"Embrace the serene power that is undeath"

The Necromancer is a class that mainly focuses on summoned minions. The skill tree covers a broad range of minion stat bonuses, but also bonuses specific to zombies, skeletons, and spectres. 

This build focuses on those phantasms while supporting them through MASSIVELY CLEVER use of the player and other minions. You will deal a mixture of mainly Physical and Chaos damage, with poison stacking for additional damage. Smite gives you a small portion of extra Lightning damage, but that's sort of insignificant.

Quick Jump

• Pros & Cons

• Skill Tree 

• Gems & Gear Setup

• Leveling

• Mapping / Endgame Gameplay 

• Expectations & POB

Pros & Cons

Pros

• + Relatively high effective health and sustain: 4k+ ES and 4k+ Life, allowing you to heal yourself for over 700 ES for every maxed Spirit Offering (9 corpses).
• + Safe for most bosses: Even if your phantasms die, you can quickly resummon them as meatshields or to focus targets at a distance and keep them at bay.
• + Fast clear speed: Not a top-tier clearing build, but comfortable nonetheless. The new minion nodes in the passive tree allow for faster leap slams.
• + Cheap startup: You don't need a 6-link to start dishing out your damage (although of course a 6-link chest will greatly increase singletarget damage).

Cons

• - Zombies die quickly under extreme circumstances, resummoning them takes a while and leaves you more vulnerable.
• - No CWDT setup (if you consider that a con).
• - No ailment immunity, relies on flasks for freeze / bleed / shock removal.
• - Weak against maps with "no regen" mods due to low amount of unreserved mana.

Skill Tree 

While leveling, prioritize in this order

1. Max zombie count
2. Spiritual Command (Increases and reductions to minion attack speed also apply to you)
3. Jewel slots (at least 2)
4. Max spectre count (1)
5. %Life and %Energy Shield
6. Minion damage

Ascendancy

• Normal lab: Mistress of Sacrifice
• Cruel lab: Invoker
• Merciless lab: Flesh Binder
• Eternal lab: Puppet Master / Commander of Darkness

Bandits

This quest is given to you by Eramir in the Forest Encampment after you complete Through Sacred Ground or talk with any of the bandit leaders. There are three different bandit leaders. You can either side with one of them (and kill the other two) to get the respective reward or you can kill all of them to get the reward from Erami - from Gamepedia

Kill all bandits

Pantheons

Do what you wish.

Passive Tree

Gems & Gear Setup

Weapons: Soulwrest

Gems: Minion Damage Support, Vile Toxins Support, Summon Phantasm on Kill Support, Controlled Destruction Support, Faster Projectiles Supportm, Lesser Projectiles Support

Body Armor: Lightning Coil

Gems: Raise Spectre, Minion Life Support, Blood Magic Support, Maim Support, Withering Touch Support, Raise Zombie

Jewels: Ghastly Eye Jewel

Gloves: Allelopathy

Gems: Temporal Chains, Spell Cascade Support, Cast while Channelling Support, Desecrate

Threshold Jewels: Spreading Rot *2

Boots: Two-Toned Boots (Fire and Lightning Resistance)

Gems: Faster Attacks Support, Leap Slam, Fortify Support, Dominating Blow

Helmet: Bone Helmet

Gems: Blood Magic - Blood Rage - Increased Duration - Flame Dash

Jewellery

Citrine Amulet, Sapphire Ring, Gloom Whorl Two-Stone Ring, Stygian Vise + Ghastly Eye Jewel             

Get most of your life and resistances here. If you don't have an Envy amulet, switch out a ring for an Unset Ring with Haste.

Flasks

Seething Divine Life Flask Of Animation, Avenger's Amethyst Flask Of Staunching, Rotgut, Witchfire Brew, Avenger's Granite Flask Of Curing

Despair aura helps you nuke down nearby targets faster. Rest is utility and can be any combination you desire.

Leveling

Act 1

• Get Raise Zombie as your first skill from quest reward. Keep Fireball around until you can get Summon Raging Spirits later in the act.
• Get Summon Holy Relic.
• Keep an eye out for three-link items (2 Blue, 1 Red)
• Get Minion Damage from quest reward. Buy Melee Splash from Nessa and link both to Summon Raging Spirits.
• Get both Flesh Offering and Spirit Offering. Use Flesh Offering, level Spirit Offering in a free slot.

Act 2

• Kill all bandits.
• Get Minion Life from Yeena and link it to your zombies if possible.

Act 3

• Got poe currency? Buy a Reverberation Rod (very cheap) and socket your raging spirits in there. If you've found a chaos orb by now, you could probably buy a Bones of Ullr.
• Get Raise Spectre. You could use it, but it doesn't really matter since they'll likely die all the time anyway.

Act 4

• Get a Chaos Golem
• Get Vile Toxins. Level it in a free slot.

Act 5

• Complete the Death to Purity quest and get Spreading Rot from quest reward. Buy another one if you can. Or buy both.

Act 6

• Clear the Twilight Strand. Get all the other gems mentioned in the Gems section and level them if you can.

Raise Zombie, Raise Spectre and Leap Slam should take priority over anything else.

If you don't have enough slots, that's fine. Don't spend your jeweller's orbs unless you have more than enough to spare (300+)

• Trash those stupid Raging Spirits.

Act 8

• Got poe currency? Buy your Soulwrest so you can wear it as soon as you ding 59! Use your jeweller's orbs to get it to at least 4 sockets. If you've got plenty to spare, try for 5 or even 6.
• Find a 4-link item (3 Blue, 1 Green). Socket Blight, Cast while Channeling, Desecrate and Spell Cascade. If you can't find one, prioritize Desecrate and Spell Cascade

Spell Cascade allows you to Desecrate 15 corpses with 1 cast and 1 charge. It's not a necessity for leveling, but it will speed it up and save time when you need to summon from scratch

Rest of the story

If you've gotten your 4+ socket Soulwrest by now, congratulations. You will now fly through the rest of the story content. How, you ask?

• Cast Desecrate (optimal setup in "Act 8" spoiler)
• Use Spirit Offering to instantly summon 9 phantasms
• If you sockted "Summon Phantasm on Kill" in your staff (which you should), repeat the previous step for 18 phantasms!
• Waltz through the story while your army sings the song of their people.

Mapping / Endgame Gameplay 

You'll likely find yourself looking at everything from a distance while you use Blight to spawn corpses underneath your enemies and send your minions on the offense, but you'll quickly notice that there will often be room for you to just leap slam in and safely use Convocation to bring your friends and slaughter your enemies.

Use Blight to hinder enemies and increase their chaos damage taken. Trigger a Spell Cascade of Desecrate (15 corpses in 1 trigger) and Spirit Offering x2 to summon a total of 10 phantasms. If you've got your defenses covered, pop your flasks, leap slam and convocate. Use Dominating Blow on anything that's still alive.

Longer encounters and Bossfights: Do the previous, but hold Blight for just a bit longer before Spirit Offering to cast Temporal Chains first, to increase all debuff durations and an additional slow. Resummon a few zombies to trigger Caustic Clouds for another layer of damage.

There's somewhat of a ramp-up in longer single-target fights as your zombies need a bit of time to get 15 wither stacks and your phantasms need a second or two to get 5 or more poison stacks. While your minions are doing their thing, you can switch between channeling Blight for debuffs and attacking with Smite for buffs. If you need some healing, use Spirit Offering in between for 700ES heals.

Expectations & POB

POB link: https://pastebin.com/ctepsfJD

(If you do not know how to use it, see the instructions below, otherwise please ignore)

• Download Path of Building (link: https://github.com/Openarl/PathOfBuilding)
• Copy pastebin URL.
• Launch path of building.
• Click on Import/Export.
• Click Import from Pastebin
• Paste the URL copied in step 2.
• Done!