Slow Mo Zombies! (No Uniques Needed|Relaxed Playstyle|Easy to Gear|Anyone Can Play|All Content)[3.5]

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Ramus wrote:

So I just unskilled about 3 minion health nodes and left the minion health skill gem in, one option for anyone that wants some extra skill points to throw into life/defense. Im honestly thinking even without these nodes and the life gem my zombies are still going to survive anything except mega-aoe deaths. So that's definitely room to spec into more defense later on.

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triniparty wrote:

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Ramus wrote:

Still very happy with this build but as I am reaching the T9-T10 and depth: 100+ delve I am getting too many shots that nearly kill me or one shot me. My minion damage and survival is still way higher than my own, very rarely lose any zombies or pets. Been thinking about swapping the minion health gem and maybe adding a CWDT setup of some sort. I have a chaos golem leveling to reduce physical damage. I still need to get my health over 5k but aside from that and maybe switching to 1h i'm not sure what else to improve for defense.

But even if I never get this thing to perform in t10+ it's done exactly what I wanted, made me a couple of EX and positioned me to be able to run any other build in the game for the most part. It's fun and relaxing and i'll probably use it till the end of league when I want to throw on a headset with music and just mass clear t1-9 maps.

Hey Ramus,
I'm not quite sure what to suggest. You've followed the guide to the dot. Are you comfortable with your movement skill? Maybe that's it? I LOVE CD so it's quite perfect for my style of play. This build can typically fly through red maps without the help of skeletons, so if you're looking for a little extra health and find your Zombies survive fine, maybe replace your amulet? It won't give anything nuts, but an extra 100 base health would help a little. You have great gear. This build cleared the Atlas easily last league with just over 5000 health. Once I hit red maps, I Charge Dash everywhere. I typically only use skeletons for boss battles.

If you look at my latest broadcasts, does my playstyle differ a lot from yours?

I'm glad you're happy with the build but if you like it, I'd like to help you crush the atlas. Any other info you can give us?

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triniparty wrote:

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Guru1619 wrote:

Been using this build for a bit now and have been swapping between it and a Saboteur Arc Trapper. Loving how much more laid back it is.

I'm curious if you've tried using Summon Holy Relic with https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Increased_Area_of_Effect_Support seems rather useful for when your pets get spread out just enough to be out of range for it and when convocation is on CD or they aren't that spread out.

Can even throw them + desecrate into a 3 link set up so it covers more ground as well. or 4 Link with Hatred + Generosity + Summon Holy Relic + Increased Area of Effect. Flat 30% more coverage area at level 1 for our most useful auras/heals. (plan on doing the 4 link soon as I get on)

Edit: With the mana multiplier from the Increased Area of Effect gem, hatred will reserver 70% mana and with Temporal Chains reserving 35% we'd need something to reduce that... Off to PoB to see if there's some reduction to easily grab.

Yup, need at least 8% Reserved Mana Reduction. not sure if it'd be worth it since you'll be completely with out mana (have 757 Mana at the moment and with the 8% reduction I have 15 mana to use). May add another 6% with Sovereignty when I get another spare point.

I love the idea of Holy Relic with Increased Area of Effect! I played with the idea (1 handed only) to replace Molten Shell with it. (It's not a bad idea to do it!) The mana multiplier doesn't really have an impact on the way we use this Holy Relic.

Good idea considering adding the Area of Effect support into our auras as well! But as you saw, the mana reservation gets impacted by the mana multiplier of the support gem. It got too much. Plus, the actual AOE increase wasn't worth it. If I had all the other AOE increasing nodes on the tree, it'd be something to maybe invest it. But then, like you said, you need the mana space for skeletons.

If you go through with it, let us know if you like it! I'm a big fan of big AOEs :). I just can't have everything I love in one build.

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Another thing I've noticed is physical damage really hurts. Thinking of grabbing an Armor Flask or a -Phys damage Flask and swapping a health flask for it.

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Ramus wrote:

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Another thing I've noticed is physical damage really hurts. Thinking of grabbing an Armor Flask or a -Phys damage Flask and swapping a health flask for it.

This is where I was... physical damage was just too much. I don't know if something is different this league or what. But I needed to make changes.

The good news is.. i'm awesome again, after some tweaks. Blowing through T10+ like nothing and at 120 delve now.

Here's the key things I changed after T10+ that I was missing to get me feeling safe again. Warning this might be a bit long.

Golem: Swap the Stone Golem for a Chaos Golem, any physical damage reduction we can find is going to be a big help.

Skill Gems Quality: Maybe I didn't pay attention enough to the guide, but it doesn't make clear what gems are worth 20% on. I found out a majority of the minion gems have additional minion bonuses for %. If you are late game, getting GCP isn't that big of a deal, or buying gems maxed out for a few C. Check all of your gems on wiki to see what increasing them gives you.

Chaos Resistance: If you are playing syndicate often, then get your chaos resist to at least not negative. I've noticed that since going from -18 to +5 chaos I am getting murdeed less by syndicate weapons and the chaos damage members. I don't know if this is worth maxing out and this can start costing C as well so put this as a secondary.

Skill Tree: Don't be afraid to spend those orbs of regret. Take out any minion health nodes you can find that do not trigger a major skill. I found 3 from the west side of the skill tree that could be safely removed and put those directly into life/health. There's also another jewel on the west side for 2 skill points that may be a big benefit if you have a decent jewel to slot.

Ascend: Do your labs as soon as they become available. And rush to find the 4th lab while mapping because the last two skills are pretty huge for survival. Either you can take Commander of Darkness, to give your minions full ele resist and 30% increased damage/3% attack speed. Or you can take Puppet Master which is 20% increased movement, 30% duration, 12% attack speed, and 30% minion damage when you use a minion skill.

My personal choice: Puppet Master

As nice as Commander of Darkness is, I have no issues with zombie survivability at all. The puppet master gains in damage, speed, etc are just too huge. This leads me into...

Minion Damage: It's time to pile this on, I talk about some of this in Gears & Mods coming up, but any skills, mods, jewels, etc that can increase minion damage are going to be great. The less time enemies have to live, the more time you can spend not dying to massive physical damage. My zombies at this point are so powerful that anything dies before my charge ends. One problem I was having was that I was using my charge on groups of enemies and they weren't dying before I got hit by attacks, or let go of charge and ended up directly in the middle of the fight. Now that my zombies are insanely powerful with puppet master/mods, they just run through just about any group.

Gear & Mods: So this is a pretty easy one. For the most part, the guide stands true. Pile on as much life as possible and overcap your resists if you have the chance. (Elemental weakness maps are a breeze with 120+ resists) +Life isnt enough, you should also aim for gear with +% to life. Your chest can hold a +1 zombie but I would highly suggest +%Life/Mana over that. Aim for 5k+ life or at least 5k+ with combined ES to survive nasty potential 1 hits.

Armor is actually a benefit to us because we're trying to avoid physical damage, thankfully all of our pieces are STR/INT which gives us great chances to get high armor/ES pieces. I am trying to aim for 2000 armor with flask right now.

In addition to this, your gloves, your staff and your helmet can all contain awesome minion mods. My gloves give +20% damage, my staff gives +28% life and damage, and my helm gives a whopping 40% damage and +1 zombie/skeleton. Minion mods in betrayal are INSANELY GOOD and easy to craft.

Another big thing is MOVEMENT SPEED. Get yourself a 30% movement boot, your movement skill relies on it and being able to maneuver is a big part of this build. You don't have to focus on damage, so you can instead focus on positioning and charging into enemies properly to trigger EE/fortify/etc.

And last don't forget about mana, you need at least enough mana to have both your auras on, and still be able to summon 1 zombie. (You can go without enough mana by disabling auras but if you lose a zombie in combat you wont be able to resummon it quickly.)

Flasks: Get yourself a 25% reduced, instant recovery on low life, 66% increased armour during flask. (Panicked eternal life flask of iron skin) and put that in your 1 slot. This is your go to potion now while fighting. Spam it anytime you take damage and between that and fortify you are going to be able to take a lot of physical hits. The next 3 flasks I use are all recovery rate/bleed and a quick silver for speed.

Maps: Honestly the only thing at all that has given me trouble is Reflect Physical. Reflect Elemental doesn't do enough damage back to my zombies to outdo their regen. Physical is a pain though, but it can be done if you are using your skeletons wisely and resummoning your zombies. Also temporal chains maps are a bit of a pain, because they signifcantly hamper your charge. But if you use a quicksilver flask and take your time you are fine. Aside from these I don't think any map mod poses a huge threat to us.

Delve: Have fun, this build is such a breeze in delve (1-125). While traveling to your point, be careful and try to charge alongside your cart as best possible. The enemies do have pretty crazy physical damage at 100+ so let your zombies and skeletons take the lead if needed. Once you reach your node, spawn a vaal army, skeles and sit back and watch. (Or read twitter, as one user stated earlier) I really like this as a delve build so far and we'll see how it goes further down we go.

Breach: RIP Breach, I wish they were still like the days of old before multiple nerfs. Because this build is just insane in a breach portal. Rip that thing open, summon a vaal pack and charge around like mad collecting shards and loot.

Incursions: Actually be careful on these temple incursion maps, with map mods some of them can be come very dangerous because of the time limit and how we use charge. The temple itself is a breeze like any other map.

Syndicate: I saved this for last because this is probably my least favorite part of the game right now. Syndicates just suck, in general. But for us, here's some tips.

Large Forts: Generally ignore these, they are not worth the time killing 1000 exp-less mobs and chancing getting pummeled by 3 syndicates. The minions go crazy attacking everything in the area while the syndicates attack you, directly.

Small Forts: These are actually fun, our minions literally mob the fort and nothing can move until it's dead.

Lab: These aren't that hard, smaller area so you can minion mob anyone that attacks you.

Intervention: These suck, for the most part. You either run if you don't get 1 hit, or you hope it's not a bad map mod/combination of syndicate/high ranks and take them out.

Transport: Meh, some of these I do, some of these I avoid. Depends on the map. If you start out in front of the train (And its coming towards you) you can mob spam and usually crush it, but if you're following behind its hard to get a good attack going.

Safehouses: Really easy stuff, just be careful on the safehouse that have chaos damage shooting you constantly.

Mastermind: Very easy as long as you follow the right choreographed movements, watch a video on this fight before you go in. Minions make mince meat of the mastermind and its minions.

Whew, this turned out to be long but I hope it helps some of you that are entering the end game this league!

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Temporal chains procs it for ourselves and Hatred keep it up for our minions.

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Ramus wrote:

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Temporal chains procs it for ourselves and Hatred keep it up for our minions.

Unfortunately commander does not work on this because its blasphemy spell. It will only affect your minions. See the guide entry on it here:

- 4th Two Points - Commander of Darkness. The aura benefits of this build are only for Hatred. Curses turned into auras do not apply to these bonuses. Hatred will therefore be the only aura that affects our minions so they'll get 3% increased attack speed. The 30% increase in damage is only applied once, no matter how many auras your minions have benefiting them. The 20% to resists will also cap our zombies with 75% elemental resists, which is huge. Hatred doesn't apply to us because we linked it with Generosity. This node doesn't affect us at all, only our minions.