3.25 Updated: Build showcase for Summon Skeletons of Archers

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Updated PoB to include a Lioneye's vision setup for the super wealthy

Old 3.24 PoB: https://pobb.in/0CEBLRCCY14I
Updated 3.25 PoB: https://pobb.in/fn0Cjo-xfrB0
Video (3.24): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ca8MnptgC-o

Last league I made a showcase for this build. Back then it already worked well and I managed to clear t17 maps all be it very slow. Truthfully especially the physical defense was a bit lacking so that is a issue I have been trying to solve and with success. It's still not the most tanky build out there but it is also no longer a glass cannon.

The build revolves around the unique helm "Ancient Skull" and the "Maata's Teaching" scepter. The combination of those 2 items alone gives very high crit chance which can be used to cap it easily using stuff like precision or using an Animate Guardian with the Kingmaker. The helmet's debuff does make minions die quickly once they crit though so to negate that I thought to use the "Blessed rebirth" notable from a minion life medium jewel (or megalomaniac). Add the new Unholy might and some withered stacks and all of that damage will be chaos and boosted by withered stacks so we can avoid added damage all together avoiding the issue with them not scaling off of that.

The gear used in the video was between a 10 and 15div investment. With that I had been able to kill Uber maven, T17 maps, and all of the maven invitations although the feared was a easy roll. I've also cleared T17 Abomination and Fortress maps. Obviously I also did all of the standard pinnacle content. (132/132 atlas passives).

While the 3.24 version did have a bit more damage I now managed to add in more armour, generate endurance charges, get a little more life regeneration, and get near 70% spell/attack block with resolute technique. All of those increases boosted EHP from 24k to 60K which is significant and should make it a smooth experience for T16's and regular pinnacle content.
T17's at this level of investment can also be done but you would need to watch your step a bit there. Luckily the build allows for a very very safe playstyle

The Animate Guardian(AG) setup is a bit unusual. It needs "Cadigans crown" in order not to kill itself and it uses asenaths for glorious explode.

At the time people really discouraged me to persue skeletal archers and one of the reasons was the video that Ghazzy released stating they will suck. Skeleton Archers WILL SUCK... even though they're buffed.

Despite that I still went for it and oh boy. It's really good for the budget I put in.

This setup only works on short lived expendable minions that deal physical damage though so all that come to mind are regular skeletons, the archer variation, maybe herald of purity, and phantasms maybe with soulwrest.
The AG might seem weak but it has no trouble staying alive and in emergencies. I am summoning 5 skellies at a time and "replacing" old one's with new ones counts as them dieying so that heals the AG for 25% of it's max life per cast.


So far it's not a build guide and I don't intend to make one myself as I won't have the time to maintain it but I can give the following guide:

Bandits: Kill all

Pantheons: Doesn't matter. Both Lunaris or Solaris would work

Ascendancy's: 1st Mindless Agression, 2nd Unnatural strength, the order for the last 2 doesn't matter

Talent tree: First go for "Lord of the dead", and "Death attunement". Once you have those 2 you can just randomly get the life nodes to get more tanky or the minion damage ones depending on your needs at that moment.

Try to work towards being able to get a medium "minion life" cluster jewel or megalomaniac by level 54 so that you can get the notable "Blessed rebirth" as soon as you can. This will help your build a lot. This is your first priority item/jewel wise. Up to that point anything that will give life, resistances, or minion damage will work.
Once you get the jewel your second priority will be getting the helmet and the third priority will be to get at least a +1 level "maataa's teaching's scepter". Once you have those 3 items it's whatever you can afford at the time for the rest.
I recommend a dragonfangs flight with skeleton levels and a shield with + levels to skeletons and some increased minion damage too.
So far the other items I use are just generic resistance + life filler items. The rings that I use are bone rings with some minion damage and minion attackspeed but you can use any ring you want.

Statswise the best scaling for damage is:
1 - Gem levels
2 - Increased minion damage
3 - Increased minion attackspeed

For defenses just stack life, armor, and resistances.
Aside from the helmet, the weapon, and the dragonfang which are best in slot easily there are no items that are mandatory so you can pick up whatever gives most damage/defense at the time. If it gives more than your old item then it's good. No weird interactions to consider.

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FMCspriggan wrote:

At the time people really discouraged me to persue skeletal archers and one of the reasons was the video that Ghazzy released stating they will suck. Skeleton Archers WILL SUCK... even though they're buffed.

Despite that I still went for it and oh boy. It's really good for the budget I put in.

I've been looking into Archer Skeletons, I found this post, watched the video, went to POB, ran some tests.
The point of Ghazzys video https://youtu.be/-c4CiEXpKLM?si=D5N_R3hkjfo4wQuQ which is supported by the math.
You could do the same build, invest the same amount of div into another minion skill. Say Summon Raging Spirits and do 2/3x more damage.
It's not to say Skeletal Archers can't do significant damage,
It's to say that any other minion skill can do significantly more damage for the same budget.

Updated the build.

New build now gives more defenses:
- More HP (not counting higher rolls),
- Block (around 70 spell+attack% easily)
- More armor
- Endurance charges
- More life regeneration
- Minion crit cap

We did go down a little in damage but it's still well over 12m

You'll want to update your PoB. Maata's Teaching was stealth changed and PoB isn't updated for it yet. It's now 15%-30% increased Critical Strike Chance. I personally started 3.25 with this and had no problems and overall invested < 3 div. The most expensive item was the +2 and 30% cap Maata's that was 1 Div when I bought it.
I ran zombies, carrion golem, and spectres with my setup though. Kept them alive by having the zombies generate phantoms to die and heal everyone else.
I'm currently working on a CI version to see what the budget looks like and how well it does.

Full disclosure:
I did Black Star, Searing Exarch, Infinite Hunger, Eater of Worlds, and all the maven invitations leading up to the maven.
I bought a Maven and Uber Elder Carry for those voidstones.
Haven't had any problems with any of the Guardian or Conqueror bosses so far.
Shaper and Elder pending.

Ah didn't notice the change to maata's yet but overall the crit chance seems to have gone up?

If you bought it all for divs then I assume you got everything on day 1.
I got my maata's on the second day for only 6c though it has almost minimum rolls. I'll get a min-maxed version later in the league.
The replica dragonfang was also expensive but dropping fast now. It started around 2div I think but I got mine for 80c and now you can get them cheaper.

Fun to see people running the build.

If you have success with your CI setup i'd be interested to see.

One of the best parts of the build is that aside from the helmet and scepter which just give to much dps NOT to take. The rest of the gear is just completely usable how you see fit.

I also discussed the Animate Guardian with someone.
If you use one you need to use a item with "deal no crits". There is a helmet and a weapon for that. I use the AG for asenath's gentle touch so that everything I curse explodes. This boosts clear a lot.

You could also just switch 1 of the gems for (greater)multiple projectiles. Obviously you sacrifice some dps but you have enough to do so.

Another alternative would be to use the asenath's yourself but that explode wouldn't be as powerful.
Instead of animate guardian you could run the "new" marionet specters that revive themselves and use those to apply buffs.

A lot of room to play with gearwise

But most importantly: How would you rate it? :D

Overall. I give it an 8/10. I tune in to watch Ghazzy often and while I agree with him on some points about the skill, I disagree on other points.

While he doesn't check unnecessary checkboxes in his PoBs, he doesn't make note or take into account about uptime on things. Like with the zoomancer, you're not always going to have all those minions hitting the target because the minions are going to be shoving each other out of the way. You're also not going to have all your skeletons up all the time etc.

The skill overall is a great starter, does great damage on low budget, and as I've done can complete at least 2 void stones on <3 div worth of gear. I'm saving my old gear to test against maven, shaper, elder, and uber elder when I have currency or time to invest in testing against them.

I think the biggest problem with the build that keeps it from moving to a 10/10 is damage scaling and reliance on the Ancient Skull. I've looked at moving the skellies into a 8 link glove setup and a few other options, but nothing has increased things substantially yet. I think a +2 helmet is a good investment vs the Ancient skull at a medium/high budget as it will let you run more support minions without fear of them dying and will make up for the damage difference you lose from "The Whispers". I think Maata's is too good to swap for a wand of any variety.

I will 100% keep coming back here with updates. #MakeSkellyArchersGreat!

Thanks for the elaborate reply.
8 out of 10 is a solid grade, Nice.

Glad to see you enjoy it and I am interested to see where you can take it.

Likewise I will also keep experimenting. As mentioned before it's one of the greatest upsides of this build. If we can somehow replace the ancient skull without losing to much dps that would be epic. I've tried a few things but so far I couldn't find much that I thought wasn't to big of a hit or without going from a 1c to a 1mirror item :D

At least the good part of a dirt cheap build is that you can save up all of your currency to experiment or reroll.

For me personally I've placed it into one of my default league starter builds.

Here's my update. I've spent about 10Div, most of that went to trying to get a +2 minion helmet. I didn't hit the +2, but did include one in the PoB for testing purposes.

PoB: https://pobb.in/1rHgodNQ4Trx

Based on the testing in PoB with my current build, if I had a +2 helmet I would only be loosing out on 100k dps.
Being able to kit the AG with a leer cast makes up for the 50% damage you loose from Ancient skull, and it's up all the time and applies to all your minions. Plus not having to worry about the Whisper DoT is a QoL in my book.

Additionally, on the +2 helmet you can craft +1 skelly and zombie.
1 carnage and 1 host chieftan has been enough in my testing to keep full charges on the minions.

This is also only lvl 90. In 5 more levels you can take the minion crit cluster, that with the harvest enchant on Maata's will but you at crit cap when Fresh meat is active and ~73% when it's not.

I'm looking into support spectres and such to see we can recoup the +50% attack speed from the lack of Whispers and if I can do that then we can cut some minion survival investment for more damage. Sadly I think that comes in the form of the large cluster jewels which kind of skips medium budget and goes right into a high budget.

Figured I'd share my findings before I succumb to the call of the spiders and swap to Arakaali's lol

Chaos inoculation definitely looks interesting,
I might also try to experiment a bit with a large cluster jewel.
I did look into a megalomaniac but there are only very few even slightly interesting combinations on the trade and the ones that actually look like something are worth a fortune.

I am currently also at between 12 and 15 div somewhere.
My current import at lvl 92: https://pobb.in/sCWd9S1rJWBU
5 to 7 divs of those went to my chest in order to 6l and color it.
The rest of the items and gems are now mostly either +-50c items or 1div.

I did some shuffling with defenses as I can't quite get myself to like high block chance with glancing blows. Just getting 30% more life does a better job.
So it's either full on block without glancing blows for me now or no block at all.

In the next few steps I will try to get some poison chance for my minions. It won't add to much dps but still it would be around 10 to 15%%

So far I only had my animate guardian die once and that was on a map where I used the scarabs to roll extra mods, the unique one to buff hp/dmg from unique mobs for higher chance, the wildwood empowered atlas passive, wildwood on the map itself, all of the increased effect of mods nodes on the atlas tree, a tormented spirit, and maven influenced and acompanied by 3 other bosses. That on a minotaur, he 1shot me and my ag. Though to be honest I kinda knew I wasn't going to put up much of a fight there anyway.

For the animate guardian setup I found that the new and nerfed sporeguard still is pretty OK to use. Your AG will charge bosses and stand there slapping them so he'll leave the fungal ground which lowers the enemies chaos resistance a little which helps the dps.

If you don't plan on running Mistress with Bone Offering, and don't mind spending a bit. In the past I've found taking the Sanctuary wheel and then grabbing a Red Nightmare to put in the slot where your watchers eye is adds a good amount of attack block.


Those are some juicy damage numbers you have. I try to avoid corruptions on gear if I can, but that is probably the best way to scale the build with how much minions benefit from gem levels.

I personally was trying to get away from the helmet and even Fresh Meat since I don't care for such a short duration of conditional damage, but that might just be the way the build has to work.

I'll probably revisit this at some point during the league, but the call of the spiders was too strong and I'm going to be getting an occultist running after work today. Good Luck in the league!