[3.21] Cold Conversion Summoner | Build guides for all budgets | (Ghazzy Zoomancer)

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Ultramarhare wrote:

Well I got lucky yesterday, was running some heist blueprints and at the end in curio displays along with many stupid 3-4 linked rare chest I saw some strange thingy, took it/escaped and it turned out to be tailoring orb, which I sold for 13ex and transitioned to medium version of this build, just without clusters.
Since I was running pretty low budget build (1 carrion golem, 3 SO spectres, hobo AG with sin eater/leper shield) I saw massive spike in damage and survivability.
Now playing feels much smoother and better! Just awesome!
Glad I got a taste of how it plays before league's end!

Now I'm set on leveling in this build in 3.14, Deadandlivin, thank you for all your work and finishing leveling guide before next league even started!
Can't wait for efficient currency and mapping guide! :D

That's great. It pretty much explains the essence of how PoE is played aswell. The true secret behind making money in this game is to simply play the game and eventually you will get lucky. To make your luck more deterministic you simply want to push more content faster. That's why you want to play a fast build and the primary reason why I go for dps and clear speed before defenses, especially early on when on a low budget.

Personally, I don't care whether I can tank Sirus storms or not if it means I can just avoid standing in them to double my clearspeed in maps. Feeling tanky is great and all, but in the end I'd rather just farm currency faster so I can gear up properly, get my Headhunter and also become immortal.
If it means I'll tank some deaths to bosses and guardians I'll happily make that sacrifice. :)

Too bad that you didn't get enough to buy the whole Cluster jewel set.
Now at the end of the league I've noticed that the Cluster jewels for the build has skyrocketed in price since no one is crafting them any longer. The mediums are lik 2.5-3 exalted orbs each. During the actual leage you'll be able to buy them for 80-100 chaos orbs.

Your damage literally doubles when you put on all Cluster Jewels :D
(Btw, sent a private messege to you on these forums, please check it out)

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Deadandlivin wrote:

For SO, lets assume 4/6 projectiles hit the target and our SO has a base dps of 1000 dps for simplicity.

If you run Predetor it's a 50% dps increase meaning our spectres do 1500 dps.
If we run GMP with 4 projectiles hitting the dps per projectile is 1000*0,75 = 750 dps since GMP reduces damage done by 25%. But we hit the boss with ~4 projectiles which nets a total of 3000 dps.

By the way, the max hits on one target is 3 (secret police dagger 1,2,3 = 3 sources) because of patch 2.0.

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Projectile skills no longer "shotgun". You can't hit the same target with more than one simultaneously-created projectile from the same source any more. They've been rebalanced around this.

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kayella wrote:

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Deadandlivin wrote:

For SO, lets assume 4/6 projectiles hit the target and our SO has a base dps of 1000 dps for simplicity.

If you run Predetor it's a 50% dps increase meaning our spectres do 1500 dps.
If we run GMP with 4 projectiles hitting the dps per projectile is 1000*0,75 = 750 dps since GMP reduces damage done by 25%. But we hit the boss with ~4 projectiles which nets a total of 3000 dps.

By the way, the max hits on one target is 3 (secret police dagger 1,2,3 = 3 sources) because of patch 2.0.

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Projectile skills no longer "shotgun". You can't hit the same target with more than one simultaneously-created projectile from the same source any more. They've been rebalanced around this.

Thanks for the clarification, I didn't know about this. I always ran under the impression that we used GMP just to shotgun with it.
So this means that it's only the 3 projectiles from Secret Police Dagger that can hit the target right?

That must mean that GMP actually is a very bad support gem for single targeting?

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kayella wrote:

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Deadandlivin wrote:

For SO, lets assume 4/6 projectiles hit the target and our SO has a base dps of 1000 dps for simplicity.

If you run Predetor it's a 50% dps increase meaning our spectres do 1500 dps.
If we run GMP with 4 projectiles hitting the dps per projectile is 1000*0,75 = 750 dps since GMP reduces damage done by 25%. But we hit the boss with ~4 projectiles which nets a total of 3000 dps.

By the way, the max hits on one target is 3 (secret police dagger 1,2,3 = 3 sources) because of patch 2.0.

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Projectile skills no longer "shotgun". You can't hit the same target with more than one simultaneously-created projectile from the same source any more. They've been rebalanced around this.

After doing alot of testing to see how SO projectiles actually behave I have to disagree. I made a video about my tests that you can check out:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMHofgd5IHc

In it I do some tests killing Minotaur several times in a normal maze of the minotaur map with a single spectre
If what you're saying is true, then my spectre should be doing more damage without Awakened GMP equipped.

The 3 projectiles fired from the Secret Police Dagger spell should all be close enough to hit the same target majority of the time.

In this picture you see how close the projectiles are too eachother with no GMP active which means they all should easily be hitting the same target consistently.

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Deadandlivin wrote:

After doing alot of testing to see how SO projectiles actually behave I have to disagree.

Hm. I just quote the 2.0 patch notes. SO was added in Betrayal, so they won't use pre-2.0 skills like other spectres. We could just ask Rory next time :P

By the way, I recommend testing in a bright outdoors map so you can see the projectiles clearly. It's easier to trace the projectiles.



You can also see clearly when projectiles hit monsters too!
The dagger makes flash animation when it hits.
You can see two flashes for one monster and just one flash for other monster:



It might be better to test without extra minions and just link RS to projectile gem (also don't use +crit because it gives damage spike)

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kayella wrote:

Hm. I just quote the 2.0 patch notes. SO was added in Betrayal, so they won't use pre-2.0 skills like other spectres. We could just ask Rory next time :P

We tested this multiple times already. They clearly do more damage with awakened gmp. Its not even close.

Even just going by pob numbers and assuming they hit only 3 times, the killtime is completely off.

Ghazzy for example has like 450k average hit on the daggers x 4.7 triggers per second x 3.

If they didn't shotgun he would do about ~6.4m dps per SO x 5 for ~32m total.

Yet he kills 2-3 man hp Sirus A9 in a few frames, at the very least quite abit faster than my ~60-80m dps build this league.

We are currently assuming that they actually hit up to 18 times with a. gmp. Which would put Ghazzy's build somewhere between 100-200m depening how many projectiles hit, which actually checks out if you look at the time to kill and compare it to other builds in the 50-100m dps range.

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kayella wrote:

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Deadandlivin wrote:

After doing alot of testing to see how SO projectiles actually behave I have to disagree.

Hm. I just quote the 2.0 patch notes. SO was added in Betrayal, so they won't use pre-2.0 skills like other spectres. We could just ask Rory next time :P

By the way, I recommend testing in a bright outdoors map so you can see the projectiles clearly. It's easier to trace the projectiles.

It might be better to test without extra minions and just link RS to projectile gem (also don't use +crit because it gives damage spike)

Alright, so I've done alot of testing now and I think I'm 90% sure how these spectres actually work. I'll try to explain my findings best I can.

To test everything I did as you told, removed all other minions, unspecced Necromantic Aegis and removed my Bottled Faith. I also replaced minion damage with Feeding Frenzy to make the spectre consistently hit the enemy.

My first finding is that it seems like Secret Police Dagger has a "Deadzone". This is a zone where majority of their projectiles won't hit the target. I'll try to illustrate with a picture:

I noticed this when running white beach maps. Against this boss, whenever the spectre was in melee range his dps dropped DRASTICALLY, even when shooting his projectiles. The only conclusion I can find is that less projectiles are hitting the boss while in melee. At times you see the spectre and the boss creating a gap between eachother and they are at a medium distance between eachother. During those moments the dps picks up alot. This happens several times. My conclusion is that, when in melee range, very few projectiles are actually hitting this boss because he's standing in a 'deadzone' between the spectre and where he fires his projectiles from which causes majority of them to completely miss.
You can see my Beach testing here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LsVzjPuw73Q

As distance is created that large cluster of projectiles that we always observe if we pause and look at the the SO's attack clump up together and hit the enemy. Usually, you have this cluster of ~7 projectiles that are shot together which easily seem to hit most targets at medium range.

This seems to be the medium window burst. We effectively get something like this:


That got me thinking since I've always ran under the impression that we're supposed to convocate our spectres DIRECTLY on top of bosses to maximize DPS and I could've sweared that my dps always skyrockets when I do so. This is directly contradicted by the video above with the Beach boss where the dps drops by like 80% when the spectre is in melee range. My hypothesis is that it has to do with monster hitboxes and how big certain monster models are. Maybe, certain monsters are so big that when they're in the Dead Zone, their hitbox extends outside of the zone making them get hit by majority of projectiles. This would explain why alot of other spectre content creators and theorycrafters run swear by SO's shotgunning and the optimal dps range being in melee.
This is how I imagine the mechanics versus larger monsters:


To investigate whether this is the case i choose to use 1 spectre in white Carcass maps because the map boss is very big there and he doesn't move around too much. This spectre ran a 4-link(Raise Spectre, Hypothermia, AGMP and Feeding Frenzy). In this video I first test the damage in medium nad long range.
After that I test convoking the spectre right on top of the boss to mimic this "shotgun" effect.
Lastly, I remove GMP to see how this affects the damage with only 3 projectiles available.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3RzQr0VFO3o

To make sure the testing was consistent I tried to do alot of clips.
Also, keep in mind for the Carcass maps that I removed my Blade Vortex, Flesh Offering and Frost Bomb and reduced my spectre down to a 4-link basically gutting his dps, yet he still manages to kill the Carcass boss very fast, even faster than the Beach Boss.

Conclusion:
I can't be completely certain but I believe my explaination describes well how the Syndicate Operatives work. I believe that they DO shotgun when the projectiles actually hit a target, but this is hard to do because the projectiles don't actually fire infront of the spectre but ahead of them which creates a deadzone in which the projectiles spawn behind enemies with small hitbxoes and don't hit them. This however, has no effect on larger enemies as their hitbox is so big that when in melee range of an SO, far more projectiles are able to hit them than compared to a smaller unit.

This would also clear up all confusion regarding the 'optimal' range at where to convocate your operatives. It feels like half the spectre community says that you're supposed to convocate them at "medium" range while others say that you're supposed to convocate them ontop of an enemy. I believe both are right, and both are wrong. How you're supposed to position your spectres is based on the character model or boss you're facing. Against larger enemies and bosses you're supposed to position your spectre closer to maximize the shotgun effect. Against smaller enemies you're supposed to position them at a medium sweet spot distance where the large cluster of ~7 projectles that the SO always fires infront of himself is sure to hit the target. If the enemy is fruther away from this sweet spot, this cluster of projectiles is split as they move in different trajectories causing some of them to miss. If the enemy is too close he enters this deadzone where some of the projectiles will spawn behind the monster and miss them completely.

Looking at this build to try next league but I have to ask. Anyone tried this build on a potato pc? Or is any minion build not suggested on a potato pc?

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Deadandlivin wrote:

How you're supposed to position your spectres is based on the character model or boss you're facing.

Nice research! Good explanation maybe make a video about it?

Also add that it depends on your DPS. If you can't kill boss quickly, don't use convocation into melee range because SO will use melee attack.

I recorded this after the SO melee bug fix early in league: https://youtu.be/-5sr-DNxpeg

(Can also see the deadzone effect that you mention!)

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Prevy wrote:

We are currently assuming that they actually hit up to 18 times with a. gmp.

Hm. When using agmp, the projectiles fly to the side as well so 18 seems too much? or do you mean the projectile animation is incorrect?

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Deadandlivin wrote:

My first finding is that it seems like Secret Police Dagger has a "Deadzone". This is a zone where majority of their projectiles won't hit the target.

Thats not a deadzone, its simply their auto-attack zone, where they will switch to melee attacks.

When GGG fixed their AI behaviour earlier this league, they also caused them to use their auto attack more sparingly in melee range. Which is why alot of players started to convocate them directly on the boss because the dps was enough either way.

Before and tbh even right now, the optimal distance is about 10-15 units.

https://pathofexile.fandom.com/wiki/File:Poe-units-72.jpg

Far enough that they wont use autos, but close enough to hit with as many projectiles as possible.

Since its kinda hard to do and both bosses and Spectres move etc, most people don't bother anymore with optimal positioning if they have sufficient damage.