[3.0] In-Depth Baron SRS guide. Including without Baron.

- Can level as SRS from level 8 easily, kills bosses fast while leveling
- Very good for SSF play
- Baron isn't necessary but is great
- Great in phys damage based parties
- Pretty good for boss killing, can do most content
- Speed is really good after Mistress of Sacrifice
- Baron scales damage + health at the same time

- Not the fastest leveler
- Chain can be painfully bursty
- Water elementals act very weirdly with SRS
- Has a lot of skills to rotate that are important
- Not a good lab key farmer, and can also be a problem for doing mechanics in lab
- multiproj shotgunning can hurt
- Somewhat socket starved
- Ideal jewels can be expensive for damage

The only logical option for bandits now are to Kill all the bandits for 2 skill points. The others don't give anywhere close to enough to be worth it.

Tree for level 8 (7 points): http://poeurl.com/boSr
- Level 1 through 8, you'll be using Fire Trap + Freezing Pulse to level. Pick up SRS after doing Glyphs and socket it at level 4 but don't use it - this is to level the gem. You can also buy a Flame Totem here. Clear as normal, be on the lookout for a blue-blue-red 3 linked wand or sceptre. Also pick up all blues to vendor unid to get a Transmutation Orb asap.
- Once you hit level 8, spend a Transmute on Melee Splash and get Minion damage. Try to 3 link these if you can to SRS, and you'll be able to use SRS right away.
- Next up, you'll be working on getting a transmute + alteration for your +1 fire weapon. You should be getting a Blue-Blue-Red 3 link sceptre or wand. Transmute the 3 link sceptre/wand, vendor a red gem with an iron ring for a ruby ring.
- The recipe for your +1 fire: Magic Blue-Blue-Red Sceptre/Wand, Ruby Ring, Alteration Orb. This will give you a +1 fire BBR weapon to put SRS in for faster leveling for a long time.
- Make sure you wear a Heavy Belt and a Jade Amulet for gearing. The Heavy Belt is pretty big for str requirements. Pick up Flesh Offering from getting to Caverns.

Tree for 20 points: http://poeurl.com/bpfn
- After that, you rush the duration nodes in Scion area to help with Flesh Offering and SRS. You may want to also go through Crypt and get the jewel socket for dex + res. After the Duration Nodes, go through the bottom side of Gravepact.
- Kill all the bandits.
- Look out for an int or str/int hybrid helmet that's 4 linked. Also try to get 1 Bone Spirit Shield while leveling for recipe. You'll use this for +1 minion helmet.

Tree for level 43-ish: http://poeurl.com/bpfq
- You can opt to do the Labyrinth trials as you're leveling or later on, but you can do lab as early as level 32 (though I would recommend 34 for golem or 36 for sacred flasks). Make sure you have Desecrate for this if you can. Pick up Mistress of Sacrifice and try to get Increased Duration on Flesh Offering. You can also link a low level (1 or 2) arcane surge to Flesh Offering for extra cast speed and mana regen!
- When you do Labyrinth, you probably shouldn't enchant your gloves - they can mess with the Equilibrium you will get.
- You can pick up Elemental Equilibrium if you have no fire/cold damage to spells on your gear (weapon in particular). Use Orb of Storms to debuff the mobs fire/cold resistance.
- You can opt out of the top minion damage if you're leveling with Baron 4L.

For crafting your +1 minion damage helmet once you have the 4 link helmet with Blue-Blue-Red-Red:
1. Vendor any Life Flask with any Bone Spirit Shield + a Transmute for a Life Flask of Animation
2. Transmute your 4 link helmet
3. Vendor your Magic 4 link helmet with a Life Flask of Animation + an Alteration to get a +1 minion gems helmet (it will have the same sockets as before, even though it doesn't show).

When you're on 4L your links will be:
* SRS - Melee Physical Damage - Melee Splash - Minion Speed (Swap Minion Speed to Minion Damage for single target boss fights)
If you feel you need Minion Damage then just use that over Minion Speed. This also can work if you have a high quality SRS already, or some twink minion speed items. This 4 link will work into low maps, until you get your 5L staff later.
- At this point, start leveling at least 5 SRS gems in your offhands. This is going to be very useful later on for flipping to 20q and corrupting for 21/20.

Level 55-ish tree: http://poeurl.com/bpfs
This is the final tree before you decide which tree variant you go on. Also get Commander of Darkness for the damage + the resistances and start running Clarity (can level this up for mana regen).

At this point you should have:
SRS Links
Flesh Offering with Inc Duration (arcane surge optional, Vaal Haste if you're lucky to get it)
Flame Dash
Orb of Storms
Stone Golem
Hatred (generosity link will help)

- Be very careful of stat requirements, don't overlevel dex gems/str gems too much by accident if you can help it. Be conservative. You can't downlevel Vaal Haste either.

- Baron 4 linked is amazing if you have it, but is not necessary. The 4 link +1 helmet recipe will work great for a long time until you get your staff. With Baron now being rarer, you may want to stick to the helmet.

- You may want to collect Close Helmets to chance later. Don't chance them immediately especially if you're playing SSF - the chance orbs are useful to buy maps from Zana early for map progression and atlas, as well as some gems.

- If you get a 5 link with no + gems it's still pretty good early on, instead of swapping out damage + speed you can just have both. Ideally you'll go staff. Tabula you can throw in spell echo though I'd never use echo endgame ideally.

- Labyrinth Glove + Boot enchants can both hurt your Equilibrium. Glove enchant almost definitely isn't worth the time. Boot enchant can be alright at least, but be careufl.

- Make sure you vendor plenty of rares and stuff identified. The alts can be useful for crafting the staff later. Get Chromatics as much as you can as well.

- I would ignore most masters until at least act 4.

- Level 1 through 8 is fire trap freeze pulse, level an SRS
- Level 8 get SRS, Melee Splash, Minion Damage. Get +1 fire wand/sceptre asap
- Eventually work towards a BBRR helmet 4 link, use recipes to craft +1 minion gems on it. Go SRS - Melee Splash - Melee Phys - Minion Speed (or Minion Damage if you want better damage for bosses or just clear)
- Lab Points: Mistress of Sacrifice -> Commander of Darkness -> Spirit Eater -> Beacon of Corruption
- Use Generosity hatred + non-generosity clarity until casting off life, then switch clarity to haste
- 5 link +2 staff lets you use minion damage and minion speed both, use mana flask
- 6 link is blood magic unless you have vagan craft, then added fire until level 3 empower.

Whatever you opt for, try to farm Jungle Valleys for The Flora's Gift cards. This card will give you your next weapon which is great for damage. You can farm on your 4 link in tier 1-3 for a while though.

When you do lab, get Spirit Eater to get more minion damage.

Make sure your resistances and gear is good. Armour is not a stat that is "bad" early on. 3k Armour is great and will help against most phys damage hits at this point. Make sure you're using a Granite or Basalt and try to get at least a Cast on Damage Taken with Immortal call set up (don't level this up when you get it).

Your flask setup is important. At least 1 life flask (ideally instant), 1 mana flask (eternal mana flask), granite/basalt, and a quicksilver. Try to get a Bleed Removal, Curse Removal, and Freeze Removal asap (freeze removal for boxes). Shock removal is useful as well but not entirely necessary.

Once you finish your Flora's Gift card set, turn it in and alteration/augment spam it until you get a +2 fire gem staff. Don't bother regalling it - if you roll cold/fire damage to spells it hurts your damage.

You will still need a mana flask unfortunately, until you get your blood magic method.

Recommend doing Prophecies to finish the chain for Grip of the Council eventually. You don't have to do the Council fight for the gloves anymore, so highly recommended you work for it.

Links at this point:
SRS - Minion Damage - Melee Splash - Melee physical damage - minion speed (elemental focus for single target)
Generosity - Hatred
Increased Duration - Arcane Surge (low-ish level) - Flesh Offering - Vaal Haste
CWDT - Immortal Call (inc duration if you can)
Ball Lightning - GMP (if you can, curse on hit - Enfeeble).
Stone Golem (maim if you can, can also phys to lightning + innervate if you have really good socket availability)
Clarity (not on generosity)
Decoy Totem (this is a godsend, don't underrate it, it will help you tons on bosses)

There's a couple tree versions to go with here. One of them has lower life, but better duration of skills (vaal haste, srs, flesh offering, etc) and better resistances. The other is more tanky but a bit more clunky in mapping.

When it comes to gearing you have a few obvious things for your weapon. Lets talk about the other stuff since we already talked about getting the +2 5L staff already.

Helmet: The Baron (350+ str) > Bone Helmet > random helmet
Baron is the BiS with Strength stacking, but a Bone Helmet will work perfectly fine for a long time. This drops in the top part of atlas. Make sure you don't waste helmet enchants on the Bone Helmet as it will overwrite the minion damage.

With Baron being super expensive, prioritize this as the last of your gearing.

Chest: Belly of the Beast > Rare chest (astral preferred)
Belly of the Beast gives tons of %Life, very useful. You can also go a rare chest instead though, which also gives more strength potentially, and more resistances.

Amulet: GG Rare > Astramentis > Rare with dex/str (Bisco's Collar?)
GG rare requires very high stats and dex in other spots to beat Astramentis, but will be better life if you can pull it off. Astramentis is great and solves all our stat issues and lets us focus on other things. A rare will do until then.
Optionally, you can also go Bisco's Collar. It helps a ton with farming and gives tons of currency. Bisco's Collar will also speed up any card farming you are doing.

Belt: Heavy Belt with str/res/life
Pretty straight forward, defensive slot, though str is nice for offensives as well. You can opt for leather belts or something else instead of course.

Gloves: Grip of the Council > Minion Damage/Str/Res/Life gloves
Grip of the Council is the best damage, adding damage as cold like Hatred. We have enough minion speed that the reduced speed is fine. These are also now easier to get as they drop from the chain itself.

Boots: A lot of choices. Kaom's Roots = Alberon's Warpath = Rare Life/Res/MS/Str boots
Kaom's Roots are, imo, heavily underrated. With this you don't need a chill/freeze removal, and you have stun immunity - though with esh ball stunlocks gone as well as the stun once per 4 second ascendency, this might not be as important. And chill has been nerfed.
Alberon's Warpath is simply the best DPS option you can get.
Rare boots will help with res and such and give more life than Alberon's more than likely. Both the last options will require a freeze/chill removal flask though.

Rings: Minion Speed, Life/Res/Str
If you can get some good Minion Speed rings, awesome. If you get to the point where you feel you can remove the Minion Speed gem, sick. That means another multiplier like Elemental Damage with Attacks or Elemental Focus. It's really hard to get some good ones of these though. But getting half decent is probably possible. Don't worry too much about it, though

So you have 2 weapon options for a 6-link: Staff, and Mace. Staff is easier to craft for +2 cause you can alt spam and has block, mace is potentially cheaper. Up to you what to do. Remember these are the options for crafting because you need to put Blood Magic vagan craft on your weapon, and these 2 are the only possible options for that.
For crafting a +3, things get complicated though. Mace has a potential new theorycraft option for it.

In the socket by the Witch, you ideally want Efficient Training to get 106-114 strength (based on jewel roll).

You can opt for a Vigil jewel and have Vigilant Strike with weapon swap tricks to get long duration fortifies, no matter which tree you're on. This makes you significantly tankier.

The rest of the jewels will likely be rares. Here are the stats you want:
Prefixes: Minion Damage and Life are the best. Cast speed things can be ok but aren't at all necessary.
Suffixes: Strength, Resistances, other attributes. Cast speed things can be ok but aren't at all necessary.

3.0 brings a new system, the Pantheon. I'll go over the ones I like the most.

The main thing: SRS links.
We have our first core links: Minion Damage, Melee Splash, Melee Physical Damage. The rest are up to debate. Make sure you quality all 3 of these to get them 20/20 if you can, as the additive damage is great.
Minion Damage: Core link, always have end game.
Melee Splash: Core link for clear, without it this would be slow.
Melee Physical Damage: Basically a core link, scales all of damage. SRS is 100% phys but converts 50% to fire, so this DOES affect all of SRS base damage.
Minion speed: When you have no other minion speed sources, this is almost a necessity to make sure SRS can catch up to mobs and hit them quick. You can actually opt out of this if you get enough Minion Speed essenced on gear, but isn't needed. Would try to get essenced minion speed if your plan is t15+ though, as it gives you an extra damage link.
Empower: With a level 3 empower, it's the next best link to use. Especially once you get the +3 weapon. And of course level 4 is even better. This also adds some accuracy to SRS on top of improving base damage.
Elemental Damage with Attacks: This used to be weapon only but now works with SRS. Really good if you have Grip of the Council, probably better than Added Fire.
Elemental Focus: Does remove your chill but is a great swap for bosses instead of Minion Speed.
Ruthless: I really don't know how to feel about this. It seems awesome for bossing, but crap for clear. Interesting in combo with Multistrike too of course, but you'd only use the 2 in combo on bosses.
Multistrike: Don't use this for clear please. Having SRS swing at the air instead of moving on sucks. Great option for bosses though.
Added Fire: Another option instead of Empower when you don't have a level 3 empower. Solid and consistent option that gets buffed by EE.
Spell Echo: Don't use this outside of leveling. You lose damage to cast SRS faster and spend less mana/life, but you cast so fast with Necromancer ascendency that ever since the limit was set to 20, there's no point running this endgame anymore.
Additional Accuracy: While it may look good on Path of Building, it's only good if you have a low level gem. PLEASE keep in mind that Path of Building will default to the highest level mob in comparison to you, so you might be comparing level 23 gem SRS to level 84 mobs. Empower will do this job. Don't use this. I do think SRS accuracy should be improved at the cost of some damage on it, and all other minions should have their accuracy improved as well. It's awful to see some minions hit under 70% of the time, and this is from actual experience. SRS, due to the scaling of the gem, has it really good and the accuracy isn't nearly as bad as other minions.
Damage on Full Life: Gets owned the moment SRS take damage. If you play SRS and have friendly life bars on, you'll see just how often this happens. Don't recommend.
Physical to Lightning: Full conversion SRS. Seems memey. May work one day especially with shock changes for bosses. Don't recommend at the moment due to lack of scaling shock chance+effect for minions, and loss of EE for hatred/fire damage.

You will of course want 1 life flask. You always want to have bleed & curse removal on flasks as a duration flask (not an instant life or anything - as in something that will last the full duration of the flask). Shock and freeze removals are useful as well. Ignite removal can also be good surprisingly cause of boxes.
My personal setup:
Seething/Bubbling Life Flask of Dousing (ignite immune instant life) - helps on those ignite boxes, believe it or not. I use this on everything.
You have your choices of 4 utility flasks: Ruby, Topaz, Sapphire, Aquamarine, Sulphur, Stibnite, Granite, Basalt, Quicksilver, and Silver flasks. Phys damage is pretty brutal, but you may opt for something else. Remember that Stibnite flasks do nothing if you have Unwavering stance (aka Kaom's Roots).
You will want flasks "of Staunching" and "of Warding" on utility flasks for bleed and curse removal. These are essential - do not underestimate bleeds or curses. An "of Grounding" utility flask will probably be quite nice to rid yourself of any possible shocks as it is easier to get shocked. "of Heat" is important if you don't have Kaom's Roots, but you can get Adrenaline instead if you have Kaom's Roots.
My personal utility flask picks are Silver Flask, Granite Flask, Basalt Flask, and Quicksilver Flask. You'll probably always have a Quicksilver, and the phys reduction from granite and basalt are great. The silver is changable but I love it for mapping.
Prefixes, you can't go wrong with Chemist's, though Experimenter's is also an option. I prefer Chemist's wherever I can though.

Getting Rampage on SRS adds damage and minion speed as well as your own movement speed, so this is great to have for map clearing. You can use Dancing Dervish swaps or Bisco's Leash. There's a couple gloves as well but I would opt for the first two.

First of all, you shouldn't do Dancing Dervish until you have your level 21 SRS in my opinion. The reason is getting blue sockets on Dancing Dervish is really hard. Bisco's Leash would do it better until then, though you lose a lot of life and potentially res.

When you are ready for Dancing Dervish swapping, check this section.

Reflect Mods: Never run both of the reflect mods combined. One on it's own should be fine though.
No Life/Mana Regen: Runnable with a Hybrid Flask, but such a paiiiiin. Avoid if possible.
Projectiles Chain 2 Additional Times: This can be super bursty and lead to some mobs doing tons of damage out of nowhere. Bone Offering instead of Flesh Offering can make this a lot easier.
Monsters fire 2 additional projectiles: This can also be super bursty with things like fireball curtains and lightning arrow. Be cautious. Bone Offering instead of Flesh Offering can make this a lot easier. Try to avoid projectile heavy maps with both this + chain from Zana - it's really one of the nastiest mod combos, and Zana offers it in her random maps.
Reduced life recovery rate: Doable, painful in red maps, but very doable.
Every other map mod is common sense of damage mods really.

Jungle Valley: Do not try to get up in the bosses face, it's Ethereal Knives have fork and can random 1 shot. Stand a decent amount away to avoid getting fork shotgunned.
Cells: Just detonate the boss once you're done. Firestorm hurts.
Arachnid Nest: Same thing as Jungle Valley, but even more painful. EK Shotgun can be brutal. Does chaos damage, not sure about Jungle Valley.
Precinct: Things like Antalie Napora and either of the EK exiles can shotgun really hard. These exiles use fork on Ethereal Knives as well. Combine that with some other stuff and yeah, quite rippy.
Overgrown Ruin: This map spawns random bosses so you might get lucky, but the spectral thrower cast-on-hit storm call-type boss is a big owner, especially because the "storm call" doesn't have a cooldown so makes gigantic laggy pools of storm calls when hitting a clump of SRS. Be careful.
Ashen Wood: Be careful of this boss with multiproj, and don't stand on your SRS. Try to cast SRS away from him to avoid some Vaal Burning Arrow shotguns.
Crypt/Graveyard: Remove all curses from your bar before doing the boss, the aoe he does when you try to curse him hurts like hell.
Volcano: This is a general warning: this boss hurts if you run ele weakness with no double overcap as it has equilibrium.

- Antalie Napora: With AoE mods, damage mods, chain, or multiproj, Antalie gets even more dangerous. Her lightning arrow also has fork, so you can get hit a ton of times at once. One of the most ridiculous exiles around. Be careful with her.
- Ethereal Knives Exiles: They all have fork. Don't get in their face and you should be ok. In their face you can get chunked super hard by fork shotguns.
- Porcupine Goliaths: Becoming better next patch as it only has a 70% chance to launch projectiles, but these can still be very bursty.

- ALWAYS detonate bosses the moment you kill them. This gets rid of any lingering effects such as Megaera firestorms in Cells, and lowers the chance of a death by detonation on the boss.

- Bisco's Collar is a very big deal if you can run it while farming cards. Focus on the quantity roll for it. This also increases the currency you get.

- You can farm for a 6 Link staff in Overgrown Shrine (tier 9) or Overgrown Ruin (tier 15), the former being much more reasonable as Overgrown Ruin boss can be very dangerous and isn't a great tier 15.

- You could potentially farm for a 6 Link mace in Arsenal (tier 10) though I don't know how good that would be. The card seems fairly rare but I don't run Arsenal much. This also drops exalt and chaos cards though!

- The only 2 handed weapons (that is, able to be 6 linked) that can have blood magic craft are maces and staves. Staves are rollable with alts, maces require an essence and can only be +3'd with some weird methods.

- There are Rampage tricks to getting Rampage. This is covered in the Rampage option section. This gives a bunch of speed in maps, as well as some extra damage. The amount of mobs needed per tier of Rampage was also lowered it seems.

- Spectres can be used for support (cursing) or for DPS if you want.

- Maim on random summons can increase the physical damage of your SRS though it isn't very much. Maiming a target with the maim support gem increases all physical damage taken by it.

- You can have something like phys to lightning + innervate on zombies/stone golem for shock, though you're EE'ing lightning - it is a damage increase.

- Vaal Lightning Trap will increase your damage on bosses by 20% if you have no other way of shocking.

- Orb of Storms + Blind can be useful as a different method of EE on bosses that makes it really safe. This is highly recommended for fighting Chimera!

Q: How is poison SRS in 3.0?
A: Absolutely god awful. The fact that the 70% minion damage on Scourge outdamages the 45% minion damage + poison on hit (even when it had 100% chance) on United in Dream really just... it's honestly incredible. Even with Vile Toxins...
Poison on minions is weaker than it is for players in 3.0. Way weaker. Would not recommend, not even on Animate Weapon.

Q: What about using Covenant chest for SRS?
A: Has been proven to work, but I'm not as big of a fan. Does let you shield charge too, and use Scourge. Do have to fuse the 6 link, and the accuracy won't be as good as staff, though it may not need it. The added chaos is a bit negligable though certainly there.

Q: Why no zombies really in any of your setups?
A: I've found zombies unnecessary. They might be alright for single target with the damage buffs but they're so inaccurate and slow that they don't actually act as meat shields. Also, getting 1000 strength isn't actually that easy without wasting a lot of investment and your mostly focused on SRS anyways.

Q: What about spectres?
A: Without Death Attunement (+1 spectre node) I haven't really found a use for spectres too much. You could have a support spectre or something though.

Q: How rare is baron?
A: Quite common from my experience. Doesn't mean you'll get it in a reasonable time even chancing for it in SSF, but it's not the type of item that'll end up costing several exalts.