###-Important Update-

As it turns out, the wiki is misleading when it says that "Rallying Cry can have an indefinite number of hidden stacks active, of which each loses its duration naturally, but only the strongest one is shown as active buff"

I interpreted this as mean multiple warcry buffs could be active with only the strongest one showing. What it actually means is that only the strongest Rallying Cry buff is applied at any given time. When the duration expires, then it is replaced by the next strongest warcry.

I have tested this using second wind Rallying cry and summon spectral spirits. Doubling the warcry buff does not seem to corelate to an increase in DPS in a highly controlled environment.

I am leaving the original post mostly un-changed in case anyone else tries to research this in the future.

Update:

Ok, so I went to alter the build in order to fix the rallying cry problem. Long story short: only taking enough warcry passives that we only have 100% uptime, and some re-pathing allows us to fit in Haste and Enfeeble.

This build has more damage, life, and minion durability. We still use rallying cry, but we're not nearly as dependent on it. We're now significantly more reliant on auras. We have to use Enduring Cry now in order to maintain minion onslaught. Dropping defiance banner at 50 stacks with our higher aura effect is a large part of the new damage bonus, but even without it, the damage is slightly better. The 2 curses and flesh offering are now casted by arcanist's brand for mana efficiency and ease of access. Also, our minions move much faster.

https://pobb.in/AgqS4QdSKpO4

Update 2:

Further improvements. No ashes, but much stronger.

https://pobb.in/-8SiB_IUL1nh

--Old post Below---

I've always struggled with squeezing out the last bits of damage, both in making high-budget versions without skyrocketing the price, and other minor improvements. So, whenever I make a build that's "good," there's probably still quite a bit of room for improvement. Not to mention my lack of experience with minion builds.

Without further adu, here it is.

https://pobb.in/ZFKK87nr8Nk7

####Where does the damage come from?

Rallying cry is not generally good. ~~But as it turns out, Rallying cry stacks with itself. Get enough duration and reduced cooldown, you can get multiple active at once.~~ Divergent Rallying cry grants an additional 2% more damage to minions per 1% quality. Just like everything else in the game, the missing ingredient is Ashes of the Stars for an additional 30% quality. With a level 3 enhance, 29% Ashes of the Stars, and base 20% quality, Rallying cry has 230% more effect on our skeletons.

~~Combine that with some passive investment into cooldown reduction and increased duration, we can get 3 rallying cries active at once without over-investing. With some Warcry Buff Effect, this easily translates into an additional ~500 added physical damage to the bois using Iron Mass.

To better illustrate the power of this: Rallying cry adds up to 20% of your main-hand weapon damage as a buff. With 230% more effect on minions, it's now 66%. With 70% increased buff effect, it's now 112.2%. with 3 rallying cries active, it's 336.6%. With 10 minions, it's 3366%. With our minions dealing triple damage, 10098%.

So, picture an attack with 10098% of base attack damage. Our minions attack 5.8 times per-second, so... Ya, that's a lot of damage.~~

We also grant our minions Onslaught, which is nice.

Another large source of damage comes from Envy (around 400 flat chaos,) which will be covered later.

We could get more added damage with a better weapon, but Iron Mass has that triple damage modifier, very fast wither, and Unholy Might. Factor in 3 Skeletal Atrophy passives and Envy, it becomes a clear winner.

####But they need to not die.

To get that large bonus to physical damage, the skeletons must remain in-range for 15 seconds, and not be... re-dead? Aggressively un-raised? Dare I say, Boned?

This makes Alberon's Warpath a requirement, not a convenience. Without it, skeletons would get lost during the fight, de-spawn, or need to be re-summoned even if they weren't killed. Every time something like that would happen, their buffs would need be re-set, and we'd only rarely get the full damage bonus.

Now that duration and AI is fixed, they need to not die. This one problem defines a lot of the choices that we'll be making.

The solution to our minion survivability issues, is Champion. There are a ton of reasons why I believe this to be optimal.

Taunt helps with minion survivability by a massive amount. It's the number one reason why we're here, and not playing juggernaut. Enemies will prioritize you over the skeletons while mapping. Against dangerous bosses, a combination of Defiance banner, conqueror, and base-line taunt effect results in them dealing 10%+20%+30% less damage to enemies other than you when you place the banner. I am not sure if the taunt debuf is additive or multiplicative, but either way, it is a lot of extra beef for the spooky bois.

Something to consider: Meat shield may be significantly better than faster attacks. Defensive minions may be a bit cringe, but there is value in all of them grouping up and following closely, especially if we need to frequently go in for a melee attack. Combined with the extra damage reduction and extra movement speed to actually keep up and dodge with us, it may be really good. But I don't play minion builds. If they stick to you like glue, it won't be nearly as good for bossing. And if their taunting means they no-longer benefit from our taunt, then they lose out on a large bit of damage and damage mitigation.

We don't just get minion durability from champ, however. Worthy foe acts as a pseudo 20% more damage multiplier (17% in practice) and almost completely removes accuracy as a factor. First to strike is an easy source of intimidate, and extra survivability for us.

30% increased effect of non-curse auras means we can create a truly titanic Envy damage bonus when combined with generosity, adding over 400 flat chaos damage on average. Almost as good as our Rallying Cry spam.

Being a Duelist means we can get Fortitude with Forbidden Flame/Flesh, a rare extra layer of defense for us as a minion build.

But that's just what we get from Champion. The duelist starting area has close proximity to the most important Warcry nodes, increased skill effect duration, and an ease in scaling strength and dexterity for our gems. Not to mention access to more max resistance on the tree, amour for a strong molten shell, endurance charges, good life, ect.

####Improvement

What are your thoughts? I considered leaning more into poison, but the machine gods warned me of something dark and sinister approaching. I believe they called it "Wilss Crillson." That, and for some reason, it just wasn't scaling as well as I would have imagined.

Are there any micro-changes I can make for more durability/damage? Apart from plugging in more awakened gems and gems, more gem quality, and lvl21-ing more stuff?

Am I simply insane, having stared into the depths of PoB for too long? Some huge oversight that kills the build?