[3.5] Skeleton Warrior Aurabot - over 70 minions and great dps

Required:

Victario's Influence is an absolute must have. As mentioned before, it does not need to be linked. Mod priorities: Aura effect > AOE > EV/ES.



Strongly Recommended:

The movement speed is amazing and the +1 to skeletons, zombies and spectres is also great. The duration roll is irrelevant.
Tip for league starters: Do not buy a Queen's Escape!!! Instead buy a Queen's Decree and upgrade it using the prophecy. Just bookmark a trade search of Queen's Decree swords with 15% minion life and damage and keep checking it. You will be able to buy one for only about 1c and the prophecy is also only 1c. Repeat until you have a decent movement speed roll and sell the bad Escapes for ez profit :D


Rares:

Use energy shield base items with high life rolls. These are usually pretty cheap because most people using ES bases don't want life mods.

Try and get +2 to minion gems on your helmet. You also need plenty of dexterity to run the green gems. Other than that you just need to cap your resistances and get at least 25% movement speed on your boots. Stuff like this is fine (cost around 1-2c each):



I used these two items on my first character in the abyss league. I went all the way into red maps with them without too many problems, though I would strongly recommend upgrading because I did die a couple of times.


Jewels:

From Dust
The Necromancer Ascendancy gives us +2 and this jewel gives another +2 for a total of 5 skeletons per cast. This helps a lot with general clear speed as well as vs bosses because you don't have to stand around casting them all the time.

Rare Ghastly Eye Jewels
Try to get Ghastly Eye Jewels with maximum life and minions taunt and blind. Use a Stygian Vise for another. One T1 blind/taunt mod is enough to have enemies constantly debuffed.

To Dust
This jewel offers a decent amount of damage and is quite affordable.


For teh Rich bois:

Skeletons (Queen's Escape): (in order) Vaal Summon Skeleton, Minion Damage, Ruthless, Melee Physical Damage, Multistrike, Maim.

Extra info:


Other minions (Helmet): Raise Zombie, Summon Stone Golem, Summon Phantasm on Kill, Minion Life.

Extra info:


Main Auras (chest): Anger, Haste, Hatred, Wrath.

Extra info:


Extra stuff 1(Gloves/Boots) Spirit Offering, Punishment, Increased Duration Faster Casting.

Extra info:


Extra stuff 2(Gloves/Boots) Purity of Elements, Flame Dash, Desecrate, Faster Casting.

Extra info:



Rich boi Gem setup:

If you are able to fit some spectres into the build, great. Which spectre you use depends on what you want, and whether you can run a high enough clarity.

Why is clarity so important?
Some spectres (Chieftains) use abilities that cost a lot of mana. Whenever they have enough mana they prioritise using the ability. A common method to make them spam stuff is to link them to blood magic. We have no room for that extra gem so that's where clarity comes in. Level it as high as possible. Go for at least level 15, otherwise you might want to rethink your spectre choice.

Because I have a high level clarity I use chieftains. 2 Host, and 2 Stygian Silverback ones for power and frenzy charges. These are the best ones if you want to boost your skeletons (at max charges my skeletons gain about 50% more damage).

Here's the lvl 90 and 100 skill tree in PoB:

https://pastebin.com/XhZXKbMp

And teh rich boi version:

https://pastebin.com/yrEyNPzv


If you don't have Path of Building yet, get it. If you really don't want to:

All dps numbers are vs shaper. This means that vs all normal content the numbers will be much higher.

11 skeletons, 12 at lvl 96:

These can do between 130k (5L) and 350k dps each

With each cast of the skill we get 5 of them so at least for a short time you can realistically put out well over 600k dps. If they survive long enough for you to get them all out then you can easily do over 1.5 million dps. That number is for the cheap version - with my current gear I can do almost 4 million dps!

Then there's the vaal version: 21 extra warriors, 9 archers, 5 mages and a general. OP AF.
One thing to note though, is that to be able to get all of the skeletons from the vaal version you have to use it before you summon any normal skeletons. This is because of the stupid 42 skeleton limit on vaal summon skeletons. If you already have 11 skeletons out, then vaal will only give you 31 extra instead of 40!

The other minions don't do very much damage compared to the skeletons. They provide a meat shield for you and help a lot with clear speed. The zombie/stone golem slams are nice and the phantasms they summon make the clear speed really good.


You can realistically get about 5k life and 1.5k energy shield for a total effective life pool of about 6.5k. If you can use discipline, this adds another 1k.
You get 10% physical damage reduction from your zombies and a tiny bit of evasion.
Enemies are pretty much perma blinded/taunted so that adds a lot of extra defence.

In order: Invoker, Bone Sculptor, Commander of Darkness, Flesh Binder. Might need Commander of Darkness earlier if you need the resistances.
You can get Puppet Master instead of Flesh Binder if you want extra damage. I personally prefer the zombie slam cdr and the 10% phys dmg reduction.

Helmet: Skeleton damage, Spirit Offering Phys as Chaos, Punishment effect are decent. Stone Golem buff effect is ok.

Boots: meh. Attack/spell dodge ones are ok. Life regen/movement speed are ok too.

Gloves: lul

Kill all.