Pure Zombie Necromancer build?

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Draegnarrr wrote:

Grasp is truly woeful as an actual item, it used to be ok as it'd help buffer their resists but now it just halves your number of zombies for a small damage increase (that works out as a decrease because you do 50% less by default by having less zombies)

Poison zombies are pretty epic though with united in dream, I usually run poison zombies + bleed spectres on my necro in a league as a reliable farmer and this one was even better as I got to save the support gem on the zombies.

Zombie + empower + bloodlust + melee phys + minion damage + faster attacks is what I used i think, with knitted horrors providing the bleed required for bloodlust.

As to zombie centered builds the issue is very simple, it takes some fantastic gear to sufficiently toughen zombies to the state they won't die and limits your offering use to the block related one not the additional damage you'd rather be using, i've personally not found a work-around for this though you can find shaper viable summoners around but they mostly rely on the spectres i don't think i've seen a successful zombie based summoner clearing the endgame content.

The new treshholds gonna be great for general mapping and easier content (looking forward to using them) but still won't help them with the hardest content, the only thing i've found that helps with that is block, as much block as you can get on all your pets.

But really the reason they aren't used as a core build is because SRS and Animate weapon are just better, more damage, easier to use and control (in the case of srs), some people like myself use them anyway because they enjoy the idea and the playstyle but i'm under no illusions that going animate weapon this season would have been vastly superior.

My main in Breach is a level 92 Necromancer with a focus on Zombies and I can say this is all pretty accurate. I'm keeping them alive (mostly) with Bone Offering, Fortified Legion, an Intuitive Leap to Decay Ward, and some jewels with Minion Block. (I'm also using Aegis Aurora, a Stone of Lazhwar with corrupted minion damage, and Rumi's Concoction to cap my own block and spell block with Bone Spirit.) I'm running Melee Splash rather than Bloodlust to clear packs faster and so I'll still hit bosses when my zombies are dealing with adds. With a level 3 Empower (failed corrupt, so relatively cheap) in a Skin of the Loyal, my zombies are effectively level 24. I also run Generosity on UiD's Envy aura.

Overall I've got about 8ex in gear (about half of that is United in Dream) and I'm having trouble with Tier 15 bosses, and I usually die at least once on a normal Atziri run (from failing to dodge her Flameblasts). I did manage to barely survive the Chimera in a rare corrupted map though. I can solo Xoph's and Esh's Domains. For Tul's, I have to swap out Bone Offering for Spirit Offering, and I don't have enough DPS even with that to clear Uul-Netol's. The one time I tried a Core map I died multiple times, but it had the Overlord's mod which made the Eater of Souls particularly deadly and difficult to dodge. The Overgrown Ruin boss killed me three times, and I haven't successfully cleared a Vaal Temple in two tries (twelve deaths to K'aj A'alai). On the other hand, the Infernal King in the Abyss is a joke.

My two biggest problems are that I'm personally very squishy (barely 6000 effective HP) and that it takes my entire unreserved mana pool to replace one zombie if it dies. My squishiness isn't a big problem unless a boss has really big area effects or does chaos damage in huge spikes, and my zombies survive better against things that hit frequently rather than hit really hard or drop DoTs rather than hit. Corpses are no problem; Desecrate with Spell Echo gets me ten, which will cap Bone Offering with one left over.

The one thing I'm least certain about is which curses I should be running. Currently I've got Vulnerability and Warlord's mark. Previously I used Enfeeble and Temporal Chains, but that wasn't enough DPS to get through Xoph's Domain. Punishment might be a decent option for more DPS. If I had more time in the league I might try using Vulnerability, Punishment, and Spirit Offering on normal mobs, then switch to Enfeeble, Punishment, and Bone Offering for bosses.

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airparisderjesus wrote:

i thought with

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Can some experienced summoner person tell me why?

it's clear i have no experiences, in fact i've never played a summoner in poe. i have decent knowledge of the game and endgame boss mechanics so i thought one could transfer this knowledge to build a novel thing like "pure zombie summoner"

but before trying i wanted to hear some opinions and i thank you for your effort

sux they die so easy

indeed, as i said before the best way to use zombies in the current meta is either

to not care about them at all and throw them in a 4l vertex so you can casually recast them or


go insanely far into the deep end of durability that they are *almost* immortal



option A is your bog standard traditional summoner where the leg work is the spectres

option B is ... well

this grotesque over investment

so saltychipmunk, how far did you go with this "overinvestment"?

anyone have seen the new grasp change?



so now we definetly have zombies/2 but with 2x dmg (i can imagine 90% is not a fixed roll).
also we have now 5000 (!) extra HP for zombies, this should be really big or not?

BTW: any idea of zombie's accuracy? (im not giving up..^^)

If only Scourge applied not only offensive but also defensive minion modifiers to player... life builds could've had a chance to be good then :0

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airparisderjesus wrote:

so saltychipmunk, how far did you go with this "overinvestment"?

anyone have seen the new grasp change?

Grasp_Balancing

so now we definetly have zombies/2 but with 2x dmg (i can imagine 90% is not a fixed roll).
also we have now 5000 (!) extra HP for zombies, this should be really big or not?

BTW: any idea of zombie's accuracy? (im not giving up..^^)

The explosion is pretty good. It goes up to 100% monster life easily. And now you don't lose any damage by cutting your zombie numbers in half. The extra life doubles the life of a level 20 zombie. Pretty good for MI even.

ok i came up with some calculations, lvl 92 tree, only took the new Grasp with 90% MORE Physical Dmg into account. counting with total of 4 zombies (3 basis+5 from tree -4 from grasp)

Links
Raise Zombie-Poison-Melee Phys Dmg-Multistrike-Faster Attacks-Minion Dmg

DPS

Lvl 20 Zombies with 619-1547 Phys Dmg
4x Zombies

33% less dmg (zombie hidden modifier)
33% more attack speed (zombie hidden modifier)

+50% more dmg Taken (shock)
+139% more phys dmg (grasp, melee phys gem)
+49% more dmg (minion gem)
+54% inc attack speed (20/20 faster attacks)
+38% poison dmg (20/20 poison gem)
+10% inc poison duration (20/20 poison gem)
+94% more attack speed (multistrike)
-15% less attack dmg (multistrike)

183% inc melee phys (tree)
285% inc double dipping like minion dmg, "increased dmg if uve consumed a corpse recently" and stuff (tree)
167% inc chaos dmg (tree)
103% inc effect duration (with 18% from temporal chains vs bosses)

no jewels taken into account.

--> 700k DPS when all 4 zombies attack. did not consider the new threshold jewel.
with 2M DPS i can instantkill double vaals, trio and uber atziri split phase. so it's still a way to go ... hmm

maybe minor buffs to zombie skill gem or addition of another cool unique could actually make it viable. if the zombies could apply bleed i would have another 1M DPS (10%/s, not moving!). so if GGG adds a bleed application for minions/zombies it actually will be very very high dmg and they might be good sustainable as we only need 4 zombies + i have defensives auras as necromancer + temporal chain Curse (on hit, sadly)

also worth to mention: when dual wielding grasp+united in dream i can actually drop Poison gem and add some other nice stuff like melee splash for clearspeed or minion speed which gives extra 50k DPS and makes minions super fast moving, which can be nice for repositioning at the boss.

I'd use Empower over Faster Attacks. Especially if u can get Skin of the Loyal. it also increases their hp. Necros provide a lot of attack speed anyway.

Btw what do you mean by hidden zombie modifier?

Also important: you can't scale minions with stuff like %phys or %chaos from your tree. Those stats belong to your character. Only minion related passives, support gems and auras will apply.

O m g how could I overlook that LOL. fucking minions.i was in totem-modus

These hidden mods are shown in raise zmbie wiki I didn't questioned them

Interesting, not sure where they got that info. Seems dubious with no source given. At least I've never heard of this before.