[3.2] Necromancer Dominating Blow - A literal Army of Minions

Welcome to the "Forever Alone" build. Where you are always the life of the party!







Executive Summary

This build takes a very niche skill like dominating blow and turns it into full blown powerhouse. If you like having loads of minions, this build will take you up to a minimum of around 60 flailing corpses (This number only gets larger with closer packs) allowing you to clear maps and bosses with the power of the lich king himself. That's not all though! Every rare mob/beat you turn will now have their special modifiers affect you in the positive, your very own artificial headhunter!

But wait! There's more! This build is very cheap and the enabling uniques are very accessible. If this has piqued your interest, please read on!

NB: This build can still clear bosses and labyrinth without the minions from dominating blow. In other words, even if you have those special arenas you will still be able to clear content.

You will be using the following minions:

- 2 x specters of your choosing
- 10 x zombies
- 10 x Phantasms
- 1 golem
- 30 -> 150+ map minions

Disclaimer: I am not responsible for you turning any of your actual friends into minions. Seriously. Not my fault.


Video:



Why Dominating Blow?:

I've always wanted to see this skill given some much needed love. It's a cool concept with very very nit-picky ways of using it. I wanted to try create a build that anyone could just dive into and truly enjoy the feeling of having this massive army without having to trade off their extremities to make it viable.

At the point of writing this, I am still testing the limits of this build but I can guarantee that it's fun. Sometimes mapping becomes a game of how many minions can you stack before the boss. Sometimes you end up completely shocked at whats going on because you've accidentally captured three beasts and your screen is full of nonsense.



Pros and Cons:
Spoiler


Pros:

- High damage
- Cheap
- Fast clear speed
- Steals rare enemy buffs
- Power scales with pack density
- Functions without dominating blow, but damage increases exponentially with it
- Decent solo and group damage

Cons:

- Lots of screen clutter
- High amount of sockets advised for leveling





Skill Tree:
Spoiler


Passive Skill Tree:
https://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/3.2.0/AAAABAMDAASzBkkI9BCXEQ8RLRNsFm8XLxo4Gmwc3B_HITQi9CSqJy8o-ilPKpgreCycLOIy0TWSNuk5CzpYOtg64TsNPAVBP0GHRARFR0eFTLNNuU3jUeZVxlXWVytZ81qRZOdmVGa6akNqrGvbbAttGXKpdqx8g3zZfRiApILHg9uFMoVghXuIQI8akDOQVaIAplemrKcIqH2qxKyYrKqtjbQvtz64k7zqvYK_l8BmyT3MvM9-0B_Tj9P72L3ZC9le2t3fiuNq5CLpAuoY6-7sOOyD7IrvfO_r8B_yHvJF9zL31_no-oD60v4K_oH-j_6z

While leveling, I recommend starting with the upward and rightward branch into minion damage before moving to the left. You will only need to really use the dominating blow skill from act 3 and onward, so building as a typical zombie summoner until you feel ready to add to your arsenal will improve your leveling experience. I personally switched to dominating blow when I had my hammer and 4 linked it.

Notes:

- The tree is fairly malleable in terms of what defenses you want. I have scaled health,
and a bit of energy shield and armor

- Hammer damage on the left is technically not required at all, though from gameplay
experience, it does have a QoL effect on how many minions you dominate in each pack due
to the culling strike on stun.

- NB: The mana reserved nodes and purity of flesh wheel should be the last nodes
you are picking. I highly recommend you fill out the bottom left branch first and then
move to the scion life wheel after

- NB2: During leveling, I focused on minion damage as a priority, I recommend you
do the same and focus on life nodes when you feel your health is becoming an
issue


Ascendancy:

- Ascendancy 1: Take the Puppet Master node. This will beef up all of your minions.

- Ascendancy 2: Take Invoker.

- Ascendancy 3: Take the Flesh Binder node. At this point they should have enough damage
and health, alongside threshold jewels to have a significant power spike

- Ascendancy 4: Take the Soul Weaver node. You will be using specters over skeletons, so
this node will amp their power up significantly.




Items:
Spoiler


Currently, the build only makes use of one unique item with a relatively low cost as enablers.


[Chober Chaber]


This is your bread and butter. It grants +2 levels to your dominating blow skill gem. In the sockets, it is very important to have multistrike, ancestral call and melee splash linked to spread your domination across the entire pack. This is what truly gives the conversion its 'umpf'. Other than that, it has decent minion life and adds to your own mana pool. This item is fairly cheap and easy to come by but the 5 link is the more expensive part. Remember that "The Jeweller's Touch" prophecy allows you to create this setup rather early on.


The following are recommended but optional:

[Sidhebreath]


Nice early game minion damage item.

[Victario's Influence]


For aura support. This is entirely optional and recommended for the later game.


Further Recommendations:

- 1 x unset ring if you run out of space for convocation/ flesh offering
- 1 x bone helmet at level 73 for minion damage


Sockets and Links:

These are all my items and their links at current. In summary:

- 1 x 5 link for domination spread and to increase damage on raised minions
- 1 x 4 link for zombies and phantasm on kill
- 1 x 4 link for specters (I personally enjoy 'Kitava's Heralds' and have gone for melee,
but I can also recommend 'Solar Guards' with a spell echo setup.
- 1 x 2 link for desecrate utility
- rest for auras, blasphemy + curse, flesh offering and convocation







Gems and Jewels:
Spoiler


- 2 x Violent Dead Cobalt Jewel
- If you feel your health can take it, add more sockets in the tree for minion jewels. I
use a ghastly eye jewel on the far left socket.




Bandits:
Spoiler


- Kill them all for those juicy points.




Overall, I do hope that you enjoy this build if you try it. As mentioned above, I am still testing limits of this build and will update this guide as I go along. If you have any thoughts or want to share your experiences with this build (if you try it) please let me know! I would be very keen on hearing your tale!

Last edited by Taerus on Mar 7, 2018, 8:44:27 AM
Last bumped on Aug 30, 2018, 4:35:42 AM
Sounds Like a Lot of fun, Will try it out, keep up the good work!
After getting first minions do you still have to use dominating blow on next minions?
I'm not sure if I understand the question fully, so please let me know if this answers you:

Dominating blow is a duration based minion, meaning that every minion you turn lasts for about 31 seconds with the above build. Once that converted minion dies, dominating blow is unable to raise them again.

So, yes, you should be constantly using dominating blow on the next packs to keep your minion numbers up to their maximum, but the amount is completely up to you. If you are satisfied with a single pack of mobs, then you can hold onto those for 31 seconds without using dominating blow on another pack.

Also to mention, in case this is what is being asked, dominating blow can only be used by you and not the minions you have converted. So unfortunately, we can't have our own army raising army... although that would be really cool.
Need to try this soon xD Looks like fun chaos ^^
Is this at least atziri viable?
How about panteon? :)
@Inferius90:

Yes, this is atziri viable. I haven't tried uber, but normal is doable. The first and second boss is an absolute breeze if you take your minions with you - You're looking at both of them dying in under 20 - 40 seconds. Atziri is a little harder, these are the highlights form my experience:

1 - The fight is lengthy, so your dominating blow minions will be few or none, so you'll fall
back on zombie and specter damage. This is still more than enough to kill her, but nowhere
like the first

2 - Her normal phase is not an issue if you time convocation to avoid the flameblasts, but if
you don't, you're going to have to re-raise your zombies (this can be a bit butt-clenchy)

3 - Her adds/heal phase is an absolute dps increase for this build. You can convert each and
every one of them. Just make sure to avoid her flameblasts that follow soon after.

4 - Her worst phase for this build is the split. Getting in position to convocate on the
correct mirror image is a pain in the rear end if you mistime it and personally lead to a
few deaths on my part (One, because I apparently suck at dodging, and two, you can
accidentally get caught in the small animation lock)
Last edited by Taerus on Mar 9, 2018, 1:38:58 PM
@Moscik

Killing each pantheon while leveling ranges from medium to breeze depending on how many minions you can take into the battle. At least until you are into the later game and your zombies are beefy. Kitava went deathless for me, but during leveling Abberath was a pain in the rear.


In terms of pantheon choices:

- I personally don't find any of them critical to the build, so go for what is comfortable.
- I personally use Soul of Lunaris since I tend to be in the middle of massive enemy packs for dominating blow and Soul of Tukohama to give me a bit more defense while swinging my hammer like a madman.

Hope this is what you were asking for :)? If not please let me know and I'll respond asap.

do you think any of the unique flasks would be good for this build? and if so which of them?

thank for your help!

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