[3.10] VOIDFORGE Chains of Command (75/75 block, 6K+ life), Cheap 12.5M dps, all content.

Edit: Chains of Command has been silently nerfed by a huge amount (60% more damage gone) between the patch note and the actual release. The build is still viable, but it has a lot less "wow factor".


Also, since Scion no longer bring something you can't get by other means, you should roll a necromancer for this build.

Hello, and welcome to this guide about Chains of Command, Voidforge edition !

Me too, like a ton of people, I wanted to play Animated Weapons this league, but I was disappointed about a lot of stuff. However, rereading the patch note allowed me to discover an hidden gem, the Chains of Command buff (I will use CoC instead of Chains of Command, i’m not talking about Cast on Crit, I won’t ever mention it anyway).

Anyway, the question everyone should be asking is "Dude, you can’t summon AGW out of thin air, why should I play this instead of NEW META ANIMATED WEAPON ?" And I would answer this:

More seriously, pros of CoC over regular AW :
Spoiler
+It’s cheaper and more readily available (no 6L required, no +2 lvl minion damage/as wand, no 4G triad grip, no hyper expensive jewel to hit that 1M dps per minion, etc etc etc). The most expensive item is for AG (Mask of the Stitched Demon) and is not needed to get the build running. It’s also recommanded to craft it yourself, as the base + the vial is less than 1 exa, while the item itself is not. Voidforge is also very cheaply available (and the build can use any kind of weapon as a starter. Hell, even wasp nest or dreamfeather are 530 pdps weapon with the added physical damage)

+The scaling is better all across the board except for one point, the benefits from level scaling. The latter will allows AW and extremely expensive equipment to outscale CoC when it no longer matter (>25M dps), and only against bosses without minions. Ps: Cold Iron Point is not enough to reach this point, btw.

+No need for any kind of gem swap. You will struggle achieving 1M dps with AW without melee splash, you will easily achieve 1,4M dps per AGW (Animated Guardian Weapon, the skill used by CoC) in your clear setup.

+The clearspeed is better, as you have a 8L instead of a 6L. You also won’t have to stop for resummoning weapons mid map.

+You won’t spend dozens of seconds at the start of each time summoning your army (BF x3-4, AW x14-17). Not counting the mana cost of it, which most people have forgotten about. Just pop the jars and you are done with it.

+You won’t have to do any kind of minion maintenance during mapping, minions will keep themselves summoned. Just don’t run elemental reflect maps.

+No spectre management (just a AG headache, but you may have it in the AW as well :p)

+Better flask management (like Rumi) since you regenerate a lot of charges naturally.

+ The COOL factor. Be honest, what is better, little broken daggers running around, or MASSIVE ENDGAME WEAPONS LIKE VOIDFORGE?


Cons of CoC over AW :
Spoiler

-You don’t have power charges on minions

-You have no freedom with the body armor or shield slot (I wanted dat 25% offering body armor )

-You need to get CoC to be able to play it (obvious, but that means you can’t use it for leveling). It’s also not SSF friendly.
-You get two less flasks slots.


And, that’s all.

"Wait, aren’t you missing tons of stuff, like frenzy charges from spectres you can’t generate anymore, the easy generation during bosses, etc ?"
Well, no. CoC can easily reach the weapon cap permanentely with two jars and some flask regen (ryslatha, essence extraction, mender's wellspring). The amount of flask charges you need = amount of flask charges you regenerate.
The build is also featuring Victorio’s charity on the character, so you generate frenzy charge (with a 4s firestorm autocasted).


Anyway, back to the build itself. The build feature :
Spoiler

-Great clearspeed

-Great defenses (75% block, 75% spellblock, 480 hp/block, 6K+ hp)
-A 2400 (at least) Molten shell CWDT lvl 1, with possibility to self activate a 7200 Vaal molten shell.

-A mostly automated build. What you need to self cast is Convocation, Desecrate (only when there is no corpses), Shield charge, Vaal Molten shell, Deathmark and Frost bomb. While that's 6 skills, they have specific uses in specific situations, so it's not like you are playing on a piano.

What happened to CoC in 3.10?
Spoiler
Anyway, why do I claim that CoC will outscale AW ? Well, it’s because most people looked at the Animated weapon rework, saw figure, said « Awesome », then looked at CoC buffs, said « oh yeah, it’s the same figures but less practical and without more multiplier, it’s shit ». Let’s look :
"
Chains of Command: The Skills granted by this item have been updated in line with Animate Weapon. The level 18 version of the skill adds 108 to 159 physical damage to the attacks of minions animated by it. This level of the skill can animate up to 13 minions. The level 20 version of the skill adds 126 to 184 physical damage to the attacks of minions animated by it. This level of the skill can animate up to 14 minions. Both have a base duration of 20 seconds. These changes affect all versions of the item.

While the patch note comment is a little backhanded and like « yeah, it’s just to keep CoC in line with AW », it’s a gross underestimation. While CoC didn’t get a more multiplier or a more AS, the 60% one it had before wasn’t changed. However, the thing most people missed is that 128-172 added physical damage is vastly different when it’s on AW than when it’s on AGW. Why ? Quite easy. AW use a shitty glass shank as a weapon, and will be able to upgrade it at best at a 400 pdps regular weapon in end game. AGW use a designed weapon (the one you give to Animated Guardian, AG), meaning you can get a weapon with a higher floor (it’s not 6-10 base damage) which scales heavily with added physical damage (It’s not a white weapon without mod).

Lot of stuff can work (Paradoxica with impale mod, a sword/claw with >2 as and 300 pdps, etc), but this guide will be about the mother of all added physical damage scaling, VOIDFORGE. Voidforge is taking your physical damage, and adds 300% of it either as Fire, Lightning or Cold. The physical damage is then deleted. That means your added physical damage is already multiplied by 3. HOWEVER, you can (and you will !) add a triad grip so the base physical damage is not deleted anymore, but added to all hits. Meaning that you actually do 400% of your physical damage each hit as elemental. It’s 100% insane.

Pobs:
Spoiler

Scion:
Spoiler
Pob of the build, 12.5M dps for cheap:
https://pastebin.com/Q8ysQff3

If you want help to gear yourself in the missing slots, check the gear section!

The Pob you should be using before Voidforge, with a Terminus est (ideally at 1c), or Dreamfeather or a Wasp's Nest if terminus est a bit more expensive at start):
https://pastebin.com/wyfE2tXS

May require to keep gems leveled, but that's still a solid 250K dps per weapon with NOTHING but CoC and a trashy wand, or 5M dps, which is enough for most if not all content.

Necromancer:
Spoiler
Solid 1M/weapon with voidforge. Before that (with Terminus est), everything else is the same except for EE and the gem setup (look for physical links below)
https://pastebin.com/WE7JUGDw



Problems to solve:
Spoiler
The main problem of voidforge is how to deal with elemental resistance. You can easily deal with one resistance. You play cold ? Frost bomb, EE, curse, etc. You play fire ? Combustion, EE, curse, scorching ray totem, etc. However, dealing with all three res at once is harder. You can use elemental weakness, elemental army then…. It’s hard. More on that later.
Crown of the Tyrant would be a great option if we could either have our own helmet or the AG one, but both slots are taken (You can get a – element mod on helmet, however. It’s recommanded, but it will be very expensive as +2 minion lvl and minion life are required before that). The solution I went with is to actually ditch one type of damage, and focus on the other two, especially cold. It allows you to use EE, so you have a much easier time against resistances. The sacrified element will be fire (Because I want firestorm in my build), but it can be lightning as well, no problem.
This will be enough for now, but additional resistance debuffs are always welcome, if you can get some. For instance, I will research if Stormblast mines can be smooth enough to include, or if the build is already way enough dps and can focus more on defenses (I want a Surrender!)


Also, another problem is linked to AG. While the mapping is quite good and easy, when you are into a boss fight without or few adds (Shaper, for instance), you have trouble generating AGW. Of course, you can use jars, and you will. However, once you have several weapons, you are no longer guaranteed that the worms will be killed by the AG, reducing the chance to spawn an additional weapon from 100% to 10% (and weaker, on top of that). To solve this, we link Infernal Legion to AG (so the worms are burned immediately by it), and we give it a huge regen with Mask of the Stitched Demon.

What you need to be End game-ready (= ready for bosses, not red maps):
Spoiler

-20% flask charge used on belt (= 9 charges used per jar to summon a worm)

-Infernal legion linked to Animated guardian. The degen will be managed by :

-Mask of the stitched demon in the AG, a body armor with "10% of maximum life gained as energy shield" and a Grave Intention Anoitment. This way, your animated guardian will regenerate 20% hp per second, making him pretty hard to kill if not instantly killed (beware, despite 43K hp, he can be against specific bosses). As I said before, I suggest trying to craft it yourself, the base + the vial being a lot cheaper than the product.

-Triad grip (but a 2G2B is enough).

-Victario’s Charity. (Juicy frenzy charge with Firestorm)

-Chains of command 6s (duh)

-A well rolled voidforge (if you can. Voidforge is cheap enough so you should check for a great one. The bonus "wealthy people" is corrupting it for 8% attack speed. During the first days, you can use a Terminus est, wasp nest or a dreamfeather for good damage before switching. If you have triad grip, you can keep the rest like that. It won’t be optimal, but it will be good enough. If you don’t, use a physical setup instead.

You don't need that to be confortable while mapping, but the infernal legion is required to be good for end game.

Links:
Spoiler

If you are using the voidforge setup:
Spoiler

Body armor (6 sockets, no need for links, RRRBBB): Multistrike – Minion damage – Melee Physical damage – Deathmark – Elemental damage with attacks – Elemental Focus. Pure power. Btw, if you reliably bleed somehow, you can remove MPD ou minion damage for Bloodlust.
BTW, if you are really rich, beside the jewels, getting an awakened melee physical damage is the biggest dps gain (beside woke multistrike, but they are not in the same price range) as an awakened gem, because of the intimidate effect. Get it first when you are getting woke gems!

Helmet (RBBB: Animate guardian + Infernal Legion (ONLY IF YOU HAVE MASK OF THE STITCHED DEMON) + feeding frenzy (for the buffs). Then, you have a 4th slot. Minion life if you don't have it in your helmet, Combustion if you want a more offensive option, Elemental army for the bonus max resistance. Elemental army also allow your AG to be capped elemental resistance without item (but without it, you only need 25% lightning/fire resistance into the body armor).
Finally, empower is also an (expensive) option for additional life and life regen. An empower 4 is +40% life and +80% regen. If you use it, you can actually remove the grave intention anoitment and pick something better instead.

Weapon 1 (into a triggered wand, BBB): Bone offering, Elemental weakness, Firestorm. Firestorm is removable, but it's very reliable to proc the frenzy charges from victario, and allows you to don't sweat too much if you are proccing the wrong EE element with shield charge.

Weapon 2 (RRG: Shield charge – Faster Attack – Fortify. Mobility skill + fortify. Business as usual.

Boots (RRRG: Hatred + generosity, Vaal molten shell (lvl 10) + Cast When Damage Taken (lvl 1)

Gloves(BBGG: Convocation, Frost Bomb, Desecrate, Portal (I like it, but you can remove it).

If you are still looking for it and want a physical setup:
Spoiler
Body armor (6 sockets, no need for links, RRRBBG): Multistrike – Minion damage – Melee Physical damage – Deathmark – Impale – Brutality. Pure power. Btw, if you reliably bleed somehow, you can remove MPD ou minion damage for Bloodlust.

Helmet (RRBB): Animate guardian + Maim + feeding frenzy (for the buffs) + minion life.

Weapon 1 (into a triggered wand, RBG): Bone offering, Vulnerability, Desecrate

Weapon 2 (RRG): Shield charge – Faster Attack – Fortify. Mobility skill + fortify. Business as usual.

Boots (RRRR): Dread banner + generosity, Vaal molten shell (lvl 10) + Cast When Damage Taken (lvl 1)

Gloves(RRRR): Pride, Flesh and stone, Portal, whatever.

Little gameplay advices:
Spoiler

Map : Enter a map, pop jars (with at least 0,05s between each, let the guardian kill them (either manually or with infernal legion, more on it later), then you can start moving. Use convocation often so the weapons are killing stuff close to you, and when you do, pop one or two jars to summon additionnal lvl 20 weapons, since AG will be on top of you. Keep Bone offering up at all time so your defenses are up, and if you don't have corpses to do so, use desecrate (in a boss room, you can set up desecrate in advance, you don't have that much to do anyway).

Leveling:
Spoiler
You can use pretty much anything you want during leveling:
-AW (if it works well)
-Summon skeleton
-SRS
Myself, I will probably test AW, and if i'm not convinced, I will go Summon skeletons.

During leveling, get Life and resistance on items (Movement speed on boots). The rest is useless.

For the tree, it will be like that:
Lvl 26
Lvl 50~
End of story, lvl 69 Feel free to get sockets as soon as you get good jewels. You are also extremely close to a cluster socket if you get something good during leveling. Get it if you do.

For the ascendancy, Move toward Necro for Normal, get necro and move toward pathfinder for cruel, get pathfinder in merciless, and get something these 3 points in uber lab. I didn't find a good way to leverage the new starter, but maybe you will.


Pantheon:
Spoiler

Major: Lunaris (with the avoid chaining projectile)
Minor: You have the choice. Since dots really hurt, the “best” are either Abberath (anti fire dot), Ralakesh (anti physical dot), or Shakari (anti chaos dot). Since Ralakesh bonus aren’t that effective and anti bleed flasks are common, I ruled it out. Then, it’s between immune burning ground and heavily reduced ignite vs heavily reduced chaos ground and immune poison. Since I felt that ignite was more dangerous to me than poison, I choose Abberath, but it’s really a personal choice here. Obviously, if you use invictus Solaris, pick Shakari. Ryslatha is still great while running the lab, of course.

Some notes about everything:
Spoiler
-In this build, Hatred has a limited impact compared to some total conversion builds. It's "only" 27% more damage (It can be over 70% in some case). However, 27% more damage is obviously worth it.
-Triad grip green sockets over blue sockets are only giving a limited amount of additional damage. While it's better to have 4G, 2B2G is only a slight dps loss and make it much easier to fit everything inside. The choice to do a 2G2B may sound dumb, but it's calculated.
-The Stone of Lazwhar may look out of place as well, but I judged it the most forward way to cap spell block. While it lack life and minion damage, it's a -30% spell damage taken (and increased life sustain as well), which is huge. Spell block is hard to cap without it. However, if you don't care, feel free to change it for a life/minion damage/res/whatever rare amulet.
-Be very careful if you are running Acid Caverns. It can spawn a boss dealing insanely high damage to minions, potentially one shotting your AG. Don't run it, or with another skill, or something, get back your AG when you do so.
-The build defense is based around Bone offering, granting a huge block/spell block buff (mitigation), and a great life gain when you block (sustain). It allows you to be VERY tanky, even inside packs mobs. The sustain is also uncapped, meaning if 10000 mobs are attacking you at the same time, you will probably regen enough to survive. Any other defensive mecanism (except straigth immortality) will die in such a case because they can't regen enough, being limited to a % of their life per second. You are most vulnerable to One shot (in one hit, not a lot of them), and dots.
-Given how empty the current pob is (on purpose, you don't need shit to do absurde damage), you can easily scale the build to 25-30M dps if you invest the currency.
-The build can easily switch to AW if you really want so. But you shouldn't :D

Cluster Jewels:
Spoiler
I don’t intend to use lot of cluster jewels. I believe I will use 2 clusters Jewels :
-A large one, either 8 nodes or 12. On it, you need 1 socket and Renewal. Then, it depend on your strategy (and what is available on the market, and what is possible at all). The 8 nodes can be rolled with another 1 or 2 notables/sockets you won’t pick so you can try to get away with renewal and the 1 sockets in 3 points or maybe even 2. Or you may want to go the "go big or go home" route, and try to get two great mods on the jewel. If for instance, you could get 4% increased minion attack speed (supposition) and 25% increased minor effectiveness, getting minors would be an incredible 5% as and 12,5% minion damage per point. In this case, getting everything would be great as well.
-One small, Veteran Awareness. It reduce elemental damage taken by 40% and grants 20% physical reduction damage during molten shell (not vaal molten shell). Imba. May be expensive, however.

Gear section:
Spoiler

Required Uniques:
Spoiler
The Writhing Jar x2. Needed to spawn weapons in all circonstances.
Chains of CommandThe core of the build. You need 6 sockets, no need for links.
Triad Grip An insane amount of dps gained from it.
Jorrhast's Blacksteel. The weapon swap used to summon weapons before/during a boss. Increase minion uptime (or average minions living) by 40%. Don't forget to get back to your regular weapon quickly after the summoning.


Recommanded Uniques:
Spoiler
Victario's Charity. Grants Frenzy charges to allies, equaling to 45% increased attack speed and 12% more damage. Corrupt it for 5% spell block.
If somehow you feel like you have enough dps (or too much dps?), you can also get The surrender for more armor, and more life/block.
Stone of Lazhwar
. Anoited with Grave Intentions. You can try to anoit it before corrupting for +5% spell block, but it can get expensive somehow. Your call.

What to search on equipment (rare only):
Spoiler

During leveling, get Life and resistance on items. The rest is useless.

-Helmet: Best case would be Life, -Cold resist, Minion life support and Minion level. The cold resist is luxury, however.

-Weapon: Get a trigger wand, with lot of minion damage, attack speed, and ideally, minion movement speed.

-Boots: Life, movement speed, resists, and ideally, increased skill duration, so your weapons last longer.

-Belt: Used flask charges, life, resists. Ideally on a stygian base.

-Rings: Life, resists, minion damage

-Jewels: Look for Ghastly eye jewel, with life, Added physical damage to minion, minion attack speed when you killed recently, or minion damage if you used a minion skill recently.

Also, you need a rare with a lvl 20 Aspect of the spider crafted on it.

Animated Guardian gear:
Spoiler

Weapon: Voidforge, obviously. Until then, Terminus est, or DreamFeather or Wasp's Nest.

Helmet: Mask of the Stitched Demon for reasons discussed above. Leer cast is good until then.

Body armor: A body armor (from whatever base) with 10% of life gained as Energy Shield. You also want as much res as possible.

Gloves: Either southbond (the AG is killing through dots anyway) for the increased life, or rare gloves with a lot of resistance

Boots: Victario flight is nice for the aura MS, but a rare with res is good enough as well.

You need resistances. The bare minimum is 75%, but you may want more so your AG can be cursed without decreasing his resistances (or else, it can be dangerous).


I will add stuff in the futur (videos, formating, etc), it's a prerelease guide anyway.

Thanks for reading, feel free to ask any question, argue about stuff you disagree with, no problem! I can be wrong, this guide can and will be improved, and your imput is valuable.

Credits to TENPURAUDON for his amazing guide. However, we have enough differences among our builds that it warrant a completely new guide. Great job, dude.
Last edited by Keyen on Mar 16, 2020, 8:56:16 PM
Last bumped on Jul 23, 2021, 9:58:29 AM
Hey i had a question, wouldnt oro's be good with the triad grip gloves to convert the phys back to fire again ?
"
takeda85 wrote:
Hey i had a question, wouldnt oro's be good with the triad grip gloves to convert the phys back to fire again ?


No. Triad grip for that would be a waste, and Oro scale very poorly with this added physical damage.
Any pob you do with oro will be leagues below this build.
Last edited by Keyen on Mar 12, 2020, 3:20:41 PM
I have no experience whatsoever with Animate Weapon what do you think is going to be better for league starting Animate Weapon and for Chains of Command later,Scion or Witch?
"
VenturaD wrote:
I have no experience whatsoever with Animate Weapon what do you think is going to be better for league starting Animate Weapon and for Chains of Command later,Scion or Witch?


Witch is not a good option as you can't generate flasks charge during a fight. So once you run out of charges on jar, you can't summon weapons anymore. That's why Scion is required.

However, for a pure AW, Necromancer is better on a lot of aspects. But if you plan to play with CoC, you should go scion.
Oh ok thanks i will try and league start as Scion then and eventually buy Chains of Command
Leveling trees for scion please!! 20/40/60
"
Lachrimosis wrote:
Leveling trees for scion please!! 20/40/60
Done.
Hey i'm super interested in the build, I just have two quick questions.

What are you going to play with before having Voidforge for your AG ?

And in your opinion, should I rather level up with SRS or Animate Weapon?

Thank you for your time
Last edited by JordanBosle on Mar 12, 2020, 5:18:09 PM
"
JordanBosle wrote:

What are you going to play with before having Voidforge for your Guardian ?

Probably a physical setup with dreamfeather or Wasp nest. It reminds me I forgot to give the links about such a setup, btw, thanks.

Edit: Andddd it's added.
Last edited by Keyen on Mar 12, 2020, 5:22:39 PM

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