Poison Zombie Support (now with Severed in Sleep)

Been having fun with poison zombies and I just picked up a Severed in Sleep, which (I think) means I can swap out my Poison support gem. I currently have Minion Damage, Melee Phys, Melee Splash, and Void Manipulation linked. For my fifth support, I'm not sure if I want Faster Attacks, Fortify, or Added Chaos. If I'm doing my math right, Added Chaos should give me about twice the damage of Fortify (since I have 265% increased minion damage from passives and gear), but Faster Attacks (assuming attack speed works off the same math as cast speed) should give me about another half an attack per second, effectively about twice the damage of Added Chaos. On the other hand, Fortify should give the zombies better survivability, which is pretty important on the rare occasions I face something that can actually kill them.

Thoughts?

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CrimsonDeath a écrit :

Been having fun with poison zombies and I just picked up a Severed in Sleep, which (I think) means I can swap out my Poison support gem. I currently have Minion Damage, Melee Phys, Melee Splash, and Void Manipulation linked. For my fifth support, I'm not sure if I want Faster Attacks, Fortify, or Added Chaos. If I'm doing my math right, Added Chaos should give me about twice the damage of Fortify (since I have 265% increased minion damage from passives and gear), but Faster Attacks (assuming attack speed works off the same math as cast speed) should give me about another half an attack per second, effectively about twice the damage of Added Chaos. On the other hand, Fortify should give the zombies better survivability, which is pretty important on the rare occasions I face something that can actually kill them.

Thoughts?

what is fortify? 20% more hp that is what fortify is basically. if you face something that can truly kill your zombies will 20% really matter?

answer: nope

honestly fortify isnt going to make zombies survive anything they would not have already survived. Such is the state of the game. either you face something that is trivial or something you cant do much of anything about.

they arent like players.. they dont have hp so low that they will be one shot like players , no do they have the option to quickly run away and heal up if they take an almost lethal strike.


its all about out lasting the thing they are fighting.. and in the end fortify will make them last 20% longer while also being effectively a dead slot damage wise. where as if you take something that actually does damage .. you might just outright kill the thing in question 20% faster


faster attacks is a skill that is better the less other soruces of attack speed you have and worse the more you have.

so assuming you basically have the 20% from the tree and the 30% from flesh then the 50% from a quality faster attacks is a respectable choice and it is always superior to multistrike from a clearspeed perspective

but once you add things like frenzy charges vaal haste, regular haste and commander of darkness with a ton of auras .. well then that 50% is not nearly as much in which case a more multi somewhere might do well


Added chaos damage is an odd choice .. its an option that is better the lower the level of your zombies are. keep in mind that zombies are slow hitting high base damage minions. high level ones can have base hits somewhere in the 1100- 2000 physical range.. added chaos to that is not that impressive.

but on lower zombies like your normal level 22 gem ones which are probably only in the 800- 1400 area .. the added chaos gem goes farther.


if you do not feel like wasting chromes re rolling i wouldthink it would be better than using a throw away gem like fortify or minion speed.



im not sure why you are using void manipulation. it scales the poison sure but zombies base damage is only physical so you arent really double dipping with void manipulation .. even with added chaos thrown in the mix.

at most id say void manipulation could be a 6th socket .. but not a socket 1 -5

that link is hilariously out of date

i wager that one is from the beta and is not relevant at all
i believe there are a few data-mined charts out there but at the veryleast that one is clearly before they buffed minion hp in awakening

i think the one from poe db is more accurate

As for the life recovery bit miss leading....

implicitly not really.. 2.5 % on minions what we get from the tree which sure is amazing on a 25k hp minion.. most people probably have 10 - 15k hp zombies so that 2.5 % from the tree is not even 400 hp/sec

that is fine vs trivial things . but the op was asking about things that would actually be a threat .. ie damage sources above probably 3k effective dps


using that the zombies would last a little over 5 and a half seconds adding in fortify would increase that to probably about 7 seconds.

regardless a gain of a second and a half is trivial.



It would work if you stacked all sorts of things to make zombies as tank as possible ie if you have say 200% minion life for 25000 hp zombies with say 10% minion life regen healing 2500 hp per second with say another 1000 in leech then fortify would be useful because that point you are clearly within distance of making that 3k per second damage source tankable..


but most builds cant do that.. infact the only build i know that can get those numbers uses umbilicus imortis with vitality and an overflowing chalice .. that is hardly practical.


so this circles back to what i originally said... 25% (thank you for the correction btw) for zombies that i doubt the op has invest nearly enough sustain into .. probably wont do anything

it wont make them tank shaper or the random haast spawn any better or worse .. well maybe instead instant death it will take 2 seconds .. regardless .. fortify .. pointless in my eyes unless you do the aforementioned stacking of defenses and sustain

Depends what else your running OP, I did DoT summoner last league so I was using knitted horrors (god they are OP), that meant i could run bloodlust on the zombies for another big more multi. Wish i had enough currency for one of the new swords on hardcore i'd love to try it out but probably won't get chance this league.

Other than that i'd go with faster attacks, only other alternatives i can think of is increased duration (64-74% more dot damage effectively if you have no skill duration nodes, considerably worse if you do) or rapid decay is another 40%. Both really depend on how many APS you gain from faster attacks.

I'm running Bone Offering (not Flesh) because it pegs my spell block (and puts my attack block over 60%, and theirs over 50% thanks to jewels and an Intuitive Leap to Decay Ward). I do have Commander of Darkness, but I'm only running two auras since I have basically no aura reservation reduction, so they're on about 30% increased attack speed right now. Multistrike seems unattractive because I'm pretty sure I'd double-dip on Less Damage. If that's correct, I'd do more physical damage than with Faster Attacks but less poison damage than my current five-link.

My zombies are currently level 19. Part of the reason I'm trying to get my links sorted out is because I'm saving up for a Skin of the Loyal (for +1 gem level), which can't be chromed. Anyway, right now that puts them about eight or nine hundred base damage per hit and, with I think 115% minion life, around 7k HP. I could use Vitality rather than Discipline but I doubt that would help them enough to make a difference and it would probably make me squishier, which I don't want.

I actually have 75% increased skill duration (to keep Offerings and Tempest Shield up longer) which makes Increased Duration look somewhat less attractive. I originally thought Rapid Decay would be good, but in practice it doesn't affect Zombies (even if they have a DoT support linked).

As for Spectres, I generally go for something that has a ranged physical or chaos attack (or fire with a good ignite chance or burning ground), but since I don't always play very long at a time, I can't always afford to go shopping for Knitted Horrors. I have them in a four-link +2 Minion helmet with Minion Damage, Minion Speed, and Summon Chaos Golem. Previously I typically ran spectres with Culling Strike and Item Rarity but I decided to try something different this time. Either way they're not a huge part of my strategy.

It's looking like Faster Attacks is my best option, with Added Chaos Damage as a somewhat distant second.

Is poedb.tw more up-to-date/accurate than pathofexile.gamepedia.com?

you can do T13 and below no problem with knitted horrors from dried lake I very rarely go shopping for spectres and thats one of the biggest reasons i love knitted horrors so much - if you are going full zombie dps (with a 6 link) you generally want the spectres to support your minions.

For myself I used a femur's of the saint for the actual zombies and a 4 link for the spectres with gmp/minion damage/slower proj and they continuined to trash everything fairly easily. I didn't have a poison sword so I had to use a poison gem which used up my bloodlust slot but in your case you could run both I think it'd be pretty effective.

Oh I used a spectre AoE/Souleater jewel too and i can recommend that the horrors fire like a machinegun its quite entertaining.

You do double dip on multi-strike's damage reduction so that is out. It sounds to me like you have the choice of

Bloodlust + Knitted Horrors for Spectres

or just faster attacks

The one thing I will add in favour of the horrors again though is the poison sword will work for them as well so running them with double dip gems should synergise nicely. You could even run one horror two monkey chieftains to get bleed + frenzy for everything.

The knitted horrors are working well with Bloodlusted zombies. I've also given the zombies Faster Attacks in place of Void Manipulation. Overall this setup seems to be working fairly well. Thanks, everyone, for all your advice. Final six-link, for those curious:
Raise Zombie-Minion Damage-Melee Physical-Melee Splash-Bloodlust-Faster Attacks