[3.5] Ghoulish Overkill! Zombie+Skeleton Baron build

they do mildly less damage with empower, but it is an option. Though the downside for empower is that it is a drastic damage loss until level 3. Even at level 4 it is around 5% less damage overall compared to ruthless.

As for how deep it has delved, I made it to around 140 personally before I got a little bored with the league. I will go back to it shortly and see how much deeper I can go without issues.

wouldnt changing clarity with purity of ice be good for uber elder fight?

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paraply wrote:

wouldnt changing clarity with purity of ice be good for uber elder fight?

While it wouldn't be terrible in theory, I dislike the idea of giving up half or more of my mana regen while being a MoM build. Any time he is going to hit me is going to almost entirely drain my mana pool in 1-2 ticks. Without being able to recover from that easily I'd fear a second hit getting me while I'm not on full mana. Also a big issue is that it only adds a small amount of survivablity as everything Shaper does that I would be afraid of has 25% cold penetration, meaning around a 8-12% damage mitigation.

Now On the other hand I would recommend a cold flask in place of whatever you are using as a 4th flask.

Hello!

I'd like to give this build a go, could someone give me some directions regarding the general priority of skills to get during leveling?

First kill the first "boss" and get to town on a Marauder, Templar or Scion. Then buy/choose Smite as your reward and put it in your Stash.

Start the Necro with Smite and Raise Zombie at level 1

At level 4 add Summon Holy Relic

At level 10 add Summon Skeleton

From here it's just adding supports and the Aura/Golem skills at their appropriate level.

Thanks for the help.

Talking about auras, how good is Vitality for both ours and our minions' survivability?

About Vitality... it's irrelevant for both. Let's talk about the character, the character already has a lot of regeneration specialy if you have the boot enchant, also life recovery from 2 or more flasks, and MoM defense anf golem/tree/items. Now lets talk about minions.Vitality doesnt matter for minions. Because two thing can happen:
a)Either they get one shoted or die in like 1-2 seconds from mechanics in fights like Uber Atziri/Elder, Shaper beam, 2 slams from Shaper/rippy moded Malcahai or,
b)they dont even get scratched.
Vitality can NOT close the gap between a) and b).You udnerstand what I mean?Minons are indestructible without vitality already up untill you meet the guys at a) in which point nothing pretty much helps even if you link 21/20 zombie with empower 4 + minon life + minion life nodes+ block + vitality. Maybe the golem can survive. And that's the real problem of this build. Weird battle mechanics on some fights. I can do totaly AFK T15 Elder with this build but I can't even damage Shaper because zombies die to his beam... it is the mechanics of the battle.

With my Glacial Cascade Saboteur I can pretty much one shot each phase of Shapper right when his dialogue ends with this build I cant damage shaper, I can survive without proble but no damage.
With CG saboteur up to T15 elder is ok I might I have to micromanage potions detonate totem, but with this build I just watch tv untill the moment I loot my watcher's eye.
With my GC sabotuer is some serious bosses with rippy mods on maps I have to sweat a lot and there is always the possibility of dying but with this build I just enter arena , loot , teleport to hideout.

Your explanation totally makes sense, so Vitality is definitely out of the question.

Would you say there's any 3rd aura (or curse linked to Blasphemy) that would be worth getting Enlighten lvl3 and some mana reservation nodes for?

you already have a 3rd defensive "aura" its called Mind Over Matter. You need "reserved" unreserved mana for MoM.But if you are really rich/lucky and you min max this build and you are high level enough and pick up another jewel slot you can equip level 1 Clarity aura (which only reserves a few mana points) and use a Watcher's Eye in that slots with at least this mod:
(15-20)% of Damage taken gained as Mana over 4 seconds when Hit while affected by Clarity.
And this , in theory I dont have the will nor the money to test it, will work as followed, you take damage, 30% of that will be taken first from the mana pool, at that same time 15-20% of the initial damage will be gained as mana over 4 seconds. So every 4 seconds, if you take a hit which does not kill you (aka 1shot), it will be like-reduced by 15-20% without doing anything because neither your life pool nor you mana pool will, on the span of 4 seconds, be affected be that 15-20% of the hit which redirects to the mana. All this is theory ofcourse.

More over, if your Watcher's Eye have this mode too:
(10-15)% chance to Recover 10% of Maximum Mana when you use a Skill while affected by Clarity
You can spam shield charge around while taking damage while praying.But to invest so heavily in character defense is pointless. The character can survive everything, it just cant make its zombies to survive long enough to melt some enemies. The character doesnt not lack survivability, nor damage. It lacks zombies staying alive vs some mechanics. You can't change this unless developers are willing to do this.

And the thing is that even if you come up with something regarding the zombies/minions to counter a mechanic that won't work vs other mechanic.
Example: you can max your minions' block vs attacks/spells with serious investment in tree nodes, offering gem and jewels and it might work against a slam or 1-2 shaper balls or an Uber Atziri flameblast, but zombies will still die against Shaper's Beam or the degens at Uber Trio, sad face ---->:(

I play in standard, I have many high end characters and I use each one accordingly.This character is by far the cheapest and the only one that I managed to level to 97.I have invested only a few chaos to each item is wears and it have brought me back so much currency from all the Watcher's Eye I haves farmed, relaxed while watching tv, almost AFK. 2 of my wander's character potions cost more than this whole build and the wander can't even do Uber Lab. Dont be fixed in something more to add to the build, it has already soooooo many in it that you don't see because they are very complex and subtle, like the perma slam of your zombies which also leeches life for you and never misses!!! This is why you can do T15 Elder afk while still completing the 4 phases that are required to drop the eye, no other build can do this.

You're mostly correct with that Spacecom. All you really need though is an extra jewel socket as the build already runs level 20+ clarity. The easiest extra jewel to get would be the one we path by in the scion starting area that has the .3% and .4% life regeneration nodes leading to it. So to make the Watcher's Eye change isn't too hard.