GhazzyTV - Beginner's Build: Lich Queen Skeleton Summoner [AWAKENER FARMABLE]

IMPORTANT NOTE:

THIS GUIDE IS NOW AVAILABLE WITH A MUCH BETTER QUALITY OVER AT: https://www.poe-vault.com/guides/lich-queen-skeleton-summoner-build-guide

I will be answering ALL questions on that forum thread and keep all guides on icy-veins website (poe-vault.com) updated consistently every league as per usual.

All my build guides as well as other written guides can be found here: https://www.poe-vault.com/guides/ghazzy-guide-hub



This thread will no longer be updated but will leave it as it was when I did this move for the sake of nostalgia <3

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For a more detailed explanation of the MELEE build check out the video guide: Lich Queen Melee Summoner Build Guide Video

High Budget EXAMPLE of gear video: https://youtu.be/SRcOZIYzjKU

Soulwrest version can be found here: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2239049/page/1#p15896938

Animate Guardian Guide: https://youtu.be/JRK5AFbhd2M

If you have any questions you can always come to my twitch stream to get them answered or just to enjoy the stream: Ghazzy's Livestreaming Channel

Melee Skelly PoB:
Path of Building Link for the guide: https://pastebin.com/UvEBK1g7
Simply go to "Import/Export Build" > Click the "Import from Pastebin" paste the link in there, and then click "Import"

Mage Skelly PoB (Please note that this is a worse version over the Melee style):
Path of Building Link for the guide: https://pastebin.com/km6Nu3hT
Simply go to "Import/Export Build" > Click the "Import from Pastebin" paste the link in there, and then click "Import" (For this build please read the notes in the PoB)

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Is this build for you?

1. If you are looking for an actual skelly build that can be played properly as both melee or mage skellies!

2. A build that is not only viable in both hardcore & sofcore, but also Uber Atziri, Uber Izaro & Uber Elder viable!

3. Insanely high eHP with really good clearing speed that is neither SRS nor Zombie.

4. A build with a high budget version allowing you to literally deal with ALL content in the game.

5. If you prefer a build guide that has a video linked to it.

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Build Enabling Items:

Mage Skelly Approach:
The only build enabling item for this approach would be the Dead Reckoning Jewel.

Melee Skelly Approach:
This version can be played in all rares if you want!

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Defence & Utility

Large meatshield army & high HP pool together with the Fortify enabling Shield Charging makes you very fast & durable.

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Pantheon Choices:

Pantheon List

Major God:

- Soul of Lunaris
Basically just helps with avoiding some projectile damage

Minor God:

- Soul of Ryslatha
Basically just an additional layer of defence when you're on low life.

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Skill-gems & Setups:

Mage Skellies:

- Summon Skeletons, Minion Damage, Spell Echo, Elemental Focus, Greater Multiple Projectiles, Pierce


Melee Skellies:

- Summon Skeletons, Minion Damage, Melee Physical Damage, Multistrike, Brutality, Impale

NOTE ABOUT VAAL SUMMON SKELETON:
It can absolutely be used to give you a significant damage increase to killing bosses, but has very little use outside of that aspect.


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Golem & AG:

- Carrion Golem, Animate Guardian, Feeding Frenzy, Maim

Animate Guardian Gear is very straight forward:
Leer Cast
Dying Breath
Victario's Flight
Helmet: Any helmet with life for low budget, for higher budget you want to Fossil Craft a helmet to give some HP with a Pristine Fossil & Jagged Fossil on an ELDER helmet to get nearby enemies take increased #% physical damage
Gloves: Any rare gloves with life or Southbound, for higher budget you'll want to get a rare pair of gloves with life & corrupted implicit with "curse enemies with lvl # vulnerability on hit"
Chest: There are plenty of options one of the most commonly used low budget styles would be to use the Ambus Charge Crusader Chainmail

Choosing which spectre to run:

Redemption Sentry (My personal choice for this build):

Redemption Sentries can only be found in the blue conqueror influenced maps where there are influenced monsters (or you can ask in global chat for someone to let you summon them in their hideout).

- Raise Spectre, Feeding Frenzy, Minion Damage, Greater Multiple Projectiles

Notes:
Prior to enabling these spectres I would use the Solar Guards mentioned down below. The pseudo link helmet will obviously change compared to the stated PoB link at the top of this guide where you should be looking for the following stats:
+[1-3] lvl of socketed gems
# minion dmg
# hypothermia
# socketed spells have crit
% increased phys dmg taken by enemies near you
(Bonus: Socketed Gems hafve +30% more elemental dmg from Essence of Horror)

The order of efficiency is pretty straight forward, the increased phys dmg taken is a bonus whilst socketed spells have crit can be entirely ignored for this build even though it does provide a small damage increase. Lvl of socketed gems & minion damage are the big ones together with Hypothermia. If you do get a minion dmg roll you then switch that support gem for either more dmg such as Elemental DMG with Attacks or go even crazier with area coverage such as utilizing Fork, Pierce or Chain


Baranite Spectres (Thaumaturge or Sisters):

Thaumaturge: https://poedb.tw/us/mon.php?n=Baranite+Thaumaturge
Sister: https://poedb.tw/us/mon.php?n=Baranite+sister

- Raise Spectre, Minion Damage, Spell Echo, Controlled Destruction, Elemental Focus, Feeding Frenzy

Note:
1) Since we're only using 4 of the above links you can use something like an Elder helmet that has mods that supports socketed gems with Conc effect as well as minion damage resulting in you being able to run a "pseudo 6 link" set-up for the spectres.

2) Before you're able to get the Baranite spectres (whichever you prefer) you can use the Solar Guards which are described below.
You can find the Baranite spectres in maps that are influenced by the Red Conqueror (Baran) and find these enemies in those maps that you have to kill then summon. Once you've summoned one I recommend heading to your hideout directly as then you're able to spawn their corpses with Desecrate as a normal minion.


Solar Guards:

Can be found here: https://poedb.tw/us/Solar_Guard

- Raise Spectre, Minion Damage, Spell Echo, Feeding Frenzy

A note worth mentioning here is the possibility of an Elder helmet with 2 specific modifiers being:
1) Socketed Gems are supported by lvl # Concentrated Effect = This scale the explosion dmg portion of the beam as well as fireballs casted by the Solar Guards
2) Socketed Gems are supported by lvl # Minion Damage = This allows you to replace the Minion Damage support gem from the 4L and instead add either Controlled Destruction or as I prefer: Greater Multiple Projectiles as they are ultimately only there to provide good clearing speed for the melee skelly approach.


Utility:

- Flesh Offering

Note:
You could run a Trigger socketed spells when you use a skill craft on a weapon and run the links:
Flesh Offering, Desecrate, & Punishment

Do keep in mind that if you run this set-up the build will feel much smoother with the automatic triggering but would also mean you should not use a pair of gloves on your Animate Guardian that provides Vulnerability on hit.

Utility:

- Convocation, Desecrate

Aura:

- Pride, Dread Banner
- Purity of Lightning or Purity of Fire if you can apply a decently lvld Enlighten.

Reason I suggest Fire or Lightning purities is because end-game bosses like Atziri & Sirus deals both Fire & Lightning damage. However, Shaper & Elder deals a lot of Cold damage. Choice is yours.

Mobility:

- Leap Slam or Shield Charge, Faster Attacks, Fortify


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Skill-tree & Ascendancy Nodes:

Ascendancy Nodes:
You start with Mistress of Sacrifice, then you grab Mindless Agression to get to Unnatural Strength. Once these are done you can either go with Commander of Darkness, Essence Glutton or Bone Barrier. It's up to you!

Leveling skill-tree, 48 points

Leveling skill-tree, 92 points

Finished skill-tree

Notes:
Once the skill-tree is finished, just focus 100% on more jewel slots.

Mage skelly approach notes:
Switch from SRS to Skellies once you have a 5L, this also allows you to remove the +2 minion helmet as well as respeccing out of the duration cluster near the scion.

Melee skelly approach notes:
Switch whenever you feel comfortable with the playstyle.

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Blighted Oils

Melee Skellies:
In my opinion there is only one notable worth taking for this build and that is Death Attunement which requires the following oils: Clear Oil, Crimson Oil, Silver Oil.

Mage Skellies:
In my opinion there is only one notable worth taking for this build and that is Gravepact which requires the following oils: 1 Azure Oil & 2x Black Oils.

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Leveling Tips:

Either level with skellies as is or you could go faster by linking Arc with Blastchain Mines and what ever added damage support gems you can and later get Controlled Destruction & Elemental Focus. And use these to level all the way up to Blood Aqueduct act 9 with and grind your way to lvl 65-70 then switch to the summoner approach.

Bandits:

- Kill them all, they give nothing of proper value for you.

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Gearing & Stat Priorities

What base items to use:

The base items of this build really doesn't matter as we don't care about the base defensive stats such as armour(str), evasion(dex) or energy shield(int). So instead the base items will follow the stat priority listed in this guide.
However, the attribute requirement of the items will base how hard it is to chrome (color) which will be the only thing we will think about when planing our gearing.
So, if you need 4 blue sockets in an item the recommendation is to get an item that has Energy Shield (int) base or a hybrid base which includes Energy Shield (int).

By using this chrome calculating website: https://siveran.github.io/calc.html you can easily track how hard it will be to chrome the colors you need. This YouTube playlist can help a lot for new players and also includes a few tricks when coloring items with the "wrong attribute requirements" for your build: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLuu-MdPs0Af8A4e3gSsJ1xDKNNcdFwY1r


Defensive Stats:

1. Life
2. ES
3. Resistances
4. Dexterity

Offensive Stats:

1. Minion Damage
2. Minion Life


Jewels:

Mage Skelly approach:
Dead Reckoning

Melee Skelly approach:
If strength stacking Baron:
Any jewel granting more strength usch as Brawn or if it's too expensive, get any jewel granting minion damage!

If not strength stacking:
Rare jewels with flat life/minions taunt on hit/%minion dmg when you've used a minion skill recently are top tier jewels for you.

Keep in mind that as a melee skelly approach you're gonna want to use 1x From Dust Jewel! You could squize in To Dust Jewels as well but it's a matter of taste of adding those vs adding strength providing jewels to scale the Baron further.




Flasks:

2x Seething Divine Life Flasks <w/e sufix>
1x Ample Eternal Life Flask of Staunching
1x Ample Granite Flask of Staunching
1x Ample Quicksilver Flask of Heat

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Recommended Unique Items:


Recommended LvLing Uniques:



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Outro:

For a more detailed explanation of the MELEE build check out the video guide: Lich Queen Melee Summoner Build Guide Video

Before you start posting questions I would recommend checking the video. I am as always available in my stream!

Hope you guys will enjoy the build! Below you can access my other build guides:

Build Guides


//Ghazzy

* Reserved


NOTICE:

I've reached a point where I have too many build guides to keep up with responding personally on each comment as I've always done on my threads in the past. I will obviously continue doing this but on the youtube videos instead. I hope you guys will understand, sadly I'm not a fulltime streamer and for me to keep build guides like this posted this was an inevitable result!

Nice to see another summoner guide from you Ghazzy!

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Shademehre wrote:

Nice to see another summoner guide from you Ghazzy!

Glad you like it bro! :D

I can concur that skeletons are really strong!. I tried them on my standard summoner this monday (with midnight bargain and prism guardian for that matter even, not even optimized for skeletons) and they do loads of dmg actually.

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leary93 wrote:

I can concur that skeletons are really strong!. I tried them on my standard summoner this monday (with midnight bargain and prism guardian for that matter even, not even optimized for skeletons) and they do loads of dmg actually.

About 90 DPS below Zombies, problem is their movement speed :)

and the fact that you have to cast them and their hp. the build up was always their issue.

the enchant / upgraded queens makes the build in terms of viability.

until those two things were made . it was simply faster to run around with zombies spectres or srs.

probably still is faster . but now skeletons are at a point where they are fast enough to no longer detract from their damage potential as they are a very snowbally kind of minion.


still going to do my zombie summoner in standard before this . but i do have a 100% queen's escape waiting to be linked.

it is curious as this build is almost opposite to it.

i have a suggestion / curiosity that maybe you can sandbox, ghazzy. have you tried running atziri with blood magic frenzy monkeys? i hear they spam the aoe while under blood magic and you clearly have more than enough minion to take advantage of it.

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Saltychipmunk wrote:

and the fact that you have to cast them and their hp. the build up was always their issue.

the enchant / upgraded queens makes the build in terms of viability.

until those two things were made . it was simply faster to run around with zombies spectres or srs.

probably still is faster . but now skeletons are at a point where they are fast enough to no longer detract from their damage potential as they are a very snowbally kind of minion.


still going to do my zombie summoner in standard before this . but i do have a 100% queen's escape waiting to be linked.

it is curious as this build is almost opposite to it.

i have a suggestion / curiosity that maybe you can sandbox, ghazzy. have you tried running atziri with blood magic frenzy monkeys? i hear they spam the aoe while under blood magic and you clearly have more than enough minion to take advantage of it.

Aye indeed.
The enchant makes the build much smoother but it is viable before hand. Effeciency skyrockets with it though.

With Queen's I think zombies will still be better in general clearing now since you can approach it differently but skellies should still be stronger for boss kills.



If you're not focusing on Spectres (Soul Weaver) then the only spectres surviving in Atziri is generally the Undying Evangelists unless you strictly put a lot of focus on making them survive. I personally prefer the bubble boys for defensive purposes as we are socket starved we don't have room for CWDT setups or the luxoury of armour or other defensive stats in the same way most other builds do.

looks cool, how about dead reckoning unique jewel for skeleton mages? do you think it would be viable if we change the setup a little bit?

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mefitis16 wrote:

looks cool, how about dead reckoning unique jewel for skeleton mages? do you think it would be viable if we change the setup a little bit?

Seeing as we can't control which summons become mages and which does not unlike Animate Weapon where we are targeting a specific weapon type to become an ally.

With the enchant we are summoning 4 skeletons per click which means we need more than 1 reckoning either way it wont add up equally. The first "X" ammount of skellies becomes mages, rest becomes physical damage dealers. If we hit the cap of our summons or if a skeleton dies due to hp dropping to 0 or duration it will screw up the entire process making us unreliably summon skeletons not knowing if the majority of that summon will be mages or not. So using 2 different link setups to unreliable use them is making 0 sence. The threshold jewel needs a rework for it to work.

Animate Weapon is completely different and makes it work due to the fact you are targeting a specific weapon type.