[3.16] Very cheap allround starter for Scourge, Skelezomlemgaurdian, tanky and pushy

So, my idea is simple, until we all, and by "we " i mean the "pros" geht a hold and a feel of the new skill tree I made by myself some very easy guide/help for the start of the league.

This is my first post, so I will save my time with the layout and be as simple and straightforward as possible.

First of all Pros and cons:

Spoiler

Pros:
- With nearly zero investments has 10k life+ES
- 58% BLock chance, 37% phys dmg reduction and 38% spell block chanse at the very least
- 7% unreserved mana, 3 Auras from you and another couple from the Guardian
- positive chaos res, just in case...
- NO UNIQUE GEAR REQUIRED! Actually the only requitrement for your gear is just common sence: the more life the better, max out your resistances, have required stats (dex on 1-2 Items) and all other mod slots fill as much as possible with minion mods)
- THe build is highly flexible and can be later transformed to anything your heart will desire, be it a golemancer, Kay's spectre or spider build, or even something unique on your own! Dare to experiment!
- IN my opinion it will be PERFWCT for scourge! Why? Pff. Because as I saw in the trailers you will get swarmed by a LOT of enemies. It might be squishy i the first 2 Acts, but later on it will be a walk of total annihilation of everything that will dare to move around you.
- same goes to breaches and expeditions.
- No cluster jewels

Cons:
- it is a fairly simple minion build, that requires nearly no "thinking" or tactical planing, therefore could be boring for some people.
- it is a plain physical build, so when you will reach maps, take a closer look on maps, with phys reflect probably avoid those, aswell those mods on expedition and co.



Now, lets continue.
Here is POB Pastebin: https://pastebin.com/QMLbX3G0

As you can see, it is quite straightforward, dont forget to pick the sovereghnity for being able to get all the needed auras.

As for skills I will get a little more in detail.

Spoiler
Our main DD-Skill are skellies. Preferably will be ofc. the 20% quality vaal summon skeletons, but it is a QOL.
Skellies - Impale - minion damage, minion speed, multistrike, predator.
For a better Bossfight you may exchange Multistrike with f.ex. Melee phys. damage (same color)

Next one os our Meatshield:
Raize Zombie, Stone Golem, Animated Guardian and Meatshield.
For the Guardian take 1-2 Items with aura effects, like Vicarios Flight, and some life+resistances items.

Then we have our QOL:
Flame Dash, Convocation, Second Wind, Portal.
POrtal is pure QOL, just saves us 1 Item Slot in the inventory.
You can use any instant movement skill with the quickest possible activation and travel speed, just for escaping.

Auras I have chosen: FLesh and Stone (in blood stance), Pride and Discipline for a little more survavibility for the minions, all connected to generosity. This makes the mobs take at least 60% more phys damage.

Next one goes on your shield: Armageddon brand, hextouch, vulnerability. This makes the mobs take another 40% more dmg, your minions inflict bleed to the enemies, which is a nice addon to it.

Final one is the wand. IF POSSIBLE gt the craft "trigger socketed spell", this is a huge QOL improvement.

Bone offering, desecrate, spell cascade linked to the last one.


Now for the gear,
Spoiler
in POB I took in one single unique: Darkness Enthroned, a unique abyss belt, that has 2 abyssal sockets and no toher stats. It is fairly cheap, makes our minions a little more powerful.
As for the jewels: life+minion dmg+minion life+minion dmg after you cast a minion skill.
You shall have at least once: Minions have a chanse to blind enemies, taunt enemies, maim enemies.



As for leveling: Enduring Bond first, then Heart and Soul, then move into the direction of Sacrifice, then South to Sancity, then left and up to Redemption and Righteous Army, then take the Sovereighnity, and then just freeform, whatever you feel is lacking, your life, minion life, or damage, go and take it :)

Now I hope my very simple noob-guide, my first-ever will inspire at least someone to try this or something similar or something completely different on their own :)

Be safe, exiles, we will see eachother on the otter side :)



Last bumped on Oct 25, 2021, 6:32:15 AM
Looks well planned for a starter - then you can improve and choose your specialty as you go on. I think I'll use the PoB as some kind of template. Thanks!

"
Looks well planned for a starter - then you can improve and choose your specialty as you go on. I think I'll use the PoB as some kind of template. Thanks!


thank you :)
Hi!

Got interested in your build because I'm thinking of doing a Skeleton league start but saw that your build had alot of optimizations you could do.

I went ahead and looked through your PoB and got some changes I suggest you consider. These are mainly skill tree and skill selection changes.

Here's the PoB I came up with:
https://pastebin.com/q4s3RiFf

Skilltree changes:
Spoiler

You spent alot of inefficient points trying to get as much minion survivability as possible. This is far from needed. My high budget builds runs 1 surviability cluster(Indomitable Army for resist cap) and have 22k health. These zombies are tanky enough to tank 100% delirius maps without a problem and only have 79% max res since I link them to Ele Army.

I changed the tree around a bit, got some masteries you didn't have. Instead of getting marginal increases in energy shield I decided to invest into damage because your build was lacking alot of it.

Skill Changes:
Spoiler

I made alot of optimizations here. There's alot of improvements you can do.

Body Armour - Skeletons:
Swapped Impale and Improved minion speed for Melee Phys and Ruthlessnes. Huge dps increase. Movement speed is made up for by taking Ravenouz Horde in the tree (60% movespeed with Onslaught active)

Helm - Spectres, Zombies and Meat Shield:
Swapped Stone Golem for Spectres. Moved away golem to a different slot.
I really suggest using spectres for additional dps buffing all of your minions. The spectres will be level 25 which allows for 4 spectres.
My suggestion is using 2 Frenzy Charge spectres, 1 Power Charge spectre and an Arena Master. This will provide you with 3 Frenzy Charges, 3 Power Charges and the Arena Master buff. The buff provides 40% increased attack, cast and movement speed for 4 sec on a 8 sec cooldown. It isn't shown on PoB obviously.
Lifetap is used to make sure spectres can spam their spells without going OOM.

Weapon - Trigger:
Swapped spell cascade for Increased Duration.
Increased Duration (with Quality) almost doubles the duration of your offering. Spell cascade provides far less.

Shield - Curse + Bonus Auras:
I removed Armageddon brand + Hextouch support. They don't really provide much for you. Might aswell selfcast Vulnerability on targets rather than applying them with Brands. Self casting allows curses to gain doom charges which increases their curse effect over time. This makes your Vulnerability upto 50% stronger compared to using it linked via Hextouch.
The AoE is also far larger when selfcasting it.

The downside is that you can't cast it and "forget it" for ~4 sec as the brand walks around seeking targets. Selfcasting also costs more mana so it's less spammable. The primary reason why I think you should selfcast it though is to fit 2 more auras.
- Vitality: By allocating 16% mana efficiency from the tree and 100% mana efficiency for vitality from a mastery we can fit vitality to vastly increase your life regen.
- Purity of Elements: Purity of Elements gives you a ton of Elemental resistances and 100% Ailment immunity. This also allows us to overcap all minions. Also makes it far easier to get resistance capped early on as you don't need as much resistance from gear.
- If you want more dps, use skitterbots instead of Purity of elements.

Gloves - Support Minions2:
Using another set of support minions here. I choose to put Stone Golem, Carrion Golem, Feeding Frenzy and Minion Life here to buff your regen and dps substantially. You could use an Animate Guardian if you like, but I only suggest getting one if you can go for a high budget version. It's not worth running an AG unless you get a Kingmaker on it imo. Golems will provide more.

Boots - Auras:
Pride, Dreadbanner, Flesh and Stone Generosity.
Swapped out Discipline for Dreadbanner. Provides a good dps bonus while discipline almost did nothing for you. Minions are already unkillable.

Ring1 - Flame Dash:
Flame dash already has 3 charges, don't need second wind.

Ring2 - Convocation:
Convocation don't get anything from Second wind, might aswell be unlinked.
Removed portal gem, the gem feels unecessary, especially now that Portal Scrolls will drop stacked. Portal scrolls are also instant cast and feel better than the portal gem which feels super laggy :)


Gear Changes:
Spoiler

Made minimal gear changes, kept all the modifiers you choose to use but changed some bases.

Rings:
Changed both rings from vermillion rings to Unset rings. Needed the additional sockets.

Amulet:
Annointed amulet with Death Attunement (Clear, Crimson, Silver) for +1 Zombie, Spectre and Skeleton. These are very cheap oils and defintely worth it.

Shield:
Changed to a high armour shield instead of the resistance one you were using for additional phys dmg mitigation.


Results:
Spoiler

Damage

Before: 103 205 dps per skeleton
After: 429 975 dps -> 416% more dps per skeleton

Survivability

Life difference
Before: 7902
After: 7792

Life Regen: 535 -> 891

Attack Block: 58% -> 67%
Spell Block: 37% -> 39%

Energy Shield: 1004 -> 485

Resistances: Basically the same, slightly more after changes due to Purity of Elements.

Ailment Immunity: 20% -> 100%

MinionSurvivability

Only picking zombies here because they usually are the squishiest minion who're annoying to resummon.

Minion Life: 41158 -> 43648

Life Regen: 832 -> 1959

Phys dmg Reduction 50% -> 58%

Minion Elemental Resistances: 83% ->

Minion Chaos Resistance: 73% -> 20%

Minion Block: 73% -> 43%

DPS: 17217 -> 50592


Hope this helps you to improve your build a little. And trust me when I say it, you don't need that much minion survivability nodes. They're usually dead picks. Investing into regen is often the best solution for minion survivability because of their enormous health pools.
Last edited by Deadandlivin on Oct 18, 2021, 10:42:35 PM
makes all sense, especially the skill changes, i have not so much insight in every sigle skill :)

The hextouch support is alho a quite a qol, perhabs can be saved by havig a ring with "curse on hit", which are quite expensive as i remembeer alto...

AS for survivability goes will have to test it out, I remember, that my miions got quite squishy, especially spectres, and happened not once to me that my f.ex. frost autoscouts died all, which forced me to go onto a heist again, thats why I initially descided against them, but i havent thoufh about the buffing chieftains and co.
Never heard actually about the arena master, have to look for it,

thanks a lot :)
I see a problem here:
"
I removed Armageddon brand + Hextouch support. They don't really provide much for you. Might aswell selfcast Vulnerability on targets rather than applying them with Brands. Self casting allows curses to gain doom charges which increases their curse effect over time. This makes your Vulnerability upto 50% stronger compared to using it linked via Hextouch.

Vulnearability costs 72 mana, while you have 60 i POB, so need some maxmana mods on gear, have to keep it in mind
"
GrafCorwin wrote:
I see a problem here:
"
I removed Armageddon brand + Hextouch support. They don't really provide much for you. Might aswell selfcast Vulnerability on targets rather than applying them with Brands. Self casting allows curses to gain doom charges which increases their curse effect over time. This makes your Vulnerability upto 50% stronger compared to using it linked via Hextouch.

Vulnearability costs 72 mana, while you have 60 i POB, so need some maxmana mods on gear, have to keep it in mind


Your mana cost on Vulnerability is because of the trigger craft on your wand and linked support gems. Keep in mind that support gems and triggers add a mana cost multiplier to a skill. Triggers add a 150% mana multiplier as an example.
That's why it shows your Vulnerability costing so much.

Selfcast vulnerability without anything linked to it costs 33 mana per cast.


You're also running Tireless in your skill tree which decreases manacost by 15%.
So the final cost should be 33 * (1,00-0,15) = 28 mana per cast.
Last edited by Deadandlivin on Oct 19, 2021, 6:13:54 AM
Personally I don't consider some of these items "starter". But I agree there is a room for improvement
"
Personally I don't consider some of these items "starter". But I agree there is a room for improvement



the most items cost lesser, than 10c, whuch you accumulate easily each third map with the vendor recipe alone

but yes i took the more... primer versions as exmple. ofc rthere are much room upwards, like get the superwand with trigger craft, 5% double dmg and so on, a +1 spectre number chest, +1 all int gems, or even this new uber belt that will cost like 500 exa i think, introduced in this league
"
Ailment Immunity: 20% -> 100%


I'm looking at the POB, and I can't for the life of me work out where the ailment immunity is coming from? What am I missing or not seeing?

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