3.8 "Melee" Cyclon necro. Rush into battle and live to tell the tale, all the way to lvl100.
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Hello everybody.
My first guide so far, so hopefully you get a good read. About myself: I been playing PoE for few years now. Up till now, I mostly run "off the shelf" builds, maybe tweaking them a little bit here and there. This one is the first build that I can truly claim as my own due to the major variation I did on it. Since it seem to be doing very good at what I meant it to do, I decided to share with the community. The build is meant to use the FoTM for 3.8 which are Necros, but with an active play style and decent to fast map clearing capabilities, on a reasonable budget of 3ex - 20ex, depending on your budget. Video Showcase
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PoB for the those that just want the numbers
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https://pastebin.com/MzYDMkqn There are two passive tree for level 90 and 100. Make sure you stand on the one you need in the tree management combo. Level 90 is enough to finish the build. After that is just bit more life and maybe some move speed. Build background
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I tailored this build for what I was doing mostly this league, which is running my elder map (City Sq.) fully juiced up with sextant and scarab. I leveled as a "regular" Slave driver necro, utilizing 5 specters, 10 zombies, 2 golems and skelies now and than, but I didn't like the inactive play style and the need to run around like a headless chicken while my minion do all the dirty work for me. This caused me to heavily invest in defensive mechanism for my necro to be able to rush ahead into packs, while still maintaining good clear speed in high density maps. Build Pro/Con
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Pros: Active play style. Tanky Decent to good map clear. 2 Button mesh - cyclone and whirling blade. Can run everything except ELE Reflect (you could even do that, just lose your specters on the way if the do ele damage, and clear will be slow). Cheap to start, and not that expensive to max out for damage. Easy to level in maps - I made it all the way to into the 20% of lvl99 by mostly t16 mapping/delving down around depth 300. Can easily be a end game bosser with few item swaps. Cons: Active Play Style 2 Button mesh - cyclone and whirling blade. Health pool is only ~5.5K so still prone to one shots at boss fights, so I would skip this if you are doing HC, unless you invest in a lot more life. Build Defenses
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So, we want our minions to do most of the damage, but we don't want to sit behind and miss all the fun. For that end we are utilizing several defensive mechanism to greatly mitigate incoming damage + have easy life/mana/ES sustain, enabling us to charge into packs on deadly t16 maps like there is no tomorrow. First layer of defense is just don't get hit - for this we use cyclone as our attack skill, allowing us to move around (aka, avoiding shit) while we hit mobs in our path and applying curses on hit. Damage Mitigation
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Second layer is damage mitigation. This is done with     1. Fortify (20% reduce damage from hits) 2. Plague Bringer ascendancy for another 10% damage reduction from nearby enemies while there is corpse around us. 3. using the new Blight league amulet, The Jinxed JuJu for another 10% reduction in damage from incoming hits. 4. Finally, using Mind over Matter (MoM) passive notable for further 30% less damage to be taken out of our life, and instead, be taken out of our mana. Overall 40% damage reduction from hits + 30% less damage due to MoM and that is before any resist/armor kicks in. ES/Life/Mana sustain
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  1. The real enabler of this build is the overworked Mistress of Sacrifice, making offering skills effect you with 75% effect. Now, combine Cyclone (a channeling skill) with Cast While Channeling (CwC) and Spirit Offering, and you can GAIN anything between 12% - 40% of your max life as base ES PER SECOND while you are spinning around. This in itself make you practically immortal on maps as long as you don't get one shot or overwhelmed with chaos damage (which is quite rare on regular maps). 2. Use a claw with Life gain on hit (LGH) and Mana gain on hit (MGH) for easy life heals and mana refill whenever we do take some damage that manage to chip through are ever replenished ES. 3. Utility Mana Flask with Enduring mode (flask effect is not removed at full mana). Provide us with ability to run no regen map with no fear of getting OOM and not being able to refill mana by using our cyclon + MGH. Also, since we run MoM, our mana is part of our life pool, so a mana flask act as an extra "Life flask" when we do get hit with big chunk of damage. Other than that we can easily reach 27%/10% attack/spell block chance that can be boosted up to 46/20 when our block flask is up. Further more, just with Jinxed Ju Ju and passive tree we can easily reach -10% chaos res so even in the event when chaos damage is present (Incursion/Betrayal), you don't take so much of it as most other builds that run with -60 chaos res at all time. Build Offenses
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Nothing too special here. Since we cyclone 90% of the time, and the other 10% we just move skill around the map, we want to utilize permanent minions that will persist through are daily play time and between maps. For that we use 4 (or 5) specters (Slave Driver) in a 6L armor + 9 (or 10) zombies on a 4L (preferbly helmet as u can l8r on upgrade it to pseudo 5 or 6 link), 2 golems which are just there for the buff they give, and finally, up to 20 spiders that wreck havoc on anything in their path via Arakali Fang Unique Dagger. The main thing in this build is that YOU DON'T need the spiders. You can do just fine without them, but when they do pop up, they make map clear from decent to super good. And with the correct gem setup, we can make them up on a map about 80%-90% of the time. However, when they go poof on you in some sticky situation, you don't go flat out and die, like most builds that only rely on the spider as their minion DPS. Also, you DON'T need to invest time in setting them up with The Writhing Jar and desecrate, making the whole mapping experience streamlined and smooth. Gear
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My Gear: Main Gear
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Main Hand: Aim for shape claw with % block attack damage while dual wielding (8% is the min roll for t1 mod). Defense is always first priority here.
2nd mod you want is: Gem supported by lvl(16-20) Maim. This will give you up to 20% chance to maim on hit, causing enemies to to have reduce movement speed. Finally you want some NON-Lightning damage added to proc. Elemental Equilibrium (EE) for a major damage boost for your Slave Driver specters. If the weapon has an open prefix, you can also just craft it. Between the Maim and non-Lightning damage, prefer the added non-lightning damage, as the maim is jsut a nice to have, but not really a must. Just make sure the weapon DOESN'T have any lightning damage added up as that will actually mess up your specters damage due to EE. The best base is either Gemini Claw for both LGH and MGH or Imperial Claw, with just better LGH and bit higher attack speed. Either one is good. Combine with the mana flask, and our cyclone costing us bout 4 mana per tick, mana regen is never an issue, even in no regen map, so the MGH is not really a must. Off Hand:: Arakali Fang for those amazing spoders. No need to link the sockets as any gem in the dagger will support the spider skill, if it can. Amulet: The new league amulet, The Jinxed JuJu for the 10% reduce damage from hits. The 10% damage is divided among our specters and taken out of their life, but them having upward of 40k life, you be dead way before any of that damage will any actual harm to your specters. Anything else on the amulet is just nice to have. Go first for high chaos resistance roll and than find one with decent values on the curse and non curse aura effectiveness. For anointment, I went for Gravepact. It's basically no brainer. Relatively cheap oils (blackX2 + azureX1), giving our minion 5% chance for double damage (basically 1.05 more multi) with some added inc. damage, attack speed and accuracy (the accuracy is used by zombies and the spiders). Boots: Rare elder boots. The most important mod is socketed gem supported by level(16-20) Fortify. This enable a 5L cyclone in a 4L item, freeing up a gem slot on a gem starve build. After this prioritize Life/Resist and finally move speed. Since we are blitzing around using whirling blades or flame dash, move speed is not as important to us, however, if the boots don't have any move speed on them, I would only get them if there is an open prefix you can craft some move speed on your own. If that is the case, crafting move speed + can't be chilled is probably the best option. IF there are several option to choose from (as in, you can cap all your resists), try go for an armor base. Since the build is aimed for mapping, even small amount of armor (~2k) that you can easily reach with gear and some passive, make a difference in physical damage mitigation. If no armor base is available, ES base is 2nd best. Ring Slots: We want curse on hit UNSET rings, for the extra gem slots. You want to find unset rings with the desire curse, than life (or empty prefix to craft life) and some resist. There are several option to choose from. For pure DPS just go with Conductivity curse, as it greatly boost your slave driver damage + some minor damage to all other minions that get affected by our wrath aura. If you have a 2nd curse enabled, Vulnerability is best in term of DPS, as it will up the spider damage + some minor buff to the zombies. With it you also don't need the Maim Support on your shaped claw, freeing a suffix that can be used for resist (which will also probably make the weapon a lot cheaper as most ppl consider this a bad mod on a weapon). However, for myself, I found that Poacher Mark elder ring work best, mainly due to the extra flask charges gained. I already have enough DPS as it's, so extra flask charges is nice QoL, for maps with reduced charge gained, especially if they have a curse on them as well. Helmet slot: Go for rare bone helmet. Here the sky is the limit, but in reality you could use a very basic one. To begin with just go with +Life/Res. Once you have some currency, try get a helmet with +2 to socketed minion gems, while still having decent life, and whatever resist you may be missing. If you really want to throw money away, go for an elder bone helmet with minion damage roll, +2/3 socketed minion gems, life and whatever resist you may find on it. If the helmet has an open prefix, you can craft +1 zombie as well. Chest slot: This is where you can dump whatever "extra" ex you got lying around. The ideal is a multimode +1 specter (which is a delve only mod) chest piece. Based on your other gear you might want to put some res and dexterity on it, beside life, and if you can afford, +1 curse craft. I would go for an armor base (astral plate base is best, for both armor and the resist implicit). You can now easily get one already 6L and with 3W3B for 4ex from ppl who perma beast imprint/split it, which is a good deal: http://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Blight/eR2Vbp6IL. I got my armor in week 1 of the league before those were available, so I'm rolling with an es/armor base, but the idea is all the same. If you don't have the currency for it you can just go with any es base +1 specter armor that has some other decent stat. If that too expensive as well, just go with 6L Kingsgurds. A mid tier solution between Kingsgurd and +1 specter armor would be a Loreweave. Gloves slot: Just a generic rare with life/res and some dexterity if you need. Again, try go for an armor base for that little bit extra physical damage mitigation. Belt slot: Another generic rare slot. Go for Stygian Vise with life and res. Jewels
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Abysall Jewels: Go for Ghastly eye jewels. Priorities high life roll. You want overall ~10% chance for your minions to taunt with attacks spread across your jewels. Unless there is a map/delve move that prohibit taunting, anything beside Guardians / Shaper / Elder can be taunted by our pack of zombies we run. This give further situational 10% less damage to us and just help taking heat of our backs. Other than the life and taunt, just try grab any good damage mod, like minion attack/cast speed, minion damage after you use minion skill, flat lightning damage or physical damage etc. Unique jewels: Unending Hunger is a must and should be your first priority, as it is a huge power boost for our specters when clearing maps. You only need 1 though. League start they were 1ex as every specter necro wanted one, but they are pretty common, and by now their price dropped to ~tens of chaos. Beside that, Intuitive Leap is a good jewel to get when you can. In the socket near the witch start, it allow us to grab 3 notable without traversing through all the minor nodes. Most important one are the blocking nodes (Mysticism and Mystic Bulwark), and when u have the point, Golem Commander for an extra golem and increase golem buff effect, is a good grab as well. If you can afford it, get one with the corrupted blood implicit, though not really necessary. Last is Unnatural instincts. Not really needed. Only reason I'm running it is due to the fact it actually dropped for me, so I said, what the hell, and just just stuck it in the scion spot for that extra move speed/life/attack speed. You can just as well ditch it and just go with another ghastly eye jewel. Flasks
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Life flask + bleed removal - is a no brainer. Quicksilver flask with extra move speed - gotta go fast. Quartz flask with freeze immunity: Phasing is gr8 as it allow us to cyclon freely around and not get block by mobs, in case our minions are busy killing something else. The 10% attack and spell doge is gravy on the top for an extra defensive layer. Make sure you have the flask up and running before you pop any chest, for the pesky freeze mod. Romi's Concoction for armor buf + extra chance to block attack and spell damage. Flask which are 1 or 2 off perfect are quite cheap. Get one! Finally an enduring mana divine mana flask for no regen map. Try buy a flask that has this mod alone and than just beast craft 'of warding' for the curse immunity. IMO the mana flask is the best candidate for it. Despite it shorter duration, it uses 8 out of 42 charges, meaning you can have it up for ~19second before it runs out, more than any other flask by far. Gem Setup
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Cyclon in Elder boots for pseudo 5L: CwC + Spirit Offering is what enable our build with high ES sustain. Culling strike is there to make sure we are able to finish off some mobs and proc Arakali Fang summon spider. It might seem counter intuitive, as the summon spider require us to have corpses around, while spirit offering blow them away, however, due to the 0.35sec CD on the CwC and the 4 corpses limit on it, there are still plenty of bodies to go around, even on just alch and go maps. 6L Specters in chest: Just your run of the mill, max out specter DPS gem. Feeding frenzy may not seem the best gem DPS wise (there are better one with better multiplier), but without it, my specters idle to much around me instead of rushing out and dishing damage, to my liking. If you are fine with the default specter AI, you can switch it to controlled destruction or some other higher multi DPS support gem. 4L Zombies in helmet: The zombies are secondary minions. Their job is to taunt shit around us, apply lightning exposure in order to increase our specter damage, and only than deal damage. Feeding frenzy is again here to replace the default zombie AI to something that actually try and hit mobs that are more than 0.5 pixel away from us. 3L Summon Spider in Arakali Fang: Since I focus on map clearing, we have melee splash in. Minion damage is straight forward and vile toxin is there to help on blight bosses, as they will have the full poisons stacks on them at all time, those giving vile toxin a higher damage multi than other support gems. If you are running vulnerability curse, you can swap minion damage for bloodlust support. 4L gloves for Aura/Golems: Chaos Golem for physical damage reduction. Carrion Golem for flat physical damage addition, mainly effect our spiders. For aura, we run wrath. For the 4th gem there are several option. You can just run generosity. This will give us almost ~50% mana free as our MoM buffer. This is what I run all the way to 100. At some point after, I swapped generosity with Herald of purity for 4 extra minions that can taunt. I don't have a say what is best here, just do whatever feels good for you. You can also choose a different gem all together, like blood and sand or some banner. All are solid options that are up to you. IMPORTANT NOTE: If you DON'T use generosity as one of the support, be sure to pick AVATAR of Fire on the passive tree, otherwise, you will do lightning damage due to Wrath aura effecting you. 1L in ring slot: Convocation to bring our army of doom upon are enemies + trigger ghastly eye jewel damage mode if you used a minion skill recently. Whirling blade is the ultimate move skill imo, as long as you are in an open layout map. If you want you can color the ring socket white with Vorici in research bench, and than be able to swap flame dash on a moment notice, if you about to enter a map that require teleporting around. 3L in Claw for general utility: Right now I'm just running CWDT setup with desecrate and spirit offering. Might seem a bit redundant with us proccing spirit offering while channeling cyclone, but i found it as another good defensive layer, especially since desecrate prior to the offering ensure that 4 bodies will be consumed for maximum effect. If that seem abit excessive to you, feel free to replace it with animate guardian + minion life + elemental army and equipe it with the usuall party buff item, like leer cast, dying breath, etc. If you do so however, I wouldn't equip him with Kingbreaker, as culling strike on all your minion might make it impossible to proc the spiders. Ascendancy
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When you go through leveling process I would suggest picking the asc. in the following order: Mindless Agression -> Unnatural Strength -> Mistress of Sacrifice -> Plaguebringer. The first two help you out with your minion dps through the acts, and you don't really need the spirit offering at this stage. Once you are close to maps, pick up mistress of sacrifice for the ES heals, and finally Plaguebringer. Pantheon
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Major: Soul of Lunaris FULLY upgraded. Get Ambrius in Colosseum ASAP for immunite from chained projectile. Minor: Usually Soul of Shakari for poison immunity and less chaos damage taken. Leveling/League start
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You can level this with SRS and zombies, or SRS and skeletons, whichever you prefer. When you are close to maps, use Advancing Fortress (dirty cheap) and Victario's Charity (bit expensive at league start) together with Necromantic Aegic noteable. You can put your cyclone in the claw as a pseudo 4L together with CwC and Spirit offering + the fortify it gives. This work cause as losng as we don't use Arakali fang, there is no need for culling strike. The claw has another benefit due to its built in % to block attacks, which is highly useful, considering we give up our shield stat for our minions. Once you find/buy a good pair of elder boots with fortify support, you can switch to Arakali fang and transition to the final setup. This is also a viable setup for t16 map running as is, since power and frenzy charges give tons off damage to minions. It will only feel strained once you super pump up your maps with sextants and scarabs. For just "alch vaal and go" red maps, you can just stop here. If you do, just note that you miss out on some block %, as we can no longer pick passive that give block while dual wielding. Transition to "UElder Killer"
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This build has the damage to do uber elder if you so wish it as is, with bout 0.37M Shaper DPS per specter. This give a total of 1.6M Shaper DPS just with the 5 specters alone, and no PoB warrior shenanigan. However, UElder attack damage are such that even with our mitigation, one shot are still very possible if you haven't nailed the fight mechanic to heart. In general, this build utilize slave driver which are a common in necros UElder clearing builds. If for some reason you so wish to farm him on this build as well, I would change few things, as in it's current form, the build is optimize for map clearing and not bossing. First, I would simply dump Arakali fang and the shape claw for two convoking wands or a convoking wand + vitario charity/necro aegis combo, for the extra DPS. Leave out the cyclone as well and just use some remote spell like storm brand to apply our curse on hit. Use flesh offering instead of spirit for more DPS. Finally up your effective life to bout 7-8k. Swapping one of the rings for dream fragment can also help in learning the fight, as it make you freeze and chill immune. So if you still get hit by shaper balls now and than (hint, you shouldn't), it won't insta freeze you, only to snipe u on the next ball. This will allow you to move back to the "run behind my minion" play style and focus mainly on avoiding the shit UElder throw at you, while your minion finish them off. Another thing that can help is to replace feeding frenzy on the zombies/specters with meat shield (instead, put feeding frenzy on one of the golems). This will make sure they will follow you around and not get left to stand in Shaper beam/balls and maybe dying during the fight. It will however require you to be around the correct boss, whenever he is out of immunity phase. How to grind to 100:
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If you want to get to 100, I can share a bit from my experience doing it this league with this build. Thanks to this build, I level more than 50% of the way mostly via mapping. Passed level 95, once I reached 80% of the level I usually finished it off with beachhead rotas, as in there, you only need to watch out from the volatiles. While in the beachhead, I usually disabled my wrath aura for extra mana buffer with MoM, as you don't really need the damage there. From Level 98->99 I did mostly high quant (90+) t16 elder city sq. with 4 sextant and 3 or 4 scarabs (depending on sextant mod). I always run breach, harbi and perandus scarab, at different level (rusted/polished/gilded) depending on their price at the time and my resources. I was also doing perma shelder ping/pong for extra mobs. Other than that I also run delve, but limited myself to depth ~250 and avoiding zones with bloodline. I also employed common sense, as in, don't go into zone with extra damage as fire/ele pen/nemesis all combine. However, at those depth such deadly combos are quite rare, so most time you can just dash across the mine horizontally. I didn't think it at a time, but if you have a second high level character, do sulphite rota with him, and not with the character you trying to level to 100. The rotas are run in a very fast pace and on highly rippy maps. More often than not, ppl rip there every now and than. Since as of Blight, sulphite is shared across account, it is much safer to run the rota on a second char, you don't mind so much ripping. Overall, I got to 80% of level 98 with this and than finished it off at pure breachstone runs. Finally for level 99->100: Same again with map runs and delve till ~35%. At this point I ripped to a screecher in delve after an encounter was already over and I went from the PC to get a drink (never park inside the mine, lesson learned...). That got me bit disheartens up and from their on I just finished the level by hosting pure breachstone runs. For general info, burning ~51k sulphite (what you get form running 3 rotas) at depth ~250 you get bout 4% xp at level 99. Each run took me bout 3-4 hours to burn through, as I was usually running with a guildy, and we were taking it chill. Final Words: When all is said and done, I had great fun using this build, I hope you will too, if you decide to try it out. Other than that, this build is far from done and there are still tweaks that I'm looking on like putting out different aura, reserving more mana and maybe dumping MoM. I'm also trying to test and see if running full phys specters like Kitava heralds might be just as good at map clearing, cause in that case, all are minions could scale off physical damage, potentially increasing synergy. Also, if I ever get the currency, it might be interesting to see if this could be made to work in baron build. All those things and more, I thought about but didn't really had the will to experiment with till I finished my leveling and the 40 challenge grind, but now I can set myself too, so stay tuned for future update. Last edited by p0miki2 on Oct 18, 2019, 5:49:26 AM Last bumped on Oct 12, 2019, 8:13:01 PM
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Hello and thanks for this great build, i'm having a lot of fun with it!
Everything gets evaporated instantly, survavibility is fantastic, you can rush from pack to pack without too much worries, always ahead of your minions, trying to curse mobs before they "disappear" and get some kills to keep up the spiders, definitly like a lot this playstyle, i was looking for something exactly like this! (tried a few times playing necro summoner in the past leagues, never liked it but this build completely changed my mind) Also revived my interest for the league, which was slowing dying after 24 challenges reached, so i went straight and converted the elementalist i was playing until now, burned some exalts and basically, started having fun again. Here's my gear if someone is intersted: Sitting at about 5.9k life, 760 unreserved mana Ps: got a small chat with the author, nice and very helpful person, he gave me a lot of tips! |
