[3.16 Maybe] Iron Mass Skeletons, cause why not

Hello Exiles,

Building builds for building fun

With a bunch of changes and nerfs coming, who knows what kind of voodoo stuff people will come up with.

in 3.15 I played an absolution guardian. Sure it sucked to high heaven and wasn't very strong (only 2m dps at best) but had the most fun playing the build cause it was something few dared to play.

For 3.16, lets just glance over all the changes planned and think about it in the now times.

Hot new renewal of never mentioned

If you aren't aware The Iron Mass essentially lets you skeleton warriors wield a copy of the weapon, letting them do some chaos damage, gives unholy might and lets them wither. More importantly, you can make them do tripple damage if you hit something recently.

What this means is that unlike the other minion builds that care a lot about minion gem levels, you can scale your damage with flat damage sources instead. Considering the Chaos theme the idea is to go chaos damage.

How does one do chaos damage on minions?
White sockets on Triad's gloves converts physical to Chaos. How does one get them? Kill the immortal syndicate to get the 4 star (fight the main boss with a 3 star in the right place) white socket room and try you luck or get the 3 star try you lick there.

Can't get 4 white sockets? worry not "Skeletal Atrophy" should help with conversion, but is not required right now.

Blah, blah, blah, blah give me the build:


There you are: https://pastebin.com/K4DrAEpM

Now, this is an HP version that does more damage, but may not take advantage of the Skin of the Loyal as much, I have an ES version but it seems too odd for now to consider.

Have fun Exile
Last bumped on Nov 10, 2021, 2:01:57 AM
Do u think poison version with The Iron Mass and United in Dreams would be nice this league? Poison and United in Dreams also got buff
You read my mind, yeah I was thinking about it as well. However, we need to solve a serious issue with effective life without a shield. So yes it will buff our damage slightly, the survivability aspect dose hurt.
I always wanted to try a Iron Mass build but could never get it to work, and now ive finally found one that works and I cant wait to try it.

My only issue with this build so far is that the Ehp is a little low so I made some tweaks to the build after converting it to a 3.16 build and this is what ive come up with so far.

https://pastebin.com/K9hWrH1h

Managed to get the Ehp decently higher without affecting the dps much at all but Im struggling to think of ways to get it any higher then this.
Last edited by ramen46 on Oct 20, 2021, 7:39:44 AM
Any particular reason for going WWWW chaos damage?
"
BatGlare wrote:
Do u think poison version with The Iron Mass and United in Dreams would be nice this league? Poison and United in Dreams also got buff


I just made a character (level 88 guardian) that did this. Was .. alright to level but doesn't really scale until 4 white socket Triads and both weapons.

Check out my profile. It's working and when properly geared (belt needs to be the abys belt for 2 abys sockets with good jewels), once you improve the gear can easily go to 10-18m DPS. Like, not hard at all. A decent chest and jewels and perhaps level 21/20 vaal skellies.

It's a really active playstyle that sometimes just drops death in scourges. In mapping it's good. You leap slam all over the place :)
'You know why I enjoy Math? If something doesn't exist we simply create it.'
When we go with The Iron Mass i think gem level do nothing to us, so Occutist or Guardian becomes more attractive then Necromancer. As our main damage is from poison skeleton, it might take some time to full damage.
The true way to do this is with an Elementalist. I practically fell in love with The Iron Mass and first tried it as a Necro Obviously but that didn't work due to tthe fact you don't really need to make Skeletons higher level.
Several points about this build (I did back in Echoes of the Atlas and am currently playing it and it owns ass):

1. First thing to get is obviously tre Iron Mass and as it's underappreciated there's a bunch of them in trade and you can even experiment with two of them in the Crucible.

2. Stack golems through accendancy (+2) and passive tree (+1). Deep into the late game you're goingto take the Anima stone and as three Primordial Eminence for maximum Golem buff. You will have initially 1 Carrion (150% Enchantment on helm) as this added physical damage bonus gets tripled, one Earth for exceptional life regen, one Chaos of phys res (those three go on helmet with +2/3 to minion skills and a Frenzy Support), last but not least a Lightning golem for extra attack and cast speed which is a huge QoL for casting and moving around with Leap Slam (Fortify/Shield slam is gone). 5th and 6th should be a second carrion and second stone to get them around you perma even if one dies.

3. Get the Covenant 5-link as quickly as possible, got mine for 3 chaos at level 49. This helps you not spend mana as you will have MoM for extra tankiness. Also has supported by Level 15 Added chaos damage - this obviously gets tripled.

4. Abyss belt but you care for Life, Mana and Minions deal increased damage if you used a summon ability recently.

5. Jewel of the build is Triad Grip. After you go maps you need to try and farm Alva for Locus of Corruption. It destroyed my gloves the first time and then decided to purchase a ready pyramid, got one for 30 chaos and boom I now have the 4 Whites Triad.

6. Attack skill should be ranged - either Lancing steel with GMP, Life on Hit and Pierce or Spectral Throw with GMP, Life on Hit and Faster Proj. Attack, summon skellies, repeat.

7. Accendancies other than golem are the Elemental Aegis for Tankiness and Your Hits Always Shock for at least 15% increase in damage.

8. Ring with Despair on hit, they are relatively cheap.

This is most of it, there's some other little bits but the main points have been made. From Dust is not a must. You can get +1 Skeletons on amulet and helmet but that's super late game. I like the MoM but it isn't a must. I have two characters based on this - Topalka is my current one and progress was pretty smooth.

One big point about Severed in Sleep/United in Dream is that the triple damage from Iron Mass doesn't count for poison, so the Envy is good but the poison isn't a great DPS increase, also you will lack the defences without a shield. Minion survivability isn't an issue as you will have an alternate Summon Skeletons gem which cannot be damaged within 2 seconds of being summoned and golems are being resummoned after 4 seconds. You can do this with extremely expensive cluster jewel or not do it all. This means putting minion life node is completely pointless, in two seconds your skelletons wil have already ruined enough and you'll have resummoned another bunch anyway meaning a perpetual stream of invulnerable skellies.

Glad there's interest in the item as there aren't a lot of builds out there and none use what I do to make it work.
Last edited by lalove91 on Oct 29, 2021, 11:11:18 AM
Hi, thanks for the build idea! May I know why do you use meatshield?
"
lalove91 wrote:
The true way to do this is with an Elementalist. I practically fell in love with The Iron Mass and first tried it as a Necro Obviously but that didn't work due to tthe fact you don't really need to make Skeletons higher level.
Several points about this build (I did back in Echoes of the Atlas and am currently playing it and it owns ass):

1. First thing to get is obviously tre Iron Mass and as it's underappreciated there's a bunch of them in trade and you can even experiment with two of them in the Crucible.

2. Stack golems through accendancy (+2) and passive tree (+1). Deep into the late game you're goingto take the Anima stone and as three Primordial Eminence for maximum Golem buff. You will have initially 1 Carrion (150% Enchantment on helm) as this added physical damage bonus gets tripled, one Earth for exceptional life regen, one Chaos of phys res (those three go on helmet with +2/3 to minion skills and a Frenzy Support), last but not least a Lightning golem for extra attack and cast speed which is a huge QoL for casting and moving around with Leap Slam (Fortify/Shield slam is gone). 5th and 6th should be a second carrion and second stone to get them around you perma even if one dies.

3. Get the Covenant 5-link as quickly as possible, got mine for 3 chaos at level 49. This helps you not spend mana as you will have MoM for extra tankiness. Also has supported by Level 15 Added chaos damage - this obviously gets tripled.

4. Abyss belt but you care for Life, Mana and Minions deal increased damage if you used a summon ability recently.

5. Jewel of the build is Triad Grip. After you go maps you need to try and farm Alva for Locus of Corruption. It destroyed my gloves the first time and then decided to purchase a ready pyramid, got one for 30 chaos and boom I now have the 4 Whites Triad.

6. Attack skill should be ranged - either Lancing steel with GMP, Life on Hit and Pierce or Spectral Throw with GMP, Life on Hit and Faster Proj. Attack, summon skellies, repeat.

7. Accendancies other than golem are the Elemental Aegis for Tankiness and Your Hits Always Shock for at least 15% increase in damage.

8. Ring with Despair on hit, they are relatively cheap.

This is most of it, there's some other little bits but the main points have been made. From Dust is not a must. You can get +1 Skeletons on amulet and helmet but that's super late game. I like the MoM but it isn't a must. I have two characters based on this - Topalka is my current one and progress was pretty smooth.

One big point about Severed in Sleep/United in Dream is that the triple damage from Iron Mass doesn't count for poison, so the Envy is good but the poison isn't a great DPS increase, also you will lack the defences without a shield. Minion survivability isn't an issue as you will have an alternate Summon Skeletons gem which cannot be damaged within 2 seconds of being summoned and golems are being resummoned after 4 seconds. You can do this with extremely expensive cluster jewel or not do it all. This means putting minion life node is completely pointless, in two seconds your skelletons wil have already ruined enough and you'll have resummoned another bunch anyway meaning a perpetual stream of invulnerable skellies.

Glad there's interest in the item as there aren't a lot of builds out there and none use what I do to make it work.


Hey man, thanks for going so much into detail about your build. Definitely an interesting way to use an elemenelist into the build. I'm currently still sticking with guardian and the survivability is nice with no reliance on MOM, however something to consider.

Minion life is essential since I want my spectres and guardian to survive, but i get where you coming from.

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