The Incredible Golemancer - Carrion Golems Elementalist Build Guide (PoE Lake of Kalandra 3.19)

August 18th, 2022, 19:37

Introduction

A Golemancer is something I felt like we really needed to cover and have in our arsenal of guides for you. Especially after the release of Summon Carrion Golem in 3.8.0 Blight League it pushed up the effectiveness of Golems by a decent chunk.

Going from having to make a choice between either clear speed with Summon Flame Golems or Boss Damage with Summon Stone Golems before made Golems almost always a one-dimensional build. Carrion Golems offered a way out of that. While Flame Golems still will be clearing better and Stone Golems can definitely compete for Single Target Damage, the Summon Carrion Golem does both of them really well making it a really well-versed all around build!

This is the main reason why the build went from rarely encountered to a top tier meta pick in 3.10 Delirium League and ever since.

Build Summary

I’d be surprised if you played 3.12 Heist League and never encountered a guy running around with Golems in your or their hideout when trading. The build is all over the place and rightfully so. There are two variants of the build, the Low-Life one which relies on a lot of Energy Shield Regen to out regenerate most of the incoming damage and the one we are covering which is an Elementalist Life based version. Since the other variant is a Necromancer, it doesn’t allow for extra Golems over the Carrions they use to do Damage. This means it is missing out on bonusses from Stone and Chaos Golem which are amplified through the Golem Jewels. These are what makes the build feel incredibly tanky and nice to play. Both of these, in an ideal setup, offer you about 900 Life Per Second and 24% Flat Physical Damage Reduction (which otherwise rarely exists on items as it is incredibly strong as a Defensive mechanic).

Obviously, depending on popularity in a League, flavor of the month builds do come at a little step-up in entry cost. Golem builds generally rely on The Anima Stone to gain an extra 2 Golems to get their maximum Golems up. Since you are using 2 utility Golems, additional sources of Golems are really big for you and you really want one of these as soon as possible. They, however, are not insanely cheap. You can circumvent this when you are still farming up currency by running double Clayshapers over the endgame options in Cold Iron Point. The issue there is that Cold Iron Points are your main source of Damage and you wont feel as overpowered until you have those in your setup. Getting all of your Primordial Jewels is definitely a major upgrade and should be considered something you want to get as soon as possible!

Pros and Cons

Pros

+ Clears the early-game content very reliably on a budget
+ Whenever you upgrade it to medium budget it becomes insanely overpowered
+ Incredibly tanky & reliable for end-game bossing
+ Can be played in SSF, as the Primordial Jewels can be farmed through cards

Cons

– Requires you to drop a lot of damage to circumvent the lack of Primordial Jewels
– Whereas the clear is very respectable, it is still a minion build and so is not as fast as some other builds

Map Modifiers to be Avoided

The only thing the build cannot run is Physical Reflect, as your minions will kill themselves.

Playstyle, Mechanics & Strengths

The way any Golemancer, and thus also our Summon Carrion Golem build plays, is very similar. You summon all of your Golems (4x Carrion, 1x Stone, 1x Chaos) and you’re ready to go! Additionally, you want to use an Animate Guardian setup to offer your Minions Fortify, Critical Strike Multiplier and Culling Strike. On top of that, an Animate Guardian can also provide a 9% More Physical Damage dealt through its helmet, which equates to an insane amount of damage buffs. Be careful when using this though, as you need to equip it with enough defensive items to make sure it doesn’t die. Should your Animate Guardian die, you lose all its items which can add up rather quickly!

Next up, you’re using Raise Spectres to summon Carnage and Host Chieftains, which cast a buff that gives all of your Minions Frenzy and Power Charges, which again amplifies their damage by a lot.

While all of that is big for your damage, one of the biggest things that buffed Golems to a tremendous extent were Cluster Jewels added in 3.10 Delirium League. Now, don’t you worry, we don’t require insane Cluster Jewels or anything to make this build do what it does best: melt things. First of all, the addition of the Renewal notable on Cluster Jewels is absolutely insane for any type of Golem Builds.

Golems innately scale very well to really high base damages anyway, so getting them to deal double damage is really strong. Besides this notable, there’s a couple of other notables you wouldn’t mind having, but if you’re just stacking these, you’ll do fine and you don’t have to worry about getting super expensive jewels.

In addition to Renewal being absolutely insane for Golems, it also made sockets more available and since this build wants to run as many Primordial Jewels as possible, it used to path all around the world to find as many sockets in the tree as possible. With Cluster Jewels giving you an extra socket per Cluster, it made it so efficient to pick up Clusters that basically everything else on them was free.

Passive Skill Tree, PoB, and Gem Links

You can find an optimized Path of Building here here. Every build I release will use the community fork of Path of Building, which is maintained and updated in a much more regular fashion than the original one. You can find PoB’s Fork, by LocalIdentity, here.

If you are not comfortable with Path of Building, we also have a Tree for you. Do note that PoE’s website does not support Cluster Jewels and some specific unique jewels and it is highly recommended you install Path of Building to follow builds most optimally.

More information about the Passive Skill Tree, as well as all the Gem Links can be found on our dedicated page.

Passive Skill Tree, PoB & Gem Links

Ascendancy, Bandits, and Pantheons

Our Ascendancy, Bandit, and Pantheon Power page goes into detail about all the choices you need to make in these regards.

Ascendancy, Bandits, and Pantheon Page

Gear Summary / TL;DR

A lot of this is explained more in depth in the Gear Page, however we will provide you with a basic idea of what gear you’re looking for in this short summary.

Gear Page

Our recommendation:

Item Slot	Item Name
Head	Rare Bone Helmet with +3 to Minion Gems & Minion Life Support
Amulet	Citrine Amulet with +2 to Gems (Intelligence & Physical Gems) & Maximum Life
Chest	The Brass Dome or Corrupted Skin of the Loyal
Gloves	High Life & Resistances
Boots	Two-Stone Boots with High Movement Speed, Resistances and Life
Belt	Leather Belt with High Life, Strength and some Resistances
Rings	1x Profane Proxy and 1 Resistance Base Ring with High Life, Dexterity and Resistances
Weapon	2x Clayshaper

Questions & Support

I made it a habit to check all comments in my guides on a daily basis. Obviously, there might be occurrences where getting a reply might take longer but I really do try to get back to you as soon as possible. I prefer you making remarks, suggestions or asking questions that way as it allows others to read through the comments, providing them with a potential answer to their question, without having to wait for me again. If I have somehow missed your question, you can try reaching me on our Discord.

If you enjoy my content to such an extent that you’d like to support me and my work, I have a Patreon you can check out. At no point should you feel pressured to contribute, but if you do, your support means more to me than you will ever imagine.

Leveling

Since we are very adamant about trying to give you a leveling experience that lies as close to your endgame playstyle as possible, we will be providing you a way to level up with Summon Carrion Golem. If you are looking for the most optimal way to level a character to maps, we refer you to the following guides.

Our step-by-step leveling walkthrough, which allows even more experienced players to save time and speed through the leveling process.
Our guide to Unique Items for leveling, which helps you gear up your characters for the leveling process.
Our beginner leveling guide, which answers many of the questions new players might have and will set you on the right path.

In order to level this build as a Summon Carrion Golem build, you need to make your way to level 34 to be able to use the gem.

Getting to Brutus & Merveil

For starters, create a Witch in whichever league you want to start.

You will want to start out by buying an extra wand from the vendor. On top of that, pick up a Explosive Trap as a quest reward. After you’ve run the Mud Flats, you’ll proceed to kill Hailrake in the Tidal Island with Traps.

From there on, you’ll be able to pick up your first Quicksilver Flask and an Summon Raging Spirit from your quest rewards and start summoning Raging Spirits as your Minions.

After killing Brutus, you will be adding an Infernal Legion Support and a Minion Damage Support to your Summon Raging Spirit link.

Level 12 and Onwards Setup

Assuming you have more sockets available now, you can add a Summon Skeletons setup so you can also spawn some skeletons if you so wish.

In Act II you also want to start running a Summon Skitterbots to amplify the damage your minions are dealing. Make sure you’re picking up a Flame Dash and a Flesh Offering too for a movement skill and some DPS buff for your minions.

Post Act II

You’re going to want to add in a Desecrate in your setup so you can guarantee corpses to cast Flesh Offering on. If you want to spend a little Orb of Regret you can pick up the Sacrifice node in the tree to make your Summon Raging Spirit last a little longer which will make them more reliable. Should you be getting a 4-Linked item somehow, you can add in Elemental Focus Support to make them deal even more Damage.

Post Act IV – Setting up Golems

This is your setup for when you have acquired your Golems at the end of act IV.

Make sure you pick up the Instability Notable as it provides you a really big boost to SRS DPS for as long as you’re using it