[3.14] Flame Golem 101 - Complete Guide To Golemancy, ✔️All Bosses Down, ✔️Necro, ✔️Elementalist

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tomatopotato wrote:

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Shiverwarp wrote:

With so much cooldown reduction, I think you would be more likely to get good results for a comparison if you really up the cast speed so that they will use up the charges (If they are charges) as quickly as possible. Maybe running minion speed, faster casting, and spell echo.

(snip)

If your test is accurate, that means with your cooldown reduction, the cooldown would be around 1.39 instead of 1.85, so base cooldown of around 4.45. This doesn't really match with my tests with no cooldown however, where you can see the golem cast a Magma Ball every six seconds after the initial 3.

I'll give it another try when I get home. I'm quite certain 1.39 isn't a correct figure though. Just for my sake, POE cooldown with 225% reduction:

100 / (1 + (total reduction/100))
↓
100 / (1 + (225/100) = ~31%
↓
~31% of 6s = ~1.85s (a figure matched by POB)

Just as a word of caution, my test doesn't show a cooldown of 1.39. It merely shows 71 shots in 96 seconds. What conclusions we draw from that are a different matter. At any rate, it does indicate that it's probably not a normal 3 charge system (if it's a charge system at all). If it is indeed a charge system, then I believe it indicates that each successful cooldown grants more than 1 charge in return. If not, then it is either active/inactive states where golems fire balls based on their cast speed or some other non-charge based system.

Also of note is that the golem (with 0 Harmony) sometimes only fires 2 shots to start before settling into the 1 per 6s pattern. Another oddity that I can't seem to reconcile with a 3-charge system.

I was just saying that your test would suggest that 1.39 is the cooldown of the magma ball if it used a cooldown system.

71 Magma Balls = 96 seconds / COOLDOWN + 2 Magma Balls
69 Magma Balls = 96 seconds / COOLDOWN
COOLDOWN (69 Magma Balls) = 96 seconds
COOLDOWN = 1.39 seconds per Magma Ball

It cannot be that each cooldown grants more than one charge according to my testing already:

https://gfycat.com/NeedyWeepyGossamerwingedbutterfly

Or else they would be firing more than one Magma Ball after the initial 3.

I would say there isn't really enough data to say whether it's a problem with the way the golems are receiving the cooldown reduction, or whether they are using a unique system that we haven't seen elsewhere in PoE. My testing with zero cooldown golems seems to match exactly with a Charges + cooldown system, but your test with very extreme amounts of cooldown reduction doesn't match the scaling of what we expect from what we know about how cooldown reduction works in PoE.

So it's either a problem in the method the golems make use of the cooldown reduction (Charges, or active states etc) or a difference in the way the cooldown itself is calculated, perhaps some complication with multiple sources of cooldown reduction. Or are we sure that the golems aren't actually using the "Golem Skills have (20-30)% increased Cooldown Recovery Speed" from the harmonies? The 1.39 second cooldown would mean a total CDR of 332%, or an average of 22% CDR per jewel you have equipped, which falls within the CDR of the stat we say only affects the rate at which the character can cast the golem. This theory isn't very likely, as with 15 of them, I'd expect closer to 25% cooldown. But if we take into account that the CDR might have been a bit higher in actuality, but the testing resulted in lower Magma Balls than ideal because of AI issues (In your video they do wander around a decent amount at the end) we might expect around 360-375% CDR, which fits better.

First time I regret not having a testing character on standard!

Perhaps try to get exactly 100% CDR, one set for the "Golem skills" and one set for "Golems have", and then test if they fire their first volley, then settle into a 3 seconds per magma ball pattern?

Now, I never personally saw only 2 shots before settling into the 1 shot per 6 seconds during my testing. I messed around in the area of the gif for a long time, but only made the gif out of the footage of one "full recharge" just for sake of brevity in an example. Did you wait the full 18 seconds? Or was this with a freshly summoned golem? Perhaps freshly summoned only start with 2 charges rather than 3?

It does make me wonder if there is some sweetspot in cooldown where you can self re-summon golems so that Magma Ball is always being cast.

The golem AI is a bit spotty though. You can see in the first few moments of the gif that the golem sits there for a moment before attacking again, but I'm pretty sure that it's a target acquisition problem because it was firing from near max range.

If I still had my character in Standard, and had that perfect spot in Reliquary like in my gif, I would do the following to exhaustively test magma ball cooldown behaviour:

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szmegma wrote:

Hello mika2salo and everybody,

I decided to play this build in the abyss league and so far I can say, this is the second best build under my play time in POE (~2300 hours).
Very good guide, very detailed and understandable!

I would appreciate if you take a look into my account and review it... maybe you find some mistakes...

I have 2 questions about this build:

1, For the animate guardian weapon I decided to use https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/The_Tempestuous_Steel, because the new abyss jewels have hinder mods, so maybe the +30% elemental penetration better option?

2, You mention the Infernal Mantle and my question is, this armour mods (inc. fire dam + chaos dam + spell dam on low mana) affect the golems too, not only me? If so, this armour will provide better damage for the golems? What is count as "low mana"? Mine atm is 305 out of 1131.

Thanks.

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@szmegma Low Mana is the same as low health = below 35%

Hello and thanks for support ^^

Animate Guardian deals about as much damage as 1x zombie in 1-link. Its purpose is purely supportive, so giving it any kind of damage boost is wasted and lowers its defenses / usefulness. AG can apply taunt and blind as it attacks and Golems can apply hinder with spells.

None of the Infernal Mantles mods affect Golems or other minions in any way directly. Only the +1 level to fire gems gives the Flame Golems gem +1 level which boosts their damage. Legacy Infernal Mantle had tons of ES and lots of +1 level corrupts before Skin of the Loyal came along. Now SotL is better that Infernal Mantle in almost every way.

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OMG, I read this post and 1 minute later i got a biscos in a Zana lvl 5 mission.

My skin of the loyal is 3r 2b 1r with empower lvl4 and summon flame lvl 21 gems. The dps is awesome.

Hey :)

Gz on ammy! You have best colors and max FG level before +1 corrupts on armor. Once you reach about 9k+ EHP (HP + ES) rest of league should go really smoothly ;)

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Actually, no. One of the nice things about slotting CWDT-ImmortalCall is that you can swap CWDT for Increased Duration and tank the Shaper Slam with it.

For the Chimera fight, Endurance Charges combined with Increased Duration will give you ~2 seconds of invulnerability, which is enough to clear most if not all the smoke clouds.

Haven't really tested taking CWDT out of Immortal Call. Desync is still so bad that usually you need to have defenses always up / on CWDT to really matter. Reactively pressing anything to boss movement has usually left me dead but might try it again.

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Exactly my point. Block requires you to build around it and in some cases make sacrifices to do so. Rumi's may not always be up. With Rainbowstrides, you're potentially giving up an extra 100 ES or 100 Life on a good rare. Rare amulet tends to mean less stun immunity. A defensive shield is a major cut in DPS. I'm not saying these are bad sacrifices, but block/Bone Offering, like most other defensive tech in this game, is not free. Nor is it the be all and end all of defense.

It's true that Block chance needs some changes in gear, but usually at pretty low cost. If you have tested 75/75% block with -75% Temporal Chains you know how totally broken it is. Elementalist has no chance to go for max block as offerings wont affect caster.

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This is inaccurate. Elemental immunity allows you to skip basically all minion survivability nodes, which means more passive tree flexibility (more EHP, more DPS, etc.).

True, you get 1x free node and 1x free jewel socket. In theory Golems are now always capped with the auras 20% ele res and the 16% ele res node, as Golems wont do much when you are dead. So dropping the ele res rare jewel might be worth to equip extra Harmony now.

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As far as pure golem builds go, ELE is already more or less an equal choice. Since 3.0, Necro Golems+Spectres might be have the edge in softcore.

Necro Golems + Spec certainly has massive DPS advantage. Way more than what elementalist with pure Golem can ever come up with. Tukohama Vanguards are just broken in damage. I'm still testing to find most optimal links for FG + TV combo.

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As noted earlier, I do not believe your Elementalist tree is optimized, which is why you don't see much difference. As such, the info you're passing to players may not be entirely correct unfortunately. I don't mean to be rude, but going by your own posts earlier in this thread, you haven't actually played as Golementalist outside of limited testing based off of your NEC setup. I highly recommend giving it it a more extended look to get a better picture of the Ascendancy.

If you can provide me with optimized tree with similar defenses as my default build, I will happily check the differences in Pob. Necro ascendancy tree gives about 20% more damage, and same seems to apply to elementalist 4+1 golems = 20% more damage. I have not seen much higher damage with mixing Golems when talking about really high end gear and tons of increased damage already applied to Golems already.

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Hmm... in order to safely come to that conclusion, I believe we have to be able to reasonably eliminate other possible explanations. Honestly, I really want you to be right about the charges, as it would be one less thing for me to think about. But for accuracy's sake, forgive me for playing devil's advocate for a second.

If we assume Magma Ball is on a 3-charge system and 1 cast costs 1 charge (like traps, Frost Wall, etc.), then we can establish an upper limit for number of casts within a given time frame. For example, with 15 Harmonies, Magma Ball cooldown drops to 1.85s (assuming perfect 15% Harmonies). I ran a test in Reliquary to confirm (good call on using this as testing area btw). The test was 96 seconds, so we can expect the lab golem to shoot a maximum of 53 Magma Balls in that span (96/1.85 + 2 charges from being full at the start; rounded down). In my test though, the golem got in 71 shots.

The shots seem to come in groups of 3 quite often, as you noted earlier. Towards the end you'll also notice a couple volleys that are interrupted when the golem attempts to move into melee range. While in transit, you'd assume that charges are filling back up and the golem should have a full barrage ready to go for the next round. There's a point though where it shoots 1, moves away, comes back and shoots 1, and pauses before resuming the expected 3-shot volley (around 1m07s).

That would seem to indicate that Magma Ball might work through active/inactive states rather than charges.

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With so much cooldown reduction, I think you would be more likely to get good results for a comparison if you really up the cast speed so that they will use up the charges (If they are charges) as quickly as possible. Maybe running minion speed, faster casting, and spell echo.

If it's active/inactive states (perhaps with a max 3 casts per active state?) then that would mean, with high cast speed, you would get a bunch of volleys at a time, then a period of waiting, then as many volleys as possible again.

If it's a charge system, they will use up all the charges quickly, then there will be a wait period before they fire a single ball (Or 2 with spell echo), and a wait period, then single ball, and repeating.

The golem AI is not consistent, they won't ALWAYS try to use magma ball no matter what if it's up, sometimes they'll putz around trying to get in melee range even though they could magma ball. You can see this in my gif as well, where it will shoot one magma ball, stop for a little bit, and continue shooting.

As for the difference in cooldown you're seeing, I have no idea. I simply took the cooldown from PoB and assumed it to be true. I would try testing with a golem that has no cooldown reduction, and then with more cooldown reduction afterward.

If your test is accurate, that means with your cooldown reduction, the cooldown would be around 1.39 instead of 1.85, so base cooldown of around 4.45. This doesn't really match with my tests with no cooldown however, where you can see the golem cast a Magma Ball every six seconds after the initial 3.

This makes me suspect that there might be some weirdness with the way cooldown itself is calculated?

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I'll give it another try when I get home. I'm quite certain 1.39 isn't a correct figure though. Just for my sake, POE cooldown with 225% reduction:

100 / (1 + (total reduction/100))
↓
100 / (1 + (225/100) = ~31%
↓
~31% of 6s = ~1.85s (a figure matched by POB)

Just as a word of caution, my test doesn't show a cooldown of 1.39. It merely shows 71 shots in 96 seconds. What conclusions we draw from that are a different matter. At any rate, it does indicate that it's probably not a normal 3 charge system (if it's a charge system at all). If it is indeed a charge system, then I believe it indicates that each successful cooldown grants more than 1 charge in return. If not, then it is either active/inactive states where golems fire balls based on their cast speed or some other non-charge based system.

Also of note is that the golem (with 0 Harmony) sometimes only fires 2 shots to start before settling into the 1 per 6s pattern. Another oddity that I can't seem to reconcile with a 3-charge system.

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I was just saying that your test would suggest that 1.39 is the cooldown of the magma ball if it used a cooldown system.

71 Magma Balls = 96 seconds / COOLDOWN + 2 Magma Balls
69 Magma Balls = 96 seconds / COOLDOWN
COOLDOWN (69 Magma Balls) = 96 seconds
COOLDOWN = 1.39 seconds per Magma Ball

It cannot be that each cooldown grants more than one charge according to my testing already:

https://gfycat.com/NeedyWeepyGossamerwingedbutterfly

Or else they would be firing more than one Magma Ball after the initial 3.

I would say there isn't really enough data to say whether it's a problem with the way the golems are receiving the cooldown reduction, or whether they are using a unique system that we haven't seen elsewhere in PoE. My testing with zero cooldown golems seems to match exactly with a Charges + cooldown system, but your test with very extreme amounts of cooldown reduction doesn't match the scaling of what we expect from what we know about how cooldown reduction works in PoE.

So it's either a problem in the method the golems make use of the cooldown reduction (Charges, or active states etc) or a difference in the way the cooldown itself is calculated, perhaps some complication with multiple sources of cooldown reduction. Or are we sure that the golems aren't actually using the "Golem Skills have (20-30)% increased Cooldown Recovery Speed" from the harmonies? The 1.39 second cooldown would mean a total CDR of 332%, or an average of 22% CDR per jewel you have equipped, which falls within the CDR of the stat we say only affects the rate at which the character can cast the golem. This theory isn't very likely, as with 15 of them, I'd expect closer to 25% cooldown. But if we take into account that the CDR might have been a bit higher in actuality, but the testing resulted in lower Magma Balls than ideal because of AI issues (In your video they do wander around a decent amount at the end) we might expect around 360-375% CDR, which fits better.

First time I regret not having a testing character on standard!

Perhaps try to get exactly 100% CDR, one set for the "Golem skills" and one set for "Golems have", and then test if they fire their first volley, then settle into a 3 seconds per magma ball pattern?

Now, I never persoanlly saw only 2 shots before settling into the 1 shot per 6 seconds during my testing. I messed around in the area of the gif for a long time, but only made the gif out of the footage of one "full recharge" just for sake of brevity in an example. Did you wait the full 18 seconds? Or was this with a freshly summoned golem? Perhaps freshly summoned only start with 2 charges rather than 3?

It does make me wonder if there is some sweetspot in cooldown where you can self re-summon golems so that Magma Ball is always being cast.

The golem AI is a bit spotty though. You can see in the first few moments of the gif that the golem sits there for a moment before attacking again, but I'm pretty sure that it's a target acquisition problem because it was firing from near max range.

If I still had my character in Standard, and had that perfect spot in Reliquary like in my gif, I would do the following to exhaustively test magma ball cooldown behaviour:

Hey :)

I think Golems have maximum 3x casts before they are forced to do other attacks. They have 3x different attacks after all, so the AI has to do some variable on attacks of they would work like 100% mortars from certain distance.

This variable seems to be forced between 3x attacks when they run out of magma orb "charges". It checks if they have shorter way to get to the enemy and spam melee attacks that what it takes to wait for cooldown for next magma orbs to end. If this condition is met, they will run to enemy and start cycling berween 2x melee attacks is too short for orbs. It it's not met, they will stand / move for the cooldown period and then cast next 3x orbs before they are forced to check conditions again.

My theory is also that the distance from enemy in linear / total move distance also affect the odds about what attack they will use. If they Golems are relatively chose, the chance to stop Magma orbs after 3x attacks seems to be higher, than when they are far from target or there is long distance to run to enemy. The melee attacks chance is significantly lower = they wait standing before next 3x casts, but not completely eliminated. Thats why in tests with blocked way to enemies they may cast 7-10x 3x orbs chains while standing and then try to move to melee rande before coming back to old position and start casting next 3x orbs.

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how important is lvl of golem? like is empower worth over another dmg gem?

Hello :)

Each level to Golems gives about 10% total damage and HP increase to them. I like extra toughness as it makes Golems basically immortal, and with empower 4 in SotL deals same amount if not bit more thanadditional "more" damage gem. Before emp 4 "more" damage gems give bit more dps, but Golems will also have lot lower HP, so you can try which you prefer.

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mika2salo wrote:

Animate Guardian deals about as much damage as 1x zombie in 1-link. Its purpose is purely supportive, so giving it any kind of damage boost is wasted and lowers its defenses / usefulness. AG can apply taunt and blind as it attacks and Golems can apply hinder with spells.

I mean that weapon penetrate 30% elemental resistance on hit. So it's debuff (huge) on enemies, that's why I think better than 25% reduced movement speed?

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Shiverwarp wrote:

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Nirvanatone wrote:

YES! This is awesome. I plan on building your exact setup. Thanks so much for linking it!!!!

No worries, I'm curious to hear how you manage, and what you think. So I'll look forward to some posts here by you!

Also, I forgot to include my tree, though it isn't much different: http://poeurl.com/bIMK

So I'm level 76 ATM but need some guidance from you Shiverwarp :). Really enjoying this build so far!

Question 1: How did you run high level discipline, elemental weakness, temporal chains all at once (mana reserved issues)? How did you run them with enhance as well? I took the reduced mana reserved nodes you did but I cannot cast my unearth totem with those gems at those levels?


Question 2: Do you need those 7 harmonies? What about Minion Dmg, Minion Speed/Life jewels that mika2 uses?


Question 3: Do you have an old screen shot of your total life, energy shield before you RIP'd? Just want to know what totals to target for.


Thanks so much for posting your skill tree and items!

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Nirvanatone wrote:

So I'm level 76 ATM but need some guidance from you Shiverwarp :). Really enjoying this build so far!

Question 1: How did you run high level discipline, elemental weakness, temporal chains all at once (mana reserved issues)? How did you run them with enhance as well? I took the reduced mana reserved nodes you did but I cannot cast my unearth totem with those gems at those levels?


Question 2: Do you need those 7 harmonies? What about Minion Dmg, Minion Speed/Life jewels that mika2 uses?


Question 3: Do you have an old screen shot of your total life, energy shield before you RIP'd? Just want to know what totals to target for.


Thanks so much for posting your skill tree and items!

1. If you have all the reservation nodes and can't cast your unearth totem, make sure you left Unearth at level 1. You do want it 20% quality eventually for more cast speed but there's essentially no benefit to leveling it up for our purposes, it just increases the mana cost of the totem. What's your unreserved mana?

2. The only harmonies you really need are the first few to get enough for Anima stone to come online.

I stacked harmonies because I was using convocation to move my golems around, and didn't find that much gain from the minion speed when I tested. This is probably personal preference. Experiment with what you find the most convenient. You'll get the most overall damage out of just harmonies though.
Cast speed can help with clear speed, but isn't as useful on bosses.

You can use PoB to measure the damage you'll gain from just the flat or increased damage on jewels (Cast speed, cooldown, and movespeed are much more complicated matters, some of which me and tomatopotato are discussing here in this thread)

3. Last footage I have of the character is here: https://gfycat.com/NeedyWeepyGossamerwingedbutterfly

I felt reasonably tanky at this point.

Swapped out my minion helm and bone boots for rainbowstride and the vertex. Still figuring out which I like more.

I love how slow Temp chains has made things and the extra ES(I think I nearly doubled my ES) but damage has gone down a bit. Also, I can't ever see the curse the AG is applying over their heads, the cheapest curse with elemental weakness gloves at the time were Doryani's Fist, so I didn't know if that messed up the AG curse somehow.

Speaking of AG, since you have him on your weapon mika2salo, if you accidentally hit weapon swap, will you lose all the equipment you bought for AG if you do that? I know you can re-summon him when you log back in, but didn't know if you took the AG gem off if you would still be able to use the same equipment or if you would have to buy it again to re-summon him. Kinda wanna test spec again(TV this time) but don't really want to have to buy all the AG equipment again.

I know you're still testing Specs and golems, but honest question, do you like your build this league more with the spec helm more, or your level 100 character with the high def and AG linked well?

And final question, would you say SOTL is better or a very high ES+Life total chest?

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sumfight wrote:

Speaking of AG, since you have him on your weapon mika2salo, if you accidentally hit weapon swap, will you lose all the equipment you bought for AG if you do that? I know you can re-summon him when you log back in, but didn't know if you took the AG gem off if you would still be able to use the same equipment or if you would have to buy it again to re-summon him.

You actually WANT animate guardian on weapon swap, because you can weapon swap to de-summon it, which saves it from dying.

The animate guardian items are bound to the character, not the gem itself, so you can use any different gem, and when you summon it, it will have the same items as before.

Only way you can lose items on the Animate Guardian is by it dying, or by replacing the items on it by casting on items.

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Shiverwarp wrote:

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sumfight wrote:

Speaking of AG, since you have him on your weapon mika2salo, if you accidentally hit weapon swap, will you lose all the equipment you bought for AG if you do that? I know you can re-summon him when you log back in, but didn't know if you took the AG gem off if you would still be able to use the same equipment or if you would have to buy it again to re-summon him.

You actually WANT animate guardian on weapon swap, because you can weapon swap to de-summon it, which saves it from dying.

The animate guardian items are bound to the character, not the gem itself, so you can use any different gem, and when you summon it, it will have the same items as before.

Only way you can lose items on the Animate Guardian is by it dying, or by replacing the items on it by casting on items.

Thanks you!

This is nice to know, I wanted to switch up some links, but didn't want my 20C gloves I just bought to go to waste.

Worth useing this for animate guardian in the build with 2xdyadus?

Hey thanks for the guide well put together. So i am trying to get an idea as which helm to use i would have to think the +2 lvl one is better but i also lose a 5link dmg gem for it an advice?