3.5 Abyssal Summoner guide
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Hi all. This build is not jaw-droppingly different to other minion builds, but it does have a lot to get excited about: Easy to acquire synergies, High damage with low investment. SSF, MF and noob viable, Easy defences, fast clearing, almost top tier single target DPS, versatility and no need for 6 links.
Build aims:
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- cheap (high budget builds are only suitable for 5% of players) - be viable as a league starter - not require any 6 links (Too frustrating for most players to acquire) - have well rounded, always in place defences that do not rely on flasks - be able to run all map mods - not require much in the way of mechanics, or micromanaging (few button pushes) - have fast clear speeds (the only way to reach even mid game content and still have time for a real-life life) - move fast (there is too much distance to cover in this game to play any other type of build) - have good safe single target damage for bossing - level smoothly, level using the same gems as endgame, and not require crazy combinations of passive nodes and gear before it becomes usable - be an option for Solo Self Found (SSF) players, so there must be a reasonable way to acquire all items in the build without buying them. Abyssal Build guide Summary
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The guide focuses on phantasms and melee skeletons, however, this is a flexible build that uses any combination you like of skeletons, spectres, zombies, srs, HoA or golems.
Strengths and weaknesses
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- The clearpseed is exceptional, as you will only have to cast 4 spells, every 30 seconds. After this, you will have 1 million screenwide shaper DPS with a mix of damage types on your phantasms. You kill the entire screen as fast as you can phase run. - The single target is also superb. You will do 3.5 million shaper dps without any gem swaps, with just 3 casts of summon skeleton, then something to proc EE. This is before we account for the very reliable chance to shock, vaal skeletons and a super long duration flesh offering. If we do include this stuff, our shaper dps gets to 4.5 million for skeletons, 1.6 million for phantasms, 10 million for vaal skeletons. 16 million DPS with just a few button pushes (Assuming max shock value). If we assume lowest shock value, it is closer to 11 million DPS. - Defences include 40% attack dodge and 45% spell dodge, 6.3K life, 500 ES, 5K evasion + blind = evade 2/3 of attacks, 13% block chance, 550 life regen, easily capped resists, permanent phasing, frozen mobs, chilled bosses, enemies are hindered in movespeed and you have plenty of meatshields - Spectres provide almost permanent frenzy and power charges - Movespeed sits at base 43%. Phase run has a duration of 4-7 seconds, which puts movespeed permanently at 93%. Flask puts it at 150%. You will be fine in the clearspeed meta, and you will level as fast as almost any other build. - This makes the build excellent at kiting/hiding while maintaining high DPS - Can run any map mod easily - Can kill any boss - Can safely delve deeply and collect side path loot using phase run - Can do SSF. Especially with the new zana mods allowing you to get 2 abyss runs per map! - Is susceptible to physical damage and bleeds, hence is not great at lab runs. You will need to use a flask to stay alive if you get hit by a strong bleed. - Is not suitable for hardcore. While you can easily get to shaper without dying, hardcore players will probably want a build that mitigates damage, rather than aiming to avoid it at all times. Items
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There are no mandatory items for this build. The main synergy involves using Shroud of the lightless, and lots of abyssal jewels, but this is by no means build defining. That being said, Soulwrest is just so good for mapping, please make it your first item priority! Helmet: Elder Bone Helmet - Look for socketed gems supported by minion life and minions do increased damage, optional: +2 to socketed minion gems. This keeps our spectres alive easier, gives all minions a buff to life and damage, and has a spare gemslot for zombies or animate guardian. Hale Negator: good defences for you. If you get hit hard, you will recover 36% of your life and ES. This takes 12 seconds to recharge fully, but is always recharging at 1 charge (3% of life) per second. Overall it gives you good protection from one shots, or is equivalent to an extra 3% life regen per second, but it needs a big hit to activate, so is not useful vs DoT. Gorgons Gaze: Really good for those super hard bosses. They get slowed and petrified so you can just stand next to them while the skellies kill them. Weapon: Soulwrest If running zombies, then use a shield and mon'treguls grasp Body: Shroud of the Lightless. This only has 5 links, but since skellies are doing high amounts of cold and lightning damage, it is actually a very powerful pseudo 7 link, with cold and lightning penetration. It also gives us an extra 11% life from all the abyss jewels we use. It is the cheapest and easiest way you will reach full damage for this build. If you are not running Shroud of the lightless, then any 6 link body armour will give you close to the same damage per skeleton. If you pursue the 6 link option, then I recommend any defensive 6 link, such as Loreweave or Belly of the Beast. Belt: Stygian vise or Darkness Enthroned Rings: Aim for life, lots of resists, chaos resistance. Mings heart is fantastic to buff your chaos resist If you do not need the resists, it is also fantastic for new player friendly defences to use a voideye and decoy totem in your ring slot. This decoy totem will completely mitigate the offenses of about 50% of bosses: those that can be taunted. For the rest of the bosses who are immune to taunt, they will still do 10% less damage to your minions - a small addition to defence. Gloves: Grip of the council This gives extra cold damage to your minions, gives a bit of life and resists, and gives us a 4 link for our phase run setup. Other options are Command of the pit or Tombfist for extra abyssal jewel slots Boots: Atziri's step - I use these because I like defences. They add a nice boost to evasion, life, and excellent buff to spell dodge. Plus has an extra gem slot compared with: Bubonic trail - The best boots for Quality of life, as these will auto destroy corpses, which do a bit of damage, summon your phantasms, and proc EE using fire damage, which we want. Amulet: The final goal here is to have an amulet that gives us an aura. Aul's uprising is best, or a rare that gives us haste or purity of elements or something. For early game, use the amulet to give you stats and resists Also useful is Sidhebreath for minion speed and life. Flasks
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Essential: quicksilver flask - moving is our best defence quartz flask - phasing is our second best defence. Extra 10 dodge and spell dodge is lovely too. Life flask - with instant regen, because some things will hit you in the face. Optional: Granite flask for extra armour Mana flask for no regen maps Life flasks Soul catcher or soul ripper - expensive, but a good damage boost Flask mods priority - Freeze immune (we don't have this naturally, so pop this flask before you open stongboxes - bleed immunity ( bleed is the scariest ailment for this build) - curse immunity (later maps have a lot of curse mods, this negates them all) - increased effect (makes you go faster with quicksilver flasks) - Increased charges, reduced charges used/reduced duration (you need less precision with flask management) Item Costs Gloves: 40 chaos for grip of the council Body: 50 -80 chaos for shroud of the lightless Helmet: 10-20 chaos for an elder helm with 3 useful mods soulwrest: Now at 40 chaos. Was 2 exalt at the start of this league!!! ouch. Gems and links
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Chest: Vaal Summon Skeleton > Minion Damage > Elemental Damage with attacks > Physical to lightning > Melee Physical
If you can afford it, Empower level 4 loses a bit of damage, but gains some minion life, and would be better for endgame bossing. If you get a green link and don't want to reroll, faster attacks or added cold damage will work Helmet: Raise Spectre > Minion Life > Blood Magic > Animate Guardian If you are not using Hale Negator, an alternate option for the last link is Raise Zombies for 300K extra damage and more meatshields. Weapon: Minion Damage > Summon Phantasm on Kill > Faster Projectiles > Faster Casting > Controlled Destruction > Greater Multiple Projectiles * Lesser Multiple projectiles is probably a better choice than GMP, but the phantasms job is to fill the screen with bullets for mob clearing, so GMP has more bullets! * You can run added cold damage instead of any multiple projectiles, and your boss damage goes up, but occasionally this results in a slower clear than multiple projectiles. So, it's probably easier to swap in added cold damage for GMP as and if needed. Gloves: Phase Run > Increased Duration > Gloves: Hatred > Generosity Boots: Flesh Offering > Desecrate > Faster Casting > Flame Dash * faster casting is great for Quality of life. It can be replaced with spell echo or spell cascade to make your desecrating much better. * flame dash can be replaced with any fire spell to proc EE Ring or Amulet: This is reserved for your second aura. Haste or Purity of Elements are best. *for the very rich, you will have enough resists to run with a 4 link hungry loop. Put Raise Zombie in here for an extra million DPS. Utility: Stone or chaos Golem, decoy totem, frost wall, molten shell, leap slam or lightning warp for terrain, portal, immortal call Jewels
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Best in Show Jewel will be a watchers eye with good mods. Assuming you are not one of the few who can afford one, then we will use all ghastly eyes. Ghastly eye jewels are very important to this build. Fortunately, this league they are easy to farm using the 'Abyss' zana mod on any map run. While the PoB links given below use expensive jewels, the build does not lose much using cheap jewels. (I am so confident that good jewels will be available, I plan on using a SSF league starter for 3.5.) Examples, discussion and tips are below. First aim: Life mods The life roll on 11 jewels can mean the difference between 5.3K and 6.3K life. The difference between 11 top tier life rolls and 11 low life rolls is much smaller, at around 300 life. Therefore, while rich players can aim to get high life rolls on every jewel, a more realistic goal would be to get any life roll on most jewels. Second aim: Increased damage if you've used a minion skill recently 11 abyss jewels running 20% of this gives our minions 220% increased damage. This works out to be 30% more damage for both skeletons and phantasms. The difference between 11 high rolls and 11 low rolls is less than 10%, so accept any RNG, as long as you get the mod. Third aim: Minions have increased cast /attack speed 11 abyss jewels with this mod give minions 44% increased attack or cast speed. Another 30% more boost to damage, as long as you have the mod, so don't worry about getting maxed rolls unless you are rich. Fourth aim: Flat damage Physical > Cold > Lightning > Fire > Chaos. Physical is the only decent mod here, and it needs to be well rolled to make any difference. 11 well rolled added physical damage mods can be similar to a 20% more multiplier for both skeletons and phantasms. This is an unrealistic goal for most players, which is why I suggest you accept any of the following utility mods as your 2nd suffix on jewels: Utility aims: Minions have increased max life: 11 low rolled minion life mods give our minions 50% more life. This is huge. You won't notice it 90% of the time, but those few times where some crazy boss would otherwise wipe your minions and make a fight difficult, they may survive, deal their damage and make the fight easy. Minions have increased movement speed: 11 low rolled minion speeds give 90% more speed. Equivalent to a full queens escape. Amazing buff for quality of life. Minion speed means both phantasms and skeletons get their first attack in faster, a huge buff to both map speed, QoL, defenses (dead monsters get no spells off!), and minion survivability (fast minions are alive minions). Blind / Taunt: Using 11 jewels, you should be able to fit this in somewhere. Helps you evade, and stay alive. Almost any other defensive mod is good: I couldn't be bothered listing them all. If we get hit, we are susceptible to ailments. We can always use more move speed, dodge, raw stats, resists, and so on. Therefore, any defensive mod can be accepted. Levelling, ascendencies, pantheon
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I've tested this build with Raider, Occultist, Juggernaut, Champion. None of these seemed especially good, so I didn't take them past yellow maps. What worked way smoother was the Witch: Necromancer ascendency, so I'll assume you are using that too: Bandits
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* I recommend helping Alira. Especially as a league starter. It will save you time and hassle finding good resists on gear. If you plan on playing this character to a very high level, then you are better off: * Kill all - if you think you will be fine getting well rolled resists on your rings, or you will be running Purity of Elements Tree:
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See PoB links for full tree.
My personal recommendation is to use the early tree for bare essentials like stats and resists. This means you can power through the early game, even as a league starter, even if you find zero good items. Skeletons are a good enough skill that they can take you as far as you need to go to get your resists, items, gems, links etc. in order. Early Goals for the tree are to get damage: 1) Lord of the dead 2) Grave pact 3) Death Attunement By now you will need resists and stats, so I then suggest: 4) Sentinel 5) Go all the way to the acrobatics nodes 6) Retribution This should get your Dexterity, strength and resists in a good place, so you'll next want some life nodes 7) Discipline and training 8) Revenge of the hunted 9) Herbalism 10) Blood drinker Now the real choices begin. For your final nodes, you have choices between more duration, more jewel slots, more active playstyle proccing EE, more life, more flasks, more aura. * If you want Quality of life, take all the increased skill effect nodes. This means your phantasms and vaal skellies last longer, you push less buttons and phase run for longer. Since I use the 'watch T.V.' playstyle, this is my choice. * If you have good jewels already, you could take the jewel slots next * It's hard to imagine your damage being too low, but if you feel this way, take Elemental Equilibrium a bit earlier and start actively proccing it on bosses or big mobs using something like firestorm. * If you don't have jewels, or don't want to spend time finding good ones, get life nodes: Profane chemistry and hired killer are in easy reach. * If you love your flasks, take Alchemist * If you get a good amulet, good resists, and can run a second 50% aura, then you may want Charisma Ascendencies
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Skeletons do all your early heavy lifting, then you need resists, so the suggested order is:
Invoker > Bone Sculptor > Commander of Darkness > Puppet Master Pantheon There is no best in show here. It's up to your preference. I personally hate Damage over time, so I take Minor God: Ralakesh Major God: Arakaali Playstyle
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When you enter an area, press desecrate, then flesh offering twice. This gets you 18 phantasms that last 30 seconds. Most maps are done in under 3 minutes, so you will have to repeat this about 6 times.
Then you have 3 options: Play Safe: Put skeletons ahead of you and phase run forward Play fast: Use no skeletons until the boss. Just phase run and run right through everything. Your phantasms will teleport to catch up, kill everything, then teleport to where you have run to next. Watch T.V: Mouse goes at the edge of the screen, minions are up for 30 seconds, so hold on the move mouse key, click phase run every 5 seconds and watch T.V, talk to your loved ones, play with the kitten, listen to music, read poetry. Look back 30 seconds later and your toon is running into a wall with dead enemies all around. This is how I play, and why I have such specific build requirements :) Bossing: Press vaal skeletons, then summon skeleton X 3. Run and hide/dodge until the boss dies. In trouble?: I have 3 flasks ready for if I accidentally cast a spell to end my phase invisibility before the cooldown is ready again (this is bad). I have a quicksliver flask with freeze immunity, a phasing flask with curse or bleed immunity and a life flask with curse or bleed immunity. Press all 3 if you sense danger, and run away or even run forward through the danger. PoB links
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The best mix of cost effectiveness, clear speed and single target =
Necromanacer with Skeletons and Phantasms https://pastebin.com/xb3fUrBs The best dps with the easiest scaling = necromancer with Zombies and skeletons https://pastebin.com/iPm2CbLg The weakest skill in the game can still be used as single target, as long as the best skill in the game is used for clears = Necromancer SRS and phantasms https://pastebin.com/z98JGBbr Tested Niche builds Magic Find version: 50% IIQ and 200% IIR https://pastebin.com/1yQpRWi2 Skeleton Mage version
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Thanks to NSUCK for helping with this one. This one was just to see how skeleton mages can work. It is brainlessly easy, but falls off very late game. I've wasted a lot of time seeing if skeleton mages (or SRS) can be viable in any build. Their base stats are just so low, that I do not recommend them unless you will stop playing at yellow maps... = Skelly mages for clear, and phantasms for single target
https://pastebin.com/ikZWcjdL Videos
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These videos are in standard, using a level 86 character from the delve league. Both maps have increased boss damage and HP mods. Gear is shown, cost of gear is in the item section of the guide. I play full afk style without spectres or EE - so damage is about half of what it would be with those things up.
T14 Dark forest with increased boss HP using SRS: https://youtu.be/7E14qcU-hkM You will note how slow srs is for high hp bosses! T14 Dark Forest with increased boss HP using Skellies: https://youtu.be/jC1ORqt2kbU (Some hard hitting beasts, and me not having fingers on the keyboard make this look worse than it should be. I wasn't looking too often, so was lucky not to die from not using potions! On the other hand, it shows how the 'watch T.V.' playstyle can still survive and do fast clears in a T14 map with no 5 links!) Here is my character for SSF in 3.5 bestiary doing a T1 ramparts run. This is my first try at SSF, so progress is slow. I've died a couple of times to this point, but could easily have gotten SSF HC here if not experimenting. Gear is shown, and there's a syndicate run in there too: https://youtu.be/CIGGKK4VW2M Last edited by grimlock9999 on Jul 24, 2019, 10:39:23 AM Last bumped on Mar 14, 2019, 9:48:44 PM
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Looks very interesting. Might start the league with this one. Ran Incursion league with your physical skeleton build, was my first build that let me run red maps with ease. I looked at the PoB links quickly, those abyss jewels will undoubtedly be somewhat expensive to get but provide good goals to strive towards during the league.
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Looks neat for me. Maybe start with this too.
How much will Soulwrest cost in the early days of the league? Whitout it we may kill things with the Skellys Thx for the work Grimlock Last edited by Revanroi on Dec 5, 2018, 3:25:20 PM
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" Very early, like first day, it will cost a lot. Should come down rapidly as long as they didn't change the drop rate. I'm actually a bit excited about this as a league starter too. I'm thinking this could be a ridiculously profitable way to get through maps. It has scope for IIQ and IIR gear, and hits its synergy, resists and playstyle goals very easily. " I expect Abyss jewels to be cheaper than ever after the first few days of the league. This is because we can now run zana map mods that have 2 abysses (cost 5 chaos). As such, I believe it will become possible to get 2 decent rolls on ghastly jewels with just SSF and no crafting. Once you save up a few chaos, alts and regal orbs, then you can start min/maxing. I've been testing the min/maxing on PoB and on my 3.4 character. It made very little difference to survivability and DPS with low rolls or with high rolls. The only important thing was to get one mod of either attack/cast speed or minion damage if used a skill recently. As such, we have a lot of cheap jewels that can be used without inhibiting the build. |
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Build looks great! have you had a chance to glance through the 3.5 patch notes yet? any meaningfull changes to this build before tomorrow?
BTW thanks for these builds, I have played your phys skellies/zombies build for a few leagues now and it totally rocks for league starter :) | |
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This is far, far from a cheap leaguestarter.
The listed gear prices are like midleague (lowest possible). Shroud never dropped below 100c in Delve (103 day 20). Useful minion jews will cost A LOT, at least 30c for 3stat. Overall the price will be comparable to the famous expensive golemancers, where harmonies are 14c. GL buying a +2 Minion DMG helm for 20c. These are quite expensive. You should clearly identify the listed gear as endgame goal. The build is fine on tabula, but requires a bit different setup until fully geared. Last edited by akavangop on Dec 6, 2018, 7:18:40 AM
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" Yes, not cheap. But I think its cappable to do white maps without any key items with the Skelly-bros | |
" Nothing seems too dramatic in the patch notes. No buffs, and the only nerf will be the change to phase run from 80% invisibility to 50%. This could end up being a huge nerf, we'll have to see. |
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" I'm gonna have to disagree with mostly all of this. " Even if you believe that the end goal items are too expensive, you can still trust me that the synergies of this build exist independently to the expensive stuff. The gem choices, tree, ascendencies and playstyle are cheap, easy, level smoothly, and work with crappy SSF gear. I've verified this. " I bought 2 in Delve. One for 40C, one for 50C. Maybe they became scarcer later, but in 3.5 it's reasonable to expect drop rates go up a lot with so many more abysses available. If you don't want to spend on a shroud, drop a trash tier 6 link chest (or tabula) into PoB and you'll see that it will work just fine as a replacement. " True, the PoB jewels I put in are unrealistic with 4 mods, but I crafted 3 mod ghastly's that weren't too far off the mark using just scourings, alterations, a few regals and orbs of chance. Now that people can run 2 Abysses at will, It is reasonable to expect that jewel purchasing or crafting will be even easier this league. In any case, 2 good mods or 3 low level mods are all that are needed per jewel. Expensive ones with 3 or 4 good mods are just icing. " I spent the bulk of my currency in Delve on testing the golem builds (lightning, chaos, Ice X 2) I found them very expensive, but not even close to comparing with the synergy, stats and ease of playing in skeleton/phantasm builds. " The elder rare helm just needs a minion damage mod and a minion life mod to be good for us. People throw these away. It does not need +2 to minion level. I bought 2 of them for 5-10 chaos in Delve. That being said, this league I believe elder rares will have lower drop rates, so the price may become higher. If that is the case, replace the helm with a hale negator, skullhead, baron, ahn's contempt, or tiara if you want. |
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I always played tanky builds that deal consistent damage too (like molten strike jugg and pre nerf nekro solar guards-Tukohama with a lot of block chance)...Between this build and your other zombie-skele build, which one is better for endgame? what are the differences or pros/cons side to side in both of your builds?...And most important for me, which one is the most tanky build? cause I really dont like dying in this game...
Last edited by yissus on Dec 6, 2018, 4:12:46 PM
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