Hello everyone,

I made one of these last week and figured I'd make one again this week. It's been a really, really good week for me. The build is now at a point where it should, in theory, be able to do anything you'd expect. I've not gone into any uber bosses with it yet because I've just spent all my time farming Trial of the Ancestors instead. Loving that mechanic!

So let's get started.

=¤Showcase¤==========

Boring map showcase with Screaming Invitation

I didn't bother recording a whole bunch of stuff this time around. I don't really have any good maps because I've run almost none so far this league, barely finished my atlas with the help of a friend supplying me with the maps I was missing. I've been playing too much Trial of the Ancestors.. And on that note, while I didn't include any in the showcase, I've reached 2000 ranking and am breezing through the content. Very happy with the performance of this build in the content! And now that I have an Ashes, the mapping feels amazing with an alt quality Animate Guardian and a Crusader explode chest instead of relying on Skitterbots and Inpulsa's for explosions because these can actually chain offscreen which is awesome.

=¤The PoB¤==========

PoB can be found here: https://pobb.in/tuiaLN1abLcp

You can also find me on PoE ninja here

This PoB has no temporary/unreliable buffs outside of Fresh Meat enabled. I'm at 75/75 block chance without offering, with a 5% life on block synthesis implicit on my shield. I have a 42.4m sDPS with 11 Skeletons that are all spawned in one single cast due to alt quality + ashes, and my 10 Zombies. I have only Leer Cast and Dying Breath with a curse on hit vulnerability gloves on my AG for damage. My spectres are Carnage and Host Chieftains, Demon Harpy and Arena Master. I have all of them disabled on the PoB.

If we start enabling buffs, for the more reliable ones we can put Brittle Ground and give minions one power and one frenzy charge we're looking at 53.2m sDPS. If we also enable Demon Harpy and Arena Master, we reach a whopping 60.8m sDPS. And if you look at the Screaming Invitation showcase, I do have both those spectre buffs up and I get one charge for both immediately, because the spectres use their abilities the moment the combat starts.

=¤Changes from last week¤==========

A whole bunch of stuff has changed.

First and foremost, I got myself a 30% quality Ashes of the Stars which lead to me getting a tiny bit more DPS over the Replica Dragonfang's Flight, but it gave me a whole bunch of QoL. Just simple things like faster Shield Charge and lower cooldown Convocation made a huge difference in the feel of the build. But by far the biggest improvement was, as mentioned already, the alt quality AG giving it 150% increased AoE with the Ashes and base 20% quality, making the explosions HUGE and easily chain on packs. I've still yet to buy an alt quality Tempest Shield, but when I do I can finally actually get to work on the body implicits and get myself a Pride aura effect mod with the 20% all aura effect mod.

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I also made myself a fancy +2 weapon:

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https://preview.redd.it/ddetrsdmaplb1.png?width=630&format=png&auto=webp&s=ce09188af207a7a11ba7f9c9b479ae960e966fac

Crafting process was as follows:

1. Bought fractured base for 6 div
2. Spam 4 socket resonators (Corroded, Jagged, Metallic, Shuddering) to hit +2
3. If you get 3 suffixes, you'll have to annul one off. If it fails, back to step 2. If you get 2 suffixes, you'll do prefixes cannot be changed and scour orb. If only 1 suffix, proceed to step 4.
4. With 1 or 0 suffixes on the item, Prefixes cannot be changed bench craft and Harvest Reforge Critical. This can land on 5 different mod types and all their tiers. This step can get very costly. Stop at whichever minion crit chance or minion crit multi tier you're happy with.
5. If you get more than 1 suffix on the item, you'll either need to stop there or annul off the unnecessary suffix. You can use prefixes cannot be changed to save the prefixes.
6. With only the crit mod, Prefixes cannot be changed again, and bring it to Aisling in Betrayal for a veiled mod. If it lands on crit mod, start back up from step 3, if it takes prefixes cannot be changed instead move to step 7.
7. Bench craft any of the damage over time multipliers before unveiling, these block the largest pool of mods because all the types block each other.
8. Unveil and pray for minion attack and cast speed and finish with bench craft trigger. Or in my case, get trigger and bench craft attack speed.

It's a very straightforward and simple process, but it costs a whole bunch of currency due to bench crafts. I spent 6 divines on the base, around 2 divines on the +2 prefixes, then 6 divines getting a 25% crit multi mod, 2 divines for Aisling that ate the crit multi so I had to restart. Then it took me 4 divines to get the 34% crit multi mod and another 2 divines to get Aisling. So grand total spent was 26 divines.

This is only a measly ~7% better than the Maata's I was using before, but it gave me a trigger so I didn't have to manually use offering and it opened a gem socket for Enlighten that let me swap out tattoos because I swapped over to a Darkness Enthroned belt, which gave me huge DPS increases, but this resulted in me not having capped res anymore. So the Enlighten allowed me to swap my reservation tattoos into resistance tattoos for the time being. I will re-craft my rares at a later date and at the end of it I should have the freedom to use tattoos for something else once again.

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The second big thing I did was find myself this 5% life on block Synthesis implicit minion shield:

https://preview.redd.it/onabfun5lplb1.png?width=470&format=png&auto=webp&s=fe266d0610d631e49dc8f351089397057171a9b9

This craft is still EXTREMELY barebones. I reached this just by spamming one socket resonator Bound Fossils. It's a very sad state for the shield to be in, but I ran out of currency at the time and decided it would have to do for now. I will revisit this shield at a later date.

Finding this shield was incredibly lucky for me, because through the first 1.5 weeks of the league there was ever only ONE other shield with the implicit for sale, at price of 100 divines. I managed to snag mine, the second one of these in the entire league to show up, at 50 chaos. I did pay the guy an extra 5 divines because I felt bad taking it for 50c.. I wanted this base over a Shaper shield because this will eventually let me make a much better shield with a high block or spell block mod allowing me to easily reach 75/75 block without the use of Bone Offering.

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And of course, as I previously mentioned, I swapped over to Darkness Enthroned. I did this mainly to get a whole bunch of damage, but a jewel like this comes in handy:

https://preview.redd.it/rxbin4xvlplb1.png?width=675&format=png&auto=webp&s=2fe6e70e94fc3cd662ee0a4cfd2908f9f09cbce3

I will have to re-craft this as well eventually, but the 48% chance to avoid being shocked being doubled by the belt, and then I can have 4% of lightning avoidance anywhere else reaching 100% avoidance chance, which will allow me to run Stormshroud for ailment immunity. I bought the jewel, but resold it immediately because I remembered I still have freeze immunity on my boots and I have shock immunity due to Tempest Shield, and I'm not currently doing content with the alternate ailments anywhere, so I didn't actually need this upgrade just yet. It's sitting there waiting for me to re-craft my boots later. I will also eventually get a bleed avoidance jewel, similar to this one, so I can be bleed immune as well. Bleed is a very, very scary thing and I want to get rid of it.

There's small tiny changes here and there outside of these, but nothing major anymore.

=¤The Future¤==========

As I've already mentioned, recrafting all my rares is on the table waiting for me to grind out some more currency. With the upcoming update where we'll get the new keystone tattoo, that will be one of the main things I'll be looking for. I can pick up the MoM keystone and use that to get Eldritch Battery, saving me 3 points on the tree which will be great. And this tattoo will probably allow me to swap to an extremely high budget cold conversion setup, but more on that if I ever get there.

I'm also planning on fitting a large cluster with impale chance and Vicious Bite once I get around to having my final two levels. I might have to reroute my tree quite a bit to make that work though.

And of course, filling in any missing alt quality gems, getting 21/20 variants and whatnot. And perhaps surprisingly, I need to get myself a level 21 Divergent Vaal Skeletons with 5-9% quality on it. The 20% quality makes it spawn 14 skeletons, 5% would spawn 11. For some reason the minions are WAY spread out when you summon 14 of them and I didn't know of this before I went for it. I'll need to level up some lower quality gems and double corrupt them instead, and hopefully that will allow me to spawn the full cap of 11 skeletons in one cast without having them spread out so far apart.

=¤Closing Thoughts¤==========

Similarly to my last post, I am blown away at how well this build has worked. This being my very first self made build that actually works is already an amazing achievement in and of itself, but have it feel this good to play? It's an incredible feeling.

I'm really loving this build in Trial of the Ancestors, and I even made a guide on that mechanic, mostly talking about the items on the main PoE subreddit a few days ago. You can find it here, should you be interested.

I'm not sure if anyone would be interested in a proper guide for this build. I know it's a pretty niche playstyle, even for minions, but I'm loving it a lot and it's worked well for me all the way from leveling in the acts to going through maps and into the endgame, and there's still so very much room for improvement. So please, if you would care to have a guide including leveling and gearing etc. please do let me know and I'll see if I can manage to whip up one.