[3.6] YTC PurePhys Skelemancer | cheap strong lazy 4,8M~7M shaper DPS | <200c/ 5ex-ish/ 25ex+

recent changes:
17/4: added shaper run video
18/4: added uberlab solo video, updated kingmaker's price (15c to 25c).
22/4: added cortex bossfight video
5/5: added uberlab solo video (minmax version)

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Is it possible to have 3m+ shaper dps + 6k lifepool + tanky mitigation with only 2ex ??
WE AIM BIGGER!! we are talking about 4,8M shaper DPS within 1,5ex budget here!! NO BS




Introducing Dorothy Johnson, the social justice summoner with up to 11 pure physical skeletons, 8 zombies, Stone golem, AG, 2 spectres, and also 4 curses 4 auras.

Pros & Cons


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Gears and Gems

Passive Tree, Pantheon, Bandit


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DPS sources


Player Survivability

Minions Survivability


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Gameplay

Annoying Map Mods
Video Showcase


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PoB link


3.6 update



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Overall

I think this build has less potential for minmax compared to other meta like winter orb or divine ire. Further investment may be better for second char instead of min-maxing this. I mean we could imagine like 3 mirrors investment for builds with elemental conversion or elemental-to-chaos, but for min-maxing this build the potential isnt there. As you can see, the difference between <200c investment and 20ex investment is not too far. The main reason is this build depends too much on unique items (That's also why this is cheap), secondly it's pure phys build. The min-max version of this might end up to 40ex as we keep improving it now. It is still realistic and affordable.

This build was originally created for league starter build, but turns out I killed uber elder and other big bosses with only 2ex budget, and currently still improving with better gears. The cheap version has already tasted like min-maxed (it's tanky 4,8M shaper DPS, what can you expect from 1,5ex). This level of DPS and survivability might cost much more for other build (might cost 20ex+). For me 4M DPS is good enough, further investment may be better for survivability instead of DPS. The enemies dont die instantly as we cast spell, so ranged monsters might hit us once or twice before minions kill them. Thus, we need more defense.

I highly recommend this to all casual player. Non-crit pure physical is much less confusing than crit chance/multi, elemental conversion, DoT, or other mechanics. Damage scaling is very tangible, it multiplies by the number of minions and attack speed so it's very obvious and straight forward. And again, the gears are very cheap. Summoner gameplay is super safe and super fun. Good luck on trying this and have fun!!

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Thanks for visiting my thread.
I have spent more than 100 hours of theory crafting in PoB for this build and willing to improve this build even further. Any advice for min-max version is greatly appreciated. Also, please visit other necromancer builds out there for more insight and comparison (look at DPS, survivability, and especially the budget). I would like to know if there's another 5exy tanky build with 4,5m+ DPS. Feel free to call me if there's any question, advice or request. I'll update this again tommorow. Stay tune.

P.S.

271k shaper DSP. Please mark the "Shaper" box, your curses won't be as effective then.

But it's still good damage - especially when it's not dependend on drinking 5 damage flasks and powering up lots of vaal skills. Only the spectre apes must survive for frencies.

Other question: How good is the survival of your skeletons at big ugly bosses?

It's bad dps when they die faster than it's time left to resummuning them, besides casting curses, offerings and dodging slams?

"

Llyrain wrote:

271k shaper DSP. Please mark the "Shaper" box, your curses won't be as effective then.

But it's still good damage - especially when it's not dependend on drinking 5 damage flasks and powering up lots of vaal skills. Only the spectre apes must survive for frencies.

Other question: How good is the survival of your skeletons at big ugly bosses?

It's bad dps when they die faster than it's time left to resummuning them, besides casting curses, offerings and dodging slams?

sorry about that, I updated it, thanks.

- big guys (carnage chieftains, golem and animate guardian) have 60k+ hp and regenerate 6k hp/s so they're pretty much can facetank all big bosses. So far they have never died yet.

- zombies (25k hp, 2,5k hp/s) sometimes die, so in boss fight I have to trigger desecrate from weapon to raise them. Need to put it in order 1 desecrate + 2 molten shell + 3 flesh offering so we can raise zombie before the corpses exploded by offering. (zombies rarely die tho)

- skeleton (5k life) cant survive against shaper's slam or other big moves. But it's okay they're easy to summon (thanks to bone sculptor passive), only need 2 seconds to summon 11 skeletons. My abyssal jewels have "increased minion damage if you used a minion skill recently", so I still need spam it regularly (at least once per 4s) even if they're survive anyways. (The fresh ones dont have frenzy till the gorilla warcry approx per 5s). As you see in the video, Izaro couldnt kill any of skeleton, they regen fast.

Yea, I feel much weaker when I fight uber elder as the skeletons dont have frenzy (I spam them), and also curse effect things. Probably the actual DPS is 190k/s/skeleton against uber elder (after I uncheck the frenzy). It's around 2m shaper dps for 6ex investment. It's still satisfying I guess. For other bosses, damage calculation in PoB is quite accurate I think.

I focus on player's survivability instead of minions as I dropped some minion's life nodes for ES nodes. I died more often than my minions. lol
2x die against uber elder, 5x against boss cortex, 2x against mastermind. (Mostly because of poor gameplay)

any advice for min-max version of this build please let me know

I advise a "nearby enemies take 9% increased physical damage" helmet for your AG. It far outstrips a leer cast, and can be had almost as cheaply. no more than 5c for one that has a bunch of crap mods on it. The 9% increased phys damage is the only mod we care about.

dread banner is strictly better than war banner. It makes attacking enemies less able to hit you, 21% less accuracy at level 20, and unaffected by reduced curse effectiveness on bosses. you want this when you're facing hydra (or any boss that attacks). Basically a nearly-free mini enfeeble. The extra effectiveness from generosity means your minions impale more often, and the impales do more of their base damage per hit when applied. You really notice it when you run a herald of agony 1-minion build. the Boss' health bar goes down by huge chunks when the impale applies. (because you're using either rain of arrows or ball lightning to proc virulence stacks, and those both hit very fast, and when the hoag does impale, the next five hits (most of them from you since ol' spoder is a slow hitter) come fast, and each does much more than the standard 10% of physical damage of the initial hit, per hit, due to the greater effectiveness through generosity and enhance (and the weapon)

drop the rejuv totem for ball lightning. you'll see why in a second. put the stone golem in the boots, and blood magic (or increased duration) on the ag/zombies/spectres


i'd drop punishment since you're socket-starved. punishment requires each minion to be hit before he can receive the buff. It's not even that great a buff versus high-tier bosses, reduced curse effectiveness and all. That lets you have 2 apes and 1 evangelist (prox shield ftw) since you can have +1 spectre boots instead of windscreams. This more than makes up for the loss of elemental aegis, even though the bubble is only up 50% of the time (75% if you go for the defensive setup i mention below)

Vitality IMHO is a noob trap. if you get a couple of extra minion life nodes on the tree you'll never miss it, and you'll have 35% of your mana back.


also, if you're feeling brave, you can wield a one-hander with minion attack speed/ and minion damage/life and %quality of socketed gems (this is where you want to put your dread banner/generosity/enhance) and victario's charity withOUT Necro Aegis. Yes, you lose elemental aegis. But if you're playing this build correctly you're not getting hit very often. That gives your crew frenzy charges when you cast ball lightning (even if you use a totem! yes i've tested it. not that we have the sockets to spare for a spell totem but anyway...)

Replace the faster casting on temp chains with bane (much better aoe than raw casting temp chains, still triggers vixen). Or you can have all 3 curses on bane in a much better pair of gloves: Fenumus' weave, for example (that's what you're doing with most of the 35% mana you saved on vitality) THEN you summon Power Charge apes (Host Chieftains) instead of Frenzy apes, and when linked with blood magic, they're much more spammy with their warcry than the chieftains are (unless GGG ninja nerfed that recently).

You can also get a white socket on your boots or gloves (wherever you have your curses) and you can swap in assassin's mark for temp chains if you're comfortable with that. probably not a great idea in delve lol.

here's a version of your "bourgeoisie" setup with a few adjustments:

https://pastebin.com/kpThpJsW

Note that the tooltip for the skeletons doesn't take into account the added damage from Dread Banner. That's like, another 15% more multiplier on top of all that. yeah that's over half a million per skeleton.

you might have to turn on spiderweb stacks. (that's a big damage boost too as well as a hinder)

if you turn off power charges you'll see why i suggested selfcast ball lightning with vic charity. It keeps frenzy charges up much more reliably for your bonebois. the power charges are really just icing. If you wanted a really defensive setup, you could actually go with three evangelists. if you did do that, replace blood magic with increased duration, and you'll have shields up for 12 out of every 16 seconds. nuts.

I did change up your links a bit. there's no reason not to use bloodlust with a melee minion when you have vulnerability as a curse. and maim is strictly better than ruthless. The enemies get maimed anyway because of vulnerability, but the gem gives you more damage for the maim.

Lastly, well an afterthought really, you can save a bunch of currency by just getting minion life on the +3 helmet. the +20 or so increased damage isn't that much, when you have aspect of the spider giving you 50% increased.

enjoy!

one last bonkers hot take:

If you have well-capped resistances, and say, level 22 discipline on an amulet, you can put bloodlust, brutality, and enlighten (only those three, any more and you're negative mana. minion damage is same boost as brutality and has a higher mana multiplier so no minion damage) in a hungry loop and then add herald of purity and get 4 mimions that come out when you fight rares and uniques and do over 100k damage each. More minions whacking on the boss means boss is blind, bleeding, maimed and taunted that much more (actually your zombies and AG apply bleed). Plus they look really cool. You'll lose some ES and/or life (whatever you have on the ring you replace with the herald of purity.

but you can only realistically do this with reduced mana reserved on a couple of jewels and some tweaks to the tree. small tweaks.

https://pastebin.com/Xqia9ycG


In this example, i do this with reduced reservation on your helmet. That's possible if you can afford to spam essences of loathing on your base until you hit at least +2 minion gems along with the level # minion life support. sounds expensive. The screaming are 3 chaos each as of this writing, and that's the minimum you would need to make it work without corrupted jewels with reduced reservation. and gg minion jewels are already expensive af without that corruption.

with this, you can't endlessly spam skeletons, but really will you have time to stand still and push them out? no, you'll be dodging mechanics and casting ball lightning when you can (applying bleed, maiming, and generating frenzy charges for your mob), while they beat the tar out of the boss. One skeleton cast every 3-4 seconds is the most you should need. basically your juiced-up skeletons will insta-phase shaper. The purity posse is just for the lulz.

"

joachimbond wrote:

I advise a "nearby enemies take 9% increased physical damage" helmet for your AG. It far outstrips a leer cast, and can be had almost as cheaply. no more than 5c for one that has a bunch of crap mods on it. The 9% increased phys damage is the only mod we care about.

Thank you very much, I didnt think of rare items for AG before. Yes, I'll take this advice for sure.

"

joachimbond wrote:

dread banner is strictly better than war banner. It makes attacking enemies less able to hit you, 21% less accuracy at level 20, and unaffected by reduced curse effectiveness on bosses. you want this when you're facing hydra (or any boss that attacks). Basically a nearly-free mini enfeeble. The extra effectiveness from generosity means your minions impale more often, and the impales do more of their base damage per hit when applied. You really notice it when you run a herald of agony 1-minion build. the Boss' health bar goes down by huge chunks when the impale applies. (because you're using either rain of arrows or ball lightning to proc virulence stacks, and those both hit very fast, and when the hoag does impale, the next five hits (most of them from you since ol' spoder is a slow hitter) come fast, and each does much more than the standard 10% of physical damage of the initial hit, per hit, due to the greater effectiveness through generosity and enhance (and the weapon)

Yes, I was experiencing the same about dread banner. We dont need accuracy buff from war banner since skeleton is the main source of dps. I was using dread banner for big bosses, war banner for short fight (adrenaline). The problem is PoB couldnt capture the mechanics of impale atm, so I chose war banner temporarily. I'll compare them again empirically.

"

joachimbond wrote:

drop the rejuv totem for ball lightning. you'll see why in a second. put the stone golem in the boots, and blood magic (or increased duration) on the ag/zombies/spectres

i'd drop punishment since you're socket-starved. punishment requires each minion to be hit before he can receive the buff. It's not even that great a buff versus high-tier bosses, reduced curse effectiveness and all. That lets you have 2 apes and 1 evangelist (prox shield ftw) since you can have +1 spectre boots instead of windscreams. This more than makes up for the loss of elemental aegis, even though the bubble is only up 50% of the time (75% if you go for the defensive setup i mention below)

I think the bubble spectre would slow me down, our gameplay is to phase thru the mobs to next mobs (either by flame dash or quartz flask) and let skeleton finish them. I have to bring the huge defense with me, if it's left behind I would be fucked up.

"

joachimbond wrote:

Vitality IMHO is a noob trap. if you get a couple of extra minion life nodes on the tree you'll never miss it, and you'll have 35% of your mana back.

I think as long as our minions couldnt get one-shotted by boss, the regen is still very important. Currently they regen 6k+ hp/s, without vitality it would be 4k hp/s. (the stone golem in your version only 38k life and regen 2k hp/s, might need to change skill set to resummon).
Well, I'm playing more defensive atm. When I feel both player and minions are tanky enough may be I'll change vitality to aspect of spider as you suggest. I'll put it in consideration.

"

joachimbond wrote:

also, if you're feeling brave, you can wield a one-hander with minion attack speed/ and minion damage/life and %quality of socketed gems (this is where you want to put your dread banner/generosity/enhance) and victario's charity withOUT Necro Aegis. Yes, you lose elemental aegis. But if you're playing this build correctly you're not getting hit very often. That gives your crew frenzy charges when you cast ball lightning (even if you use a totem! yes i've tested it. not that we have the sockets to spare for a spell totem but anyway...)

Replace the faster casting on temp chains with bane (much better aoe than raw casting temp chains, still triggers vixen). Or you can have all 3 curses on bane in a much better pair of gloves: Fenumus' weave, for example (that's what you're doing with most of the 35% mana you saved on vitality) THEN you summon Power Charge apes (Host Chieftains) instead of Frenzy apes, and when linked with blood magic, they're much more spammy with their warcry than the chieftains are (unless GGG ninja nerfed that recently).

The shield is very important for me. I currently can only subtitute magna eclipsis with vix lunaris. It's better not to dual weild weapon because skin of the loyal has a role to double the defense, If i drop the shield I would lose the benefit of the chest. (or should I change the dress as well? we're talking about min-max version right).

We have to be able pass thru mobs if we want to clear fast, so I have to be tanky enough to bear damage from 1 to 3 mobs before skeletons clear them. Otherwise, we might get more damage but we couldnt pass thru mobs, which would make us slower instead of faster at clearing. If we rely on bubble, and drop some defensive layers we couldnt clear fast. but it's better for killing bosses, i guess.

Frenzy from 2 apes is quite good tho, I dont think we need to add more frenzy source. With low level clarity they warcry as often as using blood magic.

"

joachimbond wrote:

You can also get a white socket on your boots or gloves (wherever you have your curses) and you can swap in assassin's mark for temp chains if you're comfortable with that. probably not a great idea in delve lol.

here's a version of your "bourgeoisie" setup with a few adjustments:

https://pastebin.com/kpThpJsW

Note that the tooltip for the skeletons doesn't take into account the added damage from Dread Banner. That's like, another 15% more multiplier on top of all that. yeah that's over half a million per skeleton.

you might have to turn on spiderweb stacks. (that's a big damage boost too as well as a hinder)

if you turn off power charges you'll see why i suggested selfcast ball lightning with vic charity. It keeps frenzy charges up much more reliably for your bonebois. the power charges are really just icing. If you wanted a really defensive setup, you could actually go with three evangelists. if you did do that, replace blood magic with increased duration, and you'll have shields up for 12 out of every 16 seconds. nuts.

I did change up your links a bit. there's no reason not to use bloodlust with a melee minion when you have vulnerability as a curse. and maim is strictly better than ruthless. The enemies get maimed anyway because of vulnerability, but the gem gives you more damage for the maim.

Lastly, well an afterthought really, you can save a bunch of currency by just getting minion life on the +3 helmet. the +20 or so increased damage isn't that much, when you have aspect of the spider giving you 50% increased.

enjoy!

yes, I'll change vitality to aspect of spider when I feel tankier, need to test that. I'll look for aspect of spider on ring so we dont have to change the helmet. (my current unset ring is very budget, definitely will change that ring). Yeah I'm currently using dread banner, war banner was just less confusing in PoB so I put it with some notes. The lightning res in your PoB is too much, may be we can use that slot for aspect of spider. It's a suffix, right?

I'll test bloodlust for bossing. In PoB it became 4,5M DPS in condition that the enemies are bleeding. So yeah, if it works, bloodlust will be the subtitution for melee splash. thanks a lot!

"

joachimbond wrote:

one last bonkers hot take:

If you have well-capped resistances, and say, level 22 discipline on an amulet, you can put bloodlust, brutality, and enlighten (only those three, any more and you're negative mana. minion damage is same boost as brutality and has a higher mana multiplier so no minion damage) in a hungry loop and then add herald of purity and get 4 mimions that come out when you fight rares and uniques and do over 100k damage each. More minions whacking on the boss means boss is blind, bleeding, maimed and taunted that much more (actually your zombies and AG apply bleed). Plus they look really cool. You'll lose some ES and/or life (whatever you have on the ring you replace with the herald of purity.

but you can only realistically do this with reduced mana reserved on a couple of jewels and some tweaks to the tree. small tweaks.

https://pastebin.com/Xqia9ycG


In this example, i do this with reduced reservation on your helmet. That's possible if you can afford to spam essences of loathing on your base until you hit at least +2 minion gems along with the level # minion life support. sounds expensive. The screaming are 3 chaos each as of this writing, and that's the minimum you would need to make it work without corrupted jewels with reduced reservation. and gg minion jewels are already expensive af without that corruption.

with this, you can't endlessly spam skeletons, but really will you have time to stand still and push them out? no, you'll be dodging mechanics and casting ball lightning when you can (applying bleed, maiming, and generating frenzy charges for your mob), while they beat the tar out of the boss. One skeleton cast every 3-4 seconds is the most you should need. basically your juiced-up skeletons will insta-phase shaper. The purity posse is just for the lulz.

in your PoB the helmet has 7 affixes, which one to drop?

hmm I dont think i could afford herald of purity. We, as the player, need to kill monster or hit rare/unique monsters in order to summon them. Minion's kill or hit doesnt summon the sentinels. I think it's risky for the player to stand still hitting bosses. Mana reservation is one of my concern, may be I can only drop vitality for aspect of spider then upgrade clarity level.

Fresh skeleton dont have frenzy from monkeys, so I wouldnt spam very often. I think lv8 clarity serves me and the monkeys quite well, but it's still good to have higher level after I drop the vitality.

Oh I forgot to mention that I have secondary weapon (for leveling gems and subtitution)



I subtitute vitality with one of the purity aura for big bosses, from respective boss element. (e.g. purity of ice for elder and shaper, fire for atziri). If we used aspect of spider we might also drop the defensive buff from the aura. I'll have to test how tanky I am if I drop the defensive auras for aspect of spider.

Btw, thank you so much for your feedback. It helps me a lot. It's now 4m+ DPS even in budget version.

Everyone has their preferred playstyle. I prefer to go a little slower and not have to worry in boss fights. The helmet can lose the minion damage mod.

I had a fast skeleton build in delve league, and it was a lot of fun. No block though since I was using queen's escape.

I like to run between packs, but since the phase run nerf I wouldn't even consider running through them. That's just suicidal. ;D

"

ytric wrote:

"

joachimbond wrote:

also, if you're feeling brave, you can wield a one-hander with minion attack speed/ and minion damage/life and %quality of socketed gems (this is where you want to put your dread banner/generosity/enhance) and victario's charity withOUT Necro Aegis.....

The shield is very important for me. I currently can only subtitute magna eclipsis with vix lunaris. It's better not to dual weild weapon because skin of the loyal has a role to double the defense, If i drop the shield I would lose the benefit of the chest. (or should I change the dress as well? we're talking about min-max version right).

just to be clear i never suggested dual wielding.

the vic's charity is for me to give my minions frenzy charges by casting a ball lightning every few seconds. More reliable than the apes, IMO. plus you still get block.

Only downside is VC doesn't have a lot of es on it. I might have to give magna eclipsis a whirl and see how it feels.

"

joachimbond wrote:

"

ytric wrote:

"

joachimbond wrote:

also, if you're feeling brave, you can wield a one-hander with minion attack speed/ and minion damage/life and %quality of socketed gems (this is where you want to put your dread banner/generosity/enhance) and victario's charity withOUT Necro Aegis.....

The shield is very important for me. I currently can only subtitute magna eclipsis with vix lunaris. It's better not to dual weild weapon because skin of the loyal has a role to double the defense, If i drop the shield I would lose the benefit of the chest. (or should I change the dress as well? we're talking about min-max version right).

just to be clear i never suggested dual wielding.

the vic's charity is for me to give my minions frenzy charges by casting a ball lightning every few seconds. More reliable than the apes, IMO. plus you still get block.

Only downside is VC doesn't have a lot of es on it. I might have to give magna eclipsis a whirl and see how it feels.

ahh, sorry I misunderstood the one-hander part. yes, I need to change the scepter for minmax. I was only looking for +2 fire gems and +90% minion dmg due to budget. Dont you need 'trigger socketed spell' on weapon in your PoB? It has so many active spells. How do you manage the skill set?