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

Thanks for this guide! Finally found my League starter.

"

jramsay wrote:

Really appreciate such a well written guide and I think I'll be following this for my league starter - just wondering if you'd have any suggestions for uniques which could help throughout the leveling process. Other than the generic tab / goldrim / wanderlust?

If you are going with a Shield, then the Crest of Perandus might be something to consider

https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Crest_of_Perandus

A personal favourite of mine is the Chalice of Horrors (but Level 29 and you may be all Flasks, all the time by then, and it comes with a hefty Dex requirement which likely further delays when you can equip it)

https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Chalice_of_Horrors

My guess is that your choice of Levelling Damage Dealing Skill(s) will likely have the biggest impact on your Levelling - something to carry you until the Zombies get rolling. In the past, I have found that getting Holy Relic up helps with early Zombie sustain, but that may really restrict your choice of Damage Dealer. (Because you need an "Attack" (and because I am using a Wand at that point and I want "Projectile" to stay out of the fray), the field is (or was, I have not reviewed all the changes) limited to Power Siphon and later Kinetic Blast.) But this is all very subjective of course - just disregard it if you do not think it is worth considering. And of course the revamped Raise Zombie might very well allow various other choices, particularly if the Zombies come on-line quicker.

Oh, and upon entering the first Town, I like to switch to Freezing Pulse.

"

walkjohn55 wrote:

"

GrunkleBob wrote:

...
Spiritual aid, and Righteous Army, and Redemption are a staple of this build, they've been in for a while, check the pastebin. https://pastebin.com/9ZgZuE6k

...

When you import to POB, and switch to the 3.8 tree the ascendancy is messed up, but everything else looks good...

(just in case, since you seem to referencing the 3.7 Build)

WOD has put out a Tree based on 3.8 for this Build. It's on POE Planner and it is the link labelled
Passive tree link
at the start of the Passive Tree Spoiler

https://bit.ly/2m0lNMM

This is the Tree that my previous remarks were based upon.

Thank you, just saw this now... some of this tree will have to wait, because I will be following your suggestions :)
Or at least I will be getting spiritual aid.
I am going cyclone ax with some lightning/fortify leap slam instead of enhance and summon holy relic instead of phase run.
But who knows, I'll probably do 3 versions because I have 3 different playstyles and I end up on my PS4 a lot.

About leveling..left or right side tree first or something else?

I played through story mode while dabbling in 3.6, I'm looking forward to giving it another try in a necromancer-focused league. The user-friendliness of your guides are what makes me pick it over all the other 3.8 builds popping up.

Looks like a fantastic build! This will be my starter, mostly because of the freedom it provides to use whatever gear I fancy

"

Korpivaellus wrote:

About leveling..left or right side tree first or something else?

Ok, the usual caveat: what follows is merely my opinion. A further caveat: no one (GGG staff and Play Testers aside I guess), including myself, have levelled on the 3.8 Tree or with the 3.8 Gems. And in no way does WOD endorse anything that I say. And I am not a speed Leveller.

But I will not let that stop me ....

So previously, my strategy was to go for the + to number of Minions nodes first. That remains unchanged except that there are a lot less of those nodes now.

So I would go Left to Lord of the Dead (I do not take the Minion Damage node there). I would then go to Death Attunement, picking up the Minion Life Regen and maybe the Minion Life Leech (depends if I thought it would matter).

More Minions directly scales your damage. Getting the Zombies to self-heal helps to keep them around longer (great QOL too).

I think that how many detours that you take to pick up Life on your Witch depends on how much you feel that you need it. I find that a couple of Life rings and a Life Regen amulet leaves me feeling fairly tanky for some time (but you will want other Life Regen soon because getting a Dex/Str Amulet is just ever so helpful with Attribute requirements).

After that, it looks pretty wide open - grab what you think will help the most:

Minion Life and/or Minion Life Regen if they are dying too often
Life for the Witch if she is dying too often (at all?)
Minion Damage mods
Minion Movement Speed

The Threshold Jewel is gone and so you may or may not want to prioritize the Jewel Socket. You do not need the Curse stuff until you are actually ready to use Curses (so you will need the Gems, and the open Sockets with the right Colours and Links), no sooner than any Level requirements but later in SSF for example. I do not know the criteria for deciding when to take Minion Instability - but it might be really important to get it right. You probably do not want to take Elemental Equilibrium until you have the Generosity/Hatred set as well (just do not forget to take it when that time comes and check to see that the Witch is not doing any unhelpful elemental damage).

Once you get your Minions thriving, it's pretty wide open. You can go carefully (Life for the Witch first), you can just go for it (Minion stuff until the Witch starts dying), or you can mix it up to suit your tastes. If you keep your gear (Resists and Life) up to date, the Build is fairly resilient. And generally once you get the Minions going, in regard to your weapon, you only care about what your weapon does for the Minions and helpful Buffs on the Witch, not the Witch's Damage - so more about triggering Skills or buffing stuff.

It's a great and forgiving Build.

"

jramsay wrote:

Really appreciate such a well written guide and I think I'll be following this for my league starter - just wondering if you'd have any suggestions for uniques which could help throughout the leveling process. Other than the generic tab / goldrim / wanderlust?

Hey jramsay,

Thank you very much. That's nice of you. Normally I would just suggest the uniques that you mentioned...well, I think that'll be the same. For this league specifically, I wouldn't use any uniques that change any mechanics of our skills. In the first league with so many new skills and mechanics, I think it'd be important to see how everything works naturally.

So I would really only suggest the standard uniques you mentioned to level with this go around.

Thanks for your thanks :)

"

Darthkip wrote:

i plan on giving this a go for the new league, it sounds right up my alley so alot of thanks!!!!!!

also if i may add, look at your setup and trifrosts setup, trifrost looks more like a DPS setup while your original setup is more bursty with the skellingtons (yes i know skeletons, but skellingtons sounds better :D)

i might give both a try since they can both work quite nicely, i think the SRS would work better in delves and skellys in maps, but i might be mistaken!, thanks for everything in advance :D

Hey Darthkip,

Thanks! You're very kind. I hope you like it! Let us know which route you go!

"

wafakre wrote:

Thanks for this guide! Finally found my League starter.

Hey wafakre,

I love short posts from profiles with tons of badges :).

Thanks for the thanks! Let me know if you have any suggestions for the guide or the build.

"

Korpivaellus wrote:

About leveling..left or right side tree first or something else?

Hey Korpivaellus,

I prefer to huge the right wall when I level. So I do the same with my guides :). So I do the right side first, then the top, then I cheat and go down for EE but I do the whole branch, then I expect to do the left side last.

Go anywhere you like though, just don't ignore the life nodes. It's pretty balanced in any direction.

"

Scutilla wrote:

I played through story mode while dabbling in 3.6, I'm looking forward to giving it another try in a necromancer-focused league. The user-friendliness of your guides are what makes me pick it over all the other 3.8 builds popping up.

Hey Scutilla,

Welcome back:) Let me know what you think! The build mechanics will have changed a lot.

And thank you :). (What do you mean by "user-friendliness"? How the guide is laid out?)

"

SirNut wrote:

Looks like a fantastic build! This will be my starter, mostly because of the freedom it provides to use whatever gear I fancy

Hey SirNut,

Thank you very much! It's my favourite way to too. I love being excited for new gear! Let me know if you have any advice for the guide or build.

"

walkjohn55 wrote:

Spoiler

"

Korpivaellus wrote:

About leveling..left or right side tree first or something else?

Ok, the usual caveat: what follows is merely my opinion. A further caveat: no one (GGG staff and Play Testers aside I guess), including myself, have levelled on the 3.8 Tree or with the 3.8 Gems. And in no way does WOD endorse anything that I say. And I am not a speed Leveller.

But I will not let that stop me ....

So previously, my strategy was to go for the + to number of Minions nodes first. That remains unchanged except that there are a lot less of those nodes now.

So I would go Left to Lord of the Dead (I do not take the Minion Damage node there). I would then go to Death Attunement, picking up the Minion Life Regen and maybe the Minion Life Leech (depends if I thought it would matter).

More Minions directly scales your damage. Getting the Zombies to self-heal helps to keep them around longer (great QOL too).

I think that how many detours that you take to pick up Life on your Witch depends on how much you feel that you need it. I find that a couple of Life rings and a Life Regen amulet leaves me feeling fairly tanky for some time (but you will want other Life Regen soon because getting a Dex/Str Amulet is just ever so helpful with Attribute requirements).

After that, it looks pretty wide open - grab what you think will help the most:

Minion Life and/or Minion Life Regen if they are dying too often
Life for the Witch if she is dying too often (at all?)
Minion Damage mods
Minion Movement Speed

The Threshold Jewel is gone and so you may or may not want to prioritize the Jewel Socket. You do not need the Curse stuff until you are actually ready to use Curses (so you will need the Gems, and the open Sockets with the right Colours and Links), no sooner than any Level requirements but later in SSF for example. I do not know the criteria for deciding when to take Minion Instability - but it might be really important to get it right. You probably do not want to take Elemental Equilibrium until you have the Generosity/Hatred set as well (just do not forget to take it when that time comes and check to see that the Witch is not doing any unhelpful elemental damage).

Once you get your Minions thriving, it's pretty wide open. You can go carefully (Life for the Witch first), you can just go for it (Minion stuff until the Witch starts dying), or you can mix it up to suit your tastes. If you keep your gear (Resists and Life) up to date, the Build is fairly resilient. And generally once you get the Minions going, in regard to your weapon, you only care about what your weapon does for the Minions and helpful Buffs on the Witch, not the Witch's Damage - so more about triggering Skills or buffing stuff.

It's a great and forgiving Build.

These posts are great!

I'm so excited to play this build in 3.8! Thanks again for putting it together!

Also super stoked that GGG posted the oil combo list! Depending on the rarity of oil tiers we can pick up some cool notables w/o traveling like Golem Commander.