Stress-Free PoE! BONE ZOMBIES: No Required Items! 1-Button Play! SSF League Start-End! 3.13

Gonna level up a witch, because I miss my good ol' zombo bois! :D

Questions though;

Is 'Raise Spectre' a must? I've never used the skill before and searching + identifying enemies to raise one sounds bothersome to me. And if they die, I have to search for the monsters again. Can I also just use golems? Especially because we could have more than 1 golem and free a slot for, for example, Convocation. Do we take any Spectre specific nodes on the tree and can allocate them towards golems?

I believe this opens up the weapon or shield three-link. So CWDT + Chaos (Quality adds 1% life + 1% damage - Anomalous Quality makes the phys. reduction buff stronger) + Stone (Same quality or anomalous bonuses) + Feeding Frenzy (Also 1 more golem for more Feeding Frenzy uptime sounds good to me), even if Spectres may be better offensively. In addition to that we have 2 interesting options with Feeding Frenzy; While quality improves the duration of Feeding Frenzy, the anomalous quality increase makes either the supported minion or all minions (Don't know about that) regain 0,05% of max life on hit per quality level, which may be another defensive layer for the minions. Also it's extremely expensive. (With 5 Exalts minimum, I think anomalous Feeding Frenzy is out of question, especially if it doesn't work for all affected minions - The main point of this question is Spectres VS Golems+Convocation!^^)

For the opened up three link I'd suggest CWDT + Convocation + Maybe an unlinked Convocation for those "Get here, ffs!"-Situations.
Edit: It actually seems fun to resurrect what you want to fight for you. Searching out specific stuff still sounds torribly (terribly+horribly) annoying though.


You might correct me on my conclusion, I have no idea about Spectres and might even try them. I'd still wonder if Convocation would fit in anywhere in the build ^^

What about Multistrike? It seems that's a very, very strong option for the Zombois. Especially the Awakened version if you're rich.

Can I use - instead of Bone Offering - the Commander of Darkness node and use for example Steelskin and some curse or whatever as defense? I don't quite like Bone Offering :D

Why Enduring Bond? I don't see any minion skill we use frequently to profit from the 30% damage increase if one was used recently. And the duration doesn't apply as well I think. Unless I missed something there :D

Why Elemental Equilibrium?

Other things to point out;

-> Anomalous Blood and Sand grants 0,5% armour and evasion per quality level! The normal quality improves only the cooldown, which isn't useful for us. 10% more armour doesn't hurt and is more or less free real estate. (Consider it once you got some currency from maps, with around 8 Chaos it's pretty cheapish)

-> Anomalous Maim: Instead of improving the damage of literally nothing (Normal quality effect), this quality version improves the effectiveness of the maimed effect. It's a bit more expensive, starts at 20 Chaos. An option to consider.

-> Divergent Pride: Nearby Enemies have -0.1% to Physical Damage Reduction per quality level. I don't know if it's worthwhile over the increased area of effect, but that's another option, maybe for bosses? It's expensive though with at least 40 Chaos.

-> Raise Zombie: While the supports, I think, are quality-wise favourable as they are, there are 4 total Zombie variations.


Of course if you're playing SFF this probably is no option, but if not and you're not against trading, those are options to take into consideration for later when you swim in Chaos. I think the most debatable versions are the Zombie versions. Thoughts?

ps: Yes I brooded over the guide quite some time lol

"

Royella wrote:

Spoiler

"

Wrecker_of_Days wrote:

unmodified gems...

Hi Wrecker, why are unmodified gems important?

Loving the build so far, my seven year old and I just hit level 66 and our gear is coming along!

Sorry Royella!

I couldn't find the reference to where I was talking about unmodified gems. So I'm not quite sure what you mean, sorry. The only thing I can think of is that sometimes people modify my builds to their own taste. That's one of my favourite parts of the game is the freedom people have to make a build their own. Sometimes though, when people make changes to the guide, and those changes don't work out, they forget that their setup isn't the way the guide states. So anytime someone runs into a wall, and they deviated from the guide, I simply suggest that they go back to the guide's version of the build and see if that improves things for them.

Maybe that's it?

I'm glad you and your kid are loving the style and setup. Thanks for the wonderful feedback!

"

Royella wrote:

Spoiler

I had an awesome night! My son and I hit Act 9. Got my gear somewhat respectable, all res capped and tanking right along. I did pull the CWDT and put in a vaal skelly linked with the feeding frenzy and golem, it works really well. Here's our gear so far:

And then...I pulled this off a ritual and got 6 sockets in under ten jewllers:

Followed by this just minutes later, just need some chrome to color it properly and it's time for maps!:

This build is a breeze, thanks for the guide.

Wow! What a night in RNG Land! Good for you!

"

LibraExAnima wrote:

Spoiler

Gonna level up a witch, because I miss my good ol' zombo bois! :D

Questions though;

Is 'Raise Spectre' a must? I've never used the skill before and searching + identifying enemies to raise one sounds bothersome to me. And if they die, I have to search for the monsters again. Can I also just use golems? Especially because we could have more than 1 golem and free a slot for, for example, Convocation. Do we take any Spectre specific nodes on the tree and can allocate them towards golems?

I believe this opens up the weapon or shield three-link. So CWDT + Chaos (Quality adds 1% life + 1% damage - Anomalous Quality makes the phys. reduction buff stronger) + Stone (Same quality or anomalous bonuses) + Feeding Frenzy (Also 1 more golem for more Feeding Frenzy uptime sounds good to me), even if Spectres may be better offensively. In addition to that we have 2 interesting options with Feeding Frenzy; While quality improves the duration of Feeding Frenzy, the anomalous quality increase makes either the supported minion or all minions (Don't know about that) regain 0,05% of max life on hit per quality level, which may be another defensive layer for the minions. Also it's extremely expensive. (With 5 Exalts minimum, I think anomalous Feeding Frenzy is out of question, especially if it doesn't work for all affected minions - The main point of this question is Spectres VS Golems+Convocation!^^)

For the opened up three link I'd suggest CWDT + Convocation + Maybe an unlinked Convocation for those "Get here, ffs!"-Situations.
Edit: It actually seems fun to resurrect what you want to fight for you. Searching out specific stuff still sounds torribly (terribly+horribly) annoying though.


You might correct me on my conclusion, I have no idea about Spectres and might even try them. I'd still wonder if Convocation would fit in anywhere in the build ^^

What about Multistrike? It seems that's a very, very strong option for the Zombois. Especially the Awakened version if you're rich.

Can I use - instead of Bone Offering - the Commander of Darkness node and use for example Steelskin and some curse or whatever as defense? I don't quite like Bone Offering :D

Why Enduring Bond? I don't see any minion skill we use frequently to profit from the 30% damage increase if one was used recently. And the duration doesn't apply as well I think. Unless I missed something there :D

Why Elemental Equilibrium?

Other things to point out;

-> Anomalous Blood and Sand grants 0,5% armour and evasion per quality level! The normal quality improves only the cooldown, which isn't useful for us. 10% more armour doesn't hurt and is more or less free real estate. (Consider it once you got some currency from maps, with around 8 Chaos it's pretty cheapish)

-> Anomalous Maim: Instead of improving the damage of literally nothing (Normal quality effect), this quality version improves the effectiveness of the maimed effect. It's a bit more expensive, starts at 20 Chaos. An option to consider.

-> Divergent Pride: Nearby Enemies have -0.1% to Physical Damage Reduction per quality level. I don't know if it's worthwhile over the increased area of effect, but that's another option, maybe for bosses? It's expensive though with at least 40 Chaos.

-> Raise Zombie: While the supports, I think, are quality-wise favourable as they are, there are 4 total Zombie variations.

Spoiler

1. Quality: Improves minion life & damage by 1% per quality level. 20% total. Standard.

2. Anomalous: Raised Zombies' Slam Attack has 2% increased Cooldown Recovery Rate per quality level (40% total) - 8-9 Chaos

3. Divergent: Minions Regenerate 0.1% of Life per second per quality level (2% total) - 8-10 Chaos

4. Phantasmal: Minions take Chaos Damage equal to 1% of their Life over one second (Oneshot downside?) when Raised and Minions gain 0.5% of Physical Damage as Extra Chaos Damage. Don't know if the life degen scales with quality, should it not be a oneshot downside - if not, it would be a small price depending on how much extra damage we get-, but it would add 10% of the physical damage as EXTRA chaos damage. - 25 Chaos to 1 Exalt price range. Seems it's extremely rare or very popular.

Of course if you're playing SFF this probably is no option, but if not and you're not against trading, those are options to take into consideration for later when you swim in Chaos. I think the most debatable versions are the Zombie versions. Thoughts?

ps: Yes I brooded over the guide quite some time lol

Haha! Hey LibraExAnima!

Spectres provide infinite options...an overwhelming amount. I use them as supports. Having Frenzy Charges is a massive damage bonus for zombies. You can use spectres for offence if you like as well, or other methods of support. They aren't a must, but you'd want to find something efficient to replace them with. They won't die though. Our Zombies never die and neither will our spectres...especially with Minion Life linked to them. Finding them isn't a big deal though. Not the one's I suggest in the guide anyway. They are very quick to find and then they won't die.

We're limited to one golem with this build. So if you wanted multiple Golems, you'd have to deviate from the build a bit.

I don't find Convocation useful with this build because Meat Shield keeps the Zombies close and the zombies never die.

Multistrike has its pros and cons. It's very strong for sure, but it diminishes the single hit damage. I like single-hit damage instead of multiple attacks because then the Zombie Slam and the leech zombies get are both more powerful.

If you get rid of Bone Armour in this build, you're getting rid of a lot of damage mitigation. So if you choose Commander of Darkness, be sure to replace your missing defence with something else.

Enduring Bond benefits from Bone Armour. The Bone Armour skill has a minion tag (I'll be adding that to the guide in a week or two), so that counts as using a minion skill.

Elemental Equilibrium isn't in the guide. If I have it in there somewhere, it's a mistake. So let me know where I put it.

Good questions. Hopefully, my answers helped.

It's in the non POB skill tree. It definitely looks like you've skilled it (just like the 8% mana node to the left of it, but I don't know if that's on purpose) there. Or I'm blind and I need better glasses, heh.



Personally I'd rather have the zomboys go nuts and seek stuff out themselves rather than having them glued to me. In that case - and for example in the case of Atziri, Convocation is extremely useful to pull them out of AOE's that may even be deadly for tanky characters. I don't know the exact number on how beefy the zomboys will be though, so it might not matter. And through Feeding Frenzy provided by the golem (Isn't the golems attack speed too slow even with buffed attackspeed to be procced reliably? On my RF build they're not as fast as they'd maaaybe need to be, I don't know. But then again we're not 100% minions, so they're not as buffed as zomboys.)

I might go for more zomboy leech/recovery on hit and replace Meatshield with Feeding Frenzy, see how it goes and use the slot that opens up for Convocation.

I didn't know that Bone Armour has the minion tag, but that makes sense. So it's +30% damage for minions every 3 seconds (Was it 3 seconds?) when using it on cooldown.

How much armour do you get by Bone Offering? Since it only applies with 50% strength to us. Of course it makes sense to use it since Bone Armour replaces any other Guard skill, being one itself. I'll have to think more about that.

Are you sure Multistrike has such a big con? Certainly you need to use the ... awakened? version of it to make it worthwhile, but having 3 fast consecutive hits that all leech... Plus every of the 3 hits gets stronger by 20% starting at 60% up to 100%. One would need to test how it works with the provided attack speed I guess.

What's your opinion on the Zombie quality variations? Especially the most expensive one.
Edit: Regarding the extra chaos damage variation of Zombie quality... Yeah, I should've read Brutality more closely. Even though I wonder if it really counts for extra damage. Or is the extra damage converted to physical?

Edit2: It seems I may have overreacted in regards of the Spectres. As you've done it once, you always know where they are should you need to resocket into another equipment piece and they get lost. Fun fact; My desecrate seems to only create big apes. May depend on jewel level, I don't know. Do you think 2 of the demons and 1 ape is enough? I think 2 apes could be overkill, huh?

Another line of thoughts (Still belonging to edit2): Wouldn't it be better to swap culling strike over to the golem (He has an AOE attack + culling stroke isn't important against normal mobs that die fast anyway, so it isn't really needed to have 3 minions use culling strike. Due to the level of the gem, the damage bonus is neglible I think. So 3 spectres have feeding frenzy which will proc more often. Thoughts?

Edit3: The demon obliterates anything lol He's like a siege weapon. 2 of them will be very fun!

Edit4: Not gonna use the banner! It messes up my precious MTX! :D

Thank you for the guide. It's been fun to follow!

I had a question regarding mana reservation from auras. How are you able to keep some of your mana from being reserved? I looked at the tree and didn't see anything you'd taken specifically to do that and didn't see anything on your armor which gives it. I'm a fairly new player so sorry if this is silly question. I'm just trying to figure out how to keep two auras up and still have a small bit of mana for my other spells (besides spectres with the blood magic support).

Thank you in advance :)

"

Gygaxin wrote:

Thank you for the guide. It's been fun to follow!

I had a question regarding mana reservation from auras. How are you able to keep some of your mana from being reserved? I looked at the tree and didn't see anything you'd taken specifically to do that and didn't see anything on your armor which gives it. I'm a fairly new player so sorry if this is silly question. I'm just trying to figure out how to keep two auras up and still have a small bit of mana for my other spells (besides spectres with the blood magic support).

Thank you in advance :)

You get mana mainly from intelligence, but many equipment pieces have it on them as well. Until your intelligence score is high enough, you can look if you find some pieces with mana on it. Pride reserves 50% mana and Blood and Sand 28%, which leaves 22% unreserved. At level 11 my shield charge only costs 13 mana. For resummoning stuff, just disable an aura ^^

Early game, I mean very early like act 1-2, maybe 3, zombois may die sometimes, in that case do the same.

I'm having 798 mana at this moment and have enough mana left after reservations to also run vitality (Because I've got a talisman with a gem slot in it from a Ritual) and have 17 mana left to cast my 13 mana shield charge. I only get 100 mana from my equipment (Temporarily at that), so even without that I could just leave vitality out (which isn't part of the build anyway) and cast shield charge comfortably.

I hope that helps and was clear, I'm not good at explaining. Also don't forget you get some mana from the passive tree (%).

I hadn't tried Blood and Sand yet so didn't realize it wasn't a 50% mana reservation like the two I had tried. That explains it :) Thank you!

Hi Wrecker,

I'm using a modified version of your filter because I needed to view some items that are hidden in yours. What I can't seem to be able to edit is for jewelry to have their own color. Or size. Or anything that makes them stand out. Editing your lines doesn't do anything for me. I wonder what I am doing wrong...?

"

LibraExAnima wrote:

Spoiler

It's in the non POB skill tree. It definitely looks like you've skilled it (just like the 8% mana node to the left of it, but I don't know if that's on purpose) there. Or I'm blind and I need better glasses, heh.

Spoiler

Link to my google drive for the screenshot

Personally I'd rather have the zomboys go nuts and seek stuff out themselves rather than having them glued to me. In that case - and for example in the case of Atziri, Convocation is extremely useful to pull them out of AOE's that may even be deadly for tanky characters. I don't know the exact number on how beefy the zomboys will be though, so it might not matter. And through Feeding Frenzy provided by the golem (Isn't the golems attack speed too slow even with buffed attackspeed to be procced reliably? On my RF build they're not as fast as they'd maaaybe need to be, I don't know. But then again we're not 100% minions, so they're not as buffed as zomboys.)

I might go for more zomboy leech/recovery on hit and replace Meatshield with Feeding Frenzy, see how it goes and use the slot that opens up for Convocation.

I didn't know that Bone Armour has the minion tag, but that makes sense. So it's +30% damage for minions every 3 seconds (Was it 3 seconds?) when using it on cooldown.

How much armour do you get by Bone Offering? Since it only applies with 50% strength to us. Of course it makes sense to use it since Bone Armour replaces any other Guard skill, being one itself. I'll have to think more about that.

Are you sure Multistrike has such a big con? Certainly you need to use the ... awakened? version of it to make it worthwhile, but having 3 fast consecutive hits that all leech... Plus every of the 3 hits gets stronger by 20% starting at 60% up to 100%. One would need to test how it works with the provided attack speed I guess.

What's your opinion on the Zombie quality variations? Especially the most expensive one.
Edit: Regarding the extra chaos damage variation of Zombie quality... Yeah, I should've read Brutality more closely. Even though I wonder if it really counts for extra damage. Or is the extra damage converted to physical?

Edit2: It seems I may have overreacted in regards of the Spectres. As you've done it once, you always know where they are should you need to resocket into another equipment piece and they get lost. Fun fact; My desecrate seems to only create big apes. May depend on jewel level, I don't know. Do you think 2 of the demons and 1 ape is enough? I think 2 apes could be overkill, huh?

Another line of thoughts (Still belonging to edit2): Wouldn't it be better to swap culling strike over to the golem (He has an AOE attack + culling stroke isn't important against normal mobs that die fast anyway, so it isn't really needed to have 3 minions use culling strike. Due to the level of the gem, the damage bonus is neglible I think. So 3 spectres have feeding frenzy which will proc more often. Thoughts?

Edit3: The demon obliterates anything lol He's like a siege weapon. 2 of them will be very fun!

Edit4: Not gonna use the banner! It messes up my precious MTX! :D

Spoiler

Character Screenshot

Hey LibraExAnima!

I just copied the guide's PoB Pastebin into a new "build" within PoB and I'm not showing any errors. I'll keep an eye on it though. Thanks for pointing it out.

So, just so there's no confusion, Bone Barrier is the Ascendancy node that gives us the Bone Armour skill. Bone Offering is a different skill. Bone ARMOUR gives us up to 10% physical damage mitigation passively. When activated, it makes us immune to bleed and prevents up to 2209 Damage taken (damage taken is reduced by 70% until 2209 Damage threshold). It's not what the game calls armour. Bone OFFERING gives us block chance. We get 50% of the block chance listed on the gem. That then gets doubled by Glancing Blows on the tree. It stacks with any other blocking stats we add to the build.

In regards to Culling Strike and Multistrike, make whatever changes you like, though I suggest one at a time. (Culling strike isn't for the damage, just the Culling.) PoE isn't about right or wrong. There are so many ways to do things. Next league I'll probably have Culling Strike on the Chaos Golem instead of Holy Relic or CwDT. I still haven't decided what the 4th gem will be with Spectres.

I like the Anomalous Zombies. The Zombie Slam is so powerful that GGG got rid of all Zombie Slam jewels a few leagues ago. (Brutality has its cons for sure.)