First of all: I’m not a Youtuber, so if anyone wants to make a video guide - feel free.
I don’t wanna write a 10 page in-depth guide about every single passive and skill specializations, only the key points. If you have questions, just ask.
The build
The Build planner doesn’t include resistances from passives, in total:
90 Necrotic res
30 Elemental res
20 Poison res
The core aspects of the build
really high DPS 100% crit build, most enemies in lvl 100 Echos are 1 or 2 shots
very mobile because of Transfusion - can be swapped with Infernal Shade for even more DPS if you prefer
doesn’t rely on the clunky Minion AI: No need to command your Minions and wait for them to walk to the target
generates a lot of Ward with Rip Blood
Minions are basically immortal as long as they have a target to attack
interactive, fast and fun
How does it work?
Jump into a group of enemies with Transplant, so they get feared.
Summon either your Bone Golem (against a large group of enemies) or your Archmage between you and the enemies.
Constantly cast Rip Blood on that Minion to generate ward and buff it with Dread Shade.
Every Rip Blood cast on Bone Golem will trigger his Bone Nova, but don’t hesitate to hit your Archmage - it won’t hurt him and you want to build up your ward.
Bone Golem generates a lot of threat and will be the focus target, while also obliterating hordes of enemies with his Bone Nova.
Keep in mind that Bone Golem has a 10 second cooldown and don’t summon your Minion too far away from you, or it will walk back to you before attacking.
Dread Shade lasts 20 seconds and has a 6 second cooldown - you can easily keep it up on both your minions for boss fights or at forge fights.
Archmage can hit 1 enemy with all 5 of his projectiles, so summon him as close as you can to bosses or strong enemies.
Some additional info
River of Bones passive: You want 1 point in this asap, as it allows your Minions to leech health from the insane Crits they deal.
Blades of the Forlorn passive: +70% critical Strike Multiplier combined with the 100% critchance from Dread Shade boost your Minion damage by a lot.
The unique amulet Death Rattle (almost) doubles your damage and the increased damage to minions is not an issue - take this if you can.
Increased Minion Health is not needed, you can swap it with Cast Speed on your Catalyst or Minion Health Regen/Health gained on Potion Use on your Belt.
+Skeletal Mage level on your Relic also gives increased Minion Damage, and is even slightly better than pure increased Minion Damage at Tier 4 and 5.
As long as you don’t have +Skeletal Mage level on your relic, don’t take the Ossein Frenzy skill node. It helps in boss fights, but it’s not needed.
You can swap Frozen Tomb with Grey Merchant on the Skeletal Mage for even more dps, but Cryomancer outperforms Pyromancer.
The Dread Shade skill node Flesh Harvest is currently bugged and not working (at least on the 1 minion buffed by dread shade). If that gets fixed you can either remove the Pernicious Pact skill Node or take Infernal Shade instead of Transplant to make use of it.
The Dread Shade skill node Grim Fate is also not working for the 1 minion - I reported that issue again, but I also found an older bug report, where they stated it’s only buffing the Aura and working as intended, because All for One removes Aura Buffs. Because of that i took Martyrdom (okay but not needed), Wisdom of the Dead (unnecessary) and Duskheart (unnecessary).
While that is true, the crit chance from passives and the Turquoise Amulet (Death Rattle) makes up for it, so your minion will crit strike 100% of the time. At least with the current build i have never seen a non-crit while Dread Shade is active.
It shouldn’t though since blind says it’s 50% less crit, as in less/more so it’s multiplicative and it should always reduce your crit chance by 1/2. I’ve had this ahem discussion with @Heavy & I was seeing roughly 50% crit rate on a Golem buffed with Dread Shade that had both Egoism & Blind Fury while Heavy wasn’t.
I’m not too sure how it’s calculated, but i have already 100% increased critical strike chance from River of Bones. So if Egoism adds 100 base critical strike (which i believe it does) results in >200% total critical strike chance, hence the blinded minion still always crits.
That’s possible, though worrying if it is since I’d expect crit chance to be capped at 100% then modified by any less modifiers. Mind you, it’s probably not capped since otherwise Disintegrate/Ignivar’s Head/Gambler’s Falacy wouldn’t work particularly well.
I’m going to try your setup but boost the dps even more by switching to this weapon, and making the archmage a deathknight. Items - Last Epoch Item Database
But the Cryomancers autoattacks profit from adaptive and increased Spell Damage, the Death Knight doesnt. I also tried to make Death Knight work, but to my experience it’s inferior.
GL with it tho!
Yeah, of course. But you get 15 adaptive Spell damage with the Skeleton Mage Node Gravetide and 15 from the helmet. So even a perfectly rolled Morditas’ Reach only gives 30 minion cold damage - but you give up over 100% increased minion damage and over 100% increased minion spell damage for it.
Given that % increased modifiers are relatively easy to get hold of, I’d probably prefer to get flat added damage over more % increased.
Given the build planner in the top post, you’ve got 1,040% increased minion damage from gear (including idols), +100% from the blessing, +610% from passives (ignoring any different elements 'cause it’s simpler) for a total of 1,750% increased damage. The Mages have 8 base damage, +15 Gravetide, +20 Moonlight Pyre, +15 from the helmet for a total of 58 flat damage.
Therefore if you swap out the weapon (-379% increased damage) & swap in a Morditas’ Reach (+30 added cold damage) you’re loosing 21.7% of your % increased damage but gaining an additional 51.7% more flat damage. So on paper, ignoring the various elements it does & assuming max rolls on all the affixes you’d be up about 13% (0.75*1.5) compared to using the polearm. I’m also not taking into account any of the changes to the Skellie Mage skill tree that would need to be done to use Death Knights.
ok I tested a very similar damage variation but using 3 rogues skeletons critting the dummy for 20k each, and they are faster mobility., and I used 4 minion marked for death idols, and harvest to boost their damage, and have a kill threshold. I was not high enough level to get the +1 skelly rogue to get another rogue, but yeah solid dps, and just as good if not more mobility, since rogues are so pog. I’m using a ribbon of blood ring, and a +1skeleton ring, which is useless (due to the dread phalanx node in skeleton tree that halves the number of skeletons you are able to summon) until I get a few more levels for the +1 skeleton passive o well, and morditas reach also gives them good dps, and is working as intended on my updated single companion raptor build which is critting almost 200k
I only use 1 Marked for Death Idol because everything except bosses dies in an instant and on boss fights 10% chance is more than enough to have Marked for Death constantly.
The mobility doesnt matter, as i just summon the Mage into the enemies face and he instantly starts shooting.
yeah the shotgun effect of the ice mage is better then all the other skeleton variants. glad necro finally has a decent one minion damage setup. competes decently with primalist too.
Lol I just got word that the shotgun effects will most likely get nerfed next patch as well as perma stun wearbear, spriggan form, and companions, perma taunts across the board will probably see a nerf as well, owelll.
