Any tips for a beginner minon necro ?

Hello everyone.
This is my first league (first char i pass the level 10 ^^) and this is my build: https://pobb.in/WOnJFt5lwVg7

Any suggestions how I could progress from here ? Just looking the DPS i feel i am very low and sometimes i feel squishy, being one shot from any random monster...

I followed (kind of) this two build https://pobb.in/y4Na0u3UoOX9 and https://pobb.in/hk5MFjA_twGJ.

Any tips about the best mecanics to engage until i have enough money to finish my build ?

I have the feeling the Blight and Syndicate are very fun, but not sure if it worth the time invested, what do think ?

Hey there,

your build is trying to do way too many things at the same time. Try to do less but do those things well.


I cut out a lot of not very useful minions and fully focused on your main dmg dealers - SRS. The other minions only exist to keep you alive by blocking enemies and soaking up dmg, thats it. They are not supposed to do more than that.

In your version your SRS are dealing 413k dps.
In my version they are dealing 1.4 million dps, while also being substantially more tanky overall. Thats for bossing tho, swap multistrike for melee splash while mapping, which will drop your dmg to 1.1 million - still almost triple the dmg you are dealing right now.

For reference: https://pobb.in/WJuWUYJgIndM


You might need a fair few regret orbs to respec. If so, either buy them from players or go to the vendor in town and buy scouring orbs for chance orbs and then buy regret orbs for those scouring orbs.

You also want to upgrade your gear and try to get at least 60+ flat life on every piece of gear except the weapon.
Ignore all minion stats other than minion dmg and minion atk speed. Thats all you need at this point.

I also got rid of your gloves, because they are bad for SRS. Equip whatever else you have. Ditch your boots and get some with movespeed. Positioning and movement is key for summoners, cant neglect that.
Other than that, you are good to go.

Ninjaed by Orbaal but I will leave this here.

First, congrats on getting into maps. That's a big step and the beginning of what can be a fun journey.

I haven't played a Necro in maybe 5 years, so I'm useless on detailed help. But I'll offer a few general comments. (Orbaal has great specifics - pay attention to those!)

I would say that "sort of following" two different builds will almost always lead to a bad outcome. Best to pick one build that offers some help beyond acts and stick with that. Trying to pick the cool looking stuff from different builds can work in other arpgs, but generally not in POE.

Your gear could use some improvements...
Your effective hit pool is not bad for the level, but your phys max hit is pretty low. More life, and more armour or evasion on your gear will help that. Think about replacing the Tabula with a cheap, corrupted 5-link that fits your color options and has some defenses.

Also the blue amulet and the flasks. Use trans/alt/aug crafting to get a decent prefix on each flask, and then use beast crafting to get different immunities. Looks like you only have two and they are both shock.

And you'll probably want more movement speed. Start by crafting movement on your boots.

As far as league mechanics, you should try most of them and do what is fun. Since I'm doing a late start and SSF, I have no idea what sells well. Syndicate can be useful for the veiled mods and you don't need to fully understand it to do it.

The other general tip would be to run the Wildwood at the end of your maps if you're having trouble staying alive. Doing it first will really juice your map in terms of both drops and difficulty.

Good luck!

As an experienced necro who's currently lvl 95 (almost 96) necro in Affliction:

Your setup is all over the place. Power in this game comes from investing into a thing, not spreading across many things. Skeletons with phantasm and zombies without a support aren't going to do anything. Both skeletons and zombies are fantastic minions with very high potential, but you need to give them what they need. That starts with deciding how many support gems you can give them, and that number should not be 0 or 1. At that point, just remove the minion from your setup. The only minion that's worth carrying with no support is a golem, because of the buff it gives.

As for you getting oneshot, of course you are getting oneshot, you're using a tabula. That's a zero defense item. You could have 200 ES, 100 life and 30 chaos resist, and instead you have nothing. That should be the first thing you change. Buy a regular body armor, even if it means you can only take a 4 or 5 socket one. You'll be able to upgrade that soon enough once you stop dying. (edit: you have very low chaos res right now, so you can easily die to spikes of chaos damage)

I'd advise you to replace the triad grip too, unless you have a reason for wanting the conversion. Right now your damage isn't even coming from your physical minions so it does nothing. Having gloves with life would improve your survivability.

Additionally, be aware that some items can roll important minion stats. Helmet can have +1 skeleton / +1 zombie and also +2 to level of minion skill gems. Gloves can have +2 to level of socketed minion gems. Wand can have "minions are aggressive" and body armor can have +1 to spectre limit. All very important mods, depending on what build you choose to run.

Another important defensive aspect of minion builds is taunt. There are 2 main sources of it: meat shield support (great on zombies) and an abyss jewel with minion taunt. Getting a Stygian Vise belt lets you socket such a jewel without needing passive points for it. Once you have taunt, monsters will attack you less and your minions more. I run spectres, zombies and skeletons, and I barely ever take a hit.

As for your passive tree:

- you started out with spell damage and 2 int nodes at the Witch starting point, while you should have picked the minion nodes on the right hand side, which also include mana regen and end with a mana notable, both of which help with your Mind Over Matter

- the golem nodes are kinda random, I'm not sure why you need 2 golems (and also not sure why stone golem is what you picked, I'd advise carrion + chaos)

- If you take Mind Over Matter, you have to invest in it. When it activates, 40% of incoming damage will go to mana vs 60% to life. This means you have to increase your mana pool to match 2/3 of your life pool. Ideally, you want life + mana on every armor piece + rings. Right now, you have 600 mana, so if you take a hit of 1500 damage, your life will be at 1900 and your mana at 0. Your protection is then gone, and you also have no mana for skills left, which is dangerous.

- If you drop Mind Over Matter, you can take auras, which would make your life a lot easier as you can take some offense and/or defense depending on your needs

- If you take Minion Instability, think about what that means. Any minion that protects you will do a worse job, because the last 1/3 of their life bar doesn't exist. So plan around it (or drop it).

I could probably say a lot more but it's hard to be specific any further without knowing what your build is supposed to be, which only you can say :). Have fun discovering this amazing game, and feel free to ask more questions.

Great help from Orbaal and the others, so I'll just make some minor points, that you may consider once you've been able to implement Orbaal's skill tree.

For some reason Aegis Aurora is really cheap this league, maybe GGG changed the drop pool for it, so it's more common. In any case, this shield is a great combo for Mind over Matter and Eldritch Battery witch Necros. It means you will get Energy Shield once you block attacks, which helps sustain ES that you otherwise lose when you get hit, or from spending ES on your own skills. That is what Eldritch Battery does, essentially.

Means you lose some stats on the current shield, but Aegis also increases max cold resistance to 80%, and that does help a fair bit. Plus the all res is nice too. It comes with armour and a large ES pool. Slap on determination and a granite flask, and you already have respectable armour values.

But this is only something to consider for the future. First I would suggest you follow Orbaal's advice. He is a necro specialist, and really knows what he's talking about. Has helped me heaps and heaps too with various builds :)

Good luck in Path of Exile. The journey can be frustrating at times, but also very fun.

really great people answered. It is therefore very commendable that they take the time.

I also tried to get as much defense as possible in this league. And apparently hardly anyone plays Necro Witch, so all this digital stuff is super cheap.
The biggest problem is the wisp + random mob affixes + map mods + shrines from the eater/searing. I CANNOT control enemies' damage! Because I can already facetank rare T16 and my zombies kill everything on their own. but then some (bugged perhaps) mob comes and kills the whole army in 1-2 seconds. and animated guardian gear costs me 5 divs.

so I would remain realistic. The tips from others are great! But unfortunately there is no balance at all in the game.

"

Riorrrrrr wrote:

I CANNOT control enemies' damage! Because I can already facetank rare T16 and my zombies kill everything on their own. but then some (bugged perhaps) mob comes and kills the whole army in 1-2 seconds. and animated guardian gear costs me 5 divs.

There are so many things that can kill you, or your expensive minions.

You might want to have a look at subtractem's video, "How not to lose your spectres". He's running an SRS Guardian build, and I think he has not lost a spectre or the his AG since about the first week of the league. There is plenty of good advice in there for any necro player.

"

Riorrrrrr wrote:

but then some (bugged perhaps) mob comes and kills the whole army in 1-2 seconds. and animated guardian gear costs me 5 divs.

so I would remain realistic. The tips from others are great! But unfortunately there is no balance at all in the game.

You made some critical mistakes along the way and thats why you and your minions are dying a lot. But that can be fixed quite easily.

Just some numbers for reference:

Your build
- SRS dps: 1 million
- EHP vs pinnacle bosses: 36k
- Sustain: 530 life regen
- Avoidance: 75% atk/spell block with glancing blow (big mistake!)

My version:
- SRS dps: 4.2 million
- EHP vs pinnacle bosses: 146K
- Sustain: 1k life regen plus ES recovery on block MoM/EB combo
- Avoidance: 72% atk block / 68% spell block w/o glancing blows and before Rumis. Almost capped with Rumis, pushing ehp vs pinnacle bosses to 165K


The way you keep your minions alive as SRS player is not regen or leech for your minions, its 5% instant recovery on minion death. When your SRS die or expire or you cast too many exceeding the cap of 20 resulting in removing the oldest SRS - thats all counting as minion death and results in 5% instant life recovery. Thats way more powerful then regen or leech ever will be.

You also went for a mana based caster, which is a really bad choice. Especially as SRS caster. Dont do that. Go for Eldritch Battery instead, drop Clarity and also pick up Mind over Matter. Thats solving all your mana issues forever and Aegis will take care off recovering your ES constantly.
The only issue would be dots, cause you cant block those.
This combo also allows you to run a 50% aura like Malevolence on a Divine Blessing setup to trigger a temporary dmg boost when needed.

Next. Unspec Unnatural Strength, grab Mistress of Sacrifice instead and get a Bone Offering for your setup. This is protecting your Minion and preventing them from taking a ton of dmg while also triggering more minion regen on block then you have on your tree currently while also granting you block chance, which is Glancing Blows (terrible noob trap) isnt needed anymore.
Mistress of Sacrifice also grants a massive minion duration boost which is required to be able to hit the SRS cap and also provides a much smoother playstyle.

You want to automate Bone Offering best you can, so link it to Arcanist Brand, Desecrate and Despair so you dont have to cast all those skills all the time. Put down then brand and it will do the work for you.

Fix your Dex with a Careful Planning jewel next to the melding wheel. This allows you to drop all those +30 dex nodes and grants you enough Dex to run a Grace aura on top of what you already have.
Ideally you´d anoint Charisma on your amulet, if you cant afford it you can max out vitality and you´ll have to stop at roughly lvl11. If you want to push that one all the way to lvl20 then you will need charisma.

PoB: https://pobb.in/3OYqUfyhhYCg


Now for your AG as I dont what gear its got. You want this:
- Crown of the Tyrant helmet with a white socket or Leer Cast
- Windscream boots for the additional curse
- Asenaths Gentle Touch gloves for the Temp Chains curse (would push your dps to 5 million) and the explosion for smoother clear
- Doppelgangers Guise chest for 10% regen on hit. This combined with 5% life recovery on minion death guarantees a beefy AG
- Dying Breath or Kingmaker as weapon


From here onwards you want to fix your chaos res on your gear, get rid of the chaos res nodes on your tree and invest into a minion dmg cluster setup. This would allow you equip 4 more ghastly eye jewels with chance to poison for minions so you can replace the Chance to Poison gem with Unbound Ailments and an Amanamus Gaze jewel for more DoT dmg.

This would push your dmg to 7.4 million w/o temp chains or 9 million with temp chains curse from your AG.
https://pobb.in/1W3rifVKwm-Y


Im not sure which guide you are following or if its home brewed. Either way, its not a great version of this build. Ive played it multiple times and pushed it all the way to the dot cap of 36 million dps. Thats impossible to achieve for the MF version you are playing but 36M dps is overkill anyways.
However 1M you are dealing right now and the low survivability of your current version is really really bad, especially if it could be fixed so easily and end up 5 times more tanky and deal 10 times more dmg.


Feel free to ask questions if you like, all Im asking is this: stop blaming the games balance when your build isnt anywhere near where it could and honestly should be. Not bashing you or anything like that, Im just stating facts and sometimes the truth hurts a little but if you can embrace some tough love, you´ll be way better off for it and start shitting all over the games content while being damn near immortal.
Enjoy

The mobs arent bugged. Path of exile is simply notorious of letting damage scaling sources scale to far.

There are just too many sources of MORE damage. I mean think about it if there is some crazy ass way to get over a BILLION dps on a player is it really surprising that there are ways for mobs to stack multipliers to also do BILLIONS of dps to you and your minions?

hi orbaal im hijacking this post,

could u take a look at my build im a zoomancer