[Zizaran] Kripp and Xai's Absolution Necromancer guide - 3.17

> PLAYSTYLE < You start out a map by casting Absolution on the first pack you see, you won't deal enough damage to kill the pack, but your zombies & stone golem will take care of it and this summons your Absolutions. After that you pretty much just run around spamming convocation while your Absolution minions destroy packs, summoning phantasms which take care of extra single target for you. For pure bossing the build has a bit of ramp because you don't have the mana to just spam Absolution. Cast Absolution on the boss until you're at 3 Absolution minions, and then the rest should take care of itself. Make sure you use your Assassin's Mark on the boss and to keep using skills so your Bone Offering triggers every 8 seconds > VERSIONS < We have 3 version here: - A no cluster version: probably start with this one - A cluster version: for if you want a bit more damage - A necromantic Aegis version: this one drops a bit of defense vs attacks(but should still be pretty tanky!) but gets a lot more damage because it can apply Brittle. It does have the highest gear requirement. If you switch to this MAKE SURE YOU SWAP THE ENDGAME GEARSET AS WELL > THE INITIAL PACK KILL IS TOO SLOW :( < If killing the initial pack is too slow you can pick up Spiritual Aid(Minion damage affects you) for 2 points. You can drop a jewel socket for it for example. > BUT WHAT'S THE DPS? < You might look at the PoB and think: just over 400k dps? That seems like nothing on endgame gear! Well, first of all: we have 3 Absolution minions, not just 1, so the dps of your Absolution minions is more like 1.2M+. On top of that Absolution is not even our main single target, for that we use Summon Phantasm Support, these are 11 minions at 80k dps each, for a total over 880k dps on top. In total this means you'll do just over 2M damage on a non-cluster tree, which is pretty respectable for an HC build. > MANA < The biggest hurdle to solve on this build is the mana cost, especially when you have a 6L. This won't be a big issue when clearing, but when bossing you need to cast a couple of times in a row to summon minions. A lot of Absolution builds solve this by going Eldritch Battery, but this comes at a pretty steep traveling cost on the tree since it's pretty far out of the way. In this build we stack reduced mana cost of skills to solve this issue, which is possible because we have a lot of resists on our skilltree so we need less on gear. Sources of reduced mana cost are: - Mana mastery(we take this at Mystic Bulwark) - Crafts on jewellery: flat mana + reduced mana cost - Rolls on non-abyss jewels - Nodes on the tree(like Righteous Decree and Dreamer(which you can annoint)) Like resists, the more you have the more it matters, so really try to stack it until your casting feels comfortable. We also get a decent amount of mana regen, so there should be no need to run a mana flask > I STILL HAVE MANA ISSUES :( < If you still have mana issues some solutions you could use are: - Taking Righteous Decree for 2 points, or other mana nodes - Not running Defiance Banner - Using a mana flask(until you solve the issues) - Using an Essence of Loathing on a chest to get more unreserved mana > LEVELING < We're gonna level with Absolution from level 12, starting out as non-crit and transitioning into crit once we have a 6L. The skills section should be pretty straight forward, but here are some gearing tips: - At level 8 sell a magic wand with a white sapphire or topaz ring and an alteration to make a wand with flat added damage to spells, useful for Brutus! - You can easily make a +1 minion helmet, useful for when you find your first 4L helmet: Sell a life flask with a transmute and a Bone Spirit Shield to get a life flask with "life recovery to minions" Sell a 4L magic helmet with an alteration and the flask you just created to make a 4L +1 minion helmet - If you find a wand with +1 to phys gems or +1 to lightning gems: USE IT - Vitality keeps your minions alive while leveling, make sure you have some mana left to cast your skills though > GEARING < > WAND < In the endgame version we use a multimodded Profane wand rolled with minion essences and either +1 phys, +1 lightning or +1 all spells. Using a Profane wand means we cast a bit faster ourselves, which will make the build feel a lot better. An alternative is using a Convoking Wand, when using a Corroded, Jagged, Metallic and Shuddering fossil on a Convoking Wand you have a 1/12 chance to get +1 to all spells and +1 to minion gems together. This should be more minion damage than the Profane wand, but it will take away some of the good feel of the build > AMULET < 3.17 introduces +1 amulets without needing influence for it. This means you'll just have to roll this, hopefully with some life as well and we're good on that front. > SHIELD < In this PoB we use a "Sap on block" shield for some extra defense, but this is not required at all. For the endgame shield just get any shaper pure es base and use Harvest reforge life on it. If you hit the correct prefixes you can craft "Prefixes cannot be changed" and use Harvest "Reforge life more likely" to try and hit the life on block mod(this is not guaranteed!) If you hit +1 phys and the life on block mod you can use the crafting bench to craft life and accept that, or use Harvest "Reforge more likely to have the same modifiers" to try and hit a better life roll as well. > HELMET < Before you can get the endgame helmet with minion life you probably want to drop Animate Guardian, and just run minion life support on the 4L. > ANIMATE GUARDIAN < In the Items section of the guide I added 2 gearsets of Animate Guardian to choose from. The only thing that really needs explanation is the expensive setup: We use Gravebind to make all kills go to the Animate Guardian, since we're crit we shock enemies, this triggers the Inpulsa the guardian is wearing. You might not want to take the guardian into Uber Atziri since that fight tends to kill even pretty tanky guardians, keep an eye on the hp and don't use it if you can't afford to lose the gear to bullshit at one point. > SPECTRES < You can have a lot of discussion about minmaxing spectre choices, but I like going for the most consistent charges possible: - 2x Host Chieftain (gives your minions power charges) - 2x Carnage Chieftain (gives your minions frenzy charges) Before you have a high level raise spectre drop a Carnage Chieftain first. If you're not on a 6L yet(and so not crit yet) you can run: - 2x Carnage Chieftain (gives your minions frenzy charges) - 1x Arena Master (gives attack & cast speed) - 1x Primal Rhex Matriarch (has an ability that increases lightning damage taken) If you feel like your charge uptime is good enough with 1 chieftain of each you're free to mix & match between these spectres, but I recommend reliability. > ANNOINTS < - Dreamer is really solid if you have mana issues - Ravenous Horde is expensive, but gives your minions some real zoom zoom - Any life node works too! > CRIT VS NON-CRIT < Short answer: crit > non-crit once 6L Long answer: The first 5 links of Absolution are pretty obvious damage-wise. The 6th link is where your choice gets hard. A normal PoB without config will probably recommend you Controlled Destruction at this point, but as soon as you tick "your minions have power charges" crit damage shoots up the list. Good thing we have an easy way to generate power charges: Host Chieftain spectres.