Elemental Army Build /w Skeletons & Wraiths | 600c

SKELETON & WRAITHS ELEMENTAL ARMY BUILD:

UPDATE:
Stuck @ 600c
Swapped out Wisp Weaver for Unearthed Arms/Rites of Undeath
Added Locus of Death for Wraiths
Acquired Raven’s Rise and it slaps!

INTRO:
Introducing the Necromancer Elemental Army build which is my go-to character that I’ve been playing while waiting for the next cycle. This scratches the itch that the Necromancer mastery provides which is commanding an army of undead.

Skeletons will bring ice damage and Wraiths will bring fire damage. All will be applying Damned/Frostbite to help carry their dps which comes from critical strikes.

This build uses a lot of uniques. It’s doable without them but the uniques is what makes the build shine and feel fun to play. A lot of the uniques can farmed from Blood, Frost, and Death pretty easily.

PLAYSTYLE:
This is a very active-style minion build that involves you actively buffing your army with Dread Shade/Chaos Bolts. The Revenant will act as a tank to draw aggro and benefit from the high amount of melee flat damage from our weapon. Flame Wraiths add additional DPS and can be used to draw aggro. Whenever a minion dies then we get a stack of frozen vengeance from Apogee of Frozen Light which we proc through Chaos Bolts’s node Reaper of Mayhem.

This is 48% more cold damage along with frenzy that we will proc consistently.

Frozen Eyes of Formosus provides us with increased cold damage and the ability to freeze enemies. Chaos Bolt’s node: Gate provides all minions with 100% frostbite chance and you only need 30 stacks to have an increased chance to freeze enemies.

Gate from Chaos Bolts also provides our minions with 100% damned chance and we add a dread shade with Duskheart providing another 100% chance.

Minions will sustain themselves through River of Bones. You still need to move them out of AOE attacks but otherwise they’ll hold up pretty well.

EDIT: We spawn the Revenant by using Veins of Malice so that everytime we cast a spell (Chaosbolt / Dread Shade) we will take a hit of 5% and this procs the Revenant summon.

Check the Revenant cooldown as well. I start engagements with summoning flame wraiths ahead and popping chaos bolts on the enemy to spawn the Revnant in front of mobs. Once everyone is engaged then I’ll send some bolts onto the skeletons.

REQUIRED UNIQUES
The main uniques/set items the build uses and has synergies with are:

  • Apogee of Frozen Light
  • Lich’s Scorn

I use Frozen Eyes of Formosus for cold damage + freeze and Boneclamour for ward generation plus the dexterity to proc Reaper of Mayhem.

Skeletal Mage’s Teleport + Minion Traversal Affix will help this build play more smoothly and make the positioning around Dread Shade less tedious.

I’m doing a low-life setup for EHP which are ExSangiunous and Last Steps of the Living.
T6+ Experimental Minion Transport on boots will help make this build play smooth and without it clear speed takes a hit.

Raven’s Rise is another very nice unique to add if you can get some LP on them. The Revenant works SO much better with that extra move speed.

ElEMENTAL ARMY VS T4 JULRA

ISSUES/CHALLANGES:

You need to find ways to fit in dexterity to proc Reaper of Mayhem. I find that anything around 10-15 dexterity is more then enough to proc harvest reliably.

Necromancer has very few defensive layers if we exclude the minions so this build requires attention and finesse to get the most out of it. This is by no means a meta build and you’ll need to know how to evade dangerous telegraphs and mechanics.

Boneclamour + Ward Gen Nodes will help sustain a little bit but the margin for error is small once you’re going past 200c. I run Wisp Weaver + One Foot In The Grave to help keep ward gen up.

The ability to freeze is another defensive layer, but as you can see, at 500c due to health scaling the chance to freeze falls off hard. If I had LP3 pieces I was farming for I’d be able to fit in more inc minion freeze rate and help get the rating to 2k+ levels.

Skeleton Archers dying quickly is a double-edged sword here since their deaths provide us stacks of Frozen Vengeance but our archers are our DPS so forgetting to resummon them will hurt. In the video, you can see how my DPS dropped off when I lost more than half of my archers.

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Cool Army. Might I suggest running warriors over archers. First archers are basically physical damage, casting a single half and half arrow every 6 seconds hardly qualifies as a cold minion. Second, warriors will give you a better screen. Third if you go down the bone armor tree, you will find nearly 100% up time for 40% damage reduction for all your minions and 10% for yourself.

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Archers with cold arrows gain the cold tag and get +3 levels from Frozen Apogee. Bone Armor Warriors are really lovely but I also use Archers to target with dread shade and positioning with dread shade is difficult if I’m splitting between melee and ranged.

But yes, 6 second cool down for their cold arrows is a little much but Archers attack more efficiently than Warriors which is useful for Armor Shred/Frostbite/Damned.

I really want to do a melee minion build with Arek’s Bones next!

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Armor shred is not very useful past 100 stacks. (which a full minion army can inflict easily with a mere 4 points of Aegiisfall.) I think the best weapon for nearly all minion builds is an apogee. I myself am running a Hazelroot but only because I got an lp3 version very cheap and managed the slam from a perfect +flat damage scepter I found.

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Frozen Apogee is probably one of my favorite uniques. I noticed armor shred wasn’t very useful in terms of echo clearing but when it came to bosses then the damage loss without Aegisfall was very apparent.

I also think that a more melee minion inclined build would be able to take advantage of armor shred more effectively. Nice slam on the Hazelroot! Are you finding that to be more effecitve then just going for an exalted weapon with more applicable implicits like Skeletal Scepter or Soul Harverster?

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Skeletal scepter runs a slightly higher +minion damage than Hazel but try finding one with +48 minion flat spell damage, also I like the health and mana from Hazel so I would rate my 3lp slam Hazel higher than any Skeletal Scepter I am likely to find. Though as I say Hazel is not a particularly good minion weapon in and of itself.

Soul Harvester can only help my mages, as golems, skellies and ranged wraiths cant be necro, I “might” be tempted to make my wraiths melee necro and my mages necro… but i’m not sure it’s worth it. Turret wraiths are a life style choice… LOL.

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Turret Wraiths are so much fun :laughing:

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Please tell me how are you summon Revenant?

@yamokasi

This is the passive that spawns the Revenant!

Thx :о)

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https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/A8pERl4A
what do you say about this

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Looks great! I’ve always wanted to try to build around vitality with Aaron’s Will and Cold Golems. That Raven’s Rise is NICE!!!

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VERY nice gear, I don’t see an actual on the build so is this theoretical? As a build plan I can’t fault it other than it might be a bit glass cannon (I’m not one to talk my minion build is made of fine china.) I’m not sold on last steps and the glove mod without exsanguinous. Also if this is a theoretical build may as well use an lp3 jungle belt.

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Yes, this is a theory for now, not all things exist yet, and as for the glass cannon, I agree, but I love minions, and I can’t make a tank with them

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I feel you. I’m the same way…

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Its way too glass cannon for my comfort :laughing: But pretty much no mob will hit you or even notice you when you have three golems lol!
I’d die from random aoes nonstop.

If you could fit in more vitality you could get more flat spell damage for cold golems! 50+ flat melee cold damage from Cold Vengence is so nice.

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I want to thank you and Chaust Your designs. Your build specificly inspired me to try Arrons will Seems a big improvement in both offence and defense. Did not get the slam on Arrons but did get a nice crit chance…

Other than an lackluster Abomination I’m not sure what my last skill should be, I don’t want anything that takes much attention to use. Any suggestions?

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I’d go with volatile zombies for ward or life gen and extra damage! You can spec them into horrific vessels and get them to have a necrotic tag. Doesn’t demand to much from you other then pressing the button and you can spec into dread horde to make it even more relaxed.

An experimental affix for zombies on potion use is lots of fun as well.

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Cool, maybe then i will go with mobile necro wraiths and get a nice appogee.

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Jeez I completely missed that trick!

I have a similar build and a suggestion for you… if you can drop one Minion type (I know, it’s hard) or something else to make room for Infernal Shade, then you can spec things so you can cast 6 Infernals (3 at a time) on your own guys. After that you cast Dread Shade and you’ll get 6x the flat damage from Lich’s Scorn for every Minion in your army, and it snapshots.

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