Is a basic skeletal minion build without spectres etc. even viable?

I am fairly new to arpgs and poe 2. In my first playthrough (a while ago), I used the so called 'cocaine ants'. It was pretty fun and very strong but it didn't fulfill my class fantasy of commanding an undead army. It felt more like being a zookeeper or beast master. So this time around, I want to try make my own build for the first time.

I want it to revolve around either the skeletal minions you get from gems, unearth bone guys, zombies or any combination of those. No animals, no weird creatures, just an undead army. But is that even viable?

I tried to do some research and I found literally 0 builds that would fit this description. I assume if no one is doing it, that means there is something wrong with it. Is there just not enough power without using spectres? Or is it just unpopular because people think it's less cool?

Have any of you done something similar? Can you give me some pointers on what is wrong or what is weak? Any particular support combinations that work really well? All I have so far is just using muster on everything with as many different types of minions as I can afford, but I feel like that won't be enough in the long run.

I hope my ramblings made some sense! Thanks in advance for any advice!

Comments

slimicy•5 months ago•4

I did skeletal archers poison command skill with flame wall/ignite combo through the campaign well into the endgame, then swapped to the fire grenade skeletons in the later endgame, and while I wasn't totally pushing any crazy damage I was progressing fine for a new player.

Skhemattos•5 months ago•2

Yes. Here's what I did recently and you can just not use spectres. Spirit stacking ritualist with 2 kulemak rings and a kalandra. Both rings should have x% increased spirit and x spirit per 200 strength/dexterity/intelligence. After that just use archers or your minion of choice and decimate everything. Between the 800/900 spirit and reservation efficiency, it was a literal army

SavingsAlternative51•5 months ago•1

I played with reapers strong af hc ssf just died at prologue

Slashz22•5 months ago•1

My unearth minion/sniper army build murders everything in the game. It's definitely unoptimized and still clears +3 bosses no problem, struggles with damage when you go +4 though.

TopDeckPro•5 months ago•1

Any one of the undead minions can be built around for a successful build with snipers and frost mages being the best and zookeeper builds are quite popular as well (at least 1 of each minion for the muster support)

Steel_Neuron•5 months ago•1

A secret tech that hasn't been explored much and is new this league is the new His Grave Command skill in the Unborn Lich.

It's basically "summon companion" for undeads. You can use the staff to "tame" an undead with up to 4 rare mods and keep it as a skill gem (you can even unequip the staff afterwards).

I understand this is closer to a spectre, but it's also worth considering.

NecroticToaster•5 months ago•1

You can do power charge zombies but you end up doing a lot of work just to get the power charges for the better zombies.

milafosi•5 months ago•-4

I don't understand how ur build requirement needs to exclude sceptres.

More like this

I decided to try stacking energy shield - at minimum level.

I got bored at this stage in the league and decided to spend many of my hard earned divines on a small project. Wouldn't it be funny to stack Energy shield for a min-level char? [https://poe.ninja/poe2/pob/1a027](https://poe.ninja/poe2/pob/1a027) Tabula rasa has relevant jewel mods noted on it in POB so the math actually works out since it doesn't seem to work properly in POB. second screenshot is with a lvl 29 discipline aura with 36% increased aura magnitude - I didn't wanna spend another several thousand divines on a support character, I just wanted to see how well it would work theoretically >3000 ES without aurabot is possible, however, its basically impossible in practice. As of now, there are \*18\* 2 socket uncorrupted crown of thorns left on trade - on average it takes \~11 to hit a 30% and then another 1 in 3 to get a 3 socket one. Hitting a double corrupt on said 3 socket would be better then my current one, but that's not plausible sadly. Same for the boots. Hitting a better double corrupt on the gloves and focus would likely be plausible, but I couldn't buy more bases from Finn. Grip of Kulemak 59% ES \*should\* be possible, but it already took me over 40 attempts to hit 57% so I think I'll just leave it as is. Belt I didn't find any other way besides the 25% corrupt to get ES without a level requirement - if anyone has any idea tell me. Amulet could sanctify for 19/19 but again, would require silly amounts of currency (each try is \~30 div as is with annoint + sanctify + quality). I \*think\* patient barrier should be best annoint, but correct me if I'm wrong. Total investment into this character so far is about 3000 divines, probably a bit more. further thoughts \- maximum technically possible is 3112 ES at level 2 unless I'm missing something important. POB [https://poe.ninja/poe2/pob/1a02a](https://poe.ninja/poe2/pob/1a02a) \- doubting this but: is it possible to get an ascendency at this low level by skipping straight to geonor with a helper? In which case it might be possible that xp penalties kicking it would allow me to ascend at lvl 2? This would allow +20% +20% (ascendency) +60% (jewel) ES, which would get me to 3218 ES (actual build) / 3732 ES (max technically possible) Did I miss anything?

4 months ago

552

Rakiata who?

I made an elemental crossbow varashta sorc this season as my starting build (goal was to exploit yoke of suffering's full potential, you can find poe ninja below, don't be fooled by the dmg tooltip, it kill ubers before they can move) and so since I was in the intel side of the tree I used my weapon swap to maximize exposure (with whispering ice) and curse magnitude. Here with some non-optimized gear I'm reaching a total of -338% res (that's -169% on bosses), meaning it's better than rakiata's. I use cursed ground support to apply the curse and icestorm (which comes with the staff) with prolonged duration and potent exposure to make the exposure last longer. This tech doesn't require much investment apart from your weapon swap and a few sockets at most so it can be plugged into many elemental builds. As it is now, it requires you to cast the spells with your weapon swap, so I use it mostly for bosses, but i might cast icestorm on bulky rares in juiced maps once in a while. If you have a skill dedicated for mapping, it'll propably better to use rakiata on it, and remove it or use another skill for bosses. Here's the poeninja: [https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/McZaatar-0907/character/Dendjala](https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/McZaatar-0907/character/Dendjala) I might make a build showcase if people are interested, it's a fun league starter build. With yoke and the electrocution node on the tree, enemies have 120% damage taken, more if they're cursed, on top of the giant res drop, plus you benefit from a lot of the "damage against enemies with ailments nodes" so that's why the tooltip is low (explosive grenades indicate 60k in game but they hit bosses for like 2M) at first I was playing with permafrost bolt with frost nexus + navira's fracture + fragmentation rounds, it was a fun combo and really strong for leveling but I couldn't scale navira's fracture damage in late game (I had command + minion nodes on my second weapon instead of the curse/exposure at the time) Hope this inspires some of you!

4 months ago

3012

“That’s no moon”

The Oracle Death Star is fully operational- only took 30 days of playtime. GGGs https://poe.ninja/poe2/profile/L0L-breh-1628/character/ShapesofWrath

5 months ago

2213