[3.0] [Hardcore] Life-Based Golemancer w/ Spectres

T10 Twinned Piety, with Cannibal Fire-Eaters.

I was nervous going into the start of this one and then she just got DELETED, it was pretty funny. This was when I was experimenting with Sentari's Answer on the Animate Guardian, so I'm pretty sure the Guardian blocked a spell and applied Elemental Weakness in addition to the Flammability/Projectile Weakness I was giving them (which is what the Sentari's Answer was there for)

Twinned 8-mod Corrupted Plateau map clear or Skip straight to the boss fight.

I can normally clear quicker than that, but that was some SUPER RIPPY map mods and I was really scared of the devourers and bleed (I don't always notice I'm bleeding, so I find it pretty frightening). I haven't played in two Leagues, though - seems like Devourers have been nerfed? I barely noticed them, but with those mods I expected them to be causing me more problems than they did.

T11 Merveil Boss fight.

Projectile Weakness is handy for bosses like Merveil with channeling spells, the knockback interrupts her and Dominus when they try to spray you down.

T12 Vault Boss fight.

Had never fought this guy before, I think he's new? Had a hard time spotting the actual boss at the beginning of the fight and was burning down animations instead. Was kind of scary until I started paying attention to the detonations on the ground.

T10 Underground River boss fight.

Current Tree at 89

As soon as I get ahold of some level 21 Purities, I'll grab that final point for Aura Effect in Sovereignty, and grab one more Jewel Socket to put in Conqueror's Potency, which will get me a further +2 max resist off two of my auras.

Early Tree

Here we start out grabbing the nearby zombie and minion damage clusters. This will help make your early game progress faster, and there's not much danger needing you to bulk up at this stage of the game. We'll grab plenty of life nodes later. I always use Zombies from the start, as well as SRS, but if you have a little bit of side cash and want to speed things up, head for that Jewel node next to Elemental Equilibrium, get yourself a First Snow jewel, and go to town with Freezing Pulse. It definitely makes levelling through Act 5 a breeze. A Tabula Rasa is also wonderful, as 6L zombies can tear through zones, or 5L zombie 5L SRS if you have Elreon jewelry to cut the cost of SRS down.

Just using 3L/4L Zombies and SRS can get you through Act 5 no problem, though.

Mid-way Tree

Here we start to grab some stuff we're going to spec out of later, like all the the +STR/DEX nodes and the resistance cluster next to the Scion Life wheel. I find it makes life so much easier pre-mapping to just grab resistance nodes and get rid of them once you get your gear situated. I also like to use Purity of Elements all the way through until maps, up until I can get my gear sorted out well enough to not need it anymore. And the STR and DEX we need to be able to use our Clayshaper at lv 41, as well as for LMP/GMP to support our golems. Later on we shouldn't need much, if any stray stat nodes, but right now it's a struggle to get enough STR to use that Clayshaper right at level 41. I used two of them to get me through Act 10, and then dropped one Clayshaper for the Ahn's Shield as soon as I beat Kitava. As soon as you're able to equip your Clayshapers, go ahead and grab Elemental Equilibrium for that sweet, sweet debuff.

Act 10/Early Mapping

Once we get to Maps, I dropped one of my Clayshapers for an Ahn's Shield so I would be more tanky. From here we'll use two 4L Flame Golems and two 4L spectres, as well as our 3/4L Zombies (Minion Damage, Melee Splash, with Melee Phys or Added Fire as a 4th) for clearing. Once you hit later tiers we won't worry about our Zombies doing damage at all, but in white maps with only two golems they can be a handy source of damage. From here I grinded out mostly white maps until I had saved enough to get an Anima Stone, and then I started pushing deeper.

Once you hit maps you should stop going through gear so quickly, and you can take time to focus on your gear links - which means you can afford to take the Curse cluster and 4L your gloves for added curse benefit. Elemental Equilibrium, Elemental Weakness, and Flammability turns bosses into butter.

The only uniques in the build that really matter. The Anima Stone + Primordial Jewels speak for themselves, as well as The Clayshaper. You DO NOT need a Primordial Might other than the one you use for the Anima Stone. See the last section on Minion AI.

So let's talk about Ahn's Heritage. +3 to all max resists is pretty sweet, right? On top of that, it also comes with a solid amount of HP (70-90) and almost 1.5K armor. This is HUGE, especially because at the end of Act 10 I had like... 100 armor. This makes you so, so, so safe as soon as you put it on, it's ridiculous. Well worth losing a Golem. You lose out on Max Endurance charges, but that's okay because you literally have no room for anything that could possibly generate them for you anyway. In certain spell-heavy boss fights (When I get around to doing Atziri) I plan to use a Saffel's Frame for the added +1 max resists and spell block, but I haven't found a need for it yet.



Once I got my Anima Stone, I started looking at other ways to improve my gear. I started out with the Alpha's Howl, which took a good bit of tweaking elsewhere to get enough +DEX to use, but it was worth it - for a little while. The reduced Mana Reservation, along with the +2 aura gem levels, let me spec into the Sovereignty Templar cluster and start running all three Purity gems. The freeze immunity was a nice bonus! The helmet itself is only 1-2C, though I had to spend a little more than that elsewhere to make sure I had the DEX to use it. I eventually transitioned into the Devoto's Devotion, though. At first I just wanted the movespeed and chaos resist, but I've found the +65 dex (to run Projectile Weakness) and +15% attack speed (For shield charge) have come in VERY handy much later in the build. And who can argue with that Enchantment, right? Reduced mana reservation on one of our Purity auras would also be a good idea - that could save you several skill points to use elsewhere.



An extra spectre is a nice luxury, but one I didn't add until much later. I needed the resists and movespeed from a decent pair of boots, but once I could afford lose the extra resists, Boots of Ullr make for a great boost to your boss DPS. Work it in whenever you feel good about it.



I bought one of these guys for one reason, and one reason only - No Regen maps. Because I run three purities, I have only enough mana left to cast convocation, ball lightning, and raise zombies. I don't technically NEED to cast spells to move through maps, but it is a little inconvenient not having them (especially indoor maps without convocation). Introducing: The Anvil. It gives me back a full 50% of my mana pool with every block! That's a sure winner. I ONLY wear this on zero regen maps. Any other reduced regen and I have enough mana/regen on the passive tree that I can spam my spells to my hearts content.




This flask is ah-mazing if you're set up to use it. 6k instant regen? SCHWING! I have 5,825 life, +38% Chaos resist and 355 base life regen per second, which means that after I heal myself for 5k HP instantly, the flask does 289 chaos damage per second to me - which isn't even enough to overpower my life regen.

Seriously. Amazing.

That's it for Uniques! A Belly of the Beast only gets me an extra 300 HP or so, according to Path of Building, and it drops me 200 ES (granted, I like the HP a lot more than the ES) so I'm not sure it's worth it. For a 6L upgrade, I might stick with a rare, or a Skin of the Loyal with Empower. A Vis Mortis would give you an extra Spectre, which also makes it tempting to slot both your Golems AND spectres in the 6L for 4 5L golems and 4 5L spectres. The map clear with the right Spectres would be absolutely insane, and that would free up 4 whole gem slots, which is a crazy thought on a normally gem-starved build.

Gems linked in order of importance, for when you just don't have that 4th/5th link.

5L Body Armour: Flame Golems -> LMP/GMP -> Spell Echo -> Minion Damage -> Controlled Destruction

4L Gloves: Ball Lightning -> Curse on Hit -> Flammability -> Elemental Weakness (Later on and depending on your Spectre choices, you can use Projectile Weakness instead of Ele Weakness. Downside is it limits your Spectre choices and it has a HEFTY HEFTY DEX requirement)

4L Helmet: Purity of Fire/Ice/Lightning and Convocation. No links needed! Late-game if you can switch into Unset Rings, you can move two of your auras into the rings and link Shield Charge + Fortify with your two new sockets. When you get Shield Charge, make sure you don't have any +fire damage to attacks on your gear! But if you can sneak some lightning or cold damage on to proc EE as you zoom-zoom around the map, that's great.

4L Boots: Raise Spectre! The right gems here change depending on your particular spectres. See the section on Spectres + Guardians for more details.

3L Weapon: Cast When Damage Taken level 1 -> Desecrate level 1 -> Bone Offering level 8. Because there's a delay between when Desecrate is cast and when the corpses pop up, this isn't 100% reliable in every situation. But it's the best CWDT setup because when Desecrate triggers, it has a damaging degen aura - which is targeted at nearby enemies. This in turn makes your minions target enemies that have just hit you and are now being tickled by the Desecrate spell. It makes for a much smoother gameplay experience over something like Immortal Call.

3L Shield: EARLY MAPS: Raise Zombie -> Minion Damage -> Melee Splash. In early maps your zombies can still be useful, yay!

LATER MAPS: Raise Zombie -> Minion + Totem Elemental Resistances -> Animate Guardian. I start out a character with 4L zombies, and as I get further into the game I switch them into a 3L and then a 2L as their usefulness can't keep up without dedicating to them as a primary skill. Although we have Purity auras and our Zombies should have maxed resists MOST of the time, I usually like to keep my distance from bosses, and I find adding the Resistance support to them just keeps them from evaporating anytime I stray too far away. For the Animate Guardian, see the Spectres + Guardian section coming up.

Unsocketed (in inventory):

Descrate: You have a low-level descrate with CWDT, but you need a high-level one to make spectres. I levelled it in the weapon swap and now I keep it in my inventory. When I need to make spectres, I swap it my Flame Golem GMP gem, which means it's casting with Spell Echo and I can find the right corpse faster.

Lightning Warp: I swap this out with one of my Spectre damage gems for navigating Uber Lab trials/traps.

LMP: Swaps out with GMP on the Flame Golems if I'm nervous about a boss and want some extra damage, or in really tight corridor maps when GMP doesn't have enough space.

To start with I'll link the Necronomicon, which has been a valuable resource for me: https://github.com/Mattc33/Necronomicon

Getting spectres map-ready can be a bit of a pain. The best way to do it is go to the Act zone they spawn in, raise a few spectres there. This gets you low-level spectres that will do no damage and die immediately. No good! To get higher level spectres, we need to now go to a Map that they CAN spawn in and use Desecrate (with an appropriately high level) to spawn high-level corpses and raise THOSE. This is the "Desecrate Trick" that is the key to playing spectres.

For Spectre Links, all spectres will have Raise Spectre and Minion Damage, so I'll only list two more supports for each one.

In early maps when you're at two golems and 2/3 spectres, Flame or Frost Sentinels are amazing for clearing maps, as are Solar Guards. Use Spell Echo and GMP for the Sentinels, Spell Echo and Controlled Destruction for the Solar Guards (I think? I didn't use them too much). The solar Guards are much tankier, have a sweet Kamahemeha ability, and perform better against bosses, but Frost Sentinels absolutely cover the screen in projectiles and are the strongest of the three for map-clearing.

Get your low-level Frost Sentinels from Act 8 Lunaris zones. I would grab them from the Harbour Bridge usually. Then you can get map-level ones from the T3 Channel Map, and later the T10 Temple map.

Sentinels have one small problem, though - they kind of suck for boss killing.

INTRODUCING! Undying Incinerators. These are the fire-trap guys from the Crematorium. They're amazing. Like, really really amazing. See, if you give them Spell Echo and GMP, they throw fireballs with just as much range and aggressiveness as the Sentinels do. They have a secret technique, though - CLUSTER TRAP!

When it's time to slay a boss, or if there's a Breach or Harbinger pack, swap out GMP for Cluster Trap. This, combined with Spell Echo, means your little firebug is throwing out SIX FIRETRAPS at a time. That's a lot of damage! This deals with Breach/Harbingers really well, and it provides a lot of single-target DPS for bosses. This was my preferred Spectre until I got the Anima Stone. Pick up your low-level Incinerators from Crematorium, then raise high-level ones in the T3 Sewers, T4 Graveyard, T7 Arachnid Tomb, T7 Cells, and T10 Malformation. I'm sure there are others as well, keep an eye out!


Once you get your Anima Stone and 3 Primordial Harmonies, you no longer need help clearing trash. Time to push on into later map tiers and start using Spectres that will burn down bosses! You have two big choices here, Cannibal Fire-Eaters, or Tukohoma's Vanguards.

Cannibal Fire-Eaters can do an INSANE amount of damage, but in my opinion not only are they far more troublesome to Raise due to not being readily available in an Act Zone, but since they have to run up into melee range to do their damage, they tend to die a lot more. And then they're harder to raise back up... it's a vicious cycle. If you do want to use them, though, give them Spell Echo and Controlled Destruction. You can find them in the T3 Arid Lakes, T4 Acid Lakes, T8 Shore Map, and more.

Good news, though! Tukohoma's Vanguards ALSO do an insane amount of damage. They also apply a debuff with their totems that gives up to -24% fire resistance, making your Flame Golems do even more damage! Link them with Controlled Destruction/Burning Damage and Minion + Totem Resistances. This keeps them and their totems alive and doing TONS OF DAMAGE. Bonus points for turning maps into Mario levels with your swirling flames of death. The fact that they summon totems to do their damage for them really helps these guys stay alive, which means less hassle raising new spectres. That's a big win in my book, even if they didn't have close to the best damage output as well. Get your start Vanguard in Act 6 Karui Fortress, then in T4 Acid Lakes, T8 Atoll, T9 Temple, and T10 Underground River.

I use two of these guys, for my third Spectre I use one WICKER MAN. These guys have a Righteous Fire aura and use molten strike in melee range, so they'll benefit from the same supports you want on your Vanguards. Pick one up in Act 10 The Ravaged Square, then in the T3 Sewer, T4 Graveyard, T7 Cells, T9 Temple, and more.

Notice anything about those last two? That's right! You can get your Vanguards AND your Wicker Man from the same map. Thanks, T9 Temple!

But what's that? You really like the damage output of Cannibal Fire-Eaters? Don't worry, I've got you covered with our friendly ANIMATE GUARDIAN!

We equip him with a Leer Cast, Singularity, Icetomb, and Dyadus. "A Dyadus, you say? That doesn't make any sense!" But you see, all three of our spectres do primarily Burning-type damage. And a Dyadus in the off-hand chills enemies for 1 second on hit, AND makes that enemy take 100% increased burning damage. That's take 100% increased, which means our spectres are dealing 100% MORE. The Ice Tomb has 150% increased chill duration on it, turning that 1 second chill into a 2.5 second chill. Mmmm, freezer burn.

For the rest of the gear, it's up to you. I just toss them whatever resists I find laying around, and I only bring the Guardian out for bosses. He tends to die during Breach/Harbinger events with a bunch of damage mods, and we really only need him around to double our single-target DPS.

Note: To get the Dyadus in the proper hand to chill things, animate your OTHER weapon first, THEN animate the Dyadus second.

Minion AI is something you have to get used to making work for you, so let's talk about it a bit.

Minions respond to the things that you do. There are a few ways to guide your minions into killing everything:

Use an ability or attack. Casting ball lightning in a pack of mobs is a sure-fire way to make your army of minions go chasing that glorious little blue ball and murder everything in its path. Cast it ahead of you down halls and through doorways to get your minions to go where you want them. Shield charging into a pack? Also a great way to get them to hit things!

Deal damage to enemies, even passively, such as through a Herald of Lightning (which we don't have) or CWDT-Desecrate (which we do!) The reason we don't self-cast Offering or use CWDT-Immortal Call is so that we're constantly passively damaging enemies, which is like throwing chum in the water for our rabid fireballs of joy.

Left-click your mouse in the general direction of enemies. Seriously. Don't get in the habit of holding down the left mouse button as you zoom your way through maps. Left-click often! The difference is amazing. Every time you left-click the ground as you run by packs of enemies, you're signalling to your minions, "Here boys! Here! GO GET 'EM!" and oh boy do they go get 'em.