[3.3] SUICIDE SQUAD--- minion instability zombie necromancer

Here is a link for PoB updated to 3.3

https://pastebin.com/R4XMC1XC

So since i last update this build necromancer got reworked. HUzzah. Not much else has changed so i have updated the passive tree and added a pastebin. Ill try to hit the changes further in this guide but dont blame me if i miss something

As far as the ascendancy goes, obviousely you want to head towards Flesh binder for those sweet zombie buffs. The degen damage from zombie death is now 5x bigger than it used to be, but no longer can effect the srs. Plus, you get an extra zombie now. hurray. It is really your choice whether you drop bone offering or not, but with the reduced effectiveness of SRS i would probably just stick that in a single slot and set up bone offering in a CWDT setup. Or drop it completely and take puppet master

Zombies got quite a bit of base melee damage in this patch which is nice. Also, energy shield got nuked from orbit. So i decided to utilize my respec and go for a Baron life variant, which i will detail more below. I will stick the energy shield version in its own spoiler for the sake of posterity but i can no longer vouch for its effectiveness. Additionally, map bosses got a LOT more health, which honestly makes them fairly hard for this build, though still doable. taking a full complement of coruscating elixers is recommended.

I added a new video of the updated build clearing a t13 waterways map.

Zombiesplosions are really quite satisfying
Massive burst damage
Gloriously off-meta
not bothered by reflect at all

Requires a league-specific unique to function (though it is a cheap one and available through The Forsaken div cards)
Cannot be directly affected by potions. yeah. That’s inconvenient in a big way
Zombie AI can limit effective clearing. Can still do maps in a few minutes but this isn’t really a powerclearer
Can run out of ammo during big boss fights, taking away most of our damage

This build depends on being able to reliably kill your own zombies. This presents a problem. Simply resummoning them will trigger the chaos cloud from Beacon of corruption, but will not trigger minion instability. To do this, you have to actually get your minions to low life. This can be achieved through a combination of 2 uniques.



The Umbilicus Immortalis is an interesting belt. It gives max life and max health regen which are great, but it also makes it so that all of your potions affect your zombies instead of you. This is a huge drawback, so basically nobody uses this belt. Which is good for us, because it is a league-specific item, and its unpopularity keeps it cheap. I got mine for all of 5 chaos. It is also available by trading in 7 The forsaken Divination cards.



This potion lowers your health to 1 whenever you chug it. With the belt, this effectively lowers your Zombies life to 1 instead. Which means they explode. Huzzah. This potion can be bought for 1 chaos or lower. You will want at least 2, preferably 3. Most packs will give enough charges to sustain the potion, but tougher monsters will eat through charges, so you will want some backups

The main source of damage in this build in the minion instability keystone. This causes your minions to explode when they drop below 35% life, dealing a third of their max life as fire damage to surrounding enemies. Once they explode, the Flesh Binder Ascendancy passive from the Necromancer tree will leave behind a caustic cloud dealing 50% of the zombies life per sec. I believe this lasts for 5 seconds. This is good for picking off stragglers. It is important to note that Minion Instability will apply damage for every minion you have, while beacon of corruption will only apply the damage for one minion, as DoT effects do not typically stack.

Both of these effects deal damage based off your minions’ base life. Being minion effects, they are also scaled by anything affecting your minions, most notably minion damage and area. It is important to get these things whenever you can. Though remember that minion damage is not your damage, minion area is not your area. Taking fire damage or area nodes in the tree will do nothing, and neither will bonuses from equipment (unless it is a shield and you take necromantic aegis) So almost all damage is acquired from minion nodes in the tree, or from some equipment. Notably, bone helmets and equipment made from Essences of Fear can be used to scale your damage, though trying to find worthwhile equipment made from these is exceedingly expensive. The Baron version of the build can also output your strength onto your minions, increasing their base health and melee damage significantly.

It is also possible to increase the damage of minion instability by reducing the enemy fire resist. For this reason, we take elemental equilibrium and trigger it with ball lightning totem/shield charge. We also manually cast flammability on tougher enemies.

The big item used for scaling your damage is this thing


Mon'tegruls grasp gives a huge health boost to your zombies, at the cost of only having half as many. This build maxes at 6 zombies using this, 12 without. Though you technically can get higher damage with 12, having 6 actually works better because you save time summoning them. This also gives zombies a boost to their melee damage, and causes them to explode any enemy that they kill in melee. This explosion also scales with minion damage, and is actually fairly useful for clearing out stragglers or trivial enemies such as the baby beetles. The explosion can clear normal white packs, but is more efficient to just detonate the zombies.

HERE HAVE SOME MATH

Base damage is calculated via this equation

Base damage for instability=.33*(minion base life)*(1+increased minion life)*(1+increased minion damage)*any more multipliers

Base damage per sec for corruption=.1*(minion base life)*(1+increased minion life)*(1+increased minion damage)*any more multipliers

Functionally, scaling minion damage and life achieves the same result damagewise. Minion damage also scales damage better for your SRS, and life keeps your golem alive. It is also important to get as high a level as you can on your minion gems, to maximize their base life. Notably, The Baron unique helm will increase your minions base life by giving them your strength value


outside of explosing, the sombies are still able to put out a fairly decent melee beatdown. Investing in minion damage and the montreguls effects means they can hold their own, but we also pick of this jewel so that they can attack better more frequently, just to help them out a bit. IT isnt necissary but is a decent backup.

ZOMBIES (BBBBB chest)
Raise Zombie-minion damage-minion life-spell echo-minion speed/increased aoe/concentrated effect

This is fairly straightforward. Summon zombie with the most health and damage you can. Echo just allows you to summon zombies faster, which helps a lot for clear times. If you REALLY need to function in a 4 link you can probably drop echo, though I wouldn’t recommend it. I used to use increased area as it was one of the few ways to increase explosion radius, but I am finding that minion speed basically just lets the zombies spread out to get greater coverage. Conc effect may still be swapped in for boss fights.

Basically, blow up zombies, summon more zombies, rinse, repeat. If you really want to devote a 6 link to this, fire penetration or empower are probably the best choices.

Getting a high quality in the zombie gem will increase their maximum life and movement speed, so is very useful. Quality is also very useful in the minion life and damage gems, and useful in the area/conc effect. not really useful on echo though.

SRS (BBBR The Baron)
Summon raging spirits-minion damage-spell echo-multistrike

These serve a couple purposes. They are a satisfactory secondary damage source, especially important if you manage to run out of potions. They deal a lot of fire damage so triggering EE will help their damage significantly. Their other primary purpose is to manipulate zombie AI. Zombies are programmed defensively, meaning they will really only target things if they get close or are in active combat with an ally. Raging spirits count as an ally and will actually cause your zombies to spread out and attack people, promoting much better coverage. Just having a few spirits running around will seriously increase your clearspeed. They will also spread caustic clouds when they time out, which can clear white packs decently. The baron gives +2 minion levels so they should ideally go there, but the colors are kinda unfriendly. A high level added chaos is supposedly comparable to multistrike, but it doesn’t scale off of elemental equilibrium, and I don’t want to buy one.

Quality in SRS will give them movespeed, which is very helpful. Multistrike quality gives melee damage, quality minion damage gives damage to both melee hits and caustic cloud. Don’t bother with quality on echo.

3.3 update- These guys are generally less important now that Flesh binder gives significant boost to zombies, and they can no longer trigger the degen. you should still have it socketed somewhere just to manipulate the ai, but it can be reasonably swapped out. CWDT for bone offering may be a decent replacement, but i will leave it to your creativity

Shield charge (RRG Mon'tregul's grasp/shield)
Shield charge-faster attacks-fortify
This is used to get around quickly. A common play pattern for this build is to shield charge into the largest pack around, convocate to summon minions, then detonate. If you have a bit of (non-fire) elemental damage from equipment, than it can also be used to trigger elemental equilibrium, which is really only relevant when facediving rares. Fortify is used to increase durability, though honestly your accuracy is so godawful it doesn’t always trigger.

Ball lightning totem (BGGR glove/boot)
Ball lightning-spell totem-GMP-blind
This thing is used to proc elemental equilibrium and provides a hell of a defensive boost. Blind is ridiculously effective, providing most of the effect of an evasion build without any actual investment in evasion. Ball lightning was chosen because it hits enough that you can reliably blind most opponents even with the small chance per hit. The colors are not particularly friendly on this one, so if you don’t feel like hucking the chromes at it than an increased area gem instead of GMP still provides decent coverage.

Curses (BB/G)
Blasphemy-enfeeble/flammability
This is used to boost your defense or offense as you see fit. Enfeeble reduces a huge chunk of incoming damage. Flammability is a huge offensive boost, giving fire pen for minion instability and giving it a significant chance to ignite. Unfortunately, zombies have a really high mana cost so blaspheming both curses isnt very practical. Typically i blasphemy enfeeble and manually cast flammability on tougher opponents. the flammability can be socketed anywhere not attached to the blasphemy

[I]The rest of these aren’t linked to anything so can just go wherever there is room[/I]

Convocation
This skill is pretty critical. It will summon your zombies to your location. This can be used to dogpile them on top of a tougher enemy, or simple bring them to your location if they are lagging behind. As I said before, the general play pattern is to charge into a group, summon zombies with this and then detonate. There is a small cast time on this, so if you time it right you can split your detonation so that some zombies will be where you are and some will be spread around.

Discipline
This is a chaos inoculation build. It basically just really wants discipline. This gives about 1300 ES, just use it.

this really isnt needed on baron version

clarity
This is used to regen mana fast enough to repeatedly summon zombies. I have mine sitting at level 13 which seems to be working fine. It is also important for triggering commander of darkness

Stone/chaos golem
These are strong minions used for a defensive boost. With life now being important, stone golem is probably a bit better than the chaos

Bone offering
With the death of energy shield, something was needed to bolster your defence. The mistress of sacrifice ascendancy allows you to be effected by bone offering, giving you a huge boost to block chance. Using this and a decent shield alone gets you to 64% block as well as 34% block chance. Ideally i would link this to increased duration, but honestly i was out of slots.

it may be possable to scapre some of these slots out of the less-useful now SRS setup. i leave it to your discrescion.

The life version of this build depends prettymuch entirely on this thing

The Baron is a REALLY nice hat. it gives half of your strength to your zombies, which increases their base health as well as their melee damage. Additionally, it gives additional zombies per 300 strength. with this thing and the +1 zombies body armor mod from cat you can get up to 6 zombies at a time. In addition to THAT, your zombies will leech 2% of their damage to you if you have over 1k strength. This is important, as it is basically the only form of sustain you will have. And it is a lot of sustain, as your zombies do some pretty good damage, and it applies to the minion instability explosion. Basically, the rest of the equiptment and passive tree just go towards stacking as much strength as you can get. Towards that end, this can be pretty helpful.



Astramentis is essentially the most pure strength you can get out of an amulet. Although honestly i think it is a bit overrated. AStrementis can be very expensive, and it is possable to buy a rare amulet that gives over 100 strength for a fraction of the cost, and it may even have some health or resists on it. But i had an astramentis lying around so may as well use it. another big boost to strength is these boots

These give you increased strength. Thats prettymuch it, they entirely exist just to boost you up to 1k strength.

These two jewels are also of use, though i will explain them better in the tree section



Other than that, you generally want to get as much strength on your equiptment as possable. IT is also important to get a shield with high block chance. Lioneyes remorse is excellent for this, also giving a huge chunk of health and armor. Daressos courage is another decent option if you just need some resists(as sadly, i did), and also gives some additional block chance in certain circumstances. As well as strength, try to get health and resists wherever you can.



In terms of defense, most of what actually keeps you alive is active effects. Try and keep fortify and bone offering up as much as possable. Your zombie leech should do a fairly good job keeping you alive, but do not hesitate to retreat if you are getting low. If things are getting dicey, keep your zombies alive for meatshields and try to output some damage with SRS. This build works best with hit and run tactics.

This is my ideal endgame tree. It is possable at level 85, so any more levels should just go towards
health or other defenses.

https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/3.2.0/AAAABAMDABzc2WGboRZv7DgNzY8afRi86mhlogAVJytQGGo1kr5PGmyFe_fXCPRI55AzpqwczpitOQuFYMauqsQTbK-nZlQsnLiTggeCx-yKPC3sg_5UXz_-CvqAaqySwe8OPQ8UIHyD2L356PObUEfwHwZJdqw26Xy7muAVUONqiEBXDd-w2QvUj9P7RZ3SIdOPjr4aOIKbz358S8y8xPYn7TrYJKrAZoNftz4RLScvMtGQVY9GpwhEBBCXR4Wbihku5FGWdEGHOVJTUgSza9uMsfJBRUetjYPMKPpnm2jyakMqmG0Z6-5YBw==

The tree has two primary focuses. Getting literally every source of minion health and damage, and getting as much strength as possable. What is left goes towards getting a decent health pool.

Discussed most of the important passives elsewhere, so will go through a quick summary of some of the more important passives.

Minion instability- Your primary damage source and the point of this build

Elemental equilibrium- this is a huge damage boost for minion instability

-This jewel is socketed between the witch and scion in order to turn all that int into strength.

-this is socketed into the templar jewel node to give zombies a melee boost. Not striclty necissary but helpful.

- I am currently using two of these, at the marauder and maruader-scion jewel nodes. They are used to get the final push to 1k strength. In theory with diferent equiptment you may be able to drop one or both.

The mana cost nodes near templar are very helpful for taking the edge off the high mana cost of zombies

Whispers of doom allows for an additional curse

ASCENDANCY PASSIVES

This class goes necromancer, as it offers a lot of damage and a bit of utility.

Invoker- this gives a big boost to minion life and damage and makes convocation aeaier to use. Most importantly it is necissary to get to the next one.

Flesh binder- This is zombie build, the pasive. It gives a huge secondary damage sourse from the degen, a bit f survivability for you, an extra zombie and makes zombies way better at beating the crap out of people.

Mistress of Sacrifice- This enables you to be effected by Bone Offering, which is a massive boon to your defenses.

Commander of darkness- Simply having clarity on will give a 30% damage boost to your zombies, as well as giving you an extra 20% to all resists.

3.3 update-- most of these numbers are massively wrong. For better data, please consult the PoB link at the top.

This section is basically just a place to dump actual numerical stuff out of the build. These are my current numbers, as I am too lazy to go look up the maximum values for all the gems I don’t actually have.

Defensively, at time of writing I have 5494 HP, with 61% block and 30% spell block. Resist are maxed but only barely, though my gear is not ideal so there is some wiggle room.

It is possable to have 6 zombies max with this build, though at the moment of testing i only have 5. EAch zombie has 28729 max health. According to path of building the minion instability damage to regular mooks is 56433 per zombie (total detonate damage 56433*6=338,598. The causetic cloud will do 11955 DPS. Ageinst bosses the instability damage drops to 34333 (*6=205,998) and the caustic cloud deals 10162.5 dps. The actual zombie melee attacks do 8151 dps, and the area attacks do 9759dps.(both vs bosses). SRS do 6313 dps vs mooks and 4858 vs bosses. with all 20 that is 97160 vs bosses.

This is a video of the baron life version clearing a T13 waterways map. I managed it deathless but there were a couple close calls. Though the map had a life recovery penalty that was really screwing with my leech.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o43G0R-UHsM&feature=youtu.be

this is the first video i ever made bout anything, so is what it is

old build, Basically just did a zana mission

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=03uhcisz7Kg&feature=youtu.be

old build one shotting old voll
https://youtu.be/GqYttZmm3mw

I have created another build in the same line as this, except using skeletons this time

[3.3] Explode-a-bone minion instability skeleton/dark pact necro
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2173197

This build used to use pure ES so that it had the health pool to deal with most incoming damage, and decent sustain options to deal with lack of being able to use potions. I am dumping the ES version here in case anybody still wants to try it, but i have not used it since the 3.0 ES nerf.