[3.5] Chained Flames 9 Golem Elementalist. MOM/Phase Acro. Melt the world

Red Elder
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPKHC9FsbSo

Hydra Map
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jt16PHwHOY8&t=

Shaper
Full shaper run. It was my first on this character so I swapped some offense to defense to be safe
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uy4lj-I3jOo&feature=youtu.be

Gear Breakdown

Amulet
This item is awesome. More golems and massive golem movement speed. I've found that the speed has removed the need for primordial mights golems aggression which saves a jewel socket

Weapon
Clayshaper for +1 golem. A must for golem builds

Shield
Victario's charity gives great Qol giving yourself and your minions speed for clearing. I have added a tree including it and one using a rare shield instead

Chest
I spent some time choosing between Hyrri's Ire for dodgestacking, loreweave for elemental protection, cloak of defiance for mana regeneration or kaoms heart for all round protection.

They each have situations where one is better then the other. I chose Kaoms for best safety against oneshots in high tier maps

Helmet
- Socketed gems are supported by minion damage
- Socketed gems are supported by concentrated effect
- Socketed gems deal 30% more elemental damage

Are the best possibilities

- +2 to level of socketed minion gems
- +2 to level of socketed fire gems
- Socketed gems are supported by immolate

These ones are about half as good

Getting two from the top row is a psudo 6-link. Two from the top and one from the bottom is a psudo 6.5 link

Buying one of these is cheaper then 6-linking a chest but it depends on your greed and demand

The rest
Rares with enough resistance to reach cap and then maxing life and mana. Also need +67 strength to wear the kaoms heart

Shaper gloves with blind are a great addition adding blind to your ball lightning and flame golems

Atziri's step to stack spell dodge is good protection so long as you can cover resistances in the other slots.

Getting mana regen on the rings helps

If you have low mana on gear then you might want to cut some life nodes & get more mana ones to keep the mana ratio around the optimum level of 43% of your life

Elementalist
Liege of the Primordial and Elemancer are both really solid and what makes the elementalist the best choice.

+2 golems is great damage but what makes this ascendancy irreplaceable is "elemental golems are immune to elmental damage". This immunity is what keeps our golems alive without any investment in minion life even with the amulet

After those there is a choice, paragon of calamity gives 6% resistances and 8% less elemental damage taken after taking a hit. This is... decent but not great. The other path is to Beacon of ruin. This path does nothing until uber lab where it then enables our ball lightning to shock for 20% more damage taken

Shaper of desolation will give you 100% shock chance about half the time, for the other half you have 10% chance from the tree and 10% chance to crit so it will happen a decent amount of the time as you throw out multiple casts

Two life flasks one with removes bleed. I prefer instant flasks especially on mana since they normally are very slow. Because I use instant flasks I use the ones with the highest life/mana totals

Quicksilvers with extra speed make for fast moving.

The second quicksilver and life flask are both usually untouched and just there for safety. Defensive flasks like Quartz or Basalt can easily be used in these slots instead

We are immune to status ailments from our golems so don't need to roll these on flasks

Anima stone for 2 extra golems. After that Primordial harmonies are the best damage sources. Mine are middle road, not the best not the worst. Ideally you want high damage and high golems have skill cooldown

Its not that much of a downgrade to use the super cheap Primordial Eminences instead. I can run T15 maps using just eminences and not notice that much difference


I have an abyss belt which can socket an abyss jewel. I took one with life and mana and then anything else useful


For more survival you can swap in a might of the meek or anatomical knowledge around the scion area for extra life

Links

My characters tree
www.poeurl.com/b4RW

https://pastebin.com/6RwzJWQm

Hardcore/Endgame tree, defensive shield and gets more sockets. See FAQ for details

www.poeurl.com/b6ns

Helm - Flame golem with its core gems. lvl 21/0 is better then 20/20 and generally cheaper


Gloves - Secondary golems that give immunity to status ailments and best damage through jewels


Weapon - Phase run has speed and phasing. Losing 80% visibility lets your golems take all the agro. Shield charge was the other option and has fortify but only if you put yourself into the face of what you are fighting


Shield - CWDT immortal call. Convocation is used for proximity shields and ledges


Boots - Ball lightning does many things
- Directs your minions to a location
- Applies elemental equilibrium
- Curses with temporal chains or enfeeble
- Shocks thanks to elementalist ascendancy


The other option is using Arc & swapping GMP for elemental proliferation support (more shock) or faster casting. This has the upside of extra shock chance & effect but the downside of not reliably cursing the whole pack when you enter a room and cast. Better on bosses but worse for general mapping safety

Soul of Lunaris for movement speed and then chain immunity once upgraded.

Soul of Ryslatha for flask regen in lab and then extra recovery once upgraded

Skill
I leveled with SRS and zombies but the new dominating blow or smite might be better as you can use them with a Holy Relic to keep the zombies alive.

Swap into pure golems at lvl 38 when you get spell echo and GMP. Only use flame golems while leveling, the other golems are only worth using later when you have more bonuses for using different kinds

Items
These items are cheap and easy to obtain

Wraithlord helm at level 34 for +2 levels and regen to golems

Primordial chain at 38 when you swap into pure golems. Also good time to do first lab

Buy several primordial eminence. They are cheap damage sources until you can afford to upgrade them into harmonies

Clayshaper at 41 for +1 golem

Victario's charity at level 50. Big damage boost for golems with necromantic aegis

Kaoms heart is the most expensive piece of the build. Until you get one I suggest either a chest with good life or Hyrri's Ire for more dodge to synergise with acrobatics.

Leveling Tree
www.poeurl.com/b40K
Mostly life/mana focused, if you have better gear you might take more of the jewel sockets

How much mana to get with MOM?
To get the highest protection from one shot damage the best ratio is 43% of your life as mana so if you have 6k life then 2,820 mana.

To understand why this is the case consider a 50% MOM effect, where half of the damage you are taking goes to mana which would then make the best ratio 100% of life as mana or them being the same.

I suggest having sanctified mana flasks rolled as instant, mana flasks have the advantage of 5 uses before running dry but take a very long time to apply their effect. This downside is removed when rolled as instant allowing you to tap the button everytime you take damage to always maintain a full mana pool

Pob damage numbers?
The number on Pob is for 1 orb but with GMP 5 are being thrown out at once and their AOE damage can overlap. Pob also doesn't include a number of damage boosts from our ascendancy like %golem damage and shock. I wouldn't use the number to compare to anything except another flame golem setup

Why primordial Harmony over Eminence?
Pob says that Eminence give better damage but only because it does not count the increased golem cooldowns as a damage stat. In reality better cooldowns increases damage so harmonies are better then Pob calculates them to be.

While Harmonies are better for DPS Eminance do give extra life regen from the stone golem. There is content like delving where cutting DPS for extra regen is a totally reasonable choice

Victarios charity?
The charity is the easiest option and great for leveling. Frenzy charges give minions movement speed and faster animations make them kill and then move onto a new pack allowing for a smooth experience and what I kept with all through my playthrough.

Giving your own character frenzy charges grants cast speed for faster ball lighting casts and longer phase run duration which is enjoyable Qol for the character

Rare Shield?
This has higher endgame potential cutting necromantic aegis. You can focus on attack or spell protection by getting block/evasion/life/mana or Saffell's Frame for max resistances. Then you can cut defense in the tree for more jewel sockets and assuming you already own enough well rolled primordial harmonies to fill the entire tree the result is better damage & better defense at the cost of the Qol that comes from frenzy charges

Second Clayshaper?
Going from 6 to 7 flame golems is 16.5% more damage or making room for a chaos golem in the setup is 19% more damage & 8% less physical damage taken but replaces minion life in my current setup so the chaos and stone golems will struggle to survive since they do not gain elemental immunity like the rest.

This is not much better then getting another jewel socket would be, in my calculations clayshaper was always worse then either of the shield options both offensively and defensibly

What should I put in my 6-link?
For those running a chest other then Kaoms heart and have access to 6 addition links there is two possibilities either the curse or the golems

The curse can gain Enhance for extra curse effect and elemental proliferation support for extra shock chance and duration.

The support golems can be run with minion damage and minion speed for some additional effect

Minion Accuracy?
The damage source of this build is flame golems who only cast spells and gain no benefit from accuracy. The attack based minions are Ice & Stone, improving the damage of those would not give much benefit to this build that focuses on the flame golems

Flammability?
I much prefer the defensive curses. Damage is easier to obtain then defense and the golems already do plenty of damage

If you do want an offensive curse and have a good amount of golem cooldown reduction then I would use projectile weakness over flammability. Elemental equilibrium and combustion are already pushing their resistances far into the negatives but projectile weakness gives a nice 'more' multiplier onto the orb barrage of the flame golems and results in better damage

Temp chains or Enfeeble?
In my opinion Enfeeble is better on bosses as it reduces the chance they will one shot you and Temp chains is better while mapping as it causes most of the mobs to die before ever getting the chance to hit you

I did math on % Less damage taken factoring in + curse effect and curse resistance

Temp chains & Enfeeble

Mob - 37%, 33%
Boss - 14%, 13%
Shaper - 7%, 6%

As you can see the effect plummet as you are dealing with higher tier content. This is also why I don't put any investment towards getting a second curse or curse effect