GhazzyTV's Chains Of Command Animate Weapon Necromancer Gear, Jewels & Flasks (PoE Secrets of the Atlas)

Mercenary

With 3.26, Mercenaries were introduced into the game. They, in some instances, change how the build is played entirely, and in others, simply offer buffs. This is the case for this build. In lower budget we’ll be looking for the Earthshaker for its defensive benefits through Determination and Enduring Cry and offensive boost through its Intimidating Cry. In higher budgets, we swap this out, but I’ll get to that later.
Gear wise this merc is pretty simple.
Weapon – Any big bonking stick is fine here. Don’t splurge on this, we’re only using him for buffs.
Helmet – Resistance rare. Nearby enemies take additional chaos damage mod if you’re feeling fancy.
Body – Defensive chest of some kind. Doppel if it’s not too expensive, but anything that grants defence is fine
Amulet – Perquil's Toe
Rings – 2x Squirming Terror. This automates wurm spawning and makes the build more pleasant to play.
Belt – Kaom's Binding. Phys taken as fire is a fantastic mod

For high budget, we’ll be swapping to a Doryani Merc. This means we’ll be looking for a X merc now.
Smite is a fantastic addition for us and they are reasonably sturdy through holy relics and other regen. Gearwise we’ll be looking at the following :
Weapon: The Dark Seer
Shield: Dawnbreaker
Helmet: Nearby enemies take addition lightning damage. Any resistance, life or life regen is welcome in addition.
Body: Doryani's Prototype – the lynchpin of the setup
Rings: As massive -lightning as you can manage to get. -70 is fine, -100 is better.
Amulet: Perquil's Toe. If you have really weak rings (-70 ish) a -70 amulet will outperform until you get better rings.
Belt: Immortal Flesh – -25% res is the big roll here. Big regen really helps keep it alive.
Gloves: Resistance and regen
Boots: Resistance and Regen

Summary – TL;DR

Cap your Elemental Resistances and get the attributes your gems require to make sure you can use them all. Most pieces should be Rare with Life and, of course, any lacking attributes/resistances. Modifiers which increase the level of your Animate Guardian skill are most efficient, alongside those increasing minion damage across the board. The Gear for our Animate Guardian is also key, and this will be displayed below too

My quick list recommended approach for this build would then be:

Item Slot	Item Name	Rarity
Head	Ancient Skull	Unique
Amulet	Perquil's Toe + Replenishing Remedies anointment	Rare
Chest	Chains of Command	Unique
Gloves	Life, then Res/Attributes as needed	Rare
Boots	Life & Movement Speed then Res/Attributes as needed	Rare
Belt	Darkness Enthroned	Unique
Rings	Life then Res/Attributes as needed	Rare
Weapon	Increased minion damage, Attack speed, and Trigger Socketed Spell craft	Rare
Shield	Recover on block shield – See Gear page for details	Rare

Item Slot	Item Name	Rarity
Head	Mask of the Stitched Demonor Leer Cast	Unique – Mask should be acquired as soon as possible.
Chest	d Zahndethus' Cassock OR Gruthkul's Pelt	Unique	This is replaced by Doppelgänger Guise as soon a you have a mask.
Gloves	Gravebind	Unique
Weapon	Terminus Est	Paradoxica is a monumental upgrade and will enable shield below.
Shield	Victario's Charity	Unique

Armour Pieces

This build is rather unique-heavy, and most of its rare pieces are mostly utilised for resistances. As such, it requires a rather low amount of crafting, and pieces can usually be acquired on the market.

Helmet

Ancient Skull The whispers buff is just too good to pass on. It provides us with some absolutely incredible buffs, and it’s usually quite cheap.
The important thing about this gear piece is to get the “minions have reduced maximum life” roll as low as possible, preferably all the way down to 20.
AW swords already have a horrible lifepool, and we do not want to drag it down further than we must. It also puts AG at risk to have this mod be too high-rolled.

Body Armour

This slot will always be occupied by Chains of Command, you only ever need to 6-socket this item, as all support gems socketed into it will affect the skills provided by it.

Gloves

Generic high life, movement speed with any Res/Attributes as needed.
Armour base preferred.

Boots

Generic high life, movement speed with any Res/Attributes as needed.
Armour base preferred.

Belt

Darkness Enthroned with a 75% roll is your ideal candidate here. A higher roll is, of course, better. They tend to be way out of budget, however. If acquiring this belt proves difficult for you due to price, a rare with life/resistance will do until you can get this piece.

Accessories

Amulet

High life, resistances & attributes as needed, and Replenishing Remedies anointment.

Making this slot carry your Attribute problems is a sound choice, as we have no extremely strong options to get here. A +1 all along with the attributes is very nice, but not needed.

Perquil's Toe Currently occupies this slot in the PoB. We fully intend to give this to our merc as soon as we can get a decent one, but until then, we wear it ourselves. I have no idea how early we can get a good merc.

The anoint you want is Replenishing Remedies.

Rings

Here we are either going with a combination of Amethyst Ring and Bone Ring or simply 2x Amethyst Ring. Due to our tree, we do not actually need bone ring resistances for the minions, and as such, the bone ring is a purely offensive choice.
As this gives us the option and the opportunity to go double Amethyst, that will be my primary recommendation to most players in higher budgets. In the low-budget, it will depend on how your damage actually feels to you. I prefer double amethyst in the low-budget as well.
Stat priority here is essentially:
- Life
- Resistance
- Chaos resistance
- Attributes, if you still need any.
In that order.

Weapon

As our swords do not benefit from minion levels at all, this gives us some extra options that most builds cannot really make use of. Namely, that we can entirely skip + levels and still get the exact same damage boost.
All we get from +1 all is some defensive boosts and more life for AG, and from +1 minions, we only get more AG life. Both of these extra life sources for AG are big, don’t get me wrong, but not needing them is a massive bonus.

The stats we are primarily looking for here are:

- Minion damage – preferably 50%+
- Minion attack/cast speed – preferably 15%+
- Minion Critical strike chance – preferably 70%+. It is perfectly acceptable to get minion crit multi here instead if that is significantly cheaper
- Crafted 8 second trigger to keep our Bone offering active.

What this means is we search for these parameters, except the trigger. The trick here is to search for “empty suffix” and input a “1”. Then you go to Misc options, find crafted, and set it to “no”. This way, only wands with those 3 mods, of those values or higher, with space for the trigger will appear.
It will look like this: https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Ancestor/qX94BYXSg

Shield

We’ll be using a rare shield with the Shaper mod “recover #% of life when you block”. Ideally, we’ll have a base with a decent chunk of armour, but the market will unfortunately decide your options here.
You can make these yourself once you have a base, by following the link below.

Shield Crafting Guide

Jewels

We will be using mostly rare jewels in this build. A large cluster and a bunch of Ghastly Eye Jewels.
I will be going over the stat priorities for both.

Large Cluster

For this, the most important part is the cluster being a minion damage base. After that, it being an 8-pointer.
Little else truly matters here. You slam this with an alch and take what you get. If it’s bad, you can scour it and alch it again once or twice.
Any stats you get here are a bonus. Should you get Vicious Bite or Call to the Slaughter, both of them are jackpot, especially together. They are, however, not necessary as we will be upgrading this in medium budget. Don’t overspend here, it’s mostly used for jewel sockets and whichever bonuses you got along the way.

Small Cluster jewel

This is a rather simple jewel. We are looking for a 2-point block-based small cluster with the notable “Rote Reinforcement”. We’re using this jewel to generate endurance charges and boost our block, which will massively increase our physical mitigations.

Ghastly Eye Jewels

Now these babies are something else. We have such a vast ocean of options here, as our damage sources are rather generic and all elemental, physical and chaos flat values are functional for us. Attack speed is as always solid too. That said, there are some budget considerations here, so I will attempt to outline a stat priority:
- Life – This stat is always good to have on jewels
- Flat physical – This is my primary recommendation as it’s flexible and will likely be usable once I work out medium/high budgets.
- Flat Chaos – DPS wise for Low-Budget it’s equal to phys, but it’s less flexible for later. If you can get higher values for cheaper, consider it if you want damage right now.

These are the three stats I would advise you look for, and as such, the stats on every jewel in the low budget. If you can find better jewels than I did, use better jewels than I did!

- Minions deal #% increased damage if you have used a minion skill recently. This stat is strong, very strong, but it’s also too universally good in every minion build, and as such, any jewel with this stat, life and flat values worth having will simply be too expensive. If you can snag a good one, snag it, but don’t look for them.

- Honourable mention goes to the #% to all elemental resistance modifier here. This is incredibly potent, especially in Darkness Enthroned and should you get some while rolling your jewels, it might very well be worth keeping.

Unique Jewel

Since we are ailment immune through Purity of Elements, we can utilise Replica Reckless Defence to round out our block. This is optional, and you can absolutely simply have 3-4% less block and run an extra Ghastly eye.

Timeless Jewel

Brutal Restraint in the name of Balbala. This will give us the modifier “Traitor”, which helps sustain our flasks. It also helps to fix our Dexterity problems. Don’t worry about getting a fancy one, just get one.

Flasks

Flask set-ups are almost always a matter of personal taste when it comes to what utility flasks to use. However, I will list the set-up I’ve been using for a smooth play experience. To find the available list of modifiers the flasks can have, check out these links: Utility Flasks, Life Flasks, Mana Flasks & lastly: Hybrid Flasks

Slot	Flask	Description
1	Masochist or Flagellant Basalt Flask with #% increased armour.	Preferably 50%, but take what you get early on and upgrade later.
2	The Writhing Jar	This flask enables the build by spawning worms on the ground that is then killed by the Animate Guardian therefore summoning the animated weapons	Also serves as instant life and mana flask
3	Rumi's Concoction This Granite flask helps round out our block. The armour is nice too, get decent rolls on this, we are keeping it forever.
4	Masochist or Flagellant Basalt Flask with bleed&CB removal.	Suffix is up to you, I prefer bleed
5	The Writhing Jar	This flask enables the build by spawning worms on the ground that is then killed by the Animate Guardian therefore summoning the animated weapons	Also serves as instant life and mana flask

Once you acquire Balbala, cut the second The Writhing Jar

For help crafting your non-Unique flasks, we recommend checking out our Flask Crafting Guide.

Whatever choices you make, prioritise your flasks! I can not possibly stress this enough. Skipping flasks is the number 1 new player mistake in PoE, have your flasks sorted before finishing yellow maps, preferably before even entering them.