Infernalist witch - Exploding Poison Cloud Popcorn SRS - League Starter - 2 button build

GGG pushed the hotfix, and it seems like it does not affect skeleton snipers so far

Just to begin with, I have never done my own build, and I am just playing around a bit with what works for me. So I don't expect this build to last long. But for starting the league it should work fine. Especially for people having problems at the beginning with the witch and weak minions.

- If the damage is not enough in Act 1 go for chaos damage, corrosion and Essence Drain
(I did play with arsonist minions but they didn't work well, so a better ignite skill should work better in bombing the clouds)

Cruel - act 3(act 6)

I will update this build as I go (I am slow, so bear with me)
Feel free to change this build around however you see fit

Playstyle:
- you only need 2 button and a third for every now and than for poison cloud, flame wall and pain offering
- your SRS or Hellhound ignite the enemies, what explodes the clouds
- SRS are for more damage because they go well in this build that is focused on minion and fire damage
- all other skills are automations with skeletal minions on scepter for tanking hits

Passive Skill Tree:

- the exploding clouds scale with your minion sniper damage, so minion damage feels like a nice thing
- Minion Health and Faster Revival is pretty good too
- Go into dex, strength and Int as needed for level ups and support skills
- If you have problems with survivability you can go in extra energy shield (ascendency 2 and having fire and chaos res by this point should be enough)
- incresed effect of aura ( for blasphemy aura)

Skills:

- Until you can ascend use a fire skill of your choice that ignites the posion clouds from your snipers

Skeletal Warrior Minion on Staff - extra damage and tanky
- Brutality
- Meat Shield
- Maim(lvl2)

Skeletal Sniper - our main damage dealers, poison cloud needs to be used actively
- Corrosion
- Scattershot
- Acceleration

Grim Feast: - Much more survivabilty | needs 60 spirit
- Clarity
- Vitality

Fireball - for summoning SRS, until you can get it use flame wall
- Arcane Tempo
- Fiery Death

Summoning Raging Spirit
- Feeding Frenzy
- Minion Instability
- Infernal Legion (lvl2)

Pain Offering: - Extra damage for your minions
- Persistance
- Energy Barrier
- Elemental Army

Blasphemy - needs 84 spirit, changes curse to aura
- Flammability
- magnified effect
- Heightened Curse


Armor:

- Spirit is the best, otherwise go for max life and resistances
- whatever you prefer

Ascendancy:

Infernalist

Loyal Hellhound:
Summon Infernal Hound: - He automates the igniting of the clouds and tanks for you
- Elemental Army - changes to Fiery Death(lvl2) - to Fire Exposure(lvl3)
- Last Gasp
- Lacerate - changes to: Fire Penetration (lvl2):

Altered Flesh - from now on fire and chaos resistence will help a bunch

sorry to be the one saying this, but https://x.com/pathofexile/status/1865939374304886931

Nice... but yeah, when it doesn't work anymore I will prolly change to something different
But thank you for the heads up!

So far (Act 3) this build still works pretty well, let's hope it stays like this

I made some changes to the support skills that push more damage

in cruel difficulty the build still bombs - budum tsch...
the damage output is pretty nice. For your curse aura you need to get a little closer to enemies, so try to have your resistances high.
If you get too much damage keep more distance though, the extra damage is not worth dying for <3

The wolf was a little tricky on cruel difficutly...
but more because I have a problem with stereoscopic vision and I always think I stand save with the ice beams while I am not

I decided against two auras because for now I have too less spirit and without the larger AoE I need to get too close to enemies to put the debuff on
For now I can't find much that would strengthen the build more (until ascendancy and 4th slot)
If you don't mind pushing more than 2 buttons you can use a fire skill to summon SRS, our minion damage + fire penetration and - flame resi for enemies makes them vulnerable for SRS too
so you could have a massive bunch of extra damage

I am usually a 1-2 button user, but maybe I will put SRS on E because of the lack of movement skill i usually use with E

The next time I play I will try to push popcorn SRS with minion instability, infernal legion and either fire penetration or meat shield and update the build with it


edit:
updated the build and with SRS it is melting even more than before
(sadly we can't automate SRS anymore because of the nerf)