As the title says ;D. When I say viable I mean to corruption of 500?
If 500c is your goal, they already were in Season 3. Crit zoo was farming 800-900c already.
They look to have access to more beef. they got resistance buffs in necro.
Damage was never the problem, it was how limp and annoying zoo is in the midling gearing stages. like yes at end game with a ton of good gear, you can keep them alive, the midling gearing phase was so annoying with skeletons dying all the time. hopefully its better with more resistance.
Honestly zoo just has not gotten anything new or exciting for a minute. Make skeleton mages able to cast some spells is kinda cool, but its not gonna make or break the achetype. Skeleton archers can now stack ignites I guess, cool??? like minion ailments have not managed to be good enough to fly yet.
So ill be avoiding it for now, it just feels boring. we dont get any of the cool transformative zoo mechanics like Beastmaster. Even weak off meta “zoo master” beastmasters where you just spec 5 different pets feels more engaging to build and think about then “oh boy my extremely boring and simple skeletons are default attacking!”
We dont get things like frog hat, raptor sword, etc.
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Necro zoo minion builds have long been absolute trash, as in lower than F tier. The devs have a massive hard on for only 2 different things for necros, sacrificing minions (which I would honestly say the majority of necro players hate) or a single big Abomination build that necros have to sacrifice everything else for. Beastmasters does zoo builds MUCH better than necro could ever hope for (squirrels, wolves, raptors, crows) and the big single minion is also done much better with beastmasters (bears, scorpion, sabertooth or raptor) and they dont sacrifice other skills or waste skillpoints / specialization points to make it viable. The devs have made it a massive point that they have a hard on for making the necro one of the worst minion classes.
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Yea the reworking of skeletons is pretty big and the changes to mages. Actually what I was looking for with the necro update last season.
Also being they updated several minion items power (like ravens rise) definitely should be possible.
Archers being able to now always have Fire or Cold arrow is massive. This will drastically increase their damage and ailment abilities. Combine that with Fire or Cold Aura of decay or perhaps the Lich set catalyst for Cold archers.
Mages scale better now also having access to hungering souls skill tree for death knights is interesting.
Definitely think you can do some fun zoo ailment builds though and if going Cold it’s pretty safe when your army freezes everything allowing you to push corruption. Cold golem, Cold archer, Cold Mages Cold Aura of decay with Cold Shade from Lich set everything is insta frozen till it shatters.
Really the main issues with skeleton before was Fire and Cold arrow was on a CD and couldn’t scale it. Now that isn’t the case. Hollow finger got buffed too.
Definitely will make a zoo build think it should be able to handle 1,000+ c easily. They also buffed the mana more damage scaling for mages. Season 4 can stack tons of mana huge buff.
While they did make archers at least full time swap to cold or fire they made it slower, the archers damage is also i believe the lowest of any single minion after the “rework”
Being able to fully use Cold or Fire arrow is insanely strong. It also opens up way more ways to scale it. Passive like “Chaos in flames” in the Warlock tree will work with every attack by a Fire archer instead of every 6 seconds since it was specifically on “Fire” attacks.
Ontop of that they massively boost Attack and Cast speed of minions. “Unholy rage” in the skeleton tree was buffed. Logi hunger amulet is now up too 24% attack/cast speed, Ravens rise while only works with mages is 28% cast speed.
Before this change the Archers arrows were physical even the Fire and Cold arrows were 50/50. They had no real scaling compared to now elemental every attack.
I’m not sure if I see it that way. Don’t get me wrong Death knights with hungering souls likely will go hard. Both zombie and mages have more mana scaling now. It’s actually hard to calculate the increase to Archer damage but they will do many times as much than before.
If you think 12 Cold Archers with Cold dread shade, Cold Aura of decay with 300% cold pen isn’t going to rip with ALL the more multipliers on Dot dmg. I think you are mistaken. They will offer nutty control and damage. Also on cold archers does convert ignite chance to frostbite.
Then there are tons of options for Fire Archers. With dragon flame edict, new fire aura boots.
People definitely sleeping on these builds. However I have run pure archers before this change and it’s going to significantly boost the ailment and overall damage.
Archers alone will be putting out over 1,000 stacks of ailments. There are more multipliers in Archers, Aura, Dread shade, from Vitality. Then the high resistance pen. They are gonna be good.
Then of course you got Zombies, and Mages. The zoo will be good.
Every enemy will be frozen before it gets too you. They have a lot of freeze rate and it’s every attack now. I’m tellin you. Everything on the screen will be frozen shards of ice.
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Thank you for this breakdown, just gave me the build I wanna pursue when I can find time to return to the game. Cold Necro it is.
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Yea should be fun and glad I could help.
Just to add in something that wasn’t mentioned. Cold Golem is very cool the aoe spell that freezes and it is a Tank. However I’d say it’s more for the early build and when you start pushing corruption you want to swap it out for Chaos Bolts.
Reason is “The Gate” node in Chaos bolt after it’s converted to cold will give your minions any ailment in that tree. So hitting your entire zoo and those archers will increase their frostbite chance significantly boosting stacks.
Also pathing over too “Revolution” node in chaos bolt will significantly buff your Cold mages damage and cast speed buff.
So once you have gear (Got higher mana pool and pushing corruption) I’d swap Cold Golem out and Chaos bolts will add a significant buff to your Cold Army. (Also does give you a button to press that feels good to press)
Also I do prefer the T-rex relic, it ends up basically being your Golem. The perma frenzy buff is too good and the buffs it provides for the Cold army. They go crazy with the buffs. (Many players overstack endurance to give your minions another more multiplier)
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I want to try this build.
https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/A6P4Mq4L
I’m not sure how hard it will be to play, considering my character will be very squishy.
The whole point is to add flat damage to my skeleton mages and high penetration. The golems are there to entertain the enemies. Theoretically, this build can withstand 300 corruption.
I still haven’t decided on a fifth skill.
Maxroll has no zoo necros on their tier list ;(. Well that I can find.
Well they don’t have anyone who plays necro really. Also Maxroll is just one source definitely want to use other sources like LE tools.
With that said AaronARPG has several new zoo build vids. Think he has website links too.
I’m now working on my cold zoo I got work today maybe by thurs I’ll post here with where I’m at. Damage is pretty high though, pleasantly surprised. Just want to also be tanky so working on that aspect so it’s really comfy and relaxing.
Damage will be S tier though. (I consider S tier above 30 million Dps)
S+ tier is in the 50-100 million Dps and cold zoo can probably get there with gear and right set up.
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I have this fever dream of a bee hive (+skellies) acolyte, using aura of decay and hungering souls (+6% more damage per minion).
The good thing about a fever is that the brain has ideas. The bad thing is that it can’t decide whether it’s a good idea.
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I’m bouncing around between a lot of builds (Got some wonky builds in the works) so my Cold zoo kinda took a back seat but figure I’d at least post what I got so people can look at and iterate on. My gear is very mid only got a decent helm corruption, didn’t even slam my raven rise and bricked my chest.
I’m also not sure on the final build concept which is probably why I lost interest in Min/Maxing it because I’m not sure on WHAT I want to Min/Max. What I mean is obviously I’m Cold but am I stacking Mana hard and going damage to mana? Am I Crit or DOT? So right now I’m like all of the above.
https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/A6PpDDPp
With that said I don’t quite have the cold resist to get the Aura of decay pen. Without it my minions DOT damage is over 2 million ticks. Overall damage is melting the boss target dummy.
I did test it with Aura pen node and put DOT up over 3.4 million for minions build doing about 20-25 million DPS or so.
Obviously the build can improve a lot gear wise. Just wish targeting some corruptions could be easier. I’m totally reliant on my cold army freezing everything and I’m just mostly hiding as I have no defensives in this build yet or HP.
So maybe someone wants to play around with some of my ideas and run with it. Maybe if I find a damage goes to mana Seed then I’ll stack crazy mana to scale mages and lean more into them. Drop the +1 archer on chest. Go with Mana.
Definitely think this build can get nutty damage but I don’t have the overall concept nailed down yet to make the build feel amazing mapping. Don’t get me wrong it’s not bad, I’m just want great S tier like my Auradin.
So I’ll probably keep working on some other ideas and farming on other chars. Till I have a final idea I’m excited about on this build. I definitely want to come back to it though because the damage is so crazy. Which is kinda the main part of any build.
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I won’t pretend to be a master theorycrafter, but so far I’ve been having fun with this… just started empowered monos and still haven’t slowed down, even in pretty bad gear
https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/QkYb79X3
everything stays clumped up in melee range near the golems and dread shade, packs disappear in 1 or 2 group attacks… anything that can last more than a few seconds ends up with ~300 stacks of bleed and armor shred and gets burned down pretty quickly
with half decent gear you should be able to do 500c with a summoner
mind to link your build?
Great build, tks
Okay guys think I figured it out. At level 51 I have 41 minions. I don’t have any of the main set up yet and killed T1 Julra in the campaign at lvl 49 in 3 secs.
Figure I’d post this so people can mess around with it. As you can see my gear is bad and it absolutely rips, well I mean 41 minions. An army of that size attacking super fast applying Dots nothing lives.
https://www.lastepochtools.com/planner/A83p6KL4
I wanted to do a poison rogue build so I have 11 Rogues atm. However I’m also leaning into Bees and figure poison is one of the best ways to go to scale them. Currently I have 19 Bees can get a lot more.
Also have 4 Death Knights atm who are also leaning into poison. Then of course 6 poison Zombies both of these will scale with Mana and especially Zombies with increase poison chance per Mana.
Obviously the Rogue build calls for the Lethal Concentration for your Rogues and they scale off your poison damage. I believe this is still the way to go I’ll test once I have it as it does also boost other minions poison chance and will make your minions immortal cause of leech from poison damage.
However with Rogues being nerfed because of the removal of that more multiplier node and individual operator in it’s place. Might be possible to just lean more into Bees as you see the scepter is pretty good overall for your minions and well 8 more bees. Also might be able to go with the full Bee set.
For a full Zoo this seems to be the way. Put them on aggressive and you got 40+ minions zerging your enemies so it’s insanely fast for mapping and they are all melee so moving like a cohesive spartan poison army.
I also believe poison is a great way to scale bees if you are gonna use them so once I add in Poison Aura of Decay and scale the build the damage should be nutty.
Of everything I’ve played so far this is by far the most relaxing and chill from the start literally no buttons except to spam some zombies when you need them. Also your minions will heal for so much and heal when a zombie dies so zombies actually don’t really die either. They leech back their decay. So they are basically permanent.
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О да, я абсолютно ненавижу использовать своих скелетов в роли петард или фейрверков. Но на мой взгляд проблема не в том что они мало живут или наносят мало урона.
Привести их к одному виду урона - вот проблема. Скелета наносят физический урон, в то время как скелеты маги - некротический. Даже рыцари. При разгоне одного из двух видов урона - один из них сильно выбивается вперед по полезности. Голем все еще объективно слишком слаб. Он наносит меньше урона чем 1 скелет. И не очень долго живет. То же самое с призраками - они есть огненые и ядовитые, физическо-некротические, но нету на пример ледяных.