3.8| Stress Free PoE - SLOW-MO ZOMBIES |Clear the Atlas with YOUR Items at YOUR Pace (SSF & Co-op)

The passive tree is easy to understand:
You'll start as a Witch. We start as a witch because there is only one subclass in the game that greatly benefits minions and to reach that subclass (ascendancy) you must start as a witch.

**Just follow the tree and take the nodes as they come. You'll find it quite naturally balanced. The tree will take you to level 91; it'll be easy to achieve. Pick anything you like after that. (If I was to level this character again, I'd probably do the East side first, then North, then South, then West.)

Tree Focuses:
- Minions - I've selected the nodes that increase minion limits and really focused on minion life. I want the Zombies to live despite their aggression and I want Minion Instability to do lots of damage too. I focused more on the Zombie Slam and since that skill always hits, minion accuracy wasn't too valuable. The same point goes for the Skeletons with Minion Instability.
- Curses - This build focuses on curse efficiency which means we needed the nodes that improve curse efficiency.
- Jewels - Jewel slots are amazing. Jewels are items you can find that you can actually allocate on your tree. They can give almost anything from health, damage, resists...anything. We will have only one jewel slow selected :(. As great as jewels are, I find managing them and remembering what I have socketed, exhausting. So I typically only have one slot per character. What's really neat is you can swap jewels in and out of your passive tree anytime.
- Health. You need it to live. :)
- Minion Instability - It's what our skeletons revolve around and it gives payback for killing our Zombies. I explain this in the Build Mechanics section.
- Elemental Equilibrium - We get lots of damage from this notable. It's explained in the Build Mechanics section.

Don't forget about attributes. You'll pass some nodes on the tree that give +30 to Strength or Dexterity. If you don't have items to cover what you're short in, feel free to select some of these as you pass them. You'll get respec points that will let you remove them later once you have better gear.

Now, feel free to modify this is anyway. This is just my preference for easy Solo Self Found.

Take your time to look at each skill as they come along. Some of the nodes are pretty dramatic.

Some quests earn you respec points in case you regret any decisions you made on the tree. You can also use Orbs of Regret for the same thing.

As you go through the game you'll come across Trials of Ascendancy. Starting in Act 3 you'll see their value. Once you have completed all 6 of the first set of trails, you'll get to attempt your first Labyrinth (lab). Good luck! Upon completion Choose Necromancy. You get two ascendancy points per lab. There are four labs for a total of 8 points. (Redoing the same lab difficulty will not reward you with more ascendancy points if you've already completed it.)

You can spend your points in any order you like. My preference is as follows:
- 1st Two Points - Mindless Aggression. Increases Minion Damage, Movement Speed, and Attack/Cast Speed
- 2nd Two Points - Unnatural Strength. This increases the level of ALL of our minion skill gems; even their maximum level. Minion gems get stronger and stronger the higher their level. This is our strongest node.
- 3rd Two Points - Bone Barrier. This is a busy node. It gives us physical damage reduction, elemental resist, and increased life recovery rate per minion up. But most importantly, it gives our minions more life. It also gives us a free skill, Bone Armour. Free is nice. It can be manually cast after you assign it a button.
- 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 a 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 help cap our zombies' 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.

I use Desecrate from the second weapon set to raise/summon my Zombies and Carrion Golem then turn on Hatred and Temporal Chains.

As we run around maps, our zombies will run at everything they see and kill them. Despite the fact that we have them really aggressive, I've done what I can to have them survive as well. The Zombies will follow you despite their aggression.

Cast Skeletons whenever you want and they'll explode all over the place :). So even if your zombies die, you'll have plenty of damage at your fingertips that can kill any boss. They're both bonus damage and zombie backup ;). One of their linked supports (Infernal Legion) will eat their life away until the minions initiate the Minion Instability node on the tree causing them to explode for lots of fire damage. Minion Instability makes any minion explode once they reach the Low Life state (35% life or lower).

Our Cast when Damage Taken gems take up two of our 4 links. Set at level 1, they'll be cast basically whenever an enemy breaths on us ;). Combined, they'll automatically apply Elemental Equilibrium with Ball Lightning (this must be lightning as Minion Instability is fire damage and Hatred gives cold damage), apply Enfeeble via Ball Lightning, give our minions the offering perks, and give us phasing and movement speed. All that whenever we get hit. Just make sure you move somewhere safe :).

Hatred gives all of our minions within the radius of the aura lots of extra cold damage.

Our Temporal Chains curse aura dramatically slows enemies within its radius.

*Because of my limitations I just move, cast once (Skeletons)...move, cast once...move, cast once...move, cast once...;) Staying moving and casting skills that have a duration keep me alive without needing too much attention.

Some Extra Notes:
I explain the actual mechanics in the Build Mechanics Explained for New Players section.

Zombies:
- They'll be slow to level at first but once you find that they don't need to be resurrected anymore, you'll start flying through the story.
- Zombies will survive 95% of the Atlas. Unfortunately, the 5% they suck at are some of the endgame bosses. I've found that focusing too much on how many zombies I have alive, kept me from keeping myself alive. Convocation is typically what people would use to get their Zombies out of danger, but I don't have to ability to focus on the screen long enough to use Convocation efficiently. My solution? Skeletons.

Skeletons:
- Even though it's only a four-link, it's strong. Without any Zombies raised, this build can clear the whole Atlas with just this 4 link.

Auras:
- When you are around enemies, your Temporal Chains will immediately be applied to them slowing them dramatically. Hatred will give all minions within radius lots of extra cold damage. At the max gem level, both auras will cover almost a standard size screen (North/South).

Offering:
- Offerings are skills that give buffs to our minions. Once cast, the offering skill consumes corpses. The more corpses it consumes, the more you get from it. If no corpses can be consumed, the skill doesn't cast.

Curses:
- Unless the enemy is Hexproof (curse proof), Enfeeble will make your enemies deal a lot less damage, have weaker critical hits, and are a lot less likely to Hit you with Attacks (not spells).

So a lot happens but all you're doing is moving, casting once...moving, casting once...moving, casting once...:)

Cast when Damage Taken (CwDT) is a gem that automatically casts linked spells (not attacks) when your character takes a certain amount of damage. The lower the level of CwDT, the less damage it needs to cast its linked spells. The higher the level of CwDT, the more damage it needs to cast linked gems.

CwDT cannot support ACTIVE skills with a higher player level requirement than that of the CwDT gem itself. For spells to be cast by CwDT, the spell has wot be within the required level listed on the gem. As you level gems, you'll see that they all have certain player levels you have to be at in order to use them. CwDT does too. You'll notice in the CwDT gem description that it'll only cast spells under a certain required level. That requirement level goes up as CwDT levels. Linked SUPPORT gems have no boundaries and can be fully levelled.

The benefit to a high-level CwDT at a high level is that we can have high-level gems attached to it (Stone Golem). The benefit to a low-level CwDT is that you can have spells being cast frequently. Good for utility spells (applying curses and such).

You can't manually cast spells that are linked to CwDT and within CwDT's gem requirement level.

I. LOVE. CURSES.

Curses are debuffs that you can put on an enemy. There are quite a few curses in the game, not all of them are beneficial to every build. I have chosen two curses for this build: Temporal Chains which slows every action of the enemy; and Enfeeble which makes the enemy deal less damage and hit less often.

By default in POE, every character can only apply one curse per enemy. There is a node on the passive tree that increases this limit by one. We'll be getting it and increasing the effectiveness of these curses as well.

There is a node on the tree that acts as a curse but isn't. It's called Elemental Equilibrium. It acts as a curse that lowers enemy resists. We'll be getting that too. It can be applied to every enemy.

A big part of this build are the two curses I have chosen. Curses can be cast manually as a spell that applies the selected curse to an area, or you can link a support skill called Blasphemy which will make the linked curses Auras that are always around you. Curses turned to Auras each reserve 35% of our mana (linking Enhance Support will increase that reservation %, which we'll be doing). We are going to attempt to have our curses as strong as possible. That'll take some gem and passive tree investment. Temporal Chains at its maximum level slows all enemy actions by 29%. With the appropriate investment, we can make enemies close to 75% slower with Temporal Chains (this skill cannot slow enemies beyond 75%). Enfeeble, our other curse, does not have a cap. Enfeeble has a lot of great defences. It makes us harder to be hit by Attacks (not spells), we take less critical damage, and we'll take less overall damage too. Focusing specifically on the general damage mitigation of the skill, we'll be improving Enfeeble's base damage mitigation from 30% to 45%.

Unless an enemy is "Hexproof" (curse proof), our curse will work. Curses are 33% less effective against Area/Map bosses and 66% less effective against the Shaper and his Guardians unless otherwise stated on the gem. That's OK though. The rest of the build is good enough. :)

Curse Math for those that Care :)

Elemental Equilibrium (EE) is a node on the passive tree. It gives enemies negative resists to elements you don't hit enemies with...if you've hit them with an element.
So if I hit an enemy with lightning, the enemy now has 25% extra lightning resistance and -50% to both fire and cold resists. If my spell or attack hits an enemy with lightning and fire, the enemy is only now susceptible to cold damage.

A big part of the Zombie damage in this build comes from our Hatred aura. It gives cold damage to the Zombies. Minion Instability's explosions are fire damage. So make sure that ANY item, jewel, or implicit mod from the ascendancies does not add cold or fire damage in any way.

A neat thing about EE is that it is only applied to enemies by us, not our minions. So, even though our minions are hitting the enemies over and over with cold or fire damage, they aren't giving the enemies extra resists of those elements.

Questions? Let me know.

Enemies can have their resists lowered in a few different ways. They all stack together. So if Spell A and Spell B both lowered an enemy resistance by 10, the enemy would be -20 to that resist. Exposure stacks with other sources of lowering resists, but it doesn't stack with itself. So if two skills that apply Exposure of the same element are applied to the same enemy, they won't stack. Only the strongest will be applied.

Raise Zombie is our main skill and it is a minion skill. Any minion's damage only increases with items or passive tree nodes that specifically increase "minion damage". If a node on the tree or mod on an item doesn't specify minion damage, it won't be useful at all. So something that says, "Increases your damage by 30%" won't improve the damage your minions make. In this build your character will do almost no damage, only your minions will. We will also be using skeletons and a golem.

Minions ARE considered Allies. So auras, nodes, or items that improve allies will benefit our minions. (Not every skill that reserves mana is an aura.)

Minions are NOT considered Party Members and will not gain any benefit from Party Member benefits.

Our minions Attack enemies, they don't Cast spells (except for a few vaal skeletons). So anything that improves minion/ally Attack Speed will help our build out, but not Cast Speed (that's for spells).

Lastly, minions are their own entity. Once you bring them into the world, they attack who they want. Some minions are summoned, others are raised. Summoned minions (like the Skeletons we'll be using) don't follow you but will keep attacking and chasing enemies within their attack radius. These minions have a duration. Other minions are raised, such as our Zombies. They do not have a duration and will stay raised until dead. These types of minions will follow us wherever we go. They will also follow the lead of summoned minions as well.

Lastly lastly, minions don't care about you. So if you're taking damage, they aren't going to run back and help you. You have to help yourself.

Minion Instability is a notable node on the passive tree that makes any minion at 35% of its life or lower explode dealing fire damage. The explosion is valued at 33% of the exploding minion's maximum life. Both Minion Damage and Minion Life nodes and support gems improve the explosion damage of Minion Instability.

I. LOVE. SLOWING. ENEMIES. So in this build, we're going to slow enemies. Why? Lots of good reasons...but the most important reason is: Because.

Path of Exile has two basic ways that can "slow" a character/enemy:
1-Slowing Movement Speed only
2-Slowing all actions (including movement speed).
This build will focus on the two of the few methods in the game that slow ALL actions of an enemy: Temporal Chains and Chill. These two methods of slowing can stack (to a cap of 75% total slow).

Chill - An elemental effect from Cold damage that slows all actions (movement, cast/attack speed) up to 30%. The % of slow (chill) imposed on an enemy is based on the total Cold Damage done to the enemy in one hit. So the higher the cold damage of an initial hit (not cumulative) the greater the "chill effect"...the slower the enemy is.

Temporal Chains - A curse that slows all normal enemy actions (movement, cast/attack speed) up to a base value of 29% but with investment can be capped at 75%. This build will have Temporal Chains slowing enemies at 59%, 65%, or 71%, depending on the level of our Enhance Support Gem.

Vaal skills are super versions of normal skills that have a duration and cooldown given to them. We're hoping to use Vaal Summon Skeletons. Early on in the game Vaal skills typically only drop in Corrupted areas (though as the game progresses you'll find them a little more often.) Corrupted areas can be randomly found attached to maps as a side area. Kill the boss inside these areas, loot their "stash", and hope you get the vaal skill you want.

Vaal Summon Skeletons give you both the Summon Skeleton skill and Vaal Summon Skeletons in one gem. Both skills require their own key bind/button. You can use Summon Skeletons like usual but the Vaal skill requires you to kill enemies, or damage Rare or Unique enemies. Once the skill is ready to use, you can use the skill anytime. But remember, any loading screen in the game automatically resets the vaal skill and it needs to be refilled. So don't save it too long (boss arena doors don't have load screens (except for The Lord's Labyrinth). Once the skill has been used it'll have a short duration where the skill can't refill.

Vaal Summon Skeletons instantly gives you an extra 30+ skeletons with one button press :).

Drop Only - Level 1 - Enhance Support
Drop Only - Level 10 - Vaal Summon Skeletons (Replaces Summon Skeleton Gem)
Act 1 - Enemy at the Gate - Reward - Level 1 - Raise Zombie
Act 1 - The Caged Brute - Reward - Level 8 - Infernal Legion
Act 1 - The Caged Brute - Purchase - Level 8 - Minion Damage Support x2
Act 1 - The Caged Brute - Purchase - Level 10 - Summon Skeleton (Until you get the Vaal version.)
Act 1 - The Siren’s Cadence - Purchase - Level 12 - Offering Skill
Act 2 - Deal with the Bandits - Reward - Level 15 - Kill Everyone - 2 Skill Points
Act 2 - Intruders in Black - Reward - Level 16 - Desecrate x2
Act 2 - Sharp and Cruel - Purchase - Level 18 - Minion Life Support x2
Act 3 - Lost in Love - Purchase - Level 24 - Hatred
Act 3 - Sever the Right Hand - Reward - Level 28 - Ball Lightning
Act 3 - A Fixture of Fate - Purchase - Level 24 - Enfeeble
Act 3 - A Fixture of Fate - Purchase - Level 24 - Temporal Chains
Act 3 - A Fixture of Fate - Reward - Level 31 - Blasphemy Support
Act 3 - A Fixture of Fate - Purchase - Level 31 - Elemental Army Support
Act 3 - A Fixture of Fate - Purchase - Level 31 - Feeding Frenzy Support
Act 3 - A Fixture of Fate - Purchase - Level 31 - Generosity Support
Act 4 - Breaking the Seal - Reward - Level 31 - Carrion Golem
Act 4 - The Eternal Nightmare - Purchase - Level 38 - Cast when Damage Taken x2
Act 4 - The Eternal Nightmare - Purchase - Level 38 - Curse on Hit
Act 6 - Fallen from Grace - Purchase - Level 31 - Fortify Support
Act 6 - Fallen from Grace - Purchase - Level 31 - Phase Run

Level 1 - Enhance Support
Level 1 - Raise Zombie
Level 8 - Infernal Legion
Level 8 - Minion Damage Support x2
Level 10 - Summon Skeleton (Until you get the Vaal version)
Level 10 - Vaal Summon Skeletons (Replaces Summon Skeleton)
Level 12 - Offering
Level 15 - Kill Everyone - 2 Skill Points
Level 16 - Desecrate x2
Level 18 - Minion Life Support x2
Level 24 - Hatred
Level 24 - Enfeeble
Level 24 - Temporal Chains
Level 28 - Ball Lightning
Level 31 - Blasphemy Support
Level 31 - Generosity Support
Level 31 - Elemental Army Support
Level 31 - Feeding Frenzy Support
Level 31 - Fortify Support
Level 34 - Carrion Golem
Level 34 - Phase Run
Level 38 - Cast when Damage Taken x2
Level 38 - Curse on Hit