Slow Mo Zombies! (No Uniques Needed|Relaxed Playstyle|Easy to Gear|Anyone Can Play|All Content)[3.5]

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mthomas768 wrote:

I started up this build for the first time in Betrayal, and I have to admit that it was a bit of a struggle to get going (mostly because my gear drops were unlucky). Syndicate fights were just murder. Today I poked through my stash (fed by another character) and upped my life/resists significantly, and it's made a huge difference. I was getting one-shot in Syndicate fights before, now they're pretty manageable. Your guide is excellent and I'm looking forward to more play time with this build.

I did have one question (and I know the answer is probably 'personal preference'), but what type of armor are you focusing on? I ended up with a lot of ES gear to start, but I'm thinking a switch to Armor/ES might offer better survivability. Thoughts?

Hey mthomas768,

Thank you very much for the complements. I'm glad you found some gear. This game can get harsh when it only drops garbage gear.

Two things with the Syndicate that I've really noticed as I go through the Atlas is: you can't ignore Chaos Resists anymore, and they are crazy hard the more people you have in a party. I'm almost always in party play and the Syndicate were always WAY harder than the map's boss. But the second I started playing solo, they were just as easy as a Rogue Exile (once I had Chaos Resists).

In regards to armour, I have my filter set to only Armour/Energy Shield bases. But that's only to save peace of mind on Chromatic luck. All of our damage mitigation comes from Fortify and Enfeeble. We don't have any nodes on the tree that improve Evasion, Energy Shield, or Armour. So focusing on any of them is quite a minor detail and won't really impact survivability. It's a strong and weak point of the build. You are free to choose any gear you like, but you have to Hit the enemy before your defense is active. For example, you'll notice a very small (if any) increase to your physical damage mitigation % in your character screen if you focus on Armour gear while keeping the same tree that I have in the guide.

Does that answer your question/make sense? If not, or if you have more, let me know. Good question! And thanks for the kind words. :)

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Ramus wrote:

...For what its worth, I did a t16 last night (chimera) and was able to do it with no deaths. Have not tried the others yet but i'll report back. Check out my character if you'd like. I still have much of the original tree on mine, though I am thinking about changing it up a little in some areas.

Hey Ramus,

Your character looks great! Sweet unique shield hey? And you're close to 6000 health. Sweeeeet. I hate that boss and those clouds. Good job!

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Diseasedmeat wrote:

got another question, got some gear all set up with the right links and sockets and got the gems etc, so holy relic , molten shield, and stone elemental, are on auto cast, from the def gem. was alittle freaked out on why it wouldnt let me cast it. but i cant get charged dash to work, i meet all the requirements, just keep saying skill cant be used. am i doing the skill wrong?

Most of the time people can't use Charged Dash is because they have a Wand equipped. Melee Attacks can be used by anything except Wands and Bows. If that's not the issue, let me know. If it is the issue, don't worry about it at all. I do it every league...and I make the guide ;).

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Ramus wrote:

...For what its worth, I did a t16 last night (chimera) and was able to do it with no deaths. Have not tried the others yet but i'll report back. Check out my character if you'd like. I still have much of the original tree on mine, though I am thinking about changing it up a little in some areas.

Hey Ramus,

Your character looks great! Sweet unique shield hey? And you're close to 6000 health. Sweeeeet. I hate that boss and those clouds. Good job!

I love how its evolving! Everytime I think I hit a wall I seem to find new options to make the build even better. Now I think a few incremental upgrades to my rares (max out life rolls, etc) and I may downgrade chaos resist a bit to get better rolls, but only because I am honestly done with syndicate for the moment. I'll give it another go in lower tiers maybe, but for now having it stuck on lab has improved the enjoyment of my game 999%.

Also, as I have said previously. This thing is a delve BEAST. I've made over 400c delving in the last two days with this build. Charge is pefect for delve and the way our zombies clean up behind us works perfectly with the darkness mechanic. At this point if I wanted to pick an end game build I could probably buy into any of them, but I just have too much fun with this build.

Here's the t16 if you want to check it out! (And proof for others that this build can no-death solo guardians.)

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/357028034

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Ramus wrote:

Here's the t16 if you want to check it out! (And proof for others that this build can no-death solo guardians.)

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/357028034

Thanks for posting the video, it helped me a lot to see the differences in playstyle. The major thing I noticed is the use of 4 life flasks, I use only 2 (1 hybrid and 2 quicksilvers), for sure that helps a lot during longer boss battles to get rid of bleeding and counter dots. I will try it too.

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Honestly with the exception of the Enfeeble change, things look really good. You have high health and great gear! I like the changes you made. The boss battles at the end get a lot harder the longer the battles go on. So much stuff gets added to the battles when they last a bit.

What do you find you're doing when you die? My method for the big battles is: Ignore my zombies. Move to safety, cast skeletons once. Move to safety, cast skeletons once. Move to safety, cast skeletons once...And when I can tell what's happening on the screen, I hit the boss with Charged Dash which procs Enfeeble, EE, Fortify and Holy Relic. If my Zombies die (darn Phoenix) I just ignore it. The Skeletons deal more than enough damage.

Are you comfortable with Charged Dash? Cause you could only use it as an "applier" of effects and use a flask like a Quartz Flask or Quicksilver flask to move about the battles.

Does that help at all? If you didn't understand what I said or you have more questions, please don't hesitate to ask.

Also, I'm not sure how familiar you are with all the end game battles, but the BIGGEST factor to surviving the battles is simply familiarity. It really is. Once you know what the stages of the boss battles are like and how to see the "one-shot-kill" attacks in advance is the biggest part of success there. Kinda sucks, but it's how the game is made. Thanks for the post!

Hi trini, thanks for the reply! I will try to follow your advice and put enfeeble back, for sure it will help against bosses more than the plus damage of vulnerability.

to answer your other question, I die only for 2 reasons: if I dash straight in a pack and lag, or during end game bosses that lasts more than my Vaal skeletons. I think I generally have a really safe playstyle, I feel very comfortable with charged dash thanks to the versatility it provides, can be used for moving, jumping from a section to another(you cannot with shield charge) and applying curses from distance.

I'm familiar with Guardians and Shaper, I did them with barrage/kinetic pathfinder, but in that case was totally different. I made many totem and MF builds in the past, but I used them to farm without pushing the endgame.
For sure I will need to improve how to manage with this build

P.S. i will think to use again the minion life support gem. I'm just concerned about the utility of 40000 life on zombies. Ok, for sure they will die even less, the explosion of mon' Tre grasp is even bigger, but besides that it won't help me in any way with bosses. During the guardians I never lost a single zombie. that's why I thought about hypothermia in first place. With enfeeble back, I can drop it for another gem, i can choose between 3 I think:
-minion life
-maim
-ruthless

with the drop of vulnerability I think maim is the best option, but maybe ruthless will give me more damage in longer fights, that are my weakness now. what do you think? obviously if no-one of this solutions is good, I will just put back minion life and that's all. THANKS!

Hi,

really nice build. I've started with 3.5 first time really playing "not casual", so first time looking at builds and only playing hc.

Is anyone doing this build in HC, i started with a Spectre Summoner and it was pretty neat but i did some beginner mistakes :D, anyway i got so many nice minion items in my stash and i want a minion build besides my CA Ranger in HC.

Best Regards Exile!

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Does that answer your question/make sense? If not, or if you have more, let me know. Good question! And thanks for the kind words. :)[/span]

Yep, and pretty much reflects my thinking, too. It's a small gain, but I always feel *some* focus is better than no focus when it comes to gear.

Thanks again for the build guide and good luck in Betrayal.

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Ramus wrote:

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Ramus wrote:

...For what its worth, I did a t16 last night (chimera) and was able to do it with no deaths. Have not tried the others yet but i'll report back. Check out my character if you'd like. I still have much of the original tree on mine, though I am thinking about changing it up a little in some areas.

Hey Ramus,

Your character looks great! Sweet unique shield hey? And you're close to 6000 health. Sweeeeet. I hate that boss and those clouds. Good job!

I love how its evolving! Everytime I think I hit a wall I seem to find new options to make the build even better. Now I think a few incremental upgrades to my rares (max out life rolls, etc) and I may downgrade chaos resist a bit to get better rolls, but only because I am honestly done with syndicate for the moment. I'll give it another go in lower tiers maybe, but for now having it stuck on lab has improved the enjoyment of my game 999%.

Also, as I have said previously. This thing is a delve BEAST. I've made over 400c delving in the last two days with this build. Charge is pefect for delve and the way our zombies clean up behind us works perfectly with the darkness mechanic. At this point if I wanted to pick an end game build I could probably buy into any of them, but I just have too much fun with this build.

Here's the t16 if you want to check it out! (And proof for others that this build can no-death solo guardians.)

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/357028034

If you watch my video's you'll notice I got my Syndicate setup stuck on Laboratory as well and I leave it the heck alone. I refuse to do that content at the moment with this build. I was watching the recent race though they had this past weekend for the game. It was funny because without any "extra" difficulty settings 90%+ of the players died this time around which typically doesn't happen. A lot was to syndicate crap. The funny thing was that the build which could handle it were all lightning spire/storm brand builds and the winners (top 10 even) were all that build. Since they were racing to 85 (and broke the record at 7 hours total to reach that level) they were doing syndicate because the huge chunks of EXPs it gives later in the game. They at least reward the difficulty involved with lots of exp. Problem is that most people die and lose whatever exp that could have been made off it usually.

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Ailean wrote:

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Ramus wrote:

Here's the t16 if you want to check it out! (And proof for others that this build can no-death solo guardians.)

https://www.twitch.tv/videos/357028034

Thanks for posting the video, it helped me a lot to see the differences in playstyle. The major thing I noticed is the use of 4 life flasks, I use only 2 (1 hybrid and 2 quicksilvers), for sure that helps a lot during longer boss battles to get rid of bleeding and counter dots. I will try it too.

For sure! Out of honesty, this morning I fought the other guardians and so far:

Chimera was very easy, as seen in the video.
Hydra I had 1 death and it was my own fault running into water orbs.
Minotaur was hell, died more times than Elder. The layout, physical damage and the movement and the AOE and everything about this fight just sucks.
Phoenix, --- about to fight

One thing I am realizing is if I want to fight bosses with this character and no death, it's going to be rough. But that's what boss killers are for! This thing clears out t16 maps like nothing, which is what I wanted from the start. Being able to do guardians/shaper has been a big bonus I didn't forsee. In the meantime, for bosses I am noticing minion life plays a much bigger role and mana reservation is an issue not being able to resummon. I'll probably figure something out for that soon.

Has anyone played around with dual wield? I have seen others use Unseen/Severed Cutlass and also has anyone tried taking necromantic aegis?