BalorMage's Holy Relic Necromancer FAQ (PoE Mirage)

General Questions

A special thanks to LupusImmortalis for putting this FaQ together.

Is There a Way to Play This Build Without Spectres and Animate Guardian?

Technically yes, but if this is a big issue I would suggest playing a different build.

Which Items Do I Need to Start The Build?

Poison Holy Relic Necromancer needs Geofri's Crest, a sword with a base 1.60 Attacks per second (ideally, but if you struggle with Dexterity requirements early, 1.5 base Attacks per second is fine) and an open Suffix to craft on, as well as two Transfigured Gems – Summon Holy Relic of Conviction and Lancing Steel of Spraying. In a perfect world you’d also get Darkness Enthroned and a couple of Ghastly Eye Jewel, but on an absolute baseline level you can do without.

You also want to craft Trigger a Socketed Spell when you Use a Skill, with a 8 second Cooldown/Spells Triggered this way have 150% more Cost Suffix, which you can now find in the Refinery in Act 9.

Why Specifically a 1.60 APS Weapon Base?

Pretty simple; the faster you attack, the better the build will feel. With a base of 1.6 attacks per second, you can eventually reach about 2 attacks per second with a crafted weapon.

We will always hit attack speed breakpoints because of how Lancing Steel of Spraying works, however, the faster we attack, the more Life Gain on Hit we gain, and the smoother and snappier the build feels. It will never be reflected in PoB, but we promise you will love having a 2.0 APS weapon in the endgame, rather than a 1.4 APS weapon.

What Content Can This Build Complete?

Everything, pretty much. It’s not the absolute best at anything, but it can do everything pretty comfortably. The only thing it will struggle with a bit is Sanctum.

Path of Building

Where Do I Find My Minions’ Chance to Poison?

Unfortunately, the game does not tell you that information, so we need to rely on good ol’ Path of Building. If you don’t have it, go grab it from the provided link. The first thing you need to do is import your character. To do that, follow these steps:

1. Click on “Import/Export Build.
2. Under “Character Import”, type in your Account Name, then hit “Start”.
3. Choose the appropriate league and character, tick all the checkboxes and your character is imported into PoB.

Now to find out your minions’ chance to poison, follow these steps:

1. Click on the Calcs tab on the top left side of the screen.
2. Under “View Skill Details” in “Socket Group”, select your Summon Holy Relic of Conviction and click “Show Minion Stats”.
3. Look for the “Poison” box and make sure it says 100%. If you hover over the number besides “Chance to Poison” (above “Total increased”), you can see all your sources of poison chance.

How Do I Get 100% Chance to Poison?

I am glad you asked – let’s break out the calculator and throw some math at you.

At the start, you can get away with just Chance to Poison Support in your main links and maybe one or two Ghastly Eye Jewel inside the passive tree, but eventually, you want to get rid of the support and replace it with something more powerful. That means we need to get 100% poison chance in other ways.

You will use two Ghastly Eye Jewel in your Darkness Enthroned that have an appropriate amount of Minions have (10-15)% chance to Poison Enemies on Hit. Since everyone has a different belt, you can reference the table on the gearing page with all the breakpoints. If your increased effect modifier doesn’t show up in the first column, please just refer to the one before.

Depending on what that number adds up to (the maximum is 60% – two 15% jewels in a 100% increased effect belt), you then need to make up the rest in jewels on the passive tree. Since there are literally hundreds of possible combinations here, I definitely implore you to have a look at the table and make it up as you go.

Why is My DPS in Path of Building So Low?

Unfortunately, PoB has no way of accurately representing Holy Relic’s true DPS. You have to play this one a bit “by ear”. Basically, see how the build feels. If you feel like you lack damage, consider upgrading.

I like to quote something I recently read in a Reddit post: Vibes > DPS numbers.

Build Set-up

What Are The “breakpoints” I’m Hearing About?

Summon Holy Relic of Conviction gives the Relic minions increased cooldown recovery rate (CDR) per 1% Quality on the gem. Without throwing all the math at you, there are six breakpoints of quality (and thus CDR) that allow the Relic’s nova to be triggered more often. These are:

2% (largely irrelevant), 14%, 30%, 52%, 82% and 128%.

In 3.27, there was a new Minion Offence Mastery that grants minions 20% CDR. With this, you can easily enter maps with the 30% CDR breakpoint, as you can add quality to the gem at the Divine Font at the end of the Labyrinth.

Furthermore, the 128% breakpoint will be much easier to reach. The setup for this will be as follows:

4 Green – 2 Red Dialla's Malefaction: Enhance Support (Level 3) in Red – Summon Holy Relic of Conviction (with 20% quality on the gem) in a Green socket, Ashes of the Stars with at least +26% to Quality of all Skill Gems and the aforementioned Minion Offence Mastery. This will total to anywhere from 128% to 132% CDR, depending on the roll on your Ashes.

Do I Need to Hit Certain Attacks Per Second (APS)?

Short answer: No. For the long answer, keep reading.

Normally, to have a benefit from the CDR granted by the skill gem’s quality, you’d need to hit 5 APS for the 52% breakpoint, 6 APS for the 82% and 7.58 APS for the 128%.

However, since we use Lancing Steel of Spraying as our attack to trigger the Holy Relics novas and hit enemies with tons of projectiles, we can forgo the APS requirements.

Which Support Gem Should I Drop in a 5-Link?

Minion Damage Support

Which Movement Skill should I Use?

This comes down to personal preference. We use two types of movement skills in this build. For moving through the map quickly it’s either Shield Charge, Whirling Blades or Leap Slam and for moving over gaps and terrain it’s either Frostblink or Flame Dash.

Why Does My Movement Skill Feel a Bit “Stuttery”?

Make sure you have enabled Always Attack Without Moving on your movement skills. Left-click on the skill and then make sure the box at the top of the skill list is activated.

How Do I Summon My Corpse Spectres?

Most importantly: Take out Bone Offering from the trigger weapon!!!

Then, right-click on the corpse in your inventory. It will appear on the ground in your hideout. Then you can use Raise Spectre as usual.

What Happens When My Corpse Spectres Die/Get Unsummoned?

As of 3.27, there was a huge quality of life change. Here’s the quote from the patch notes:

“When Spectres die they now transform into a floating Orb Spectre that cannot be targeted and cannot use skills. When you enter an area the Orb Spectre will automatically transform back into the original Spectre. Orb Spectres can still be overridden when Raising new Spectres.”

This means unless you accidentally summon over your spectre, you will no longer lose them.

Which Items Go On My Animate Guardian (Affectionately Called “Bob”)?

When you decide to use an Animate Guardian, there are two irreplaceable core items to Bob:

Boots: Windscream (for an additional curse)
Gloves: Any cheap rare gloves with a Curse Enemies with Temporal Chains on Hit corrupted implicit modifier. Can later be replaced by Southbound with the same corruption. Alternatively, you can use Asenath's Gentle Touch.

The other three gear slots have multiple options.

Helmet	Body Armour	Weapon
Leer Cast (cheap, gives 50% increased damage), possibly with a % life regen corruption	Zahndethus' Cassock (very cheap, provides Bob with a ton of Chaos Resistance and creates Consecrated Ground on block)	Dying Breath (cheap, provides increased damage)
Crown of the Tyrant (expensive, specifically with a WHITE socket for tons of extra flat chaos damage)	Garb of the Ephemeral (expensive, provides tankiness for you, extra options on Synthesis Implicits)	Kingmaker (expensive, provides Fortify and Culling Strike) You will eventually want to upgrade from Dying Breath into this.
Mask of the Stitched Demon (expensive, an incredibly defensive option for Bob, makes him nearly unkillable when combined with one of the defensive chests)	Doppelgänger Guise (moderate price, provides tankiness for Bob)
	Gruthkul's Pelt (moderate price, provides tankiness for Bob, but less so than Doppelgänger Guise)

How Do I Assemble My Animate Guardian?

Go into a combat zone (for example Blood Aqueducts in Act 9), throw all items on the ground from your inventory, hover over the gear pieces and press the button for Animate Guardian over each piece. Make sure your loot filter doesn’t hide any of the items. I recommend turning it off temporarily while summoning the Guardian.

Do not try to throw gear on the ground in your hideout or in town! A prompt will show up asking if you wish to delete the item, as gear cannot be on the ground in non-combat zones.

How Do I Keep My Animate Guardian (and Holy Relics) Alive?

If you find your Relics dying early in the progression, swap out Minion Damage Support for Meat Shield Support.

Take the Minion Defence Mastery for Minions Leech 1% of Damage as Life. Use Bone Barrier as your fourth Ascendancy node.

Only start using Animate Guardian at an appropriate Gem level – 19 should usually be fine, and make sure it’s linked to both Minion Life and Meat Shield. Use one of the defensive chests mentioned above. Now that the guardian doesn’t lose his items on death you can do this earlier if you wish but it will die and have to be resummoned in your hideout.

Forgo a third spectre and anoint Decay Ward, a cheap to anoint notable that grants your minions increased block chance and Life Recovery on Block, which synergizes well with Bone Offering.

Is The Build Ailment Immune?

The build is ailment immune in all but name with the right setup.

We get Freeze avoidance from Arctic Armour and chill immunity from a bench craft on our boots eventually. If your Animate Guardian wears Garb of the Ephemeral, you become immune to Chill and Freeze (well, actually your Movement and Action Speed cannot be reduced below base value, but – same difference) and you cannot take Critical Strikes from enemies, which also neutralizes Brittle. That’s the cold ailments taken care of.

For Fire ailments, we reduce the duration of Ignites on us by 60% thanks to the Abberath Pantheon, and will also be unaffected by Burning Ground from it. Scorch lowers our Elemental Resistances by up to 30% for 4 seconds – this one is completely negligible.

As for Lightning ailments, Tempest Shield grants us Shock immunity. Sap makes you deal up to 20% less damage for 4 seconds – again, this is negligible.

And for Corrupting Blood, we can use the corresponding Protection Mastery until we can get immunity on a jewel corruption.

Why Do We Take Mind Over Matter?

We don’t. What we do is use a Timeless Jewel in the socket below Mind Over Matter, which will then transform the Keystone into a different one. Do not take Mind Over Matter without the Timeless Jewel!!

The Timeless Jewel we want for our purpose is Elegant Hubris with Commissioned # coins to commemorate Caspiro which will transform the Mind Over Matter Keystone into the Supreme Ostentation Keystone. This Keystone allows us to forgo any attribute requirements on gear, at the downside of not gaining any inherent stat bonuses from our Attributes.

Now, the number on a Timeless Jewel is called the seed. The seed determines what happens to the small and notable passives on the skill tree. Our absolutely ideal best in slot Timeless Jewel would give us the Slum Lord notable on both Arcanist’s Dominion and Fire Walker. However, a jewel like that will be very expensive. You can settle for one of the other notables in the area that will cost you 3 Passive Points to reach, or if you are very early in the progression, just get one that has only the keystone.

Please refer to the Timeless Jewel search within Path of Building to find a proper seed. If you need help on how to use it, please refer to the section later in the FaQ.

How Do We Sustain Mana?

When you are first starting out you have the option of using Lifetap Support in your 4-link with Lancing Steel of Spraying.

Once you reach a certain level of gearing, you will use the Non-Channelling Skills have -7 to Total Mana Cost craft on both of your rings. You can search on your crafting bench to see which map will give this craft.

Also, you want to use a Viridian Jewel with Gain 2 Mana per Enemy Hit with Attacks.

Which Map Modifiers Below Nightmare Maps Should I Avoid?

This build is pretty much immune to any map mod. I guess reduced Block Chance makes us a bit more squishy? And Chance to Avoid Poison makes us do less damage, but both are negligible.

Flesh and Stone is an Aura, Wouldn’t That Be Affected By The “Players have x% reduced effect of Non-Curse Auras from Skills” Map Mod?

Technically yes, but actually no. See, the damage reduction granted from Flesh and Stone while in Sand Stance is actually a buff and not part of the Aura itself. As such, it will not get affected by the map mod. Just PoE things.

Do We Use a Bloodline Ascendancy?

Bitter Heresy from the Lycia Bloodline Ascendancy is the best option. This needs to be used in tandem with either a (Perfect) Pain Artist, the Rational Doctrine jewel, or both.

Fantastic Abyss Jewels and How To Craft Them

This build relies on very good Ghastly Eye Jewel to unlock its full potential. If you are up for a foray into crafting, this section is for you! Do not spend exorbitant amounts of Divines on ready-made jewels. Make them yourself and get something to settle on for the time being!

To start, we need a base jewel with item level 60 or above, as that is the minimum item level required to roll Minions have (10-15)% chance to Poison Enemies on Hit. There are two ways of crafting your jewels.

Harvest Crafting

Use the Horticrafting Station and harvest craft with the “Reforge a Rare item with random modifiers, including a Chaos modifier” option. This will cost you 100 Vivid Crystallized Lifeforce (yellow) per try. Just keep going until you hit the Minions have (10-15)% chance to Poison Enemies on Hit mod and at least one more desirable mod.

Alteration Spamming

Start spamming Orb of Alteration and Orb of Augmentation until you hit it, which is about a 1:66 chance using this method. If you hit one of the following prefixes with an open suffix, you can use an Orb of Augmentation to look for the poison chance:

• +# to maximum Life
• Minions deal # to # additional Chaos Damage
• Minions deal # to # additional Physical Damage

Once you have the poison chance at a value you are happy with, you can use a Regal Orb to make it rare. At this step, you are looking for one of the following useful mods:

• Any of the prefixes listed above that you do not have yet
• Minions have X% chance to Hinder Enemies on Hit with Spells (Suffix)
• Minions have X% chance to Taunt Enemies on Hit with Attacks (Suffix – this applies to the minions from Herald of Purity, Animate Guardian and some Spectres)

If you hit any of the modifiers mentioned, you can (and probably should) use an Exalted Orb to get a fourth mod. If not – back to the beginning.

Since it’s very likely you will require all of your Abyss jewels to have the Minions have (10-15)% chance to Poison Enemies on Hit mod, there aren’t really many other options for affixes on your jewels.

Upgrades

Balor likes to say “Buy what you can afford when you can afford it.” I will list the upgrades to the build in no particular order:

• Darkness Enthroned (if you don’t have it yet)
• Dialla's Malefaction (this should probably be the second priority after the belt, as it is a huge increase in power)
• Amanamu's Gaze
• The Surrender or Svalinn
• Ashes of the Stars (Ashes lets you reach the 128% quality/CDR breakpoint)
• A 12 passive Minion Damage cluster with Added Small Passive Skills have 35% increased Effect and +x% to Chaos Resistance, +x to Maximum Life and a suffix of your choosing. This is an “I don’t know what to do with my money” upgrade. (we prefer 3% attack and cast speed to make the build feel better / more snappy as that mod effects us, and is basically 40% increased attack speed over the whole cluster)

But Which Amulet Should I Use? Is There a Cheaper Option?

Of course there is a cheaper option, and it is our trusted friend The Jinxed Juju. This is a fantastic amulet, since it provides Chaos Resistance, Aura effect and extra tankiness with its ”10% of Damage from Hits is taken from your Spectres’ Life before you“ unique modifier. Also, Option 2 for Dialla's Malefaction lets you reach the 82% quality breakpoint without the need for Ashes of the Stars. From there you could upgrade into Replica Dragonfang's Flight. However, last we checked, they were very expensive.

What Can I Use as a Shield Option?

Before The Surrender or Svalinn, you can use a Shaper-influenced shield with Recover (3–5)% of Life when you Block. If you get a Minion shield (Bone/Ivory/Fossilised Spirit Shield), you can get some extra minion damage stats as well, but the Shaper mod to recover life on block is more important.

How Do I Find The Right Timeless Jewel?

The best to find it is in Path of Building. Big thanks to Discord user Yannis for typing this up:

This is how I do it and how I have helped people find theirs. This might not be the most efficient way possible, but it’s better than looking through one at a time.

First open an empty PoB and do this pathing

Find the “Find Timeless Jewel” button at the bottom of the window. Click it.

Confirm the jewel you’re looking for, at the time of writing for Holy Relic Necromancer that is:

• Elegant Hubris
• Caspiro
• Jewel Socket: Mind over Matter
• Also make sure to click the checkbox at “Filter Nodes”

1. At “Search for Node”, select Slum Lord, your panel should now look like this:

Lastly hit search, and then click “Copy Trade URL” and paste that into your browser, future clicks will give you a new link with a new set of jewels, that all assign Slum Lord to the position you selected, you can keep going until you find one in your price range.

How Do I Craft a Weapon?

Basic Weapon

For a basic weapon, get the fastest attack speed one-handed sword you can find. If you don’t have a Timeless Jewel yet, any sword with low Dexterity requirement will do. Use whatever tier of Essence of Fear you have available. Craft Trigger a Socketed Spell when you Use a Skill, with a 8 second Cooldown/Spells Triggered this way have 150% more Cost from the crafting bench in your hideout. If you do not have this craft, you can find it in the Refinery in Act 9.

Slightly Better Weapon

For a slightly better version of the above basic weapon, spam Essence of Fear until you also hit an Attack Speed roll. Then craft trigger as described above.

Even Better Weapon

Search on trade to find any weapon with 1.6 base attack speed and at least item level 77. Ideally you want EXACTLY item level 77 to eliminate some modifiers and make crafting Tier 1 Attack Speed slightly easier, but any item level above 77 will do. Buy Deafening Essence of Fear from Trade or Faustus’ Currency Exchange and spam until you hit (26–27)% increased Attack Speed alongside the essence modifier. Then craft trigger as described above.

Advanced Weapon

1. Search on trade to find any weapon with 1.6 base attack speed and at least item level 77. Ideally you want exactly item level 77 to eliminate some modifiers and make crafting Tier 1 Attack Speed slightly easier, but any item level will do.
2. Buy Deafening Essence of Fear from Trade or Faustus’ Currency Exchange and spam until you hit (26–27)% increased Attack Speed alongside the essence modifier.
3. Use Orb of Annulment until you are left with the Minion Damage Essence modifier and Attack Speed. You want one open prefix and two open suffixes, so a random prefix alongside the Essence modifier is fine. If you fail, repeat Step 2.
4. Craft can have up to three Crafted Modifiers, Hits can’t be evaded and Trigger a Socketed Spell when you Use a Skill, with a 8 second Cooldown/Spells Triggered this way have 150% more Cost from your crafting bench. This weapon should be fine for most people.

Final Weapon

Before we continue, please be aware that this is the most expensive and advanced craft we will talk about here. Please follow these steps carefully.

Please note that you also need to find another way to apply Despair, as you will lose a Gem Socket on your weapon.

Also note that you cannot fracture mods on Influenced items or items with Synthesized Implicits. With all that out of the way, let’s get into it.

1. Search trade to find any One-Handed Sword with 1.6 base attack speed and an item level between 77 and 81. Make sure to filter out Synth and Influenced bases, but please double-check.
2. Use a single Hollow Fossil in a Primitive Chaotic Resonator to hit a guaranteed Abyssal socket. If your item has more than 4 mods, use Orb of Annulment until you are down to 4 mods. If you annul the Abyssal socket, repeat this step.
3. This is where it gets expensive. Use a Fracturing Orb for a 25% chance to fracture the Abyssal socket. If you fail the fracture, start again from Step 1.
4. Buy Deafening Essence of Fear from Trade or Faustus’ Currency Exchange and spam until you hit (26–27)% increased Attack Speed alongside the essence modifier.
5. Use Orb of Annulment until you are left with the Minion Damage Essence modifier and Attack Speed (and the fractured Abyssal socket).
6. Use the Crafting Bench to craft Cannot Roll Attack Modifiers, and use an Exalted Orb. This guarantees +1 to Socketed Gems.
7. Craft Trigger a Socketed Spell when you Use a Skill, with a 8 second Cooldown/Spells Triggered this way have 150% more Cost and enjoy the absolute best in slot weapon for this build. Good Luck, Exile!

Synth-Implicit Weapon (cannot be used with the above method)

Search on trade to find any weapon with 1.6 base attack speed, a Minions deal #% increased Damage Synthesized implicit and at least item level 77. Then follow the same steps as described in the Advanced weapon section above.

Discord and In-Game Global Channel

If there are any questions left unanswered (which I find hard to believe ;)), you can always ask in the discord linked below or stop by BalorMage’s Discord server and check the #help_me channel in the PoE1 section. We’re happy to help you out, but will mock you lovingly, but mercilessly, if your question is answered by this document.

You’re also welcome to come by Balor’s global in-game channel, to access it, type /global 22567 into your chat. Say hi!