Is skeleton and golem build viable end game?

My last second last iteration of my Necro was Lowlife Summon Skeleton Archers and Cryomages and melee Wraiths casting on cooldown to get in the way of mobs but mainly to get sacrificed by the Mages - ive since switched to Abomination which im not going to mention however I dont think I had more than 300% minion HP, 200 dodge which is not coming from my gear and 0% minion regen - I just use Reach of the Grave for the leech for ranged/spells and if they die occasionally then I just resummon them

I dont use Dreadshade unless theres only 1 minion in the setup, I hate the skill. Bone Golem build where you stack spell damage and Bone Nova proc chance and cast Dreadshade on the Golem then cast Rip Blood for him to retaliate is definately end game viable - I was playing it as yet another build and had up to near 50k crits per cast on the Dummy - this was back when Dreadshade gave 2000 resistances so you had to follow the golem around and just got too tedious

I haven’t used dread shade that much as a life decaying buff to cast on my minions. I mainly use it in the version where I cast it on my enemies to buff everything around.

I also used a infernal shade variant on my minions to buff attack speed and damage. If you don’t invest in spelldamage the damage done to your minions isn’t that much and they sustain a fair amount of time.

I know @Heavy made a fire golem build with infernal shade when the skill was released. From what I heard from him it was pretty nice. Don’t know how far he pushed it.

Maybe something to try, too.

So hows your experience with single (or low number) minion builds, @Shrukn?

The only one on my setup is a “poison/necrotic golem with death seal ailment/hit damage hybrid”. This thing is working really well. Currently running the 90s timeline with it.

So first off, i have to say i usually do not like minion/summoner type of playstyles, but this single skill made me enjoy it somehow.

The very first second i saw the Infernal Shade Node “Soulfire” (the one, where it has unlimited duration) i thought: THIS! I need to build around this!

The Node before that “Subjugation”, which increases the damage by 10% per second active, which makes it kill your minions eventually is also really interesting.

I used it on a Twinned Pyre Golem. Bone Golem can have crazy good Fire resistance (together with the necromancer passive tree a total of 66% Fire resistance). Also they have a Fire Dmg Aura inherently, with will lead to them having 2 different “fire damage auras” with the Infernal Shade on top of them

You also can combine that with the dread shade “Pernicious Pact” Node, which gives Dread Shade no health decay, but a everlasting poison. (You can get minions to 75% poison resistance via Necromancer Passive Tree)

This all combined made those twinned golem destroy everything. You just need to keep them alive as long as humany possible, i achieved this with Minion Health Regen mainly.

You could easily run this setup as a full summoenr or a caster.
Since Infernal Shade Damage scales with your damage, you can compeltely ignore minion offesnive stats and have the Pyre Golems still be usefull, or go full summoner.

This build was capable of clearing everything withease. Both as Full Summoner and as “Caster with only Twinned Golems”

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Seems most people here are simply forgetting the fact that Bone Prison exists and can pull aggro w/ Dread Shade. It acts as a shield for your minions. It’s how I was able to push my full skelemancer necro to 250+ in 0.7.9. Granted the inherent aggro on Bone Prison was nerfed, Dread Shade still gets the job done. Bone Prison also happens to be the tankiest minion in the game with 3k flat hp, so scaling that is easier to build its survivability and gives you more prefixes for dmg. It can be utilized with Abom summon as well to give your Abom insane hp and longer survivability, with all minion hp you can get the abom to last a few minutes or so. Anyway, I’ve found this to be the best way to mitigate damage dealt to minions as you just position ranged minions out of the enemy projectiles. As far as melee minions and golem specifically, I think they are lackluster and won’t ever be able to scale to end game effectively unless changes are made. Though as I said ranged minions are still very viable and the gameplay is pretty simple keep bone prison up w/ dread shade both have 6 sec CD w/ 20 sec duration, so can maintain 100% uptime. In mono, throw it ahead and have minions target large/tanky mobs. In arena, there are optimal positions to stand in one place until like 120+ waves where you can throw bone prison + DS to pull aggro from all spawns and minimally micro manage minions. After about 150 you have to do a better job and dodge a lot more stray projectiles. I made a build guide in 0.7.9 and have yet to push the build this patch, but never re-did the gear on it after defensive changes.

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Ive played - Bone Nova Golem, Solo Raptor, Hybrid Raptor and Spriggan pet and with the Spriggan using Spriggan/Werebear Form and Assemble Abomination. I prefer Primalist in LE than Necro overall

Solo Raptor build I took all the single companion buffs and skill buffs like Frenzy totem, tried Crit/Poison as I have 4x Aspect of the Viper effect ended up switching to Hybrid where I still used Raptor but also attacked with Serpent Strike - it actually works well as you put Maelstrom on autocast to give you dodge/heal - you kill the small mobs with some poison stacks and Raptor comes along to hopefully just attack the remaining stronger mobs

My Druid has Spriggan pet with all the spell buffs and uses Poison Vine minions which is basically like Warchief from PoE but different, summons 5 vines to hit mobs - when I fight a timeline boss I switch to Werebear to just summon Entangling Roots to buff Spriggan by 40% or so

Ive spent quite a bit of time with Assemble Abomination and ended up just giving up, I needed to have Bone Wall, Summon skeleton/archer - you summon the skeletons then the wall summon the Abomination then cast Dreadshade/Infernal Shade and gogogo - problem is it will die after a short period and too painful to resummon and because I play on a controller I couldnt use other minions as it kept targetting a skeleton instead of the Abomination

I think we have to commit a definition of “endgame”. What is it exactly that you think melee minions are to weak for? Is it Arena above a certain number of waves? Because imho the survivability at all mono timelines is absolutely ok.

I made my first attempt at Formossus yesterday and died because of poor positioning. My minions weren’t the problem. No micromanagement needed. They tanked everything. Just needed to resummon 3 skellis untill I died at around 50% health left. Currently lvl 86 Necro with the melee minion build mentioned above.

Absolutely! Have to admit that I never tried a build with bone prison, yet. I didn’t see the utility/synergy, yet. Will look into your guide for sure, to get some inspiration. :+1:

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Sorry when I speak of endgame, I do mean empowered monos and competitive arena pushing. The effectiveness part is in comparison to other builds. I think the scaling is a lot easier for other minion specific masteries and investment doesn’t hinder your defenses or individual character scaling. I guess I should’ve prefaced by saying, ‘I think they are viable, but…’ or something in my original reply.

hello all.
i have also tried many minion video builds boardman mostly.
wraiths are gone in my opinion to many nerfs for even just non bone curse pre fix.
hmm yes as most posters have said you have to keep you and your minions alive
so after much testing i made well i dont have a build guide i just tried to ind a way to make necromancer still works with ward nerf and blood rip fix.
after a whilei found a way.
now for arena it works well but arena depends on how good your reflexes are after 100 waves i get kinda sleepy lose focus etc.
also arena and any huge group huge aoe anything that makes graphics in game work overboard doesnt matter what yer set up id if your computer cant handle the game at that level.
that being said this is only way ive found viable to push with a minion build.
works well but like every build theres lots of investment crafting mind my gear is only at t5 im still 85.

so the concept is to use skele mages to sacrifice sekel warriors have 6 sec bone curse on autocast. with the 5 second reapply on hit and blood rip on fall off.

for blood rip you want both chances of blood splatter at 100 percent 6 points of investment.

golems will never die
skele mages rarely on huge packs or end game mono bosses may die have to resummon sometimes dont. only in extreme cases.

the trick is to have your autocast bone curse always hit a monster. then your golem attacks your skele attacks and skele sacrifices of skele warriors trigger the 5 second auto aplly bonecurse once it starts triggering the blood rips from the minion hits proc blood spaltter which in turn proc more bone curse hits during the 5 second window which keeps the process always up resulting in sustainable defense.
laso have to have all your resistances capped mine are at 86-100.
only minion sffix i use is regen its at 1784 right now.
hope this helps for a good endgame viable build for minions.

i can only hope 1 day summon wraiths will make a comeback with a 3 piece set or soemthing.

happy new year to you all.

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damn forgot also you need cool down reduction at max on yer helmet need ezangious and last steps of the living obviously.
the cdr is so that while all your reapplies are happening and before that ends your original 6 second cd bone curse can be reapllied so theres no down time

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Oh, I am gonna try this. Sounds fun :slight_smile:

heavy lemme know how it works for you please thanks for the reply

It’s really helpful to ping people with @Heavy. (or reply to one of my posts)

Otherwise i might miss posts, since i tend to not check each and every topic.

I am not exactly sure what you want to know. If you want some more detailed advice feel free to pm me.

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