I Was Wrong About Flame Golems (kind of)

[@workman3407]

I actually like videos like these. Often times poe ninja doesn't tell the whole story, especially on skills that don't show their damage on the charts.

[@WillyTung]

Primordial Chain is only good when your golem count is lower. With a perfectly rolled Primordial Chain (35% less Damage): 1 Golem > 260:100 - 160% more Damage 2 Golems > 325:200 - 62.5% more Damage 3 Golems > 390:300 - 30% more Damage 4 Golems > 455:400 - 13.8% more Damage 5 Golems > 520:500 - 4% more Damage 6 Golems > 585:600 - 2.5% less Damage Once you get past the 4 Golem mark then there are many, many better options over PC.

[@TheTayquann]

I forgot this is for flame golems, but for ice golems its solid bc survivability

[@yakoobski]

@@TheTayquann Not realy. It applies to all golems. Mainly because they reworked the first golem ascend node to give a flat 100% to golem buff effect instead of the 25% per summoned golem it had before, just like the second golem ascend node has. So with 3 extra golems you only get 75% buff effect. Before the first ascend node nerf you got 150% golem buff effect from Primordial Chain. So nowadays with chaos golem you only get 4% extra phys mitigation, while before ascend nerf you did get 9%. Stone golem buff is only like ~100 regen, before the nerf it was ~200. Moreover you can easily tripple or even quadruple your dmg with +3 amulet, spectres, guardian, unbound+skitters, swaping shock ascend to extra exposure ascend cause skitters already shock, and many many more tweaks and tricks. Since 3.8/3.9 Primordial Chain is a huge bait for golemancer. That's when they added extra golem to the passive tree and +lvl amulets. It was only good back then because there was no alternative. At bare minimum it needs a rework to not disallow other minions. I think that still wouldn't be enough but at least you could use it with Carrions which require other minions to even function.

[@kenneth5624]

Could you elaborate on where you got the numbers from? purely from just looking at the ammy its 35% less dmg for all golems so if you only had one golem it would just be like 100% * 0.65 vs 6 golems 600% * 0.65. I've been looking for a golem build to play this league but unsure which to choose from

[@WillyTung]

@@kenneth5624 Just basic math. One golem at 100% is just 100%, but with +3 (4 total), it's (100% - 35%) x 4 = 260 - 100% = 160% more Damage. There are other things that can affect the math but if you just look at the amulet only then the math is solid. So if you build has more than four golems without this amulet I would look into other options.

[@kenneth5624]

@@WillyTung Gotcha, I was thinking its better to have less golems with primordial chain. Do you have a golem build this league per chance?

[@G33KST4R]

Again, I genuinely hope that GGG walks back the absurd nerfs to permanent minions now that PoE2 is a separate game.

[@jameskurth3560]

To be fair they buffed golem damage during that patch so....

[@Dan1loBC]

5:35 I specced into essence this league and finding one of those guys would shred some of my janky builds. I think you make a great point. Jewels (and flasks) are very important build modifiers in current PoE, and having a build require that many jewels takes up space for some of the spicier ones. And if we're talking "1-button playstyle", righteous fire builds feel the same, but without requiring constant convocation and keeping your minions alive. I personally favor melee minions in this case, because if you give them enough speed, they can shred around the screen without requiring constant convocation to keep the clear speed.

[@gianlucapx]

Golems damage scales with their level. Adding one level is like adding one more 20/20 damage support gem. The problem with your flame golems is that they are placed in the staff, so they miss the added levels from wand, shield and corrupted body armour. Stone and ice golems can reach 30 mill damage with min-maxed gear and jewels. Unfortunally, if you go for more damage, you have to sacrifice life nodes. So you will die, even if you have chaos and elemental resistances capped, and immunity to elemental ailments. The primordial chain amulet reduces their damage, but has its benefits. The main one is the insane movement speed, that will make your golems like rockets. It gives 3 more golems. It can be easily found corrupted with "you can apply an additional curse" and anointed with Whispering Dooms, so you can use three curses on bosses. I have an ice golemancer and moving from primordial chain to dragonfang was a shock. They gained more damage for sure, but became very slow. Before they were three times faster than me, now they crawl behind me. And I'm using also the Haste aura. I haven't tried stone golems, but I'm pretty sure that their regular version would move like Romero's zombies, because they have been always slower than the ice ones. The frenzy charges given to them by the carnage spectres don't make up for the lost movement speed. I tried the flame golems in the staff, but they make way less damage compared to the variant I've said.

[@aberwood]

Great work on the deep dive. I'm using replica cold iron point and dragonfang for +9 ice golems atm. They're awesome in tota, their ice spear attack fills the entire map. It's a real graphics card melter though 😂

[@kenneth5624]

Hey man, this might be the second or third video I've watched from yourself. Just wanted to say I appreciate looking at builds from a fair standalone pair of eyes, we need more of this in the community. Theres a few builders out there that claim their build is great, showcase looks amazing and then turns out its super jank or super expensive hidden in a few items. My newer friends often fall into this trap and build videos like this where you explain in depth how it can be improved etc is awesome.

[@TarisRedwing]

Nice dude. I can tell you actually care about PoE and input from others where as others I've seen would rather "die on the hill" to prove a point then accept any criticism much less turn around and make a good video like this one showing off what they have learned. Good on you Subtractum and it's why you are one of my favorite PoE build streamers

[@heAMnify]

i used to rock flame golems too, even before the golems rework for golems to spam more mortar and less melee skills. the thing is, a spectre build trumps over it by alot. 😂

[@NilsAubroeck]

Pretty sure most minion builds suck without spectres and AG, thats like 100-200% more damage? Its why I hate minion builds.

[@Utahjazz-uh9fm]

I love playing golems but haven’t had the time to get the primordials. Have you thought about using cluster jewels with minion damage? Large and medium large passive primordial bond renewal and rotten claws. Medium with feasting fiends renewal. Works with carrion golems one stone one flame. Would love to see you explore a setup like this

[@straden79]

carrion golems scale dps much better with other minions, ggg needs to work on fixing the golem jewels tho

[@amondberzal6195]

Looking at this build and feel that its still weird. If you dont use primordial amulet,then you can use spectres and spectres are boost your damage.Same with animated guardian.

[@Panda_SMM]

I like the idea of picking off meta builds and doing it the way poeninja players are generally doing it, but then finding smart people who have specialized themselves playing that specific build as a showcase of what’s better than what the average poeninja player is doing.

[@Failzz8]

Yep, for the off meta stuff there's always that one guy who knows what he's doing, and then a bunch of people who are clearly just copying the same scuffed youtube guide lol

[@geburah8319]

you should totally keep doing content like this. not everything has to be good at everything. this is a very good chill mapper. some people want builds like this to relax with at the end of a workday, while casually earning currency.

[@tdotfun]

Appreciate the redo/retake on it. Off meta build is off meta for a reason. Now, if that damage and survivability was league start/100c total, I might be interested.

[@xTobsecretx]

Nah you didn’t do it dirty - flame, stone and chaos golems are not trivial to build and they’re not exactly in an amazing place rn. I think it’s really cool that you’re doing the average build bc as you showed, there are some really good improvements you can make on what people on ladder are doing. The problems you found in your first video are what 90% of the golem build help posts on the poe builds subreddit end up having as well. Primordial Harmony stacking is not very intuitive and lots of golem builds I have reviewed don’t have enough. Primordial chain I think is popular bc the only real build guides for most of these golem builds are super old and outdated. Good on you for posting an update!!

[@nope-bv6cu]

Horde still keeps the buffs I assume? Like lightning golem boosting player cast speed

[@Xomage999]

Yeah, I've done golems a time or two in my time with poe, and I really dislike that primordial chain is a trap. I so very want it to be *the* choice for golems, but more for the sake of more is just trumped too hard by less for the sake of dps.

[@lolleonlolable]

yeah i think it has too many downsides too like -35%damage AND you cant use the most op shit a summoner has AG/specs. but its still kinda good for speed mapping with pure stonys. or at least it was, the new +3 amu is just way too good. i think its sad in genereall where golems are atm, they should maybe limit the golem jewels you can use but make em better or somehting like that. that u need like at least 7-8 of them + one just to make em aggressive + anima stone is too much.

[@Siegram999]

always seen it as a bait item the downsides are just way too strong. ontop of that golems themselves arent very strong in general and they force u into the jewels ontop of that. carrion/stone golems or bust tbh

[@bertjohnson401]

Great, I just gamba'd a replica dragonsfang past a flame golem modifier because they were sscuff, lol.

[@lootmaster1337]

Man i miss my ice golems build i played all the way back in synth, those boys slapped so hard with a 7link chest (rip maim support) Permanent minions just sadly feel off now, even if this setup seems rather reasonable, if minions were good it would be much more expensive than 10 divs

[@jameskurth3560]

Yay for old ice golems. I still have mine from blight league.

[@kaiderscheid4353]

I miss Golems but yeah its hard to fit in defenses, it has the same issues classic totem MoM builds have

[@zeer7411]

Subtractem, you could make a Penance Brand build, it could be ignite or crit, whatever, I always wanted to make a build with this skill, but it never works out, I love your videos and your explanations.

[@hiddenpixels9558]

may i ask if your profile picture is magnum or blue steel?

[@subtractem]

blue steel of course

[@hiddenpixels9558]

lookin good :P@@subtractem

[@Supremeangell]

not adding spectres or ag is losing at least 50% of your damage. minions in general without support minions for debuf n damage boost just doesnt feel good

[@vyntarus9618]

What if they made the primordial jewels work like the grand spectrums? I made a carrion golemancer back in Sentinel and I didn't think it felt great to have to slot so many of the same jewel like that.

[@trueedgelord9079]

It would be nice to see an explosive concoction build, Ive only ever seen Mathil play it asa meme and it's always seemed like it had so much potential to me.

[@Trypan]

tried doing an explosive conc build this league with the new dragonflight, mahuxotls shield. Mapping its ehhh, bossing is awful. Flask charges just wont sustain although lots of flask investment when bossing

[@vicococ2662]

even x5 the damage it is still not enough for QOL

[@ryhluen9311]

Can you make a guide for this?

[@Nicolas-tq8yz]

a well rolled primordial chain is between a +1 amu and a +1 amu nicely rolled (with a minion affix) in terms of strengh. So really an early item Dont you have enough mana for skitterbot? Now, i dont know if you had an opinion about lightning golem but you are probably not wrong, they break my heart. They do a not so bad boss dps tho Ice golems open the option for replica cold iron point, wich is nice

[@AcSlaytah56]

id kill to have someone take a look and try to fix my current cast when stunned build. im tanky af but only doing around 2 mil dps with what id consider fairly good gear.

[@philippdrescher6012]

Can I see it or have your PoB? I don't know if i can help you, but I'm very interested in a cast when stunned build. ;)

[@AcSlaytah56]

@@philippdrescher6012 I feel like my last message got deleted?

[@philippdrescher6012]

@@AcSlaytah56 I don't see another message, maybe links are not allowed or sth.

[@AcSlaytah56]

yeah not sure how to get ya the build sorry.@@philippdrescher6012

[@hoayuko]

Seems like a good starting/2nd char ?

[@albertakitesurfer]

I'm still running golems on fire trap elementalist lol. I got stone+chaos+Minion life support with Golem mastery+increased chaos Golem buff Eldritch implicit. I don't find they die too much, they res quick, pull some agro and help with survivability (PDR/Regen)

[@aiden5887]

I love this series xx

[@lolleonlolable]

made a pob with 4 times the damage, tryd to post it but youtube deleted my comment and warned me.. the fuck. tldr: you can do waaay more damage than this. i think 25-30 mil dps vs pinnacle boss is pretty decent for a walking build.

[@fma0420]

Can you describe what you changed?

[@lolleonlolable]

​@@fma0420 lol i prolly spend like 30min minmaxing this shit, pob is gone becasue youtube deleted my post and i didnt save it. i try a tldr: animate guaridan leer cast / dying breath spectre / frenzy apes 2 big cluster with good nodes. (besides renewal all the nodes he has are kinda wrong) minion damage vs pinnace on glvoes 17%fire weakness vs pinnace on gloves better golem jewels 45/20 tattoos that actually make sense like aura effect awakened ally focus for fire pen better gems like max lvl quality /divergent/anomalous where it makes sense. better ghastly jewels in belt (his are trash) like 20%minion damage when used minion skill / added fire damage ones. bottled faith unnerve from awakened controlled lvl 5 dropped 2 mana reserve nodes and eldritch battery (he dosnt even need it) but idk prolly add determination to the build insdead of that but idk ur porlly sc and dont care about defense ? thats the stuff i can remember hope it helps (it was for lvl 100 btw) but yeah you can deal like waaay more damage with this, or even add like determination/Grace and get more res from better gear/tattoos thats an option too. not a fan of purity of elements with this, his pob kinda looks like "ok i try this fast and dont use good gear or a real skilltree) idk why you would even link a pob like this. some noobs gonna copy that and think its good ^^ cheers.

[@trungnguyenphuocquy9735]

LOL with all of this and u call it minmaxing? am not even call this low investment, u just put some stuff which "INCREASING THE DAMAGE" to the build. Proving the build could deal more damage is meaningless, you still couldnt do anything other than alch and go map, then all the investment for?

[@lolleonlolable]

@@trungnguyenphuocquy9735 than call it whatever you think is the right word between "zero investment" and "minmaxing" not sure what ur even on about. he did t16 with 20%more monster life with like 1/4 of the damage he could have. you comment is literally so dumb that i thought about you beeing a bot comment. if you wanna talk like this you should prolly remove your youtube "build showcase" videos :D first one i watched you nearly died 4 times, nxt time you died. im really impressed by the sanctum bosskill too, not every build can do hard content like that. specially not shittly golems huh ? *wink*

[@spacenw]

Hi, I have been away from PoE for over a year now, which build do you recommend picking up for starters?

[@StanleyDarsh22]

Righteous fire

[@soararos]

I got a couple of questions on a build in doing right now. Where would be the best place to have someone just double check it with me just to make sure im not messing up anywhere.

[@pickledbeaker5916]

Key for golem builds: more jewels than a Disney princess

[@dinho178]

If you want comfort to walk around just play spectres

[@marcodxd3631]

i just want to say that stone golems deal 50m damage

[@philippwolf6088]

You should definitely use support minions if you already dropped the amulet

[@philippdrescher6012]

True, Animate Guardian with Kingmaker, Gravebind and Explode Chest improves Minion builds Quality of Life by a milestone.

[@halxyonous]

The DPS is honestly really good for a mapping setup, shame about the defenses or lack thereof.

[@nicknicksiren]

I think in these types of videos you are focusing too much on what is or is not meta, whereas it's sort of missing the point. The reason why many players play certain builds in ARGPs in the first place is the _implicit fun factor_ for how a build functions. Whether it's mechanically, or in the backend numbers side of things, people get implicit satisfaction for playing certain builds, regardless of if it's meta or not.

[@stfucookieman957]

the point of the video is to see if the hype is worth it, and it clearly isn't is the answer has nothing to do with meta and everything to do with the shitty feel/scaling of the build

[@fma0420]

That is the explicit point of the video, I think. He’s exploring how it feels to play and generally how it performs, and came to the conclusion that if you like this kind of build, it’s a good one.

[@sober667]

Conclusion avarage player bad XD

[@trungnguyenphuocquy9735]

Still a fan of Primordial chains even it 100% a bait LOL.

[@B455PL4Y3R]

why do people dislike your videos

[@subtractem]

Just a bunch of trolls, started on league start when some lies were being spread to create drama. It'll go away eventually but will take some time.

[@LightOfSkyFalling]

Like seriously... why people talk 💩 about stone golems? They wreck everything, specially this season with the replica amulet that gives +3 to stone golems... Now If they don't know how to push their dmg... that's their issue 😂

[@TylerDane]

Without having watched your other video, probably the reason it sucked before is exactly because you were doing what the "average" player was doing when there is no "average" player in the sense of using all the most common things among everyone playing any specific build. It's the same as there being no "average" human being when everything is aggregated for any sample of people.

[@subtractem]

There is absolutely an "average" when it comes to this type of thing. Standard might be a better word. I didn't aggregate and pick the most common passives and items, I looked at a bunch of people that are playing Flame Golems and did what they did. All their builds were essentially identical.

[@ocping]

It's hot garbage tbh. You were being too nice.

[@reverie9358]

shoutout to the gigachad golem enjoyers

[@JavierCasanova25]

Release the ghazzy (base growl from the deep)

[@rozkarim6241]

you kind of choose the weakest golem of them all, stone golem,carrion golem,ice golem is better for dps

[@evrE1aftermestolemyname]

you look like you are taking a lot of embers and ichors irl lol.

[@lucasmoraes9103]

No they are not good at all... either you dump a load of currency or they will not perform that good at all.

[@sethgradwell2366]

Can anyone recommend a good minion build for MF farming crimson temple 8mod maps with wandering path? Want to try minions for MF since I think they can compete with a mid tier bow MF build on a much better budget.

[@archiei40x]

So, somebody couldnt handle the fact you took a jab at the archetype from your own perspective? Ive done multiple golem builds in the past, from scion to guardian and the witch ascendancies. The build isnt in a good place, the amont of uniques is required to even feel good, then the defenses per divine invest smh. The amount of possibilities i have to give up stacking primordial jewels vs possible 6 stat abyss for minions, while dealing with diminishing returns just doesnt feel good.

[@Alex_Faux]

Someone responding to his video and correcting some of his mistakes is exactly what we want to happen. His showcase made it seem like Flame Golems are completely unplayable when they're just average to mediocre. I played golems for way longer than the meta did because I enjoyed the playstyle. Clearly the guy who posted the comment loves the build otherwise he wouldn't have the tech.

[@kenneth5624]

@@Alex_Faux yo if you got a pobbin for me to look at I was wanting a new golem build

[@pansms1837]

nice

[@k-daddy9988]

Sounds like some neckbeard got in your head lol. Ill say it so you dont have to; flame golems is still garbage 😂 Love your content, my dude. Thanks for the video.

[@subtractem]

not in my head, free content :)

[@alanleonardopiovesan]

Obvious you was wrong!

[@subtractem]

?

[@Jc-go3mz]

build still sucks lol