[3.10] VOIDFORGE Chains of Command (75/75 block, 6K+ life), Cheap 12.5M dps, all content.

+It’s cheaper and more readily available (no 6L required, no +2 lvl minion damage/as wand, no 4G triad grip, no hyper expensive jewel to hit that 1M dps per minion, etc etc etc). The most expensive item is for AG (Mask of the Stitched Demon) and is not needed to get the build running. It’s also recommanded to craft it yourself, as the base + the vial is less than 1 exa, while the item itself is not. Voidforge is also very cheaply available (and the build can use any kind of weapon as a starter. Hell, even wasp nest or dreamfeather are 530 pdps weapon with the added physical damage)

+The scaling is better all across the board except for one point, the benefits from level scaling. The latter will allows AW and extremely expensive equipment to outscale CoC when it no longer matter (>25M dps), and only against bosses without minions. Ps: Cold Iron Point is not enough to reach this point, btw.

+No need for any kind of gem swap. You will struggle achieving 1M dps with AW without melee splash, you will easily achieve 1,4M dps per AGW (Animated Guardian Weapon, the skill used by CoC) in your clear setup.

+The clearspeed is better, as you have a 8L instead of a 6L. You also won’t have to stop for resummoning weapons mid map.

+You won’t spend dozens of seconds at the start of each time summoning your army (BF x3-4, AW x14-17). Not counting the mana cost of it, which most people have forgotten about. Just pop the jars and you are done with it.

+You won’t have to do any kind of minion maintenance during mapping, minions will keep themselves summoned. Just don’t run elemental reflect maps.

+No spectre management (just a AG headache, but you may have it in the AW as well :p)

+Better flask management (like Rumi) since you regenerate a lot of charges naturally.

+ The COOL factor. Be honest, what is better, little broken daggers running around, or MASSIVE ENDGAME WEAPONS LIKE VOIDFORGE?

-You don’t have power charges on minions

-You have no freedom with the body armor or shield slot (I wanted dat 25% offering body armor )

-You need to get CoC to be able to play it (obvious, but that means you can’t use it for leveling). It’s also not SSF friendly.
-You get two less flasks slots.


And, that’s all.

"Wait, aren’t you missing tons of stuff, like frenzy charges from spectres you can’t generate anymore, the easy generation during bosses, etc ?"
Well, no. CoC can easily reach the weapon cap permanentely with two jars and some flask regen (ryslatha, essence extraction, mender's wellspring). The amount of flask charges you need = amount of flask charges you regenerate.
The build is also featuring Victorio’s charity on the character, so you generate frenzy charge (with a 4s firestorm autocasted).

-Great clearspeed

-Great defenses (75% block, 75% spellblock, 480 hp/block, 6K+ hp)
-A 2400 (at least) Molten shell CWDT lvl 1, with possibility to self activate a 7200 Vaal molten shell.

-A mostly automated build. What you need to self cast is Convocation, Desecrate (only when there is no corpses), Shield charge, Vaal Molten shell, Deathmark and Frost bomb. While that's 6 skills, they have specific uses in specific situations, so it's not like you are playing on a piano.

Anyway, why do I claim that CoC will outscale AW ? Well, it’s because most people looked at the Animated weapon rework, saw figure, said « Awesome », then looked at CoC buffs, said « oh yeah, it’s the same figures but less practical and without more multiplier, it’s shit ». Let’s look :

"

Chains of Command: The Skills granted by this item have been updated in line with Animate Weapon. The level 18 version of the skill adds 108 to 159 physical damage to the attacks of minions animated by it. This level of the skill can animate up to 13 minions. The level 20 version of the skill adds 126 to 184 physical damage to the attacks of minions animated by it. This level of the skill can animate up to 14 minions. Both have a base duration of 20 seconds. These changes affect all versions of the item.

While the patch note comment is a little backhanded and like « yeah, it’s just to keep CoC in line with AW », it’s a gross underestimation. While CoC didn’t get a more multiplier or a more AS, the 60% one it had before wasn’t changed. However, the thing most people missed is that 128-172 added physical damage is vastly different when it’s on AW than when it’s on AGW. Why ? Quite easy. AW use a shitty glass shank as a weapon, and will be able to upgrade it at best at a 400 pdps regular weapon in end game. AGW use a designed weapon (the one you give to Animated Guardian, AG), meaning you can get a weapon with a higher floor (it’s not 6-10 base damage) which scales heavily with added physical damage (It’s not a white weapon without mod).

Lot of stuff can work (Paradoxica with impale mod, a sword/claw with >2 as and 300 pdps, etc), but this guide will be about the mother of all added physical damage scaling, VOIDFORGE. Voidforge is taking your physical damage, and adds 300% of it either as Fire, Lightning or Cold. The physical damage is then deleted. That means your added physical damage is already multiplied by 3. HOWEVER, you can (and you will !) add a triad grip so the base physical damage is not deleted anymore, but added to all hits. Meaning that you actually do 400% of your physical damage each hit as elemental. It’s 100% insane.

Scion:

Necromancer:

The main problem of voidforge is how to deal with elemental resistance. You can easily deal with one resistance. You play cold ? Frost bomb, EE, curse, etc. You play fire ? Combustion, EE, curse, scorching ray totem, etc. However, dealing with all three res at once is harder. You can use elemental weakness, elemental army then…. It’s hard. More on that later.
Crown of the Tyrant would be a great option if we could either have our own helmet or the AG one, but both slots are taken (You can get a – element mod on helmet, however. It’s recommanded, but it will be very expensive as +2 minion lvl and minion life are required before that). The solution I went with is to actually ditch one type of damage, and focus on the other two, especially cold. It allows you to use EE, so you have a much easier time against resistances. The sacrified element will be fire (Because I want firestorm in my build), but it can be lightning as well, no problem.
This will be enough for now, but additional resistance debuffs are always welcome, if you can get some. For instance, I will research if Stormblast mines can be smooth enough to include, or if the build is already way enough dps and can focus more on defenses (I want a Surrender!)


Also, another problem is linked to AG. While the mapping is quite good and easy, when you are into a boss fight without or few adds (Shaper, for instance), you have trouble generating AGW. Of course, you can use jars, and you will. However, once you have several weapons, you are no longer guaranteed that the worms will be killed by the AG, reducing the chance to spawn an additional weapon from 100% to 10% (and weaker, on top of that). To solve this, we link Infernal Legion to AG (so the worms are burned immediately by it), and we give it a huge regen with Mask of the Stitched Demon.

-20% flask charge used on belt (= 9 charges used per jar to summon a worm)

-Infernal legion linked to Animated guardian. The degen will be managed by :

-Mask of the stitched demon in the AG, a body armor with "10% of maximum life gained as energy shield" and a Grave Intention Anoitment. This way, your animated guardian will regenerate 20% hp per second, making him pretty hard to kill if not instantly killed (beware, despite 43K hp, he can be against specific bosses). As I said before, I suggest trying to craft it yourself, the base + the vial being a lot cheaper than the product.

-Triad grip (but a 2G2B is enough).

-Victario’s Charity. (Juicy frenzy charge with Firestorm)

-Chains of command 6s (duh)

-A well rolled voidforge (if you can. Voidforge is cheap enough so you should check for a great one. The bonus "wealthy people" is corrupting it for 8% attack speed. During the first days, you can use a Terminus est, wasp nest or a dreamfeather for good damage before switching. If you have triad grip, you can keep the rest like that. It won’t be optimal, but it will be good enough. If you don’t, use a physical setup instead.

You don't need that to be confortable while mapping, but the infernal legion is required to be good for end game.

If you are using the voidforge setup:
If you are still looking for it and want a physical setup:

Map : Enter a map, pop jars (with at least 0,05s between each, let the guardian kill them (either manually or with infernal legion, more on it later), then you can start moving. Use convocation often so the weapons are killing stuff close to you, and when you do, pop one or two jars to summon additionnal lvl 20 weapons, since AG will be on top of you. Keep Bone offering up at all time so your defenses are up, and if you don't have corpses to do so, use desecrate (in a boss room, you can set up desecrate in advance, you don't have that much to do anyway).

You can use pretty much anything you want during leveling:
-AW (if it works well)
-Summon skeleton
-SRS
Myself, I will probably test AW, and if i'm not convinced, I will go Summon skeletons.

During leveling, get Life and resistance on items (Movement speed on boots). The rest is useless.

For the tree, it will be like that:
Lvl 26
Lvl 50~
End of story, lvl 69 Feel free to get sockets as soon as you get good jewels. You are also extremely close to a cluster socket if you get something good during leveling. Get it if you do.

For the ascendancy, Move toward Necro for Normal, get necro and move toward pathfinder for cruel, get pathfinder in merciless, and get something these 3 points in uber lab. I didn't find a good way to leverage the new starter, but maybe you will.

Major: Lunaris (with the avoid chaining projectile)
Minor: You have the choice. Since dots really hurt, the “best” are either Abberath (anti fire dot), Ralakesh (anti physical dot), or Shakari (anti chaos dot). Since Ralakesh bonus aren’t that effective and anti bleed flasks are common, I ruled it out. Then, it’s between immune burning ground and heavily reduced ignite vs heavily reduced chaos ground and immune poison. Since I felt that ignite was more dangerous to me than poison, I choose Abberath, but it’s really a personal choice here. Obviously, if you use invictus Solaris, pick Shakari. Ryslatha is still great while running the lab, of course.

-In this build, Hatred has a limited impact compared to some total conversion builds. It's "only" 27% more damage (It can be over 70% in some case). However, 27% more damage is obviously worth it.
-Triad grip green sockets over blue sockets are only giving a limited amount of additional damage. While it's better to have 4G, 2B2G is only a slight dps loss and make it much easier to fit everything inside. The choice to do a 2G2B may sound dumb, but it's calculated.
-The Stone of Lazwhar may look out of place as well, but I judged it the most forward way to cap spell block. While it lack life and minion damage, it's a -30% spell damage taken (and increased life sustain as well), which is huge. Spell block is hard to cap without it. However, if you don't care, feel free to change it for a life/minion damage/res/whatever rare amulet.
-Be very careful if you are running Acid Caverns. It can spawn a boss dealing insanely high damage to minions, potentially one shotting your AG. Don't run it, or with another skill, or something, get back your AG when you do so.
-The build defense is based around Bone offering, granting a huge block/spell block buff (mitigation), and a great life gain when you block (sustain). It allows you to be VERY tanky, even inside packs mobs. The sustain is also uncapped, meaning if 10000 mobs are attacking you at the same time, you will probably regen enough to survive. Any other defensive mecanism (except straigth immortality) will die in such a case because they can't regen enough, being limited to a % of their life per second. You are most vulnerable to One shot (in one hit, not a lot of them), and dots.
-Given how empty the current pob is (on purpose, you don't need shit to do absurde damage), you can easily scale the build to 25-30M dps if you invest the currency.
-The build can easily switch to AW if you really want so. But you shouldn't :D

I don’t intend to use lot of cluster jewels. I believe I will use 2 clusters Jewels :
-A large one, either 8 nodes or 12. On it, you need 1 socket and Renewal. Then, it depend on your strategy (and what is available on the market, and what is possible at all). The 8 nodes can be rolled with another 1 or 2 notables/sockets you won’t pick so you can try to get away with renewal and the 1 sockets in 3 points or maybe even 2. Or you may want to go the "go big or go home" route, and try to get two great mods on the jewel. If for instance, you could get 4% increased minion attack speed (supposition) and 25% increased minor effectiveness, getting minors would be an incredible 5% as and 12,5% minion damage per point. In this case, getting everything would be great as well.
-One small, Veteran Awareness. It reduce elemental damage taken by 40% and grants 20% physical reduction damage during molten shell (not vaal molten shell). Imba. May be expensive, however.

Required Uniques:

Recommanded Uniques:

What to search on equipment (rare only):

Animated Guardian gear: