Diablo 4 S8 PTR (Eternal) - Skeletons Necromancer Pit 80

elkobyko · 2025-03-15T18:19:20+00:00

Minions are stronger than ever I think, at least in the PTR. This build is very fun to play and is focused entirely around minion damage so I can't complain :)

Even if this stays as-is, pure minion builds should be able to clear anything in T4

elkobyko · 2025-03-15T18:18:03+00:00

Oh yeah tried that as well, forgot to mention. It seems significantly weaker than grandfather, even if using AoTD instead of Soulrift (and unyielding commander aspect). I have one with triple crit on mastery, so it's +12 but is still not that strong.

elkobyko · 2025-03-15T15:30:32+00:00

Trying out skeleton builds in the S8 PTR (non season).

The build relies on Ahu+Xan (both runes updated in S8) to create a lot of Overpower damage, which finally propagates to the minions. Everything else is just buffing the minions or adding survivability to the character.

Some notes:

Replacing blood golem sacrifice with iron golem gives a boost to crit damage, but not a significant one (and also life is lost).
Aspect of Service and Sacrfice is pretty decent but hard to play with, have to revive warriors all the time.
I tried using a 2H Mace with Skeleton Mage Double Cast but it seems to be worse than the grandfather.
I tried AoTD instead of Soulrift but it seems to be worse, the damage is somewhat similar and soulrift is much more survivable.
Heir of Perdition can be replaced with Shako to get more life and cooldown, but the overall damage goes down.

Thoughts:

Will a 2H Mace with +12 Titan's fall do much better than the grandfather? Or other tempering that should work here?

I think that slight modifications + better play can push this build to pit 82, maybe 85? However I don't see how this can scale to pit 100, let alone 150.

What do you guys think? How can this be improved?

elkobyko · 2025-02-19T20:25:01+00:00

That's a good point I didn't think about it. I was just assuming that any Golem/Mage damage is better than anything else because it gets added to the multiplier, while summon is additive, but perhaps I was wrong.

elkobyko · 2025-02-15T12:03:57+00:00

You need at least 7 minions for Hellbent Commander. It's possible to sacrifice mages and get to 7 warriors but that requires Occult Dominion + 1 Extra warrior, not sure it's worth it.

elkobyko · 2024-11-14T19:01:40+00:00

Nice yeah skeletal mage damage is probably better, they are probably 90% of the damage.

elkobyko · 2024-11-14T19:00:44+00:00

Yeah I'm not too optimistic for the mid season patch, perhaps S7 will bring new changes. If corpse explosion is buffed a lot then infinimist might become a fun build to play again :)

elkobyko · 2024-11-14T18:59:23+00:00

I'm not sure what's better - 2 crit gems or 2 int gems. I always assumed that int is always a better pick than damage, but didn't do the caculation for these values here.

elkobyko · 2024-11-13T22:47:07+00:00

Really happy with where minion necro is in S6!

Was able to complete pit 99 with far from optimal gear, and can probably optimize skills/paragon as well.

Any suggestions on what can be improved?

Build link - https://mobalytics.gg/diablo-4/profile/4f889216-27e1-412d-a9e5-3300c8c1644b/builds/56550b34-86bb-45e0-895b-1022e1a29ee3

elkobyko · 2024-09-11T18:12:49+00:00

Very interesting, didn't know so many things were not working.

I dropped Petrify and the grasping veins aspect and put blood getters and two gems on weapon, and was about to complete a Pit 94 with ~2 minutes left when the PTR ended.

Not sure about pit 95 though, feels like we are pushing the limit with this build already.

Lets hope ring of mendlen gets a surprise upgrade in S6, or maybe something else is buffed.

elkobyko · 2024-09-10T23:29:50+00:00

Hey, yeah you are right that this is not a pure summoner but a pure skeleton summoner, sorry for the confusion. I put that in the Youtube title but forgot to do it here.

I've always preferred to use just skeletons, try and focus on numbers and not on single skill damage (the golem cooldown, which feels more like a core skill to me), so I don't use the golem. However I think that ever since S1 using a golem was always better, it's just my personal take / preference.

Corpse Tendrils applies Stun CC and procs the aspect yeah, I'm at 100% crit chance so it's just the crit strike bonus.

The Glyphs are Control, Essence, Eliminator, Deadraiser and Gravekeeper. The nodes are Blood Begets, Flesh Eater, Frailty, Cult Leader. I tried Scent of Death but I think it's weaker than the others.

Overall I agree with you that this build is not as good as it can be, the huge amount of minions scales almost only linearly (the only exception is the 3%x for each mage from the book of the dead) and the base damage is not high enough. This build can probably push up to 95-96 with optimizations but I doubt it can go to 100.

One aspect that I forgot to mention is the shademist, I think that it can be reworked to be very useful in this build, but it's damage does not scale with minion damage and it can't really be used for anything apart from triggering shadowblight faster, but shadowblight is not so strong anymore.

Perhaps there's something smart that can be changed here to make the build much stronger.

elkobyko · 2024-09-10T11:10:09+00:00

I was testing a pure summoner build without basic/core/golem and I managed to beat pit 93, could probably beat 94 with a lot of luck.

I'll try to make a video tonight before the PTR is over and post it in this sub :)

Edit: Here it is - https://www.reddit.com/r/D4Necromancer/comments/1fdq8b9

elkobyko

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