[3.14] Work in Progress! | Wazzupdj's Triad Grip Aurastack Necro | Vaal summon Skeletons

I'm lazy. I cannot be bothered whatsoever to grind maps until I have an exalt to spend on a marginally better rare piece of gear that ups my damage by 20%. Instead, I take as many decent/build enabling enabling uniques as I can to cobble together a build that goes farther than it really deserves to. As a result, this build should be able to do shaper/elder with almost no crafts (essences and crafting bench, nothing more).

Using a 4G triad grip, we convert 100% of minions' physical damage to cold. From there, the Hatred aura is a straight up double-dipping more multiplier for our minions' cold damage, and as a result scales for very long with increased aura effect.

That is all the excuse needed to start full-on aurastacking. Using Victario's influence, we can stack a bunch more auras without running out of mana reserved. This gives us a bunch of power-boosting auras in exchange for a 6-link, further driving down costs. We also stack a bunch of aura effect on items and on the tree to further capitalize on this. With all this aura effect, using high-impact mines for the aura effect, at max mine stacks we can easily get ~60% chance to deal double damage.

With a hungry loop, we can run a Raise zombie with feeding frenzy for mapping, as well as vaal summon skeletons for bossing in an elder 4-link helmet. The exact minions you run is kind of personal taste; Since most of the power is in your auras and not in your link setup, it is almost trivial to simply swap out the vaal summon skeleton gem for Dominating Blow/SRS/Spectres.

The lack of rares make it hard to build a decent HP pool. To account for this,

+ Easy leveling
+ Scales deep into endgame with little cost
+ Cold-based minions freeze many other would-be threats
+ Many defensive layers
-Bit of a 10-button build
-Hungry loop shenanigans can be annoying
-screen clutter
-Minions, I know a lot of people hate the playstyle
-Minions hitting the boss can perpetually freeze them, which requires walking away from them. (Was this fixed? I don't remember)
-Relies a lot on uniques, not SSF friendly
-Build has been nerfed every league since blight league
+Build has been nerfed every league since blight league

I'm going to save my PoB's when I'm levelling at level 10, 30, 50, and 70, and publish them inside the pob spoiler. I'll try to have something here that resembles a levelling build for leaguestart.

I usually go for raise zombie immediately out the gate, support that with minion damage and summon phantasm (this one you get through the optional Mercy Mission) on a three-link. It's not the fastest levelling experience but it gets the job done. You can also get purifying flame at level 1; the consecrated ground it provides is a huge boost in survivability, and it can apply Elemental Equilibrium for -50% cold resistance later on.

When it's available, put summon skeletons on a separate three-link with minion damage and melee phys/deathmark. You can potentially find a lvl 1 vaal summon skeletons in vaal side areas, so it's worth running those, or even buying a Vaal summon skeletons gem from the market. You can also choose to forego vaal summon skeletons and just level with the non-vaal kind, but you'd be missing out on the trivial bossing the vaal gem provides.

The vitality and precision auras help a lot with early-game damage and survivability.

At level 23 you can equip/buy a Matua Tupuna shield. The +2 socketed minion gems mod is very powerful; Since you get skellies at quite a low level, their damage scales very hard with gem level so socketing the skeletons in the shield is an up to 70% more damage modifier. This alone can easily carry you to act 4/5.

At level 24 we can activate the Hatred aura, and at level 32 we can get a Triad Grip. Turning a Triad grip into one with four green sockets can be done with the vorici trick, but that requires unlocking the crafting recipes in Delve (which you can only do starting in act 4). Once you have the gloves and the recipe, I usually go for a triad grip with the first two sockets green, and the last two blue for levelling, which I'll turn green once I have the jeweller's orbs required.

You can get the Jinxed Juju amulet at level 48, and Victario's Influence at level 52. This is a good moment to select the gems you want for your hungry loop and socket them in your off-hand weapons for levelling.

When doing the first two labs, I like to take Mindless Aggression and then Unnatural strength, so you have +2 to all minion gem levels relatively early on. When your minion gems are not yet level 20, the bonus additional gem levels give is larger. It also increases their base health a lot, which makes them much more survivable.

In the end, this build does head toward a trigger wand. This is only at level ~90, however, once the hungry loop setup has been completed.

Proof-of-concept POB, endgame: https://pastebin.com/LL549Sq4
Proof-of-concept POB, ~lvl 55: https://pastebin.com/5UbVu0sz

All these gems are in the order of most important to least.
(Helmet) Vaal summon Skeletons-Minion damage-Deathmark-Elemental Damage with Attacks
(Body Armour) Hatred-Precision-Skitterbots-bonechill-Flesh and Stone-Vaal haste. Activating the haste aura is nice, but not required. You can choose to forego the haste aura, and reinvest the reduced mana reserved into other stats.
(Gloves) Phase run-Dash-Second Wind-Desecrate
(weapon 1) Bone offering-Assassin's Mark-Frostbite. This is a trigger wand,
(shield) Raise spectre-Blood Magic-Animate Guardian. We need the blood magic so that the frenzy charge/power charge monkeys keep spamming their skill.
(boots)High impact mine-purifying flame-carrion golem-discipline.
(ring 1)Vitality.
(ring 2)Raise zombie. This is a hungry loop; more info on this can be found below.
Tree/Ascendancies
Mindless Aggression-Unnatural Strength-Commander of Darkness-Mistress of Sacrifice.
Pre-hungry loop setup:

Animate Guardian gear
Spectres Used
Hungry Loop
Getting the 4g Triad grip with Vorici trick