Defenses are Garbage for all builds - glass cannon is the only way.

Is it even possible to build a normal necromancer with normal minions?
And not exploding one hundred million dps insanity.

Is it possible to build a necromancer using energy shield and minion passives from the tree?

No it's not, because it's not worth it to build defenses in this game and you HAVE to use determination in every single build it's annoying af.

You HAVE to use AG for damage.

you either go insanity mode full damage and block or you wont be able to do any boss and or any map.

I genuinely would like for the devs to make a guide on how to use energy shield on the witch, because chaos damage is stupid.

You will NEVER see a necromancer build that is not more than half of the templar block and life/armor nodes, like wtf? What is the point of energy shield? it does not reduce physical damage and it does not block chaos damage.

And even if you do get some "good defenses", some random one shot BS WILL kill you and your minions instantly, so what is the point of building anything other than glass cannon?

I managed to make my own builds and even if you go follow a guide you will see that the passive tree has nodes that are straight up useless, for ANY build, like those block recovery nodes lol, so every build guide goes glass cannon, you think I'm exagerating? open youtube and search for ANY class and ANY build and see for yourself.

And not just for the witch tree.

Why do they make it so insanely impossible to build good defenses? like you HAVE to have 100% immune to everything or don't even bother, and if I talk about stuns I will cry.

Anyways that was my rant about how defenses are garbage, now tell me what you think.

I was thinking about returning for this league after not playing for a few years, and looking at current builds, I see that they still haven't really addressed this issue. The game has always been hyper focused on damage output being the most vital way of survival unless you go full turtle, like you stated. It's something I truly hope PoE 2 approaches differently and provides more options on how to play the game versus "pure tank or pure glass cannon."

This thread will be a nice collection of many Necromancer builds that are neither full tanks, nor glass cannons, not wannabe Templars. If only it had a better title. Btw, CI is a thing and there are many CI builds/build variations.


Anyway, I'll start:

https://pobb.in/IfpN_H_oRDQp

In my case I am using Megalomaniac for tankiness, instead of fully upgrading my gear, having better flasks. and going for a full damage cluster jewel + 5th Ghastly.

It's not meta right now, and if you go all-out it has a hard DPS ceiling because of the silly dot limit, but it can do almost anything.

20 layers of defences, CI, 1M ehp, infinitive recovery, 60M damage, all ailments immune, crit immune, 89% resis possible or 30% more ele-ehp, 100% spell suppression, evasion, block, spellblock, immortal herald-minion, etc.

You cannot die in most poe-content.

https://pobb.in/3bdCXXcq

I used all portal before even seeing the boss at a t16 map with hard modes, had exactly the same pob but with legacy items on standard. Clickbait immo.

"

Spacecom wrote:

I used all portal before even seeing the boss at a t16 map with hard modes, had exactly the same pob but with legacy items on standard. Clickbait immo.

if u die with that u should just uninstall at that point

Yeah, I've been looking through poe.ninja and the forums for 3 days in my freetime trying to find a build for witch that I can solo push 100 with. While it's certainly not impossible to get a tanky build from the top right side of the tree, I am finding a lot of difficulty finding a build that can satisfy the requirements of solid/decent clear and good defensive layers. My perspective could largely be coming from a lack of experience/knowledge as this is my first league actually trying to investigate this kind of stuff, and not being a total meta slave. If anyone has any objections to the point of OP, please direct me to a build or guide I can follow. The only build I've seen that seems insanely tanky is the HoaG necro, but I want to be able to map quickly and the showcases don't seem to show the agony crawler moving all that fast.

"

Maxiebear wrote:

Yeah, I've been looking through poe.ninja and the forums for 3 days in my freetime trying to find a build for witch that I can solo push 100 with. While it's certainly not impossible to get a tanky build from the top right side of the tree, I am finding a lot of difficulty finding a build that can satisfy the requirements of solid/decent clear and good defensive layers. My perspective could largely be coming from a lack of experience/knowledge as this is my first league actually trying to investigate this kind of stuff, and not being a total meta slave. If anyone has any objections to the point of OP, please direct me to a build or guide I can follow. The only build I've seen that seems insanely tanky is the HoaG necro, but I want to be able to map quickly and the showcases don't seem to show the agony crawler moving all that fast.

If you search for "Pure Spectre Ward Tank" on Youtube you'll find videos by a user called "WifeDota". The build he showcases is very strong in both offense and defense, is a fast mapper and decent bosser, and it allowed me to get to 100 for the first time. Ward is a really strong defensive layer this league, if you have max/lucky block.

I even leveled from 98 to 99 by doing Uber Cortex runs, including the boss. Once you hit 100, you can then change some gear and triple the DPS while only losing a bit of defense. It can then do ghosted exiles on T17 (you might die from time to time) and comfortably farm T17s in general.

The biggest downside though is spectre life versus T17 map mods or crazy enemy affix combinations. I've invested into making my (damage) spectres quite tanky, but the T17 map mods are so unbalanced that you can easily lose your entire team of Frostbearers to a single volatile core for example. The current "balance" sadly results in extreme damage spikes, nuking even minions with 100+k life and 80%+ all res + 90% phys res in just a couple hits if you get unlucky burst damage.

"

Synbiotico wrote:

it's not worth it to build defenses in this game and you HAVE to use determination in every single build it's annoying af.

You HAVE to use AG for damage.

you either go insanity mode full damage and block or you wont be able to do any boss and or any map.

I genuinely would like for the devs to make a guide on how to use energy shield on the witch, because chaos damage is stupid.

You will NEVER see a necromancer build that is not more than half of the templar block and life/armor nodes, like wtf? What is the point of energy shield?

None of this is true, but it'll take you a lot of time studying build guides to find your favorite. You definitely don't need an AG for damage, neither is there a need to go full damage unless you really want to pursue aspirational goals. There are plenty of Witch CI builds too, you can search for them in the forum and check them out to get a better understanding of just how tanky CI builds can be.

"

TheSwarmIdentity wrote:

"

Maxiebear wrote:

Yeah, I've been looking through poe.ninja and the forums for 3 days in my freetime trying to find a build for witch that I can solo push 100 with. While it's certainly not impossible to get a tanky build from the top right side of the tree, I am finding a lot of difficulty finding a build that can satisfy the requirements of solid/decent clear and good defensive layers. My perspective could largely be coming from a lack of experience/knowledge as this is my first league actually trying to investigate this kind of stuff, and not being a total meta slave. If anyone has any objections to the point of OP, please direct me to a build or guide I can follow. The only build I've seen that seems insanely tanky is the HoaG necro, but I want to be able to map quickly and the showcases don't seem to show the agony crawler moving all that fast.

If you search for "Pure Spectre Ward Tank" on Youtube you'll find videos by a user called "WifeDota". The build he showcases is very strong in both offense and defense, is a fast mapper and decent bosser, and it allowed me to get to 100 for the first time. Ward is a really strong defensive layer this league, if you have max/lucky block.

I even leveled from 98 to 99 by doing Uber Cortex runs, including the boss. Once you hit 100, you can then change some gear and triple the DPS while only losing a bit of defense. It can then do ghosted exiles on T17 (you might die from time to time) and comfortably farm T17s in general.

The biggest downside though is spectre life versus T17 map mods or crazy enemy affix combinations. I've invested into making my (damage) spectres quite tanky, but the T17 map mods are so unbalanced that you can easily lose your entire team of Frostbearers to a single volatile core for example. The current "balance" sadly results in extreme damage spikes, nuking even minions with 100+k life and 80%+ all res + 90% phys res in just a couple hits if you get unlucky burst damage.

"

Synbiotico wrote:

it's not worth it to build defenses in this game and you HAVE to use determination in every single build it's annoying af.

You HAVE to use AG for damage.

you either go insanity mode full damage and block or you wont be able to do any boss and or any map.

I genuinely would like for the devs to make a guide on how to use energy shield on the witch, because chaos damage is stupid.

You will NEVER see a necromancer build that is not more than half of the templar block and life/armor nodes, like wtf? What is the point of energy shield?

None of this is true, but it'll take you a lot of time studying build guides to find your favorite. You definitely don't need an AG for damage, neither is there a need to go full damage unless you really want to pursue aspirational goals. There are plenty of Witch CI builds too, you can search for them in the forum and check them out to get a better understanding of just how tanky CI builds can be.

MF just look at your tree from the character called "gogochaosgolemgo" only life and damage, are you insane?

"

Maxiebear wrote:

Yeah, I've been looking through poe.ninja and the forums for 3 days in my freetime trying to find a build for witch that I can solo push 100 with. While it's certainly not impossible to get a tanky build from the top right side of the tree, I am finding a lot of difficulty finding a build that can satisfy the requirements of solid/decent clear and good defensive layers. My perspective could largely be coming from a lack of experience/knowledge as this is my first league actually trying to investigate this kind of stuff, and not being a total meta slave. If anyone has any objections to the point of OP, please direct me to a build or guide I can follow. The only build I've seen that seems insanely tanky is the HoaG necro, but I want to be able to map quickly and the showcases don't seem to show the agony crawler moving all that fast.

I did this one for Hierophant, if you want to take a look.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/3528240