{3.10} Speaker for the Dead | The Mass Minion Summoner | League Starter, Leveling Guide 💀

I'm rather new to PoE and tried this build. I must say that it's amazing. Very cheap to get things rolling (T10 maps with gear worth like 20c? no problem), because minions do everything on their own basically. Only one thing bothers me - are zombies actually useful? Most of the times it's spectres + phantasms that do the heavy lifting while cleaning trash.

Zombies don't even come close to the enemies. And even if something is hard enough to survive artillery barrage from spectres + phantasms (let's not forget about Herald Of Agony Tactical Missile Launcher) - I use skeletons or even drop the Vaal skeletons nuke. Single target unavoidable DPS from skeles is definitely something that bosses don't like, but I simply fail to notice how zombies are actually doing.

What I think about is to drop Grave Intentions subtree (it gives +2 zombies, +1 skele and chaos resistance for minions) and go for Sentinel and other resistance boosting skills. Why? To make build even cheaper because it's resistances that are most costly. If you want +3 minion gem helmet - you can have it even for 1c, BUT if you also want +hp AND +res it goes to even 1-2ex price levels. Dropping some res lowers the price for pretty decent helmet to like 4-5c which makes a big difference. I'm not sure if I will even notice lack of 2 zombies and 1 skele, I'm more concerned about these res to be honest. Also skeles are very expendable, because they are so cheap and fast to summon again - while losing zombies actually hurts.

Instead of Flesh Binder I would also go for puppet master - so skeles and other minions would be able dish out even more damage. I'm not really sure if this 10% phys res would make much difference.

Also I'm using 3 Frost Sentinels right now and I'm wondering if it's good idea to swap one for Solar Guard?

Hello! Thank you again for this awesome build.I'm having so much fun with it. So this is the weapon im using and i swear on my life i never see the herald of agony come up. Am i missing something or doing something wrong? Also, i do have the buff running as well so its not that im forgetting to turn it on.

Thank you for your time!

Lesser Poison supports spells that hit enemies so you need that mod on the piece of gear that is socketed with Ball lightning (Cast when channeling-Charged dash-Ball Lightning-GMP) as well as an 'Adds x to y Chaos Damage to Spells' jewel.

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BiggestFlirt wrote:

Hello! Thank you again for this awesome build.I'm having so much fun with it. So this is the weapon im using and i swear on my life i never see the herald of agony come up. Am i missing something or doing something wrong? Also, i do have the buff running as well so its not that im forgetting to turn it on.

Thank you for your time!

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BiggestFlirt wrote:

Hello! Thank you again for this awesome build.I'm having so much fun with it. So this is the weapon im using and i swear on my life i never see the herald of agony come up. Am i missing something or doing something wrong? Also, i do have the buff running as well so its not that im forgetting to turn it on.

Thank you for your time!

If that's your only source of poison, yeah, you won't be proccing herald of agony. The HoA buff only gives virulence stacks when you poison, not when your minions do, and you only have minion gems in your weapon. So your zombies poison (and your HoA would poison, if it ever showed up), but that doesn't give you virulence stacks. You have to poison stuff to get virulence stacks.

The build normally accomplishes that by using a jewel that adds physical or chaos damage to spells + Poison support on Charged Dash & Ball Lightning.

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Sorator13 wrote:

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BiggestFlirt wrote:

Hello! Thank you again for this awesome build.I'm having so much fun with it. So this is the weapon im using and i swear on my life i never see the herald of agony come up. Am i missing something or doing something wrong? Also, i do have the buff running as well so its not that im forgetting to turn it on.

Thank you for your time!

If that's your only source of poison, yeah, you won't be proccing herald of agony. The HoA buff only gives virulence stacks when you poison, not when your minions do, and you only have minion gems in your weapon. So your zombies poison (and your HoA would poison, if it ever showed up), but that doesn't give you virulence stacks. You have to poison stuff to get virulence stacks.

The build normally accomplishes that by using a jewel that adds physical or chaos damage to spells + Poison support on Charged Dash & Ball Lightning.

I have this item which has ball lightning socketed on it. Does that count? :O

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BiggestFlirt wrote:

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Sorator13 wrote:

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BiggestFlirt wrote:

Hello! Thank you again for this awesome build.I'm having so much fun with it. So this is the weapon im using and i swear on my life i never see the herald of agony come up. Am i missing something or doing something wrong? Also, i do have the buff running as well so its not that im forgetting to turn it on.

Thank you for your time!

If that's your only source of poison, yeah, you won't be proccing herald of agony. The HoA buff only gives virulence stacks when you poison, not when your minions do, and you only have minion gems in your weapon. So your zombies poison (and your HoA would poison, if it ever showed up), but that doesn't give you virulence stacks. You have to poison stuff to get virulence stacks.

The build normally accomplishes that by using a jewel that adds physical or chaos damage to spells + Poison support on Charged Dash & Ball Lightning.

I have this item which has ball lightning socketed on it. Does that count? :O

If you have a jewel that adds X to Y physical or chaos damage to spells, yes. Otherwise, no, because you can only poison when you deal physical or chaos damage, and Ball Lightning doesn't normally deal either. (It would work if it were Lesser Poison Support instead, since that adds a small amount of chaos damage to supported skills, but Poison Support doesn't do that, in exchange for a higher chance to poison.)

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Sorator13 wrote:

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BiggestFlirt wrote:

Hello! Thank you again for this awesome build.I'm having so much fun with it. So this is the weapon im using and i swear on my life i never see the herald of agony come up. Am i missing something or doing something wrong? Also, i do have the buff running as well so its not that im forgetting to turn it on.

Thank you for your time!

If you have a jewel that adds X to Y physical or chaos damage to spells, yes. Otherwise, no, because you can only poison when you deal physical or chaos damage, and Ball Lightning doesn't normally deal either. (It would work if it were Lesser Poison Support instead, since that adds a small amount of chaos damage to supported skills, but Poison Support doesn't do that, in exchange for a higher chance to poison.)

Okay got it. I will find a jewel that adds chaos damage to spells. Would that be a waste of a jewel? Because i dont think you have a jewel like that do you? Unless i'm not looking properly.

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BiggestFlirt wrote:

Okay got it. I will find a jewel that adds chaos damage to spells. Would that be a waste of a jewel? Because i dont think you have a jewel like that do you? Unless i'm not looking properly.

I have . If by "you" you mean the guide author, I think he has the same effect on a helm, which is probably not something to aim for because it's hard to get that along with other useful helm mods.

@ BiggestFlirt:

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BiggestFlirt wrote:

Hello! Thank you again for this awesome build.I'm having so much fun with it. So this is the weapon im using and i swear on my life i never see the herald of agony come up. Am i missing something or doing something wrong? Also, i do have the buff running as well so its not that im forgetting to turn it on.

Thank you for your time!

Be sure to read "I Accept" -> EVERYTHING YOU NEED -> "Item Requirements", in case you missed it. The bit about the jewel is covered there.

In short, you must inflict poison with your own attacks or spells to gain Virulence; minions, like Zombies, cannot do it for you. You must have at least 1 stack of Virulence for the Agony Crawler to appear.

This is why we use Ball Lightning (hits rapidly), a Hypnotic Jewel that adds flat Chaos Damage to spells (poison only scales off of physical and chaos damage, so 0 of either means 0 poison), and Poison Support (higher poison chance) as a glove affix (saves a socket). These three things together allow Ball Lightning to inflict poison, and thus Virulence, and can reach 40 stacks for maximum Crawler DPS within two seconds or less, even on a single target.

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@ Granathar:

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Granathar wrote:

I'm rather new to PoE and tried this build. I must say that it's amazing. Very cheap to get things rolling (T10 maps with gear worth like 20c? no problem), because minions do everything on their own basically. Only one thing bothers me - are zombies actually useful? Most of the times it's spectres + phantasms that do the heavy lifting while cleaning trash.

Zombies don't even come close to the enemies. And even if something is hard enough to survive artillery barrage from spectres + phantasms (let's not forget about Herald Of Agony Tactical Missile Launcher) - I use skeletons or even drop the Vaal skeletons nuke. Single target unavoidable DPS from skeles is definitely something that bosses don't like, but I simply fail to notice how zombies are actually doing.

Every minion has its weaknesses. Builds that focus solely on one minion feel that especially. We instead use a variety of minions to minimize our overall weaknesses. Ranged minions, for instance, can't do anything to monsters under a Proximity Shield. You would either have to drag or Convocate your ranged minions under the shield, wait for the shield to dissipate (some monsters have a permanent shield), or ignore the monsters altogether. But if you have melee minions, they will naturally get under the shield to deal damage. Without Zombies, our only melee minions are Skeletons, which require us to stop and cast to summon them. Having Zombies means we can focus on other things while they commando in and take out the shield monsters for us.

Zombies primarily serve a utility role for us. They block many types of projectiles just by being there. They act as decoys. They help Taunt and Blind when you have minion jewels. They Maim faster than the Agony Crawler can do on its own.

They also provide Physical Damage Reduction to you and all other minions with Flesh Binder. Eight Zombies are the equivalent of two Endurance Charges. Twelve are the equivalent of three. If you stack this with other sources, like a "+1 minimum Endurance Charge" craft on a rare amulet and ring, Chaos Golem, Basalt Flask, and a few others, the protection grows exponentially the closer you get to 100% (like Elemental Resistances). It's possible to almost reach 50% for us, which would halve phys damage and essentially double our effective health against it. I did some calculations in an earlier post about this and found we could actually survive a 17k phys damage Shaper Slam by going down this route.

But even if we don't stack it, 10% phys reduction means taking only 90% of phys damage, which equates to (1/0.9 =) 11% more life against it (@200% life, a 5% node on the passive tree is worth ~1.5% more life). As Necromancers, we get almost no direct defensive options. As long as we can keep Zombies alive (which is why we level-stack to boost their life, which also simultaneously boosts the Agony Crawler's damage), Flesh Binder is our best. (The resistances from Commander of Darkness become meaningless with decent gear; Mistress of Sacrifice with Bone Offering is an unreliable ~14/14% attack/spell block chance, while Spirit Offering's ~9% of your life as energy shield is bottlenecked by CWDT's 0.25sec cooldown, so it won't protect from every hit, and both are cut down further by Acrobatics.)

Zombie damage is decent, but as you said, our ranged minions often obliterate everything before the Zombies can even get into melee range. Sometimes, though, that's not always the case. Maps with lots of corners, pillars, and other projectile-blocking clutter can restrict our ranged minions. Melee minions, on the other hand, naturally go around these obstructions, smoothing out our overall clear. They aren't the stars, but they clean up well. And all for one gem socket.

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Granathar wrote:

What I think about is to drop Grave Intentions subtree (it gives +2 zombies, +1 skele and chaos resistance for minions) and go for Sentinel and other resistance boosting skills. Why? To make build even cheaper because it's resistances that are most costly. If you want +3 minion gem helmet - you can have it even for 1c, BUT if you also want +hp AND +res it goes to even 1-2ex price levels. Dropping some res lowers the price for pretty decent helmet to like 4-5c which makes a big difference. I'm not sure if I will even notice lack of 2 zombies and 1 skele, I'm more concerned about these res to be honest. Also skeles are very expendable, because they are so cheap and fast to summon again - while losing zombies actually hurts.

Instead of Flesh Binder I would also go for puppet master - so skeles and other minions would be able dish out even more damage. I'm not really sure if this 10% phys res would make much difference.

If you need the resistances, then do what you can. You can even get some on jewels. But it's not too hard to get them in order once you get good gear. I go over this in the Leveling Guide's Epilogue's Gear section:

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Hercanic wrote:

After Kitava, we start at -60% in all resistances, so we need 135% to reach the cap of 75%. Victario's Charity has 30% Lightning Resistance, so we're ahead here right off the bat compared to Cold and Fire. We get another 8% Elemental Resistance from the shield, 5% from Cruel Preparations on the passive tree, and 12% Chaos Resistance from the Purity of Flesh cluster. That comes to 13%/12% Elemental/Chaos Resistances, so we need at least 122% Fire/Cold and 92% Lightning from gear.

You'll need a minimum of four other items with resistances (1. Belt, 2. Boots, 3. Ring, 4. Gloves, 5. Helmet, 6. Amulet, 7. Body Armor, 8. Jewels, 9. Weapon): Two with 45%/45% Fire/Cold, one with 32%/46% Fire/Lightning, and one with 32%/46% Cold/Lightning. Overcapping by an additional 40% is fine, as it will protect you against an Elemental Weakness curse.

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Granathar wrote:

Also I'm using 3 Frost Sentinels right now and I'm wondering if it's good idea to swap one for Solar Guard?

That's fine.

I elected for a Solar Guard just to broaden the use of Elemental Proliferation. Any kills from the Ignite degens count as our kills, which can trigger the Power Charge mod on Victario's Charity. Rarely, my minions will get Power Charges are a result. The most reliable time is during big defensive events like Delve nodes, where the degen fields are constantly being fed new monsters and my minions stay pretty close to be within Charity's 40 unit radius (a level 1 aura has a radius of 36).

Did you do some calculations about Flesh Binder survivability vs Puppet Master dps? Because I'm pretty certain that the latter may be better because potential DPS boost while having so many minions will probably be huge and it may be better to just melt bosses faster than be 10% tougher against physical damage.

I would use Commander of Darkness if we didn't want Generosity to not break our DPS output with EE. 20% resistances, some cast speed and 30% more damage for basically free? It would be even easier to boost resistances and gear could be even cheaper then.