Special thanks to MonkiGW2 who helped us add minions to this build to make it even more powerful! MonkiGW2 posted about adding more passive points for minion durability and use Spectres for more consistent frenzy, and animated guardian for fortify. Check out his comments on page 7.
For this guide we will just keep it simple with zombies only, as they require zero investment and add a lot to this build. 25% MORE damage for your crawler thanks to feeding frenzy for your crawler, elemental army (-10% cold resistance), AND onslaught when you have at least 4 zombies alive.
Seven 18K health body with 80/80 elemental resistance is not bad for an expendable meat shield you can re-summon at any time. 30K DPS each also helps killing off low health monsters quickly, for a much smoother clearing experience.
1) Whakatutuki o Matua, superior choice for Zombies. Replaced shield charge, fortify and faster attack support with Raise Zombies, Elemental Armies and Feeding Frenzy
2) Took Soul of Lunaris to protect against chain damage, replaced Time of Need with Bastion of Hope for 20% extra spell block chance thanks to Lethal Pride, and stun immunity.
3) Since we lost our movement skill, replaced lesser poison with flame dash, and both ball of lightning and flame dash benefit from faster casting!
Thank you for the shoutout!
I am happy to report that I am at 460 delve depth now, just hit level 96. I haven't lost my Animate Guardian. I do occasionally loose a zombie and more rarely a spectre. I did have to buy a grand spectrum with "corrupted blood cannot be inflicted on you" corrupt. I died twice from lvl 95 to lvl 96 both from corrupted blood.
If anyone wants to min/max with minions here is my setup:
This Animate Guardian setup is super expensive 15-20 exalts in Blight league. But we get Temp Chains with explosions, -10 all resists, blinded enemies, speed cannot go below base value, enemies cannot crit strike you, culling strike, and fortify.
Note: there is one more Minion regen node on the "Sacrifice" wheel. I may drop the mana node by "Mystic Bulwark" to help further prevent Zombies and Spectres from dying. You do loose like 1k ES and 1k Armour.
Ok my zombies died in phys reflect as expected but I sill have alot more attackspeed on my crawler after changing to the setup you are using and cant figure how :D is skitterbots giving attackspeed of smt? it says movement speed and not attack speed, some insight would be wonderful. And I dont get it why skitterbots are so good?
Hard to say what you changed.
4 or more Zombies = onslaught.
1 or more Zombies = feeding freezy buff.
Frenzy Charges obviously from Poacher's Marks.
And also one passive wheel with big minion damage.
Do you MUST use Blood Magic with Raise Spectre? I was hoping I can save a slot and add desecrate for boss fights without consistent source of corpse.
If you go with only 2 Carnage Chieftians for the Frenzy then yes, they won't cast frenzy consistently enough without blood magic. However, if you went with 3 or 4 they might do it enough that you can skip blood magic. If you go two Carnage and two Host Chieftains then yes, I recommend blood magic.
Do you MUST use Blood Magic with Raise Spectre? I was hoping I can save a slot and add desecrate for boss fights without consistent source of corpse.
If you go with only 2 Carnage Chieftians for the Frenzy then yes, they won't cast frenzy consistently enough without blood magic. However, if you went with 3 or 4 they might do it enough that you can skip blood magic. If you go two Carnage and two Host Chieftains then yes, I recommend blood magic.
Thanks! I heard they have zero regen so they will stop casting eventually :(
I am going to try something similar to your build soon. Kingmaker is just too good, and I think you can get it cheaper by buying two pieces separately? I don't really need other buffs. I believe Mast of the Stitched Demo + Grave Intensions can animated guardian some massive regenerations.
Special thanks to MonkiGW2 who helped us add minions to this build to make it even more powerful! MonkiGW2 posted about adding more passive points for minion durability and use Spectres for more consistent frenzy, and animated guardian for fortify. Check out his comments on page 7.
For this guide we will just keep it simple with zombies only, as they require zero investment and add a lot to this build. 25% MORE damage for your crawler thanks to feeding frenzy for your crawler, elemental army (-10% cold resistance), AND onslaught when you have at least 4 zombies alive.
Seven 18K health body with 80/80 elemental resistance is not bad for an expendable meat shield you can re-summon at any time. 30K DPS each also helps killing off low health monsters quickly, for a much smoother clearing experience.
1) Whakatutuki o Matua, superior choice for Zombies. Replaced shield charge, fortify and faster attack support with Raise Zombies, Elemental Armies and Feeding Frenzy
2) Took Soul of Lunaris to protect against chain damage, replaced Time of Need with Bastion of Hope for 20% extra spell block chance thanks to Lethal Pride, and stun immunity.
3) Since we lost our movement skill, replaced lesser poison with flame dash, and both ball of lightning and flame dash benefit from faster casting!
Pity they all die in deep delve for about couple seconds)
I am in 500ish now and they hold up fine, I basically press and hold three buttons: Ball of Lightning, Molten Shell and Convocation. I don't need them to do damage, I just need them to be there to block the enemies and provide Onslaught and Feeding Frenzy buff to the crawler. In 1000+ I may need to switch back to Aegis Aurora with fortify, or replace feeding frenzy with meat shield, not sure yet . . .
In delve with our set up, our crawler has frenzy charge nearly 100% of the times, 2.5 million POB if I check Frenzy Charges is very real in Delve. If I eventually get my hands on a +1 corruption chest I will be doing 3.5 million damage with crawler. We clear really, really fast and our Zombies do not really need to take damage.
Keep in mind we are using zombies TOTALLY differently than Baron zombie builds. These builds rely on Zombie to do all the work, they don't have a crawler doing 2.5 million full screen piercing damage behind them. Delve is also full of corpses for us to easily resummon.
General mapping is just so much more enjoyable with Zombies. Their damage is like culling strike and they buff your crawler so much. You don't get 25% MORE easily in this game.
Well, 500 depth is not deep at all, many builds can make 600. im about 1k delve, how i said earlier. I was running with zombimancers mates with animate guardian 120k hp, they all die even with my es buff) More than 2mil shaper dps won't really matter because AI crawler not so good, and shock calculation in pob incorrect, its lower.
All those fancy rings, and additional minions won't be matter then your 18k es will be not enought to live, i barely live with 24.5k es.
Last edited by alexandro_108 on Oct 27, 2019, 5:23:29 PM
Thanks! I heard they have zero regen so they will stop casting eventually :(
I am going to try something similar to your build soon. Kingmaker is just too good, and I think you can get it cheaper by buying two pieces separately? I don't really need other buffs. I believe Mast of the Stitched Demo + Grave Intensions can animated guardian some massive regenerations.
Basically, I just want to make sure I die before my animated guardian dies :)
I've seen that AG setup but you don't need to do Grave Intentions you can just do a body armour with "Gain 10% of Max Life As Extra Max ES" on your AG. Like this:
(Don't need the spell crit, I just happen to have it for a volatile dead build I have). Just get one with lots of life, % increased max life, and regen #% life per second.
Well, 500 depth is not deep at all, many builds can make 600. im about 1k delve, how i said earlier. I was running with zombimancers mates with animate guardian 120k hp, they all die even with my es buff) More than 2mil shaper dps won't really matter because AI crawler not so good, and shock calculation in pob incorrect, its lower.
All those fancy rings, and additional minions won't be matter then your 18k es will be not enought to live, i barely live with 24.5k es.
Thanks for the tip! I agree for deep delving, you need something like this guy's gear: 36K energy shield, 250K Shaper damage. Maybe a little more damage but last season, POEDan did HC delve 1359 with 27K energy shield, 500K Shaper damage.
Instead of 18K energy shield, 2.5 million Shaper damage (4 million if you have a really fancy minion set up). I suspect I will have two sets of gear, one for deep delving one for everything else. I am trying to do at least 5-10 floors a day, I will update the guide when I get there!
The thing is you can also fish for easier nodes, so it is really hard to say what the limit of a build is. A depth 1000 node with no damage mods is going to be easier than a depth 700 node with three damage mods.
I think you are underestimating the power of "high damage and don't care if I am dead" however. If you look at top of SC ladder, the three 1400+ Guardians all have 7K energy shield, playing some funky Cyclone build with Purifying Flame and Wave of Conviction. I did POB and didn't understand how to calculate their damage, and their defense doesn't seem that hot either so . . .
Last edited by hitmantb on Oct 27, 2019, 9:48:16 PM
Thanks! I heard they have zero regen so they will stop casting eventually :(
I am going to try something similar to your build soon. Kingmaker is just too good, and I think you can get it cheaper by buying two pieces separately? I don't really need other buffs. I believe Mast of the Stitched Demo + Grave Intensions can animated guardian some massive regenerations.
Basically, I just want to make sure I die before my animated guardian dies :)
I've seen that AG setup but you don't need to do Grave Intentions you can just do a body armour with "Gain 10% of Max Life As Extra Max ES" on your AG. Like this:
(Don't need the spell crit, I just happen to have it for a volatile dead build I have). Just get one with lots of life, % increased max life, and regen #% life per second.
Thanks for the tip!
I am looking for a few more ideas to improve this build. Our energy shield regeneration is not great, I am at 500 per second while moving, 800 if I stand still for two seconds 1600 if I blocked recently and standing, and 2500 per second I pop flask for consecrated ground on top of it. When I am moving it is very low.
Which provides consistent 6K energy shield recovery per second when Zombies are hitting stuff. Any idea on how to close the gap? I don't really want to do a full Zombies build because they are a lot more fragile for us than say, Necromancers.
Alternatively, I can get Time of Need again, but I will need better ways to deal with stuns. I wouldn't mind sacrifice some damage for more regeneration.
Last edited by hitmantb on Oct 28, 2019, 9:30:54 PM
Thanks for the build, Hitman! One thing I am confused with is the leveling process; we have very little health and shield while leveling, and the first tree provided is a CI tree (so we really pursue no health nodes other than Cruel Preparation). Is there a way to boost our survival between 50-68, or are we expected to follow a life-based tree on our way to 68?
UPDATE: Yah this build is squishy as all getgo prior to 68. Definitely not HC viable - somebody leveling this is pretty sure to die a few times (at 64 with BiS gear for leveling only spotting 1k health and 1.4k or so shield).
I still don't know if the expectation is to level up with the L68 tree, or if you recommend an alternative tree until transitioning to CI at 68.
Remember, the vast majority of PoE players don't run CI and aren't familiar with transitioning. As such covering this is important IMO.
While I know this build rocks starting at 68, getting to that point is a bit rough - an update to the leveling section would be solid - and at least explaining why we go CI while leveling vs. life, and perhaps giving some advice for those who don't want to die while making this build :)
All that and a bag of chips!
Last edited by Mooginator on Oct 30, 2019, 8:31:01 PM
