[3.19] The Hymn of Steel is sung at the Iron Mass. Chaos Skeleton build.

POB


The Iron Mass has been an item in POE that has been kind of neglected from the start. I think most Minions players have looked at it at one point or another and written it off since scaling skeleton levels has traditionally been better, and Skeleton mages have been much, much better the past few leagues. But with nerfs to Minion gems in general, and buffs to the Covenant, I think the Iron Mass now has it's time to shine

Why play this build?


Why not play this build?



How the Build works

"

We use Envy and the Covenant's level 29 added chaos damage gem to give our skeletons a huge mass of flat damage to scale with the Iron Mass's triple damage mod and wither on hit.

We add as much attack speed and accuracy as possible to ensure our skeletons are ramping up as many wither/poison stacks per second as possible.

Playstyle

Use Whirling blades to whip around the map at high speed and drop skeletons whenever you run into mob packs. Use Smite to keep your iron mass buff up, and hand-cast despair on rares/uniques.

Vaal summon skeletons and Vaal haste can be used on bosses or league mechanics.



Gear




Skill Links




Levelling:
To be finished later

Tagging this in case I need a second post

e: double post

Hello,
thanks for sharing.
Going to try this build out and twist it a bit to make it how I like it.
Could you please tell me the Spectres you use and the Animate Guardian Setup?
Much appreciated!

Thanks for the interest! I don't have a levelling tree out yet but if you have any questions there, let me know.



Spectres are currently 1 host chieftain, 1 carnage chieftain, 1 arena master.

I'm considering going 2 carnage chieftains since we benefit from attack speed more than crit so much that more consistent applications of 3 frenzies might be worth it since we benefit so much from getting poison/withered stacks up.

I've also heard great things about primal crushclaws due to their action speed debuff but I've yet to test it out in practice.


As for AG, what I'm currently using is relatively budget, you can go more expensive. I do not believe we need the more tanky AG setups since we are constantly getting infusions of 5% health on all our minions from skeletons dying or being refreshed, our AG's biggest defensive bane is that we don't stack minion level gear for more base life, and that's not really all that fixable with gear. I haven't lost a single AG I put more than 20c into though.

- Kingmaker

- Leer Cast (Crown of the tyrant w/ white socket is almost certainly better)

- Garb of the Ephemeral

- Rare gloves with intimidate on hit and resists (your AG should usually be in your defensive auras due to meat shield but it never hurts to make sure they're tanky out of it)

- Shocking ground boots, I don't rely on shocking ground and believe it's off for the POB, but it's nice when it's there. Sapped ground would be the more defensive choice, but I'd take unreliable offense over unreliable defense.

I'll do a more formal update to this build once 3.20 launches and I can play around with it more but my initial thoughts are:

- Kingmaker rarity nerf is going to suck. The Fortify was a great defensive layer and once that came online I was basically only dying to high tier lake enemies and Pinnacle bosses. If the price "only" goes up around 4x I'd still recommend it for deep endgame play, the only AG I lost all league was to a essence memory'd super juiced mob when the AG got out of my auras.

- Vaguely optimistic about the curse changes. Despair losing flat chaos sucks hard for this build since flat damage makes this build with IM's triple damage, but we weren't getting much out of it in the fights we needed it for. The nerf to white mob effectiveness doesn't mean crap because this build mows down anything but tough ANs and Pinnacles effortlessly.

- The Relics are going to be potentially sick for this build. We've got so much of our gear slots dedicated to uniques that even mundane stats like stats or resists will be liked. The Aura effect affix that we do know is an option would kick ass with our many auras. Some of the keystones we can't realistically path to would be good to marginal upgrades as well.

- Vaal smite looks cool but even with it's boosted buff, don't bother. Vaal haste and Vaal Skeletons are so integral to the damage windows that we don't want to split the soul gain 3 ways. Also if you use a dedicated push to walk key like I do, we don't have an extra slot for another skill.

- Jewel ailment rework may mean we're able to get off of PoE if we can get ailment immunity to shock and ignite from our jewels and more base resist than I had in 3.19. Grace would be my first thought for a replacement.

- Was hoping for a general minion buff. Didn't get one. Dang.