- Out Of Date
Introduction
While the PoB shows you what gear we believe belongs in which budget, it might still be a bit unclear in what order we think you should prioritize what.
On this page, we will do our best to explain what we prioritize when, and why. With that out of the way, let’s dig into the gear progression.
Campaign
During the campaign with this build, you will for the most part pick up items that have the links and colours you desire and hit them with an Orb of Alchemy or an Essence with an appropriate function to make them rare. You will be hoping for a resistance when doing this, and should you end up having an open suffix on the item the crafting bench will let you add on a second resistance roll or an attribute roll, depending on your current needs.
Keeping your resistances as high as possible, ensuring you have the attribute rolls and getting some life modifiers is all you need to worry about at this stage. Do keep in mind that resistances are not very important in the first couple of acts but becomes extremely crucial for your survival around Act 5 and forward and reaching the cap (75%) is preferable for all 3 elements at this point. If you’re struggling with gear to reach this you can always replace any of your offensive aura(s) for a Purity of Elements to help solve this potential problem.
Low Budget
We are going to make the assumption that you have kept your resistances capped going into this budget, and will be working with that assumption. If you do not have capped resistances when hitting maps, you need to get that sorted as soon as possible. Any attributes you might need to keep leveling your gems and/or equip gear will also need to be sorted either via gear or by deviating slightly from the skill-tree by picking up any needed “+30 attribute” nodes on the tree. Gear wise, pieces such as a Heavy Belt and/or Jade Amulet are great pieces to solve attribute issues.
Early gear
The first order of operations is going to be acquiring a 6-Link. We recommend a 5 or 6L Corrupted rare of any ES variety or Hybrid ES variety. Using a mere Tabula Rasa is always an option but a corrupted 6-Link will provide other stats for you as well, just make sure you grab one with the correctly colored sockets!
Now that we have our chest piece sorted, we will be looking to pick up any Wand we find and hope it has an increased minion damage roll (This can roll on Calling, Convening or Convoking wands). The only important part here is that the item has an open suffix slot to bench-craft “Trigger a Socketed Spell when you Use a Skill” which will automate the Desecrate & Bone Offering skills which will make the build MUCH smoother to play. Modifiers such as + level of either minion or all spell skills are highly preferable on your wand as well but do tend to cost a bit more.
A helmet with +1 or 2 if the wallet can survive that investment level of all minion skill gems is preferable, don’t forget to make sure the helmet has a life modifier!
Next up we grab some boots, gloves, amulet and rings with resistance rolls and dexterity rolls on them. The exact stats on what does not matter all that much, you just want a little bit more than you need and then move on with your life as all of these items will be replaced in time. Do not spend a lot of currency on these.
It is finally time to prioritize our old friend Darkness Enthroned. Minion builds like Ghastly Eye Jewel and this build is no exception.
Getting a very well-rolled belt, especially early on, is extremely expensive and not advised. Get a roll of 50-75% or so, and look to upgrade the belt later. The values above that simply aren’t worth their price early on, we can spend our currency better elsewhere.
Clusters
The important part here is our medium cluster noted below, before we get to that we’ll be using ANY Large Cluster Jewel with Minion Damage, even as early as the first couple of hours of a new league you can purchase one of these bad boys for as little as 1x Chaos Orb. The idea here is to either purchase a rare one or a white and use an Orb of Alchemy and just keep what ever you end up with. We recommend getting one with at least 10x passives as the purpose is to have room to slot in extra damage for the build without deviating from our skill-tree.
You should acquire a Medium Cluster Jewel with the base “minions have #% increased life” and 4 or 5 passives. Avoid 6 passives as they will waste your points.
You need to have the modifier “Blessed Rebirth”. Nothing else on this jewel matters, but you have to have this for mechanical reasons. In more cases than not this is cheaper to craft yourself by making sure you purchase an item level 68 or higher Medium Cluster Jewel with minion life, this search link will help you find one like that: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Ancestor/gk7PYGOIQ and then simply use Orb of Alteration & Orb of Augmentation till you hit the Blessed Rebirth notable, finish it of with a simple Regal Orb.
Jewels
The main modifier is to make sure that literally, every, single, jewel you have slotted has a Life modifier increasing your health. Outside of that you can go for a variety of different damage modifiers ranging from “Minions Deal X – Y Additional Physical/Fire/Cold/Lightning Damage” as any of them will work fine, physical is the better one but can cost a bit more. Other modifiers could be increased attack speed for your minions or “Minions deal #% increased damage when you’ve used a minion skill recently”
Shield
With our offences reasonably solidified at this point, it is time to take care of our defences.
The primary defensive layer in this build is block combined with life recovery on block which you’ll find on both Crusader & Shaper influenced shields. This is not a main priority early on but becomes an attractive upgrade around the red tier map stage of the game. Both before you get a recovery shield and after you’ll want a life modifier on your shield and any extra resistances are always welcome here. Other modifiers that can be very attractive is increased minion damage as well as + level of all minion skills, however, they come at a much higher cost.
Amulet
A rare amulet to help solve your attributes and/or resistances is the main goal here. Later on you’ll want to upgrade to a The Jinxed Juju as it will increase your damage output as well as provide better survivability by moving some of the damage you take from hits to your spectres instead.
Concluding low budget
If you have not already, it is high time that you sort your flasks. Get flasks with the modifiers that correspond with the guide as best you can, and be willing to spend a little extra to get better rolls on your Rumi's Concoction. Also don’t forget to make sure you have Bone Ring to get your permanent minions resistances capped! They have 40% Elemental resistances and a cap of 75% so make sure you get 35% from your rings. Moving forward you’ll also want to give yourself Chaos Resistances when possible to help build your defenses higher.
Medium Budget
This is the part where we move our main skill (SRS) in to our helmet instead of our body armor. However, there are situations where keeping your SRS in your body armor is preferable. So before we talk about the upgrading path of your other items we have to paint a picture of what you’ll be looking for with the helmet choice first!
Helmet vs Fleshcrafter
No matter what you do the Fleshcrafter is the biggest upgrade you can grab for the build so start with that. You can go from a 6-Link body to a 5-Link Fleshcrafter and that will be a DPS increase. My recommendation is to always make it 20% quality and link it yourself with Fusing orbs. In this process you can sometimes hit a 6-Link Fleshcrafter at which point the recommendation is to use the SRS in your body armor together with a +2 level of all minion skill helmets till you get a “3-modded” helmet.
The purpose of moving your SRS to your helmet is to alleviate socket pressure from the build and it also ends up being the path you’ll take moving in to high budget with the build meaning you’ll want to use a proper helmet. There are a handful of modifiers acting as “extra support links” for your minions that should be on the helmet, some better than others. Essentially when you go in to the medium budget for the helmet a combination of 2 of the following modifiers would be enough and if you have a 6-Link Fleshcrafter you’ll want at least 3 of the mods before changing.
- Socketed Gems are supported by Level # Minion Damage
- Socketed Gems are supported by Level # Hypothermia
- Socketed Spells have +#% to Critical Strike Chance
- Socketed Gems deal 30% more Elemental Damage (Essence of Horror)
- +1-2 Level of all Minion Skill Gems
- Socketed Gems gain 50% of Physical Damage as extra Lightning Damage (Essence of Insanity)
For the Elemental SRS build the level of minion skills isn’t as important as it is for other build and the increased critical strike chance is extremely beneficial as we’ll be using Spirit Offering in the medium and high budget versions. Below you’ll find a video describing the crafting process of this type of helmet. Do keep in mind that in many cases it is cheaper to just purchase one instead of crafting one yourself.
Aegis Aurora vs Surrender
Since we’ll be using Mind over Matter the Aegis Aurora is a great addition to the help to help sustain the Energy Shield. However, not everyone likes this play-style and if you end up not enjoying this you can opt out of the Mind over Matter keystone and instead equip a The Surrender or a rare equivalent shield. Not using Aegis with Mind over Matter will end up making the build a little squishier but can for some people make the build more enjoyable to play.
Wand
Once these steps have been taken we want to make sure the wand is a +1/+1 with a trigger craft bench-crafted, preferably with increased minion attack speed and if the wallet allows; increased critical strike chance is great here. Other modifiers such as increased critical strike multiplier for your minions isn’t a bad choice here either.
The rest
With the major items out of the way as you upgrade to the higher budget PoB you can pick & chose in what order you’ll upgrade the build. The biggest damage increase from here on out is to aim for a proper Large Cluster Jewel as shown in the PoB, this does come at a much higher price-tag which is why we focus on the Chest, Helmet, Shield & Wand before taking that step. The remaining pieces should always be kept a keen eye on to make sure you don’t accidentally lose your resistance caps and/or attribute requirements to equip your gear and gems.
Final Notes
If you end up playing with a 6-Link Fleshcrafter the recommendation is to sell it and buy a non-linked Fleshcrafter once you move over to a proper minion helmet.
Don’t give your Animate Guardian any chaos resistance via gear and completely avoid any modifiers from gear (specifically Ghastly Eye Jewels) that gives your minions chaos resistance as this will either straight up kill them or make them extremely squishy. A tip here is that if you’re concerned for the well-being of your Animate Guardian you can give him a high -Chaos Resistance rolled Oskarm to make him convert less of his HP into Energy Shield!
In the low budget gearing it’s important to make sure you have Energy Shield bases if needed to have enough Energy Shield via Eldritch Battery to afford casting your Divine Blessing aura!
