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

For those using a Zombie build for the first time, a bit of additional information regarding how to direct your Zombies. Trini points out that Zombies will move in the direction you attack. Mostly this is going to be with Charged Dash. Since this is a channeled skill (you'll see your ghostly self move in the direction you're pointing), Zombies read this as an attack and will race in that direction.

You can also use Skeletons very efficiently to direct your Zombie's simply by raising a skeleton where you want your Zombies to go. You can try this by throwing your Skeletons out in several directions and watch your Zombies race after each one. I find this useful to keep my DPS concentrated; for instance, during a fight with a boss who summons lots of minions. By spamming Skeletons right on top of the boss, it keeps your Zombies in one location and prevents them from being distracted from the boss.

This also works with spectres, so if you're using spectres as you level, this directs them as well.

Hope this info is helpful.

I may have missed it somewhere, but with the enhance and enlighten gem, when they hit level 2, does that allow us to use all three auras? Right now all I have is enfeeble and temporal chains, but cant cast hatred? either I do have low mana and need more or I need to wait for the level 2 support gem to kick into play to have the effects play put

I started up this build for the first time in Betrayal, and I have to admit that it was a bit of a struggle to get going (mostly because my gear drops were unlucky). Syndicate fights were just murder. Today I poked through my stash (fed by another character) and upped my life/resists significantly, and it's made a huge difference. I was getting one-shot in Syndicate fights before, now they're pretty manageable. Your guide is excellent and I'm looking forward to more play time with this build.

I did have one question (and I know the answer is probably 'personal preference'), but what type of armor are you focusing on? I ended up with a lot of ES gear to start, but I'm thinking a switch to Armor/ES might offer better survivability. Thoughts?

"

Viscar wrote:

So I made a view of my char running a T9 map. I ran out of red maps for now. It's the same basic premise though as you'll see in the video. Basically I only really worry about physical reflect maps. My zombies destroy themselves on those. One other thing to note. I had just recently converted many of my gems to quality 20% and reset their levels back to level 1 with the vendor recipe. So things aren't quite as powerful as they were before the reset as I am leveling the gems back up.

https://youtu.be/7y033N2vNk4

EDIT doing up another video right now of a T11 I just got and ran a T12 zana inside it.

EDIT AGAIN:

https://youtu.be/nWnc0oMzmAw

Video uploaded. Little better quality and didn't get the server freeze I got on the last one.

Hey Viscar,

I'm glad it's working out for you! Great job. I like seeing how other people play their way. Thanks for sharing!

"

...sweet will try it out and see how it goes, i find it hard to look for rare gear, i just dont know outside the primary stats what other stats are solid on gear for this build.

Hey Diseasedmeat,

It can be pretty crazy figuring out gear.

TO EVERYONE:

I'll try and break it down easy.

For everything that isn't your weapon, you want Health, and resists (if you are playing Betrayal, don't forget Chaos resists).

Your Amulet can be where you get ALL your Dex and Strength that you're missing. Once you have that, aim for an amulet that has health too (resists are a bonus).

Rings and Belts are easy parts of a build to get most of your resists.

All your gear except your weapon should have high health rolls (75 or higher as an estimate).

Your weapon can't have Added Cold Damage and should have a prefix free (or have a minion damage mod already on it). I'll explain below.

If you're starting from scratch, This is the order I'd do things in:

- Get your 5/6 link(s).
- Get your boots with movement speed.
- Get your Bone Helmet.
- Get your amulet.
- Get the rest of your gear to revolve around everything else.


The following slightly more complicated part will help you a lot:

Every rare in the game can roll up to (BUT NO MORE) than 3 prefix and 3 suffix modifiers. When you craft, you can add 1 mod to an item. You can check how many prefixes and suffixes an item has by holding ALT (or pushing down the Right Analog like a button) while highlighting an item.

So go to your crafting bench and take a lot at what you have already unlocked.
Take note of what you can craft, and your values. For example, if you currently can only craft up to 30 Maximum Life, don't rely on crafting Life. Try and find gear that has higher life and craft something else on it.

So take a look at your bench. Then when items drop (or when you're shopping) keep a look out for items that have only two prefixes or two suffixes.

Prefixes:
- Maximum Life
- Movement Speed
- Minion mods

Suffixes:
- Resists

So here: If a pair of boots drop that have 30% movement speed, 70 health, and only 1 or 2 suffix, you can craft resists on it.

If a weapon drops that doesn't have Added Cold Damage and only 2 prefixes, you can craft Minion Damage.


These are some basics. There are always a few exceptions and bugs that exist but that's how you can narrow down your stash and what you find valuable for your build.

I hope that helps everyone!

"

Ailean wrote:

- I started to use Magna Eclipsis unique shield, and I feel really good with it. the +2 levels on gems makes TC superstrong (+32 quality thanks to enhance lv5) and the life + armor are really good against the biggest threat: physical damage. But mostly the Elemental Aegis skill is broken: 1000 shield against magic damage is like to have 1000 ES more (with my setup I have 5600 life and 900 ES).

This is crazy, I just grabbed one for 29c:


Wow, the shield is game changing for elemental messups and its sent my armor and life through the roof. I have this going with my United in Dream and I am tearing through T15's like butter.

For what its worth, I did a t16 last night (chimera) and was able to do it with no deaths. Have not tried the others yet but i'll report back. Check out my character if you'd like. I still have much of the original tree on mine, though I am thinking about changing it up a little in some areas.

"

poeGT wrote:

...I think scourge+charity looks like a safe combo?

I would have never guess 4 life flasks, but it makes sense. Do you bother with minion heal affix on it? Or all the links/tree is enough beef for them. I am using onslaught atm too but I am leveling.

Scourge and Charity is always awesome:)

Use any flasks you like. I only use two flasks cause too many buttons and options hurts my brain ;). True story.

got another question, got some gear all set up with the right links and sockets and got the gems etc, so holy relic , molten shield, and stone elemental, are on auto cast, from the def gem. was alittle freaked out on why it wouldnt let me cast it. but i cant get charged dash to work, i meet all the requirements, just keep saying skill cant be used. am i doing the skill wrong?

"

Ailean wrote:

Hi to everyone, I play PoE from beta (not all the leagues, I had many breaks during those years) and it's my first time doing a summoner build (even if the witch is my favored Exile)...I hope I didn't forgot nothing, sorry for my English and thanks to Triniparty for making this guide and being always so kind.

Hey Ailean,

Great post and thanks for the kind words :). I'm glad you enjoy the build and gave it a shot! As I'm sure you know (being around the game a long time), it's really common when trying a new playstyle in POE to make modifications on the go to get over the "walls" of a current setup. So to get to T16 as your first "wall" is awesome. Way to go! So great job asking for a second look.

The one thing that makes this build weak for some playstyles is how we get our damage mitigation. If you have 10'000 energy shield, you can get away with a build that doesn't have anything to weaken the damage we receive. But when we're capping at 5500 health, the mitigation is vital. You've kept Fortify which is huge (remember it only works on Hits, not Damage over Time), but you got rid of Enfeeble. Granted that doesn't work as well against bosses, but even if you're lowering boss damage by 18%+, it'll help a lot. So make sure both are "on" as much as possible. Don't die trying to turn them on, but keep them on if you can.

Mon't's is an awesome weapon. Do your Zombies stay alive with Mon't's but no Minion Life Support? Do you find they do enough damage in the high end battles? I'd suggest putting Life Support back in, but if they aren't dying, they aren't dying.

Honestly with the exception of the Enfeeble change, things look really good. You have high health and great gear! I like the changes you made. The boss battles at the end get a lot harder the longer the battles go on. So much stuff gets added to the battles when they last a bit.

What do you find you're doing when you die? My method for the big battles is: Ignore my zombies. Move to safety, cast skeletons once. Move to safety, cast skeletons once. Move to safety, cast skeletons once...And when I can tell what's happening on the screen, I hit the boss with Charged Dash which procs Enfeeble, EE, Fortify and Holy Relic. If my Zombies die (darn Phoenix) I just ignore it. The Skeletons deal more than enough damage.

Are you comfortable with Charged Dash? Cause you could only use it as an "applier" of effects and use a flask like a Quartz Flask or Quicksilver flask to move about the battles.

Does that help at all? If you didn't understand what I said or you have more questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Also, I'm not sure how familiar you are with all the end game battles, but the BIGGEST factor to surviving the battles is simply familiarity. It really is. Once you know what the stages of the boss battles are like and how to see the "one-shot-kill" attacks in advance is the biggest part of success there. Kinda sucks, but it's how the game is made. Thanks for the post!

"

Rodneyking wrote:

I may have missed it somewhere, but with the enhance and enlighten gem, when they hit level 2, does that allow us to use all three auras? Right now all I have is enfeeble and temporal chains, but cant cast hatred? either I do have low mana and need more or I need to wait for the level 2 support gem to kick into play to have the effects play put

Hey Rodneyking,

Good question. I think there's a little confusion. I'll check the guide to make sure I'm clear on things.

If you follow the guide without modifications, there will only be two auras: Hatred and Temporal Chains (Blasphemy). Enfeeble is Cast on Hit from our movement skill. So you won't need any mana reservation nodes on the tree.

Also, out of the "drop only" gems, we only use Enhance. I didn't include Enlighten in the guide.

You're welcome to add them in any way you like of course. But the guide (un-modified) doesn't include 3 auras or the Enlighten gem.

With Temporal Chains and Hatred on, you'll have almost all your mana used up, but it's enough for Skeletons and Charged Dash.

Let me know if you have any other questions. Thanks for the post.