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

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Ramus wrote:

Man, you are just awesome. Thanks for that information. I am really tempted to pick one up now. I'm going to see if I can find one at 1ex and then I may pull the trigger. At this point I have no real reasons to use a 2h staff aside from skele gems, I don't need the resists.

It also appears that Aul's uprising has level 15 envy with no mana reserve.. that is interesting as well, but I would need to get rid of my current unique amulet. Actually.. this might be huge with commander of darkness? If I can run this aura for 0 mana then I get the 20% elemental resist from commander, etc. Making that affect both me and my minions, and keeping hatred/EE as well.

I just love how many different ways this build can go. Theres almost no way to "Screw things up" and you can sink as little or as much into it as you want. Call me a fanboy but I plan to use this build going forward for league openers.

Hey Ramus,

You're very kind to take the time to write so often and to be so complimentative. Thank you. And referring back to an earlier comment, please don't feel like you can't suggest or criticise the build at all either. It's all helpful. Not everyone has the same preferences and playstyle. But thank you for such generous praise.

It's a lot of fun doing Rare Only builds. Cause then ANYTHING that drops can be exciting and a potential improvement. I played around with a Righteous Fire Chieftain, Caustic Arrow Trickster (lots of Dodge), and a Chaos Innoculation (obviously curse heavy) Occultist last league with the same idea of Rare Only. I love it.

Anyway, thanks again :).

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haiScore wrote:

*Reposted from 3.4 in case you didn't see it and visibility*

Thank you for writing up the guide to this build and being so supportive in the discussion! I always love playing summoner since it seems so poetic considering the themes of the game revolve a lot around the undead and corpses.

Anyway, a major problem I ran into is low mana. Is this build specifically designed to reserve away all the mana? After using Hatred and having Temporal Chains turned on, I have about 90 mana or 15% of my mana left to do anything?!

Also as I've been leveling, I've grown really attached to using a spell-totem casted Arc followed by button mashing SRS with melee-splash, which procs Elemental Equilibrium just fine and does like 90% of the work for me clearing the map off screen quickly.

So the trouble is that I would like to use charge dash also to activate Holy Relic, but does that mean I'll have to give up on my current playstyle? Any advice is appreciated, thanks again!

Hey haiScore,

I did get notified that you posted on the 3.4 thread, but you re-posted on the 3.5 thread before I could sit down for the evening and do some responses. Thanks for re-posting :).

You're very welcome! I'm happy to help. POE is the best game earth but it can be so hard to get started without guidance. I was fortunate enough to have a buddy that's been in it since the alpha/beta days to help me get started...I can't imagine what it would have been like to do it alone.

I too am a minion fan. In every game, I always love creating an army around myself.

The build without any modifications uses very little mana. Hatred uses 50% on our mana but is a HUGE boost to damage, while Temporal Chains linked with Blasphemy uses 35%. But when we add Enhance to the links, it increases the mana multiplier, which increases the amount of mana it reserves. SO you'll have 90% of your mana reserved. It enough for Spamming Skeletons with a 6 link anytime you want and never notice mana as an issue.

I'm a huge SRS fan as well, but ya, you'll have to make a hard choice. Something has to go, you only have so many gem sockets. To be really efficient with SRS, you'll want really fast cast speed and mana regen. It can be done with this build, you'll just have a harder time getting the rares you want cause you'll be searching for what is already suggested, on top of looking for mana regen and cast speed.

I'd probably suggest cutting the movement skill out. You'll be a glass cannon but because SRS is essentially a ranged casting skill, I think you'll find you'll use either your movement skill OR SRS. It'll still let you use Vaal Skeletons on bosses too.

But that's only for how I typically play SRS.

I hope that helped. Let me know if you need anything else.

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triniparty wrote:

Merry Christmas to everyone who hasn't had it yet :)

Merry Christmas triniparty! Hope you and your loved ones have a great holiday. :)

Can't wait to find new ways to make this build even more awesome in 2019!

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triniparty wrote:

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armstrongxnxx wrote:

Hey triniparty Where can i find the craft + 1 Maximum Number of zombies/Skeleton?

Hey armstrongxnxx,

You know, that's a good question...I don't exactly remember. I'm pretty sure it's something I got from Unveiling an item. I'm playing league on PC with my Slow Mo Zombies and my other builds in standard on console. I have the craft available on PC but not on console. So I'm pretty sure I just found it as an option to unveil from an item.

Are you league or standard? Sorry I don't exactly remember.

Betrayal league i saw your body armor on your armory but i can't find the craft to + 1 Maximum Number of zombies and Skeleton if u remmember please tell me

I just hit 70 on Xbox! Merciless Lab was so easy, with 3L zombie and 3L skeletons only (other gem links same as you proposed) it took me about 15 seconds on last trail. I am looking forward for engame, finally I might kill Elder :D

Just grabbed this off the market for 35c, unfortunately I wasted almost 80c in chromas trying to get the blues on it. But whew, my minions are moving at super speed!

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By taunt do you mean that enemies are attacking you last? Cause Taunt is an actual mechanic in the game that this build does not use. So since we don't have any Taunts, who the enemy chooses to hit is random...or based on whatever coding. But there is nothing with this build that makes enemies hit the minions first. Maybe Syndicate member are designed to specifically aim for the user, but there is no Taunt like the Champion has.

Just wanting to be clear. I hope your changes work for you.

I was trying both Taunt Totem, and the Stone Golem (still using the golem) to try to get the darn betrayal masters off my posterior when they teleport onto me and hope they stuck on what was taunting them. It doesn't work. Well it does sort of, but not really. Even when taunted, the betrayal masters will auto teleport to you after a period of time, or if you get to far away (not counting the caravan/transportation squad as they teleport to the caravan instead).

Finally tough, I caved in a bought a few cheap piece of gear and got lucky on some others. Right now I have about 4K health, 1K ES, over capped resistances, and cake walking through most of the content. I hit about 51% phys damage reduction too with my setup. That being said, if 3+ intervention guys all pop out at the same time on top of me I can STILL be 1 shotted. Just unlucky luck of the draw when that happens. Otherwise if I can space them out I can usually handle everything else now. Fortifications can be a real bear if too many betrayal members help out with the crap ton of npcs that spawn too. Especially the corpse exploding guys. Just ugh to them in a tiny packed place filled with corpses. That is just instant death every time.

I have modded up your build and can basically run red maps no problem solo or in groups. Clear speed I am about as fast as anything else I've seen. I randomly pop into higher level open groups to compare the build with others there.

As I said previously, and still stand by, the build rocks on everything but Betrayal mechanics. I wouldn't ever do this as a HC build with the Betrayal league. You can check the variant of my build out. Basically the only thing left for me to get is to pop an Enhance gem into my headpiece and be done gem wise. I currently us SRS, but thinking of switching to skels maybe. Not sure. I basically shield charge into a group, pop convo, pop all my flasks, and hold down the SRS button until everything is dead. Then charge into the next group and do it again. It's WAY faster on clear speed IMHO this way.

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Viscar wrote:

As I said previously, and still stand by, the build rocks on everything but Betrayal mechanics. I wouldn't ever do this as a HC build with the Betrayal league. You can check the variant of my build out. Basically the only thing left for me to get is to pop an Enhance gem into my headpiece and be done gem wise. I currently us SRS, but thinking of switching to skels maybe. Not sure. I basically shield charge into a group, pop convo, pop all my flasks, and hold down the SRS button until everything is dead. Then charge into the next group and do it again. It's WAY faster on clear speed IMHO this way.

I would have to partly agree with this. As I said in my T10+ thoughts post a page or so back, there are certain parts of syndicate we do well on with minions, and other parts that are just bad. Generally, we're screwed on intervention because high tier syndicates will completely ignore minions and auto-target teleport attack you for a near 1 hit or 1 hit. At this point my only options are to get them in a room where I can send my minions, back out, and hope none of them TP to me. Skeleton duration has helped a little with this. For transportation, its a matter of getting in front of the transport. So its heading towards your minions, then you can vaal up an army and hopefully slam them before they can target you. Sometimes I just ignore these since they are easy to skip in high tier maps. Forts are hit and miss and depend on tier and size, small forts are a breeze, large ones can suck. Labs are generally easy because of the small area your mobs can fill, but also easy to avoid in high tier.

Generally speaking syndicate is my least favorite part of this game right now. And since I have not tried any other builds this league I can not speak to if this build is weak against syndicate, or if its syndicate that is ridiculously overpowered. (I am leaning towards the latter.)

Thanks for sharing your character, I am going to take a look at it and see what I might want to work into my build! That physical reduction sounds great.

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I would have to partly agree with this. As I said in my T10+ thoughts post a page or so back, there are certain parts of syndicate we do well on with minions, and other parts that are just bad. Generally, we're screwed on intervention because high tier syndicates will completely ignore minions and auto-target teleport attack you for a near 1 hit or 1 hit. At this point my only options are to get them in a room where I can send my minions, back out, and hope none of them TP to me. Skeleton duration has helped a little with this. For transportation, its a matter of getting in front of the transport. So its heading towards your minions, then you can vaal up an army and hopefully slam them before they can target you. Sometimes I just ignore these since they are easy to skip in high tier maps. Forts are hit and miss and depend on tier and size, small forts are a breeze, large ones can suck. Labs are generally easy because of the small area your mobs can fill, but also easy to avoid in high tier.

Generally speaking syndicate is my least favorite part of this game right now. And since I have not tried any other builds this league I can not speak to if this build is weak against syndicate, or if its syndicate that is ridiculously overpowered. (I am leaning towards the latter.)

Thanks for sharing your character, I am going to take a look at it and see what I might want to work into my build! That physical reduction sounds great.

That's my problem in a nutshell. Intervention is the worst if enough members of the syndicate all TP out at once and slam you at the same time with their abilities. Almost zero counter to play that with a minion build. Caravan can sometimes be skipped and sometimes not. The caravan syndicate members will always teleport back to the caravan too once it gets far enough away. Well the transportation members will teleport to the caravan, the "helper" syndicate members will chase you down though like an intervention. So that part of the mechanic can be partially abused at least.

Forts as you said are hit and miss. You can mostly skip them, unless they are planted in certain spots on the map you can't get around them at all. I've encountered that a few times. I've had my problems with both large and small size forts too. Again it depends on the members that show up and how many adds had a chance to spawn before I could engage the fort. Sometimes I'm dealing with something nearby and didn't realize the fort got activated and is generating a ton of adds already.

I will state however that it is the build I believe that is having an issue with Betrayal. Friend at the same level went with a Dominating Blow/Herald of Purity Templar setup for his league starter. Hasn't died. Has no problem beating down syndicate 3 stars of any sort and amount. Just jumps in and smashes them everytime. That was before the recent nerf. Afterwards it is a joke entirely to his build. I know other builds are the same when it comes to dealing with the syndicate. The minion build relies a bit on the minions being part of the defense, or in also this build, curses as well. The Betrayal mechanics basically ignore minions and curses when they pop out of their green TP's and 1 shot you all at once.

As for my damage reduction:
11% from zombies out right now for summoning 11 zombies with the Flesh Binder node
20% from Fortify (which is all damage reduction)
15% from Basalt Flask
20%~ from Granite depending on level of enemies
8% from Lunaris
5% Gruthkul

By raw numbers it is 80% ish or so (with my normal armor level added in on my character sheet). This is what pops up on my character sheet when I run all this. Path of Building shows similar too. Life Regen is 238.7 normal, 472 with Sulfur Flask, and 565 with Holy Relic regen going on top of that. I THOUGHT the whole setup was pretty tanky. I still get slapped around on red maps though at some betrayal encounters. Also, Catarina is soo much fun... (not really). I beat her, but took 3 deaths last time we fought. This is also mostly due to our curses having no real affect on her. Friend never even had to look at his screen while fighting her except to knock over her gems. Again the friend that is also a casual player that started with me and decided to go for a tanky Dominating Blow/Purity setup is destroying the same betrayal content (along with all other content) that is slapping me around from time to time.