[3.0] Skele Mage / Wickerman Necromancer! Life/MoM - Safe Fast Clear - Great Single Target!

Hello everyone! It's been a while since I've posted a contributing post to the forums so here we go!

This build has been sort of a combined effort of many different builds using similar ideas meshed into one. I have played as a pure skele mage, and a pure spectre necro a bit, and decided to combine the best of both worlds to counter the weaknesses of both sides.

Skele mages have been a popular go to this league because of their flexibility with gear, and their pseudo totem playstyle which is popular for those who want to alch and run maps without worrying about reflect and those other baddy mods.

Ok so with the intro out of the way, now to the meat of the build!

Must haves!

So, the downside of a few of these must haves is that because of the growing popularity of the build or playstyle, the threshold jewels are now 20-30c (HSC). It's nothing to bad compared to gearing a golem build, but can put people off.

2x Dead Reckoning Jewels
1x From Dust (Not needed, but instantly placing 6 Skelemages is a huge boost to clear speed and QoL, and as such is needed imo. Only 1-2c as of this post)

So far, that's all you need in terms of gear. The rest comes with time, leveling and currency!

Current Gear - Links - Recommendations

So, as a baseline for those curious, this is my current setup ~


Current Passive Tree


Not to bad right? I mean the 6L PoH is not cheap and neither is Biscos, but the rest is fairly cheap. The helmet I crafted, but +2 minion in the helm only helps the tankiness of zombies/guardian.

Now to break it down.

I leveled this build without pledge of hands, and instead used a tabula with a brightbeak and a shield. Leveling with skelemages is possible and very good when you are able to get access to the jewels needed. Until then use SRS or whatever you fancy.

Weapon

So, Pledge of Hands is the best choice hands down, not only because of the ability to get a 7L in terms of gems, but also the boost to mana which helps are EHP by increasing our mana pool by a ton! A 5L PoH carried me to 91 when I was able to 6L one of my own, which is a huge boost to damage or QoL depending on gem choice. We will get to that later.

Armor Slots (Helm/Body/Gloves/Boots)

Rares with life/resists/move speed are the go to here. A good thing for most summoner builds is that it's easy to get res capped and high life when you have the luxury of depending on mostly rares. And because these rares don't need things like crit or flat damage mods, they can run very cheap.

For the helm in particular, once you get to the mid 70s a bone helmet is your best bet for damage, and I crafted my own for the +2 minion gems. The implicit 30-40% minion damage is a great boost to damage for not only your mages, but your spectres.

For your body, a 6L is not needed at all and you want life/res as usual, and when you can either get Catarina to Lvl 5 or a buddy to craft +1 skeletons on your chest piece. This adds another mage which is - you guessed it - more damage!

Jewelry

Much like armor slots, you want to get res/life (maybe mana regen to help MoM out). Dexterity is going to be needed in this build so get it on as many pieces of gear you can in high quanitities, and possibly a few nodes on the tree like I did. We also run a Essence Worm Ring to run haste free of charge reserving no mana at all!

Gems/Links

Main Skill - Skelemages

Summon Skeleton - Minion Damage - GMP - Pierce - Controlled Destruction - Faster Projectiles(QoL and some Damage) OR Elemental Focus (Huge More Multiplier but slower projectiles)

Spectres (Wickerman for tanking bosses and amazing burn damage in a big AoE for faster clear and pack clean up) - Summon Spectre - Minion Damage - Burning Damage - Elemental Focus - Inc AoE

4Ls - In my +2 helm I run Raise Zombie - Minion and Totem Resists - Minion Life - Animate Guardian

In my gloves my curse setup - Ball Lightning - Curse on Hit - Elemental Weakness - GMP

In my Boots is my Desecrate/Flesh Offering - Flesh Offering - Inc Duration - Desecrate - Spell Echo

And last but not least, in our Essence Worm we run Haste!

Animate Guardian Gear Setup
I use Singularity (Basically a hinder effect, and a Springleaf shield for regen with Ambus Charge for life/res, Victarios boots for movespeed, and the %life Gloves southbound I believe)

Pros/Cons

Pros -
Relatively cheap to get started
Fast but not zoom zoom fast like shield charge VPS builds
Safe due to minions soaking hits and 8-9k EHP due to MoM
Easily capable of running biscos without losing damage or compromising safety
FUN!

Cons -
Jewels are getting kinda pricey but nothing insane.
Not top tier clear speed.

Also, I have done Guardians and Shaper so far with this setup. I switched to Conc Effect for Wickermans, and Slower Projectiles instead of Faster Projectiles for more Damage. No deaths, did well enough.

Videos

Racecourse Clear - https://youtu.be/o1QqTBVZMvw

Added Video

Bump -

Things have gotten a bit better with the recent patch fixing the cooldown bug from the 'From Dust' jewel.

can this build do all end game content or at least all t15 map bosses in HARDCORE?
how is the damage vs bosses?

Ty

forgot to ask can this build do chayula runa and kill chayula boss?

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Camaron wrote:

can this build do all end game content or at least all t15 map bosses in HARDCORE?
how is the damage vs bosses?

Ty

Yes, and did shaper as well and all guardians easily. I swap faster proj for slower proj and GMP for LMP. Very safe and good damage. Chimera can cause some issues but I've never had a huge problem getting him out of smoke screen.

Yes. Swap GMP for LMP and Faster Proj for Slower Proj on boss fight. Use portals if thing's get to sketchy but he goes down fairly quick. Having high chaos res is also highly recommended so you don't get chunked. Also use the brine king pantheon for stun resist.

nice!!! can u check my profile mysteiosa in Harbringer hardcore seems my dmg is a bit low what can i do to improve it?

ty

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Camaron wrote:

nice!!! can u check my profile mysteiosa in Harbringer hardcore seems my dmg is a bit low what can i do to improve it?

ty

Essentially what you want to do is aim for a 6L pledge (Though I didn't get one till 92ish). Also, gem levels still have a ways to go. The DPS grows with time. Just use my gear as a reference and aim for that. a 5l chest with a +1 skele enchant is super easy to get, or just enchant it yourself through a lvl 5 catarina, its like 2-3c I think. From dust jewel spawns 6 skeles at once so your not just standing there casting them opening yourself up for taking damage.

This seems like a very cool build but what about the ascendancy nodes for someone who hasn't messed around with necromancers before? Are they the standard nodes in every necro build or have you made some changes?