3.8 New Queens Escape + Baron - super fast physical skeletons + zombies

Hello Grim ... i see mentioned several time use of Decoy Totem but can see not any mention of one in guide for Gem setup. I check also you Profile and Character (Bones_Jones?) and can see not any use of Decoy Totem Gem. Please you can explain how is used the Decoy Totem without have necessary Gem on Gear? Thank you.

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Hello Grim ... i see mentioned several time use of Decoy Totem but can see not any mention of one in guide for Gem setup. I check also you Profile and Character (Bones_Jones?) and can see not any use of Decoy Totem Gem. Please you can explain how is used the Decoy Totem without have necessary Gem on Gear? Thank you.


For levelling, I highly recommend getting a voideye ring and putting decoy totem in it. It keeps you alive in a lot of situations. But, to do this you'll need enough resists in gear, from tree and from aura to get by with just one rare ring. One of the reasons it is good early is because you are moving slower and your minions are weaker before you get good gear.

Then when you get to end game, and have good gear and a bit of cash, your clearspeed is high, so stopping to cast decoy totem slows you down. Also at very end game, monsters will melt it faster or ignore it more often. This is why at end game i chose to drop it in favour of a change to aspect of the spider belt and resists/ life/ socket on the ring.
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Grim, wondering your thoughts for Delve and Femur of the Saints vs. Queen's Escape. As we push into the extremes of the mine, do you think there will be a point where slower, more powerful skellies are the way to go or do you think the thesis of weaker, faster hits will still hold up?


In short, yes i do think femurs will be good, but a lot of people have lag issues with that item, it's a bit risky to use it, cos the game is not enjoyable with lag.

A guess might also be that these delve monsters have crazy minion killing abilities, so minion life may be better than speed, and that +2 to gem level will be sexy.
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A guess might also be that these delve monsters have crazy minion killing abilities, so minion life may be better than speed, and that +2 to gem level will be sexy.


This is part of my concern as well. Minions are either going to be really good or worthless as content scales. I still plan to give it a whirl as a league starter. The general gearing is so much cheaper than builds I typically use and once you hit lvl 19 gems you can pretty comfortably do T13+ maps. That's gotta take you pretty far early in delve. Especially since minions aren't affected by the darkness.

Bought a Bloodbond chest piece yesterday to try out the blood offering skill. Great alternative to flesh offering ... and it gave me the last ring slot to use for flame dash. The downside really doesn't affect us much with all the regen. The explicit "Minions have 20-30% increased maximum life" could help come Delve league. Also gives them dodge and the offering skill gives lots of regen and 50% increased damage.

The only truly difficult thing with the chest is coloring. I'll never understand why they took a summoner chest and made it heavily evasion based. I recommend using the crafting bench to get your red sockets out of the way cheaply. The last 3 blues can be pretty tough as well, but not nearly as bad as the reds. I got stupidly lucky and the whole procedure took me around 400 jewelers. Expect to use closer to 1k. I would not recommend chroming this unless you are willing to compromise on the sockets. Almost no way you are not getting a green and if you avoid it 3R3B is equally unlikely.
My impression is that Delve is going to be rough for summoners. The tight Delve dungeon corridors and darkeness DoT mechanic are hard counters to summoner's advantages of kiting and casting from a distance.

Zombies will need to be re-summoned to raise their level as you delve deeper. Time and mana to re-summon 15 zombies just adds micro-management stress. Not the best thing for necromancers who wanted a less button mashing style of gameplay.

Minion AI will make or break summoners in Delve. Minions now sometimes get stuck on an obstacle or sharp corners. The current skeleton AI that tends to wander off and target random far away enemies. Hope AI is changed for the better in Delve, the AI needs some fixing (like wielding Femur and casting Vaal summon skeletons).

But its a good thing that Delve is adding new content AND changing summoner gameplay. More use of haste and movement skills. More need for summoner protection like MoM, block, evasion, etc.

No need to nerf summoners for Delve, its design should drop minions from top tier OP. Any guesses on summoner power ranking in infinite Delve dungeons?


Can someone take a look at my endgame gearing and passive tree? I have two six links and many of my gems are maxed out. But I want to optimize my character even further. Right now I am around 7.5k HP (7.3k HP with from Dust jewel). Should I stack more health or go for more damage? I have a lot of taunt jewels and even blind.

I am also grabbing all health nodes near my tree. But I was thinking about taking some elemental resist nodes to get more dps oriented gear? What do you think? Please advise! I am willing to try anything to squeeze more out of my build.
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Can someone take a look at my endgame gearing and passive tree?


I havent looked at your passive tree, but my opinion is always more life!

For gear, you are at the point of diminishimg returns.
- you can squeeze out another few hundred life with rings and belt.
- You can get lvl 21 active skill gems
- you can swap fortify for empower lvl 4 on zombies, or get another blue slot for conc effect.
- you can add corruptions to gear or craft master affixes to rares
- you can add lab enchants to boots, gloves, helm. But, i wouldnt reroll that baron, its a good enchant! Buy a new helm and enchant that one.
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sighlight wrote:

Can someone take a look at my endgame gearing and passive tree? I have two six links and many of my gems are maxed out. But I want to optimize my character even further. Right now I am around 7.5k HP (7.3k HP with from Dust jewel). Should I stack more health or go for more damage? I have a lot of taunt jewels and even blind.

I am also grabbing all health nodes near my tree. But I was thinking about taking some elemental resist nodes to get more dps oriented gear? What do you think? Please advise! I am willing to try anything to squeeze more out of my build.


Re-coloring a six link is a pain, but I'd consider trying for a 3B 3R Queen's Escape. Adding minion damage gem over fortify will power up the zombies. Maybe replace ruthless with empower, the extra zombie health is worth a small DPS drop.

Where is Purity of Elements? It is key in this build. That single gem will remove the need for so much elemental resists on your other gear. Plus the 30% increased damage from Commander of Darkness that you are missing right now.

Strength is also needed. Getting 1k str for the zombie life leech in the Baron is a good goal. Look for belts with % increased attributes. The % increase has a larger effect the more str added from other sources.

If you are willing to drop some of that 7.5k HP, you can skill re-spec to Grave Intentions for +1 skele and +1 zombie. Or use 3 skill points to open up that jewel socket.
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Matbus wrote:
My impression is that Delve is going to be rough for summoners. The tight Delve dungeon corridors and darkeness DoT mechanic are hard counters to summoner's advantages of kiting and casting from a distance.

Zombies will need to be re-summoned to raise their level as you delve deeper. Time and mana to re-summon 15 zombies just adds micro-management stress. Not the best thing for necromancers who wanted a less button mashing style of gameplay.

Minion AI will make or break summoners in Delve. Minions now sometimes get stuck on an obstacle or sharp corners. The current skeleton AI that tends to wander off and target random far away enemies. Hope AI is changed for the better in Delve, the AI needs some fixing (like wielding Femur and casting Vaal summon skeletons).

But its a good thing that Delve is adding new content AND changing summoner gameplay. More use of haste and movement skills. More need for summoner protection like MoM, block, evasion, etc.

No need to nerf summoners for Delve, its design should drop minions from top tier OP. Any guesses on summoner power ranking in infinite Delve dungeons?


The one good thing for summoners is that the darkness will not harm minions at all. This could be a huuuuge buff compared to other classes.
Would the new herald of purity (see below) aura most likely replace the curse aura we were using?

Looks like some changes are also going to be coming to the skill tree, hopefully near where we are putting our points.

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Alongside the release of Delve, we've created a brand new set of skills to better enable ally-centric playstyles for the Templar. Today we're showing off one of those skills -- and it's not what you think!

The skill...? Herald of Purity. Herald of Purity, like the other Herald skills, adds damage to your attacks and spells -- Physical Damage in this case. Killing enemies with Herald of Purity active summons a Sentinel of Purity for you. You can have up to four of these beefy minions at once. They have a basic melee attack for use against single enemies, and an area-of-effect slam for groups. Killing enemies while you have four Sentinels of Purity active will restore the life and refresh the duration of one of them, rather than killing and replacing it.

On-kill effects such as this lose some usefulness against tough bosses, so you also have a chance to summon or refresh a Sentinel of Purity whenever you hit a Unique enemy.

You can specialise in this Herald to some degree with one of the new Guardian Ascendancy notable passives, Radiant Crusade, which boosts the amount of added Physical Damage you get from the effect of the Herald, as well as increasing the area of effect of your Sentinels of Purity. The other new notable after it even gives them a new, more powerful slam skill on a cooldown.

And of course, you'll be able to further capitalise on your minions with a number of new passive skills in the passive skill tree.

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