[3.10] Volatile Dead NecroSlinger - 100% T16 & all contents - 10+kk DPS, 6k HP, max block, HPonBlock

- Apr 10, 2020: killed few AL8 Sirus in the meanwhile and updated a video of one of those, bought ring with onslaught on hit for QoL

- Apr 07, 2020: massive gear improvements, raised the average damage of each orb by about 100k, updated the Gear section, screenshots, PoB links, etc.

- Apr 05, 2020: trying out the "Utility version" instad of the damage versione (check PoB and FAQs), minor adjustments here and there

- Apr 04, 2020: new videos and FAQs, updated PoB with new jewels and gear pieces, damage increased by a lot

- Mar 31, 2020: guide published

Let's start by saying that the baseline for this build is clearly not unique, there are many other guides using Volatile Dead and Spellslinger, most of them with the Necromancer Ascendency class too.
This build offers a good solution to tackle this league contents, which are definitely some of the deadliest we've had in a while, with damage spiking out of nowhere (partially mitigated by the most recent patches) and an overall increase of tankyness of monsters. We use an interesting combination of mechanics, allowing us to reach impressing amounts of survivability, sustain and damage, targeting players that are interested in a medium-to-high budget version;
We are also using some really interesting Cluster Jewels to enchance our character.
This build only requires three buttons to work (move-only key, movement skill and triggering skill), is not flask realiant (even though the flasks help immensely) and is highly automated in its core mechanics.

Pros:
- Good clearpseed and damage (6-9kk "flaskless" Shaper-DPS, or 10-14kk with flasks)
- Decent life pool (5.5-6k HP)
- Max block and spell block (taking half damage from blocked hits)
- 700-800 HP recovery on block
- Elemental Ailments immunity
- Stun immunity
- Corrupting blood and Silence immunity (with easy-to-buy corruptions)
- Scale very well with investment
- Easy to play (no targeting needed)
- Reliable and automated generation of charges (endurance charges are optional)
- From level 24 you can pretty much use your final setup

Cons:
- Not budget-friendly (to achieve good levels of damage/survivability, you need at least a 10ex+ investment)
- Cannot run reflect maps

Let's get started talking about the actual build and the mechanics involved.
This build utilizes the new Spellslinger gem to automate the use of our damaging skill, Volatile Dead, and the corpse generation, Desecrate.

Damage:
First of all we need to generate corpses, we achieve this with Desecrate supported by Spell Cascade, allowing us to reach the coprse of limit of 10 with each cast. This skill is automated by the first Spellslinger setup.
Our main source of damage is Volatile Dead, which creates three balls of fire, which chase enemies before exploding, dealing a good amount of fire damage; when they get generated, from corpses consumed by the skill, a smaller esplosion happens, which deal fire damage in an area based on a percentage of the corpse life. We support Volatile Dead with Spell Cascade too, to generate up to nine balls with each cast. These orbs have a duration, so you can cast a bunch of them before getting into the actual fight with a boss (there a limit of 60 balls active at the same time). This skill is automated by the second Spellslinger setup.
Spellslinger is a very unique skill; it automate the supported skills (reserving some mana) when you attack with a wand, but also the damage of the support spells with the wand's damage. The base colldown of the skill is 0.5s, but we can reduced it with Cooldown Recovery Speed, increasing substantially our effective DPS.
Our damage is strongly amplified by Herald of Ash, which is buffed by the unique cluster jewel Calamitous Vision and the unique ring Circle of Anguish.
We are also able to cast (automated) Wave of Convition (applying the Fire Exposure debuff) and Assassin's Mark (since we are crit-based) to further increase our damage.

Defense:
This is a Life-based build, that should achieve at least 5.5k HP at level 90, but can reach higher values with more levels and currency.
There was a time when having a big life pool was more than enough to avoid 99% of the dangerous situations; that time is no more. We have to layer multiple defenses to achieve high survivability.
Thanks to the Necromancer ability to benefit from Offering skills (Bone Offering in particular) and the Lethal Pride Timeless Jewel (the Kiloava's one), we easily achieve 75% chance to block attack and spell damage; the drawback is that we prevent only 50% of damage from hits we block. This is still a massive survivability bonus.
Bone Offering also grants us a lot of Life Recovery in Block, which can be further boostd by a suffix that can appear on Shaper/Warlord's shields, replenishing our life pool by 5% each time we block.
A high-level Steelskin supported by CWDT grants us and additional layer of pseudo-life pool when we most need it.
This build specifically focus on achieving permanent Stun Immunity and Elemental Ailments Immunity, with a combination of item mods, passive skills (Arcane Swiftness) and notables from cluster jewels (Flexible Sentry and/or Elegant Form). These malus are often overlooked, but being immune to them is massive defensive and QoL bonus.
Investing in some good jewels, with the right corruptions, we can also achieve Corrupting Blood Immunity (which is the scariest form of Bleeding) and Silence Immunity.

Utility & stuff:
Our main skills are automated by Spellslinger, our utility ones are triggered every 4s by a suffix we can bench-craft on out wand ("Trigger a socketed spell when you use a skill"); this way we can automate the aforementioned Bone Offering, Assassin's Mark and Wave of Conviction skills.
To trigger all the gems, we need to attack with our wand; using Frenzy as the triggering attack allows us to always mantain max Frenzy Charges. Supporting it with both Combustion and Inspiration directly buffs our Volatile Dead's damage.
We can have consistent generation of Power Charges thanks to Assassin's Mark and the cluster jewel notable Mage Hunter.
For our mobility we use Dash supported by Second Wind and Arcane Surge (granting us some additional damage); we can generate Arcane Surge in single target scenarios, even without dashing, thanks to the cluster jewel notable Arcane Heroism.
We can enhance our life recovery using Leech and another unique cluster jewel, Kitava's Teachings, which recovers 5% of our life and mana every second (the mana recovery is very good for no-regen maps).

We really need the two passive points, so your best option is to kill them all.
While levelling it can be beneficial to help Alira, the stats she gives you are useful early on, but you have to respect her later (20 regrets + onyx amulet).

You do not have to follow this progression precisely, feel free to grab more life or damage when you need it, and jewel sockets when you have something good to use.
The very first few levels you can use any skill you want, freezing pulse and then Arc are solid options.
At level 12 you can equip Volatile Dead (even though it's not that strong when you do not have the whole combo), at level 16 you also gain Desecrate and then at level 24 you finally have Spellslinger. At that point you are good to go with your endgame setup.
Make sure to grab good levelling uniques (Lifesprig, Tabula Rasa, Wanderlust, Doedre's Tenure, Goldrim, etc) to have a smooth experience.

This is a standard progressione without considering cluster jewels; when you have good ones, start using them.

- 27 Points: you can already place you first cluster jewel


- 50 Points: we grab some mana reservation to use the two Spllslinger setups and also Herald of Ash


- 76 Points: nothing special, just good stuff


- 100 Points: you unlock both cluster jewels, when you finally have the Thread oh Hope, remove the connecting points on the left part of the tree (as shown in the "gear->jewels->unique jewels" section)


- 115 Points: this is pretty muuch your final tree (level 92), with well-developed cluster trees, Thread of Hope, Lethal Pride and Heart of Flame annointed


Here I leave a pastebin link for Path of Building, if you wanna play with it:

- https://pastebin.com/Tr88ysrB Damage version with Heart of Fire annoint
- https://pastebin.com/Hdk2PMPV Utility version with Battle Cry annoint

The ascendency tree is pretty straightforward, we ascend as a Necromancer as soon as possible.
Our main goal is to complete the first two labs to reach Corpse Pact, which grants us many good benefts.

In normal lab take Plaguebringer.
In cruel lab take Corpse Pact.

Later on, you can choose whether you need the elemental resistances or the block first. I suggest you to grab the offering node and then the resistances (which you shouldn't really need anyway).

In merciless lab take Mistress of Sacrifice.
In endgame lab take Commander of Darkness.



Pantheon is not so gamechanging, you should take whatever you find more useful.
Major God: Soul of the Brine King is very useful early on to avoid gettin stunlocked; when you have achieved stun immunity, grab Soul of Solaris for the damage mitigation bonus (with the first two upgrades).
Minor god: even more preference-dependent, so chose according to your needs. Soul of Ryslatha (with the upgrade) is a good QoL for the life flasks, while Sould of Shakari (with the upgrade) is pretty good to deal with chaos damage dangers.

Let's start showcasing my gear, this should give you a rough idea about what you should aim for. I'm also gonna discuss each item slot with additional informations on what you should look for.
I also suggest you to always use sites like PoEDB, or similar ones, to check all the possible mods, tiers and so on.
Keep in mind that I'm always trying to improve the gear, therefore you should check the character inside my profile to see the most updated setup.

Gear:




Jewels:


This build uses two clusters and some uniques; I'm gonna discuss what you should look for and your best options.
You can also use some rare jewels, if you find ones with 3-4 good mods (life, crit multi, spell damage, fire damage, etc).



IMPORTANT: To achieve stun and ailments immunity, you can choose a combination of mods on different pieces of gear and cluster jewel notables; you already have 20% of both with Arcane Swiftness. Play around with those options and find what works best for you.

- Body Armour: craftable prefix: 25-35% stun AND ailments avoidance

- Gloves: suffix: 16-30% stun avoidance
craftable suffix: 21-25% stun OR ailments avoidance

- Boots: suffix: 15-25% ailments avoidance or 15-35% stun avoidance

- Helmet: craftable suffix: 21-25% stun or ailments avoidace

- Flexible Sentry: 25% ailments avoidance

- Elegant Form: 30% ailments avoidance

Flasks:

When you are clearing you should press the four utility flasks pretty much on cooldown, they give you a lot of damage and survivability. There's not many options in my opinion, but you can play with different utility and unique flasks, choosing the combination you prefer (always have a flask with curse-removal).

- Diamond Flask: try to get either flask removal or movement speed
- Quicksilver Flask: try to get either Curse removal or movement speed

There are some good unique flask:

- Wise Oak is a massive boost to our offense and defense (try to balance all three resistances)
- Atziri's Promise is a strong offensive option, while also giving some appreciated chaos resistance
- Blood of the Karui is probably your best life-flask option, since you don't even need other ailment-removal affixes
- Rotgut is a nice alternative to the Quicksilver Flask, since it also provides Onslaught

Other really good damge/utility options are: Cinderswallow Urn and Bottled Faith.

You can also see the gems in the gear above, but here's the whole list (main links in order of importance).

- Main hand (links not needed): Bone offering, Wave of Conviction, Assassin's Mark
- Off hand (3 links): CWDT, Steelskin, Tempest Shield (i like having them max lvl)
- Body armour (6 links): Volatile Dead, Spellslinger, Spell Cascade, Concentrated Effect, Elemental Focus, Inspiration
- Helm (4 links): Dash (lvl 13), Second Wind, Arcane Surge (lvl 4), Increased Duration
- Boots (4 links): Frenzy, Barrage Support, Combustion, Inspiration
- Gloves (3 links + 1 socket): Desecrate, Spellslinger, Spell Cascade, Herald of Ash

The four socket setups (gloves, boots and helmet) are interchangable.
If you have some Awekened support gems, just use them, since they are always an upgrade; they are not really needed though.
The reason why we use Barrage Support is explained in the FAQs.

Here some Path of Building with the two build variations I'm trying out (click on the images to open them up in a bigger version).

- Damage version with flasks


- Damage versione without flasks


- Utility version with flasks


- Utility versione without flasks

- Sirus fight AL8 - Quick fight, incredibly easy as usual

- Simulacrum run - Just a quick video of a Simulacrum run (from wave 10 to wave 20)

- Sirius fight AL6 - just a quick fight, not even challanging, gonna push for AL8 asap

- T16 Canyon 100% Delirious - Very long video with shortcuts for bosses. This map was exhausting and not worth in terms of rewards, but it was worth as an experience

- T12 Toxic Sewer 100% Delirious - Just a random map with a random death

- Simulacrum - Wave 15 with Omniphobia - My first Simulacrum, completed the whole run but it was super laggy to show the whole video

- Random Minotaur kill

- This is the "barrage effect":

Work in progress..

Work in progress..
Q: Why do you use barrage support linked to Frenzy?
A: With barrage every single projectile you fire is essentially considered an attack for the Spellslinger purpose; by using just frenzy you have a very cadenced attack rate, if you have too much or too little you are gonna waste DPS by missing potential procs of spellslinger.
With barrage support you shoot an almost continuous stream of projectiles, each one of those can proc spellslinger, therefore your precise attack rate doesn't matter that much and you can almost always cast the spells as soon as they are off of CD.
Morevoer, if you attack normally, your first attack will only generate corpses, while only your second one will actually spawn orbs; this is because with the first attack you cast at the same time both desecrate and volatile dead, but this one doesn't actually find any corpses yet (there a delay between the cast of desecrate and the corpse generation). With the barrage effect, instead, with a single animation, you are actually alternating the two spells, creating corpses and orbs right after. Check the barrage GIF in the "Videos".

Q: How much damage do you have?
A: If I stand still and just attack non-stop, we can proc our spells up to 3.5 times/s (20% CD recovery from lvl21 spellslinger, 12% CD recovery from the belt, 15% Cd recovery from boots, 30% CD recovery from the enchant). Let's consider the damage version of the build: without flasks, my avg damage is about 290kper orb, which means about DPS = 9.1kk against Shaper(290*9*3.2). With flasks, instead, my avg damage is about 450k, obtaining a DPS = 14.4kk against Shaper. You can increase those numbers by about an additional 10-20% if you also consider the corpse explosions. The utility version has about 7% less damage. Keep in mind that is a more reasonable scenario, we are not standing still and spamming non-stop, therefore we canconsider proccing spells maybe 2-2.5 times/s.

Q: Why are you using Inspiration if you do not spend mana on Volatile Dead?
A: The Inspiration linked to Frenzy generate charges (since it costs mana); the other Inspiration, supporting Volatile Dead, doesn't generate charges by itself, but buffs VD based on the amount of charges available (which are generated by frenzy).

Q: How expensive is this build?
A: It depends on a lot of factors.. Overall I think I spent about 30ex for the setup I'm running (also considering the value of the pieces I crafted by myself). But you can get away with way cheaper gear, sacrifing a bit of damage and tankyness. For the core pieces of gear and jewels you can spend probably 10ex and still achieve great results. The more you try to min/max it, the faster you'll have to spend money, as usual.

Q: I've seen two variations of this build in the PoB link, damage and utility, what's up with those?
A: The main difference between the two options is that the Damage version annoints Heart of Flame, while the Utility version Annoints Battle Cry; the Damage version has about 8% more damage than the Utility one. On the flipside, the Utility one has Instant Wacries and all the benefits of having a Enduring Cry spammed every 2.5s (max Endurance Charges, high Life Regen, stronger Immortal call, etc.). I've yet to decide which one I like the most, but the warcries are pretty convenient and smooth when they are instant and we already have way too much damage for any reasonable content.