Most enjoyable levelling yet. Speedy SRS + Zombies: Easy playstyle, cheap to start, scales well

Our DPS comes from SRS and Zombies buffed by Victario's influence auras, and sped up so they get to enemies before enemies get to you.

1) This build is perfectly suited to Delving. While running as fast as you can, you are still killing everything, so you can collect great loot from delving just by sticking to the path, not fiddling around with s#@tty flares and dynamite and darkness.

2) Cheap early, scales decently late. At the time of posting, a Queen's Escape costs 7 Chaos. All other levelling items are so cheap as to be virtually free, or can be replaced by whatever rares you find.

3) Simple playstyle: One damage skill, One movement skill. Your eyes are on collecting loot, map pathing and keeping your quicksilver flask up.

4) Glass cannon build: It's kill or be killed. We have little damage avoidance or mitigation, and a low end life pool. Fortunately you will kill almost everything before it has a chance to get near you. You will still need to be wary of exploding monsters, poor positioning, ground effects, labrynth traps. These are often hard/impossible to avoid, and will hit you hard. Life flask reflexes are tested more than tankier builds

5) 30 minions on screen risks lag. 30 fast moving minions just seems to cause more lag than usual. Also as usual, the new league has more lag than standard. Enjoying this build assumes decent internet and graphics.

SPEED
Fast moving SRS are incredibly satisfying. They get to enemies well before you are in danger, kill them, then run on to kill enemies you cannot even see. You need zero mouse targetting skills.

Fast moving zombies are superb bodyguards. If anything gets close, the zombies are on it fast enough to kill without it performing an action.

Minion speed comes from Items, Jewels, Ascendencies, Auras, flesh offering and tree nodes. All easy to acquire, all scales with no dimishing returns. All adds tremendously to effective DPS, and enjoying this game.

CLEARS
Great AOE. Zombies are slamming in AOE and SRS have melee splash. Whatever the mob size, we can handle it. This build is suberb at clusters of enemies like delve encounters and breaches.

BOSSES
Great Single target ... most of the time. For any boss that takes time to spawn, You'll kick ass. You'll have 20 buffed SRS ready and they won't get a look in. For most other bosses, we can switch gems, and get superb single target DPS that no boss can kite. This build is, however, very weak vs bosses that need a player to move around a lot to dodge damage. If we are moving, we cannot cast our SRS and we lose a lot of DPS. If we are moving, our zombies get worse at targetting and we lose a lot of DPS. Also, some bosses have terrain and crazy AOE explosions that do not suit our low life high damage lifestyle.

PARTIES
A huge chunk of our damage comes from auras, so you will make a good party member. But minion cause more lag than other builds, so it's definitely not a recommended party build.

WHY IS THIS FUN?
Our minions can do their damage 2 screens away from you, around corners, and are almost instantly at any location for monsters that pop out of the ground or from the sky. So even though this build has high damage, it is even better at dealing effective damage. Effective, meaning less micromanaging, less dangerous positioning for you, less need to know what enemy you are facing, less factors that need to combine before your DPS hits maximum.
All this leads to more options: how fast you go, how safe you play, how much time you spend picking up items, how much time you spend earning currency.
Also, bees are and mummies are cool skill effects :)

DEFENCE
Some very nice cold and stun damage. Ruthless stuns will proc regularly with SRS high attack speed. The third blow will also chill more and freeze more as it has higher cold damage than usual. Zombies will hit very hard, and have high cold damage from Hatred, so they will chill and freeze as well.
By the time our tree is complete we have 3 spectres. Once can be dedicated to power charges, which on minions gives us lots of crit chance for even more elemental ailments. We also have a curse spot free for temporal chains that will extend duration of freezes, stuns and chills, while slowing enemies movement and DPS.

Here are the details of the final form meme build (SRS and Zombies) based on some of the zippiest minions going around.

Super expensive version: https://pastebin.com/8JdRziSV
Helmet: At least 2 exalt
Weapon: At least 4 exalt
4 link Victarios Influence: 20C
Command of the Pit: 20C
Plus the cost of getting great jewels and 20/20 gems, 21/20 active gems

Stats

With flesh offering, EE, power and frenzy charges, plus vaal haste
5.5K life 500 ES
20K Zombie Life
300K Shaper DPS per SRS and 300K Shaper DPS per zombie, Totalling 8.5 million DPS
400% increased minion movespeed (PoB will say more, but good enough Essence of fear rings may not exist)

More realistic stats (realistic items, no vaal haste, realistic jewels)
5K life 500 ES
20K Zombie life
200K SRS and Zombie Damage (just EE and flesh offering up) totalling 6 million DPS
350% minion movespeed

Here are the details of the 7 Chaos budget levelling guide that is the most fun and fastest way of killing every monster you see, and most that you don't see. Regardless of your end build, you can still level and delve almost as fast as you can run.

Here is the basic build tree, items and gems at 60 skill points: https://pastebin.com/HhqUhLGE

Summary
Queen's Escape: costs 7 chaos
Other mandatory uniques are: Victario's influence
A +2 to minion level helmet (Wraithlord is good, you can use cool melee spectres until mapping when you switch to frenzy and power charge generating spectres)
You will want 2 quicksilver flasks, preferably with chill/freeze avoidance on one and increased movespeed, reduced charges used, increased duration as other good mods
For all other gear, just get enough dexterity, strength and resists.

Targets:
Level 1 - Get a raise Zombie Gem
Level 1 - Get a quicksilver flask ASAP
Level 1 - Get boots with as much movespeed as you can
Level 1 - Get a Ruthless gem and start levelling it in a red gem slot
Level 4 - If not league starting, buy a 20% quality SRS gem (2 chaos)
Level 8 - Get minion Damage gems X2. Link one each to raise Zombie and SRS
Level 8 - Get clarity Gem. Level this up to keep your mana regen happy until end game
Level 8 - Get flame dash gem. Use this to go faster and avoid trouble
Level 16 - Get an Atziri's foible (cost 1 Chaos) - This solves a lot of mana and attribute problems while levelling
Level 18 - Get Minion life, melee damage, elemental damage with attacks and minion speed gems. Start levelling them all. By now you should have at least 3 links for zombies and SRS, so link a third gem to both (your choice which one for now)
Level 24 - Get Hatred, Haste and Anger gems
Level 28 - Get a raise spectre gem
Level 30ish - Go to the library and complete Siosa's quest. This will allow you to buy gems that the witch cannot buy in towns, like Elemental Damage with Attacks and Anger
Level 31 - Get Generosity gem. Link Generosity to Hatred
Level 34 - get a Wraithlord, or any +2 minion level helmet. Use Jewellers orbs to get 4 sockets, orb of fusing to get 4 linked sockets and chromatics to get 2-3 blue colours and 1-2 red colours. This setup will easily get you to white maps
Level 38 - Get a Queen's Escape Sword
Level 52 - Get a Victario's Influence. Put your haste, Anger, Hatred in here. (You no longer need generosity gem)
Level 52 + Keep upgrading the resists on your items to keep them capped. Get life as well!
Level 75 - By now you will be into maps, should have 6 ascendency points, and will be slowly getting experience for your gems. At this point, the levelling guide stops, the build become less exciting, and the grind starts for finding the currency, gear, and experience to make the build endgame viable.

From here, your tree will stack life and your soul will be spent trying to get enough currency for the following:

Endgame: Spend your currency on....
- 5 linked queens escape (30 chaos)
- getting 6 slots on your chest (don't need 4 to be linked until you get an enlighten later)
- Getting better jewels.
- Getting 20% quality on all your gems
- Getting level 21 SRS and raise zombie gems
- Getting a kickass Elder or Shaper Helmet with good mods for your zombies
- getting a command of the pit gloves. Before you can equip it, you'll need to make sure your resists and stats from rings, belt and boots keep your resists capped.
- Getting a 6 linked Queens escape in the right colours (4 Exalt)

Ascendencies
Puppet Master
Commander of Darkness
Invoker
Flesh Binder

Bandits
Kill All

Enchants
Gloves: Of the grave
Boots: Movespeed
Helmet: Bone helmet has a good mod in straight minion damage
Otherwise, any Flesh offering, Anger, Hatred, SRS or Zombie mod is great.


Pantheons
Your choice. I like Garukhan for minor god (movespeed) and Solaris for major god (crit and elemental protection)

In chest: Hatred, Haste, Vaal Haste, Anger, Enlighten linked
CWDT and temporal Chains linked

In Weapon: Summon Raging Spirit > Minion Damage > Melee Splash > Elemental Damage With attacks > Ruthless > Minion Speed
For Bosses: Swap Minion Speed for elemental Focus, and Melee Splash for Multistrike

In helmet: Raise Zombie > Minion Life > Minion Damage > Concentrated Effect > Melee Damage > Hypothermia / Minion speed / Immolate.

In boots: Flesh offering, Flame Dash, Arc, Faster Casting

In gloves: Raise Spectre > Minion Life > Blood magic

In rings: Clarity, Desecrate or stone golem

2 X violent dead Jewels
1 X ghastly eye jewel with minions blind on hit
1 X ghastly eye jewel with minions taunt on hit

Aim for at least 35 life on each jewel. For the memes and speed, aim for minion speed next, and finally minion damage

Cobalt Jewels can also get nice rolls with % increased life for you and % increased damage for minions

Original Poster (OP) Progress
Character "Roy_Drage"
Current level 80, maps owned: Up to tier 6, Delve level 80, currency spent: 30 chaos

Alternate Version
I added in skeleton mages in gloves, for an extra 400K AOE damage. We drop command of the pit, so lose accuracy on our SRS. This, however, allows us a safer playstyle, as the skeleton mages clear from further away, and aggro minions well before we arrive.
https://pastebin.com/AvAXLWkT

Videos
Real technical issues here, but it'll give you an idea:
Will post later maps as I find them!

T6 Fields Map: https://youtu.be/gBZMXdpaKFY
Level 80 Delve: https://youtu.be/_pB9iKdxmjk

FAQ