Pure Zombie Necromancer build?

I don't know why I didn't think of this before but some guy posted on reddit to use newly buffed shapers gloves and geofris chest to obtain a ridiculous amount of "free" ehp, seeing ad you're already stacking STR. With those items and a high es shield you should be able to easily break the 10k ehp barrier!

I am closing in on 5k health. I am not sure yet if I will use shaper's and geofri's. Time will tell, because with a rare chest I can get a 7th Zombie fairly easily, but with Geofri's it's going to be near impossible.

My current aim is just to see if I can get about 7k health without it, once I get better gear. I'm just below 5k right now for he who was asking

I ran geoffri's and shapers gloves last league on a generic str caster to maximise that defensive bonus and they worked pretty well then, considering they doubled the bonuses on them I expect to be able to easily break 10k though its going to take some time to get the right gear makeup to do so.

I'll post in again should I survive long enough to get both on with good gear to share some stats, the violent dead jewel atm is enough to make the zombies crush through leveling easily enough its gonna be fun to play maps without my usual (knitted horrors) carrying everything.

I would caution against over zealously going for too many zombies.


a high hp pool is the summoners major form of personal defense .. no to vp it is in a bad part of the tree for a zombie build and the passive tax would be massive.

not to mention summoners do not face tank .. if anything big huge one off hits are what will murder you

otherwise you can have a ton of sustain just by wearing a shield and using bone offering . that was what i had to do when my 6 man party decided that i had to tank the double beyond breach invasion map for them.

I was tanking 5 generals and a breach at a time simply because i was using 18% block on femurs of the saints and bone offering.


passive regen will help with dots and 2% life leech from just zombies will get you to leech cap.


honestly if you are doing this zombie build you can pretty much kiss everything to the right of the right most minion node goodbye unless you really really want mom (mom means you cant really do umbilicius but is still technically an easy way to add 2k to your ehp)


resist stacking with all those uniques is going to be difficult .. i would say stop at 6 zombies



the only way id go for 7 zombies is if that was also the only way to improve my ehp


now that i think about it this could be a viable way to make a life base umbilicus build.. you would probably have to stop at 6 zombies as i said but 2% leech from all those zombies will be more than plenty to ditch your pots for everything but say .. labyrinth runs

"

Saltychipmunk wrote:

now that i think about it this could be a viable way to make a life base umbilicus build.. you would probably have to stop at 6 zombies as i said but 2% leech from all those zombies will be more than plenty to ditch your pots for everything but say .. labyrinth runs

This is what I am hoping to accomplish.

1000 str (+3 zombies)
+1 zombie 6L rare torso with life, str, resists

Currently at 5k life and getting close to 900 str with this:

There's still room to grow in the tree and gear, only using one efficient training atm etc.
(It will be a pain in the ass to cap resists though, with no resists on amu, gloves, boots, helmet, belt)

With 2% regen from the meginord's gloves, 2% from umbilicus and a bunch of regen from the tree, I hope I can sustain my life comfortably.

I'm currently doing a hybrid zombie summoner and facetank DPS necromancer.

The idea is to use the new Baron helm and 2x Scourge claws to massively boost both the zombies and my own damage.

I'll easily be able to hit 1k strength margin and am shooting for around 8k life with vaal pact.

I'm adding poison to my zombies and my own attack as both will double dip with the scourge damage bonus. I should be around 10-11 zombies when build is complete.

Planning on running a CWDT - Spirit Offering - Desecrate - Increased Duration.
Normally Spirit Offering is not very useful for Necromancers because it is based on your total life pool, but this build will have a rather large life pool. I'm hoping by facetanking I can keep Spirit Offering up more or less indefinitely for an additional 18% EHP. The bonus Chaos Damage gained on both my minions and myself will further boost the double dipping poison potential.

I'm a bit concerned that my zombies will die too easily to end game content, but my DPS should be extremely high even without the zombies. I'm optimistic that the initial burst of DPS against bosses at the beginning of the fight while my zombies are alive will be high enough to melt bosses near instantly.

ok i'm gonna open another thing:

maybe you noticed that there will be significant changes to bleeding/poison with 3.0 (or 3.0 beta)
--->

the most important is that we have no double dipping BUT have the base skill/attack damage scaled for DoT damage like poison and bleeding.
Zombies have insanely high base damage and therefore the concept of "poison zombies" may be better than before. additionally, GGG will introduce a "chance to bleed" gem so we can have Poison+Bleed from zombies. imo, this is could explode the damage of the zombies, as bleeding dmg is even tripled for standing enemies (from 10% to 30%) for 3.0

"

We'll be introducing other support gems to further enhance Bleeding as well, so Bloodlust won't be the only support that applies specifically to Bleeding effects.

maybe one could build fully around bleeding zombies now and pick United in Dream to provide extra poison (as a minor dmg source). for clearing it will be nice to have many zombies (i.e. use queen's escape or such) but for focused boss builds it will be OK to have only a minimum number of zombies because bleed can't stack (let's say mon'treguls grasp+united in dream).

comments? i'm very excited :D

"

airparisderjesus wrote:

ok i'm gonna open another thing:

maybe you noticed that there will be significant changes to bleeding/poison with 3.0 (or 3.0 beta)
--->

the most important is that we have no double dipping BUT have the base skill/attack damage scaled for DoT damage like poison and bleeding.
Zombies have insanely high base damage and therefore the concept of "poison zombies" may be better than before. additionally, GGG will introduce a "chance to bleed" gem so we can have Poison+Bleed from zombies. imo, this is could explode the damage of the zombies, as bleeding dmg is even tripled for standing enemies (from 10% to 30%) for 3.0

"

We'll be introducing other support gems to further enhance Bleeding as well, so Bloodlust won't be the only support that applies specifically to Bleeding effects.

maybe one could build fully around bleeding zombies now and pick United in Dream to provide extra poison (as a minor dmg source). for clearing it will be nice to have many zombies (i.e. use queen's escape or such) but for focused boss builds it will be OK to have only a minimum number of zombies because bleed can't stack (let's say mon'treguls grasp+united in dream).

comments? i'm very excited :D

the fact that bleed cant stack is why bleed anything minions dont make much sense. though if there was a chance to bleed gem or something id probably still use umbilicus with lions roar just because the constant knock back from the zombies would proc the better version of bleed and it would replace multi-strike provided the damage output was acceptable

montre would also make the most sense in this case as well.

ive never been a fan of the dream montre setup since you cant really use umbilicus with it at all and expect to live.

minions can be strong but are just too unreliable. Spam something to get them moving in a direction, which is fine, but then you have to wb away and boom they come running after you. IF you have to dodge alot you are screwed and will do little damage. Once they engage they need to stay with that enemy until they or that unit dies.