[3.28] CheapBunny's Fresh Meat Summon Reaper of Revenant Gladiator | Catarina | Ancient Skull

The build idea started with Catarina Bloodline ascendancy node Prolonged Service. I thought this node is quite interesting since it is introduced in 3.27. And it got buffed in 3.28, becomes 20% more minion damage (from 15%), makes me wanted to play with it even more.


This node has great synergy with Ancient Skull unique helmet.


While this helmet provides huge bonuses to minion through Whisper, it has been very difficult to make use of it, because of the chaos damage over time downside to the minion, causing your minions die very quickly. With Prolonged Service, it not only prevents your minions dying from the chaos dot, the chaos dot also makes your minion goes into low life quickly, and get the 20% more minion damage from Prolonged Service.

(Whispers: Minions which hear the whispers take 20% of their maximum life as chaos damage per second, have 50% increased attack speed and damage, and do not listen to you)

Prolonged Service also allows the build to go all in investing into minion offensive power without taking care of their survivability, which is a huge upside.

With Ancient Skull and Prolonged Service, minions will die 6 secs after the their hp reduced to 0, and they have to be resummoned again. Ancient Skull helmet also requires minion critically hit to gain the buff, which makes Fresh Meat a great support, it provides massive critical bonus and Adrenaline buff to the minions when they are newly summoned.



Fresh Meat Support's buffs apply to minions based on 10% of their minion duration, up to a maximum of 10 seconds. For permanent minions without a duration, this buff will always last for 10 seconds after they are summoned.

To make full use of Fresh Meat support, we need a permanent minion that is easy to summon, and with no cooldowns. Yes, the answer is Summon Reaper of Revenant.



Because we need to resummon 5 Reaper every time Reaper dies, Unleash support becomes handy.

The build is taking another nodes from Catarina Bloodline, Death Offering.



This nodes will kill any target affected by offering when the duration expired, including player, making the build cannot ultilize bone offering to gain block chance, so I go with Gladiator for easy max block and lucky block.

Consume (Heal): The Reaper will use this ability if it has less than 75% life, there is an allied damageable minion nearby.

The Consume skills kill one allied damageable minion, then recovers 50% of the Reaper's life and applies a buff to the Reaper for a base duration of 6 seconds.
40% increased attack speed
40% increased movement speed
30% increased Area of Effect
10% increased character size

Ancient Skull helmet chaos dot will reduce Reaper's life very quickly and hence triggering the consume to buff Reaper offensively.

In this build, we feed Reaper with Spectres and Skeletons. We are using Dark Marionette spectre that will revive automatically 4secs after being consumed. https://www.poewiki.net/wiki/Dark_Marionette

As we need to keep up offerings buff all the time to prevent Death Offering killing Reapers, and to summon enough skeletons for Reaper's consumption, Arcanist Brand setup is used to semi-automate the whole process.



For bossing, you will need to use Desecrate periodically for offering skills to consume.



Alternatively, you can anoint Hollow Effigy passive to press one less button.

1. 75%/77% block chance

2. Lucky block (Gladiator ascendancy)

3. Decent Ehp (6k life + es)

4. 5% life recover on block (shield mod)

5. 75% chaos res

6. Automation + Steelskin

7. Shock Immunity (Tempest Shield)

Early Game[
Decent dps Rare Two-Handed Axe/Mace


Mid Game
Minion Damage/Minion Attack Speed Rare Wand

End Game
+1 Minion Level/Minion Damage/Minion Attack Speed/Minion Crit Rare Wand

Early Game
Two-Handed Axe/Mace

Mid Game
Minion Damage/Minion Resis/Life/Resis Rare Shield

End Game
Socketed Gem Reserve Efficiency/Life gain on block/Minion Damage/Minion Crit Rare Shield


(Only the reservation and life on block is needed. I bought the shield with all 3 suffixes (reservation, life on block, minion crit), beast craft suffix cannot change, and harvest reroll minion mod + ex until something decent.)

Early Game
Life/Resis Rare Body Armour

Mid Game
+2 Minion Body Armour


End Game

(Look for 5B1R if you are following Medium Budget version, which does not use Greater Multistrike support)
(The keystone does not matter, just avoid keystone that can brick the build like Blood Magic)

Early Game
Life/Resis Rare Helmet


Mid Game
+Minion Level/Life/Resis Rare Helmet


End Game

(Corrupted implicit : +1 maximum power charge)

Early/Mid Game
Life/Resis Rare Gloves


End Game
Level 30 Aspect of Spider/Minion Damage/Life/Resis Rare Gloves


Eldritch Implicit : Minion Damage

Buy gloves with decent Life/Resis, with one opened prefix and one opened suffix. Bench craft minion damage and beast craft Level 30 Aspect of Spider.

Early/Mid Game
Movespeed/Life/Resis Rare Boots

End Game
Movespeed/Life/Resis Rare Boots


Eldritch Implicit : Drop Brittle ground while moving

Early/Mid Game
Life/Resis Rare Belt

End Game

(Corrupted implicit : +All Elemental Resis)

Early/Mid Game
Life/Resis/Attributes Rare Amulet

End Game

(Anointment : Gravepact)

Early/Mid Game
Life/Resis Rare Rings

End Game
Life/Resis Rare Ring
+
Minion Damage/Minion Attack Speed/Resis Rare Ring

(These jewels are for High budget version, refers to POB for Medium Budget jewels.)

Cluster Jewels


Unique Jewels

(Slot in specific jewel socket, refer to POB)
(Look for Minion Damage)


(Slot in specific jewel socket, refer to POB)

(Refers to POB)

Medium Budget


High Budget

On Gloves (Enlighten will affect Aspect of Spider)

On Shield