Ring of Power Mages

This build scales Skeletal Mages to insane values to pump out damage while being fairly tanky thanks to Soul Rift.

1. Keep up Soul Rift
2. Decrepify enemies
3. Keep up Skeletal Priest buff
4. Cast Corpse Tendrils to group up enemies and gain damage

This build is designed to buff up your Skeletal Mages as much as possible so that they can deal massive amounts of damage through either the Ring of Mendeln or from your mages auto attacks. The new Hand of Naz gloves are incredibly powerful both for pushing and speed farming. For harder content they add a load of damage as well as allowing us to run Aspect of Service and Sacrifice on our weapon. For speed farming they add a fantastic AOE effect to our mages attacks. Overall Mages are a very powerful build that comes online very easily and scales into a late game power house.

Attack Speed Requirement

It is extremely important that you get to 100% minion attack speed to fully scale the Cult Leader paragon node. To make sure you have enough attack speed, go into your character sheet and add your attack speed with the stat, "Minion Attack Speed". That numbers needs to be 100% or greater. If you need more attack speed you can always run the Frenzied Dead Aspect or pop a Elixir of Precision for extra attack speed.

Soul Rift

Traditionally minions builds have played Army of the Dead to get access to the Unyielding Commander aspect but there's big issues with uptime on Army of the Dead due to its longer cooldown and the lack of Increased Duration temperings for Army of the Dead. Soul Rift ends up having much more consistent damage while also giving a massive amount of survivability.

Because minions are able to proc lucky hit, they are able to proc Abhorrent Decrepify for increased cooldown reduction. This allows us to easily get great uptime on Soulrift

Mage Damage

Mages are great for scaling the Ring of Mendeln because you get 5 of them, constantly attacking. This allows for a steady stream of damage from the Ring of Mendeln that Golem builds can't match. It is important to note that most of this build's damage is coming from the Ring of Mendeln, so we are focused on buffing physical damage instead of the shadow damage the mage's attacks will be doing.

Elixers and Incenses

With the abundance of herbs now in the game it is now very easy to grab some consumables to either shore up big weakness with your character or to massively increase your strengths. I highly recommend you regularly keep Elixirs and Incenses running. Below I laid out the best consumables to use for every situation.
 

Elixirs

If you need more of any specific resistance or armor, use those elixirs first. Once your armor capped and resistance capped, look to use the Elixir of Advantage for the extra attack speed if needed for Cult Leader. If you're having trouble staying alive and your armor capped and resistance capped, you can use the Elixir of Fortitude to gain a 20% hp multiplier. Finally, if you aren't 100% crit chance, you can use the Elkixir of Precision for extra crit chance.
 

Incenses

For incense you have a couple of options, depending on what your character needs.

Core Stat

• Sage's Whisper: Generally the best option as it gives the most amount of damage.
• Spiral Morning: Not a bad alternative, as the all stat gives some armor and also helps hit breakpoints in paragon tree. Only use if there's specific paragon nodes you're trying to reach.
   

Resistance

• Soothing Spices: Best all around option as it gives +10% all resistances and +2% max resistance to everything. Only use another option if needed to hit resistance caps.
   

Defensive

• Song of the Mountain: Great early game option for the +300 Armor
• Reddamine Buzz: Gives +750hp, best option if you are already armor capped.

Chaos Perks

There's nothing too crazy we can run but the combination of A Beast Cornered with Marred Guard gives a nice amount of both damage and tankiness. Crazy Brew gives a fair bit of damage via attack speed and Accelerating Chaos gives a bit of cooldown reduction.

Mercenary

In general Subo gives the most damage via high uptime on Cover Fire. However if you are low on resistances you can pick up Raheir for a smaller amount of damage but lots of all res. For our support we are always using Aldkin with Flame Surge as this will proc loads of Lucky Hits.

Leveling

Use this build for leveling and then rotate into Ring of Power Mages when you find your Ring of Mendeln.

Masterworking and Greater Affixes Explained

Masterworking

Masterworking (MW) enhances an item's stats. Each MW rank boosts all affixes by 5%. Ranks 4,8,12 give a 25% bonus to a random affix (MW Crit).

In this planner, the color blue on an item denotes that the affix got one MW Crit, the color yellow denotes that the item got two MW crits and the color orange denotes that the item got three MW crits.

For future reference the amount of MW Crits on an affix will be denoted by 1MW, 2MW, 3MW.

Greater Affixes

Greater Affixes (GA) on an item force the affix to roll at the top of it's range of possible values and then applies a 50% increase to its value. GA increases are additive with Masterworking increases.

In this planner, the yellow star to the left of an affix denotes that is a GA.

Example

To put it all in to practice, let's calculate what stat increase a GA Affix on a 12/12 Masterworked item with 2 MW Crits gets:

Ranks 1-3, 5-7, 9-11 all give 5% -> 9 * 5% = 45%

Two MW Crits -> 2 * 25% = 50%

GA = 50%

Total = 45% + 50% + 50% = 145%

FAQ

Why no Golem?

Minion builds are much stronger if you focus entirely on either buffing mages or buffing the golem. For a mage build, sacrificial the golem for the extra crit damage multiplier ends up being significantly more damage.

Why no Army of the Dead?

Army of the Dead is just a lot weaker than Soul Rift and requires an aspect slot to do anything. It's better to go Soul Rift for the extra damage and vulnerable application than to run Army of the Dead with Unyielding Commander

Fastest Way to get Ring of Mendeln?

Farm Nightmare Dungeons to get Distilled Fear to summon Beast in Ice. Also spend all of your Obals on rings after reaching Torment 1.

9/21: Updated for season 10
10/8: Updated for Patch 2.4.1