3.29 Dominating Blow Necromancer League Start Build Guide - Path of Exile

Guide V1.3 - I'm only human, hopefully I've managed to get everything that absolutely needs to be here! 3.29 NEW STUFF! - Like every build, we're gaining some quality on our key gems through the new socket color system. Not the biggest benefit for Vaal Domination directly, but great for things like spectre tank and the like. The Broken Elegy appears to be gone for the time being, which puts us back to a +3 staff. This means less damage early, but also much tankier sentinels; if you played in 3.28, you probably remember that they felt pretty fragile. We've also gained a new reservation option in Mana-Infused Staff, which offers a lot of block in exchange for an unchangeable 30% Mana Reservation. This is difficult to fit because we already want to run two 50% Auras. We also lost our Bloodline Ascendancy though, so we can take Commander of Darkness to free up Purity of Elements, which solves it again again. At this point, you have MANY options, but the coolest side effect is: we don't need Replica Dragonfang's Flight! That's right! It's super expensive because of how popular Dominating Blow became, and now that we're on a +3 Staff, we can actually cut it, as well as move around SEVERAL passive points. Reinvest these into DPS or Defense, whichever you prefer; I am leaguestarting Corpseblaster, so I've simmed up a Cluster Jewel as a 'recommendation' in the meanwhile. GGG also made a 'systems' change involving the way certain minions pause between/after attacks, Dominating Blow being one included. This is going to result in a DPS increase, but it's difficult to tell how much. It's possible the build will feel exactly the same as before after all the changes, or even stronger, but certainly a little better than shown. @kamilmcki8631(Youtube) - Thank you calling out that the abyssal jewels simmed for earlier endgame stuff were extravagantly priced! Garbo example added for earlier trees/gear set. WARNING -(THESE NOTES WERE RELEVANT IN 3.28, LEFT IN AS ADVICE IN THE EVENT THEY'RE RELEVANT AGAIN! (3.29 Note - The Broken Elegy appears to no longer be available, so we're back to a +3 Warstaff with %Minion Damage Essence'd on. If it can still be acquired, this staff remains very strong.) Updates! (3.28) - The Broken Elegy is an INSANELY powerful staff for this build, giving us enough physical as extra chaos to our minions for it actually push us to move things around. It's very strong early, about average midgame, but has interesting prospects long-term for potentially being our Best-In-Slot weapon. To support this, I would recommend pathing to Righteous Fury on the passive tree to get the +1 Strike Mastery, which in turn opens up our gloves to get Admiral's Arrogance down the line! This covers the loss of levels, letting us enjoy The Broken Elegy's power long term. On the economic front, items are expensive. The Broken Elegy is cheap, but +2 Helmets, Replica Dragonfang's Filght, and now Adimral's Arrogance are all very expensive. I now recommend picking up the Bonemeld unique amulet, in the interim. Essentially, you use Bonemeld with a +1 Helmet to get yourself to a 'cozy' level 23 Vaal Domination without too much investment, which puts you in a position (alongside The Broken Elegy) to farm for a Replica Dragonfang's Flight. It's difficult to switch before this because Bonemend may as well read '-40% All Resistances', which means you need to pump your Chaos Resistance and even put a little effort into balancing your Elemental Resistances, but it's worth it for the relatively cheap cost and the throughput you gain. Admiral's Arrogance is an option for higher DPS, but no longer recommended. A Level 4 Empower Support seems superior because of the defensive benefits you get by NOT using Admiral's Arrogance. Additionally, A level 1 Cruelty can be added to the links of our Vaal Domination for 'free' if you manage to overcome the need for Commander of Darkness. This is done by completing The Black Barya encounter and choosing the new Bloodline Ascendancy offered there. (This is no longer available in 3.28; Commander of Darkness is now used to cover dropping Purity of Elements.) ============================================================================================================================================================================================ ============================================================================================================================================================================================ ============================================================================================================================================================================================ Leveling 1-40 First and foremost: Do NOT switch to Dominating Blow too early. Unless you have a source of Accuracy (Precision is fine), consider holding off until picking up Resolute Technique. Start with a spell of your choice, Magma Orb is a classic for the early game but if you're comfortable with another go ahead. A Lightning Spell is preferred if you find a +1 Lightning Skills wand. Additionally, a +1 Phys Skills wand is also very desirable for our level 12 switch. Until then, pick supports like Added Lightning Damage to set up for an Absolution switch. From this point, we acquire Absolution, which is our chief leveling spell going forward. Unlike in other versions of Dominating Blow, I've suggested, we hold on to this for a little longer. The Templar starting area hits many more important breakpoints early, which makes it better suited to switching immediately. For Witch, I suggest you wait until you at least acquire Summon Carrion Golem, which seems to be around when you'll start applying high value skill points on the tree (Resolute Technique!), but also because the Carrion Golem itself provides a sizable buff to our sentinels. On your way to Dominating Blow, you can pick up Herald of Purity for some extra power, but this gem tends to not play well with Dominating Blow itself due to minions competing for space. Early on, Dominating Blow typically wants both Melee Splash and Ancestral Call, although you can potentially cut Melee Splash temporarily if you're unhappy with the DPS. At 38, Multistrike will replace Melee Splash anyway, and remain that way until you get a late-game source of +1 Non-Vaal Strike Target, which lets you swap Ancestral Call for Melee Splash. If you have a glut of Chance Orbs, it can be worthwhile to purchase additional Dominating Blow gems from Siosa and level them early, and simply hurl Vaal Orbs as you find them at the gems in the hopes of getting an early Vaal Domination. For your fourth link early on, either Melee Physical Damage for raw DPS, or Minion Speed for comfort (the Attack Speed affects us as well thanks to the Spiritual Command notable). Our first ascendancy is for Mindless Aggression. On the way, you want to pick up a number of skill gems and have them leveling, and eventually start making use of them as the situation demands it. Holy Relic is very potent for much of the build's early game and even early mapping, typically until you can rely on powerful Spectres to help you spin-up at the start of a map, so get Summon Holy Relic and Raise Spectre when your currency allows for it. Maim Support is a great DPS boost, as is Feeding Frenzy; early on you attach these to your Carrion Golem. Maim Support will be phased out after our second labyrinth however (Unnatural Strength), because it converts our Minion Damage to Chaos. What DOES help our chaos damage is the Despair curse, so make sure you pick that up! Determination accounts for much of our early Armour scaling, but until you acquire it either Vitality or Clarity can be very useful themselves. Ultimately, both Determination and Purity of Elements are our elected Auras because there isn't much support for Chaos Damage, and because Purity of Elements solves all elemental ailment woes for both us and our minions, as well as makes gearing EXTREMELY easy. Leveling 40-70 Things smooth out in progression from this point onward. We look to get our Mana Reservation situation sorted so we can run all of our Auras, and we keep an eye out for a +1 Melee Gems 2-hander we can 4-link to give our Dominating Blow a very, VERY significant boost. Even better would be a +1 Melee Gems and +1 Socketed Gems 2-hander, especially if it has an additional open prefix to craft %Minion Damage on. A weapon like that can carry you well into Yellow Maps with ease. Our second ascendancy is for Unnatural Strength, and our third is for Commander of Darkness. Bone Barrier comes last, but you could consider taking it third if your Resistances are very stable and you feel like sustain or Physical Mitigation is a more important place to invest. Typically though, the build doesn't need it until Red Maps. We acquire much of our %Minion Damage scaling very early on from the skill tree, so for much of the second half of the campaign we're focusing on what defensive additions we make. Going into White Maps, you want your Auras running, some Maximum Resistance scaling, your Enduring Cry working with minimum 10 power, and the Armour/Energy Shield Mastery online and functioning. The only offensive outlier you might need to work out is getting Vaal Domination if you don't have it yet. As for Spectres, Carnage Chieftains are good enough in the early game. Early Mapping This is where the value of Melee Splash really starts to make itself known, as does Vaal Domination. The build tpyically feels very sturdy on the way to Red Maps, and Bone Barrier gets picked up just in time to ensure it still feels that way into Red Maps and beyond. As you accrue currency, getting a Stygian Vyse or even Darkness Enthroned can be a major boon to damage. Likewise, start acquiring Jewel Slots on the Passive Tree, because Ghastly Eye Jewels are a major damage source for this build. The chief mod to hunt, especially early on, is 'Increased Minion Damage if you've used a Minion Skill recently'. This mod is a Suffix, and goes up to 20%; getting it with %Minion Attack Speed or %Chance for Minions to Poison (these are also suffixes) is what we're really looking for long term; getting two good suffixes is a very late-game and expensive endeavor, so don't worry too much about it early on. If you don't have one already, a +2 Melee Gems weapon with %Minion Damage crafted onto it is a major upgrade that really cements the build's early DPS in a decent spot. As an aside, and certainly not something too important early mapping, you also want to hunt a 'Runegraft of the Soulwick'. This absolute beast of a graft gives us the ability to silently spin-up our Vaal Domination for Pinnacle Bosses and the like, which can make clearing them significantly more comfortable. ============================================================================================================================================================================================ GEARING CONCERNS / CONSIDERATIONS: WEAPON: A Warstaff, preferably with the top-end 25% Attack Block modifier, and with a 1.3 base Attack Time. Getting +2 Melee Gems and crafting %Minion Damage on this is good. Getting +2 Melee Gems with an Essence of Fear is much better, as it gives us access to using the %Minion Attack Speed/%Minion Cast Speed craft. Ultimately, we want +2 Melee Gems with +1 Socketed Gems alongside an Essence of Fear %Minion Damage prefix. This is relatively easy to do if you can snag a weapon with a +2 Melee Gems fracture. A +1 Socketed Gems fracture would also work, but will be more expensive to finish. This allows you to spam Essences of Fear until you hit the other mod, which isn't terribly uncommon; alternatively, you can try Recombination, which is definitely the go-to if you're in SSF or the like anyway. HELMET: You want an Armour and ES base with + Level of all Minion Skill Gems. +1 levels is good, +2 is better, and +2 with any sort of decent Life + suffixes on the helmet otherwise is solid gold. What you're looking for is very simple, but also very expensive - that means be willing to settle early for what you can, and be prepared to save up a lot for a strong replacement down the line. For Eldritch Implicits, what's most important is Physical Damage taken as Fire/Cold/Lightning. The other is player's choice. Long term, you want a Hunter Influenced helmet with -% Chaos Resistance to Nearby Enemies. Because Chaos Penetration isn't really a thing in support gem form, sources of this stat are extremely valuable. AMULET: You no longer need Replica Dragonfang's Flight for Dominating Blow. It's still very good early, but it's also very expensive because of how popular the skill has become. Because of the nature of the skill and its lack of tags, this is FAR AND AWAY the best option for some builds, even compared to the likes of Focused Amulet bases. Now, we typically want a Rare Amulet with +1 to Level of All Skill Gems. +1 All is a very rare mod, Dominating Blow's chief tags are Melee, Strike, and Minion, which do not have associated Gem Level tags. As for the Annoint, Soul of Steel is a great choice, as is Prismatic Skin. Typically, all of our best options are defensive in nature, so the Annoint is very flexible indeed. The exception is Death Attunement, which boasts a 3rd Spectre, although Conjuror of Rot is gone with Mirage, so this isn't as good as it was in 3.28 either. The other big Amulet option is Aul's Uprising, which gives us back Purity of Elements (the free Determination version is best), or another aura entirely (Malevolence is an option here once our minions are poisoning.) BODY ARMOUR: No Life mods, for the Life Mastery. As much Armour and ES as you can get, for the Armour/ES Mastery. Chaos Resistance and Additional Physical Damage Reduction are our premium suffixes, with other Resistances or relevant Stats also of value. Eldritch Implicits are almost guaranteed to be Physical Damage taken as Fire/Cold/Lightning, and +1 All Maximum Resistances. The Brass Dome can be considered, but is ultimately a lackluster choice compared to a very good Rare Sacred Chainmail. GLOVES: Armour/ES Base and Life are mandatory. %Increased Attack Speed can be useful, but isn't too important. +1 Non-Vaal Strike Targets is the most important detail, acquired from an Exarch Eldritch Implicit. Long term, you can hunt for a pair with 28-30% Increased Minion Damage via a Deafening Essence of Fear, but that's likely it. As an aside, if you attempt to convert the build to using a 1-Hander, Admiral's Arrogance can be slotted in to make up for the missing Gem Levels, as Vaal Domination is a 'Strike' skill. This would require a new source of +1 Non-Vaal Strike Targets though, so you'll need to figure that out. Typically, Admiral's Arrogance is not preferred because you lose access to the Energy Shield/Armour Mastery that gives us a ton of defense. BOOTS: Armour/ES Base, Life, and Movmeent Speed. Free Space, basically. Ralakashe's Impatience can work if you want, but the build has plenty of time to use Enduring Cry so it's likely not at all necessary. RINGS: You get Life, you get Resistances. Flat Mana Reduction crafts are very useful, and you can fix Stats here as well. Long term however, you can get A LOT of power through Bone Rings in the form of %Minion Damage (Prefix, up to 42%), and %Minion Attack Speed (Suffix, up to 16%). Part of the reason we like Commander of Darkness so much is that it opens us up to be aggressive in seeking this Jewelry-related affixes! Keep in mind though that strong Bone Rings will be expensive, and that this is a late-game optimization. BELT: Darkness Enthroned. A good one, perferably. Ghastly Eye Jewels are our best friend, and we want more of them! GHASTLY EYE JEWELS: All of the most important mods are Suffixes. Typically, we want Increased Minion Damage if you've used a Minion Skill recently, and %Chance for Minions to Poison. These two mods are expensive together, but our minions do 100% Chaos Damage, so obviously Poison is a free vector to scale, especially with them automatically Withering enemies with their attack as well. If %Chance for Minions to Poison is 100% or very high, then %Minion Attack Speed may be a higher value second suffix. For Prefixes, we want things like Life, Armour, and Flat Minion Physical Damage. Flat Minion Chaos Damage is fine, but doesn't scale quite as well. Once you have 4 Ghastly Eye Jewels, you want the unique 'Amanamu's Gaze', which applies an enormous multiplier to our Minion's Poison Damage. This is an expensive pickup, so don't feel pressured to hunt it early, you simply don't want it until you already have 4 Ghastly Eye Jewels. UNIQUE JEWELS: Watcher's Eye can give us some very nice benefits because we run Determination, and Purity of Elements if we have Aul's Uprising. Reduced Extra Damage from Critical Strikes is an enormous favorite of mine, as is most other Determination mods, such as Chance to Block Attacks, Additional Physical Damage Reduction, or even just Flat Armour. Purity of Elements can give us another +1 All Maximum Elemental Resistances, which is obviously just very good on a build with no Spell Suppression. If budget is no concern, Impossible Escape to Imbalanced Guard is potentially a titanic bonus to our All Maximum Elemental Resistances. SPECTRES: Perfect Forest Warrior is our boy. Onslaught for us + our minions isn't just good value, but it also provides Culling and makes mapping much faster. Carnage Chieftain can be kept alongside it, as many other cheap options aren't as effective with us already scaling Wither (Pale Seraphim, for instance). Long term, Perfect Forest Tiger for Haste and keeping the Frenzy Charges of Carnage Chieftain is the optimal swap, although this spectre is VERY EXPENSIVE, and shouldn't be looked at too early. If going for third spectres, I really haven't been able to pin down an 'obvious' choice myself. Host Chieftain is 'an option', at the very least (for minion power charges), which works well with our Animate Guardian Brittle Ground. 6-LINK EXPLANATION: Vaal Domination is our primary skill. Multistrike is obviously really strong, as is Melee Physical Damage, Fortify, and Minion Damage. The final support is Behead, which is an utter darling that doesn't get the credit it deserves. For starters, bosses are most dangerous on Low HP, so having our DPS highest at that time is often a straight benefit. It works with Ailments also, but it also gives us one attribute found NOWHERE ELSE IN ALL OF PATH OF EXILE. Behead gives us Melee Strike Range, which helps our Sentinels swing over one another, effectively reducing the chance that they will get stuck on each other and 'do nothing' when bunching up. You typically swap Behead out for Melee Splash while mapping. IMBUED GEMS: RIP Mirage. ANIMATE GUARDIAN: This is a later game switch, because a meaningful Animate Guardian requires pretty good gear, and Summon Carrion Golem costs nothing. While we're busy with meaningful character upgrades, this sits in waiting. That said, as you raise the level of Vaal Domination, Summon Carrion Golem becomes obsolete. There is an optimal gear suggestion in the item sets labeled 'Giga Guardian' (or at least what I've found to be the best so far). Giga Guardian gives us exploding corpses, another -20% Chaos Resistance for our enemies, 10 Fortification (or 18% Increased Damage and Curse Effect for Dying Breath, as Kingmaker is quite expensive), and Brittle Ground if the big idiot can get himself on top of the boss. We don't bother with Wake of Destruction because it's a drop in the bucket vs Wither, but still an option if you value consistency or just don't like Brittle Ground. These effects can be simulated in custom configurations, but it's a very sizable gain of DPS and clear. Generally speaking, Dying Breath, Leer Cast, Wake of Destruction, and Expedition's End are all great, more 'budget-friendly' options you can pursue early if need be (Thanks @Memorydumped on Youtube!) A special note about Searing Exarch: Searing Exarch is a colossal puddle of hotdog water and depression. His meatball phase will be the bane of your existence, and there's no much you can do about it but try and use your minions as a shield. You can unsocket Vaal Domination to remove your sentinels and reduce the chance they'll get in the way, but there's really nothing you can do but carry a strong Ruby Flask and lean on your Molten Shell/VMS. If you do die or log out, let your Runegraft of the Soulwick fill up VMS before you go back in. Unfortunately, there is nothing you can really do about your Spectres eventually running into a bunch of balls beside you and annihilating your belief that anything in the world is fair. PINNACLES IN GENERAL: Writhing Jar CAN be useful here, but it's also very possible your Spectres will kill the worms before you even if you activate the flask mid-swing. We build strong tank so that spinning up is relatively safe, and because Behead is weighted toward the second half of most fights, you tend to avoid phasing the boss before fully spinning up. The nature of Dominating Blow is notably skewed though, where being underprepared defensively is very punishing with major bosses. EXTRAVAGANT OPTIONS: This is a very large gray area for me, because I haven't had a chance to take the build to properly high investment yet. There is always a potential switch to a 1-Hander, which we discuss in the GLOVES section with the mention of Admiral's Arrogance. The right 1-Hander with the right Influence (Shaper/Elder), carefully crafted and paired with a Squire has the potential to be an enormous improvement. Perfect Forest Tiger absolutely fits in this section because of how pricey it can be. Bone Rings have low-value implicits because of our glut of Elemental Resistances, which means Corruptions (Determination Aura Effect, Level 23 Despair, etc) or Synthesized Implicits (%Max Life, %Armour, Max Endurance Charges, Regenerate % Per Endurance Charge, etc) are all on the table if you're willing to knuckle down and make the ring yourself. Replica Dragonfang's Flight will become more common as the league continues, so Corrupting it for All Max Res or another Implicit could potentially be very strong if you can give up the All Attributes. As per usual, I stream at League Start, and for 3.29 I will be returning to Corpseblaster for some fresh R&D. Still, feel free to stop by and ask me about this build or any of my others, or just to say hi and/or call me bald. Happy Allflame Launch, Exiles!