3.8 Necromancer. Fun Army build.

Most of the gear is dirt cheap.

Pretty good clear speed, especially on high monster density areas.

Really fun to have a huge army that looks cool.

Potential for insane DPS with aurabot/cursebot.

Large numbers of minions can make party lag which is bad for people who like to group. If your computer is not made for gaming with a graphics card you probably shouldn't play this build cause it will lag.

There are several skills to click in your rotation. This can make it hard to remember to use flasks. It can also take away the fun for players who think that 1 button killing is fun.

The final build uses almost every gem slot for offense. It will be hard to make room for defensive things.

The defense is not that amazing, but not terrible.

There are several leveling guides so I will only focus on the most important parts.

Skills - Grab summon raging spirt, skeletons, zombies, and flesh offering as fast as possible. Vaal summon skeleton will help a lot with boss kills, but it is not necessary if you are really poor and can't trade for it yet. Even if you don't use all these skills in the beginning you want to be leveling them up the gems as much as possible.

Use zombies and raging spirits only in the very beginning. Once you get feeding frenzy support gem, skeletons become awesome. 4 sockets on minions should be plenty of dps to get to end game maps easily.

Rotation - Cast skeletons as far away as possible. If they don't agro anything move to their location and repeat. Once they agro anything keep summoning skeletons to their maximum amount and then summon raging spirits from maximum distance. Maximum distance is hard to describe but I try to keep the enemies where I can barely see them on the corner of my screen. If you try to cast summon raging spirts too far away they won't agro anything so make sure you see them move immediately after casting.

Use flesh offering only when their are breaks in the fighting unless the duration expires in the middle of a fight. The expiration rarely expires if you make it a habit to cast it in-between fighting sequences.

Once you run out of a monster kill streak repeat the skeleton to raging spirit sequence. If you ever see a big boss or hard unique cast vaal summon skeleton. It does overkill damage while leveling.


For passives Rush to minion damage nodes, especially the ones that increase minion duration or minion speed. You can grab life or energy shield nodes along the way so you don't have to use regret orbs later.

I will make a file for the tree on path of building later, but the idea is to grab as many life/energy shield nodes as possible that are close the minion damage nodes you take. You want about 30% minion nodes and everything else defense.

Summon Raging spirits - These are the easiest minions to level up with to get to end game maps. They are awesome in end game maps also. Great Clear speed and great single target DPS.

Vaal summon skeleton - You don't need this before end game maps, but it will make boss fights easier if you get it earlier. The boss dps is insane. This skill works amazing on longer fights like blight/legion/boss fights.

Summon Skeleton - With the new feeding frenzy support gem, skeletons now have great clear speed. They also absorb damage which keeps enemies away from you.

Zombies - With feeding Frenzy they have average clear speed and better positioning. These are mostly for meat shields and fun and not necessary for clear speed.

Spectre - Carnage chieftain - These guys give frenzy charges which boost other minions attack speed and damage by a lot.

Animate guardian - Can add good dps to all minions for cheap gear cost.

Phantasms - With soulwrest staff these minions have the best clear speed. On wide open maps with tight monster density, nothing comes to close to their dps, because they can hit so many targets. The only downside is they are slower than raging spirits and skeletons are at moving around the map.

Flame Dash - Teleporting over gaps saves a lot of time when you have to run a long way around the map. This also helps for getting out of the way of certain dangerous enemies.

Desecrate - necessary for preparing yourself for hard areas.

flesh offering - increases clear speed for fun. Can be switched to a defensive offering if you need defense.

Carrion golem - If you have space use 1 slot to boost all your minions damage a little bit.

1. At the start of the map cast desecrate twice then flesh offering twice. Every flesh offering summons 5 phantasms. Repeat this cycle until you get 20 phantasms.

If you prefer maximum safety and maximum dps, do this before other challenging encounters. Summon max phantasms right before entering alva incursions, right before entering an arena to fight the boss, right before activating an abyss egg.

2.

Use the skeleton/raging spirit rotation combo from leveling guide after that. The phantasms summon themselves from occasional flesh offering cast and so you don't have to worry about the new minions fitting into your rotation except at the beginning of maps or before challenging encounters.

You can use corpse explosion linked spell cascade or unleash or both to summon up to 20 phantasms in 1 cast. This would be good if they die too much or you dont want to cast as often. I don't have room for corpse explosion so I don't use it. There are also boots that explode corpses as you walk for free summoning, but I don't use them cause I need every gem slot.

Weapon - Soulwrest. I start with a rare minion damage staff for early mapping since this thing is expensive early on and you don't need this to do big damage. by week 1 or 2 it costs less than 20 chaos to buy this and I purchase it.

Helmet - Rare helmet with +2 level socketed minion skills and socketed minion skills are supported by minion damage support gem. These are costing 30-50 chaos right now. If you want 3 level socket it costs 1 exalt average. This will buy easier to get than soulwrest and adds a lot of dps.

The hungry loop - I don't use this until around like tier 7-9 since I don't buy already leveled up gems. Until then I use an unset ring with the same stats as my other rare. This ring is frees up gem slots that are needed on builds like this that focus on massive armies for fun.

Rare items - Look for the following mods in order of importance on rare items. If you look for medium rolls on all these mods you can pay around 10-20% of the cost of high rolled gear.

Rare body armour - Big energy shield and resists. If resists are maxed from other gear you can try to add dodge on here to improve defense.

Rare Amulet - Look for + raw maximum energy shield, %increased maximum energy shield, Life and some resists. If resists are maxed from other gear craft minion movement speed. You can anoint the amulet with a cheap minion damage passive that you don't plan to path to.

Rare Unset Ring with a socket - Life, energy shield, mana, resists. I use mana here cause I use mind over matter. I don't need the mana on other gear cause I calculated it ahead of time. I will show the math later this guide is not done.

Rare gloves - Energy shield, life, resists.

Rare boots - Energy shield, life, resists. If resists are maxed you can try to get dodge on the boots.

Belt - Energy shield raw, %increased energy shield, life, mana, resists.

Total - At level 85 With an average of 10-20 chaos orb cost per gear piece, I have a total of 10,000 effective life. This is with around 4k life 4.5k energy and 1.5 mana from mind over matter. If I needed more I could run spirit offering, because it adds a lot of energy shield to life/energy shield hybrid builds.

rare ghastly eye jewels - Minion taunt, minion blind, energy shield, life, minion damage if you have used a minion skill recently.

Most minions builds have some auras and a curse or 2 to maximize their scaling of damage. This build doesn't use any curses or auras. The idea is to scale my damage as much as possible without auras or curses, since I usually join groups that tend to have 1 or 2 bots in them anyway. I thought about having animate guardian have that cursing shield that gives ignore curse limit curses.

This build does surprising dps for not having curses or auras at all. I haven't done much testing, but the aura and cursebots should scale dps more on this build than most, cause it scales dps as much as possible without using auras or curses.