[3.9] Pure Phys Skeletons & Friends Necromancer — Beginner/SSF/Budget Build

not sure why this didn't get more attention or if you purposely stopped bumping this thread but this build is incredibly cheap and easy as a league starter. i'm playing it in flashback.

i rolled normal atziri deathless at level 79 without uber lab and then rolled uber lab at 80 after finding all of the trials. the traps throughout the lab were more of a threat than Izaro. i'm in to T5/6 maps at the moment still using a tabula and i haven't had a reason to fear anything yet. just charging around while my skeletons one shot almost everything (using melee splash, too).

not at home at the moment but i believe i have about 4.5k hp and 2k mana - effectively 6.5k hp. overall i would say i've spent about 40c, largely due to Dust jewels being 10-15c at the moment + tabula. i also way overpaid for Brightbeak and Charity at 4c each so i could level faster.

i was looking for sort of an intro to summoner build and was specifically looking to avoid Spectres/AG while also keeping costs down and this build is simply fantastic, thank you!
Great build! Easy to follow and I'm now speeding through mid-tier maps with ease. I found leveling with SRS kind of a pain, but once you get your skellies and zombies to 6 or so things start speeding up.

Question regarding the gloves if OP is still around:

I know it's a pure phys build, but would swapping out Brutality for another dmg gem and using Grip of the Councilhttps://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Grip_of_the_Council be viable?
Still; sane: l'éxil.
"
Mnemonix wrote:
Great build! Easy to follow and I'm now speeding through mid-tier maps with ease. I found leveling with SRS kind of a pain, but once you get your skellies and zombies to 6 or so things start speeding up.

Question regarding the gloves if OP is still around:

I know it's a pure phys build, but would swapping out Brutality for another dmg gem and using Grip of the Councilhttps://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Grip_of_the_Council be viable?


You can, but I'm not sure how good it would be. I'd recommend checking it in Path of Building first. I think there's a good chance you'll go neutral or even negative on boss dps.
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Since I was wondering about leveling trees and saw the question earlier in the thread, I figured I'd share my take on it.
I've added 4 leveling trees to what the OP had created. Check out the pastebin below, here's what it comes down to:

1st tree, 32 points: First I'll rush Death Attunement, then Grave Intentions and Melding
2nd tree, 52 points: Going through Herd The Flock and Puppet Master to Purity of Flesh, taking Discipline and Training most likely last, but depending on how I feel my life is I might take it first.
3rd tree, 75 points: MoM, Quick Recovery and Grave Pact along with some life and mana regen nodes. If the situation calls for it and your life/mana ratio is good enough, or you play HC, you can opt for MoM earlier on instead of Retribution and Disciplne of Training in the 52p tree.
4th tree, 95 points: Dip two points into the Scion life wheel, continuing further left to Born to Fight etc. Lastly, I'll pick up Necromantic Aegis as soon as I have a decent shield to share and Harrier for some movement speed and preparation for the jewel slot.

Nothing's written in stone and it's just one way of doing it. I haven't touched the build yet so I might be completely off. But I figured if totem builds can do most of the leveling content on crappy life, then a summoner can as well due to the safe nature of the both builds (?).

https://pastebin.com/WvdhXUzX

ps: since leveling as SRS can be a pain as stated, I'll probably be leveling something like freezing pulse into firestorm until level 20 or later if the damage is still good enough.

edit: I just started leveling this and I gotta say, as soon as I switched to a 3-linked SRS in a +1 fire wand I felt I needed the extra mana and regen. So I opted to take MoM before Melding in the first leveling tree.

edit 2: I found switching to Spell Totem + Skeles + Minion Life and Dark Pact + Spell Echo and Void Manipulation is helping me enormously through the leveling process without deviating from the target final tree. This of course until I have access to the jewels and cruel lab.
Last edited by silithid#2767 on May 13, 2018, 1:57:42 PM
Couple more questions:

1. Any reason not to use United in Dream (https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/United_in_Dream) over The Scourge? I got lucky this league and have a bunch of currency to spare. PoB is giving me around 2k more DPS with it.

2. Most other builds I've played use some sort of CWDT-IC setup, is it because there aren't enough gem slots?

Thx!
Still; sane: l'éxil.
"
Mnemonix wrote:
Couple more questions:

1. Any reason not to use United in Dream (https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/United_in_Dream) over The Scourge? I got lucky this league and have a bunch of currency to spare. PoB is giving me around 2k more DPS with it.

2. Most other builds I've played use some sort of CWDT-IC setup, is it because there aren't enough gem slots?

Thx!


Obviously not viper but I'll give my thoughts since I've been playing this build fairly successfully.

1. the build does so much damage when everything is hitting so i don't think 2k dps is worth the QoL that Brightbeak gives with resists and the huge increase to our shield charge speed. The Scourge probably would give more dps (though i can't check PoB right now) and may be worth it on high end boss fights.

2. with the life+MoM effective HP sitting around 7k - 8k plus fortify plus meat shields i don't think CWDT+IC is a total necessity in the build. however as he suggest in the gem links section you can adjust the gem setup a bit like dropping Culling from one set of links, adding (selfcast) stone golem in it's place, and then you can add IC to CWDT. you have some flexibility with those.
"
silithid wrote:
Since I was wondering about leveling trees and saw the question earlier in the thread, I figured I'd share my take on it.
I've added 4 leveling trees to what the OP had created. Check out the pastebin below, here's what it comes down to:

1st tree, 32 points: First I'll rush Death Attunement, then Grave Intentions and Melding
2nd tree, 52 points: Going through Herd The Flock and Puppet Master to Purity of Flesh, taking Discipline and Training most likely last, but depending on how I feel my life is I might take it first.
3rd tree, 75 points: MoM, Quick Recovery and Grave Pact along with some life and mana regen nodes. If the situation calls for it and your life/mana ratio is good enough, or you play HC, you can opt for MoM earlier on instead of Retribution and Disciplne of Training in the 52p tree.
4th tree, 95 points: Dip two points into the Scion life wheel, continuing further left to Born to Fight etc. Lastly, I'll pick up Necromantic Aegis as soon as I have a decent shield to share and Harrier for some movement speed and preparation for the jewel slot.

Nothing's written in stone and it's just one way of doing it. I haven't touched the build yet so I might be completely off. But I figured if totem builds can do most of the leveling content on crappy life, then a summoner can as well due to the safe nature of the both builds (?).

https://pastebin.com/WvdhXUzX

ps: since leveling as SRS can be a pain as stated, I'll probably be leveling something like freezing pulse into firestorm until level 20 or later if the damage is still good enough.

edit: I just started leveling this and I gotta say, as soon as I switched to a 3-linked SRS in a +1 fire wand I felt I needed the extra mana and regen. So I opted to take MoM before Melding in the first leveling tree.

edit 2: I found switching to Spell Totem + Skeles + Minion Life and Dark Pact + Spell Echo and Void Manipulation is helping me enormously through the leveling process without deviating from the target final tree. This of course until I have access to the jewels and cruel lab.

This is really helpful, thank you. Mind if I quote some of this?

"
dwaters wrote:
"
Mnemonix wrote:
Couple more questions:

1. Any reason not to use United in Dream (https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/United_in_Dream) over The Scourge? I got lucky this league and have a bunch of currency to spare. PoB is giving me around 2k more DPS with it.

2. Most other builds I've played use some sort of CWDT-IC setup, is it because there aren't enough gem slots?

Thx!


Obviously not viper but I'll give my thoughts since I've been playing this build fairly successfully.

1. the build does so much damage when everything is hitting so i don't think 2k dps is worth the QoL that Brightbeak gives with resists and the huge increase to our shield charge speed. The Scourge probably would give more dps (though i can't check PoB right now) and may be worth it on high end boss fights.

2. with the life+MoM effective HP sitting around 7k - 8k plus fortify plus meat shields i don't think CWDT+IC is a total necessity in the build. however as he suggest in the gem links section you can adjust the gem setup a bit like dropping Culling from one set of links, adding (selfcast) stone golem in it's place, and then you can add IC to CWDT. you have some flexibility with those.

Put it better than I could.
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I played this build for the first time in Flashback, and it's wonderful as a league starter that can do everything on a budget. turns out there aren't many problems in PoE that cannot be solved by repeatedly throwing skeletons at them from a safe distance.

now I'm trying to make Shaper more reliable, because he, his clone and his intermission bosses just delete all my minions with AoEs, making the fight extremely hasardous (without the "meat shield" this build doesn't have much survivability) and slow.
I have the same issue with anything that AoEs hard, like the Phoenix guardian...

any suggestion for minion tankiness ? in the current state I don't think I have any chance of beating Uber Elder if the Shaper just deletes my minions in the same way.

Last edited by le_vagabond#3240 on May 18, 2018, 7:45:46 AM
"
le_vagabond wrote:
I played this build for the first time in Flashback, and it's wonderful as a league starter that can do everything on a budget. turns out there aren't many problems in PoE that cannot be solved by repeatedly throwing skeletons at them from a safe distance.

now I'm trying to make Shaper more reliable, because he, his clone and his intermission bosses just delete all my minions with AoEs, making the fight extremely hasardous (without the "meat shield" this build doesn't have much survivability) and slow.
I have the same issue with anything that AoEs hard, like the Phoenix guardian...

any suggestion for minion tankiness ? in the current state I don't think I have any chance of beating Uber Elder if the Shaper just deletes my minions in the same way.


Uber Elder is going to be rough for summoners no matter how you slice it, I think.

For Shaper, I definitely found the uncreated annoying as hell, since the ground effect melts minions. But that mostly seemed to slow things down rather than be unsafe. Shaper itself smashes skeletons but doesn't kill zombies that quickly, and there's plenty of downtime in the fight to raise them again.

There's no good way to make skeletons tanky because their base life is so low. Zombies, the ideal would be a +3 minion helm with Minion Life, Minion Res and Empower. That should keep them alive in the Shaper fight at least. I haven't tried Uber Elder on this build.
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I was wondering how good or bad it would be to drop the shield and go montregul / united in dream just to keep zombies alive no matter what.

what do you think ?

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