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

So what spec is the better one to use? necro or elementalist?

Me i started as necro ..but with the legion monolith the spectre are not that great to wake up enought monster . so i switched to witch and focus more on golem dps and i am finally getting more shard.now from legion encounter

Any tips for a life based version? I'll lvl this build today and I think I'll have problems with life sustain.

So far I plan to counter the low life regen withBlood of the Karui and Life flask pantheon. If you have more ideas I'm all ears.

"

DrHarvey12 wrote:

Hey Mika,

Just started building my golemancer recently. Not too far along yet with her since I was having a lot of fun with ED + Cont and haven't had too much time this league to play.

I wasn't sure I was even going to try a golemancer this league since the minion targeting issues I felt could be fairly annoying to deal with when it comes to unlocking the monolith enemies. I bought my 6-link for my ED character but haven't yet been able to colour it (being a pure evasion base) and so thought I would give golems a go whilst farming chromes to hopefully colour it at some point.

So far I am pretty happy with golems this league. I've tried to go pretty tanky (well as tanky as a zero budget build allows) though since the legion mobs felt scary on my ED character. Unlocking the legion mobs is ok. Nowhere near as nice as unlocking everything with one ED + Contagion cast but then I doubt anything feels quite as good as that this league. Still, on open maps I am probably unlocking 75% to 85% of the stuff; at least so far in yellows.

I've gone Elementalist CI and am stacking some armour with the memory vault helmet and running determination. This gives me about 11k armour just running around and 35k armour with flasks popped. This in turn with a vaal molten shell gives me a protective barrier of almost 20k damage for the 9 seconds it lasts. Pretty much immortal when it's up and with vaal discipline too if I need it. Only 7.5k ES with very basic gear and only lvl 84 ATM. Hopefully get that up to 8k - 9k with better gearing. One nice thing is that the witch / templar ES nodes are actually good when you do start armour stacking through a memory vault.

The idea will be to transition to a TV spectre setup later on and then use it more for bossing and my ED character for map clear. TV spectres will require an almost total gear change so it will be a fairly long term project assuming I keep enjoying the league.

Good luck in the league yourself Mika :)

Hello :)

Good to hear that your are enjoying the league. I'm also quite happy at how well minions can unlock the frozen enemies. GGG must have tested things out properly for minion builds.

I'm using Solar Guards atm, and they are pretty much destroying packs in lower tier maps. I'm wondering if using 4x Flame Golems in Vis Mortis with 4x Solar Guards could be better than using TV Specs this league as its more about raw clear speed than big single target DPS?

Your setup looks very nice. Can you tank one Minotaur burrow or Shaper Smash with that much armor?

"

So what spec is the better one to use? necro or elementalist?

"

Me i started as necro ..but with the legion monolith the spectre are not that great to wake up enought monster . so i switched to witch and focus more on golem dps and i am finally getting more shard.now from legion encounter

Hey :)

Both work fine. With Necromancer I would try Solar Guards in this league over Tukohama Vanguards. This way you get 7-8x Projectile based minions depending if you use Vis Mortis.

Elementalist is also very good choice as you get lot of Area damage.

"

Any tips for a life based version? I'll lvl this build today and I think I'll have problems with life sustain.

So far I plan to counter the low life regen withBlood of the Karui and Life flask pantheon. If you have more ideas I'm all ears.

Hi :)

Your tree and gear look much different from mine, so I can only give some general advice.

Lot's of minion nodes have big Energy Shield, so going for full HP seems like you have to stretch tree pretty far to reach enough nodes. Also you are potentially losing some jewel sockets while doing this. Many good summoner items are also ES bases, like Skin of the Loyal which gives absolutely no benefit to HP.

You could try to swap as much gear to be HP / armor bases as possible, which would probably include Skin of the Loyal.

If you can reach 6-7k HP, I think you should be safe with enough armor. Flasks become much better at that point, but you have to be careful of high elemental hits as 10k EHP hybrid can cushion for that but 7k HP will probably die.

"

mika2salo wrote:

Hello :)

Good to hear that your are enjoying the league. I'm also quite happy at how well minions can unlock the frozen enemies. GGG must have tested things out properly for minion builds.

I'm using Solar Guards atm, and they are pretty much destroying packs in lower tier maps. I'm wondering if using 4x Flame Golems in Vis Mortis with 4x Solar Guards could be better than using TV Specs this league as its more about raw clear speed than big single target DPS?

Your setup looks very nice. Can you tank one Minotaur burrow or Shaper Smash with that much armor?

Hi Mika,

I definitely like the idea of running 4 Solarguards. I've never really been one to focus much on bossing at all so having them for the extra clear when it somes to legion packs would be pretty nice.

I'm only into t9/10's atm so still quite a ways from guardians / shaper. I'll probably test this character out on them if I get that far. The issue with the character is fairly lackluster single target DPS as I can't fit in any offensive spectres. So whilst I might be fairly tanky vs guardians they are going to be fairly long fights which would probably be safer attempting with a lot more single target and less defense. I've just hit 9k ES atm still with a few more ES / Armor passives to get so hoping that will make the legion encounters feel fairly safe; even into red maps.

I've actually taken to using a Vaal arc setup when mapping over the storm brand. Gone full offensive curses so it's linked to both flammability and ele weakness. Then when I open the monolith I can cast my vaal arc and pretty much everything gets hit and cursed. It also has increased shock duration so I actually get some slight use of of the Beacon of Ruin(ed) ascendancy node for a few seconds at least.

I'm really looking forward to hearing about which historic jewel you will be recommending and where it should go. I've seen a few that changes passives to stuff like 80% increased minion life....etc. If I could get the Soul Weaver ascendancy (ie: 100% inc minion dam + 100% inc minion life) in a jewel and by grabbing a few passives on the tree then that would really open up Elementalist as a strong choice; for mapping anyway. I know that the jewel seed will likely matter so it may never be as easy as get this exact one but even just some ideas about what is possible or something to aim for would be pretty helpful. I have to admit, they baffle me atm.

Anyway, hope you continue to enjoy the league!!

"

mika2salo wrote:

Hi :)

Your tree and gear look much different from mine, so I can only give some general advice.

Lot's of minion nodes have big Energy Shield, so going for full HP seems like you have to stretch tree pretty far to reach enough nodes. Also you are potentially losing some jewel sockets while doing this. Many good summoner items are also ES bases, like Skin of the Loyal which gives absolutely no benefit to HP.

You could try to swap as much gear to be HP / armor bases as possible, which would probably include Skin of the Loyal.

If you can reach 6-7k HP, I think you should be safe with enough armor. Flasks become much better at that point, but you have to be careful of high elemental hits as 10k EHP hybrid can cushion for that but 7k HP will probably die.

Hey Mika,

Thanks to your input I cleaned up my tree a bit, so I can reach 191% life and still have 9 sockets, which should give me sth around 6k/6,2k-ish life lategame.

Rumi's still missing which will boost the defense more, also no Vaal Molten Shell yet (which is busted this league with the armour stacking I do). Also added Flesh and Stone for some Blind action in melee range and less damage from afar. I'm not happy yet bc of my relatively low life pool, but this will change as soon as I gain higher levels.

What I'm still missing is Fortify. I don't see myself using Animate Guardian (I heard Legion mobs are killing it quite often) and I barely used Leap Slam with Fortify anyway so I removed Fortify - Phase Run is simply more fluent while mapping.
I'm thinking about Vigilant Strike, but I won't have enough points for another socket for The Vigil. What is your view on the survivability of Animate Guardian this league? It seems the easiest way to fit Fortify in my approach to your build.

/edit: Another question: do I have to take Sacrifice in the tree to cap my Flame Golem resistances? Looks to me that way in PoB :(

I recently got this



can I still use it with Solar Guards even with Conc Effect or is the reduced AOE way too extreme?

In the section for Animate Guardian you mentioned that you can use it to applly elemental weakness, If you go that route, what do you usually replace it with in your gear setup.

Hi

I really love the build so far. I have a question about shield & necromancer Aegis

I have just bought Vuctario's charity shield but bit reluctant to use Necromancer Aegis as I would die easily...(I have not tried yet)
Would it make much difference if I dont use Necro Aegis ?



Also, is Winter orb best option for this build ? or do you have any other skill you recommend ?
Thanks

"

Hey Mika,

Thanks to your input I cleaned up my tree a bit, so I can reach 191% life and still have 9 sockets, which should give me sth around 6k/6,2k-ish life lategame.

Rumi's still missing which will boost the defense more, also no Vaal Molten Shell yet (which is busted this league with the armour stacking I do). Also added Flesh and Stone for some Blind action in melee range and less damage from afar. I'm not happy yet bc of my relatively low life pool, but this will change as soon as I gain higher levels.

What I'm still missing is Fortify. I don't see myself using Animate Guardian (I heard Legion mobs are killing it quite often) and I barely used Leap Slam with Fortify anyway so I removed Fortify - Phase Run is simply more fluent while mapping.
I'm thinking about Vigilant Strike, but I won't have enough points for another socket for The Vigil. What is your view on the survivability of Animate Guardian this league? It seems the easiest way to fit Fortify in my approach to your build.

/edit: Another question: do I have to take Sacrifice in the tree to cap my Flame Golem resistances? Looks to me that way in PoB :(

Hello :)

I don't have enough currency yet to buy lvl 20 Animate Guardian gem yet, so can't say much about it's survival yet. I would guess that especially with your setup high level AG should be able to survive as you run Bone Offering instead of Flesh Offering. I would however not recommend trying AG before you can get access to lvl 20 gem. If you want to try AGs survival first, you can replace Kingmaker with Dying Breath (1 alch) and -fire res helmet with leer cast (1 alch).

Yep, your minions are not capped atm (around +40%) and especially AG needs capped elemental resistances to survive. It's quite tricky to cap minions resistances if you don't take elemental resistance nodes for them. You could run purity of elements or socket some rare 10% ele res jewels for minions as quick fix.

I may not be able to comment much about the tree as it's so different to what I'm used to run, but I will happily answer if you got questions about mechanics or other parts of the build :)

"

I recently got this

can I still use it with Solar Guards even with Conc Effect or is the reduced AOE way too extreme?

Hey :)

You can run Solar Guards fine in the helmet. They don't have much area to start with, so conc effect doesn't affect them that much. I have been happy with my Solar Guards tearing down Legion packs so far in mid tier maps, so I can recommend at least trying them.

If you run Combustion with Golems, you can find some helmets with Immolation support in them. It adds 4th support for SGs as Golems will ignite enemies for them and Solar Guards will hit burning enemies and get the extra damage.

"

In the section for Animate Guardian you mentioned that you can use it to applly elemental weakness, If you go that route, what do you usually replace it with in your gear setup.

Hi :)

Elemental Weakness by Animate Guardian is meant to apply curse to enemy when your too far for your own curses to affect it. AGs elemental weakness won't override your own curses, so it can hit enemies when they are in your curse range and apply its own solo curse when you are kiting endgame bosses across the screen.

AG hits so few enemies that I would not completely replace self cast Elemental Weakness.

"

Hi

I really love the build so far. I have a question about shield & necromancer Aegis

I have just bought Vuctario's charity shield but bit reluctant to use Necromancer Aegis as I would die easily...(I have not tried yet)
Would it make much difference if I dont use Necro Aegis ?

Also, is Winter orb best option for this build ? or do you have any other skill you recommend ?
Thanks

Hi and thanks for support ^^

Victario's Charity gives about 1.5x DPS boost and makes map clearing lot faster thanks to added movement speed for minions. The loss of block chance and EHP (HP + ES) is noticable, but if you are good at kiting you can prevent most of the deaths. However it's always trading safety for speed, so if you are still leveling I would wait till you reach level your are comfortable to stay a while.

Now that Cyclone is channeling skill, it opens up some interesting opportunities. Other channeling spells to trigger EE are less effective in my mind as they wont keep on triggering it once you stop casting.

However Cyclone may open up some new possible links. It wont trigger EE straight away on it's own, so ring needs to have added lightning / cold damage. Once that is fulfilled any Cast when Channeling -> Spell 1 -> Spell 2 should work. I just started testing it today, but found nothing very effective. There may however some good combo with Shaper / Elder gloves that have good supports.