[3.3] SUICIDE SQUAD--- minion instability zombie necromancer

Hey! I love the idea for this build and I am gonna try to run it. I have always enjoyed off summoner builds. I am gonna run this build as life with heavy regen, it is probably worse but I want to test that out. Anyways, I had a few thoughts/questions.

First, how big is the Instability AOE? I have been doing some number crunching and it seems like Empower is a nice damage buff to the zombie setup if you can cut the IAOE.

Second, It also APPEARS that Fire Penetration Support works with Instability, so I was curious if you have messed with that at all?

Third, Since I am going life I don't NEED discipline so I was planning on running double blasphemy with temp chains/flammability.

Fourth, I am gonna try a slightly different Spell totem setup. I was thinking about doing it with Arc-Innervate- Blind. I also considering linking a better arc setup in a Kitava's Thirst. But since you have piloted the build I wanted to ask you about this, Mainly, how often are you casting Zombies? The Kitava procs are only 30%.

Fifth, The sulphur flask seems good but a little unnecessary. I was thinking about doing something weird, like running a Quicksilver flask, or a Sibnite flask with movespeed, so that the zombies have an easier time getting to targets, and the clouds from stibnite seem a little more useful than the damage from sulphur. (Since sulphur flask in an increased modifier and not a more multiplier)

The last thing I wanted to say is that I really like your guide. The explanation of the skills and their less intuitive uses is INCREDIBLY helpful, so thanks for the idea and the good guide. :)

When i started this build, i originally went life with some decent regen. It runs into some problems. the biggest of which is that there just isnt nearly as much health as ES in the tree around witch. She ended up with like 4.5k health and moderate regen. It also became apparent that the build had a fairly dangerous playstyle (having to facedive groups to cast consecrate) in order to have a decent clearspeed. I would say health is doable, but you will need some really good equipment, possibly a belly of the beast for health, which has some pretty unfriendly colors. The greater freedom in auras may be helpful though. So if you manage to pull off the life version let me know what you did to make it work.

Empower/fire pen would be a tremendous addition, if you have the slots for it. If you have a 6 link, definitely use use. But with my 5 link i dont think it really beats minion damage/life. The area on Instability is a pretty decent size, but it is hard to get zombies spread out enough to really take advantage of it, so area gem is pretty handy. If you wanna try without it go ahead, though the already high damage means area probably helps more with clear speed than the empower boost would. And you can still swap in concentrated effect/chance to ignite if you need a damage boost

Kitava's is an interesting notion. Sense your zombies are constantly exploding, you are recasting a lot. but unless there is a large group or a tough enemy you tend to do a lot of
casting over piles of corpses. However, zombie cast speed is naturally just slow, and you would barely get more than one mana expenditure per second, and this would be worse with kitavas cast speed penalty. So it may be workable for a curse or some sort of longer duration buff, but not sure about using it for a shock setup. may actually be useful for skeletons or something.

I have tried using arc-innervate totems on minion builds in the past, and ran into the problem of shock duration. Without investing in spell/lightning damage, the totem simply cant do enough damage to apply shock for any meaningful amount of time. If you want shock, it is probably better to use a vaal lightning trap. The limited ammo should really matter since you have no issues instakilling most magics and rares anyway.

As for flasks yeah i dont use the sulfer that much, go nuts

I approve of this thread. A friend and I had the same idea some time ago but we never really tried it. We called it...

Hello, I'm having a lot of fun with this build, but also having some problems. Specifically, how do you address things like ignite or other dots? High resist I am sure helps, but it's not always enough and it's frustrating watching your ES drain and there's nothing you can do.

"

robproctor83 wrote:

Hello, I'm having a lot of fun with this build, but also having some problems. Specifically, how do you address things like ignite or other dots? High resist I am sure helps, but it's not always enough and it's frustrating watching your ES drain and there's nothing you can do.

Honestly This is one of the bigger weaknesses of the build. There simply isnt a good way to clear ignites or bleeds. The best strategy is to do your best to avoid them. if you know an enemy can ignite/bleed you , stay away and wait for the zombies to engage on their own. Luckily not a lot of enemies have a high ignite chance, and sense you do no direct damage the really dangerous bleeds dont effect you, just occasional punctures from statues and such. IF you play smart you can just avoid them.

If you are fighting some boss where the dots are a real problem, best bet is to take the belt off, chug cleanse potion than put it back on. But this is just awkward as hell to do in a fight

Sulfur flasks can also help just by spreading consecrated ground around, the extra regen can take the bit off of some dots

This response is kinda halfass cause, yeah, i havent found a real solution either.

"

sagiterios wrote:

Honestly This is one of the bigger weaknesses of the build. There simply isnt a good way to clear ignites or bleeds. The best strategy is to do your best to avoid them. if you know an enemy can ignite/bleed you , stay away and wait for the zombies to engage on their own. Luckily not a lot of enemies have a high ignite chance, and sense you do no direct damage the really dangerous bleeds dont effect you, just occasional punctures from statues and such. IF you play smart you can just avoid them.

If you are fighting some boss where the dots are a real problem, best bet is to take the belt off, chug cleanse potion than put it back on. But this is just awkward as hell to do in a fight

Sulfur flasks can also help just by spreading consecrated ground around, the extra regen can take the bit off of some dots

This response is kinda halfass cause, yeah, i havent found a real solution either.

Hi, thanks for writing me back and letting me know your thoughts on this. If you haven't found a good solution it probably doesn't exist :P But I did like your suggestions, and like you said it's not common enough to be a serious problem, it's just frustrating when it happens.

This is probably a terrible idea, but I wanted to see if you thought skipping all the minion life nodes and basically not buffing life at all in order to trigger MI frequently would be a feasible idea? MI is buffed from both minion life and attack correct? So, you would sacrafice a huge chunk of damage, but you would at least still be able to buff it some, most important you would gain your belt back and also now all your minions would be popping. I was thinking about refunding all my minion life passives and gear but deep down I dont think it would work. I dunno... Your thoughts?

fire damage or elemental damage on the passive tree, doesnt scale the minion instability damage right? i check it in the poe wiki, but that was last modified like 6 months ago, and i dont know if it is still how it works.

BTW i had the same idea when the belt came out, but i m only gonna try to make it in the legacy league, becouse i ve had other older ideas i wanted to make a reality. :)

"

Fracture333 wrote:

fire damage or elemental damage on the passive tree, doesnt scale the minion instability damage right? i check it in the poe wiki, but that was last modified like 6 months ago, and i dont know if it is still how it works.

BTW i had the same idea when the belt came out, but i m only gonna try to make it in the legacy league, becouse i ve had other older ideas i wanted to make a reality. :)

yes, the tree can only scale the damage through minion nodes. If you are somehow able to apply increased elemental damage directly to the minions (ie minions deal increased fire damage or a shield with necromantic aegis) than it would increase the damage, though i do not think i have seen anything like that really worth taking

Well that's just what I needed ! =D
the belt / flask combo is genious.



I have a bit of a different approach though:

hybrid life ES - decent gear brings you up to 4.5k life AND 8k ES with 1k ES regen. with your belt i can probably get it up to 1.2k reggen

- but how does one reggen life now? well good sir: MISTRESS OF SACRIFICE + BONE OFFERING instead of flesh binder is as good as it gets for witch survivability and mitigation!

summary 12.5k life pool with 1.2k reggen - capped block chance 500 Hp per block and overcapped ele resists ofc and at least positive chaos resist

all this comes at a price though. I dropped a lot of minion nodes. I only employ 3 large Zombies. and they have a little under 100% minion health but still 170% minion damage.

the only thing i need to be weary of is chaos damage. Especially so if greedy minions wont share the pots anymore. But generally running into a pack with full ES and popping bone offering will in return rapidly refill your health pool. Whether this is practical would need testing. currently I counteracted chaos damage mainly with pots.

how do I make my zombies pop currently? I skip all the nodes that somehow give them reggen.
they die reliably sometimes even too fast for CWDT to resummon them. Well it's still a work in progress =D sweetspot would be somewhere having only 1 - 2 out of 3 Zombies alive during combat.

The idea was to create a necro tank rather than a necro bomber. i employ a lot of cast when damage taken (lvl 1+desecrate+convocate , lvl max + bone offering + tempest shield , lvl x + summon skeletons + zombies + support in my 6 link) so just from taking damage I spam desecrate and convocation always keeping minions by my side. Taking a large chunk of damage will trigger bone offering and tempest shield. Zombies and Skeleton summoning needs to be somewhat balanced with their efficiency thresholds which I haven't really determined yet. but as it currently stands I can safely keep maxing the gems as the reggen is so big and still ensure a frequent recast of minions.

So what do I do actively?
- enduring cry + IC helps in boss fights
- main skill is a 4 link with scorching ray + raging spirits + cast while channeling + increased duration

I guess this build isn't nearly as fast as yours =D calculating dps is difficult too as the build employs various minions dps + DoT from scorching ray + MI + beacon of cooruption but I still enjoy it a lot ^_^ gonna try and see how it works out with the belt / flask combo

gluttony of elements to take care of burning? 6s of burning healing you instead... A bit situational and cost amulet slot though. Might be better of with 2 vaal disciplines used as flasks as it will also out heal bleed.

Too bad that ZO doesnt work with maligaro lens... For taht reason im thinking about going life based(hybrid?)... Boosting hp through str might work well with new baron helmet and maybe small hp pool(when compared to ci-es) would be offset by lens health gain...

Also, temp chains got extra value of prolonging burning dmg... no idea how much value it adds though