[3.9] Null's Inclination Aurabot Summoner

It's finally here! Blade skills (Bladefall, Blade Vortex, etc) leave "blades" on the ground, from which we can animate. This is very exciting as it addresses the main problem on Animate Weapon builds.

This build will require a significant amount of changes and will probably come out completely different of what is presented here. Therefore I'll stop updating this guide and might come with another brand new build once I figure out how it's gonna work.

Right now this build is deprecated, however it should work as it did in so many leagues, if you want to give it a try.

A few changes on this build. Some minion movement speed nodes have been nerfed and the passive tree changed slightly. This build still works and should be playable as before.

I'm pretty excited about the new Feeding Frenzy support. Having our minions swarm all over the place sounds pretty interesting!

About the new ascendancy nodes, I haven't figured out yet the best options. I'm thinking about:

* Mistress of Sacrifice
* Mindless Aggression
* Bone Barrier
* Commander of Darkness

Bone Armour is a new Guard skill and would conflict with CWDT - Immortal Call. We can probably drop it for a new minion setup, maybe Animated Guardian and zombies.

This patch reworked melee combat and some changes affected this build.

* Basic attacks now have a small cleave around the target, which means Melee Splash won't feel mandatory for AOE situations. We still use it for maps and clearspeed, though.

* Precision aura has been added to the game. It provides a lot of Accuracy and crit chance. Now its much easier to cap minion hit chance and we no longer need Command of the Pit.

* It appears the interaction between Rain of Arrows and Summon Phantasms was a bug:

"

Fixed a bug where the Summon Phantasm Support would cause non-minion skills to be counted as minion skills for cases such as Null's Inclination's "Trigger Socketed Minion Skills on Kill" mod.

Effects from "x% increased damage if you used a minion skill recently" can only be triggered by Blink Arrow or Convocation, which is quite annoying :/

Nothing special changed from 3.5. There are two things worth noticing:

* Summon Phantasm on Kill now has a chance to summon a Phantasm on hit against bosses. Its a nice bonus for this build, now that it can generate minions on boss fights.

* The new quiver (Maloney's Mechanism) can be pretty interesting too. Having 3 additional sockets enables more gem combination possibilities, such as:
- Animate Guardian
- Raise Zombies
- Rain of Arrows - Curse on Hit - Some curse, to leverage the trigger effect and apply a specific curse.

3.8 - Blight League


3.5 - Betrayal League

+ No 6 link required
+ Cheap to get started
+ Plenty of space for customization on items and the passive tree
+ Can run any map mod

- Loses all your minions on zone transitions (death, Elder and his guardians, TP back to hideout, etc)
- Can get really laggy at maximum minions, which might force you to play on Predictive mode
- Produces a lot of visual and sound clutter which might hide important gameplay cues (volatile flameblood, caustic ground, reflected damage missile, etc)
- Requires an alternative 6-Link setup to do bosses

The main flavor of this build comes from the unique bow Null's Inclination:



Whenever we land a killing blow with this, any skill gem with both "Spell" and "Minion" tags will be triggered. This guide will focus on triggering Animate Weapon and Offerings.
Since we need to constantly attack and score kills, we use Herald of Purity and link "Summon Phantasm" to our attack skill. Phantasms and Sentinels of Purity will be summoned whenever we land killing blows.

Most of the time we'll be hanging around with 64 minions (50 animated weapons, 10 phantasms and 4 sentinels of purity). To further boost their damage, we'll use the unique body armour Victario's Influence:



Any "Aura" skill gem socketed here will be enhanced by Generosity Support and have reduced mana reservation, which means we can stack a bunch of auras in our mana pool.

To make sure we'll be killing most enemies before our minions kill them, we use the unique helmet Speaker's Wreath:



This means our minions cannot kill enemies unless they are ignited. Because we provide Fire damage to our minions, they have a 5% chance deal a critical strike and apply ignite. Its not as bad as it sounds, because you won't have to single handedly kill every enemy on maps.

This combination results in a very active, fun and fast-paced summoner build! So far it has been the most fun build I have played on this game.

Required gear


As explained on the Gameplay section, these uniques are required to make this build work.

Belt


This belt gives a nice amount of life, a bit of damage and ailment immunity if we juggle our stats correctly. Ailment immunity allows us to run different suffixes on flasks instead of the traditional shock/freeze/ignite immunity.
The best combination we can do is Dexterity > Intelligence > Strength, providing immunity to shock and freeze. Both chill and ignite can be mitigated with the Pantheon.

Alternatively, you can use a Stygian Vise for an extra Abyss Jewel.

Gloves


Any Rare gloves with life and stats or resists.

Amulet


Astramentis makes the gearing requirements much easier, but ultimately you should look for a rare amulet with life and stats or resists.

Ring


Any Rare ring with life and stats or resists. A Warlord's Mark ring is great to provide healing for you and your minions, but not really necessary.

Quiver

Any Rare quiver with life, dextery and resists.

Boots

Any Rare boots with life, movement speed and resists.

Jewels
Have at least 1 jewel with "Minions Blind on hit" and "Minions Taunt on hit" such as these:


They're both suffixes and its possible to have them on a single jewel. It can be a bit expensive, though:

To equip your Guardian, simply drop the item on the group and press the skill button on top of it. He will inherit every effect provided on each equipment.

You only need to do this once and it will last until he dies. It can wear the same equipments designed for players, except accessories. Therefore, we'll feed him the following items:




These items provide some interesting AOE buffs for you and your minions.

If the Animated Guardian dies, you lose any equipment fed to him. Thankfully, these items are pretty cheap and easy to find. We can also feed him some sturdy gloves and body armour to prevent his death. Some options are:



If you are willing to spend some extra currency on your Animated Guardian, here are some interesting options:

Animate Weapon - This goes into our bow:


Offering - 6th socket on the bow

Flesh offering grants an attack and movement speed buff to you and your minions. Its better for clearspeed and DPS.


Spirit offering in a good option to improve both your minion survivability and yours. It instantly provides Energy Shield when activated

Auras and Herald - This goes into our body armour:



These auras provide a lot of damage to our minions. We use Herald of Purity here to have a "baseline" minion, because its very easy to summon them on maps and bosses.

Attack skill - The build enabler


Rain of Arrows is the best attack skill for this build because it covers a huge area and doesn't require any other support gem to work, such as Pierce or Greater Multiple Projectiles. We can use it as-is in any situation.

Summon Phantasm has a chance to summon minions upon landing killing blows or hitting rare or unique enemies.

Elemental Army allows our phantasms to apply "Exposure" on enemies, making them vulnerable to elemental damage.

Culling Strike makes it easier to score killing blows by sniping your enemies before your minions kill them. Its also very efficient against tough enemies such as rare monsters and bosses.

Support Minions


We give the Animated Guardian some items to buff nearby allies. Carrion Golem gives a nice DPS boost to nearby minions and its a pretty strong unit.

Spectre


We summon a Carnage Chieftain (found in Act 2 - Old Fields) as spectre. He grants frenzy charges to you and your minions every few seconds. Blood Magic is required so that he casts it as often as possible.

Movement

Blink Arrow is amazing to move you around and creates another minion when used, however it has a long cooldown. We can offset that using Flame Dash for instant movement on demand.

Dread Banner

It gives our minions a chance to apply Impale on hit and reduces the accuracy of nearby enemies. Its a great offensive and defensive aura!

Convocation

Convocation is a very important skill to move your minions around, for both offense (stacking all minions on top of one target) and defense (moving them away from AOE attacks).

Bandits - Kill all!

Ascendancy - We're going Necromancer on the following order:
1- Mindless Aggression
2- Mistress of Sacrifice
3- Bone Barrier
4- Commander of Darkness

Pantheon
Soul of the Brine King - It provides stunlock protection and reduced effect of chill on you.
Soul of Abberath - It reduces the duration of ignite effects on you, so that ignite removal flasks won't be required.

Passives
Basic passive tree, 99 points (Level 76)

Finished passive tree, 119 points (Level 96)

We use 1 Recovery flask, 1 Speed flask and 3 Defensive flasks:

Recovery

Any "Catalysed" or "Sapping" Life Flask "of Animation" to heal you and your minions.

Speed

Any Quicksilver "of Adrenaline". I personally prefer the Chemist and Experimenter prefixes.

Defensive

These are good options to mitigate incoming attacks. Quartz Flask also gives you Phasing, which allows your to move through enemies unhindered.

We'll be leveling with spells until level 32~33, where we'll swap to bows. Until we can equip the Null's Inclination, we'll be using sentinels and phantasms to level up.

14 Points
* Get Freezing Pulse after killing Hillock.
* Complete "Mercy Mission" and get Summon Phantasm. Link it to Freezing Pulse
* When you reach The Prison, get "Added Lightning Damage" from Nessa and link if to Freezing Pulse. Also, buy a "Minion Damage" from her and slot it somewhere on your gear.
* After killing Brutus, get "Flame Dash" as your movement skill. If you have found enough currency, buy a "Clarity" from Nessa and use it. Remember to leave it at level 1!
* When you reach The Cavern of Wrath, get "Firestorm" from Nessa. Use it instead of Freezing Pulse.

26 Points
* As soon as you reach act 2, go straight to the Chambers of Sin and save Helena. Buy Herald of Purity from Yeena after completing this quest. Link it to that Minion damage you bought from Nessa. If you don't have enough Strength to use Herald of Purity, consider equipping a Heavy Belt (can be bought from vendors for a few scrolls)
* Complete the side quest on The Crypt and grab the "Survival Instinct" gem. Slot it on that jewel node.
* Do the rest of act 2 as usual, killing all bandits.
* Start picking up every Rare bow and quiver you find. If it has a decent amount of damage mods, keep it to use later. A few examples:


45 Points
* On act 3 you'll start finding 4 linked items. Keep an eye on any GBB or GBBB, as we'll need it to link our bow setup soon.
* Grab the Jade Amulet from Diala. You might need the dexterity it provides once we swap to bows.
* After you clear the blockade on The Sewers, you'll have access to the Library on the Imperial Gardens. Go there and complete the quest given by Siosa.
* Buy the following gems from Siosa:

- Toxic Rain
- Rain of Arrows
- Anger
- Blink Arrow

This is when we drop the Firestorm and use bows. We'll be using Toxic Rain - Summon Phantasm - Added Lightning Damage. If you managed to find a GBBB, buy another "Minion Damage" on act 1 and place it in the 4th link. Replace Flame Dash with Blink Arrow and activate the Anger aura. Place Rain of Arrows somewhere in your gear for now, because we'll be using it later.

If you dont have enough dexterity to equip a bow, consider doing the following:

- Equip a Jade Amulet;
- Grab nearby passive points that grant Dexterity ("Precision" gives 20, "Practical Application" gives 20 and "Agility" gives 30). Later in the build we'll have enough Dexterity to respec these passives.

* When you do swap to bows, respec those "spell damage" nodes on the initial part of the passive tree and grab the shortest path.
* Continue the act 3. Do the lab when you feel comfortable to complete it. Ascend as Necromancer and grab the "Mindless Aggression" passive.
* On act 4, get "Summon Carrion Golem" after completing the first quest.
* After defeating Daresso and Kaom, get "Decay Support" from Diala. Replace it with "Added Lightning Damage".
* Now that we have Decay, replace "Toxic Rain" with "Rain of Arrows".

66 Points
* Nothing special here. Keep going down the passive tree.
* Remember to keep upgrading your bow! Pick every rare bow that drops and check if its a DPS upgrade.

80 Points
* As you approach level 60, grab all duration nodes:
- Enduring Bond, near the Witch starting point
- Potency of Will and Exceptional Performance, on the center of the passive tree.

* Do the cruel labyrinth and get the "Mistress of Sacrifice" passive.

* When you hit level 60, open the trade site and look for any Null's Inclination listed. It's a very cheap item and shouldn't cost more than 1 Chaos orb.

-- Transitioning into Null's Inclination --

1- Quality up your bow and spend every Jeweller orb you found until you hit 6 sockets.
2- Then, spend your Fusings until you hit at least 5 links.
3- After that, spend your Chromatics until you hit 1 Green, 2 Red and 3 Blue, having the unlinked socket being a Blue one.

This step is all based on luck. If you managed to craft your bow, great! Head to the Gem section and buy the gems listed there. Also, remember to replace Decay for Culling Strike on the Rain of Arrows setup.

If you didn't managed to complete the craft yet, thats fine. Continue playing the build you have right now and keep trying! You'll eventually hit it.

Note: Even if you didn't hit 6 sockets or the right colors, it's possible that Null's Inclination will be a upgrade for you. You can use it with Flesh Offering and Animate Weapon right away.

-- --

* Continue the quest line as usual. At this point you might consider spending some time on Blood Aqueducts to familiarize with the build and farm exp, item upgrades and currency.

* If you successfully crafted the Null's Inclination as listed above, buy a Speaker's Wreath and equip it at level 64.

95 points

* Complete the merciless labyrinth before defeating Kitava. Get the Bone Barrier passive.

* Get those aura nodes on the passive tree. As soon as you get them, buy a Victario's Influence, 6 socket and equip it. Slot all the gems listed in the Gem section.

* After you equip the Victario's Influence, get Elemental Equilibrium. Make sure that none of your items are granting "Added X to Y Fire/Lightning Damage to attacks" and at least one of your items is granting "Added X to Y Cold Damage to attacks". By applying cold EE, we make enemies vulnerable to Fire and Lightning damage, which are the two elements we're providing with our auras.

At this point, the passive tree is completed! If you enjoyed this build and want to keep going, there's a bit of fine-tuning to improve your character

112 Points

* Whenever possible, do the uber lab and grab the Commander of Darkness passive.

* At this point, your minions are doing all the damage. Respec the following passives on the western part of the passive tree:
- Redemption
- Spiritual Aid
- Righteous Army

* Allocate Grave Intentions, on the right side of the Witch starting point. It will provide more survivability to your minions. (If you need more defenses, consider swapping Flesh Offering with Spirit Offering)

* Allocate nearby life nodes to increase your health

119 Points
* Allocate Utmost Swiftness. Once its done, buy a Golden oil and anoint your amulet with Influence (more on that below)

* Last but not least, allocate Profane Chemistry.

At this point, you're at 96. The 4 remaining points can be spent on jewel nodes to customize your character.

Here's my suggested order to chase upgrades. A few tips before buying them:

* Save your currency. Always look for cheap upgrades until you can afford the expensive ones
* Negotiate your orbs of fusing. We barely use them on this build and they are quite valuable to other players.
* When buying rare items, look for open prefixes or suffixes. You can craft Maximum Life on prefixes and Resists on suffixes.
* If the market is saturated with a specific unique item, look for perfect/almost perfect rolls. A good example is the Speaker's Wreath helmet, which can be bought with perfect rolls (40 dex, 15% skill effect) for a few alchemy orbs

Minimum requirements

1- At level 60, Null's Inclination with 6 sockets and at least 5 links
2- At level 64, Speaker's Wreath with maximum rolls
3- Before doing maps, rare items with Maximum Life and Resists
3.1 - Boots with at least 20% increased movement speed
3.2 - Any ring, amulet or quiver with Cold Damage to Attacks
4- After allocating all "reduced mana reservation" nodes (around level 75), Victario's Influence with 6 sockets
5- Cyclopean Coil. You probably won't need to juggle your stats, but they should be Dexterity > Intelligence > Strength.

Upgrades 4 and 5 might hurt your resists badly, as they provide none. Consider spending more currency on better rares if necessary.

6- Taunt and Blind Abyss Jewel:
* Minions have #% chance to Taunt on Hit with Attacks
* Minions have #% chance to Blind on Hit with Attacks

7- Unset Ring with "Curse enemies with Warlord's Mark on Hit"
8- Cyclopean Coil with perfect or near perfect rolls (40 Maximum life Implicit, 80 Maximum life Explicit, 15% Increased attributes).
9- Victario's Influence with 15% Increased effect of non-curse auras

Lab enchants
Helmet: Animated Weapons deal 40% Increased Damage
Gloves: Commandment of Reflection or Commandment of the Grave
Boots: None of them are particularly useful on this build. The best enchant on this slot would be "% chance to avoid stun"

Anointments
Influence: Best, but expensive enchant. Requires a Verdant, Teal and Golden oil:


Utmost Swiftness: Cheap and useful alternative. Requires a Sepia, Teal and Crimson oil:


Alacrity: Extremely cheap alternative. Grants +30 Dexterity and uses 3 Clear Oils, which is the easiest to find


Min-maxing

These are endgame goals that don't need a specific order:

* Level 21/20 gems: Animate Weapon, Wrath, Anger and Vaal haste
* Level 20/20 gems: Everything else
* Double-corrupted Victario's Influence to have +2 Socketed Aura Gems and +2 Socketed AOE Gems. (Can be achieved on the Temple of Atzoatl, Locus of Corruption room)
* Double-corrupted amulet to have Increased Wrath/Anger Aura Effect
* Rare shaped Quiver with Dexterity, Maximum life and Onslaught on kill
* Rare amulet with Dexterity, Maximum life and a open suffix to craft "10% chance to Summon Spectral Wolf on kill"
* Bossing weapon swap using:
** 6-Link Lioneye's Glare with 28% Quality. (28% Quality can be achieved with Hillock rank 3 on the Transportation Safehouse)
** Maloney's Nightfall.

Since we can't trigger Animate Weapon during boss fights, we'll need an alternative setup to do them. The best combination I came up with so far is using Mirror Arrow on a Lioneye's Glare and Maloney's Nightfall:



Gameplay
* Cast Mirror Arrow on cooldown. Dont place them too far away, because they need our auras to deal damage.

* Keep using Rain of Arrows to summon Sentinels, Phantasms and apply cold Elemental Equilibrium on the boss

* Cast Desecrate/Flesh Offering when out of danger.