"Blood Mage - Detonate Dead" Build Guide (non-meta version)

So, I wanted to create a build that does not rely on "meta" stuff like "Archmage/Stat Stacking/HOWA/Heralds/etc." to be safe from nerfs and other balance-related changes.

My approach is a "Pure Phys DD Blood Mage" and I'll present now everything you need to know, how to build and how to play.

Topics:

1. Up- and Downsides
2. Overview of the fundamentals
3. Skills in Detail
4. Gear and Mods
5. Items and Stuff
6. Passive Tree
7. Good to know
8. Ascendancy
9. Levelling
End


Upsides:

- can clear the entire game, all bosses, all mechanics
- easy to gear and SSF viable
- decent damage and good survivability
- basically no skill cost (DD)

Downsides:

- less damage than ele based version like "Archmage"
- minion KI
- slower mapping (walking speed)
- downtime IF something kills all your minions like Arbiter AoE nuke (but can be "outplayed")


Overview of the fundamentals:

We only focus on the secondary part of "Detonate Dead", the corpse explosion, and ignore everything else. The damage is based on 20% of the corpse's life (Hp), so we invest in "Minion Life" and "Minion Level" as much as possible, get some "Physical damage" and boost that with "Critical Damage".
For our gear we take "Energy Shield" bases with high "Life" rolls, cap all our resistances and later if we are able we squeeze in some "Critical Strike Chance". But later in detail.
Gameplay-wise it's a "one-button" build while mapping and only on bosses the "Offering" and "Curse" are needed. While I try a lot of other things with skills that could be useful, this build is the "base" you can advance from, if you want.


Skills in Detail:

1. "Detonate Dead"
This skill has two parts, but we ignore the fire and only focus on the corpse explosion. Not only because we use "Brutality", but furthermore to ignore the skill cost for "Blood Mage". The cost of a skill is really important because we spend "Life" and "Mana" every time we cast.
Instead of levelling "Detonate Dead" we keep it on the minimum level to use (level 7), which leaves us with a base cost of 22 Mana/Life and with support gems at 39 Mana/Life - basically nothing.
A higher level wouldn't do anything for the corpse explosion, it's 20% corpse life on any level and deals heavy physical damage.

Support Gems in Order:
- Corpse Conservation, 25% chance for corpses to not be consumed by the skill
- Spell Echo, 30% less cast speed but the spell repeats an additional time with greater AoE
- Minion Pact, removes 100% of my max HP from a nearby minion to deal 40% more damage
- Brutality, 35% more physical Damage but can't deal ele/chaos damage
- Supercritical, 100% increased Critical Damage Bonus but 20% less Critical Hit Chance

Is the only skill we want the "6-link" (Skill Gem and 5 Supports).

2. "Skeletal Brute"
While the spirit cost is not terrible, not great, with 44 - we only need a few anyway. The high minion life is why we take them over everything else and they are melee-coded, so they run to the enemies themselves.
For the build to feel good you need a minimum of 3 Skeletal Brutes, then later aim for 4 and more than 5 has no impact, but 5 can be aimed for if you want to invest more into the build.
With decent gear, I'll go into detail later, the "Skeletal Brute" has 100.000 HP and regenerates 20k per second, so the removed life from "Minion Pact" does not matter at all. This leaves us with enormous damage for our "Detonate Dead" - 20% of 100.000 Hp is 20k Physical Damage (base) per explosion.

Support Gems in Order:
- Meat Shield, Minion itself deals 35% less damage but 50% more Minion Life (for the corpse)
- Minion Mastery, +1 to Minion skills (increases the life)
- Physical Mastery, +1 to Physical Skills (increases the life)
- Culling Strike, doesn't do anything in maps but can be useful on pinnacle bosses

Skill base level 20 is NOT mandatory, but IF you get an "Uncut Skill Gem Level 20" that's the only one you would use it on. Increasing other skills to 20 is okayish, but just luxus. In trade, it's better to sell them to improve gear.

3. "Sacrifice"
Our first Spirit Gem out of two and this gem is mandatory. The build does not work before you get it.
This Gem enables the ability to explode our "Undead Reviving Minions" (Skeletons in this case). While they now count as corpses, they still scale with Minion modifiers. Increasing Minion Life increases Corpse Life.

Increasing the level/quality is insanely underwhelming, sure, minions revive faster, but they don't. The difference is not noticeable by any means in practice. This is because the reviving time is really high and you ALWAYS reset the time when you consume a new corpse. Don't worry, I'll address this in my next "Feedback Post".

Note: Sacrifice benefits from all +x Level to Minion Skills modifiers too, and it's still not great.

4. "Soul Offering"
This skill we only use on bosses when we actually need more damage, in maps things die in one DD cast anyway, well... or beefy rares in two, but you get the point.
On offering a "Skeleton" we gain "x% more Spell Damage". That simple.

Support Gems in Order:
- Ablation, 15% life cost on use for 30% increased buff effect
- Persistence, 40% more skill effect duration
- Font of Blood, life regen while skill active (nice to have, but not mandatory)

5. "Vulnerability"
The same goes for our curse, which is only needed on bosses to remove their armour and prevent them from recharging Energy Shield.

To get the most out of it we use the "Weapon Swap/Set" system. The curse is the only skill we allocate to "Weapon Set 2", everything else is set 1.

Support Gems in Order:
- Inspiration, 40% less cost
- Heightened Curse, 25% increased effect

6. "Skeletal Cleric"
We primarily use it for our "Soul Offering", but this minion has a really cool use I will explain later. For 99.9% of the time you just keep 1 Cleric in your group.

This skill doesn't really need support gems, but if you want to put something in, use this:
- Last Grasp, when minion life hits 0 it will stay for 4 more seconds
- Ingenuity, increased cooldown recovery (they spam their heal more often)

7. "Grim Feast"
Our second and last "Spirit Gem". We use it to overflow our Energy Shield and the great thing is - our minions/corpses spawn the orbs on death too, so we can generate them all the time and everywhere. One orb, with decent gear, gives 800-900 ES.


Gear and Mods

1. "Weapons"
This build uses only a single unique. The wand "Enezun's Charge" is so good and a really common unique - it's not even funny.

I have to explain now WHY because there is a major difference between "PoE1 Detonate Dead" and the PoE2 version. In PoE1, the "Secondary Damage" (corpse explosion) is NOT affected by modifiers related to spells like "#% increased Spell Damage" or "#% increased Critical Hit Chance for Spells" etc., BUT in PoE2 - it is.
I couldn't find any official information about the explosion being affected by these mods, but I tested it in a specific way.
There is an Atlas Passive node that gives "Break Armour with Critical Hits with Spells..." and it works. The only part of our DD that deals damage is the explosion and we break armour, so DD in PoE2 is affected by spell-related modifiers.

You will now understand why this wand is BiS, period.
The wand gives us 80-100% increased Spell Damage, 30-50% increased Critical Strike Chance for Spells, 25% chance for corpses not to be consumed, some mana on kill (doesn't really matter, but nice to have) AND if you want to go for a corrupted one you can get "30% increased Critical Hit Chance for Spells" as implicit.

This wand costs basically nothing and I found so many myself, you never need to worry about getting one in SSF.

Besides this awesome unique we go for a sceptre in our off-hand. While levelling the base type doesn't matter, you can use a "Rattling Sceptre" for minions, but the second you get an "Omen Sceptre" with good stats you drop the rattling like a hot potato. The minions from the rattling screw your damage if you explode them and it's hard to aim the right ones, so it's a huge downside in late-game.
The "Malice" aura from the sceptre builds up "Critical Weakness" over time, so it's great for bossing, BUT you could use "Eye of Winter" to apply the weakness even faster if you like a build with more buttons to use.

The mods you are looking for are in order:
- +x to Level of all Minion Skills
- Minions have #% increased Maximum Life
- #% increased Spirit

I ran a sceptre without increased spirit even in pinnacle content, so it's great to have, but not mandatory. We aim for Spirit on Body Armour and Amulet too, so you have a bit wiggle room.

Now to the rest of the gear.

2. "Helmet"
The helmet is a really important piece because we can get up to "+2 to Level of all Minion Skills" on it.
Go for an Energy Shield base, then look for a high Life roll on it and at least +1 to Minion Level, but later for the +2. If you are in the late game and want a really good helmet you can go for:
- +2 to Level of all Minion Skills
- Life
- % or flat Energy Shield
- Mana
- #% increased Critical Strike Chance
and resistance if needed.

The mana is not mandatory by any means, but this build uses "Mind over Matter", so it's great to have. Depending on your resources you can ignore the mana here.

3. "Gloves, Boots, Belt and Rings"

Here the gearing is super simple. Get a high Life roll on every piece of gear, Energy Shield and Mana are great too for Grim Feast and MoM, but you mainly cap your "Elemental" and "Chaos Resistance" with these items. Sure, movement speed on boots, but that's self-explanatory.

4. "Jacket"
The Body Armour is a bit different. The most important stat is "Spirit" and you should get 40 on it. More is ok, but not needed. This can take a while to get, but besides the 40 Spirit, we want Energy Shield as high as possible.
For early mapping 400-500 ES is totally fine, but later try to improve.
If you are SSF and can't find a good ES Body Armour with 40 Spirit you could drop one "Skeletal Brute" and go with a chest without Spirit on it until you get a good one.

5. "Amulet"
Here we have 3 important mods, first the "+1-3 to Level of all Minion Skills", then "Spirit" (at least 30) and Life. The base type doesn't really matter.
Spirit, strength, life, whatever, some implicits are nice to have, but not a single one is mandatory, so you go with what you get in SSF or what you are able to buy in trade. In SSF the "Alva Gamba" helps to get an amulet with +1-3 early on.

6. "Second Weapon Set"
With this set, we increase the level of our curse.
There are two options:
- wand with "+x to Level of all Physical Spell Skills" and a focus with "+x to Level of all Spell Skills"
- Staff with "+x to Level of all Physical Spell Skills"

Note: not a single other mod matters on these items, BUT you should use the weapon swap curse only if you have good gear (a huge hit pool). The curse will cost a lot (350-400 Mana/Life) + the 500 Mana/Life cost from the offering, so until you get a decent hit pool you use the curse with your weapon set 1.


Items and Stuff

1. "Jewels"
This build has 7 slots for jewels and the jewels are easy to get. We use "Ruby" and look primarily for "Minions have #% increased maximum Life" and with higher investment "#% increased Global Physical Damage", that's it. Everything else doesn't matter on them. Sure, more stun is ok, but yeah. Look for these two mods.

2. "Anoint on Amulet"
The best is "Holy Protector" - "Minions have 25% increased maximum Life", but it costs "Disgust, Despair, Suffering". So wait with the anoint until you get a good amulet.

3. "Charm"
Besides two exceptions we use the "Stone Charm" to prevent getting stunned.
The two situations where you want to swap to the "Thawing Charm" are:
- Xeth, the breach boss because of the summons
- Iron Citadel, the Count and his cold damage stuff
If you can get two slots, use both.


Passive Tree

In general, get 205 Intelligence for your skills and everything above that into Strength for more HP and the sceptre requirement.

Here is the "PoB" of my character, so you can look at the tree, items, and skills. Change one Strenght node to Intelligence if you don't hit the 205, if needed. My actual character is higher level, so I already fixed it, this tree is made with a level 93 character in mind.

Maxroll: https://maxroll.gg/poe2/pob/lhfu01xp


Good to know

While I can run T15/16 maps with max mods, instilled, corrupted, with Atlas Passives boosting monsters and so on, there was one mechanic that took me some time to figure out - Simulacrum.

The problem there is - killed enemies don't leave corpses, so if you exploded all your minions you were left alone with the horde. There is a "trick" to make "Detonate Dead" Simulacrum viable.
As I mentioned earlier, the "Skeletal Cleric" will come and save the day.
If you want to do Simularum you set your "Skeletal Brutes" to 0 and spawn as many as possible Clerics, swap "Meat Shield" and "Corspe Conservation" into them and go. The damage is enough to do Simu but you don't need to worry about losing all your minions anymore. With my gear, I can have 13 at the same time and with ok gear you will have around 10 at least. While they have way lower life - I wasn't able so far to kill them in Simu. Hf.


Ascendancy

The first two points are set in stone, but I allocated them at level 41 and ran without until then.

The next two points go into "Gore Spike" so we reach with the next points "Sunder the Flesh" faster.

The last points go into "Open Sores", yes... the curse node. Everything else doesn't matter. The spell leech is useless because we never drop below our overflowed life and the same goes for the life loss over time node. The bleed node would be ok... on a bleed build, but this build doesn't need bleed.

The curse node is better than it seems, first of all, we don't need to worry about the curse duration and more important - with the high cost of the curse we only need to apply it one time. It's not only QoL, it's safer in pinnacle fights.


Levelling

I mean, play what you want until you get "Detonate Dead", "Sacrifice" and "Skeletal Brute". Personally, I had a great time running "Skeletal Arsonist" and the tree only needed a few small changes (more focus on "Minion Damage" instead of "Minion Life").


End

Should any questions appear - ask.