OP melee/minions builds ?

I saw the new unique claw "the scourge" with the "increases to minion damage also affect you" mod and it looks like it could be VERY powerfull with dominating blow or a CoC raging spirits build... what do you think ?

Melee/minion hybrids are inherently troublesome and not very powerful. Dominating blow works decent enough but I don't like it personally because of ruckus on screen and problems in solo boss fights like Daresso.

If you take the trope of a deathknight straight and try for a figher with minion backup, you end up with a suboptimal build that takes a lot of patience to get working. You can check the concept in witch build section, look for 'rathma's chosen', it can work with DB, as long range support with something like sunder and as a hard hitter with bleeding EQ and can be made fairly durable.

The claw mostly allow you to take those 10% increased life to minion in the tree, wish may free up some points. i al;so would like to make this claw work.

Also, there is that :

I don't think the claw even really needs to be used in a melee/minion hybrid build.

Unless I'm seriously misunderstanding something (in which case, by all means let me know), if you dual-wield it, the 10% chance to summon a Spectral Wolf on kill and the 70% increased minion damage on hit will apply twice. This means the minion the weapon itself summons gets summoned more often and you get 127-412 damage on the weapon (base damage * 2.4, a 140% increase correlates to multiplying by 2.4 due to the base being 100%, not 0%). That's not bad. And you inherently leech 2% of that. And you benefit strongly from dual-wielding nodes, minion damage nodes and the new Bone Helmets.

Hell, I might even try this with Necromancer since ALL of her minor nodes grant 15% increased Minion damage. Take Mistress of Sacrifice so your Offerings affect you as well, take Spirit Eater for double dipping on increased damage after consuming/destroying a corpse (70% from one node I believe, which is awesome), Beacon of Corruption for a bit of Chaos scaling and Commander of Darkness for a bit more aura scaling, it might actually be alright. And the wolves are minions, they also get the buffs.

I think you could actually make this claw very strong, but again, I might be misunderstanding something. If I happen to get a couple of these I will definitely give this a shot though.

Also ZePample, it just gives you minion damage, not all minion buffs.

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Vipermagi wrote:

"This means the minion the weapon itself summons gets summoned more often and you get 127-412 damage on the weapon"
Minor note: The Scourge will still have the same base Damage as always, you just get global Increased Damage, additive with your other Increased/Reduced Damage. Should have good flat scaling though.

Right, I don't think I phrased that nearly as well as I could have. I was mostly just saying that in the absence of other mods that would be the weapon's damage after the two 70% increases, not that the base damage would go up.

I hadn't considered flat scaling, there is that new ring that adds tons of flat phys (my first thought on seeing that ring was "Facebreaker wet dream"). That could be really nice along with The Scourge as well.

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loco1234 wrote:

And the wolves are minions, they also get the buffs.

Get Necro Aegis, and you wolves will use shields! Mind=blown :D

While i dont like scion at all, i figured that would be a decent build for Spectre, Wolfs & Cyclone with the claw. It's mostly focused on buffing your own aoe/claw damage but with the minion nodes i took they can still be usefull.

Had to took so much aoe because claws have a range of 5 (wish is one of the worst).

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAABAABAJMnUzVvV3gZwaDWB4_BSxyNgRX9tMVirGyMnao2Pbl8jAvssCaVfIMRLSyc7Ip9GGvbogBh4lVLBLOf3-98PAXAZkVHMtGMNnBSidNtbIRvdf0Wvw-rJIuExSo46-76gCqY2QunCFAwIG5Ms91IuNkBCRGWf8b_3iT951RRR9Qjjb8FtcLs8h6_l8k9l5U9X1JTl_RtGSL0bAtQQsM6m7VfsMpKdweHE5ykb56DCb6AYENuPQOWOyiWMshbFbgIZzBx3ahLeDpCsVumMgMEqHIQYu_9hFMAwfGzS1fA4wj0wFRqQxzcjxrQH-_rvoqhLw==

It's true you don't get attacked as much with some pets around and they will soak missiles, but with that amount of life you'll get oneshot by a rhoa. Seeing that most minion bonuses are on the left side and claw passives are on the right you kinda have to ignore one of those or spread yourself far too thin to function. Can't recommend Cyclone with claws either, Reave would be a much better idea as extra range allows you to hang a little behind your pets if needed.

One other thing I noticed is that using Cyclone seems to confuse minions sometimes as they tend to follow your actions to an extent. They react much better if you don't click around too much but use some skill that targets a point ahead of you, like Ground Slam.

Minion hybrids have it easier than straight build but they still must stand still and don't spend their time running around like regular summoners or totemists do. As a result they do take a beating, the Necromancer hybrid I mentioned above has more than twice the life bonus, some armor, 6 endurance charges, enfeeble, fortify, phys reduction from zombies, MoM and Bone offering on demand.