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

what spectres can i use?
solar guards ? i have a helm whith minion damage and burning damage

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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?

Hey :)

"Attacks with this Weapon Penetrate 30% Elemental Resistances" mean that only attack done with the one wielding the sword will penetrate 30% of resistances. This is not global debuff like EE and will only affect Animate Guardians damage. Its really going to waste on AG.

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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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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.

Thanks for support :)

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sumfight wrote:

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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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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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.

Hello :)

I'm switching between my standard lvl 100 char with default links and gear and league one with Golems and Specs. I really like both and they play pretty differently.

Standard gear gets much higher EHP with using Vertex and Rainbowstrides. The automated links are also great for fast clear 1-button without worrying about anything.

Golem + Spec has lot more damage and defense with max block. Total clear speed however is much slower as minions have no charges and I have to cast Storm Burst to raise Offering up before more dangerous packs as CWDTs are at bare minimum. With +1 level Bones of Ulr and some extra curse effectiveness, this version also gets max level Temp Chains.

Standard build is better for fast clearing overall and has more passive playstyle. Playing it is more mobile as its based on kiting and Phase Run keeping aggro down. Golem + Spec has massively more single target damage + defense but at the cost of slower clear speed and bit lower EHP. Playing it is more stationary as you keep casting Storm Burst and keep max block up.

The AG curse should work if you have taken extra curse node for yourself and equipped curse on hit gloves for AG. It can be kinda hard to see but theres no reason why it would not work.

SotL is as good as rest of your gear is. If you are not using lots of high ES items, the 100% increased ES wont give huge amounts of ES. However if you have lots of base ES to multiply, you end with as much ES than basic rare ES armor and + levels for Golems. With Specters the damage from Golems is bit less relevant so if you find some huge ES 6l you can try it. I really like SotL as its potentially cheap and has best balance between DPS and defense.

I'd say that if you are good at kiting, like lazy play-style with fast clear-speed the default set is better. Id you focus heavily of Abyss rifts and high tier bosses, hate dying and want to end boss fights asap at cost of some clear speed the test layout (Golems + Specs) is better.

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

Hi :)

The Hungry Loop is pretty much a trap item. You lose tons of ES and HP while using it and usually the ones interested in it are also using Bones or Ulr and some armor / evasion helmet for Specters, so they have already low EHP. I think it may be better to drop some links totally than lower defenses at cost of more stuff if you are trying to level at all.

However I have not personally tested it yet and you might be able to use it with your items setup. I just recommend being cautious about how much you can lower defenses before it affects mapping ;)

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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?

Hello and thanks for support ^^

Id say that the second one is much better as the minion damage gem + added minion damage add huge amount of DPS. it has however pretty low ES, so i would max Temp Chains with +1 Bones of Ulr, Curse Effectiveness and run max block chance without Victario's Charity and Necro Aegis. Usually taking Spec with Golems means lower EHP, so you need more active defenses.

You can check my league char for links and maybe adapt some of the ideas ;)

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what spectres can i use?
solar guards ? i have a helm whith minion damage and burning damage

Hi :)

I'm using Tukohama vanguards. They have best single target DPS and make boss fights as short as possible. Golems clear trash while TVs melt rare abyss mobs and bosses. Solars are bit too close to Flame Golems to really add anything more than total DPS. SGs also have less aggro range than FGs so, FGs have most likely killed trash mobs at the times Spec AI sees them.

I have a question but first wanted to say what a great guide and what great support of the guide. Thanks for all your hard work as well as your partners in crime.

My question is: looking at your current build and tree I don't see how you avoid getting stunned every 2 seconds. Is it you just don't care if you get stunned as it doesn't really matter as spectres and golems kill everything and your energy shield is high enough to absorb any damage you take while stunned or does your block chance keep you from getting stunned very often?

As an aside, I tried slower projectiles in place of GMP and hated it but using both... that might be something I try.

Keep up the great work!

Alright so i hit it with some more chaos spam and hit this still low es sadly but i think i will stick with it now to try to get an enchant on it sucks every time u enchant it lose the spectres so i will wear the other for now I did see you doing that storm burst i tried it before i had the rumi's maybe i will try it again but for now till i get my enchant i will run like this

How's mapping with the build and if u go the elementalist path, Liege of the Primordial, Paragon of Calamity, and what for the last 2 ascendancies O.O

Been looking into this build as the build I'll end the league with and just wanted some ideas xd

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Shiverwarp wrote:

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.

Although your testing fits for a charge-based system, I don't believe it necessarily eliminates simple active/inactive states or some other system as a possible explanation.

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Or are we sure that the golems aren't actually using the "Golem Skills have (20-30)% increased Cooldown Recovery Speed" from the harmonies?

I believe we're quite sure on this point. If not, it can easily be re-confirmed by timing the cooldown on summoning.

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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?

I'm skeptical about an 18-second wait making a difference, as you may see in the subsequent test results. If you feel it's worth doing, let me know and I can re-do the tests later.

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1. How many casts over a certain time period. 60 seconds seems fine.
2. Record what happens when moving golem far enough away to recharge. Wait various time periods
3. How long it takes for a full "volley"
4. How many balls in a full volley
5. Do we see the same "Volley into 1 cast every x seconds" behaviour?
6. Any variance for extended periods attacking
7. How many Magma balls they use immediately after being summoned

(snip)

I appreciate you laying out extensive lines of testing. However, I'm not sure all of that will be necessary to reach a practical conclusion. As you requested, I re-did the tests using Minion Speed (LVL 21), Faster Casting, and Spell Echo. I kept the test at 96 seconds so we have a baseline for comparison with the previous test (apologies for not making it an even 100s as the first test was just a random cut). I got the following results:

Flame-Golem:
71 Magma Balls (previous test)

Flame Golem-Minion Speed:
92 Magma Balls

Flame Golem-Minion Speed-Faster Casting:
118 Magma Balls

Flame Golem-Minion Speed-Faster Casting-Spell Echo:
186 Magma Balls

(videos linked, i didn't count too carefully, apologies if the tally is off by more than ±1 or 2)

I believe it's safe to assume that cast speed is the determining factor here and that it cannot be 3+1 charge-based system. 186 balls over 96s is over 2 shots/sec. For 3+1 charges, you'd need 1100% cooldown reduction to achieve that rate of fire (74x mostly perfect Harmony jewels).

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mika2salo wrote:

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.

I can't post one with similar defenses, because Elementalist will build around and slot different defensive tech in place of Bone Offering as I already mentioned. I did post one earlier though with ~150k Magma Ball DPS compared to ~100k on your NEC tree. It also had 500 more EHP. That was not even the extreme-offense version (which can hit 250k+).

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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.

Can you show us a Shaper or Uber Atziri video when you're ready? Or of somebody else? TV specs can carry even without golems, but I haven't been able to find a 3.1 example yet (since the TV totem nerf) and I'm curious how big the gap really is.

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xflinn wrote:

How's mapping with the build and if u go the elementalist path, Liege of the Primordial, Paragon of Calamity, and what for the last 2 ascendancies O.O

The last two don't matter too much. Grab the two cast speed nodes for that extra tiny bit of safety if you're a perfectionist.

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tomatopotato wrote:

Although your testing fits for a charge-based system, I don't believe it necessarily eliminates simple active/inactive states or some other system as a possible explanation.

It doesn't eliminate another system, but I do believe it eliminates a simple active/inactive state, because then why would it be variable, and gain more volleys after waiting the full 18 second cooldown?

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I believe we're quite sure on this point. If not, it can easily be re-confirmed by timing the cooldown on summoning.

This would confirm that it's working on the player, but that doesn't mean GGG didn't mess something up and also apply it to the golems themselves (It's been known to happen)

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I'm skeptical about an 18-second wait making a difference, as you may see in the subsequent test results. If you feel it's worth doing, let me know and I can re-do the tests later.

The 18 second wait is relevant for zero cooldown reduction testing. It's a test for the Charge system (or at least something that acts like it), where you wait for the expected recharge time of 3 charges. At zero cooldown reduction this is 18 seconds according to PoB. It's only a useful test when you notice the golems settle into a single ball every x seconds pattern after they fire their initial volley. Your tests at very high cooldown reduction would not benefit from this because they essentially never stop firing.

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I believe it's safe to assume that cast speed is the determining factor here and that it cannot be 3+1 charge-based system. 186 balls over 96s is over 2 shots/sec. For 3+1 charges, you'd need 1100% cooldown reduction to achieve that rate of fire (74x mostly perfect Harmony jewels).

Your number count for spell echo, was it actually 372 magma balls total, but 186 casts? I shouldn't have suggested spell echo for testing, because the double cast might take longer than a single regular cast, so it makes the testing weird. With a charge system, spell echo also only uses one charge.

I also don't believe that only testing at these extremely high cooldowns can lead us to a proper conclusion. We also need tests at zero cooldown, and median cooldown. This way we can find where cooldown is outstripped by cast speed. If cast speed at no cooldown gets significantly more Magma Balls in the same time frame, then we absolutely know something is up.

Your tests at high cooldown could mean that your golems are gaining much more cooldown than we previously thought, or it could mean as you suggest, that the cast speed is somehow circumventing whatever it is the cooldown does, whether it be charges or some other method.

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Shiverwarp wrote:

It doesn't eliminate another system, but I do believe it eliminates a simple active/inactive state, because then why would it be variable, and gain more volleys after waiting the full 18 second cooldown?

My apologies as I hadn't looked carefully enough at your 2nd gif. Interesting. Hmm... Could it be that for the first volley, the active frame timer doesn't begin until the first shot is active? And that the initial cast time is carried over and counted against active frame time in subsequent volleys leading to fewer shots fired? Actually no, nevermind. That could explain 2 shots dropping to only 1, but not 3 to 1. Hmm... might be worth asking on the Mechanics thread? Although hairier stuff like this tends to get ignored a lot :/

(edit: went ahead and posted the question)

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This would confirm that it's working on the player, but that doesn't mean GGG didn't mess something up and also apply it to the golems themselves (It's been known to happen)

I'm not really comfortable bringing bugs into the discussion just yet, otherwise it'll be difficult to come to any sort of conclusion.

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Your number count for spell echo, was it actually 372 magma balls total, but 186 casts? I shouldn't have suggested spell echo for testing, because the double cast might take longer than a single regular cast, so it makes the testing weird. With a charge system, spell echo also only uses one charge.

You're right. In my rush to just get it done, I overlooked this. So then it was only 98 shots, which is less than the 3-link setup. Hmm... I could see being able to fit more individual shots than pairs into a certain frame of time as a rough explanation. But then I don't know how to reconcile that with your gif.

At any rate, the non-Spell Echo test at 118 shots over 96s would still require around 640% cooldown reduction, a number that isn't possible even with a full 120 skill points and assuming GGG mixed up the stats on Harmony.

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I also don't believe that only testing at these extremely high cooldowns can lead us to a proper conclusion. We also need tests at zero cooldown, and median cooldown. This way we can find where cooldown is outstripped by cast speed. If cast speed at no cooldown gets significantly more Magma Balls in the same time frame, then we absolutely know something is up.

I honestly don't have the appetite for that much testing today. I'll have another look at it next weekend or so if you haven't done the testing yourself by then. Thanks for the error-checking. Until next time... :)

P.S. What MTX are you using for your golems? I didn't see anything in the shop?

I just did few tests as well, as a data point for you guys, but then I got into it.

15 balls in 20 seconds, with just flame golem 21, not using a +1 chest, no other links.

26 balls in 20 seconds, only adding spell echo.

I have 8 perfect harmonies and 3 perfect eminence. 15 x 8 = 120 CDR, 3 x 20 = 60 Faster

I have a cooldown of 2.73 seconds, and a cast speed of 2.96/sec (with the spell echo in)

6 casts should take 2.02 seconds (3 charges)

The math for 20 seconds, with it starting on cooldown at the start of the first cast, would get me 43 balls. Too high.

The math for 20 seconds, with it starting on cooldown at the end of the first cast instead, would add .338 seconds to each cycle, would get me 39 balls in 20 seconds.

The math for 20 seconds, with it starting on cooldown after 6 casts, 2.02 seconds, would get me 25 balls.

The math for 20 seconds, with it starting on cooldown after 5 casts, 1.69 seconds, would get me 26 balls.


So I did a longer test. 120 seconds, 164 casts counted.

starting on cooldown after 6 casts, 2.02 seconds + 2.73 seconds per cycle, 152 balls

starting on cooldown after 5 casts, 1.69 seconds + 2.73 seconds per cycle, 163 balls. This is the pretty accurate.

Final test, added faster casting lvl 1 (20%) got 164 ba;;s in 120 seconds again. So cast speed isn't increasing my BPM (balls per minute) while I'm CDR capped.

That being said, at no point did my golems stop shooting for 2.73 seconds in duration. They do however, seem to bunch up, then spread out again. I assume that's the difference between the 2.73 CDR and the 2.02 seconds to cast 6 balls causing it to be uneven.

Also, as others have pointed out, they don't shotgun in bunches of 6, it didn't shoot 6 times, then wait 2.73 seconds, then shoot 6 more times.

It shot 8 times with no noticeable delay, then paused, then within less than a second, shot another pair. It then continues to shoot regularly, with slight delays between waves.

If they were recharging individually at 1/3rd of the 6 seconds, I should be able to shotgun into 10-12 before it starts pausing. If all the charges came back at 2.73 seconds, I wouldn't see the 7th and 8th shots without a pause first. So it's definitely recharged once before the 2.02 second mark, but still hasn't recharged a second time before the 2.70 second mark (two more casts duration), but then fires sub 1 second dual balls after that.

I don't have a theory to explain what is happening with the charges, but it seems like 60 / (5 casts duration + CDR time) * 6 works out to an accurate number of balls per minute at least as long as your casts cast duration is less than your cdr.

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tomatopotato wrote:

Hmm... might be worth asking on the Mechanics thread? Although hairier stuff like this tends to get ignored a lot :/

Looking at that thread, I don't think I'll bother. It seems to be for more well explored things than this. As far as I've seen, this thread is the only place people have really delved into the mechanics.

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tomatopotato wrote:

I'm not really comfortable bringing bugs into the discussion just yet, otherwise it'll be difficult to come to any sort of conclusion.

It's less about confirming a bug, and more about confirming what precise effects the Harmony jewels have on golems. We know more harmonies = more magma balls, but the interactions may be more complicated than that.

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tomatopotato wrote:

At any rate, the non-Spell Echo test at 118 shots over 96s would still require around 640% cooldown reduction, a number that isn't possible even with a full 120 skill points and assuming GGG mixed up the stats on Harmony.

Is it somehow possible that the CDR is multiplicative? The fact that faster cast rate would circumvent the cooldown seems a bit bizarre to me. The logical way for it to work is for cooldown to set the upper limit of magma balls, and then more cast rate will let you actually reach that upper limit faster (or at all)

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tomatopotato wrote:

I honestly don't have the appetite for that much testing today. I'll have another look at it next weekend or so if you haven't done the testing yourself by then. Thanks for the error-checking. Until next time... :)

Yes sadly I already deleted my character or I would be testing it myself! Don't really have the time level up another to test, so thanks very much for the work you've already done.

Really these tests are about trying to find the optimal cooldown vs cast rate setup, so that we can optimize DPS. If cooldown is not as important as we previously thought, we might be able to get quite a bit more damage.