3.7 In-Depth Ice Golems Guide - Snowybois - On Hiatus for 3.8
============================================================================ Had some things come up IRL and I will have to miss out on what looks to be the best golem league in ages. Play hard for me my golem friends! ============================================================================= Hi all, i'm a long time summoner golems/spectre player who has now spent 3 seasons devoting himself to tirelessly pioneering Ice Golems for the masses. A huge amount of credit goes to mika2salo whose Flame Golems 101 i've been using since the day it was written. I learned everything about summoners from that guide and it will always be a great resource. Do you want to do insane dps? Do you want respectable clearspeed, and great survivability? Do you want to die instantly as you forget that this build can't do phys reflects maps?! 3.7 Updates Looks to be a lot of chaos damage in this league, be sure to pick up some resists. Phase acro and pure life mom looks good for those wanting to push to 100. https://pastebin.com/V7HMEAtv Still on the fence about charity vs bow builds. Shield charge feels really good now. Updated the skill gems to includ Cyclone+CWC setup, looks really good. Once I got my gem levels up I no longer struggle with clearing Legions. Build feels great now. New 3.7 PoBs! Yakoob had highlighted Demi's Victario's Influence bow build that I really crushed on so here's my take on it. I managed to fit Maim into a Maloney's Mechanism Proc and return it to it's 1 button roots. The idea is utilizing Scourge Arrow + CWC + Desecrate/Flesh Offering Then using Maloney's Mechanism to frenzy/maim/gmp Added a Necromancer Variant courtesy of Mika2salo ******************************************** ******************************************** Introduction This guide was originally written as a paper concept during Delve League but now that i've tested it and modified it I can't stress how fun and versatile it is. In this thread all variants are welcome and we'll do our best to adjust and adapt to the challenges of each new league. The basis of this build is that we are an 8 golem elementalist focusing on Ice Golems great melee scaling as our core dps skill. The previous problems Ice Golems have always had was low time on target, this is completely solved by the +100% movespeed on the primordial chain.
Why Primordial Chain?
Could you do this exact same build without chain and gain more survivability and options? Absolutely. But the 100% minion movement speed on primordial chain solves the #1 problem of melee minions. Time on Target. Time spent derping around is time the golems aren't hitting things. Nothing will improve your mapping effectiveness more than increasing minion speed. As such, it's very very hard to replace the chain even though it takes such a priority jewelry slot and restricts our ability to use other fun toys like animate guardian or phantasms.
Our wide variety of golems give us immunity to Freeze, and potentially shock/ignite as well. It allows us to really utilize the liege of the primordial ascendancy passive for that aura bonus per golem making us regen nearly as much as an RF character. I'm currently sitting at +1200 Life Regen in my 3.4 gear. The Regen and relatively high effective health pool, combined with passive summoner playstyle let us safely dps while our little murder hobos do the bulk of the work. Optimal DPS is a 6/1/1 setup or 5/1/1/1 if you prefer the extra immunity over another ice golem. Pastebin's with Explanations This league i'm currently testing Hybrid builds that make use of Victario's Influence. The new aura's we got from 3.7 spoil us for reserve choices and like all summoners we want to buff our minions as much as possible. In order to import these you'll need the program path of building. https://github.com/Openarl/PathOfBuilding If you have any questions on getting it working PM me and i'll give you a hand.
Path of Building
3.7
3.7 PoBs
This season I recommend playing the Phase Acro/Mom tree with necromancer's aegis and clayshaper/charity. The bow build is fun but damage is very high this league and we want the added survivability. 3.7 Pure Life 3.7 Necromancer - no Vic's Influence 3.7 Elementalist PhaseAcro/Mom Necro Aegis
Older Versions
3.6
Breaking each of these out with their own explanations this season. Let me know if the format makes more sense than in 3.5 or if I should change it.
League Start
https://pastebin.com/1QZi4wLT Follow this tree if you're new to the guide and then as you get a feel for it transition to one of the others.
Pure Life Brutality Build
https://pastebin.com/1vu5Hm4F With the Hatred Nerf we have to decide if we want to use Grip of The Council or fore-go hatred in favor of other sources of damage. This gear setup takes advantage of the Trigger a Socketed Spell on Use 1hander mod to auto-cast flesh offering/vulnerability. The ability to craft minion damage/attack speed help to offset You give up a golem in exchange for being even more of a 1 button build than before. You don't have to go this skill/weapon setup, just wanted to throw it out there for returning users of the build. I've tested it out in 3.5 and it maps very smoothly. TL:DR Easier to Gear/Good Survivability Note the wand instead of Clayshaper.
Brutality Build with Mom Recommended
https://pastebin.com/34U5gA5H Update: After a lot of testing this league this is what I recommend. It's tankiest and easy to gear. With Betrayal still randomly invading maps you want the survivability provided by MoM. Losing Hatred is a small dps loss but gaining 2k EHP from your mana pool is more than worth it. This build looks really spicey actually. We've eschewed the newly nerfed hatred in favor of Brutality and far more survivability than before. You lose a bit of damage compared to hatred builds but as i've always stressed, Once you have your +1 gems/Maim Chest you will do enough damage, you aren't looking for more you're looking for ways to survive. The blood magic attached to flame dash/phase run resolves the problems i've always had when I attempted MoM builds before, I feel like this setup is in a good place once you have your end-game gear. I'm going to attempt to gear for this build this season and i'm excited to give it a chance. TL:DR Most Survivability
Traditional Life Based - Hatred
https://pastebin.com/cW50ibMU So this is the most similar to last season, I made some changes due to the hatred mod, doesn't sim correctly yet until PoB updates the hatred gem updates. If we mathed correctly without grip of the council a hatred+generosity setup got roughly an ~8% damage nerf. With grip of the council conversion and generosity however it's actually a slight buff. I'm making use of the extra 2 gem sockets we gain to squeeze in a blasphemy/enfeeble setup for more survivability but you'll need mana reserve reduction either from tree or hat. This setup is going to be the most damage but least survivability, good starter for softcore players until you get your high-end gear and the best place to start before you transition to the other builds TL:DR Most Damage
MoM Based - Hatred
https://pastebin.com/EvytMZW6 Similar to the traditional build, hatred in an essence worm gives you higher dps but very hard to acquire resistances/gear for. If you enjoy MoM give but don't want to give up the dps the Brutality builds do this is the way to go.
HC
If you're playing HC and are willing to give up damage for considerable survivability increases check out this 2H maul variant. It uses Vigil to give fortify to you/minions reliably. Phase Acrobatics - Kaom's Heart
3.5
Pure Life https://pastebin.com/ZzPGdeT5 MoM Alternative https://pastebin.com/2Ebxf8S6 Again Liege of the Primordial and Elemancer are self explanatory, +1 Golems is a no brainer and our 9 golems gives us +225% stone/chaos aura which is great. I elected for Beacon of Ruin over Paragon of Calamity because I enjoy the 20% minimum shock for bossing and ele proliferation for delving. Paragon + Pendulum is much safer for mapping and is a very viable alternative.
Bandits
Kill All
Pantheons
I usually swap Pantheons depending on the content I'm doing, favoring Lunaris with Slayer upgrade for most content. Without lunaris you will take a lot of damage from projectiles chaining off your minions onto you while mapping. Arakali can also be fun for even more regen. For Minors i'm usually Shakari because I enjoy being poison immune. Skill Links and Gear Explained I've left the recommended skills from older leagues in the guide so you can get an idea for how flexible the build is. The core is going to be 6L golems, 4L golems in hat. Everything else is flexible but I make some recommendations of what I personally would never drop. Below I've also included some Pros/Cons of other ascendancies and why I recommend elementalist. Recently updated Mika's Necromancer build which looks great but I haven't had a chance to test it yet.
Skills
3.7 - Early Game No Bow
4L - Hat - This is where you put your 2-3 aura golems. Stone Golem, Chaos Golem, Lightning Golem supported by minion life or empower. 6L - Body Armour - Ice Golem + Melee Phys Damage, Multistrike, Empower, Minion Damage, Maim Support 4L - Gloves - Cyclone + CWC + Fortify + Flesh Offering 3L - Weapon1 - Generosity-Warbanner+Hatred 3L - Weapon2 - Storm Brand, Curse on Hit, Enfeeble 4L - Boots - Phase Run + Increased Duration + CWDT + Convocation
3.7 - Lategame Aura Reserves
4L Hat - 4L - This is where you put your 2-3 aura golems. Stone Golem, Chaos Golem supported by Empower and/or minion resistance. 6L Bow - Ice Golem + Melee Phys Damage + Multistrike + Empower + Minion Damage + Fortify 6S Chest - Hatred + Enlighten + Stone And Flesh + Blasphemy + Temp Chains + Precision 3L Quiver - Frenzy + Coh + Vulnerability/elemental weakness 4L Gloves - Scourge Arrow + CWC + Desecrate + Flesh Offering 1S - Unset Ring - Discipline 4L - Boots - Phase Run + Increased Duration + Dreadbanner + Vaal Grace/Purity of Ice
3.4
4L - This is where you put your 2-4 aura golems. Stone Golem, Chaos Golem, Lightning Golem supported by minion life/empower. 6L - Ice Golem + Melee Phys Damage, Multistrike, Empower, Minion Damage and then either Maim, Damage on Full LIfe, Conc Effect, or Faster attacks. 3L - CWDT, Immortal Call, Convocation 2L - Hatred+Generosity 3L - Orb of Storms, Blasphemy - Temp Chains 1L - Phase Run I was originally running a blasphemy setup but have since swapped to a Determination+Watcher's eye, Would honestly recommend Grace or Temp Chains over Determination though even with an eye. Do as I say not as I do. The remaining open sockets can go to portal gems, flame dash, another utility skill.
3.5
3.5 Skills Setup 4L - 6L - Ice Golem + Melee Phys Damage, Multistrike, Empower, Minion Damage and then either Maim, Damage on Full LIfe, Conc Effect, or Faster attacks. 3L - CWDT, Immortal Call, Convocation 3L - Storm Brand, Curse on Hit, Enfeeble 3L - Hatred+Generosity+WarBanner (run hatred in essence worm if using Mom) 1L - Phase Run 1L - Flame Dash 1L - Vaal Haste
3.6
4L - Hat This is where you put your 2-4 aura golems. Stone Golem, Chaos Golem, Lightning Golem supported by minion life or empower. 6L - Body Armour - Ice Golem + Melee Phys Damage, Multistrike, Empower, Minion Damage, your final gem will depend on if you're brutality or hatred tree. Brutality/Ruthless Respectively 3L - Curse on Hit, Enfeeble, Storm Brand 3L - Generosity-Warbanner- Hatred in essence worm if MoM or dropped if brutality 2L - CWDT - Immortal Call The rest of the links are very flexible. Pick your favorite movement skills, work in flesh offering/vaal haste or more mana reserves, expand your cwdt setups. Look at the 3.5 and 3.4 links if you need help but it is entirely adaptable to your playstyle. Another good setup i've seen EE trees use is storm burst, cast while channeling, desecrate, flesh offering. But then you need to apply your curses some other way.
Gear
Helm - Ideally you're looking for an Elder Helmet with +Minion Levels and Minion Life but anything with resists and life works. I run My 3 aura golems + Blind Support Here. Another option for bossing is 3 golems+Empower. A phenomenal Alternative starter helm is the Skullhead. Your golems here are little aurabots anyway and all of the stats on a Skullhead are wanted/needed. There are plenty of Good Lab Enchants for us, I prefer Stone Golem Buff but chaos buff, golem damage, phase run, aura's etc are all great. Skin of the Loyal - Core skills are going to be Ice Golem/Minion Damage/Melee Phys/Empower/Multistrike for your last 1 while mapping run melee splash. For guardians and above run either maim,ruthless or Concentrated Effect which is nearly identical damage to maim support once your cyclone cooldown is lowered enough from the Harmony stacking. 3R2B1G skins tend to be much more available/cheaper than 4R/1G/1B skins. Do not hesitate to buy one of these. ****************************************************************************** Instead of Skin of the Loyal/Clayshaper/Victario's Charity, our new endgame setup is a crafted Minion Bow+Maloney's Mechanism. This allows us to run a CWC Scourge arrow/desecrate flesh offering setup with an auto-cast frenzy/maim/gmp. Freeing up the chest slot allows us to run Victario's influence for even more aura reservations. This setup is extraordinarily powerful with the new auras and should be your end game goal. ****************************************************************************** ClayShaper - High Minion Life Rolls are great. Victario's Charity - I cannot stress how good this shield is for minion builds. Rush Necro Aegis around 50 and use this. Command of the Pit Gloves - 2 abyss jewels are not necessary but highly sought after, we want this for the accuracy to minions, I run my hatred+generosity here. A great budget alternative to these are the "Grip of the Council" gloves. Personally I would use Grip's over 1 socket CoP's Boots - All you are looking for in boots is resists/Life/movespeed rares. Jewelry - The rest of your jewelry is used to get your resist cap and +life/ES. Minion Speed/Damage/Life is great but not needed. Flasks Bleed Immune Quicksilver flask as Bleed is the only status effect likely to kill us. Rumi's Concoction Gets us some much needed block/spell block. Forbidden Taste is absolutely bonkers for us considering we out-regen the degen it adds allowing us to basically have an 'instant' Karui's. You're regenning 1200/second anyway, if you need healing you need it RIGHT NOW. For your Last Flask I would recommend a stibnite. Jewels 1 Anima Stone = More Golems More Problems 1 Primordial Might: This thing is more important even then Anima Stone, your ice golems are NOT SMART without it. With it, they will run into the next room Rainbow 6 style clearing out mobs while you wait safely around a corner. 2-3 Primordial Eminence: 2-3 of these is optimal DPS, 3 is more defense for the player at the expense of a tiny amount of damage. 4 you start to lose a bit of damage. The optimal dps ratio of harmony/eminence will change depending on your Golems current stats/gear. It should almost always be 2-3 Eminence though I have never simmed it at 4 without 13 Jewel Sockets. 5-7 Primordial Harmony: You want good golem CDR rolls and good %Golem Damage. Because we're summoning at least 4 types of golems, the 20% vs 15% per golem type damage roll matters a bit more for us than other golemancers who aren't doing 6/1/1/1 or 5/1/1/1.
Other Ascendancies
A couple of notes about the build. Pros: Very high damage Pure Life Versions have Great Life Regen, i'm sitting at 1200 in current gear setup (3.4) Immunity to freeze, shock Amazing Uber-Lab Farmer, can afk in fire and make a sandwhich Uber Elder Capable If you have an RSI like I do, it's a 1-button build. Cons: I cannot stress how expensive this build is. It is not a league starter for any sane player. As it's gained in popularity it's become even more expensive. It scales with currency which is nice but i've sunk close to 170ex into the build this league. You cannot do Phys-Reflect Maps, well you can but it is really annoying to swap back/forth between fire/ice golems all the time. (If you really want to run these just swap in leech support and they should be fine with conversion+leech) Mapping Speed is respectable but not insane. Cant tank 1-shot mechanics. Aegis means you have no shield/block chance. Pick your poison Very Expensive Can be hard to cover resists, run purity of elements until you get your jewelry sorted out. If you don't enjoy 1-button builds, this is not the build for you.
Elementalist
Pros: Very High Life Regen, i'm at 1200/s +17% Phys Reduction (Chaos Golem) 28% Increased Cast/Attack Speed (Lightning Golem) (PoB does not calculate your golem aura ascendancy bonus correctly) Freeze, Shock, (Ignite?) Immunity 20% More damage from Beacon of Ruin 180% Increased Golem Damage 12% all resistances Elemental Immunity for Ice, Fire, Lightning Golems. +2 Golems Cons: No Stun Immunity Low Effective HP unless MoM or Hybrid (I'm currently sitting at 6500) Poor Curse Effectiveness
Occultist
Edited: Don't go Occultist
Necromancer
Mika2Salo was kind enough to provide us with the following tree. https://pastebin.com/7y5nxqr6 Video : https://youtu.be/fi8-FEaZTvI " Leveling Advice and Tips/Tricks for the build If you want to refund the fewest number of points and learn the build as you go along below is the advice I would give. But there is nothing wrong with leveling storm brand and swapping to golems later, in fact for anyone league starting this is what I would recommend. Find a storm brand guide, level as elementalist, get a couple of exalts, then swap over to golems before you transition into red maps.
Leveling
Start off with Raise zombies, srs and holy flame totem. (3.6 they do much more damage now with the accuracy buff, they feel really good) At Level 4 Grab Warbanner. At 12 Use SRS and don't forget to craft a +1 fire gems wand as it makes a huge difference for them. In your Early Skill tree head towards the minion damage nodes. You should look something like this Head towards Spiritual Aid In act 3 Be sure to grab a hatred to start leveling in preperation for golems, it synergizes very well if you're already using SRS. Once you unlock Golems in Act 4 it's smooth sailing from here on out. Buy a clayshaper+primordial chain, and then go finish your first Lab, get your +1 Golem. Start with Flame Golems + controlled Destruction, Minion Damage, and LMP. If you have necklace/clayshaper+lab you will run 5 Ice Golems, 1 Stone. If you only have lab done+ Clayshaper run 3 Ice golems and keep using srs. Once you get a victario's charity make sure you get necro aegis, your tree should look something more like this at that point. Begin buying your harmonies + Eminence. Chase jewels from this point forward in your skill tree while you save up for your x2 primordial mights. Once you meet the level requirements, have 2-3 harmonies, 2 labs done, and a six-link tabula or skin, You can buy a 21/0 ice golem and swap from fire golems over to ice. Tabula is a great alternative to skin of the loyal and can be farmed relatively easily in blood aqueducts. Update: New goal is 6L Minion Bow with +1 gems and multimod crafted.
Videos
3.4 Uber Elder-https://streamable.com/hwkxh Deathless video, normally I have 1 death to the tentacle phase because i'm god-awful at manually casting Immortal Call. I recommend removing your convocation and running Vaal Purity of ice as well as a Cold Flask in slot 5. You can see my hesitation in the video as I realize Determination and Purity of Ice don't share a color so I just ran Determination instead. 3.4 Hydra T16-https://streamable.com/3wi3k 3.5 Mastermind - https://youtu.be/9Q40ggjZc8s 3.5 Hrabri_Lavek's Deathless Uber Elder - https://youtu.be/__pkNNa-SXQ 3.5 Stottyboy's Deathless Uber Elder 1440p-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TgTd4n8FetQ
Hall of Fame Level 100's
YaKooBski_B_E_IG Last edited by Utopian238 on Sep 5, 2019, 10:00:09 AM Last bumped on Dec 11, 2019, 4:06:42 PM
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hey
im also working on a build same to this. first i dont see a point using sr since u wil never sand in 1 place for it to Mather much. just go arc + unbound aliment support gem. me on the other side think on going mom not es ( maybe just me but never liked es ) also whit 9 golems and the uber lab stone golem ench u reach 375% effect of stone golem i get to 900 life reg and 350 mana reg whit around 7.5k effective life pool |
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Reserved
Last edited by Utopian238 on Sep 13, 2018, 2:57:47 PM
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re: Defense
Immunities are nice. Mitigation layers work too, depending on the damage type your facing. But the best thing you can do for your defense imo is stack EHP. Your chosen uniques will eventually lose out to a good rare on your upgrade path: Vertex: chaos res can be reasonably capped without it Skin: offensive piece with average/mediocre defensive value Death's Door: build has plenty of flask freedom, which makes this a QOL piece rather than a true defensive upgrade re: Shock Unfortunately(?), the increased shock effect from spells like Arc don't work like that. As Elementalist+Beacon, your 20% guaranteed shock effect would be 20% x 1.29 = 25.8% total shock effect. Other than that, your basic premise is correct for SR-CWC-shock spell. ⚡ Lightning Golems: /1902593 ⛄ Ice Golems: /1914382 Last edited by tomatopotato on Aug 27, 2018, 12:27:18 PM
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Thank you very much for the shock math, that seems way more reasonable I made this entire post because I was scratching my head going "Surely that can't be right!" Appreciate all of the input.
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" You can also allocate Unwavering Stance keystone. It takes only 6 skill points to get Stun immunity, if additionally somehow to grab a jewel socket below the Constitution notable. The downside is that ES-based build would still suffer without ES bonus from Chayula. But if all you need from Chayula is stun immunity, then Unwavering Stance is a good option. Last edited by cyberxndr on Aug 29, 2018, 11:23:44 AM
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Updated with the final build I ended up running. Still working out whether I want to curse Temp Chains via Blasphemy or Enfeeble in an on-hit setup and running arctic armor and playing around with a few other things, very very strong so far.
Last edited by Utopian238 on Sep 5, 2018, 6:19:38 PM
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Any videos or gifs of this in action?
And/or updated PoB/Build guide/Gear? | |
My comp has trouble recording with OBS but i'll try to show me being god-awful at one of these Uber-Elder Kills. Don't laugh when you watch it, be impressed at how far the build is carrying such a baddie.
I am astonished at how fast I clear T16 maps once my gear was up and running. Here's the updated Pastebin https://pastebin.com/zduvqr8w I'm playing around with Determination right now because I got a double determination watcher's eye, but I think generally Vaal Grace+Hatred is going to be better. If you don't have the mana reduction from an elder hat grab 4% from a nearby node, Grace being doubled by Skin of the Loyal is pretty huge for survivability. Skullhead is a great budget hat that someone I talked to today is running. Adding it to the suggested pieces. Last edited by Utopian238 on Sep 13, 2018, 12:28:14 PM
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Do you cast any spells yourself? Does a ball lightning move quick enough to curse on hit ahead of the golems while mapping?
Edit: How is delve going for you? Able to go fairly deep so far without much trouble? Last edited by BoJankles on Sep 12, 2018, 8:07:50 PM
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