[3.7] Melee HEALER! 6k+ heal per second

+ Extremely tanky and safe using Proximity Shield spectres
+ Unique role in party play, very effective in Melee League
+ Much easier to keep your spectres alive than many other necro builds
+ Cheap core with nice scaling options
+ Leaves massive amounts of zombie corpses in its wake to make arenas look like epic battlefields

- At the time of posting, Aukuna's Will is bugged and often doesn't summon zombies at the intended location. GGG is working on a fix.
- No millions of shaper dps
- Can solo, but has considerably low clearspeed. Not the best option for Incursion/Legion content if you're looking to do full clears.
- Needs lvl 68 to start being effective
- Requires possibly large amounts of essence crafting for scaling

When soloing, the leveling process can be quite slow if you're not willing or able to use passive refunds, as you will ignore many of the minion damage nodes on the tree.

I would recommend to get the nearby minion damage nodes and ignore minion life nodes/jewel sockets until you get to level 68, then refund.

Early game, use Summon Raging Spirits to deal most of the damage:


If you're not using a 6link like Tabula Rasa, prioritize the gems by order. If your leveling gear allows you to get 20 raging spirits quickly enough, switch Faster Casting for Melee Physical Damage.

For most endgame content, you will be able to leap slam on top of your enemies, convocate and start facetanking. When playing in a party, your friends can stand right next to you. As long as they don't get oneshot, they'll be back to full life in less than a second.

For the content you can't (or don't want to) facetank, you can stay at a safe distance while sending your minions offscreen to bully the enemies for you. This sends your proximity shields and self-heal away from you, but you can convocate them back to you if you're in danger.

6link:

Use Wither to increase enemy chaos damage taken. Summon zombies while channeling. When you have your maximum number of zombies, you will kill off one of your current ones to leave behind a caustic cloud and heal nearby allies.

Keep your Wither level as low as possible, as the only thing it really does as it levels is increase your area of effect while significantly increasing the mana cost. You'll want the 20% quality for increased duration though, so I'd recommend buying a 1/20 at some point or leveling one yourself to reset to 20% quality in your alternate weapon slot.

GOT CURRENCY? Get your Raise Zombie level as high as possible to further increase their life by using Empower. Use Deafening Essence of Fear on an Elder chestpiece and look for %minion life and +1support gems. I used a Saintly Chainmail because it's easier to get the blue sockets, but an Astral Plate would be better if you can get 5 offcolors on it.

Other:

High level Cast when Damage Taken to fully utilize the armour buff from Molten Shell and block chance from Bone Offering. Allies close to your zombies when Bone Offering triggers will be healed for over 1k life (2k if your zombies have 100k life)



Determination: Since you have no shield because of Necromantic Aegis, and Aukuna's Will doesn't provide any armour, use this skill to raise your physical damage reduction to an acceptable level.

Arctic Armour further decreases the physical and fire damage you take.

Your Chaos Golem also provides additional physical damage reduction.

Since you'll often want to be in melee range, these skills greatly enhance you to tank things that would otherwise oneshot you.




Use either Undying Evangelists (Act 3: Sceptre of God) or Heretical Guardians (Act 10: Ravaged Square) for proximity shields. Efficacy + Increased Duration to decrease the downtime of proximity shields. Increased AoE (from the helmet) and Pulverise give you pretty large areas of comfort.

You'll often have to jump away from combat to allow your spectres to recast their proximity shields.

While this helm turns your spectres into a 5-link, the increased AoE from the helm is not at all necessary but I personally find it comfortable to have large proximity shields. You can also use any other helmet and use Increased AoE instead of Pulverise.



Leap slam is bae. Keep up your fortify buff as much as possible to avoid oneshots. What doesn't kill you brings you back to full life.