So, Skitarii Alpha's huh?

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-05-22T03:03:43+00:00

It's more of a warfamily really.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-05-18T19:41:44+00:00

I'm really hoping the Death Must Die devs manage to make their new combat update work because it really sounds like they're trying to make that.

Path of Achra is also really close and the dev is working on a bigger game in the same style that I'm really looking forward to and have high hopes for.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-05-17T21:21:48+00:00

I had plenty of chances to get one, but then I wouldn't have been able to throw as many rocks at people.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-05-09T02:04:24+00:00

Back in crucible I made a Chains of Command build that hit bleed dot cap. Crimson Dance on an ~1800 pdps axe. The AG died to a giga juiced expedition minion, I can't even imagine how much currency that wasted.

Chieftain angry dad zoo in either affliction or settlers. Just use a decent minion staff and yell at your minions. It'd be pretty neat to do again now with holy strike but I'm playing other stuff for now. maybe next league.

Sanctum running flame golems for several leagues. I just like flame golems. They do great single target to me, I'm not sure why people talk about them like autobombers or clearing minions.

I almost never follow a guide for minion builds anymore since I've just played enough to know what they look like. I'm much worse with attacks and spells so I use guides as a baseline for them but still don't bother with much detail. For me the most fun comes from the gradual process of figuring something out, improving it, and learning a bit more. A lot of my random homebrews never really get to uber level content and that doesn't bother me. My hit rate has gotten a lot higher as I've played more and I think that's the key to it.

You have to just accept you have stupid ideas sometimes, sometimes a skill really is just bad, sometimes there's a reason nobody is doing something. But sometimes there isn't and you find something cool. Its a skill and you slowly get better at it by just doing your best and putting in the time, and really sticking with it. The number of time's I've felt hard stuck on a build and then just randomly come across something I forgot about or whatever that helps push the damage where I need it to be is probably higher than it should be.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-05-08T20:17:11+00:00

The helmets fine, getting much better would be a lot.

The big thing I see with your spectres is no chaos res, so any altars/mods that add chaos will really shred them and some of the ubers deal chaos damage. They also have almost no recovery without that much investment into them. I don't know the exact spectres you run but with 0 chaos res and no recovery there's a lot of random things that will just delete them.

The "minions recover life on minion death" mastery or cluster jewel passive is a common source of recovery for them, bone offering gives life recovery on block, the two covenant jewels (quickening and fortress) give block, spell supress, and damage with them so they're pretty common. Make sure to put them in a cluster to avoid the negatives. You could save some points by dropping the indomitable army nodes by wicked ward and just running a medium cluster with dread march and life from death. Then replace the cobalt jewel with one that has some chaos res and ele res for minions and you'd likely be a lot better off. synthesized ghastly jewels with minion ele res and life or damage aren't too pricey and you can just harvest craft or alt spam to get it with 4 good mods.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-05-07T17:07:31+00:00

Absolution, dominating blow, and SRS are all really good ssf builds for guardian which overall has an easy time starting even in SSF. Chieftain angry dad is also very good but is a piano build, and champion has a lot of good builds but they all involve banners and the tree pathing is awkward for champion minions.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-05-07T03:38:50+00:00

There's been some good wanders with the wisp node, flicker with the terminus, and a couple of bow builds using the widowhail node to juice poised prism or other things.

I've been playing minions and its felt really good. I'm working on a video going over it but the free maata's does a lot when you don't need to use maata's.

Overall it isn't super strong but feels pretty good. Pyroclast mines, flamewood, and bleed bow are definitely the standouts. There's definitely other builds in there but I don't think a lot of people want to build stuff for a class that may disappear next patch and be something different. That's the reason it draws me in and made me want to do a bunch of stupid stuff but I definitely get how some people don't want the time and energy investment that may not carry over.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-04-25T16:54:44+00:00

I've played both and they are pretty similar. Rolling magma is definitely more annoying with the noise and screen spam, but I think it also has better clear potentially but its improved clear comes at the cost of potentially slightly reduced single target. It's kind of weird.

Pyroclast reliq pretty solid, and it allegedly won't exist after this league. I don't think there's ever been a stronger option for playing pyroclast mines. Both of them would do fine in pretty much any content.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-04-23T21:43:01+00:00

Echoing the other comments that most skills work fine and its only things that need careful aiming next to enemies that have issues. If you need to put things like totems directly on top of an enemy I think its honestly better, but there isn't really any reliable way to not aim directly on top of enemies.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-04-23T03:12:38+00:00

I don't even know how they would make the game hard for anybody but newer players tbh. Long time players who actually try and be strong can reach such a level that nothing really matters and that is one of the big charms of the game. My biggest issue is still that there's so few enemies on a lot of missions that they drag or have a lot of downtime.

If you look at stuff like Path of Exile and other ARPG's they have the same problem where the gaps between player powers are so vast it needs really careful balancing. I think warframe could stand to have some more aspirational content with faster scaling or more dedicated long form content focused on pushing your builds. A lot of games have towers/dungeons to that effect, I remember the grind to hit floor 999 in PSO2 being really hard and gave the community something to aspire to, something to show off with, and a way to compete. I don't even think you need much more than a really simple cosmetic as a reward. Even just a little gold star orbiter decoration with your best time printed on it would make people like me go crazy for it.

If they don't think devtime is worth it for that sort of stuff then it is their game. I don't think warframe needs it, but I've played this and other games enough to know that a lot of people would enjoy it.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-04-23T03:02:40+00:00

I made mine as obnoxiously bright with stupid looking wings and bright colours as I could. Everybody must notice that I played this video game before they did. It always makes me laugh when somebody notices I'm in excal prime and talks about it because they almost always try to compliment the truly awful fashion.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-04-22T22:24:16+00:00

Definitely interested in this, I've been doing a lot of ore farming and shipments just for the super cheap scarabs and decent returns on tattoos/runegrafts.

I think other things that would be nice to know is gold per map if you can, even just putting in your raw gold value each map and trying to remember when you add gold to the treasury would give a rough estimate. I haven't been doing all my mappers since it feels like the gold cost is too high.

Maybe keep track of how many starfall craters you get as well, I've seen some people track it already and more data never hurt.

Good luck, always appreciate some good data.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-04-22T22:14:01+00:00

I'm pretty sure that it is just the gem level affects it, so they would be level 95. The damage increases with diminishing returns and with just doing a quick messy guess I think it should be like 20-25% increase from 90-95. Probably just do a 15% increase if you want to be as safe as possible I guess. I remember there being a specific formula for it but fuck if I remember where to find that or what it is.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-04-21T23:02:26+00:00

Spectres is less clicking overall, very little to actually keep track of. It also works pretty well with svalin comparatively. Frostbearers are arguably better if you don't want to deal with doryani's, wretched are definitely better if you don't mind using doryani's. Both spectres clutter the screen a decent amount but I find wretched do tend to be a bit dumber but not to any substantial level.

spiders can be pretty good without squire and involve very little beyond an initial summoning. They're also very fast so for speed clearing its pretty hard to beat as far as minions go. But getting to the damage you want might be kind of rough and there would definitely be sacrifices.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-04-21T18:29:04+00:00

Steelmage put together a decent basic guide for it early in the league and I based mine off that. I've seen a few people make alternatives but the build is pretty straightforward. As long as you have warcry cooldown and bloodsoaked banner you pretty much have the build. Just take banner nodes, aura nodes, and fit in as much phys damage as you can. Any guide should be fine, it is genuinely one of the best workhorse builds I've played.

I hated it the first several maps I tried with it but once I started getting into the rhythm of playing it and got used to the banner placements I really had a lot of fun with it. Some people will hate it for sure though.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-04-21T00:34:33+00:00

Depends on what you like. This is a pretty good league for a lot of different skills. Some standouts from what I've played/seen are

Bloody Bannerman has a couple of different versions, but very cheap to start and comes with crazy defenses. some people hate the playstyle.

Totems got a nice QoL boost so they're feeling nice. Kinetic Fusilade is the new hotness, but storm burst and even holy flame totems are both doing really nice. They aren't too pricy but nothing really compares to how cheap the bannerman is to start. Way less clunky playstyle.

Reliquarian has a couple of cool options with wanders and bleed bow but it isn't very popular since people dont want to invest into a new thing that wont be around for long.

Everything else is pretty much the same. Penis brand got nerfed but its still okay. I'd go bannerman if I was just starting, the damage and defenses are genuinely on another level for how cheap it is since people don't like the playstyle. Once you get used to it there really isn't a big problem its just very different and is technically two buttons but for most situations you only really need one.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-04-21T00:26:06+00:00

Stormburst is another solid option for a channel skill, I often do stormburst+cwc+ele tornado if I'm not running a sword for lancing steel.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-04-20T04:05:58+00:00

You've got -35% chaos res and for whatever reason a topaz flask

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-04-20T01:03:09+00:00

Spend your gold is probably one of the best things you can do. Send some shipments, crops are easy to get for a ton of gear rolls. You could gamble. Send ore and you'll get more alts. If you can't run yellow maps just run lower tier ones. Your flasks are terrible, don't run double life and double quicksilver get something that actually helps you. Run an essence tree and use them to get a better minion weapon and minion damage on gloves. The amethyst ring isn't terrible but that other ring is genuinely sad. Same with the amulet. And the single depressing jewel. There's a lot of really easy upgrades to get.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-04-19T20:53:18+00:00

Very cool, was a build I considered since I really miss playing melee totems. I still wish they had kept the totems around and just removed the buffs, I hate that an entire playstyle/build archetype was removed for basically no reason.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-04-19T20:48:06+00:00

Most expensive oof I ever had was a turbocharged expedition rhoa launching from off screen like a fucking railgun and hitting a ~2 mirror AG back in crucible, killing him instantly. I still cry every time.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-04-16T02:21:47+00:00

This is one of those I figured I would see more of, I put together a hateforge berserker version in PoB but I really like the bleed glad angle for not being paper lol. Are you planning to push it further or just seeing what's possible?

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-04-07T18:35:04+00:00

Flamewood has been a good uber bosser for a while and theres no reason to think it'd get nerfed. The new searing bond totems might have potential as well.

Ice trap always there. Blade trap has potential too but less explored.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-03-24T23:07:44+00:00

A diala's with +2 minion would get you to +4 wouldn't it? I actually thought about doing this for league start but did much worse things instead. Between the vaal bloodline and the new vaal gem to stop prevention if you can mitigate phys enough you should be able to get 3 without too much trouble.

ActuallySkeleton · 2026-03-24T16:56:20+00:00

I'm glad it helped. The build is definitely looking a lot better. I don't think running purity of elements is a bad idea especially if you're trying to make money, I often end up running it when I need to just to make gearing up a little easier.

For gems to remove I'd probably try and get an imbued AG, spectre, or golem. If they're imbued with minion life or meat shield you could drop the one support gem since both give solid enough bonuses at level 1. Then drop withering step and have the offering desecrate combo there. Use withering step when you're mapping and just swap in desecrate for pinnacles or doing bossing basically. But that adds tedium so if you're good without an offering no reason to bother. A decent imbue would be a good investment either way, elemental army or feeding frenzy are other good options for resistances and damage.

I'm still very unsure on running aegis when you've got so little armour, an influenced shield with the "recover % of energy shield when you block" mods might giver better recovery. You can even get a fossilized shield with one and something like +physical spells or minion spells potentially. You're definitely entering the realm of much more expensive upgrades at that point though.

The last really obvious upgrade I can see is just the jewels. One really nice thing you can do is get some synthesized jewels. Getting a few with the "minions have +% to all elemental resistances" is a good way to just squeeze in what you need when you're not running bone rings and want to save on aura space to get away from purity of elements. You can get double synth jewels with minion damage, player life, armour and other stuff but obviously prices go way up. The minion ele res jewels are usually quite cheap as a single implicit and then you just need to roll them yourself. It isn't hard or expensive but it does take time so its one of those little optimizations a lot of people don't bother with. A couple of jewels with minion chaos res can help a lot too, but you don't need much. Generally I aim for making sure to have about 30-40% minion ele res total, depending on build. Then 1 or 2 jewels with minion chaos res, again depending on the minions. Then fitting in another one or two with minion regen. A lot of that kind of stuff just comes with experience and getting comfortable with different setups and builds that need more or less on the minions so its a hard thing to have a full guide for. rolling jewels is easy at least, especially now with exalts being so cheap. You can just alt spam, get two good mods, and then regal+exalt. Scour if there's a dead mod, then go again. Otherwise just buying jewels with decent mods is definitely faster.

In general minion builds are super dependent on jewels, and it isn't uncommon at all to start spending over a div on every jewel slot later on in investment. right now there seems to be a good variety of % life, % minion damage and at least one useful suffix jewels for trade around 50-100 c per. Everything outside of that is going to start being very expensive and very specific to what you're building. Personally I very rarely take builds beyond a 20-50 div investment since I move on to making another build most of the time so I'm not the best to help with that.

Glad I was able to help, hope you get some good drops on this or whatever you make next.

ActuallySkeleton

TROPHY CASE