The goal of this build was to make a pure Zombie build that feels as smooth as possible to map with while at the same time is able to do all content in the game.

 

Quick Jump

 

Skill Tree 

Ascendancy: Invoker -> Soul Weaver -> Commander of Darkness -> Mistress of Sacrifice

Bandits: Kill all

Pantheon

Soul of Lunaris: The phys reduction when shield charging into enemies and the chain immunity make this the best one.

Soul of Shakari: Chaos damage reduction and poison immunity is really good for this build, since it uses Zealot's Oath.

PoB: https://pastebin.com/Zqc6mK06


 

 

 

 

 

Defense & Offense

Defense show
First 'Cast when Damage Taken' setup:
Level 2 CwDT
Level 8 Spirit Offering
This triggers whenever you take 583 damage, means you will recover energy shield every time Spirit Offering is cast and gain extra elemental resistances, the most important defensive layer of the build. You will rarely even drop down to your Life pool while standing right inside every mob.
Second 'Cast when Damage Taken' setup:
Level 1 CwDT
Level 1 Desecrate
Level 1 Convocation (20% Quality)
This triggers whenever you take 528 damage, this means it will be casted before the Spirit Offering.
Desecrate provides you with corpses for the Offering.
Convocation makes your Zombies keep up with you faster, increasing the clear speed.
(Note that these gems dont need any levels to be useful for this build, so you can keep them at level 1)
Zombie Leech:
To keep you alive through chaos damage, your Zombies will leech Life for you by using "The Baron".
Fortify:
Linked with Shield Charge to keep it up all the time.
Energy Shield Regen:
The Energy Shield pool of this build is not that big (around 4000), so the regeneration through Zealot's Oath is initially not that high, but the Spirit Offering boosts it up to 6000. Plus using a Stone Golem (with the buff helmet enchant, if you can get your hands on one) and Holy Relic will give you a significant amount of ES regen.

Offense show
Frenzy Charges:
Two Carnage Chieftain spectres grant your Zombies frenzy charges. Those are way more powerful on minions than they are on players. I explain how to set them up in the "Support Spectres" section below.
Auras:
You use Hatred linked with Generosity and Haste linked with Enlighten to have enough mana left for Shield Charge.
Spirit Offering:
Zombies gain extra Chaos damage.
Elemental Equilibrium:
You proc EE by hitting enemies with your Shield Charge using lightning damage on one of the rings. This boosts the cold damage of Hatred and the fire damage of "Mon'tregul's Grasp".
Animate Guardian:
Your Animate Guardian boosts the damage of the Zombies by wearing "Leer Cast" or Jagged fossil crafted helmet and "Kingmaker" or "Dying Breath".
Map Clear:
The mod "Enemies killed by Zombies explode dealing Fire Damage" of "Mon'tregul's Grasp" and their slam is enough for clearing maps so you dont have to use a Melee Splash gem, this makes room for another damage support gem.

 

 

Skills Gems Setup

SRS + Minion Damage + Melee Splash + Melee Physical Damage + Spell Echo + Maim

This is your main skill until your Zombies start to get strong enough later when they have enough survivability. Use them in a Tabula if you have one.

Zombie + Minion Damage + Melee Physical Damage + Minion Speed

Extra damage and meat shield for leveling. Use them in The Baron or in a "+X to Minion Gems" helmet.

Hatred + Generosity

Best aura for SRS and Zombies.

Clarity

Helps out with mana regen for SRS.

Ball Lightning + Faster Casting + Greater Multiple Projectiles

Increases damage by applying Elemental Equilibrium.

 

Gear

For a more detailed selection of gear, please refer to the PoB Link. The gear selected in the PoB is not mandatory if it is not stated. It is recommended that the player check the affix of the gear and make a better choice.

 

Enchantments

Helmet enchantments

There are a some really good and useful options here.

The best one in my opinion is the Stone Golem buff one, it gives you an extra 200 Energy Shield regen per second.

Both Desecrate enchants also add a nice defensive boost for the Cast when Damage Taken setups.

Zombie attack speed and damage enchants are good of course, but they are expensive and i actually prefer the defensive ones above over some damage that's not really needed.

Same goes with the Spirit Offering extra damage.

Then there are enchantments that add some utility to this build, like Convocation cooldown recovery, Haste mana reservation, Hatred mana reservation, Shield Charge attack speed and

Spirit Offering duration.

Glove enchantments

Not a lot of good options here.

Most useful one would be "of Light", that creates consecrated ground for you and your Zombies when you take a crit.

The minion ones "of the Grave", "of War" and "of Reflection" are at least better than no enchantment at all.

What you dont want to have here are enchantments that deal fire or cold damage, so it wont proc Elemental Equilibrium.

Boot enchantments

Some useful ones here.

Best defensive one is the extra Life regen enchantment when hit.

Best utility one is the extra movement speed when not hit.

The added lightning damage enchant can be useful if you cant get lightning damage on your rings to proc Elemental Equilibrium.

 

Map mods

You can run all map tiers with almost all map mods without a problem. There are only two mods to avoid:

Monsters reflect 18% of Physical Damage: Your Zombies will kill themselves.

Players cannot Regenerate Life, Mana or Energy Shield: Can't Shield Charge, so no Fortify and Elemental Equilibrium.

 

Leveling

Focus on life and elemental resists on your rares.

You can use "Meginord's Vise" to help you get to 1000 strength for the Zombie leech before you do uber lab for the last Ascendancy nodes.

Only use the body armor and the gloves once you have "Mistress of Sacrifice", so you can use the auto Spirit Offering setup. If you have less than 1000 strength when do you so, you only have life flasks to get your health back.

There list some ways here how you can optimize this build for general mapping without giving up too much damage and survivability.

Clear Speed Setup

Zombie Links: Use an Item Rarity insted of a Multistrike/Maim/Ruthless to increase your chances for better loot.

Passive Tree: Give up the Life and ES nodes at "Melding" and/or "Written in Blood" to be able to get the flask nodes at "Alchemy".

Flasks: "Experimenter's" prefix on both Quicksilver and Silver flasks and "Adrenaline" suffix on the Quicksilver in combination with "The Overflowing Chalice" will grant you almost 100% flask uptime and fast shield charging.

Enchantments: Get the Shield Charge attack speed helmet enchant and the movement speed boots enchant.

End Game Bosses

The damage of the Zombies is not the problem here, but their survivability.

This is the best setup for this: Zombie + Empower + Minion Damage + Phys Damage + Maim + Minion Life

If the Zombies are still dying, you can temporarily respec out of some health nodes and get the reduced mana reservation nodes north west on the tree so you have enough mana to resummon them.

You can also drop the Haste aura for Vitality, this way you have enough mana to resummon them and also add a nice boost of health regen to you and your Zombies. You can use a damage support instead of the Minion Life Support this way.

To have corpses to summon them, use a high level Desecrate gem instead of the low level one, so you can cast it yourself and it wont get triggered by the Cast when Damage Taken.
A high level Convocation gem is also helpful to manually get them out of the Shaper beam for example.