[2.6] Necromancer: 4 Stone Golem DPS, Using The Baron

I'm running haste+hatred and lv 4 enlighten atm. Obviously the combo is good but resummoning zombies is a bitch because of having a small amount of mana left. You don't have the mana to resummon stone golems either. Someone has a good alternative to replace hatred or haste with, that reserves less mana so we can run that + low lvl clarity.

Edit: Sorry posted this in the wrong place lol, moving now

You may want to experiment with Spirit Offering, as well.

I'm running a Zombies/SRS variant of the Baron in Legacy at the moment(Baroness_Samadia, for interested parties, though the character is far from optimized at the moment), used Flesh Offering for most of my run. But when I finally managed to grab a Severed in Sleep I decided to switch to Spirit Offering to see how it went. Immediately super-impressed and have never even thought about going back.

For one, SO gives you close to a 2k shield at the ~6k life mark on a full pop, and it just gives you that shield instantly. I actually have two Spirit Offerings in my build - a lower-level one in my CWDT set-up and a higher-level one I cast manually. The high-level version is for regular mapping, whilst the CWDT SO is amazeballs for Breaches and other heavy-blitz situations.

On top of that, the critters get 23-29% of physical as Added Chaos, which is basically Unholy Might for everybody. It's a big clearspeed/killspeed boost even without any compensating minion speed, and unlike Added Chaos it scales just fine with slow single hits since it's +% Added, not flat damage. I could only afford a cheapass 2/2/2 Skin of the Loyal for my version (Raise Zombie, Minion Damage, Melee Phys, Fortify, Faster Attacks, Blind for the Zomboids. NOT optimal, though there are arguments for it); if I could trade the Blind for a Minion Speed to compensate for the loss of Flesh Offering I'd be golden. You can totally run Minion Speed though, so hey.

Mon'Tregul's Grasp means the Zomboids do not die, but I noticed pretty significant drops in critter reliability with five GigaZomboids over eleven regular Zomboids. Zombie A.I. is just so bad, which may be fitting but is also frustrating. Five bigger critters just don't engage reliably enough, and half the time three or four of them swing at the same target, the first hit gibs it, and the others are wasted. I think minion speed of some sort is essential for Mon'Tregul's Grasp variants; the five larger zombies just didn't engage properly at lower speeds, and it left me sorely wanting in Breaches and other high-density situations. Bosskilling was fine either way, but the character didn't flow as well in regular mapping.

My intent is to grab Flesh Binder with my Uberlab points as soon as I get my final Uberlab challenges done (what can I say, I'm slow -_-), and see if 11% Flesh Binder reduction, plus Fortify on the Zomboids (and Blind currently by necessity, though it's not working as well as I'd like), means the smaller critters can survive better in heavy fights. Currently Fortify alone is not enough, I still lose them regularly in tough situations, but I don't have an Empower gem either, so that might just be a critter level issue. Only so much money to go around in Legacy, though.

Super nice to know where the zombies are in a scrum, though. Dat Fortify buff is great for pointing out where the damned things are and letting me better track what they're doing. So is Spirit Offering, for that matter. Really cool for tracking what the A.I. is (not) doing.

Would absolutely love to try the Golem version, but ten exalts do not, in fact, grow on trees in Legacy if one is a poor currency farmer. C'est la vie. Zomboids and Spitters for me! Still deletes bosses with hilarious speed, and the ability to just stand there and do almost nothing in a Breach never fails to make me smile. Run around, let CWDT constantly give me new chunks of ES, have stupid high regeneration thanks to tree, gear, and Stone Golem buff, Zomboid leech, Spitter area coverage/clear...now that the build's gotten halfway in gear it doesn't really die anymore. The zombies do, but I only drop if something unexpected happens and I'm not paying attention. And this from a guy who largely stinks at PoE.

EDIT: Ah! Just remembered!

Also consider Belt of the Deceiver for your Animated Guardian. The new version's Intimidate to nearby enemies would be a nearly free boost to your damage, and one that also double-dips in a sense. It might even survive the double-dipping purge planned for 3.0.0, given it's a double-dip on enemy damage resistance, not friendly skill modifiers.

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myrmician wrote:

I wasn't too big a fan of linking Multistrike to them because of the less damage modifier applying to the initial hit and the poison, as well as it locking them in place for too long at times (besides bosses) as they often one shot rares anyway. I am currently trying out Added Fire but also want to test Added Chaos. Have you experimented with either, and if so, what were your conclusions?

Hello, i see this build focused on phys damage (with curse totem) and i think you should look at Fortify Support, it boost their huge phys and give to golems additional defensive buff.

I also use Melee Damage on Full Life Support, because for now i dont have empower, and most of time golems walk with full hp :D

P.S. Odif, Thank you for this build, i really love Stone Golems!

P.P.S. Sorry for my english its not my primary language.

I noticed that the CWDT are level 1, is there a reason for this? Sorry for the noob Q.

Cast When Damage Taken Support is kept at level 1 so that the gems that you have linked are triggered at the lowest possible health loss.

In other words, you take a small hit and something like Spirit Offering is triggered consuming corpses and giving you a sizable emergency energy shield. (When you finally put points into the Mistress of Sacrifice ascendancy)

If you, however, level Cast When Damage Taken Support gem up a lot, it takes ALOT more health loss to trigger its linked effects.

The trade off however is that when Cast When Damage Taken Support is kept at a low level, the gems you have linked to it must also be kept at a low level to function.

Hope this helps

I like what you have done with this build but i wonder if Umbilicus Immortalis belt would work for you here. You could then use witchfire brew to apply your vuln curse from your zombies allowing you to keep a distance as well as drop the spell totem, with the added benefit of life and utility flasks to keep your zombies up and running longer as long as their leech can sustain you.

the trick is to use Primordial Eminence instead of Primordial Eminence. Than the golems use Rolling Stone(Whirling Blades) and are a lot faster.

Hi!

I am enjoying the build so far. Have you or are you going to update with the changes you mentioned to run the Haste aura?

Also what were the other armor options that had +1 skill gems?

Thank you!

L55 and only died once so far so pretty happy.

I've started my very first char in PoE recently.
And yes, it is necromancer, 56 level so far.
Can you please look at my passive tree and say if it still possible to switch to your build or better to start over with all these +STR points? I've used pretty much classic Summoner build with +minions nodes.

My current build


Not sure where to go from here, Flame Golems are amazing for now but I'm not sure they are viable lategame.