Falling Zombie Brand Saboteur - Comprehensive Build and Mechanics Guide [PoE 3.24]

[@Surgeon_General]

*Comments and FAQ:* - Level as Armageddon Brand until yellow maps. Switch once you have the transfigured gem + life/resist gear and a 6link. Make sure you can afford mana cost - use Honourhome helmet if needed. - How to self-craft the helmet: Fractured base, reservation essence until acceptable suppression and an empty suffix, lock suffixes and harvest reforge chaos guaranteeing chaos resistance. If bad tier, annul (classic or eldritch), if that misses go again from essences. Once acceptable suppress + chaos res + mana efficiency, use eldritch chaos/exalts to reforge prefixes until acceptable life. - Corpsewalker corrupted with +1 to socketed gems can be used to slot your auras + Enlighten to really help with mana reservation (credit @Ciapciaq for suggestion) - Brutality is a marginally better damage support gem for single target but it bricks the fire corpse explosions from Mon'tregul's Grasp. I don't like gem-swapping for bosses, but you *could* and it would technically be better. - Eldritch Battery is an option and would free up some passives from mana cost reduction, but EB feels bad without running Discipline which I was trying to avoid. - Consider Dread Banner + Generosity to give the zombies impale chance.

[@imdifferennt]

is it still possible to make brand recall 0 mana?

[@Surgeon_General]

@@imdifferennt probably still possible but no promises yet - without a PoB update I can’t keep track of the moving pieces to make sure the change to Inspiration support doesn’t brick mana cost reduction. It’s definitely a nerf to the gem, but I believe there are more sources of reduced cost on the skill tree to make up for it. The safe bet is to plan on using Eldritch battery and Discipline

[@imdifferennt]

@@Surgeon_General will you make an updated build guide before league start? This build looks fun as hell

[@YakultLitro]

@@Surgeon_General brand recall cant be 0 mana now?!!

[@TheEichelXD]

if someone wants to play this on 3.25. do note that first of all they nerfed inspiration. you have to take more "reduce cost of skills" nodes to get to 0 mana cost. and secondly they changed the passive skill tree slightly so that one of the 80% increased minion dmg nodes from elegant hubris is not in range anymore. you need another timeless jewel. the best i could find at the moment was 32760 for 3x Minion dmg but no defensive stat. GL all with the new league

[@UltraSuperDuperFreak]

there 4 stones with each 3 minion dmg around necromantic aegis keystone , and they all have 1 80% minion hp aswell . Incase you choose to use Maligaro's Lens nad have abit less dps instead. for the instant heal spams .

[@Xyrm]

Excellent, clear, and detailed guide. Only thing I’d personally like to see would be a “leveling tips” section on how to build into the build!

[@williamtownsend3118]

I'm already done with the league, but I just wanted to say that your videos are always pretty well done, but as build guides go, this is absolutely exceptional. Excellent work here on putting it together, on top of the awesome mechanical exploration.

[@destructiveideation3784]

Amazingly creative and fun-looking. Thank you for sharing!

[@AdrianPerez-mt8rt]

Wow. Its a rly nice brainstromed build. Rly nice interaction whit the brands

[@Cheddariz]

Guess I'm not done with the league yet. Excellent work Doc. 👏👏👏

[@YakultLitro]

thanks for the build, this felt like a pseudo DD. that 50% hp explode really feels good when mapping. the bots are also offscreening.

[@Berryloss]

Sweet build! I played something very similar last league but wound up using a brand recall tech with pragmatism. Socketing brand recall into pragmatism gives it so many levels you can get the cooldown to be super low, and this league with automation support both of them would be getting 8 levels and you can get the cooldown to as low as 1.3s. Last league I had it down to 1.45 and the damage was nice, I just used a decent 6 link influenced main hand to compensate for the lack of a 6 link chest. Being able to use automation this league almost made me run the build again but I wanted to try too many new things. Love seeing how you built it, it's a lot less gear restricted and can probably get more tankiness especially.

[@arcainex]

Yeah definitely gonna give this a shot and play it out, thanks a lot

[@jowsarrret3963]

this is most likely my 3.25 build if theres no nerfs thank you great video

[@kidpolygon802]

damn, hope we see more of you. really good guide with an interesting build

[@sergeychistov8162]

I'm a fan of Mon'tegrul's Grasp since I got it as a random drop, and I've been thinking of its use ever since. I haven't played PoE since a Nemesis league, but the moment I read the patch notes on alternative gems, I knew INSTANTLY what I was going to do!! My builds, whatever, were crap, say the least. Thank you for sharing your build! My dreams of 50% explosions came true.

[@lennyghoul]

You've piqued my interest. I always love new uses for minions. 😄

[@UltraSuperDuperFreak]

20:04 Not only way to recover. Maligaro's Lens can be used as recovery. You have 50 zombies dying each secound . You get healed for 1% of each zombies hitpoint . Nothing except 1 shoot can kill you then.

[@KaelfromTW]

does anyone actually tried this shield on your build? how does it feel?

[@juicejuicejuicejuicejuice]

not interested in playing the build but damn, what a guide.

[@oreohachiko]

Excellent build, Doc. Arcanist brand interaction is really strong with this skill. A few things though: have you considered eldritch battery to solve mana costs? Seems like a lot of investment in mana reduction. Also, thoughts on trigger on focus helm mod and its interactions with brand recall?

[@Surgeon_General]

Late response, but here's some answers if anyone else is looking: - I tinkered with EB but it didn't feel good without running Discipline and I didn't want to give up that mana reservation. - Focus helm mod: I would run focus if you could automate it but Automation Support doesn't work on it (its a skill, not a spell) and we can no longer put focus on left click.

[@KaelfromTW]

its so beautiful, like a poem

[@5chneemensch138]

Would love an update.

[@daepst1]

Do you plan to provide a leveling/leage-start guide? Do you simply not advise this as a league starter? I did hear you say that you league-starting this, but you did not seem to be recommending it.

[@Surgeon_General]

Leveled as Armageddon Brand til ~80, swapped when I had a corrupted 6link and used Honourhome to help afford mana costs early.

[@barczi8]

with that minion mastery can we fit in AG somehow, or is the socket pressure simply too high

[@Surgeon_General]

Yeah, AG should work, I just HATE the mechanic so I never use it. Socket pressure is high but I would use defensive supports on an AG just to be safe

[@seapeajones]

Brought me back to the league

[@BrugGrug]

If you're having issues with mana reservation and are dirt poor like i am, what I did was link a carrion golem and an aura with guardian's blessing i still haven't maxed anything yet but the constant zombie deaths with the mastery node does keep the minion alive One annoying thing I've found about this build are Soul eater mobs, you can't really avoid feeding it souls as your zombie deaths count 🥲

[@toucheJSHAYdynasty]

im not experiencing the same amount of zombies falling, in my hideout it only looks like half the amount shown in the video edit: the most i see is 2 zombies on the buff bar, where i see you get 50+ edit2: so my zombies is costing 11 mana, my arcanist brand and both my brand recalls are 0. if i reduce even more mana down to 9, i get 4 zombies to fall, idk whats all this means. i see in your pob, the zombies coz 13 mana, but in the video, you never lose mana edit 3: i took of 2 supports and now my zombies cost no mana and now i can have 50+ zombies fall, my understanding i thought the brand mana is what i had to worry about not the falling zombies

[@benlister5477]

Does Enduring Bond work, or would Arcanist Brand Falling Zombies not count as 'you' using a minion skill? If it does I think you should definitely take it as the increased skill effect duration would be important for brand uptime

[@jonasxie5230]

wonderfull guide video. Thank you for your hard work. I really enjoying the way you presentation your conent. keep t up ! BTW Have you tryied Convocation gem to improved the QoL? even thought use Convocation, the two trigger bot are still not very smart when mapping, but it may be a option. And also, Since you invested to much reduce mana cost on the passives tree, is EB is an option ? I will try a EB helmet version of your build. Again Thank you for your nice found ! Combine Arcanist Brand and Falling Zombie with Saboteur is insane.

[@Surgeon_General]

I tried to avoid EB because I didn’t want to have to run Discipline, but EB is definitely an option, especially if you get resists and ailment immunity elsewhere and can drop Purity of Elements. I didn’t have a jewel socket for convocation so just learned to let the bots take the lead. It did take some getting used to.

[@ILikeGuns1992]

Tota music = instant banger video

[@Kanazr]

Hi, thanks for a great guide! I'm interrested in playing this build next league. I am wondering if awakened melee phys / pulverize isn't an option as gem slots also? Since it bypasses the penalty of - att speed. But in PoB it seems they dont increase hit dmg? I saw one of the top HC players use this (Phazeplays), so it might work? Also he uses impale from dread banner / generosity, shouldnt this also be quite a dps increase for relative low cost?

[@cryptokidkid5163]

great video, ty!

[@SpiritMEOW]

I think you have automatic deletion of comments with links? Anyway, build is great. Wonderful bosser. I am unsure if the falling slam has a melee tag. Trying impale, since dread banner is great anyway

[@ElicatrothTV]

ok im definitely looking into doing this for spells even if that means I then take the penalties... I prefer farming over bossing and this looks like a cool way to use Trigger bots.

[@ElicatrothTV]

Messing around with this on Forbidden rite has proven to be really goofy lol. My character that takes almost no damage at all while in a CoC cyclone setup takes like half of its health in damage with Fourth Vow with this setup lol. My FPS drops to like 20 each time it casts too, its glorious! That said scaling the damage itself so far eludes me and it only gets to the point of working but not doing damage (blood aquaduct being carried by lvl 23 FR lol)

[@flamemano]

I think people get too baited by all inning trigger rate. Even if you drop the trigger bots node and halve your trigger rate your dps is still PLENTY for all content in the game. Also, im 100% sure sab is a bait as well. Go trickster and take the trigger bot node

[@watercra]

Do you think you could make a version with Svalinn this league?

[@tonyswu]

Super cool.

[@SpiritMEOW]

I’m gonna try this in standard. With the legacy mana cost flasks, I can replace inspiration support with something else. Thoughts on awakened brutality versus awakened melee phys? Other legacy things come to mind? (Couldn’t find a good crucible mon’tregul) You are the best doc

[@Surgeon_General]

*DO NOT USE BRUTALITY FOR MAPPING* - The "no elemental damage" on it makes the corpse explosions from Montregul's do zero damage. I made this mistake early in the league. Brutality is the best DPS support so you can drop it in for bosses, but you want to use something else (probably melee phys) for mapping

[@SpiritMEOW]

@@Surgeon_General I didn’t think of that! Yeah melee phys definitely best, since the less attack speed doesn’t matter

[@SpiritMEOW]

@@Surgeon_General I’m wondering if the zombies aren’t actually benefiting from melee physical support. Will try pulverize instead, seems like the ideal support anyway Edit: pulverize is also melee damage, switched to aw inc aoe. I think it might be spreading the zombies more though?

[@Ciapciaq]

Corpswalkers can get "+1 to lvl of socketed gems" corrupted implicit to raise lvl of Enlighten Gem.

[@Surgeon_General]

Thanks for the suggestion, forgot about boot corruptions

[@Ciapciaq]

@@Surgeon_General I got one more idea, but idk how important is cast speed. You could potentialy block prefixes on your sceptre and use veiled orb. There is about 10% chance to see Trigger mod on 4 sec cd in each choice, on avrage thats 3-4 orbs. I check it on Craft of Exile, and in about 100 try most unlucky i found it at 6th orb. Most of the times 2-3 hits. That veiled mod + crafted cast speed?

[@Ciapciaq]

8 sec + T1 cast speed + crafted %quality of socketed gems VS 4 sec + Crafted cast speed + any natural prefix mod (with i believe would be maximum mana?) Ofc you can try to land it on weapon that actualy got that natural cast speed + 3 preffixes and open suffix. But that would be expensive gamba.

[@Surgeon_General]

@@Ciapciaq you actually need the 8 second mod. The 8 seconds on the weapon overwrites the 4 second base cooldown on the gem, allowing you to have two independent brand recall loops. If you use the unveiled version, the base cooldowns are the same and the loops will block each other from triggering

[@Ciapciaq]

@@Surgeon_General Intresting interaction. I bet even if you offset those setups with diffrent CDR (quality on gem for eg.) it still won't work.

[@TheEichelXD]

Hey i did some minmaxing on manacost reduction and was able to completely drop the inspiration gem in the 6 link to make some room for another link. any support gem with max 140% cost multiplier works with the maximum mana reduce i got. which gem would you run? brutality ofc for pure single target is great. but in aoe situations? i thought about maim or impale, but im not really good at calculating those kind of skills in pob as its my second league so far. thx a lot :)

[@Surgeon_General]

Melee Physical support or Pulverise should work but don’t show as damage increases in PoB. I’m 99% sure this is just a PoB bug though, you can verify in game and make sure the tooltip shows the % more damage. How did you get costs down? Synth jewelry implicits?

[@TheEichelXD]

@@Surgeon_General i went pretty all in on it, so i dont know if it is worth at all, but i got an amethyst ring with -10 mana cost elreons veiled fractured, crafted -5% mana on it. with the quality then its -12 flat mana reduce and 6% mana reduce. double that ring with kalandra touch. then i got all the mana reduce nodes on the tree and fit a watchers eye into it with -10 flat mana with clarity. then all u need is 3% more mana reduce which i though on getting a helm synthesize implicit for. have to fit clarity somewhere though. haven't actually done the watchers eye or the synth helm in game, but got the rest because it saved alot of skill points overall. as soon as i realized how much mana nodes i had avalable now on the tree i though of maybe getting to drop inspiration, but yeah u need much. still new to the game, didnt know there are cost reduction synth implicits on gems, maybe i could fit one of those in instead of the helm implicit. Ingame name is "Ellogino" if u want to see the ring and pathing on the skill tree (just minor adjustments really)

[@chaseliou1070]

How to find Ancient Suffering? I tried to look on wiki but it seem complicated because I havent tried delve before

[@Surgeon_General]

Ask nicely in /global 6666

[@jaebola]

wp brother, sadly on reddit so many complains xD please dont take it too seriously

[@dnd5019]

is there a way to scale posion chance like poison srs, 50 zombie slams per sec seems pretty good if you can get 50 to 100 percent poison chance on hit and no am not thinking about adding united in dream, more gastly eye jewels/ other stuff like Darkness Enthroned

[@Surgeon_General]

You can, but it's generally quite difficult to scale DoTs on minions because it uses *their* damage over time multiplier, not yours. +% to minion damage over time multiplier is a very hard stat to scale so while its possible to apply the poisons, it's hard to get %more multipliers to its damage.

[@dnd5019]

@@Surgeon_General hmm makes sense still pretty amazing use of mechanic, will definitely think of using it in my next league as i never thought that skill would have been useful.

[@AdamTPL]

Hi its possilbe to play this build whitout mageblood?

[@MartoRoss]

I wonder if there is a way to make this a leaguestarter 🤔

[@Surgeon_General]

I started Armageddon Brand and switched to a variant of the build in the level 80s, around low yellow maps. Montregul's, the transfigured gem, and %mana reduction are key so it makes sense to level mostly as something else.

[@phamhoa2312]

The only bad thing about this videos is next league falling zombie 21/20 price

[@petrocktamer3241]

how did you craft that helm? just get really lucky essence spamming?

[@Surgeon_General]

Fractured base, reservation essence until acceptable suppression and an empty suffix, lock suffixes and harvest reforge chaos guaranteeing chaos resistance. If bad tier, annul (classic or eldritch), if that misses go again from essences. Once acceptable suppress + chaos res + mana efficiency, use eldritch chaos/exalts to reforge prefixes until acceptable life.

[@petrocktamer3241]

@@Surgeon_General right. im sure ive done a similar craft recently, not sure how i forgot. thanks

[@redimer-l9r]

Они это сделали. Настоящий мужицкий дождь.

[@duckedup7142]

will this work in 3.25?

[@Rurix48]

Not an expert, but i think it will. The inspiration support change, might make lowering mana cost harder. I am absolutely no expert, so no promises.

[@natanaelnatan6021]

how did you craft the gloves?

[@Surgeon_General]

Fractured base, spam deafening essence of greed until good suffixes. I was looking for suppress and regen and settled for a lower tier of suppress. Remember you can use eldritch exalts / annuls to fish for explicits (for example if you hit T1 suppress and nothing else). Do the implicits after you’ve finished the explicits.

[@Tiniuc]

Would this work on a scion, I wonder?

[@Surgeon_General]

No triggerbots on Scion so you lose a big multiplier to zombies / sec

[@ntma]

>reliant on mageblood

[@Cheddariz]

For speed. You can just use a stigy with res to make up for res flask