[3.8 Ready] (UPDATED) Skeletal Confetti Bomber League Starter(skele mages)

This was back in 3.1, for new players a Mayhem race is a temp league in which absurd amounts of league mechanics are in set zones. For instance you can encounter breaches inside a breach lords domain to double stack breaches on top of each other(it's the only way this has ever happened.) and you can have 20 strongboxes in one zone, and so on and so forth. It's really difficult to survive.

(3.1 Harbinger Mayhem race League)
https://youtu.be/LaNwWrC1z_U

Liven up any party with undead confetti explosions

Relatively Inexpensive

Good for people with ADD

Can clear well enough on it's own (it survived Mayhem with trash gear and that was 3.1)

Emulates that D2 summoner experience pretty well.

Not the fastest leveling experience if you're not used to skeles, you pretty much have to use freeze pulse for a long time.

Struggles without gem levels

Very easy to lose your character in the mess on screen

Annoys party players and it's EE.

Tries to melt your GPU.

This build uses a lot of curses and it's a lot of buttons to press.

Don't even bother using your skeletons for the most part, grab freeze pulse or storm brand and pick up a summon skeletons gem. Use freeze pulse or storm brand without modifying your passive tree outside of the guide and towards the mid 20's to 30's you'll want to start setting up a 4 or 5 link with summon skeletons. The earlier you can get a Vaal Summon Skeletons the better.

Skeletons are highly dependent on gem levels, the difference between a lvl 19 and a lvl 20 Vaal Summon Skeletons gem is incredibly large.

Definitely get the new [3.8] Carrion Golem the moment you can to help your little skeleton buddies.

You can actually do a fair bit of extra DPS if you set up a 4 link Dark Pact setup and spam it on your skeles, I did it for the majority of the leveling process up into some breaches, you just need to be careful to not cast it on yourself fighting bosses. When your skeletons die or you miss click you can cast it on yourself and sacrifice your life pool to do damage.

The moment you can grab Minion Instability and the additional curse on the tree you're going to want to, when you dark pact your skeles to death it will give you a major dps boost against bosses in the leveling process.

KILL

Lab is pretty painless until uberlab as long as you can dodge and have an instant life flask, I didn't try uberlab in mayhem but I'm going to assume it's not very pretty unless you're fully geared out.

Total DPS as long as you keep every curse up is up from 3.1 from 550k to roughly 800k-1.1mil with all skeletons summoned under ideal conditions.

This thing kept up with T10+ 20 rogue exiles and upwards of 5-10 strongboxes popped at the same time without paying much attention at all, it's not fast but it's safe. You can actually box out a lot of bosses because they can't handle 6 skeles being summoned on their face every half a second and don't agro on you.

https://i.gyazo.com/93c2ed7e81a2f1d9d4cf5d3a4e505f9d.mp4
Bosses have a rather hard time attacking you and get very easily distracted by skeletons, which is fantastic in a party because it allows anyone with heavy DPS to hammer on the boss while they're stuck in a skele-clump.

Vaal Summon Skeletons: Your Dead Reckoning makes this 15 mages instantly cast with an extra 20 friends along for the ride to tank, this is an instant massive DPS boost and should be saved for bosses, strongboxes, essences, breaches, and very dense maps. If you want to try it, throw on a 4 link Dark Pact setup and go nuts. It stacks with your skeles for a grand total of 51 active skeletons.(this was in 3.1)

Vaal Summon Skeletons is so incredibly underrated.

(SEVERELY OUTDATED AND FROM A TEMP LEAGUE, this stuff is garbage aside from the Kaom's Heart it was to prove that it was viable with trash.




Rare movement speed, life, res boots.

Life/Res gloves with strength.


Doedre's Damning

Coral ring essence crafted with essences of Fear for minion movement speed, with resistances.


Alternatives:
5 link staff (easy to get with cards from jungle valley and such, the market is often flooded with them within 3 hours of the league start.)

Stygian vise with strength, life, resistance.

Aul's Uprising with Wrath reservation.

Malachai's Artifice:

with the best fire roll, and pop a lightning golem into it instead of using carrion golem. This will let you drop EE on the tree and as long as the golem is alive it can trigger EE for the skeletons to beat something to death without the skeles themselves overwriting each other every second.


Flasks:

Life Flask
Rumi's Concoction.
Silver Flask
Basalt Flask
Quicksilver

1x Dead Reckoning (3.8 BUFFED TO 15 SKELETAL MAGES FROM 5 PER)

From Dust

To Dust(final jewel you would throw in at 92.)

Alternatively you could alt and regal some ghastly eye jewels.

Sire of Shards Skele setup: Summon Skeleton -> Pierce -> Ele Focus -> Minion Damage -> Spell Echo. Drop Spell Echo in a 5 link since it's the least useful and if you have Vaal Summon Skeletons it's useless for it's various minions.

Summon Skeleton - Pierce - Minion Damage - Elemental Focus - Controlled Destruction - Spell Echo/Slower Proj

(This was in 3.1) using Death Mark Support is going to be integral for DPS against more recent content, as spell echo doesn't support Vaal skills you will want to drop spell echo for Death Mark support.

In the previous iteration of this build, Vaal Skill gems hadn't been merged with standard skill gems and required 2 entirely separate links to cast. So Spell Echo used to be a viable choice. It is completely fine until you have a vaal summon skeletons gem.

You will want a lvl 21 Vaal Summon Skeletons gem, the damage is too good to pass up and there's a bunch of ways to get one.

------------------
Boots/Helm/Gloves:

Dark Pact - Arcane Surge - Conc Effect - Added Chaos Damage

or

Smite - Faster Attacks - Ancestral call - Additional Accuracy (buff skeleton damage by hitting an enemy once in a while.)

Plus

Haste - Wrath - Zealotry. Do not use anger, it will mess with your elemental equilibrium.


Curse Setup:

Elemental Weakness - Projectile Weakness - Flammability

And finally just pop a flesh offering in the last socket.



This build uses a lot of curses, you're going to have a lot of buttons to press.

PoB Pastebin:

https://pastebin.com/FVQtZxHn