[3.3] Popcorn Skeleton bomber (Minion instability Earendel's Embrace)

@DreamScythe

Thanks for the explanation! My puzzles are solved now.

I have Dark Pact on a totem-faster casting link but I dont like the gameplay of dropping it on every pack of monsters I encounter : (

Would it be a nice idea to run a 6l with scorching ray, wither or incinerate, cast while channeling and then the skellies?

Hey, @DreamScythe!

Love the look of the build, but I am still leveling. I was thinking about running a Curse Occultist Hybrid, based on your build. I'm still pretty new, so could you give me your thoughts on this skill tree? www.poeurl.com/b0nV

The idea is to lower enemy resistances with curses such as Flammibility, Despair, Enfeeble, Elemental Weakness, and Assassin's Mark, all supported by Blasphemy. Then I try and increase AoE of my curses so I don't have to be directly in the thick of it but close enough to get Maligaro's Lens heals and to curse the enemies.

I plan to use Earendel's Embrace and Maligaro's Lens, obviously. But I would need Windshriek boots and 2x Doedre's Damning to run the 5 curses. I have not thought of any other uniques, yet, though Bloodbound and Thirst for Horror might be good, especially Thirst for that 1% damage leeched as life from cursed enemies.

I plan to use the aforementioned cursed-gem setup along with your suggested Dark Pact-Totem setup. The Dark Pact setup should work really well with my Despair curse and reduced enemy's Chaos Resistance nodes. A Fortify-shield slam setup, obviously. Lastly, your skeleton 4L setup would be needed but due to my potential mana issues with my curses, I might need to use the Blood Magic Support; I am not sure though as I do not know how much mana my curses will take... I don't know what defensive setup or other skills I should use, so any suggestion there would be nice!

As for gems, I feel that I need 2x From Dust to be able to summon more Skeletons quickly. I'm not sure how I could get more skeletons, but it looks like my current set up gives me a max of 9 skeletons.

I'm still new, so for all I know my idea might be trash, so I'd like to know that before I put more time into it! Let me know if you have any suggestions!

Ok, a couple things Colt.
You're limited to 1 From Dust.
The idea of using occultist for Profane bloom and the extra curses is really interesting.
Here are the cons tho:
-50% minion life
-165% minion damage.

I think using 5 curses is overkill and could put very severe restraints on your gearing. I suggest running 3: Ele weakness, Despair, Flamability. Put them on a heretic's veil and you should not have to worry about mana reservation (https://poe.mikelat.com/#4_uSb/CSrRc.NLrp). If you wanna invest in mana reservation nodes, consider linking a lvl 3 or 4 Enhance on the heretic's veil. You can get sovereignty for 4 points and it would leave you at 90% mana reserved total (or 87% with a conqueror's efficiency, https://poe.mikelat.com/#m5WfU3Cd/CSrRc.JXft). Finally, you could also run an Impresence amulet, either fire or chaos, which would put you at 72% reservation with no investment from the tree and a linked enhance (https://poe.mikelat.com/#5TM_fk1V/CSrRc.JXft).

You could run 2 Scepters instead of the Maligaro's Lens, as the healing AoE from the shield is VERY TINY. Also, running 2 scepters make the skeletons pop a lot faster and allows you to get around 4 passive points back from not having to get Necro Aegis.

You could drop the Hex Master node, which costs 6 points and gives you very little.
You could drop MoM because you heavily reserve mana for all the curses.

Here is a lvl 70-ish tree with the proposed changes:
https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/3.3.1/AAAABAMBAQQHCPQNHxCXE2wWbxhWGGoaSBpsHNwfGCL0JKoo-iqYNZI26TpYOuE8KDwtQYdCekWdSOdMs025TeNR-1NSVK5VxlgHWpFodGnYakNqrGvbbAttGXgvenB85XzwfRh90n6hgseDX4PMg9uFYI8aj0aRB5MnmK2a4JuhnL6drqEvplemrKcIqH2qxKyYtz64k7zqvoq_l8k9zLzNFtAf0_vYvdkL2mLfiuNq6-7siu_r8h7yRfQo99f56PqA_gr-jw==

You could also drop forbidden power and void beacon to get Vile Bastion which would give you lots of survivability if you go CI, I can work on a passive tree for that later.

You can also consider running a 6l for the summon skeletons on a cast while channeling setup.
For instance, Blight Or Wither - cast while channeling - summon skeletons - minion life - minion damage - empower. This would make profane bloom stronger.

Finally, you can't leech life from Minion Instability because it is the minions that cause the damage. I also think that you cant leech life from profane bloom if the minions do the killing.

Edit:
CI lvl 90 occultist tree, using Impresence, triple curse on a heretics veil linked with enhance: http://poeurl.com/b0of.

I did a quick comparison of both necro (no curses) and occultist (triple curse) on path of building, using the same 6l and both get around the same average damage on each skelly pop (necro got around 77k and occultist 76k), with occultist getting 38k ignite dps and necro 18k ignite dps.

Woah, @aerotsu, these are some amazing suggestions!

Yeah, the minion life and damage loses are pretty severe; I was hoping the increased chaos damage and reduced resistance would help even it out. I am glad that you think it is an interesting thought, though!

Your suggestion to link only those three into a Heretic's Veil is great, I agree and will absolutely do that. I also like the idea of linking an Enhance Support to it, along with the Impresence Amulet. That should leave a good amount of mana for my Dark Pact Totem and whichever channel skill linked to Summon Skeletons!

I don't know which would do more damage, Blight or Wither, but I will try both when I can!

The heal was the main reason for running the shield, so if it is not worth it, I will run two scepters.

The option to go Chaos Inoculation (had to look up that abbreviation because I'm still new haha) while picking up Vile Bastion is a great idea! I feel like I am kind of bad at the game and more survivability would be great, though I am worried that the enemies have -20% Chaos Resistance lost from Void Beacon would hurt the possibly low damage of the build. What do you think? I don't know how to calculate damage.

Thank you so much for the help! I like that you didn't tell me this was a horrible idea because I'd have to restart with a new character, most likely!

As with every CI build, you could just do a regular Life build, since it is easier to level and do early maps with life builds and then respec into CI when you have appropriate gear and enough passive points to do it. And if you decide that switching to Energy Shield isn't worth it, you could just keep doing a Life build. They are usually simpler to deal with, since you can just use a life flask for sustain, as opposed to more complex mechanics that energy shield requires.

With my RF Occultist for example, I switched to Energy Shield (using a Shavrones wrappings) when I was around lvl 86.

People use Path Of Building to calculate damage.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iLpKZVNTOo8

The damage calcs you ran look promising! I think I prefer the CI build but I'll have to look into it more.

I found an awesome Heretics Veil, with +3 to Socket and the x3 blue x1 Green links to give Flammibility, Despair, Ele weakness, and Enhance! It does not have a price, though, so I can only assume its very expensive. Gives me something to shoot for, though!

I assume I would need a Shavrones Wrappings if I went the CI route, right?

A +3 curse heretics veil is probably very expensive, yea.
Just get a regular one for now, should cost a couple chaos at max.
Shavrones Wrappings is used on Energy Shield builds that aren't CI.
Chaos damage usually bypasses energy shield and directly damages your health.
Chaos Innoculation makes your maximum life be 1 and makes you immune to chaos damage.
Shavrones Wrappings (or Solaris Lorica) makes it so chaos damage cannot bypass energy shield. This allows you to reserve life for auras or curses. If you reserve enough life (65% or more), you are considered to be on Low Life and you can do a lot of cool stuff with that effect. For instance, you can get the Pain Attunement keystone which grants you a 30% More Spell Damage modifier (effectively, a 7th link). This however does not affect minion damage, so it wouldnt be too recommended for this build.






https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Low_life
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Shavronne%27s_Wrappings
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Chaos_Inoculation
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Chaos_damage
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Energy_shield
https://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Pain_Attunement

edit: its 65% for low life, not 75%

I really appreciate all the help!

I am so glad my idea isn't impossible to do and that I now have a much better idea of how to execute it!

I'm only level 30, right now, but I'll be sure to post a full guide and reference you if it turns out to be solid once its fleshed out!

Interesting discussion! Here are some of my thoughts regarding the Occultist build.

The occultist build would be great when mapping, because of the huge amount of es regen (after kills) and curse explosion. However, when you are facing bosses, especially shaper or elder, you would be pretty vulnerable. Since shaper has 80% less curse effect, your damage would be nerfed from 80k / skeleton to around 30k / skeleton. Also, without the regen on kills, you have little sustain or defensive layer. No leech, no armour, no evasion, little block chance (bone offering won't help now) etc.

Some suggestion:

1. You can try hybrid instead of CI. There are a lot of good life nodes around, choosing CI would be such a waste. I did some pob tests, with hybrid, you should be able to get 2500 life + 7500 es. Covenant would be a perfect choice, offering 10% increased max life + 350+ es.

2. Since you are running es, should use discipline aura, which grants at least 1k extra es. 3 curse + lvl 3 enlighten, discipline + lvl3 enlighten and some reduce mana reserved nodes on tree will leave you at exactly 0 mana. But then, we have covenant which grants blood magic to your skeleton skill.

3. You can also use shavronne revelation for some extra es and 3% es regen. The drawback is that you cannot regen mana, but you don't have mana anyway.

4. A watcher's eye with es regen or faster start of es recharge would also be really sweet with this build.

5. I don't understand why you use cast when channeling, 2 extra support can greatly boost your skeleton's damage.

6. One from dust is perfect. You have 9 maximum skeletons, summon 3 each time, perfectly divided.

Current pob setup:

helmet: 3 curse + enlighten lvl 3

armour: vaal skeleton + minion life + minion damage + empower + elemental focus + fire penetration / area of effect

4l: cwdt lvl1 + increased duration lvl 20 + phase run lvl3 + immortal call lvl3

4l: flame golem + spell echo + combustion + greater multiple projectile

3l: animated guardian + empower + minion life

3l: discipline + enlighten lvl3 + portal

One drawback is that if your golems die, you have to close one of your auras to resummon it.