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

Thanks for the great build triniparty.

I played poe in 2013 for a little bit but this was my first "real" start. So I'm learning the game with your build.

I'm currently playing with the 1handed build, you can check my gear on my public profile.

I'm thinking of linking Summon Phantasm on Kill Support to my Raise Zombie.

And putting them with the support gems from the build inside of the 6-link Soulwrest staff. (2-handed)

Phantasms follow you like Zombies, the difference is they have ranged attack.

"

The maximum number of Phantasms that can be summoned caps out at 10 naturally, however, when a Summon Phantasm on Kill Support gem is socketed into the staff, the gem's phantasm count is added to the total without requiring the 'on kill' parameter, bringing the maximum quantity of Phantasms to 21 with a level 21 skill gem.

When I checked the phantasms with my current build on PoB:
Total DPS of a Zombie: 19.503
Total DPS of a Phantasm: 12.294

I can currently raise 10 zombies. So, total DPS of 195,503.
21 Phantasms have the total DPS of 258,174.

So once I have 21 Phantasms, which is really easy, zombies can raise Phantasms pretty fast by killing the first 21 mobs, I would have a total DPS of 453,677. More than double of my current DPS. And this is without altering the Passive Skill Tree in your build. 21 additional minions also means that 21 more things to tank/aggro the attacks from the mobs.

Have you thought about this? Am I missing something?

I'm eager to try but I'm not sure which support gem I should pull out to put Summon Phantasm on Kill Support in. Do you have a suggestion?

Summon Phantasm on Kill Support
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Summon_Phantasm_on_Kill_Support

Soulwrest
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Soulwrest

"

Viscar wrote:

Meant to put an update here.

I finally did get eternal labs done. Got my skeleton ascendancy nodes and swapped to Vaal skeletons from SRS. Big difference in some major matchup and against he syndicate. That at the nerf/tweaks recently made them much more doable overall.

For the most part steam rolling all the content. I haven't done anything past T15 yet. Mainly because this game's RNG hates me. Literally. Want to know how BAD the RNG is for me in this game? I've been playing since beta from 2013 to now. 6 years. I have thousands of hours logged into this game. I have spent hundreds of thousands of fusings trying to 6 link anything. Never done it until 2 days ago. Literally just got the achievement for my first 6 linked item from using a fusing. THAT is how bad the RNG is for me in this game. Hence why I go for the cheap builds. I am lucky to get an exalt to drop for me per league. PITA to get higher tier maps dropping and going too.

Still this is one of the better overall builds I've done so far for ease of play. It is fairly cheap, effective, and easy to play.

Sweet! Thanks for the update! And congrats on getting a 6 link on your own! I don't have that achievement yet on either PC or console yet, but you started long before me. I started in the early 2's. 2.3 maybe? Last league I spent 3200 fusings on one item and didn't get it. I feel your pain, it hurts. So great job on the accomplishment!

I'm glad you're liking the build! Hopefully you get the maps to drop soon.

"

f5uck wrote:

Thanks for the great build triniparty.

I played poe in 2013 for a little bit but this was my first "real" start. So I'm learning the game with your build.

I'm currently playing with the 1handed build, you can check my gear on my public profile.

I'm thinking of linking Summon Phantasm on Kill Support to my Raise Zombie.

And putting them with the support gems from the build inside of the 6-link Soulwrest staff. (2-handed)...

I can currently raise 10 zombies. So, total DPS of 195,503.
21 Phantasms have the total DPS of 258,174...21 additional minions also means that 21 more things to tank/aggro the attacks from the mobs.

Have you thought about this? Am I missing something?

I'm eager to try but I'm not sure which support gem I should pull out to put Summon Phantasm on Kill Support in. Do you have a suggestion?

You're very welcome! And welcome back! It's a privilege to help people learn the game and have people learning the game to choose my guides. If you have any suggestions for the guide or build, please feel free to post. Advice from both the new and the experienced are equally valuable.

Summon Phantasm is awesome. And so the Soulwrest. You're not missing anything! I enjoy having my guide be open-ended so that if an item drops that excites you too much to ignore, you can use it and accommodate it.

To answer your question, in the 6 link staff, definitely lose Melee Physical. Phantasms cast projectiles and won't benefit at all from that gem.

Don't forget that you have to consume corpses to get all 21 Phantasms out there.

Let us know how it goes! That's a great addition to the build!

And thanks again for the kind words :).

How much is +2 to minion gems worth? I have a Skullhead but one of the Syndicate guys was nice enough to drop me a Wraithlord. Is the +2 to minion gems on that worth more than the life, mana, resists and other stuff on the Skullhead?

"

saintonan wrote:

How much is +2 to minion gems worth? I have a Skullhead but one of the Syndicate guys was nice enough to drop me a Wraithlord. Is the +2 to minion gems on that worth more than the life, mana, resists and other stuff on the Skullhead?

Hey saintonan,

Great question.

I'm not sure which weapon version you're doing, but if you're doing the one-handed version, have skeletons in the head piece, have the rest of the guide as I laid it out, your skeleton gem and it's supports at level 20, and wearing the Skullhead, your stats would be this:
DPS per skeleton: 46'000
Health per skeleton: 4600
Movement speed per skeleton: +154%

With Wraithlord you get:
DPS per skeleton: 57'000
Health per skeleton: 5600
Movement speed per skeleton: +156%

So it's up to you if it's worth it. The only time offense isn't worth it is if you can't stay alive. So the only reason to not use either is if you need the health. Once you're doing the Elder maps with your eyes closed you'll have Helmets drop that have great modifiers for minions that essentially make a 4 link, a 5 or 6 link...while also having a +1, 2, or 3 to minion gems. Here's an example: an Elder mod can be: "Minions deal (23-25)% increased Damage, Socketed Gems are Supported by Level 20 Minion Damage". There's also one for Minion Life.

Does that answer your question?

I think it answered what I was looking for. I'm using Queen's Decree right now, but I'm trying to angle closer to the one-hand weapon version of your build because I don't expect that sword to last me far into the endgame, and most solutions after that use one-hand weapons.

My question really centered how to value +2 to gems. I can't actually get to a level 20 gem until my caster is level 70, and at that point I'll probably have better options than either of these, like the ones you talked about. That makes the dps increase somewhat less than what you posted, but it's awesome to have a ballpark number! In the meantime, I went back and thought about my gameplay the last couple of acts, and about the only time I've bothered with skeletons is on bosses and Syndicate events, and it seems to me that to make Wraithlord useful I'd have to use skeletons a lot more than I currently do. Since I'm currently clearing things about as fast as I can loot, and since from what you wrote the +2 doesn't make a drastic overall dps increase (considering zombies and skeletons combined), I think it makes more sense to have the life/mana/resists.

Thanks for your help!

Picked back up after my holiday break and I'm still loving it! It's getting me places I've never been and teaching me a lot, especially because I'm in SSF and I've had to learn a lot about crafting to get gear that works for me. Just yesterday I decided to drop my SRS and Spectres and also slotted my skills exactly how the guide suggests. It took a little bit of adjusting but it does kill things much faster, although I've been dying more because instead of sending my SRS ahead to guide my zombies now I have to channel the move skill which sometimes ends up putting me in the middle of danger. Before I had both TC and Enf on Blasphemy, so I'd just send the SRS ahead then run around the pack of mobs while the zombies finish them off. There was no taking advantage of EE that way though, which ultimately made me go away from that. Overall I'm glad I changed to how the guide specified though, it feels much faster - I just have to be more careful.

Right now I'm trying to level out my resists and get my chaos resist up, while at the same time finding room for more Dex and Str because some of my gems won't level up.

Anyways, thanks again and let me know if you happen to see anything obvious that I can/should change up.

Thanks for a great guide triniparty.

I have played your Slow Mo builds twice before, last time was in Incursion league. But I usually get sidetracked into other builds at some point, and hence I have never made it further than low tier maps in SSF.

However, this time I really feel good about the build, and will try to see how far I can push the build in Betrayal SSF.

Here is my current gear at level 83:



Just this morning I got lucky and got this from the beastiary altar:



Gonna see how I can craft that and put it to the best use in order to push on.

The first time I got a 6L in SSF so really excited to see how far I can take this.

One question, I got both Enlighten and Empower support gems, can these be used in the build?

Once again, thanks for a great build. I will keep you posted once I get further into high end maps. I am slow leveler though with limited play time, so it may take a while :)

So as I've been playing around in Path of Building with this build, one thing I noticed was very odd. That is the recommended support gems to boost DPS for Zombie Slam attack. With 2 Violent Dead gems, I don't think my Zombies ever use the default attack anymore. They just spam slam anytime they attack. So I looked at maximizing the slam damage. The first and highest dps gem recommended by PoB is Cast While Channel Support. I have no idea how that works for the slam attack. The dps increased listed is very sizable too from PoB.

Can anyone else confirm what I am seeing in PoB? Is it a bug or should we all be slotting that support gem instead?

I'm getting close to my final build setup. With the last changes to Fortifications finally being brought back down into actual events I can do in high red maps, Betrayal is no longer a problem for me. Assuming I get only 1-3 at a time. 5-6 at a time is still overwhelming odds that I can only hope to run away from. That rarely happens at least to have that man syndicate members all show up at once. For reference you can get up to 3 members as part of a team for that event. So 3 fortification members can show up for an event. You can also have up to 3 allies or free floating agents show up to help. Having 5+ all at once, especially pre-nerf Fortifications, was basically me seeing how fast I could press the resurrect button. Pretty much it is that way for any build I've seen thus far at least.

I did Elder last night and all the guardians for him on red maps. Was fun. Stomped them all. Half the time I could go afk after shield charging into the boss once, popping Vaal skels, and then sitting off to the side constantly popping my Phase Run flask and my Stibnite flask. Bosses rarely targeted me if I did that. I will state it was a but more boring doing that so I still liked to be a bit more active with what I was doing. Bosses also tended to be phased fast from the DPS output of all the minions to their various invuln phases.

If I want to keep with regular skeleton warriors though I can push my health easily past 6K with the build I got going thus far. Part of me though is leaning to instead use skeleton mages with 2 Dead Reckoning and 1 From Dust jewels. That would drop my health to about 5.5Kish in the end with 600 ish ES. That is assuming no major upgrades to gear I am currently wearing and just additional health from a couple life nodes I have left to take.

One note, I did have one really BAD map I died on a few times before realizing what was happening. Curses with Elemental weakness, and -11 to elemental resistances dropped my fire to 64% for that map. Fire is the resistance that is the lowest "overcapped" resistance I have over 75%. So it was the only one to drop below 75% on that map. It was against undead as well and those darn necromancers were popping Detonate Dead on a Tier 15 Tower Map. Suffice it to say, I was INSTANTLY 100% to dead every time I was next to a corpse. I died 3 times that way before I put my flesh offering into a direct cast. Then I just moved slowly through the level blowing up the corpses before they could be used against me. The damage from that one spell is ridiculous when NPC's use it.

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Blacksheep1775 wrote:

...Anyways, thanks again and let me know if you happen to see anything obvious that I can/should change up.

Hey Blacksheep1775,

Things look great! And you have high Chaos resist! Change is hard. So hang in there. New habits are rough to learn. Only two suggestions for you since you asked:

1) Some of your gear has low life. But you know this and are in SSF...So you ahve to take what you can get. Just a reminder though.

2) The Decree of Winter on your gloves will initiate the negative effects of Elemental Equilibrium. So the gloves either need to be replaced or you need to replace the enchantment via lab.

Looking great! I'm glad you're enjoying the build!

Oh! I try and keep all my attribute requirements on one item. Amulets are the easiest to get lots of attributes on.