Hey bud is it worth losing the life from warriors blood and the marauder starting nodes to pick up gravepact. https://pastebin.com/5MHmayKU check the level 94 tree as I doubt i'll get any higher than that, the last 6 points i'd probably path into combat stamina and grave intentions.
lose out on a few hundred life but you gain a lot of dps.
Yea, if you can meet you STR requirement with gear then you don't "need" Warrior's Blood. It's a strong node for a league starter. The +20 strength and life regen is huge when you have shit gear and you're in position to take four inc% life nodes.
I don't think taking Grave Pact is worth it. I don't like traveling through Foresight and grabbing useless ES nodes, but it's only 3 travel points and but it's more efficient. Going to Grave Pact is extremely point inefficient for one skelly when you can craft +1 skellies on your chest and get it from an amulet and now you're at 12. Melding is closeby for more inc% life but it's a terrible life cluster, and instead of the jewel socket you have I'd rather take the attack speed nodes by Harrier leading to jewel socket on the right side of the scion start or taking Hire Killer.
cheers the atk speed node/jewel socket and hired killer are definitely better. Also are you confusing grave intentions with gravepact? I agree I feel grave intentions is definitely not worth it. Gravepact would be though if you push to 100. I didn't know you could get skeles on amulet and chest piece.
Thanks FOURmulaic for the guild I used this guide for the incursion race got to 95 easy mode with all the info. Thanks again for all the hard work hope to see more in the future.
The minion attack/cast speed from Ghastly abyss jewels should apply to you with that notable unless it's bugged or I'm interpreting it incorrectly.
Not cast speed, you will get only attack speed from Spiritual Command (Increases and reductions to Minion Attack Speed to also affect you). We use attack speed only for shield charge/leap slam, that's where's my question came from. But it's true that increases from ghastly jevels apply, but only Attack Speed part
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FOURmulaic wrote:
Spoiler
Also, I think it's extremely annoying to summon an odd number of Skeletons. The From Dust is not worth it when you're fully geared, so it's either 9 or 12 (multiples of 3) for me. Getting 12 Skellies is very difficult without a lot of investment. You have to make sacrifices on your tree and gear and most +1 skelly amulets are very bad.
When you Summon the 10th or 11th Skelly Warrior you're killing 1 or 2 that could already be attacking a target. That temporarily lowers your single target DPS. I did Uber Elder dozens of times with 9 skeletons. When you really need the DPS you need to change the gems on your Spectres like pure Spectre builds do. The Skellies help their AI and push the damage to new heights.
On side note, during boss fight, if a skelly die you wait till 3 die? (serious question, I'm curious)
English is not my native. To grammar nazis, feel free to correct me, I appreciate any occasion for improvement
Last edited by neltisen#4916 on Aug 30, 2018, 2:22:16 AM
I know you said you don't think there's room for improvement, but I think MoM could be a good option.
https://pastebin.com/2t4D7Gg5
This build has slightly fewer resists and loses about 2k dps per skele, but gains about 420ehp and 2.1% regen. And it has the advantages of MoM for things like lab traps. Which could be super good this league if the damage over time applied by Delves is a %max life degen like lab traps, where MoM is a 30% damage reduction as long as you have mana.
I know you said you don't think there's room for improvement, but I think MoM could be a good option.
https://pastebin.com/2t4D7Gg5
This build has slightly fewer resists and loses about 2k dps per skele, but gains about 420ehp and 2.1% regen. And it has the advantages of MoM for things like lab traps. Which could be super good this league if the damage over time applied by Delves is a %max life degen like lab traps, where MoM is a 30% damage reduction as long as you have mana.
MoM is great early on if you're using this as a league starter. You can easily get well over 6.5k eHP when your char level is in the low 80's with mediocre gear. The big eHP pool looks good on paper, but you don't want to worry about two health pools when you're fully geared and pushing high tier content.
We're already relying on regen and life flasks for sustain. We don't have the ability to take advantage of mechanics that quickly replenish your mana pool (like a strong Indigon build for an extreme example). You need to heavily invest into mana regen and use a mana flask in place of a utility flask or a life flask that can gain 3 charges every 3 seconds unlike a mana flask.
Even with a well rolled mana flask and an Atziri's Foible or the expensive well rolled Blue Pearl Amulet I bought with ~120% Mana Regen I thought my mana sustain was mediocre. When I was testing MoM and chaining Guardians and doing Uber Elder I found myself staying on low mana too often for my liking after I'd take burst damage. When that happens you're just relying on your life pool which will probably be lower and have less sustain than if you hadn't gone MoM in the first place.
Unless there's a better way to sustain your mana pool you're much better off with ~7k HP than 6k HP and 2k mana.
Last edited by FOURmulaic#4690 on Aug 30, 2018, 10:39:26 AM
Not cast speed, you will get only attack speed from Spiritual Command (Increases and reductions to Minion Attack Speed to also affect you). We use attack speed only for shield charge/leap slam, that's where's my question came from. But it's true that increases from ghastly jevels apply, but only Attack Speed part
On side note, during boss fight, if a skelly die you wait till 3 die? (serious question, I'm curious)
I only mentioned cast speed because the jewel mod you're looking for is minions have % increased attack speed / minions have % increased cast speed. It's one mod, two lines.
There are several gameplay videos. Obviously I don't do that.
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Based on some of the recent questions I think some of you want to know why I don't invest into more than 9 Skeletons and won't take Gravepact or Grave Intentions. If you want to go for more than 9 that's up to you.
Long story short, damage isn't an issue. A better player than me could comfortably do Uber Elder in ~2.5mins with 9 skellies and 3 Spectres. I'd rather invest into my own survivability. If you have more than 9 you have to cast four times instead of three which can cause mana issues depending on your gear and character level. It's another action you need to perform instead of Flesh Offering. Sometimes you're actually lowering your DPS vs multiple uniques/rares (if you have 10) and during the hardest encounters your skellies are going to die anyway and you won't have the max constantly engaged.
You could use the From Dust jewel if you have 10 skellies. You're trading an abyss jewel that could have life, damage, survivability for convenience.
----edit
There's going to be a hard cap for how deep this build (and minion builds in general) can go into the Delve and it'll be impractical to continue trying. There's no mirror tier gear for minion builds AFAIK that'll take the power to another level. Eventually your skellies will struggle and the only hope to go Bed Bath & Beyond is Spectres.
Last edited by FOURmulaic#4690 on Aug 30, 2018, 1:30:43 PM
Not cast speed, you will get only attack speed from Spiritual Command (Increases and reductions to Minion Attack Speed to also affect you). We use attack speed only for shield charge/leap slam, that's where's my question came from. But it's true that increases from ghastly jevels apply, but only Attack Speed part
On side note, during boss fight, if a skelly die you wait till 3 die? (serious question, I'm curious)
I only mentioned cast speed because the jewel mod you're looking for is minions have % increased attack speed / minions have % increased cast speed. It's one mod, two lines.
There are several gameplay videos. Obviously I don't do that.
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Based on some of the recent questions I think some of you want to know why I don't invest into more than 9 Skeletons and won't take Gravepact or Grave Intentions. If you want to go for more than 9 that's up to you.
Long story short, damage isn't an issue. A better player than me could comfortably do Uber Elder in ~2.5mins with 9 skellies and 3 Spectres. I'd rather invest into my own survivability. If you have more than 9 you have to cast four times instead of three which can cause mana issues depending on your gear and character level. It's another action you need to perform instead of Flesh Offering. Sometimes you're actually lowering your DPS vs multiple uniques/rares (if you have 10) and during the hardest encounters your skellies are going to die anyway and you won't have the max constantly engaged.
You could use the From Dust jewel if you have 10 skellies. You're trading an abyss jewel that could have life, damage, survivability for convenience.
----edit
There's going to be a hard cap for how deep this build (and minion builds in general) can go into the Delve and it'll be impractical to continue trying. There's no mirror tier gear for minion builds AFAIK that'll take the power to another level. Eventually your skellies will struggle and the only hope to go Bed Bath & Beyond is Spectres.
Thanks for the extensive answer ^^
English is not my native. To grammar nazis, feel free to correct me, I appreciate any occasion for improvement
I've tried to adapt this build with a complete new pathing, not sure if it's better or not yet
https://pastebin.com/PJ2GUVa3
terms of you have a decent amount of additional dmg, more skeletons, pretty much the same hp, your minions can also sustain a bit more but you are missing out on dodge entirely.
Thoughts?
Look at your dex requirement. You'll need to fill it out on your gear somehow which means it'll be harder to gear your character or you won't be able to run a high level Haste/Vaal Haste. You'll limit your options for MF gear and if you decide to not use Haste then you're missing out on Watcher's Eye mods in trade leagues that greatly benefit this build.
If you want a big eHP pool you can use an Essence Worm for a single aura and go MoM. You can stay res capped, get 8k+ life and 2k+ mana for 10k+ eHP. I already tried that, but I can tell you from personal experience that I'd much rather have 7.5k HP and capped dodge and high spell dodge than 9.5k+ life with little to no mitigation that usually ends up with less damage/clear.
Dodge / Block (RIP) isn't something you tack on. It's more effective the more you stack just like resists. Your skellies aren't blinding packs of monsters unless you're playing slow af. They will blind single targets, but YOU WILL DIE to some random pack of monsters if you're solely relying on a large health pool and zooming around with terrible defensive layers.
You can look at this thread history and see I used to have issues with Minotaur and Uber Atziri with ~9k+ HP some of the times I ran it until I stacked dodge/block (RIP). Besides Uber Elder you shouldn't die to a single boss in the game unless you're running a stupid combination of map mods.
I've played this build way too much, put a ton of thought into it, and tried many variations of it. As of now, if you want to completely figure out a strong Skelly + Spectre/Golem build on your own then pretend you never saw this thread. I don't play meme/shit builds and I get off on optimizing builds. I have no problems confidently saying this is one of the better builds/summoner builds you can play right now.
I'm open to suggestions and trying a new build/build variant altogether, but I don't think there's much wiggle room left for optimizing this particular build.
yeah i've noticed the dex requirement myself later on, atm i'm thinking about not going for spiritual command because i was thinking about using phase with a quicksilver flask for my entire movement. With this you don't have to get insanity gloves, you don't need to consider attack speed on your weapon, you free 2 of your gem slots in your gloves and with the +1 spectre on boots your might even get more movement speed even.
My question would be how often do you actually cancel your phase-run while playing? casting it every 3-4 seconds would be okay i guess with it being instant, but less would get annoying
Also is there i lack of targeting from your spectres when you don't shield charge into enemies? afaik minion-focus works like that. Would i have to cast skeletons into every group?
EDIT: also you get phasing through using phasing then, might use hatred over haste, not sure
Last edited by ivogh#7631 on Aug 30, 2018, 4:10:40 PM
