Lightning Golem Crescendo ♫ All Content / HC Focused / Not Casual-Friendly

Another day, another post !

Started mapping and bought my gear for 2-3ex total (ring and amu included).


My gear :


Because capping ele resist was so easy, I improved my chaos res too (I'm at 53% chaos res currently).

I'm still experimenting with projectile weakness, and while it feels nice for mapping, it's really annoying on boss. Oh while I'm at it, empire's grasp reverse knockback doesn't work when our minions are doing the knockback.

Also, I'm really considering switching elemental focus with controlled destruction. Even if my golems don't crit that often, the conductivity curse should be enough to have the monsters perma shock.

Mapping is going smoothly, I'm surprisingly tanky (well, for a lvl 71 char) and doing more than enought dps to clear everything fine. I just need to improve the clearspeed a little.

Also, shield charge is so much faster than leap slam it's crazy

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Mennphis wrote:

I'm trying another variation of the build because I'm trying it with scion. I really don't like energy shield (even when it was meta xD) so I'm also only building life, which lead to a lot of differences in the skill tree.

I think I'm the opposite. When they nerfed ES/CI, it felt like they took away my drug of choice :P

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1) Projectile weakness, the false good idea :

Spoiler

During my leveling, I tried projectile weakness. A lot.

This curse is on paper really nice : It's the biggest dps increase a curse can give you, free piercing ... But what really kill it is the knockback. I've seen monsters go screens away because every hit procced the knockback, and found it really annoying. Also my ball lightning procced the knockback a lot too.

Even if I got a 6L (praise the mighty tabula), might, anima and 7 harmony, I found it too annoying to be considered seriously. But maybe this issue is only because I'm still leveling (so my gems are not 21/20)

Edit : More about that in the edit section at the bottom of the post

Might still be useful to squeak out a little more DPS against endgame bosses, a lot of whom are immune to knockback.

"

b) Elemental focus :
I feel like this gem can be a lot less effective than what we think. Don't forget that we can't shock the monsters anymore, which can be (but probably won't) up to 50% more dmg.

That's true. My thinking though is that anything you can effectively shock in this game doesn't need to be shocked. Map mobs, even rares, just fall over with or without shock. For anything that you can't effectively shock (due to too much HP), more damage is better.

What you said made me review the links I have listed in the guide though. I noticed I had EleFocus listed as link#6 for the clearspeed setup. It should be Added Lightning instead. Fixed. Thanks :)

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c) Increased duration :
I can't agree with you when you say that it's a 73% more dps on long fight. It's "only" a 73% more dps for the orb dps, not the total dps. Your tests are showing that even if you overestimate a little the benefits of the gem, it's still really efficient. But what about increased duration VS efficacity ? What about increased duration VS controlled destruction. Speaking of those 2 gems ...

Ah, you're right. When doing boss fights, I tend to forget that the projectile even exists. Oops :x

I decided against Efficacy because the orb can't use the "More DoT" bonus, and the remaining two bonuses aren't large enough to beat 73% duration in boss battles or any gem with a 40% More Damage multiplier.

I gave up on Efficacy after seeing the numbers on release. I think it's really meant for something like Essence Drain that benefits from all 3 multipliers. For CD, like I said above, I can't get a good shock on Shaper (assuming I'm not misinterpreting the way it works now) because the orbs do lots of small hits and the shock effect itself scales off the size of the hit. And since we're dealing minions, you won't be able to boost the shock effect via the passive tree (not that you'd want to waste points like that anyway).

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So what is the best setup in my opinion ? In order of importance :
- Lightning golem
- Spell echo
- Minion damage
- Pierce (not here for the dps increase, just for the clearspeed gain)
- Elemental focus
- Added lightning

It's just my opinion, and you have tested it way more than me so I have no doubt that your setup is probably better than mine. I'm just trying other things :p Also because of my ascendancy I may have to consider "minion elemental resist" for certain fights (looking at you uber atziri, phoenix and hydra).

I'll give this a try this weekend. Sorry for the delayed responses. Dealing with work issues this week.

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3) My planned passive tree :

Spoiler

https://pastebin.com/YBDp6CXQ

I didn't do the rings and the resists on my PoB, but you get the idea of the hp + armor goal.

I like the life node spree out of the Mara starting point. It's a good idea.

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- I'm rather unimpressed by victario atm ... Feel like my golems never are full on frenzy

Odd... I feel like they're always on full frenzy.

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Ps : I saw that a golem MTX has been datamined on poedb ... WTB this MTX, GGG please

I wish they'd just let us use pets as golem skins :P

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Ok, real thought here. I can spend 10ex+ on a 6L offcolor Lioneye's vision, but if I can do the same thing cheaper, I'll gladly choose the other option. Maybe I can take

and play again with projectile weakness ? (so I don't have to take lioneye just for the piercing effect) But I'm loosing some hp doing that ... So I don't know ... I will have to try

Oof... I dunno if I could spend that much to test it unless I'd finished testing everything else first.

How is the armor route going for you? Do you notice significantly higher physical mitigation?

I just did the uber lab alone at lvl 75 (yeah I know, I don't lvl too fast but I don't have too much time to play atm), and it was really easy. Because I'm building some %hp regen, and I have 2 instant flasks I'm never afraid of dying to traps, and thanks to my armor + chaos golem, I'm at 56% reduction estimate without any flask up (80% with my granite), so Izaro didn't hit me too hard (I still dodged everything, just in case, but his auto only took 800hp).

So yeah, the armor route is not too bad, I can really feel a difference. But the armor route is not cheap because of socket colors ...

I think you missed my last post (the first of this page), because the stuff I ended up buying cost me way less than the 10ex I was talking about in the first post.


The shock mecanic changed during 3.0, now when you shock, you always shock for 2s, but the efficacity of this shock vary depending of the %hp removed by the hit. I need to test more vs boss to see if there is any difference, but I feels like the monsters are dying quicker since I switched elemental focus to controlled destruction. You can use vaal lightning trap for shocking mobs, but I don't have any gem socket left (that's why I'm not using vaal haste/flesh offering too).


ATM my build is doing T11 just fine. Trashs take some time because I'm not using GMP, but bosses are melting (not melting like if I was playing a blade furry build, but they are dying very quickly) even if my golems are still lvl 17.

Even without the knockback, I feel like projectile weakness was a loss in DPS (even if it's an increase of dps on PoB). I'm not sure if our orb benefit from the proj weakness ... (pob is saying yes, but that's not what I felt while playing)


I'm always using victario's now for 3 reasons :
1) The frenzy issue was mostly because I was not clearing efficiently
2) The power charges compensate for controlled destruction
3) Me having frenzy charges too help a lot with my clear speed (+atk speed for my shield charge)

"

Mennphis wrote:

The shock mecanic changed during 3.0, now when you shock, you always shock for 2s, but the efficacity of this shock vary depending of the %hp removed by the hit. I need to test more vs boss to see if there is any difference, but I feels like the monsters are dying quicker since I switched elemental focus to controlled destruction. You can use vaal lightning trap for shocking mobs, but I don't have any gem socket left (that's why I'm not using vaal haste/flesh offering too).

Hey, sorry for the late reply!

For mapping, hmm... well, I would say that once your gems are leveled up completely, you won't notice the difference between shocked and unshocked in terms of clearing trash mobs, even on T16. They'll all die as you walk past them. If you run good, linear layouts, they'll mostly all die as you run past them with Quicksilver.

For bosses, you'd need shock enough to make up the 5% More gap between ConDest and EleFoc (plus whatever you lose in crit damage from the CD penalty). Since this is a build that relies on many small hits, rather than fewer large hits, those numbers are not practically achievable. The only other way I could see working is if multiple small shocks could stack. Unfortunately though, it looks like Shock stacks were removed in 1.2.

Now all of this is just empty number crunching. Just to be sure, I ran Shaper with my normal setup, except I swapped EF for CD. Result: Couldn't shock (or at least, there was no visible shock effect) and the run didn't "feel" any faster.

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ATM my build is doing T11 just fine. Trashs take some time because I'm not using GMP, but bosses are melting (not melting like if I was playing a blade furry build, but they are dying very quickly) even if my golems are still lvl 17.

I know you prefer one gem configuration for all situations and I realize recoloring can be a hassle, but it might not be so bad if you approach it in phases. What I do in leagues is level and map initially with GMP+Pierce. After I have all the gear I want, I switch to the Increased Duration setup for the rest of the league to do harder bosses and challenges. That way I'm only recoloring once. To be honest, the GMP+Pierce setup is more than enough DPS for all content in the game. I just like to optimize for single target in HC, since general mapping provides little to no danger/challenge.

Anyway, I'm glad the Scion/Armour route is working for you. I'm looking to try a Might-stacking Chaos Golem build with Scion eventually. I'll refer to your setup when the time comes. Thanks!

Any plans to try out Summon Phantasm on Kill?

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Jolii wrote:

Any plans to try out Summon Phantasm on Kill?

Yeah, will definitely try to work it in for mapping. But if the Phantasms don't auto-teleport to you like other minions, that'll be a deal-breaker and hamper clearspeed.

As with most on-kill abilities, I don't foresee it being useful in a lot of boss fights.

First off, just wanted to comment on your guide quality, it is excellent! Very well thought-out and informative, especially for a player who has never run a minion build. I've gotten her up and running and just started grinding maps out, (less than two days played, and that is just playing casually).

I play SC, 1 because I have very little experience with this build, and 2 because my comp is a potato, I had to hit the bail button during the final Kitava phase due to FPS lockup... but in general find the build to be exceedingly tanky, if you know your limits, a few of my wipes have been due to running and gunning and having my quartz/Basalt flask run out deep in a pack or poping a breach way before I'm leveled for it (Golem Lvls 17,17,8)... The build kinda gives you a false sense of invulnerability at times... just gotta play a bit more conservatively. Currently level 74, but took down white elder at 72, with no issues.

Something that I've found to be fairly helpful are the ghastly jewels with minion % chance to taunt, because we cap so easily on our resists, putting two ghastly in the Darkness Enthroned has kept mobs running at my ele's instead of me... which is nice. Unfortunately ohh cartwheels seems to get killed a bit more often so I have to pay attention to that a bit more. I think once I start to get a better grasp of the mechanics and start rounding out my gear, this will become a FAV for sure.

Again an excellent guide and awesomely strong build!


On an additional note: What are your thoughts on slower proj (have you tested it)? I've been swapping it with GMP for stubborn bosses (ie S-Arid Lake with egg break) it feels faster than GMP but then again not sure. Tactic is to slide up to boss, drop wall, convo, bail, locks minions in place so they don't trail.

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Swede67 wrote:

First off, just wanted to comment on your guide quality, it is excellent! Very well thought-out and informative, especially for a player who has never run a minion build. I've gotten her up and running and just started grinding maps out, (less than two days played, and that is just playing casually).

Thanks, appreciate it. A little surprised though. I made a conscious decision to not make the guide that newbie-friendly and to not hand-hold too much. I think it's better for players to learn certain things on their own. (Linking to EngineeringEternity is a bit of a cop-out, hahah)

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Something that I've found to be fairly helpful are the ghastly jewels with minion % chance to taunt, because we cap so easily on our resists, putting two ghastly in the Darkness Enthroned has kept mobs running at my ele's instead of me... which is nice. Unfortunately ohh cartwheels seems to get killed a bit more often so I have to pay attention to that a bit more. I think once I start to get a better grasp of the mechanics and start rounding out my gear, this will become a FAV for sure.

That's a pretty good idea. I think once you hit endgame though, you'll probably want to go back to Primordials. By that time, your gems will be maxed and stuff tends to die before it makes a difference, while a lot of the more major bosses ignore Taunts. Apparently, Uber Atziri can be taunted though? Sounds like something worth testing...

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On an additional note: What are your thoughts on slower proj (have you tested it)? I've been swapping it with GMP for stubborn bosses (ie S-Arid Lake with egg break) it feels faster than GMP but then again not sure. Tactic is to slide up to boss, drop wall, convo, bail, locks minions in place so they don't trail.

That's really cool. I never thought about trapping the boss in like that before :) Anyway, to answer your question, it's probably not worth it, especially once your gems are leveled. A lot of boss models are big enough that GMP can reliably shotgun for multiple hits. (small sample size test shows GMP slightly faster vs. the rhoa boss) Honestly, I skip a lot of bosses when I'm focusing on clearspeed/XP.

By the way, for anybody who hasn't seen the reddit thread:

[PSA-ish?] Golem abilities benefit from both cooldown stats on Primordial Harmony

It is apparently a bug that will be fixed in the future:

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1774829/page/6

RIP Golems? :x

Ohh, not new to the game, just new to minioning... been at it for about two years, off and on, you know one of those filthy casuals... And yeah, I used EE's poets pen bodyswap design (since we prioritize life instead of damage/spell power) to power level until I could use the Clayshapers.

And I apologize for the confusion, should have tried to link the setup. I don't sacrifice any of the Primordials, the ghastly jewels are in the belt Darkness Enthroned, with dual max taunt jewels with mid level ES it is equivalent to a Crystal belt with 24% minion taunt on hit to boot... Not sure what the future of Abyssal jewels are once the league has closed, they have pretty much killed all other jewels and belts, but the setup has seemed to work well for me.



Thanks for the vids, that is cool.

The slower proj suggestion was to try and address the comments about needing to recolor for clearing maps and downing bosses. Was just trying to address a QOL concern that had popped up in the thread. Swapping the GMP with slow proj just before going into boss arena allows a small substitute for single target without having to recolor. I would follow your advice and if going after a guardian/Elder/Shaper recolor for single target. And I thought shotgunning is no longer a thing, unless Galvanic Bolt has a secondary effect that has the potential for overlap...?

And I hope they don't get to the CD correction on next patch; don't want to see this and similar Golem builds get gutted...

Thanks again Tomato!