💥Exploding Zombies MI 💥

Endurance: 7 (high)
Map clear efficiency: 6 (good)
Single Target damage: 9 (very high)
Budget: 7 (above average)

1. Mistress of Sacrifice.
2. Mindless Aggression.
3. Bone Barrier.
4. Plaguebringer.

Major: the Brine King

Minor: Ryslatha

Both of them fully upgraded.

Kill them all.

Unique Jewels:


Cluster Jewels:


Other Jewels:

Make sure you choose useful mods for anti- bleed/poison/ignite.

Minion Instability requires your minions to reach low life so that they explode, dealing damage based on their maximum life. The more life they have, the more damage they deal. Since the explosion comes from the minions, this damage scales with Critical Strike Chance, Critical Strike Multiplier, Minion damage, Minions' elemental/fire damage, Minion AoE, Fire/Elemental penetration, Area of Effect support gems (both damage-wise and Area of effect), and its damage is also affected by Exposures and other sources of increased damage taken by the target. Frenzy/Power charges on minions that explode will also affect the damage of the explosion. The MI explosion also benefits from chance to ignite and you can proliferate its ignites.
Note that minions have to reach low life in order to explode. If, for some reason, a minion is instantly killed by 1 shot or re-summoned, the explosion will not trigger.
We use the Replica Earendel's Embrace and Phantasmal Quality Raise Zombie gem to make them lose (approximately 30%) life per second until they explode at 50%.


Damage scaling:


Defenses:


Uniques:


Rares:


The Skill:

Links explanation:


Keystones:


Masteries:


Tattoos:


Spectres and Animate Guardian:


Gameplay:

Leveling:

Mapping:

Weapon: The sceptre is generally cheap. Around 1d for an almost perfectly rolled one;

Shield: I crafted the shield myself and one like this can cost a lot but generally an efficient similar shield can be found for around 5~10 divines;

Body Armour: 1d to 10d. Depends on the keystone it provides. One with Eldritch Battery should be around 7~10d.

Belt: You can find one with 85~90% effect for approximately 20c. A perfectly rolled 100% is around 8~10 divines;

Helmet: Most important mod is the +2 to all minion skill gems. It's a generic helmet and it's around 5~7 divines;

Boots: Around 1d for maximum Scorch effect and +2 socketed minion gems implicit;

Gloves: No more than 1d for nearly perfect rolls and a useful implicit;

Amulet: Around 1d to 3d for one like mine;

Rings: Should be between 1d and 5d for each. Try to find ones with increased minion damage and increased minion life. It is very important that they do not have implicits with Minion resistances (but Bone base).

Jewels:

-A good-rolled Fortress Covenant is around 4~5d. You can find one for 100-150c with just any roll;

-Forbidden Jewels: Very cheap. 1 divine for both.

-Rare jewels: 100~150 chaos orbs for each, by average.

-The Large cluster jewels are around 1 divine orb each. The Medium cluster jewels are around 50c to 1d.

Skill and Support Gems: By average all gems should be around 3~5d. Min-maxing on the gems is very effective - I recommend getting a level 4 Empower, a 21/20 Phantasmal Raise Zombie and Awakened Fire Penetration.
Maximizing the gem efficiency can be approximately 20 additional divines.

OVERALL BUDGET: between 30 and 90 divine orbs.

Good:
-Easy gameplay with high defenses;
-Good clear speed;
-Really good single target damage;
-Maps with no regen don't matter;
-Maps with Reflect don't matter.

Bad:
-Map clear can feel a little clunky at first, until you get the hang of it;
-Can get very expensive if you seek to maximize the performance.

Videos:

Screenshots:

Links:

-The build can be played with two of those sceptres to increase the amount of life that zombies lose per second. Generally, the faster they burn and the more cast speed you have - the better damage output;

-You can achieve additional burnout for the zombies by taking Necromantic Aegis and equipping Maligaro's Lens shield but it requires additional passives to reach it. Or pray to the RNG god to get the Necromantic Aegis through a tattoo but this is a risky move and it's not worth it anyway since your character will not get the bonuses from a potentially better shield;

-Another way to increase the burnout damage of zombies is to use Ashes of the Stars to increase Phantasmal Raise Zombie's gem quality, respectively the damage they take after summoned. It's expensive but it works if you wanna spend 40d for that amulet;

-Another way to increase damage taken by all minions is to use the Fortress Covenant so that it converts certain notables. This is risky because your spectres and guardian will suffer too;

-Minion Damage support will increase the total damage output by approximately 30% since it lessens the zombies' life. This calculation includes the +1 level for the Awakened gem version. Elemental Focus is not a bad support for bosses but we lose a little damage from ignites this way;

-The free 3L can be used for any defensive setup. A good one I had before was Frost Wall lvl 10 + CWDT lvl 1. But in order to make it work efficiently, I had Phasing with Haste on the watcher's eye so that the frost wall would not be a problem for my character. A quartz flask can be an alternative for this setup;

-Using Flesh Offering Instead of Bone offering will make your performance smoother. At the cost of 27~28% both attack and spell block;

-Desecrate is barely needed because you can use the zombies as corpses to cast an offering on them 😈😈😈 Or to "raise" them as spectres 🤣 ...