Lich's Scorn skeleton rogues by Qwark28 Build Guide

Hi, I'm Qwark. You can find me in the LE forums or discord. I play this build on HC.

I noticed a distinct lack of melee minion builds besides the abomination and wanted to try my hand at making melee skeletons viable. Normally, melee skeletons are lacking in AI, movement speed, leash range, aggro range. So, we have to patch those weaknesses up by making them deal tons of damage, while attacking and moving as fast as possible. By working on these issues, we end up with a build that has good clearspeed, can kill all bosses and is moderately tanky.

This build can be played comfortably in SSF, there are no mandatory items, every item and affix listed simply make your skeletons perform better. That being said, there's a major QoL difference between having Lich's Scorn and crit idols or not.

For damage, we focus on buffing their damage with Death Rattle and Lich's Scorn. We also focus on CRIT on the skill and passive trees, along with our idols and chest/helmet prefixes in order to achieve 85%+ crit chance.

For speed, we focus on getting every possible attack speed node on the tree, frenzy on the shade tree and Veins of Malice 5/5, along with Eterra's Path and optionally Ravens' Rise if you prefer a less tanky approach.

Gear wise, we use resistance rings + Sinathia's Dying Breath + Rite of Undeath 10/10 until the endgame blessings and we've covered our resistances. For endurance, we use engraved gauntlets and immortal plate bases, until we can cap it from blessings.

Honorable mentions to Pebble's Set for anyone who wants to play a build that forgoes a belt, relic and weapon for raw damage. This set provides resistances and +51 flat elemental damage, which you'd be wise to convert to cold by keeping it your lowest res.istance

Critical Strike Chance Gear For Minions

The reason I have listed this build as really starting at 63 is because melee skeletons were not good whatsoever before you reached a crit cap, and that could take a bit of farming to accomplish, seeing as how all the passive tree crit sources only bump them up to 22% or so. However, Lich's Scorn will give you the much needed oomph you need to start playing them as soon as you get the item, allowing you to cap crit at your own leisure.

For idols we look for a minimum of 2 idols with 2% crit chance for skeletons. After that, you can either make your gearing a lot easier by accumulating more crit idols, or focus on life idols and make gearing a bit harder.

Your chest and helmet will require % crit and flat crit. You can skip 1 of the 2 depending on how good your idols are.