[3.16] Very cheap allround starter for Scourge, Skelezomlemgaurdian, tanky and pushy

"

New Purity of Elements gives ailment immunity but the gems aren't updated yet in POB

"

Deadandlivin wrote:

Hi!

Got interested in your build because I'm thinking of doing a Skeleton league start but saw that your build had alot of optimizations you could do.

I went ahead and looked through your PoB and got some changes I suggest you consider. These are mainly skill tree and skill selection changes.

Here's the PoB I came up with:
https://pastebin.com/q4s3RiFf

Skilltree changes:

Spoiler

You spent alot of inefficient points trying to get as much minion survivability as possible. This is far from needed. My high budget builds runs 1 surviability cluster(Indomitable Army for resist cap) and have 22k health. These zombies are tanky enough to tank 100% delirius maps without a problem and only have 79% max res since I link them to Ele Army.

I changed the tree around a bit, got some masteries you didn't have. Instead of getting marginal increases in energy shield I decided to invest into damage because your build was lacking alot of it.

Skill Changes:

Spoiler

I made alot of optimizations here. There's alot of improvements you can do.

Body Armour - Skeletons:
Swapped Impale and Improved minion speed for Melee Phys and Ruthlessnes. Huge dps increase. Movement speed is made up for by taking Ravenouz Horde in the tree (60% movespeed with Onslaught active)

Helm - Spectres, Zombies and Meat Shield:
Swapped Stone Golem for Spectres. Moved away golem to a different slot.
I really suggest using spectres for additional dps buffing all of your minions. The spectres will be level 25 which allows for 4 spectres.
My suggestion is using 2 Frenzy Charge spectres, 1 Power Charge spectre and an Arena Master. This will provide you with 3 Frenzy Charges, 3 Power Charges and the Arena Master buff. The buff provides 40% increased attack, cast and movement speed for 4 sec on a 8 sec cooldown. It isn't shown on PoB obviously.
Lifetap is used to make sure spectres can spam their spells without going OOM.

Weapon - Trigger:
Swapped spell cascade for Increased Duration.
Increased Duration (with Quality) almost doubles the duration of your offering. Spell cascade provides far less.

Shield - Curse + Bonus Auras:
I removed Armageddon brand + Hextouch support. They don't really provide much for you. Might aswell selfcast Vulnerability on targets rather than applying them with Brands. Self casting allows curses to gain doom charges which increases their curse effect over time. This makes your Vulnerability upto 50% stronger compared to using it linked via Hextouch.
The AoE is also far larger when selfcasting it.

The downside is that you can't cast it and "forget it" for ~4 sec as the brand walks around seeking targets. Selfcasting also costs more mana so it's less spammable. The primary reason why I think you should selfcast it though is to fit 2 more auras.
- Vitality: By allocating 16% mana efficiency from the tree and 100% mana efficiency for vitality from a mastery we can fit vitality to vastly increase your life regen.
- Purity of Elements: Purity of Elements gives you a ton of Elemental resistances and 100% Ailment immunity. This also allows us to overcap all minions. Also makes it far easier to get resistance capped early on as you don't need as much resistance from gear.
- If you want more dps, use skitterbots instead of Purity of elements.

Gloves - Support Minions2:
Using another set of support minions here. I choose to put Stone Golem, Carrion Golem, Feeding Frenzy and Minion Life here to buff your regen and dps substantially. You could use an Animate Guardian if you like, but I only suggest getting one if you can go for a high budget version. It's not worth running an AG unless you get a Kingmaker on it imo. Golems will provide more.

Boots - Auras:
Pride, Dreadbanner, Flesh and Stone Generosity.
Swapped out Discipline for Dreadbanner. Provides a good dps bonus while discipline almost did nothing for you. Minions are already unkillable.

Ring1 - Flame Dash:
Flame dash already has 3 charges, don't need second wind.

Ring2 - Convocation:
Convocation don't get anything from Second wind, might aswell be unlinked.
Removed portal gem, the gem feels unecessary, especially now that Portal Scrolls will drop stacked. Portal scrolls are also instant cast and feel better than the portal gem which feels super laggy :)

Gear Changes:

Spoiler

Made minimal gear changes, kept all the modifiers you choose to use but changed some bases.

Rings:
Changed both rings from vermillion rings to Unset rings. Needed the additional sockets.

Amulet:
Annointed amulet with Death Attunement (Clear, Crimson, Silver) for +1 Zombie, Spectre and Skeleton. These are very cheap oils and defintely worth it.

Shield:
Changed to a high armour shield instead of the resistance one you were using for additional phys dmg mitigation.

Results:

Spoiler

Damage

Before: 103 205 dps per skeleton
After: 429 975 dps -> 416% more dps per skeleton

Survivability

Life difference
Before: 7902
After: 7792

Life Regen: 535 -> 891

Attack Block: 58% -> 67%
Spell Block: 37% -> 39%

Energy Shield: 1004 -> 485

Resistances: Basically the same, slightly more after changes due to Purity of Elements.

Ailment Immunity: 20% -> 100%

MinionSurvivability

Only picking zombies here because they usually are the squishiest minion who're annoying to resummon.

Minion Life: 41158 -> 43648

Life Regen: 832 -> 1959

Phys dmg Reduction 50% -> 58%

Minion Elemental Resistances: 83% ->

Minion Chaos Resistance: 73% -> 20%

Minion Block: 73% -> 43%

DPS: 17217 -> 50592

Hope this helps you to improve your build a little. And trust me when I say it, you don't need that much minion survivability nodes. They're usually dead picks. Investing into regen is often the best solution for minion survivability because of their enormous health pools.

"

Deadandlivin wrote:

Hi!

Got interested in your build because I'm thinking of doing a Skeleton league start but saw that your build had alot of optimizations you could do.

I went ahead and looked through your PoB and got some changes I suggest you consider. These are mainly skill tree and skill selection changes.

Here's the PoB I came up with:
https://pastebin.com/q4s3RiFf

Skilltree changes:

Spoiler

You spent alot of inefficient points trying to get as much minion survivability as possible. This is far from needed. My high budget builds runs 1 surviability cluster(Indomitable Army for resist cap) and have 22k health. These zombies are tanky enough to tank 100% delirius maps without a problem and only have 79% max res since I link them to Ele Army.

I changed the tree around a bit, got some masteries you didn't have. Instead of getting marginal increases in energy shield I decided to invest into damage because your build was lacking alot of it.

Skill Changes:

Spoiler

I made alot of optimizations here. There's alot of improvements you can do.

Body Armour - Skeletons:
Swapped Impale and Improved minion speed for Melee Phys and Ruthlessnes. Huge dps increase. Movement speed is made up for by taking Ravenouz Horde in the tree (60% movespeed with Onslaught active)

Helm - Spectres, Zombies and Meat Shield:
Swapped Stone Golem for Spectres. Moved away golem to a different slot.
I really suggest using spectres for additional dps buffing all of your minions. The spectres will be level 25 which allows for 4 spectres.
My suggestion is using 2 Frenzy Charge spectres, 1 Power Charge spectre and an Arena Master. This will provide you with 3 Frenzy Charges, 3 Power Charges and the Arena Master buff. The buff provides 40% increased attack, cast and movement speed for 4 sec on a 8 sec cooldown. It isn't shown on PoB obviously.
Lifetap is used to make sure spectres can spam their spells without going OOM.

Weapon - Trigger:
Swapped spell cascade for Increased Duration.
Increased Duration (with Quality) almost doubles the duration of your offering. Spell cascade provides far less.

Shield - Curse + Bonus Auras:
I removed Armageddon brand + Hextouch support. They don't really provide much for you. Might aswell selfcast Vulnerability on targets rather than applying them with Brands. Self casting allows curses to gain doom charges which increases their curse effect over time. This makes your Vulnerability upto 50% stronger compared to using it linked via Hextouch.
The AoE is also far larger when selfcasting it.

The downside is that you can't cast it and "forget it" for ~4 sec as the brand walks around seeking targets. Selfcasting also costs more mana so it's less spammable. The primary reason why I think you should selfcast it though is to fit 2 more auras.
- Vitality: By allocating 16% mana efficiency from the tree and 100% mana efficiency for vitality from a mastery we can fit vitality to vastly increase your life regen.
- Purity of Elements: Purity of Elements gives you a ton of Elemental resistances and 100% Ailment immunity. This also allows us to overcap all minions. Also makes it far easier to get resistance capped early on as you don't need as much resistance from gear.
- If you want more dps, use skitterbots instead of Purity of elements.

Gloves - Support Minions2:
Using another set of support minions here. I choose to put Stone Golem, Carrion Golem, Feeding Frenzy and Minion Life here to buff your regen and dps substantially. You could use an Animate Guardian if you like, but I only suggest getting one if you can go for a high budget version. It's not worth running an AG unless you get a Kingmaker on it imo. Golems will provide more.

Boots - Auras:
Pride, Dreadbanner, Flesh and Stone Generosity.
Swapped out Discipline for Dreadbanner. Provides a good dps bonus while discipline almost did nothing for you. Minions are already unkillable.

Ring1 - Flame Dash:
Flame dash already has 3 charges, don't need second wind.

Ring2 - Convocation:
Convocation don't get anything from Second wind, might aswell be unlinked.
Removed portal gem, the gem feels unecessary, especially now that Portal Scrolls will drop stacked. Portal scrolls are also instant cast and feel better than the portal gem which feels super laggy :)

Gear Changes:

Spoiler

Made minimal gear changes, kept all the modifiers you choose to use but changed some bases.

Rings:
Changed both rings from vermillion rings to Unset rings. Needed the additional sockets.

Amulet:
Annointed amulet with Death Attunement (Clear, Crimson, Silver) for +1 Zombie, Spectre and Skeleton. These are very cheap oils and defintely worth it.

Shield:
Changed to a high armour shield instead of the resistance one you were using for additional phys dmg mitigation.

Results:

Spoiler

Damage

Before: 103 205 dps per skeleton
After: 429 975 dps -> 416% more dps per skeleton

Survivability

Life difference
Before: 7902
After: 7792

Life Regen: 535 -> 891

Attack Block: 58% -> 67%
Spell Block: 37% -> 39%

Energy Shield: 1004 -> 485

Resistances: Basically the same, slightly more after changes due to Purity of Elements.

Ailment Immunity: 20% -> 100%

MinionSurvivability

Only picking zombies here because they usually are the squishiest minion who're annoying to resummon.

Minion Life: 41158 -> 43648

Life Regen: 832 -> 1959

Phys dmg Reduction 50% -> 58%

Minion Elemental Resistances: 83% ->

Minion Chaos Resistance: 73% -> 20%

Minion Block: 73% -> 43%

DPS: 17217 -> 50592

Hope this helps you to improve your build a little. And trust me when I say it, you don't need that much minion survivability nodes. They're usually dead picks. Investing into regen is often the best solution for minion survivability because of their enormous health pools.