TbXie's Carrion Golems Elementalist Build Guide (PoE Affliction 3.23)

Out Of Date

June 9th, 2025, 17:26

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.

Afflicition Uncertainties & Possibilities

While the new Summon Carrion Golem of Hordes seems really interesting on first glance, the loss of its buff effect is honestly almost never being made up. The only argument you could make for the gem is that it’s better while leveling, as you might not have spectres / zombies & an animate guardian but honestly, at the endgame, the Damage mulitplier from Carrion Golems buff effect is almost impossible to overcome. This effectively means that the build lost 1 total Golem in the endgame, which is a little bit sad and might make us go towards Stone Golems in the future.

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 well-liked pick in 3.10 Delirium League and has been ever since.

Build Summary

I’d be surprised if you played for a while and have 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 a few iterations of the build going around. Where as all versions have its owns perks, this one focuses on upping the maximum amount of Golems in order to be able to run Utility Golems as well. Other builds, having less maximum Golems, have a lot of issues sacrificing a DPS Golem for survivability. This means they are missing out on bonusses from Stone and Chaos Golem which are amplified through the Golem Jewels. This is the main cornerstone of this builds defensive layering and should therefore not be neglected.

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 Golem to get their maximum amount of 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. Luckily, ever since the huge buffs to them, they are now almost impossible to beat, barring Mirror-Tier Minion Wands, and are therefore a super easy to acquire powerspike that will carry you hard for a really long time.

Pros and Cons

Pros

+ Clears the early-game content very reliably on a reasonable budget
+ Once everything comes together it feels a bit overpowered
+ Solid playstyle for end-game bossing

Cons

– A little bit hard to get off the ground super early in a League due to Primordial Jewels being a tad annoying
– 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 (6x Carrion, 1x Stone, 1x Chaos) and you’re ready to go! Additionally, you want to use an Animate Guardian setup to offer a ton of buffs to your Golems. However, given recent changes, Animate Guardians can actually die. Therefore, please make sure you read & understand the section about Animate Guardian gear..

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. Every build I release will use the community fork of Path of Building. You can find PoB’s Fork, by LocalIdentity, here.

If you are not comfortable with Path of Building, PoePlanner’s website offers you a non-PoB alternative to import the code from the above link. 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 Helmet Base with +2 to Level of All Minion Skills, Life & Resistances
Amulet	Replica Dragonfang's Flight
Chest	Skin of the Lords
Gloves	Rare Gloves with Minion Damage, Life, Resistances, Attribute
Boots	Rare Boots with Movement Speed, Life, Resistances
Belt	Darkness Enthroned
Rings	1x Profane Proxy and 1 Bone Ring with Minion Resistances, LIfe, Resistances
Weapon	2x Clayshaper

Questions & Support

If you enjoy my content to such an extent that you’d like to support me and my work, or you have a specific question you request my private time for, you can buy me a coffee over at Patreon. At no point should you feel pressured to contribute, but if you do, your support means more to me than you will ever imagine.

Even though we try to make our guides as complete as possible, obvioulsy it’s possible you still have questions. We have an entire mod-team readily available to support you & your questions on Discord. You can find us on the ARPG Vault Discord. Make sure to open a Guide Help thread so things stay clear in the main channels.

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 guide” “”:https://www.poe-vault.com/guides/path-of-exile-beginner-guide-welcome-to-wraeclast-fresh-exiles-start-here, 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. However, I strongly recommend delaying this swap to the point where you are both level 41 and posses 2 Chaos Orb or the equivalent to purchase 2x Clayshaper.

At that point, you can just start copying the PoB, and you should be fine. Do note that early Primordial Jewels greatly ameliorate this progression.

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, A Holy Flame Totem and a Summon Raging Spirit from your quest rewards and start summoning Raging Spirits as your Minions.

After killing Brutus, you will be adding an Minion Damage Support and a Added Lightning Damage Support to your Summon Raging Spirit link and a Summon Phantasm Support to your Holy Flame Totem

Level 12 and Onwards Setup

This becomes available as soon as you enter Merveil’s Caverns and you should swap into this whenever you can, before Merveil, at the latest.

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. Additionally, swap the Phantasm Support for a Physical to Lightning Support in Act II.

Post Act IV – Setting up Golems

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

From there on out, feel free to start transitioning into the Late Game skill set as you feel. Do not neglect both of your first labs as they’ll provide you with great help during the leveling Process.