A pure melee minion build uses fast moving Skeletons and Zombies. Stay alive the easy way. Beefy life based defenses, with high regen and decent mitigation from all damage sources. Clear fast with 100% increased movement speed, and few button pushes.

This build makes a great league starter, Noob friendly, easy to acquire items and gems, with a super relaxed playstyle. 

Quick Jump

• Skill Tree 
• Gems Setup
• Gear Setup
• Leveling

Skill Tree

Ascendancy

Commander of Darkness > Invoker > Bone Sculptor > Flesh Binder

Bandits

Kill all

Pantheons

The Pantheon List

• Soul of Solaris gives the best mix of defences
• Soul of Lunaris is good also if you plan on hanging back and kiting projectiles
• Soul of Garukhan is the best minor god, for a bit of move speed and evasion.

Passive Tree

Gem Setup

Vaal Summon Skeleton (in Weapon) Brutality > Minion Damage > Melee Splash > Melee Physical Damage > Maim

* For boss fights swap melee splash with ruthless or multistrike, but really this is optional, it only shaves a short time off already fast fights.

* If you manage a 6 link, We recommend minion speed. While this does not give maximum tooltip damage, it keeps your effective damage high, because they will start hitting the enemy sooner, will be harder for fast enemies to kite, and will switch targets faster.

Raise Zombie (In chest) Minion Life > Brutality > Minion Damage > Melee Physical Damage

* If you manage a 6 link, solid options would be minion speed, empower, fortify, faster attacks, ruthless.

Purity of Elements in an unset ring

Enfeeble with Blasphemy + Desecrate and Summon stone golem (in boots or glve)

CWDT with incresed duration, phase run, immortal call (in boots or glove)

Animate Guardian + Raise Spectre + Minion Life + blood magic (in helmet)

* The blood magic gem is for the carnage and host chieftans who have a really low mana pool. With blood magic they spam mass frenzy and mass empower a lot more frequently.

Decoy totem *optional* Set in a voideye ring for preference.

Gear

The items listed below are only relative items. You can also select the corresponding items according to your preferences, as long as you can achieve the same effect.

Recommend

• Weapon 2H: Queen's escape. Love that minion movement speed. This is as close to a mandatory unique that this build has.
• Helmet: The Baron. Gives minions extra damage and life via your strength. The + 2 helps the survival of your spectres, golem and Animate guardian.
• Armour: Belly of the beast. Nice life, a bit of resist, decent armour and buff to your life flasks.
• Boots: Alberons warpath. Buff to strength, some armour, moderate movespeed, extra skellie.
• Gloves: Meginoords Vise. Life regen, strength and armour
• Belt: Anything you like.
• Rings: any unset ring and Voideye - the only thing that makes decoy totem worthwhile. Unset ring keeps your purity of elements away from mana multipliers
• Amulet: Astramentis - covers all stat requirements, nice boost to strength

Other options

• Helmet: There are some nice helmets going around. Anything with minion damage can replace the Baron if you choose. This would mean that your boots, gloves, belt and amulet would now have less value from any strength boosts.
• Ring: Doedres' damning can replace one of these rings if you run curse on hit or curses in your CWDT.
• Chest: Ambu's charge is nice for the endurance charges and the life regen. Bloodbond is nice for extra life for you and minions, and allows you to cast an offering for more minion damage. Tabula Rasa is great for easily reaching that 6th link.
• Belt: Stygian vise is great with the right jewels. For example, 2 X strength, life, minion blind, minion taunt ghastly jewels with the 50% increased effectiveness would be fantastic in here.
• Weapon: Mon'tregul's grasp and a defensive shield is a great option. With the incursion buff to vaal skills, femur of the saints provides and even bigger boost to damage than before because your 35 vaal skellies can be cast more frequently, buffed by a flask, and get supported by more gem links.

Flasks

Essential: At least 1 quicksilver flask, preferably with increased speed and reduced charges used

Essential: 1 X 'of heat' and 1 X 'staunching' suffix to negate freeze and bleed. Almost certainly you'll want these on life flasks.

Essential: In no regen maps, you will need a mana flask (I also turn off enfeeble)

Optional: Elemental flasks like 'taste of hate' (protects from cold damage) that can be used when you know you're facing that element

Enchants

Gloves - 'of the grave' is best, but not worth too much effort

Boots - 'Life and mana regen after being hit' is my favourite, but any defensive option is good

Helmet - 'reduced purity of elements mana reservation' would be my favourite, i'd then add in an arctic armour in the desecrate slot. Good luck rolling something decent though, or even finding a baron to buy with any useful mod. Overall though, aim for any minion style enchant on the baron helm.

Leveling Guide

ASAP - Find or craft boots with movement speed. Keep getting more movement speed on boots forever

Level 1 - Get Raise Zombie. This skill gets you to level 4, and then sits in any nicely rolled 3 or 4 link item until you get Invoker ascendency. At this point your zombies should become way more persistent (not having to resummon them all the time)

Level 4 - Get Summon Raging Spirits

Level 8 - Get minion damage and melee splash and link those with summon raging spirits in a 3 link item (coloured RBB)

Level 10 - Get Vaal Summon Skeletons, or second best is getting plain summon skeletons. Start levelling this gem but continue using SRS.

Level 18-26: Find or craft a + 1 to minion level helm (4 linked with RRBB) Add in melee physical damage gem.

Level 26: Find or buy a Baron helm (second choice is a +2 minion helm). Craft it with 4 links coloured RRBB. (While you can level up to 55 with SRS, now would be a great time to switch to skeletons. Put them in the helmet.)

Level 38 onwards: Find, buy, craft a 5 Link chest or 5 link weapon. Best is Queen's escape and Belly of the beast. Add in Maim, Brutality, Minion life, minion speed, etc as your 5th gem to zombies and skeletons

Final Targets: overcap resists, find a 6 link chest, and get a 6 link queens escape, get awesome jewel rolls, and life rolls on gear, get 20% quality gems and level 21 corrupted active skill gems.

Leveling Item Options

For rings, belts, gloves, shields the priority is: Enough stats for your gems > Capped resists > Life > life regen > armour

Weapons Instead of queens escape = An incursion corrupted rare with + Minion Damage, Femur of the Saints, Chober Chaber, Dying Breath, Aurumvorax (for resists), The scourge, Mon'treguls grasp, or any 5 or 6 linked 2 hander you find until you can get a better one!

Helmets Instead of Baron = Wraithlord, Skullhead, rare +2 helmet

Body armour Instead of Belly of the Beast = Tabula Rasa, Lightning Coil, Ambu's charge, Perfect Form, Loreweave, or any well rolled rare.

Boots Instead of Seven-League Steps = Bubonic Trail, Victario's Flight, Alberons Warpath, Any rare with 30% movespeed should be good

Gloves Instead of Meginoords Vise = Kalisas grace, Wyrmscale, Any rares that help you with resists, stats, defence.

Amulets instead of astramentis = Sidhebreath or any Rare/Unique that helps you cap resists, get stats, and defences

Belt options = Darkness Enthroned, Strings of Servitude (with increased resistances is fantastic for levelling), Belt of the deceiver, or any rare that helps you cap resists, get stats, get defences.

POB link: https://pastebin.com/s7iQUgw2