Summon Holy Relic Necromancer (PoE The Forbidden Sanctum 3.20)

GhazzyTV

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Introduction

Due to the latest balancing changes, we do not recommend playing this build anymore, as it does not meet the high standards we apply to our guides in terms of fun and performance. We are leaving it up as a reference and it might be revived in a later patch.

Summon Holy Relic Summon Holy Relic has been a skill that hasn’t quite received the limelight it rightfully deserves, the skill itself summons a relic that follows us wherever we go, as we attack the relic dishes out large portions of AoE damage in a similar fashion to Cast On Critical Strike Ice Nova builds, while being accessible to newer players and extremely easy to pull off as a league starter.

This guide is also available in a video format if you prefer that over reading.

Build Overview

In this section I will outline the pros, cons, & the general play-style. This will allow you to determine if the build is for you or not!

Pros

+ Extremely Tanky – This build perfectly handles tanking packs of monsters by taking advantage of block & recovery, while getting insane maximum resistances & armour.

+ League Starter – The build functions well on pure rare gear and only requires a few uniques to enter its final form.

+ Bosser – The build has great bossing capabilities and will get you through to the very endgame of PoE

+ Cyclone / Static Strike – On the top end Static Strike allows for a more passive playstyle, while Cyclone is one of if not the most smooth skills for mowing down packs and moving forward through maps simultaneously.

Cons

Animate Guardian – While Ashes of the Stars Ashes of the Stars makes it significantly easier to sustain your AG, it is nontheless possible for your AG to die.

Facetanking – As our main damage source comes from an Area around us, we need to tread carefully with tanking too many hits point blank as well as being careful to avoid one shot mechanics

Relies on block for recovery – One shot mechanics can take this build out, while normally this will only occur 25% of the time, this can be further exasperated by the reduced % chance to block map modifier, which can make these maps rippy.

Playstyle

The playstyle will consist of either using Cyclone Cyclone or Static Strike Static Strike to proc the Summon Holy Relic Summon Holy Relic nova ability, mowing down monsters and bosses alike.

Holy Relic can be rather confusing, as our attacks are triggering the attacks of the Relic we want to make sure that our total Attacks Per Second gets as close to the Cooldown of the nova, but never above it. You can always double check this by importing your character into Path Of Building, where you can compare your attack speed to the cooldown.

Image of Cooldowns

This isn’t as relevant for Static Strike, as Static Strike itself causes chain attacks to activate periodically, making the tooltip inaccurate unless you calculate the beams too. That being said, it is extremely easy to figure out whether you’re being efficient with your attacks if using Cyclone.

Damage Scaling And Defensive Layers

As with all minion builds, we make use of scaling levels on our skill gems & getting more damage sources from the variety of sources available to us. Using a curse on hit setup, an Animate Guardian and Brittle from our boots can increase our damage significantly

Our main source of defences come from Auras (which are further augmented by Ashes of the Stars Ashes of the Stars), having a large health pool & consistent source of life gain on hit, as well as an army of minions surrounding us ready to get hit by any and all projectiles that might be aimed at us.

PoB. Passive Skill Tree And Gem Links

The PoB community fork created by Localidentity is the only version being kept up to date, so make sure you have the correct version: PoB Community Fork.

For a League Starter with minimal gearing I highly recommend following this https://pobb.in/gvet_AdKTyfC (Do note that you’ll need at least 1x rare jewel with “Increased %mana reservation” for your aura skills.

Once we’re ready to transition into heavier investment the following Path Of Building links will have everything you need.

This High End PoB boasts ridiculous amounts of defenses.

Detailed Path Of Building & Gem Links

Gearing

A lot of the end-game gear can easily be crafted, to learn how to craft as well as learn how to craft specific items check out my crafting guides here.

You can read more details about our gearing recommendations on the dedicated page, but for now you can see a summarized version below.

Detailed Gearing & Flask setups

Item Slot Item Name Rarity
Head Geofri's Crest Geofri's Crest is a Holy Relic specific unique, making it perfect for this build Unique
Amulet Ashes of the Stars Ashes of the Stars will be our endgame choice, but we can use anything to satisfy resistance / defence needs until then Unique / Rare
Chest A Tabula Rasa Tabula Rasa can give us our 6 link really early on, we can also use a rare with great defences and a 6L if we have access to one Rare/Unique
Gloves We’re looking for resistances, life, and maybe a minion damage implicit/essence Rare
Boots A rare pair of boots with Level to socketed minion gems, movement speed, and brittle from Eldritch influence on top of defences will take us where we need to be Rare
Belt A decent Stygian with defences or simply Darkness Enthroned Darkness Enthroned Unique/Rare
Rings Unset Ring Unset Ring with + level of socketed gems to ease Socket requirements and buff up the skills we socket here, beyond this focus on attributes & defences Rare
Weapons For our weapon of choice we want a Rare Sceptre with minion modifiers, + level to all spell skill gems, and the Trigger bench craft for automation Rare

Ascendancy, Bandits & Pantheon Recommendations

You can read about the recommended Ascendancy, Bandit choice, and Pantheon Power recommendations for this build on our dedicated page.

Ascendancies, Bandits & Pantheon choices

Leveling

We can use Holy Relic all the way from level 4 and you’re free to do so, picking it up for the regeneration & levelling the gem itself is great, Levelling as Absolution is one of the most effective ways to get through the game fast as a minion build, so I highly recommend this approach.
Leveling this build with Herald of Purity Herald of Purity alongside Absolution Absolution from lvl 16 & 12 respectively is most likely the best way to go as our core unique isn’t available for a long time, especially on League Launch.

Skill points while levelling

Do note that these trees relate to the low budget setup more than the other variants of the Holy Relic build, since leveling with ES based setups is extremely difficult, I highly recommend leveling with the life based variant.

Level 39 Skill Tree – Here we’re laying out the groundwork for our skill tree, picking up the pathing nodes and consolidating it with life / damage as and when needed.

Level 60 Skill Tree – The majority of pathing nodes are picked up, there isn’t a particular order for picking up the masteries but picking up life mastery can be a great option if you require an extra chunk of life, Minion Offence mastery is the exact same, you can pick it up for a tiny bit more damage. Pick up Resolue Technique as soon as you have the helmet and are using Holy Relic for your main source of damage, if you’re levelling as absolution this isn’t something to worry about.

Level 78 Skill Tree – This tree is what we’re looking to have in early mapping, we’ve picked up everything important and can now begin filling out jewels and the remaining masteries that are missing.

Finished Skill Tree – This has everything we’re looking to fill out and we’re all good to go.

Before You Enable Minions

Before you are able to utilize minions for your leveling experience you will need to make sure they function for actual clearing, this ultimately comes down to giving them the tools for hitting multiple targets. This allows you to level with minions as early as level 8 as that’s the restriction before you can get Melee Splash Support Melee Splash Support. The skills listed below are the ones I prefer to use till I hit level 8:

Once you reach level 12 you are able to pick up the Absolution Absolution skill and level with the ability all the way. Any links providing extra damage for the minions would be preferable early on:

In Act 3 Library you’re able to pick up Physical to Lightning Support Physical to Lightning Support which enhances the damage significantly, auras doesn’t come in play till Act 3 either, at which point you’ll want to run Wrath Wrath & Zealotry Zealotry depending on if you’ve taken the reduced mana reservation nodes or not.

We can also pick up Spell Echo Support Spell Echo Support for Absolution after killing piety in act 4.

Besides our main source of damage you can utilize Raise Zombie Raise Zombie with Ruthless Support Ruthless Support, this can be further augmented by adding Feeding Frenzy Support Feeding Frenzy Support .

Vitality Vitality Early on in the acts to keep yourself & your minions alive better is also great.

For more general levelling advice, we recommend the following guides.

Questions?

To guarantee that my guides are tools you can utilize to enhance your experience in Path of Exile, you may have questions. Please join the PoE Vault discord and they will attend to them as soon as possible.

Final Notes

As much as I love making build guides, it is very crucial in a game like Path of Exile that you play the game the way you enjoy playing it. With that said, if you’ve made any tweaks to the build compared to what I’m showing in this guide I would love if you’d posted it in the comments! It’s an effective way to show other approaches and it helps me grow as a build guide creator!

I hope you found the build guide useful and I wish you all many Divine Orb Divine Orb drops!

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