Volatile Dead Spellslinger Necromancer is widely regarded as one of the best league starters in Path of Exile. In this video, CatmasterOP will talk about why this build is great. The build allows you to progress the entire game without any necessary PoE items while being comfortable and going fast. For more details, you can follow GucciPradas and Zizaran’s videos on Volatile Dead Spellslinger. You can also import Zizaran’s PoB, which has all of the information necessary to replicate the build.
Volatile Dead is a two-component spell that has a corpse component and a spell damage component. When the corpse explodes, you create an orb that runs towards enemy and deal spell damage in a large area. The corpse explosions can’t be reflected, but they don’t scale with spell damage too. To supply corpses for Volatile Dead, you can use Desecrate. Desecrate Volatile Dead builds only became good once The Poet’s Pen and Spell Cascade were in the game. The Poet’s Pen is a unique wand that lets you trigger socketed spells whenever you use Wand attack, which has been replaced, in this case, with Spellslinger support.
Spell Cascade support makes spells appear not only once but also once in front and behind the target area. It only works for AoE, but since both Dececrate and Volatile Dead are AoE, it triples the number of things it does.
Spellslinger is a spell support that turns spells that are linked into reservations. You can see that in CatmasterOP’s video, he has three spellslingers running. His main setup is Volatile Dead with Inspiration, Hypothermia, and Spell Cascade. The other one is Descrate and Spell Cascade, and another utility setup is Wave of Conviction and Bone offering with Onslaught.
In cruel Lab, Mistress of Sacrifice makes your Sacrifice offering skills affect you with a reduced effect and gives you skill effect duration. It is good for Bone Offering because Bone Offering allows you to reach block cap with Glancing Blows.
Glancing Blows is a passive keystone that has been added to the tree, which was only available through timeless jewels. Glancing Blows doubles your chance to block, but as a downside, instead of avoiding all damage from the blocked hits, you take 50% of the damage from blocked hits. So, doubling your block chance then having the benefit it gives you doesn’t change anything, but it makes it more consistent, and it’s much better to be block capped and to take 50% of damage from block hits than to have half block cap and avoid all damage. Glancing Blows is a nice stepping stone to have some block cap without investing too much into it. With Glancing Blows, you can roll recover percentage of life on block on Shaper Shields.
In normal Lab, Plaguebringer gives you more damage, which makes nearby enemies deal reduced damage with nearby corpses and gives you 30% increased AoE if you have consumed the corpse recently.
Corpse Pact gives 50% increased maximum life to the corpses that you spawn. The corpse explosion part of Volatile Dead depends on the corpse’s life, which is a big boost to the corpse explosion component. “Enemies near corpses you Spawned Recently are Chilled and Shocked” means you can use Hypothermia, which lets supported skills deal more damage with hits and ailments against shield enemies since the enemies are guaranteed to be chilled next to your corpses, and you spawn more corpses than you consume. It also helps with the shock because shock increases damage taken by 15%.
Enduring Cry
CatmasterOP’s twist on this build is that he uses two Warcries. In 3.11, Warcry has been changed to not share a cooldown anymore. So, you can use both Enduring Cry and Infernal Cry in the build and link them with Second Wind so that when they go on cooldown, you have a second use, meaning the first use stack already recovers while you still have the second available. Also, since Enduring Cry has been buffed, every time you enduring cry, you are guaranteed to generate at least 1 endurance charge regardless of nearby enemies. When enemies are nearby, based on the power of those enemies, you generate more endurance charges, and for every 5 power, it grants 1 endurance charge.
In CatmasterOP’s video, even if he is alone with a unique boss, he can still get 4 endurance charges when he enduring cry, which is more than his maximum. Also, for a short duration of the buff, it will give additional all resistance and additional physical mitigation per endurance charge, which makes the endurance charges 50% stronger for a short of time after he warcried.
Also, the 1-second regeneration effect that Enduring cry always had has been massively buffed. So, whenever he uses Enduring cry, he regenerates 1900 life over 1 second, which is a solid chunk of life and equivalent to using a Surgeon’s Hallowed Life Flask.
Infernal Cry
Infernal Cry covers enemies in ash, causing them to take increased fire damage, and this effect is based on the power of the nearby enemies, but it goes up to 20% as well. So, as long as you have a decent amount of nearby enemies, you’ll get a significant damage increase by covering enemies in ash with Infernal Cry. On top of that, it causes enemies to explode on death. When enemies die, they explode, dealing fire damage equal to 8% of the monsters’ max life, which is incredibly useful for clearing those bulky packs with resistance.
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