{3.10} Speaker for the Dead | The Mass Minion Summoner | League Starter, Leveling Guide 💀

"
Hercanic wrote:
Speaker for the Dead is among the top 10 most popular builds on poebuilds.cc right now. Nice!



Looks like the ranking is based on view count since league start. Considering we're neither meta nor an established multi-year-old build, I'd say that's pretty impressive!

Thanks everyone!


Congrats! @Hercanic On getting the build on the top ten list man, I’m loving it and having a blast and ty for looking at my gear and giving me some tips it helped out.

I was wondering if you have tried Uber Elder or if anyone els has . I tried him for the first time last night and man that fights got a lot going on lol, my main question is dose anyone else’s minions get rocked? I have been summoning my minions in delv monster level 81 and when I went to do Uber elder last night he killed everyone in 2 secs other then my frost sentinels. I got him down to 75% not good at all lol but first time ever just wondering if anyone got any tips.

Thanks
Last edited by Thoax19x on Mar 31, 2019, 2:35:38 PM
The author, merged 500 chaos, turned out roughly so .. for how critical is +1 not to have in existence? can i close the shaper


Hi there!

I'm trying to follow this build. The one question i have is you have so many skeletons out like all the time. I feel like i have to actively summon them all the time. Do they just come out passively for you for some reason? Thank you for your help!
"
BiggestFlirt wrote:
Hi there!

I'm trying to follow this build. The one question i have is you have so many skeletons out like all the time. I feel like i have to actively summon them all the time. Do they just come out passively for you for some reason? Thank you for your help!


You only really need skeles for single-target damage (against rares/uniques/bosses), and occasionally when you're up against a bunch of enemies or want to be clearing in two directions, as well as some other niche uses. Your clearing is mostly handled by herald of agony & spectres spawning phantasms. You definitely don't need to have them up all the time!
"
Sorator13 wrote:
"
BiggestFlirt wrote:
Hi there!

I'm trying to follow this build. The one question i have is you have so many skeletons out like all the time. I feel like i have to actively summon them all the time. Do they just come out passively for you for some reason? Thank you for your help!


You only really need skeles for single-target damage (against rares/uniques/bosses), and occasionally when you're up against a bunch of enemies or want to be clearing in two directions, as well as some other niche uses. Your clearing is mostly handled by herald of agony & spectres spawning phantasms. You definitely don't need to have them up all the time!



Perfect! Thank you for your the advice/help ^_^
I really am in love with this build and wanted to share with people how I changed the build a little bit to fit my own preferences.

I followed the tree to the exact specifications but changed some skills. Namely, I chose to use Whirling Blades instead of Shield Charge. I personally don't like shield charge and find the sound of whirling blades much more pleasing. I also decided to put Zombies in my helm instead of weapon and Skeletons in my weapon instead of helm.

So the links I have are:

Weapon : Vaal Skeletons - Bloodlust - Melee Physical Damage
Helm : Zombie - Minion Life - Empower - Animate Guardian

I only made this switch once I got my Animate Guardian gem to 20/20. I lose DPS because skeletons isn't linked to Vile Toxins but I personally prefer to have beefier zombies and guardian since they're used a lot more than skeletons while mapping. I find if I lose my meatshield zombies shit goes down bad very fast, meanwhile I only have skeletons out during boss fights or throw them out randomly while mapping.

Putting skeletons in my helm allows me to also use Flame Dash in my alt weapon switch if I want to traverse ledges/gaps without suddenly losing all my zombies and going through the trouble of summoning them again. Likewise if I wanted to use Portal on my alt weapon after finishing a map. Again, just personal preference.

I also leveled using Convocation because when low level I feel I need to re-position my summons a lot more since they do less damage and have to make them focus target. Once I hit level 90 with good gems I took Convocation out because my summons have enough damage to just hit whatever.

This was my first build where I actually understood what was going on with the build to feel confident enough to make small changes according to what I like to make it my own.
@ everyone:
Whew, I finally finished going through this entire thread and indexed all my responses. 196 posts, and if we include the first three and this one, I've made 200 posts in this thread alone.

That's 20 pages.

22%, or 1/5th of all posts here are mine.

If each post took me ~20 minutes, that'd be 4000 minutes, or 67 hours, or almost three days worth of time.

Wow.

Should I start a donation PayPal so I can justify this time to my wife? =oP

Now, aside from a perverse obsession with stats, what's the point of the Reply Index? GGG's forum doesn't have a way to search within a specific thread, so finding my responses becomes all but impossible without brute-force skimming through 90+ pages of the thread. If you've ever asked a question, you may not remember on what page I answered, or you might have even missed it. With the Reply Index, you can search for your own name to find any of my posts that were addressed to you. As I add short descriptions of the content of each post, you'll also be able to search the Index using keywords. "When did Hercanic talk about Elemental Equilibrium?" Soon you'll be able to find all posts where I do. This'll also benefit me when I need to look back, too. Win-win!




@ banang:
"
banang wrote:
Oh Hercanic,

Synthesis is my first league and I can'T believe how much fun I'm having thanks to your build, guide and all the hard work you've put into both.

Today I've downed the shaper (unfortunately died to the Unshaped because I was surprised by it, but no more deaths otherwise) and my new goal is to meta-craft the best-possible claw you've described in the crafting section.

My current solution is as follows:
use alteration until i hit both +1 lvl gems and 20maim, although the chances seem abysmally low. Then imprint it with beast crafting so I can use regal + annulment on it to further meta-craft it.

I just read what TheUberElite wrote about crafting a +3 maim mace, sounds possible, but oh so expensive...

Thank you very much!

Congrats on the first-time(?) Shaper kill!

Imprinting may be prohibitively expensive, as it was last league.

Hitting the perfect claw will likely be an expensive endeavor. On the bright side, it gives us something to work towards, no? Just two mods...




@ Thoax19x:
"
Thoax19x wrote:
"
Hercanic wrote:
Speaker for the Dead is among the top 10 most popular builds on poebuilds.cc right now. Nice!
Congrats! @Hercanic On getting the build on the top ten list man, I’m loving it and having a blast and ty for looking at my gear and giving me some tips it helped out.

I was wondering if you have tried Uber Elder or if anyone els has . I tried him for the first time last night and man that fights got a lot going on lol, my main question is dose anyone else’s minions get rocked? I have been summoning my minions in delv monster level 81 and when I went to do Uber elder last night he killed everyone in 2 secs other then my frost sentinels. I got him down to 75% not good at all lol but first time ever just wondering if anyone got any tips.

Thanks

Yep, several people have beaten Uber Elder with this build.

"
So i managed to bring down uber elder, and surprisingly easier than i would think.

Simply put, moving with charge dash is straight up better than moving with shield charge. Vectoring your charge dashed against line/cone projectile and skipping them with the blink iframe is actually strong.

(Link)

People have beaten Uber Elder with a level 36 character. They've beaten him with Frost Wall, Desecrate, and Freeze Mine of all skills. The takeaway here is that Uber Elder is a very mechanical fight. If you know it well, you can avoid all the dangers.

One technique the level 36 guy did was setting up a digital metronome to time boss cooldowns:

"
tie23he wrote:
I used a 60 BPM metronome to help time the Nova, Shaper Beam cooldown, Add phases. (Link)

Did you cap your Skeletons to 75% elemental resistances with two 10% jewels? If not, they're taking twice the cold damage.

How many Skeletons did you typically try to recover in one go against Uber Elder? To avoid getting hit by anything, unless you really know the timings, you must restrict yourself to one cast, then immediately begin dodging. Wait until both Shaper and Elder have done something, that's your opening, cast once and continue moving. Circle-strafe Elder, or zip back and forth on his side with Charged Dash to stay behind him. If you try to have it all and stand around to recast full Skeletons, that greed will probably get you killed.

For comparison, self-casting/attacking builds must interrupt their DPS to dodge all the time. If they can't facetank, they kite. Attack once, move until you have another opening, attack once, move. Same idea with Skeletons. Losing them is like the boss stepping out of Firestorm. It sucks, but even if they only survive for one or two seconds, at 200-300k DPS per Skeleton and three Skeletons summoned per cast, you've dealt 600k-1.8M damage with a single 0.43 sec cast.

Be careful of falling into the trap of loss aversion. It's understandable that you won't want to lose Skeletons, but even a single strike is still damage dealt. Your Skeletons dying is no different, numerically, than other similar DPS drops like dodging. So why does it somehow feel worse? Loss Aversion.

If Skeletons last 20 seconds, anything less than 20 seconds feels like we lost something. It's our natural survival instinct to minimize losses over gaining more, to where we feel losses twice as hard as gains. As a result, it can cause us to want to make irrational decisions, if left unchecked.

This powerful adverse reaction, felt in our gut, can interfere with our ability to think things through rationally. Case in point, even though your Skeletons melting is no different that a boss walking out of a Firestorm, we might feel the former more if we inadvertently perceive Skeletons as a Thing We Have rather than a disposable spell to recast. We must remind ourselves that their loss is the same as whiffing any other spell.

Just remember, GGG didn't give one of the lowest base healths to one of the most powerful minions because they're supposed to be immortal. Skeletons are intended to die. They'd be too powerful otherwise, since they allow us to dodge while they continue to deal damage.




@ usss89:
"
usss89 wrote:
The author, merged 500 chaos, turned out roughly so .. for how critical is +1 not to have in existence? can i close the shaper



Level stacking gives damage, accuracy, and life, so it's very valuable for Zombies and it's power for the Agony Crawler that doesn't increase its reservation cost.

Remember, no item is necessary in this build, they only make it stronger. +1 with Empower becomes +2. It's 30% more damage for the Agony Crawler and 3464 life for Zombies.




@ BiggestFlirt:
"
Sorator13 wrote:
"
BiggestFlirt wrote:
Hi there!

I'm trying to follow this build. The one question i have is you have so many skeletons out like all the time. I feel like i have to actively summon them all the time. Do they just come out passively for you for some reason? Thank you for your help!
You only really need skeles for single-target damage (against rares/uniques/bosses), and occasionally when you're up against a bunch of enemies or want to be clearing in two directions, as well as some other niche uses. Your clearing is mostly handled by herald of agony & spectres spawning phantasms. You definitely don't need to have them up all the time!

Were you referring to the beginning of the T15 Basilica video? There was an Abyss at the start, so that's why I used Vaal Skeletons.

We don't use Skeletons until we want single-target damage on a very tough foe, like a boss; or, like with the Abyss, are engaging a wide front and want to attack in multiple directions simultaneously. They're discretionary minions, your on-demand assassins and reinforcements. For general map clearing your persistent minions are more than enough.




@ vancemorgan:
"
vancemorgan wrote:
I really am in love with this build and wanted to share with people how I changed the build a little bit to fit my own preferences.

I followed the tree to the exact specifications but changed some skills. Namely, I chose to use Whirling Blades instead of Shield Charge. I personally don't like shield charge and find the sound of whirling blades much more pleasing. I also decided to put Zombies in my helm instead of weapon and Skeletons in my weapon instead of helm.

So the links I have are:

Weapon : Vaal Skeletons - Bloodlust - Melee Physical Damage
Helm : Zombie - Minion Life - Empower - Animate Guardian

I only made this switch once I got my Animate Guardian gem to 20/20. I lose DPS because skeletons isn't linked to Vile Toxins but I personally prefer to have beefier zombies and guardian since they're used a lot more than skeletons while mapping. I find if I lose my meatshield zombies shit goes down bad very fast, meanwhile I only have skeletons out during boss fights or throw them out randomly while mapping.

Putting skeletons in my helm allows me to also use Flame Dash in my alt weapon switch if I want to traverse ledges/gaps without suddenly losing all my zombies and going through the trouble of summoning them again. Likewise if I wanted to use Portal on my alt weapon after finishing a map. Again, just personal preference.

I also leveled using Convocation because when low level I feel I need to re-position my summons a lot more since they do less damage and have to make them focus target. Once I hit level 90 with good gems I took Convocation out because my summons have enough damage to just hit whatever.

This was my first build where I actually understood what was going on with the build to feel confident enough to make small changes according to what I like to make it my own.

Chance to Bleed Support does not work with Spells or Minions. That's one reason we use Charged Dash, because it's a ranged attack, which can inflict bleed.

I'd recommend swapping Bloodlust Support for Minion Damage Support, rather than Vile Toxins Support, since with Quality it beats out even a level 21 Vile Toxins (1% more vs. 15% increased minion damage = ~3% more damage) and is not conditional so it's always up.

When you connect GMP and Faster Projectiles to Spectres/Phantasms, you'll have a lot more coverage and freeze proliferation to protect you, so Zombies won't feel as necessary. Once you can level-stack Zombies to 26, with 20k life, you'll pretty much never lose any while mapping.

Animated Guardian can still be worked in by replacing CWDT and Spirit Offering. Elder Boots can have Fortify for additional protection for the Guardian. Moving Whirling Blades and Faster Attacks to the boots will free up a socket, too. Though having auras in your shield means losing weapon swap on demand.

In any case, you'll spend 99% of your time mapping, so while my setup is designed to push Skeleton DPS, you don't actually need that much until you get to Guardians, Shaper, Uber Elder, and other difficult content. I'm glad you've been enjoying the build and felt creatively empowered to take it in your own direction!
Last edited by Hercanic on Apr 2, 2019, 12:27:35 AM
First off i'd like to say I love this guide so far just picked up POE on the ps4 and loved the idea of playing a necromancer and this was the first guide i looked in to and loved the presentation so decided to give it a whirl. However I appear to be having an issue finding or may have overlooked a few things in the build that i think may be important. It may also be just that I am new to this game and am not understanding basic mechanics however i have a few questions if someone would be kind enough to answer or at least point me in the right direction to find the answers in the guide.

First the leveling section stops at level 69 with 92 passive points but the POE planner linked for this states maximum points is 123 and i'm assuming a max level of 99 to 100 however level isn't the issue my question is is there a point detailing where the last 31 skill points go? or is it a you can do whatever from here this is all you need sort of thing.

Second is there a section that states exactly what skills we need to link to each-other? So far i have understood that orbs and poison and minion and minion supports are a good idea but unless I've overlooked it i cant see anywhere where it lists what skills you would like to have linked.

Third the guide says act 3 shop sells Charged dash however it isn't in the shop even after doing all the quests and finishing the act

lastly the planner also only has 4 of the 8 total specialization points listed for the class specialization is it listed somewhere else what ones to take?
@ Atsumouri:
"
Atsumouri wrote:
First off i'd like to say I love this guide so far just picked up POE on the ps4 and loved the idea of playing a necromancer and this was the first guide i looked in to and loved the presentation so decided to give it a whirl. However I appear to be having an issue finding or may have overlooked a few things in the build that i think may be important. It may also be just that I am new to this game and am not understanding basic mechanics however i have a few questions if someone would be kind enough to answer or at least point me in the right direction to find the answers in the guide.

First the leveling section stops at level 69 with 92 passive points but the POE planner linked for this states maximum points is 123 and i'm assuming a max level of 99 to 100 however level isn't the issue my question is is there a point detailing where the last 31 skill points go? or is it a you can do whatever from here this is all you need sort of thing.

Second is there a section that states exactly what skills we need to link to each-other? So far i have understood that orbs and poison and minion and minion supports are a good idea but unless I've overlooked it i cant see anywhere where it lists what skills you would like to have linked.

lastly the planner also only has 4 of the 8 total specialization points listed for the class specialization is it listed somewhere else what ones to take?

Based on what you say you're missing, have you not opened the "I Accept" spoiler box in the main build thread? Final passive trees, gem links, gear, everything is there.


"
Third the guide says act 3 shop sells Charged dash however it isn't in the shop even after doing all the quests and finishing the act

In Act 3, go to The Imperial Gardens waypoint, make your way toward the left until you find The Library. Near the waypoint inside The Library is a ghost NPC named Siosa. Complete Siosa's quest to find the four golden pages in the area below the Library, entered through a staircase hidden behind a random bookcase that can be opened by clicking on a nearby labeled wall candle. Siosa will then sell you almost all gems that require level 28 or below, including Charged Dash.
Last edited by Hercanic on Apr 2, 2019, 4:36:38 AM
Thanks for that I feel dumb. I could have sworn that link was just a photo thanks for pointing me to the right path. As soon as I get done with this quest ill go back to act 3 and look for Siosa.
Last edited by Atsumouri on Apr 2, 2019, 5:00:19 AM

Report Forum Post

Report Account:

Report Type

Additional Info