Should I play this?

At this point, no. GC miner and Skelepact Necro are vastly better options. I thought this build would be a good boss killer, until I realized it still takes 5secs longer than a good boss killer build. The only good thing I did was to kill uber Izaro on level on first try. This build has a few synergy going on so I feel like it should be worth sharing.



Build description:

Scales primarily skeleton life for base DP damage. I do not focus only on poison damage, instead it is scaled alongside DP hit damage, just think of it as a guaranteed crit with 20% multiplier. I used 4x Coated Shrapnel for guaranteed poison, but you can ditch one and use the new unique flask Coralito’s Signature. Poison can be scaled with mine damage as well, which is a nice bonus. With mines you also won’t accidentally sacrifice your life if no skeletons spawned. With skeletraps you can spawn lots of skellies in a short time thanks to Sabo’s Chain Reaction. Trap cooldown is generally a non-issue but ideally you should get it down to around 2s.



About Damage:

Currently my skeletons are about 8k life but it can goes up to >10k life if you min-max. In addition to minefield and tremor rod, I used chain. So it actually hit a lot in a short time. One cast will hit 3*2*5=30 times. If you have time to prep it will be 9*2*5=90 times. 90*6%=540% means you need at least 6 skeletons for DP. Hitting that much in a short time means you can use Vile Toxins for 45% more damage, and perma-blind everything with Sabo’s Blind Assault. My current average damage inc. poison for shaper/guardian in PoB with flask and wither, is 7333, so per cast it is 219990(x30) or burst(x90) is 659970 which is pretty meh. Upper limit seems to be around 1.5million shaper burst damage.



How to play:

Throw traps, then lay mines and detonate. Occasionally use vaal clarity, vaal grace, wither totem, stone golem and flasks. For strongboxes and essences you can throw 2 traps, lay mines 3 times and put down wither totem.



Pros:

• No-risk Dark Pact, meaning it won’t consume your life if you don’t have skellies since it uses health from mines.

• Is the only decent spell-based poison build without requiring any poison-based uniques to work.

• Can run all map mods but I always skip no regen mod, and sometimes temp chain.



Cons:

• Very squishy and low health (around 5k up to 6k ehp) despite all the defences from blind/ev/dodge/chill/hinder/tempchain/phasing/MoM.

• Small AoE, it only covers roughly half the screen

• 3-button gameplay. There’s also a slight delay on casting and while DP is chaining which takes up roughly 1-2s.

• Not top tier clearspeed. Probably a little worse than Blade Flurry because you can't whirl.

• Cannot leech, as all other mines build do.





Mandatory Equipment

• 6L Tremor Rod. 5L will not have enough damage to do red maps.

• Elder helmet with +2 minion gem and supported by lv20 minion life. You put your skeleton trap here.



Good optional uniques

• Tinkerskin, really helps a lot with survivability. I tried Bloodbond and it wasn’t as good.

• Atziri’s Step. Most of your threats are going to be spell damage so 16% spell dodge is very nice.

• Sidhebreath. A decent all around minion amulet for this build. If you can craft a very good rare amulet go ahead and use that one.

• Coralito’s Signature. Provides slight damage boost.

• Witchfire Brew. I will only use it when I can dual curse since tempchain is essential to survivability.

• Lavianga’s Spirit. I used up all currency for experiments so I don’t have money to buy this expensive one.

• Clear Mind. Free <60% spell damage if you don’t want to use blasphemy. Note that spell damage doesn’t affect poison.



Others

• Essence of fear crafted gloves. Look for life and resists.

• A fear crafted shaper boots with cooldown recovery speed will be a better offensive alternative to Atziri’s Step. I wasted lots of time and currency on this but still didn’t get a decent one.

• Shaper belt with cooldown recovery speed. I did not have this as I need my current one for life and resists.

• Rings with life and resists. Most of my resists are here. Note that I maxed out my resists for red tier Elemental Weakness, which is at least 110% uncapped resists with +1 max resists amulet.

• At least 1 panic life flask, 1 panic mana flask, and 1 quicksilver flask are recommended.



Enchants

• 40% increased DP damage would be best for helmet.

• Commandment of the Grave is decent glove enchant for clearing up trash mobs but I would prefer the consecrated ground if I can get it.

• Been trying to get spell dodge on boots but no luck so far. Move speed and dodge is good too.



Gem links

• Tremor rod. In order of importance. Dark Pact – Minefield – Chain – Vile Toxins - Void Manipulation – Trap and Mine Damage. 4 green sockets can be hard to get so you can replace Trap and Mine Damage with Unbound Ailments. One misunderstanding people have is that Added Chaos Damage gives huge damage boost, which it is not. Remember to type in your skele life in PoB config and you’ll realize that.

• Helmet. Summon Skeleton – Trap – Cluster Trap – Empower . If you want more clearspeed or while levelling you can use Trap Cooldown instead of Empower.

• Wither – Spell Totem – Increased duration . For more damage. You can use Decoy Totem instead for more defence. Detonate Totem can be good for initial burst damage but will run out very soon due to limited skeleton life and trap cooldown.

• Vaal grace – Vaal clarity – Increased duration . This plays a huge part in survivability during mapping.

• Cwdt – IC – Vortex – Detonate Mines . You need Immortal Call to survive porcupines.

• Blasphemy – Temporal Chains . If you want to free up some mana you can use Desecrate – Raise Spectre instead. Use Morbid Experimenter in Act 3 Lunaris Temple for Temp chain. It is a little hassle to have to resummon it once in a while so I opt for blasphemy instead.

• Flame dash to cross gaps and dodge volatiles.

• Summon Stone golem for life regen and taunt.



Levelling and passive tree

I levelled as a GC miner until 70-ish. I went for Clever Construction and Volatile Mines, then grab both area nodes, then jewel slots, Acrobatics and Phase Acrobatics, lastly I grab MoM when I feel like I have enough life and mana.



Bandits

Alira for mana regen and resists, or kill all for 2 points.



Pantheon

Generally anything is good, for general mapping I would take those reducing chaos damage over time because desecrate grounds hurts a lot.

Major - Araakali for reduced damage taken over time and capture Armala for chaos res.

Minor - Shakari. Ryslatha is a personal favorite because it is the only one that will eventually get me out of sticky situations.



Reference Links

A low quality gameplay video (T11 Shaped Jungle Valley) just to show how it works.

PoB pastebin of an ideal character.

My profile. Look for ABS_Skelepact.



Edit 1: Added Bandits and Pantheon.

At this point, no. GC miner and Skelepact Necro are vastly better options. I thought this build would be a good boss killer, until I realized it still takes 5secs longer than a good boss killer build. The only good thing I did was to kill uber Izaro on level on first try. This build has a few synergy going on so I feel like it should be worth sharing.Scales primarily skeleton life for base DP damage. I do not focus only on poison damage, instead it is scaled alongside DP hit damage, just think of it as a guaranteed crit with 20% multiplier. I used 4x Coated Shrapnel for guaranteed poison, but you can ditch one and use the new unique flask Coralito’s Signature. Poison can be scaled with mine damage as well, which is a nice bonus. With mines you also won’t accidentally sacrifice your life if no skeletons spawned. With skeletraps you can spawn lots of skellies in a short time thanks to Sabo’s Chain Reaction. Trap cooldown is generally a non-issue but ideally you should get it down to around 2s.Currently my skeletons are about 8k life but it can goes up to >10k life if you min-max. In addition to minefield and tremor rod, I used chain. So it actually hit a lot in a short time. One cast will hit 3*2*5=30 times. If you have time to prep it will be 9*2*5=90 times. 90*6%=540% means you need at least 6 skeletons for DP. Hitting that much in a short time means you can use Vile Toxins for 45% more damage, and perma-blind everything with Sabo’s Blind Assault. My current average damage inc. poison for shaper/guardian in PoB with flask and wither, is 7333, so per cast it is 219990(x30) or burst(x90) is 659970 which is pretty meh. Upper limit seems to be around 1.5million shaper burst damage.Throw traps, then lay mines and detonate. Occasionally use vaal clarity, vaal grace, wither totem, stone golem and flasks. For strongboxes and essences you can throw 2 traps, lay mines 3 times and put down wither totem.• No-risk Dark Pact, meaning it won’t consume your life if you don’t have skellies since it uses health from mines.• Is the only decent spell-based poison build without requiring any poison-based uniques to work.• Can run all map mods but I always skip no regen mod, and sometimes temp chain.• Very squishy and low health (around 5k up to 6k ehp) despite all the defences from blind/ev/dodge/chill/hinder/tempchain/phasing/MoM.• Small AoE, it only covers roughly half the screen• 3-button gameplay. There’s also a slight delay on casting and while DP is chaining which takes up roughly 1-2s.• Not top tier clearspeed. Probably a little worse than Blade Flurry because you can't whirl.• Cannot leech, as all other mines build do.6L Tremor Rod. 5L will not have enough damage to do red maps.Elder helmet with +2 minion gem and supported by lv20 minion life. You put your skeleton trap here.Tinkerskin, really helps a lot with survivability. I tried Bloodbond and it wasn’t as good.Atziri’s Step. Most of your threats are going to be spell damage so 16% spell dodge is very nice.Sidhebreath. A decent all around minion amulet for this build. If you can craft a very good rare amulet go ahead and use that one.Coralito’s Signature. Provides slight damage boost.• Witchfire Brew. I will only use it when I can dual curse since tempchain is essential to survivability.• Lavianga’s Spirit. I used up all currency for experiments so I don’t have money to buy this expensive one.• Clear Mind. Free <60% spell damage if you don’t want to use blasphemy. Note that spell damage doesn’t affect poison.Essence of fear crafted gloves. Look for life and resists.• A fear crafted shaper boots with cooldown recovery speed will be a better offensive alternative to Atziri’s Step. I wasted lots of time and currency on this but still didn’t get a decent one.• Shaper belt with cooldown recovery speed. I did not have this as I need my current one for life and resists.Rings with life and resists. Most of my resists are here. Note that I maxed out my resists for red tier Elemental Weakness, which is at least 110% uncapped resists with +1 max resists amulet.At least 1 panic life flask, 1 panic mana flask, and 1 quicksilver flask are recommended.• 40% increased DP damage would be best for helmet.• Commandment of the Grave is decent glove enchant for clearing up trash mobs but I would prefer the consecrated ground if I can get it.• Been trying to get spell dodge on boots but no luck so far. Move speed and dodge is good too.• Tremor rod. In order of importance.4 green sockets can be hard to get so you can replace Trap and Mine Damage with Unbound Ailments. One misunderstanding people have is that Added Chaos Damage gives huge damage boost, which it is not. Remember to type in your skele life in PoB config and you’ll realize that.• Helmet.. If you want more clearspeed or while levelling you can use Trap Cooldown instead of Empower.. For more damage. You can use Decoy Totem instead for more defence. Detonate Totem can be good for initial burst damage but will run out very soon due to limited skeleton life and trap cooldown.. This plays a huge part in survivability during mapping.. You need Immortal Call to survive porcupines.. If you want to free up some mana you can use Desecrate – Raise Spectre instead. Use Morbid Experimenter in Act 3 Lunaris Temple for Temp chain. It is a little hassle to have to resummon it once in a while so I opt for blasphemy instead.to cross gaps and dodge volatiles.for life regen and taunt.I levelled as a GC miner until 70-ish. I went for Clever Construction and Volatile Mines, then grab both area nodes, then jewel slots, Acrobatics and Phase Acrobatics, lastly I grab MoM when I feel like I have enough life and mana.Alira for mana regen and resists, or kill all for 2 points.Generally anything is good, for general mapping I would take those reducing chaos damage over time because desecrate grounds hurts a lot.Major - Araakali for reduced damage taken over time and capture Armala for chaos res.Minor - Shakari. Ryslatha is a personal favorite because it is the only one that will eventually get me out of sticky situations.Reference LinksEdit 1: Added Bandits and Pantheon. Last edited by shin_igami on Feb 10, 2018, 11:04:41 AM Last bumped on Feb 10, 2018, 9:01:43 PM