[1.3]Lowlife Buzzsaw Dominating Blow 100+ minions

Gorge run, character level 73
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8NM0kkEgyoQ

Note that my play in this video is not anywhere near optimal. I did this in one take rather than cherrypicking a good run. The monsters in this video are pretty much the worst -- skeletons, rock monsters, quill beasts etc. All of these are slow melee and among the worst minions you can get.

Still, it should give you a taste of what the gameplay is like.

This build doesn't have anything special going for it defensively. You can get 5-6k ES pretty easily plus some evasion and block. If you want you can customize the build to be more defensive. I would strongly recommend doing so if you plan on playing hardcore.

That said, the build does have one very strong thing going for it defensively: ludicrous numbers of minions. If you have ever played a summoner you know how good it can be to spread enemy damage out between a few zombies and spectres. Imagine that and multiply it by 10 or 20. Once you really get going you can easily avoid most damage. If you need to, you can leapslam away from dangerous enemies and let your minions clean them up for you.

Some minions provide a lot of additional defense as well. Proximity Shield rares and evangelists give you bubbles to hide in. A wide variety of enemies freeze/chill or use useful defensive curses like Warlord's Mark, Enfeeble, and Temporal Chains. The best thing you can get though are rare monsters with powerful auras. The speed aura makes you move even faster than you already do, and the energy shield aura easily boosts you up close to 8k max ES.

There is a downside to the minions though -- it makes AOE difficult to see. This is particularly true for things like poison clouds and burning ground as your minions are likely tossing their own poison/fire.

The build makes you want to go fast. The faster you go the more minions you will have at a given point in time. When you are in an area that might be dangerous, just slow down and play carefully. You can avoid a lot of deaths that way.

SUSTAIN

The biggest defensive question that this build faces is sustain. You don't have much max health, but blood rage does degen you. You easily get 10-15% leech from blood rage, but most of your damage is elemental so it's very hard to actually leech a lot.

Your ES will never regenerate naturally while BR is active.

Using only blood rage I found that I could usually outpace blood rage but not by much. Luckly I often found myself taking very little damage from monsters but in situations with lots of degen clouds or large amounts of AOE I could easily get into a situation where I was basically screwed -- if I stand and fight I take more damage than I can handle, or if I back off I stop leeching and dig myself into a bigger hole. Again this didn't happen often but most of my deaths did come from similar situations.

Eventually, I focused on a couple of different strategies for solving this problem and all of them are viable:

1. Life Leech gem. This is the easiest as it will give you plenty of elemental leech. The problem is that it comes at the cost of a lot of damage, so I prefer to find a different solution.

2. Zealot's Oath. This solution takes more work but is the best cheap solution imo. You can pick up a little regen on the tree easily, but it's not enough. From here you can go two routes: invest a lot of points in getting more regen or use The Blood Dance boots. I'll discuss these options in the gearing and passive tree sections. Note that if you use Zealots Oath you won't regenerate life naturally so you will want to pick up a tiny bit of life gain on hit or life gain on kill to ensure you can cast whatever blood magic skills (Blood Rage, Convocation, Flesh Offering) you are using.

3. Shavronne's Revelation. The build doesn't need mana at all, so this ring is very powerful. You can easily combine this with ZO for insane regen or just use it to cancel out Blood Rage's degen. The problem is that the ring is quite expensive, especially on temp leagues.

4. Vaal Discipline. This is a great "Ohh Shit" button that will boost your max ES through the roof and allow you to regen very rapidly. The problem is that you actually have to cast it -- it's not instant like a potion -- and it requires souls to use. I think this is a great option but personally I don't think its enough on its own especially if you don't have godlike reflexes

No cooldowns.



With flasks up but no Vaal Haste.

There are basically two stages to this build offensively: Buzzsaw and Steamroller

In Buzzsaw mode, you are basically doing a poor man's version of ele buzzsaw. You use wrath, anger, hatred and herald of thunder to give yourself a lot of flat damage to stack up on a relatively fast hitting weapon. The build absolutely requires Soul Taker because of the insane mana cost on Dominating Blow. Luckily Soul Taker hits pretty quickly, although not as fast as a nice foil or corsair would.

With lowlife and Blood Rage (combined with enhance and quality blood magic if you can) you will attack very, very quickly. You will easily tear through packs of whites and blues and chop down most rares/exiles easily.


Once you have gotten up to 30-40 minions you will quickly snowball it to "steamroller mode" where you just plow through the entire map clearing close to movement speed. The best part is that your minions scale automatically to the content you are doing. Unlike spectres, your dominated monsters will be the same level as what you are fighting. You might normally hate fighting evangelists, tentacle miscreations and plumed chimerals but when you play this build they will become your best friends. Of course, it doesn't hurt that your pals all get Hatred, Anger, Wrath, and Haste to help turn the damage up even higher.

The only minions that are relatively useless are slow moving melee dorks like zombies and some skeletons. They pretty much don't do anything useful other than absorb damage.

Useful minions include: anything ranged, anything that leaps/flickers, anything that casts curses, anything that gets around quickly

Rares are fantastic, of course.

Once you get the steamroller going you will be close to unstoppable. You pop rogue exiles without even realizing they were there. The only thing that tends to provide a meaningful speedbump are map bosses, which are something of a weak point for the build. Many bosses aren't a problem but the big baddies like map versions of Piety and Dominus are a challenge as they combine a lot of health with massive AOE which clears out your minions pretty easily. These bosses are doable -- I've done double piety and double necropolis merveil so far -- but it's definitely a weakness.

One thing that can be helpful against bosses is minion instability. Exploding minions hit quite hard, and bosses tend to actually kill your minions quickly. I've seen map bosses knock off most of their health bar in seconds when letting lose their AOE.

The actual passive tree setup for this build is extremely flexible. This is what I consider to be the absolute core of the build, although please note that you might do a somewhat different pathing depending on your eventual plans:

https://www.poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgUA-d2LjEqYzGaUXMBmpwi4k-vuKPqCx-q6DXxXybQMRnH-SR2q4Ygaj_ba-wkZipu1wzrKSm-egwmboY9G99cc3JMnIvRsCw2NbRlLrhsl2VvpAi9v2RNwu-wYwcV_xhFQpys1ucNtXGuESPrSHRSApGTnFy9CoySwxp4Qfwx9X2rb50cG0NCP-nzZ9zJyqUVHMtFmnsAaWfOsqg==

It's basically just a bunch of aura and ES nodes along with Resolute Technique. You want RT because you really don't want to crit with this build. Freezing mobs is bad because if you shatter them then they don't become minions.

From this point there are loads of things you can do! Here is my current build at level 85:

https://www.poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgUAA-4MfQ18DY0PqxB_EVAWvxcvGYoabBqPGyUc3B0UHaodviL0JLAo-i9vMtEzhzW5PC1Co0VHRnFG10cGSOdKmEuuUzVV1lcpV8lX4lnzXGtfamaebAttGW1sb55wu3GFcql35XzZf8aApIKbgseDCYRIi4yMdo9Gj_qTJ5Rcm6GbtZ2unjyly6cIpyusqrGztAy1SLcxuJPAGsBmwcXDOsNtxPbGnspKzGbQ0NkT2Vvb5-GI6QLquuvu7BjsOO0g7UH22vcy98H31_nd-ej60vsJ

Mostly what I have done is focused on increasing my personal damage through grabbing a lot of elemental damage nodes. Additionally I took Zealot's Oath and an extra frenzy charge to use along with my Blood Dance boots for sustain. I also grabbed Minion Instability for extra damage against bosses and one Skill Duration cluster to increase my minion duration and help out with Vaal Haste and Vaal Discipline. If I were to continue to level I might consider pathing down into the Shadow elemental nodes.


Another completely reasonable strategy might be to focus more on defense by grabbing nearby block nodes along with more ES.

Yet another strategy is to focus on scaling physical damage more, possibly grabbing the big axe wheel below RT.

You also might consider going crazy with minions and grabbing a bunch of minion damage nodes. We path right by all the best minion clusters so why not?

You could also path hard into the southern part of the tree going for as much regen as possible to pair with Vaal Pact. If you do this you can also pick up the other Skill Duration cluster and Unwavering Stance.

Last but not least, if you decide to go lowlife based on chaos resist rather than Shavs/Lorica, you will need to spend a lot of points picking up health. I might suggest something like this:

https://www.poebuilder.com/character/AAAAAgUAA-4MfQ18DY0QfxFQFy8ZihpsGo8bJRzcHRQdqh2-IvQksCj6L28y0TOHNbk8LUKjRUdGcUcGSOdKmEuuVdZXyVxrX2psC20Zb55wu3KpfNl_xoCkgseDCYRIi4yPRo_6kyeUXJuhm7WdrqcIpyu0DLiTwGbBxcM6w23E9saeykrMZtDQ2RPZW9vn4YjpAuq66-7sGPba9zL3wffX-d356PrS-wnGrrc-QYfjahZv8NVJUUmx18_5N--I2L3-CjWSU1JFnZrgtfLPMlltX5huqg==

Please note that this is NOT rigorously theorycrafted. Please do not copy it unless you check to make sure it will work with your gear setup.

Links:

[] = mandatory
<> = optional

Chest - [DOMINATING BLOW] - [MULTISTRIKE] - [MELEE SPLASH] - <Increased Duration> - <Faster Attacks> - <Minion Damage> - <Added Lighting/Chaos/Fire> - <Melee Physical Damage> - <WED> - <Life Leech>

For general clearing you want multistrike and melee splash for sure. Beyond that you should pick up to three of the optional gems depending on what colors you have.
Increased Duration allows you to build up a bigger horde. It's unnecessary but in my opinion it adds to the fun factor. If you are having trouble with lag I'd suggest not using this.
Minion damage boosts only your minion damage but it's a big boost.
Added X Damage, Melee Physical Damage, and Faster Attacks boost your damage and some of your minions as well.
WED increases your damage a LOT but does not affect your minions as most if not all monsters count as unarmed.
Life Leech is good for sustain but I'm not a big fan of it. You might need to use it while leveling.

If you are stuck in a situation where you need to kill a boss with your own DPS rather than relying on minions I'd suggest swapping out some of your gems for better single target. In my normal setup I use DB - Multistrike - Melee Splash - Increased Duration - Minion Damage - Added Chaos. For single target I'd take out melee splash, increased duration and minion damage and replace them with WED, Added Fire Damage and Added Lightning Damage. Hell, you can even swap out Dominating Blow for Heavy Strike if you want.

Auras:

[WRATH] - [ANGER] - <Empower> - <Vitality> (linked in PRISM GUARDIAN)

You can go for more offense or more defense (assuming Zealot's Oath).

[DISCIPLINE] - [L21 REDUCED MANA] - <Haste> - <Hatred> - <Grace> (linked in The Vertex or another +1 gem level item)

<L20 Reduced Mana> - <Herald of Thunder>

Pick two of Hatred, Haste, and Grace. I prefer Hatred and Haste on softcore, but YMMV.

The precise aura setup that I use requires a L21 reduced mana gem in a +1 gem level item (so L22 RM), but this is not mandatory. You might wonder why I don't just take another 4% reduced mana reservation on the tree (I intentionally skip a node). The reason is that if you take 34% reserve then Wrath + Anger + Empower in Prism Guardian won't put you on low life. In order to reserve enough life you need no more than 30% reduced reservation. Thus you need the extra levels on your reduced mana to just squeeze in.

There are two possible ways around this:

1. Use Vitality instead of Empower and run 34% mana reservation.

2. Drop Herald of Thunder

If you do either you won't need a level 21 reduced mana. If you just drop HoT you also have two more gem slots to play with.

UTILTIY:

[LEAP SLAM] + [FASTER ATTACKS] - I pair these with Herald of Thunder and Reduced Mana. I suppose these aren't strictly mandatory but they really help with clearspeed.

[BLOOD MAGIC] - [BLOOD RAGE] - <Flesh Offering> - <Convocation> - <Enhance> - <Increased Duration>

If you have quality Blood Magic it will add it's attack speed bonus to Blood Rage. I strongly recommend using Enhance here for even more attack speed, but if you really want you can use Increased Duration to boost Flesh Offering. Flesh Offering is tough to use as your kills don't leave behind corpses. Monsters that your minions kill do tough, and Flesh Offering is a sick ability to really turn up the heat when you have a big army. Convocation might be useful but I haven't tested it yet. It's not mandatory because monsters automatically teleport to you when they fall too far behind.

Your last three link is flexible but I like to use:

<Vaal Discipline> - <Vaal Haste> - <Increased Duration>

VD is great for defense/sustain and VH is an absolutely brutal damage and clearspeed boost.

This build can do most map mods. The only mod that you absolutely can't do is Hemomancy.

No regen and half regen are doable, just pay attention to how you are sustaining your ES pool.

Physical reflect, burning ground, poison ground, and shocking ground all act as an additional drag on your sustain. As long as your sustain isn't awful you can laugh all of these off.

Elemental reflect is painful. I personally avoid this map mod but have cleared ele reflect maps.


Many map mods are actively good for this build. Packsize, Magic Monsters, Rare Monsters, and Nemesis mods all actively help you by giving you more and more powerful minions. Inhabited by Demons is fantastic because tentacle miscreations and whipping miscreations make great minions. Fracturing is just ridiculous, and I've topped well over 200 minions in a fracturing map.

Other than that just use your best judgment.

My only other piece of advice is to plan when you are going to hit the boss. You should be able to kill most bosses, but it might be wise to skip some. If you decide to engage though be sure to gather up as big of a horde as you can and then hit the boss. Don't wipe up the whole map first as you will have fewer minions remaining at the end.

Another possible strategy for bosses is to change your gem links to focus on your own single target damage. See the gems section for more on this.

I wouldn't suggest leveling with this build as it won't even work until you can equip Soul Taker. Level however you want. I personally went with elemental spectral throw, but I think minions, flameblast or even something like lightning tendrils would be fine.

Q: Can I play this as a different class?
A: Absolutely. Shadow and Witch should both be good, and Scion is probably viable too.

Q: Why don't you go blood magic/mortal conviction?
A: Soul Taker does not work with blood magic

Q: Can I use grace instead of haste?
A: Hell yes

Q: Do I need Convocation?
A: No, minions will teleport to you when you move offscreen. That said, Convocation might be good, but I haven't tested it.

Q: Do I need Soul Taker?
A: Yes

Q: Do I need Shavronne's Wrappings?
A: Probably not. It's easier to pull off with Shavs if you can afford it but you should be able to do it with a Lorica or high chaos resist and more life. Note that these options are not trivial and require a lot of adjustment. See the gearing section for more information.

Q: Do I need Increased Duration gem?
A: No, but it is a lot of fun.

Q: This build sucks at the start of a league! What were you thinking?
A: Ya gotta find something fun to do late in a league too...