"Wraith bomber" - summon your army of spooky goons and potentially fry your computer (0.7.0d)

Acolyte
1

Disclaimer: currently with my setup this build causes massive lag and i have not been able to progress to a point where i can min/max the character, so everything here will be just general outlines to follow

i made this guide so others may follow it and report on their experiences, to see if it really does cause huge lag or its just me

as for people asking for a video, refer to this thread, it has a very short video on the lag and i explain why i cannot make a longer and proper showcase.

on to the guideā€¦

SUMMARY

this build focuses on generating large numbers of minions with Summon wraiths
Wandering spirits and Rip blood are specialized for mana sustain to keep up with the massive costs of the main skills

the secondary main skill is Sacrifice which is specialized for chain explosions and to re summon minions you sacrifice back into more minions

the last skill to use, is up to preference, i recommend
Transplant for mobility
Mark of death for plain old more damage
Exhume, seems useless but i will go into details later once i explain the passive choices.

GEARING

your stat priority on gear should be INT (to scale everything)
glancing blow and protections as your defensive stats
run this build with a wand/scepter + shield
the wand/scepter is needed for the -3 mana cost affix (helps a lot with sustain)
the only unique i recommend is Doublet of Onos Tull the bleeding chance will power your minions damage and int will scale it all.

this chest is very important for your minions damage but if you cannot get this chest there are alternative ways on the passive tree of Summon wraiths and Sacrifice to give your minions consistent DoTs on hit,
for Wraiths spec into the Noxius strikes passives on the left side of its tree
for Sacrifice spec 2 points into the Eviscerating Wraith passive on the bottom of its tree

PLAY STYLE

cast everything off cool down, the better you time your spells the more efficient and powerful this build gets, keep up your summon count (sometimes you should cast sacrifice and hit nothing to re summon your minions before they all die out) and use the ā€œcommand attackā€ button(A) for your minions regularly if not always, when you go below mana (globe turns purple) spam rip blood on mobs to regenerate it, having -3 mana cost on your weapon removes the mana cost of rip blood and helps this build massively.

your own minions have the potential to box you in and get you killed because you can collide with them, using Transplant is the best way to avoid this issue, but if you are using any other skill try and pop your minions with sacrifice to escape, doing this should clear any threat thats too close to you and generate a ton of ward as extra protection against anything unexpected happening.

SKILL SPECIALIZATIONS

nodes highlighted in red are priorities to max out the rest of the points left over can be spent as you wish, i will give a more detailed explanation and recommendations just bellow the pictures

RIP BLOOD

head straight for the upper left side towards the mana regain nodes, you need this to help with sustain, after that max out the blood splatter node for aoe, you can regain over 50% of your mana back in one cast if you hit a big pack of monsters

i currently have this specialized further towards the bottom left for the corrosion debuff which reduces enemy armor(since most of the damage this build does is physical)

WANDERING SPIRITS

go towards the top right straight to the ā€œgain mana when spirits expire nodeā€ then go to the bottom right towards the cooldown reduction node, after that you can either max out the ward generation node (just before the mana node) or go for the summon frequency node on the bottom right

for the remaining points i currently have it specialized to make spirits shoot poison projectiles, you can opt to go into the fear nodes but they will make the skill cost extra mana.

SUMMON WRAITHS

head to the top right into the ā€œmass wraith nodesā€ this will give the skill a cooldown but make it summon up to 7 wraiths.

you can head further in and grab the cooldown reduction node, the rest of the points are for making the wraiths last as long as possible (max hp and the 4pt reduced health drain node)
you can opt to drop some points from the hp or cooldown reduction node to max out the poison chance node on the bottom left (this should boost the wraiths damage by a lot)

SACRIFICE

big boy damage.
head into the chain explosion node to the right then go down into the Crimson horror node on the bottom left, this combo will allow you to pop all your normal wraiths and convert them into tanky and long lasting blood wraiths.

max out Pontifex and blood wraith damage + health nodes on the way towards crimson horror
the rest is up to you, i would recommend getting some points into the aoe node (Necrotic audience) bigger aoe will allow you to pop more minions and 1 point into the blood wraith leech nodes

currently i have the rest of the points into the bone nova nodes, but i do not recommend that, these nodse are a trap if they are not specialized into enough, i suggest going left into the ignite and fire damage nodes, maxing out ignite over fire damage

PASSIVES

as stated in the disclaimer i could not min/max this build so im only lvl 55 and this passive tree in incomplete.

nodes highlighted in red are priorities to max out, nodes not highlighted are flexible and up to you to decide.

ACOLYTE

INT and Mania of Mortality, the biggest node for your defenses, this passive is the main engine behind your ward generation
the last 2 nodes are filler, i put them into ward retention.

LICH

HUGE int node and its right at the start
max out the 8 pointer bleed node for a 56% chance for you and your minions to cause bleeding, this is a huge damage boost, combined with Doublet fo Onos Tull your minions have a 96% chance to bleed, now imagine have 30-70 minions all attacking and applying their bleed stacks.

later on you can revisit lich and grab the last INT node (but i dont think there will be enough points.)

NECROMANCER

i will be going into more detail here since this is the main tree.

grab the minion health nodes as a starter, more minion health = longer lasting wraiths
after that you can eithr go into Cursed blood for the 60% phys damage for you and minions or go into Marrow armor for lots of armor

Wisp weaver, Putrid retribution and Ward vortex for the next 15 points
wisp weaver and ward vortex for additional ward generation and ward retention

Putrid retribution is a huge node, it allows you to sustain huge numbers of minions, since the main focus of this build is to ā€œkillā€ you own minions this passive will proc very regularly and can start a cycle of summoning blood wraiths + putrid wraiths

you can grab 1 point into Mark of Punishment, this will proc almost always when you use sacrifice and basically give you a free 30% more damage boost if a monsters survive a cast of sacrifice

spend the rest of the points into whatever until you can reach Empty the Graves, this passive is a huge armor boost considering how much minions you summon.

spend points into whatever to reach Undead Intellect, max this out for a huge INT boost
as you go up there i recommend spending points on more defensive passives like Rite of Undeath and Blood armor

WHY GET EXHUME?

this skill is secretly OP for this particular build, why?
exhume is actually coded to summon minions which instantly die which then generate the corpses

you have 3 passives which benefit you when a ā€œminion diesā€

  1. Mania of mortality
    casting exhume has a chance to give you a huge amount of ward almost for freeā€¦
  2. Putrid retribution
    casting exhume basically allows you to summon putrid wraiths on demand but at a % chance
  3. Mark of Punishment
    casting exhume has a chance of debuffing everything around it to take 30% more damage.

CONCLUSION

thats it, i hope someone will try out this build and not get crazy lag to be able to stretch and optimize it to the max, unfortunately i currently cant, possibly because of my computer specs.

thanks.

4 Likes
2

I am also playing a sacrifice bomber. But I am using Skeletons to get more minions and also mana sustain. Mind catcher gives 15 mana per skeleton and so far seems to be enough with no mana efficiency on gear. I will check Exhume tho.

Btw you Necromancer tree image is same with Lich one.

3

just edited it, thanks for pointing it out
i havent played around with skeles much will test them

if i may ask do you also lag with this build?

4

Only during explosion but not for too long, just a small spike. I didnā€™t test it in Arena yet tho.

5

hmm, how much minions can you sustain with your build? i can easily have 50ish follow me around and i get input lag at that points(my character starts moving in place and it takes a while for commands to register), and the collision from them can make it worse in tight spaces

if i pop sacrifice on 7+ mobs with 30-50 minions all the damage calculations and additional actions register and it usually ends up crashing the game.

6

None :smiley: I didnā€™t invest any minion damage so if i summon they explode. Also I didnā€™t invest much in Necromancer tree yet, focusing on Lich nodes. Do your minions contribute well? I wasnā€™t sure if it would be viable to try to scale both minions and explosion. I can kill monolith bosses with 2-3 explosions without marking for death.

7

yea they can do huge damage, all of them can cause bleeding if i have 20 of them wail on a boss it usually drops in 10ish seconds, but by that time i would have already popped sacrifice and one shot it lol

if it doesnt die, sacrifice re summons my army as blood wraiths and they can continue wrecking the boss as i add more to my minion count with normal wraiths and i wait for CD on the next sacrifice.

8

Sounds good, I will probably try that when I get some more levels. Donā€™t wanna respec now.

9

This looks sick, gonna start leveling it to try it out tonight!

10

This looks fun, thanks, will also be sacrificing my GPU for minions later.

11

How far did you go with this in arena? I believe itā€™s unplayable?
Susprised on how much ward you have.

1 Like
12

this was my 1st build in the last alpha patch, i got to around 700-750 at lvl 68,
but arena didnā€™t scale as hard as it does now so it probably counts as like 300-400 for this patch. i thought the game was just lagy on its own back then but i sat through with it since it was alpha, realized later it wasnt that bad when i started my sentinel lol. havent done arena with this beta character as its unbearably laggy.

my strategy was to sit in a corner and have my minions body block incoming monsters, would help me not die with the lag lol, they would usually murder mobs pretty fast if i saw too much monsters i pop sacrifice and wipe the screen, if arena wave didnt end id do a lap and kill anything that didnt go into my corner.

ward generation is RNG, i usually have it at around 600-800 on average but RNG has bought me to 2-3k ward before lol.

13

Arena is about stayling alive mostly. But with this amount of lag i doubt itā€™s even possible. But you need to try it, cause i really like the build but i wonder how well it survives in real action. In monolith of fate everything is very easy unless you stack triple damage or triple protection mods

14

ill try and see how far i can go with this Beta character, but i doubt ill break even 120 lol, and playing it is frustrating to me so my motivation to push is low.

you can try the build for yourself and see how far you can push it (this is the main reason i published this guide) but you might find it too laggy and you just cant anymore like me lol.

15

Just have to say Iā€™m loving this build so far! level 62, I did manage a 65 arena (then died to ground aoe getting blocked in by minions, swapped back to the teleport skill now :stuck_out_tongue: ).

It does hang up for 1 second on big sacrifices, but itā€™s mostly manageable.
My ward seems to be 400-1000 mostly (it ranges a lot). Also seems to make the armor bounce up / down as itā€™s based on life/ward (so the higher the ward, the less armor you have).

16

thanks :smiley:
yea, getting boxed in by your minions is an issue, dont know why they have collision with the player at all. ill add this detail in the play style section

does it feel laggy when you have 30-50 minions?

17

Having a lot of fun so far. Still only in my late 30s right now but itā€™s starting to feel good. A couple suggestions for the guide:

  1. Cooldown reduction on helmet!
  2. High spell damage wand with % spell damage and -mana cost of skills prefix

Will update later when I get higher level and start gearing up.

18

nice
CDR speed is a prefix, you would need to drop glancing blow for it, i think it caps out at 15% for t5 so not that big really will probably shave half a second or less from most of the cooldowns

19

This sounds fun! +1 thanks for the build guide. Iā€™m gonna try this for my next character

20

What do you think of taking Stench of Blood for Rip Blood? Minion AI is really bad and this could really help. Canā€™t respec to it currently so was wondering if anyone has tried it?