Mistress of the Blade - Iron Mass Skellies

As I start to winddown this league, I thought I would share my starter and end game build. This is not a build guide but rather a description of the journey in developing the toon. For me, the problem solving is the best part of POE. Longer description discussion below.

Ironmass Necro Chaos Skellies (Offering focused)

League started (maybe my smoothest league start in a while with the new masteries) with great ability to dump currency and upgrade.

T16 Scourge viable

A9 Sirius

Cleared Wave 30 Simulacrum comfortably

POBs (note this is my end game gear):

DPS Version (uses Bloodbond and only life): https://pastebin.com/a25vG2LV

Hybrid (Uses Sporeguard and is life/ES hybrid with higher EPS): https://pastebin.com/He9zFtE2

Poe Ninja Link: https://poe.ninja/challenge/builds/char/TheRealWildborn/Mistress_ofthe_Blade?i=0&search=item%3DThe-Iron-Mass

Videos:

A9 Drox Kill: https://youtu.be/6EPXYe5yVKs

Sepulcher Mapping: https://youtu.be/Cs1bHGqUGpE (Juiced with rando sextants and blight scarab, this is how I made all my monies this league)

Wave 27-30 Simulacrum: https://youtu.be/PJ4-FIe6_Do (note wave 30 was 56% chaos resist, and this is a chaos build)

The Journey

I started this league wanting to play minions. I have played golems and spiders in various forms in prior years but have generally refused to play basic minion necro zombie or skelli builds. The hipster in me just can't be that basic. I saw Ironmass rereleased a few leagues back and read various posts about it being bad, and more recently that Necro is an inferiors ascendancy to use with it as it does not scale with skill level. Challenge accepted. (It also turned out that this build became heavily unique based, krangle league turn out to be an excellent fit.)

So around the time of patch notes, I saw all the doom and gloom that GGG sucks and they only do nerfs. For me the changes just mean more problem solving, I hate doing the same thing twice. With that said, there did not seem to be much directly affecting minions, so I started theory crafting. I really wanted to do Chaos minions and really wanted to make poison work. The poison part never really worked, unfortunately (united dream is a trap).

The chaos part was pretty easy, just get 3 skeletal Atrophies on clusters and you now have 90% conversion. I know lots of folks talk about triad grips, but in my view that is such a waste of a gear slot. It also helps that no one seems to like Skeletal atrophy, so those cluster jewels tend to be cheap. I also noted that if you pair it with call to the slaughter and feasting fiends (don't really need this notable, you can get two jewel slots for 5 point investment and this build wants jewels.

As to the jewels, you want life + Minions deal physical damage. I was able to clear T16 maps with some pretty scuffed jewels. T1 physical + T1 life and other juicy mods get expensive pretty quick but definitely are not necessary. Also played for a very long time without from the dust because it provides no direct dps or survivability, after tens of hours of button spamming. This is absolutely needed, my DPS significantly increased upon using it because I am now able to keep my skeletons full summoned and on the target. My hands also were very thankful for the reduced button pushing.

Second part of the DPS is getting additional damage from supports. This is done through awakened chaos damage, and Aul's uprising for the mana free envy. Aul's is a massive upgrade. I got a "the Fiend" drop day 4 or so in league that helped me get this early. A rando life ammy with resists were fine for getting through yellow maps.

The last piece of DPS, and is key to my version of the build is Offerings. While leveling I was shopping for cheap unqiues with the few chaos that dropped along the way. I saw Leash of Oblation which allows you to have an offering of each type. I also found BloodBond Armor which gives a 4th offering. Mix this in with the new mastery that give 20% increased offering effect, plus the witch accendency that allows you to also receive the benefit, you end up with a crazy amount of offensive and defense value. So much value that every time I look at replacing it, I have not been able to find anything better (Maybe mageblood but that does not help with DPS).

As to defense, I noted that bone offering would allow me to max block, but they nerfed the life on block component (and the minion regen does not apply to the character ><). So I had to find other on block effects. Shields got a huge boost this league, and getting a shield with good life, armor and life on block was pretty cheap. Also anomalous bone offering will give 70 life on block as well. Also from prior leagues, I have started slotting in enduring composure into every build I play for endurance charges, and then try to pick up boots with +1 endurance charge implicit (corrupted or this league I crafted a synth pair). These two combined allowed me to get to red maps.

Unfortunately it was not enough for Scourge or juiced maps. I still got shredded the moment I entered scourge. At first I thought my life was too low, I was cruising around 4.5k at the time. I tried adding a glorious vanity Doranyi (gives 15% life as energy shield). While this helped some, I still got chunked down by that big fast hits and had not great way to regenerate energy shield (divine shield needs a on of armor, more than I had at the time). I tried using fenumus boots that allowed energy shield on hit, which was decent but bad against dots and also forced me to be in the middle of mobs. Still died a lot.

Ultimately, I got on the determination train (that skill is crazy this league), and pick up an Aegis Aura. With Amor now in the 35k-50K range (with flasks) I was able to do fully juiced T16 and scourge at will. I did not like that the timeless jewel took a jewel slot and required an additional passive, so i kept trying to make al ife build work. After many more additional deaths, I found that after I got 6k life and a recover on life shield, I finally realized enough on block to survive high level scourge hits.

That last tricky part of the build was managing mana and casting offerings. I ultimately went with cast while channeling using cyclone. You also need to span desecrate to have enough bodies to cast on. I switched this back and forth numerous times, but like having a max level flesh offering in the main cyclone for the move speed and attack speed on whirling blades, and then have bone offering and spirit offering in a CWDT setup which are only triggered when am getting beat on in big packs. Lastly I manually cast blood offering. In my hybrid version, you can fully automate this for less button pushing. But it comes at a cost of losing blood offering with a ton of regen and 3 M DPS.

Resists with a necro are pretty easy to balance with Commander of Darkness, as I started making currency I was bale to get enough resists on rings so I did not need that accendancy, but it was great for league starting. Also, although + skills to not buff Iron mass damage, unnatural strength allowed me to get to lvl 25 skellies for an additional skeleton summon (or about 10% dps) plus another specter, and increased carrion golem buff. This was an end game switch that provided a significant boost.

The last tweaks on the build have been from the krangle verse. There are sooo many interesting uniques out there. I picked up my +1 skill Bloodbond with consecrated ground on hit for 40C a couple weeks in. I was rocking a krangled belt that gave intimidate on hit that I bought for 5C ( the withered chant was slightly better). I also self krangeld my sword with double positives (+ phys damage + light res). So much value layered in to this league!