Prelude

I've never made a build by myself that didn't just fail miserably early in maps, but I figured I'd try finally to do it successfully this league. I was originally planning on playing Golems + Zombies, but I didn't really like my options or the scaling of it on tight budgets because Golem jewels are always pricey early on due to them being limited to Delve.

So as a result, I was looking into other builds. Skele Mages, Dominating Blow, Absolution.. None of it seemed fun for me. I like clearing being tied to just passive minions so I don't have to worry. But one thing that I found very striking was the ability to go for melee skeletons in the campaign. There's been a lot of talk about Fresh Meat recently, and I even made a post calling it "bait", and I still stand by that. I genuinely don't think it's a good support in the endgame because the opportunity cost to get value for it is so high.

Leveling

But talking so much about Fresh Meat got me thinking about leveling with it, and sheesh does it look good early on. So we know this gem comes from Sharp and Cruel in Act 2, so once you kill the spider in Act 2 you can get this gem. This means it has a level requirement of 18. 18!! Do you folks realize how insane that is? Adrenaline for minions at 18!? By the time you get the gem, you're going to have 89% increased minion damage on my tree and Adrenaline gives 100%. Oh and it gives 25% attack speed too, basically giving 25% more damage on top of the 100% increased at this point. Nice!

So I wanted to level with skeletons, but not skeleton mages because bleh. And I kinda think I cracked the code for this, at least for my personal needs.

The Build

Before I go on, let me just throw the PoB right here: https://pobb.in/ijCND5UM2w18

It's set to level 91 sitting at 4.4m sDPS when you open it and I would say that all of my checkbox use is fair game for the setup I'm going for. Gems are all at 19/0 except for the actual minions are at 21/0 because those gems will be cheap and they'll be almost mandatory to get just to keep them alive when you get to higher tier maps. I haven't enabled spectres other than giving +1 power and frenzy charges, but Zombies should be at 3/3 permanently while Skeletons will likely be at 1/1 or 2/2 most of the time on bosses so I feel it's a good middle ground. Some might argue Brittle Ground is a bit bait, and perhaps it's true, but if we toggle Brittle off it's still 4.1m. Very respectable for the items I've set up on it. And while you might say some of the stuff is borderline non-starter items, like the wand or shield perhaps, but I wasn't originally planning on releasing this PoB so I just made stuff I know I'll be able to get by day 2 at latest.

You can find all the toggles for spectres and what AG gear I'm using etc. on the config custom text box. If a slot for AG isn't mentioned, it's something generic and defensive just to keep Bob alive.

It does have a very barebones leveling tree but no gear or skills or anything set for it, I'll figure that stuff as I go. There's a small respec towards the later parts of the build when you anoint an amulet with Death Attunement. Then there's a generic tabula setup with Maw of Mischief to give aggressive to minions to make them clear better. Darkness Enthroned with two very basic jewels, 9 passive cluster and a blessed rebirth cluster if that ends up being necessary. I've invested plenty into minion defenses so Zombies should be fine-ish and if they're not I'll just invest some more into minion defenses.

The big key part here is that I'm using Red Nightmare as I mentioned in in this post to replace Bone Offering for the most part, I still need to figure out some block chance additions but I wouldn't imagine that to be too hard. This opens up the build for some really nice crit scaling via Spirit Offering. Early on in the build, the new unique Scepter Maata's Teachings will enable massive crit chance scaling and even though it's guaranteed to lose out to other options eventually, it's a very strong unique early in character progression. I'm unsure how rare this unique will be, but I would expect it to be fairly obtainable. I have this unique in custom crafted scepter form where I assume a decent crit roll with a Harvest quality enchant on it for +4% base crit, since minions have 5% base crit by default and this will put them at 9% base crit. It will go higher, up to 4.5-5% once you get 30 qual and a good roll etc. and the reveal image showed it at giving 8.5% so I just set it at a middle ground of 4%.

Endgame

There's a level 100 tree in the PoB as well, and an maxed out gem setup but I've not bothered with crafting and figuring out maxed out gear. With the Maata's setup on the level 100 tree I'm sitting at 8.5m DPS, still wearing practically zero damage from gear outside of the cheap shield and Maata's and all the jewels and whatnot are still trash starting things. Maxing out gems puts the build at 14.5m DPS. Very solid for such bad gear.

I will need to revisit the entire tree and all the gear setups and whatnot later, main focus being capping out block and spell block. I am almost certainly getting Mystic Bulwark and the mana mastery eventually to fit in Aspect of the Spider and I am going to get a higher spell block roll on the shield. And who knows what goodies we have in store with the tattoos. 75/75 block without offering should be VERY achievable. I will be getting a % life on block shield as soon as I can which will make me very tanky with the block cap.

I will also be aiming for a 50% global defences fractured chest piece with gem level scaling on it and I will eventually look into perhaps getting suppress capped as well. I'll be looking into minimum endurance charges on jewellery, potentially Ashes scaling and whatnot on top. But all that will come later and for now this is what I've come up with.

Epilogue

If you have any questions or suggestions do let me know. As I said in the beginning, I've never made a build that works myself and from what I am seeing on the PoB this might be the first time I've got it somewhat right. Still got ways to go with defences especially, but it seems reasonable for the gear I've got on the character and I am very much planning on getting this off the ground for now and I will very likely swap to doing golems eventually, but I'm probably going to push this build a while before I do that.

Thank you for reading, if you read anything but this part, of course.

Wish you all a happy league start!