Even in a 4 link, absolution should help us get through campaign and white maps and make us able to farm some currency to build whatever golem build we are going towards.
This strat should be easier for the necromancers and since I will be going elementalist, I imagine it could be a bit hard for me.

"

monik390 wrote:

Seems decent. Only error i found - wrong crafted shield base. Just pure int - bone, ivory and fossiled spirit shields can roll minion modifiers, so w/o recombs there is no way to get armour shields with minion stats.

Good thing - clearly saw the difference between guardian and necro here: on medium budget guardian has less dps (6m difference, 125 vs 131), lower minion life, not capped minion and character res, and way less spell block.

So, guardian would be harder to build and heavily underperform if it'd use similar approach for building.

Had an urge to start this, but my prototype AW project still lingers in my mind, and it's indeed stronger on guardian for couple of reasons.
Anyway, will return here and go for this build after I totally get pissed by both prototype and AW xD

Have a great league Deadandlivin.

Yeah, that's true, didn't think about the base honestly.
Shouldn't make that big of a difference though. Missed the 20% dmg implicit though.

After going through all Ascendencies for my build, Guardian looks to be the second strongest. It has some issues getting block capped though wish requires you to sacrifice alot of dps elsewhere to make up for lacking defensive layers.

I think Guardians edge out during league start for most minion builds but once you start investing into items and skill gems costing Exalteds(Divines) I think it'll start to fall behind.

Hope your AW build performs, AW seems to become the meta minion build this league. I think the Lightning Approach should be the strongest but everyone seems to be prepping up Poison and Chaos conversion AW builds. I tried to make an AW build 2 leagues ago, leveled up to 80 with other minion skills, then respecced into a theoretic AW build I had in mind. Quickly discovered you only could summon 1 AW at a time and was horrified. Thought it would summon ~5 like Skeletons. The playstyle felt so clunky that I unfortunately never logged into that character again :D

If you can get past the playstyle though, their numbers seem to be pretty good. Not sure if I agree that it's the strongest minion skill out there though. I think normal melee skellies are better, both in throughput and playstyle. But not sure, haven't done the math to compare.

"

My humble suggestion is that we go with the absolution build up until maps or until we can afford at least 4 or 5 golems with consistent dps on them and then converting to complete golems. Even in a 4 link, absolution should help us get through campaign and white maps and make us able to farm some currency to build whatever golem build we are going towards.
This strat should be easier for the necromancers and since I will be going elementalist, I imagine it could be a bit hard for me.

Yeah, this is actually correct. Last league I leaguestarted with Absolution + Skellies + Zombies instead of SRS. Had totally forgotten about it.
I think that's probably the best way to league start. Mainly because it's much easier to maintain 3 Sentinels of Absolution than trying to keep SRS minions up. Absolutions also seem to do way more dmg so they're definitely the best way to league start.

Thought cause they had 50% dmg converted to lightning, they would be bad with Sidheraths Breah. But after testing them out in PoB they're just vastly superior. Thanks for the headsup, changed the leaguestarter from using SRS during the first acts to Absolution.

Not keeping the Absolutions after Act4 though. Even if their numbers are better than x2 Golems at that point, the QoL playstyle of Golems and other passive minions is just too good. If anything, I would maybe think about swapping the FAS spectres for Absolution minions. But then again, my Act4 setup already has ~75k dps which is ALOT for act4, it'll probably oneshot all campaign bosses anyway. The Added clearspeed from having GMP + Spell echoing Frost Auto Scouts will just feel better when cruising through the acts.

If your goal is to design a build during the campaign that ONYL utilizes one minion and disregards everything else though, Absolution is probably the best cause it has the best pure single target dps. But that's only in a vaccuum though. When we start to add groups of minions together, single target become less of an issue early on and it's more about efficiency and QoL. Absolution's biggest weakness is its abyssmal clearspeed.

Hi Deadandlivin,

thank you for updating the POB, will definitely level with that.
Could you explain why Sidhebreath Paua Amulet should be so broken?
Yes, it sounds nice that we are converting 50% of physical damage already to cold and push this with Hatred, but the last line make me a bit nervous. Dealing no non-cold damage. Are we then not losing some DPS as 50% of our damage will not be converted and therefore lost?