Hardcore Minion Necro (Golem thorns & Mendeln) Farming T3 Hordes

You can refer to this for now. I am still in the leveling/gear hunting phase so my running build is a bit different. maxroll.gg/d4/...
Here are some explanations about the build:
In this coming season we see some nice changes to minions (long overdue buffs). As always, I cook up some thorns builds, and this time I think a golem focused non-Razorplate thorns build could be interesting (not that it will be S tier, but something relatively easy to build toward in HC, with decent end game potential).
The main changes making this build viable:
1. Armor to thorns conversion ratio for the Bone Golem goes from 70% to 200%.
This is the main reason why this build can work. From the maxroll planner, if we stack armor on very possible piece (including armor% temper, and spiked armor temper), we can easily get 8k+ armor. With additional minion/golem armor from skills and paragon, 10k+ armor for the golem is possible which translates into 20k+ golem base thorns.
2. Cult Leader and Kalan's edict buffs. Cult Leader minion damage multiplier up from 2.5x to 3x, which is a 20% x buff for minion damage. Kalan's edict now also gives 3%x damage per active minion, so 36% x minion damage buff.
3. The Mendeln unique effect now scales with minions, a long-waited change that will benefit us a lot for dealing with very passive monsters and when they are crowd-controlled.
Some other thoughts about this build:
Why no Razorplate?
1. The thorns rolls from Razorplate appears quite low compared to what we can potentially get from the golem armor. A Razorplate gives 3-4k thorns depending on how many GAs it has. Also the unique effect of Razorplate while very nice, tops at 10% chance x 200% amp = 20% x buff on average, which is about the same as a legendary aspect such as blood getters, but you lose the golem mastery, and other affixes including an armor roll and one armor% temper.
2. To fully utilize the Razorplate, we need the thorns inheritance temper (a utility temper) that conflicts with the Soulrift duration temper. In this patch, Soulrift is just too good too pass. For a Non-Razorplate golem thorns build, we don't need the inheritance temper because the thorns come from armor not from inheritance, so we can temper armor% and Soulrift duration. When we can maintain 100% soulrist coverage, we can temper other utility slots for spiked armor.

[@sinitarpku]

Still farming for items. Apart from the mastery from Mendeln, my items have 0 mastery ranks/passive ranks, and I am still missing the 5th paragon board, so damage will be much higher when the build finally comes online. From what I am seeing now, the crit version of Mendeln minions (probably the version to sacrifice golem) would have higher DPS.

[@S34Mii]

Glad to see minions still winning. Have you tested if Needleflare has been fixed yet or not?

[@sinitarpku]

I just tested it with the new dummies that can attack. Still not working for minion thorns.

[@wendaguan]

Thoughts on minion thorns this season? Also, got a planner? Cheers!

[@sinitarpku]

You can refer to this for now. I am still in the leveling/gear hunting phase so my running build is a bit different. maxroll.gg/d4/planner/cv9710zm
From what I am seeing now, Mendeln minion (probably the version to sacrifice golem) would be stronger in most cases. Thorns might be better in niche cases.

[@carldarley6026]

Yikes guess im not making a thorns minion

[@olegvalenko2635]

planner?

[@sinitarpku]

You can refer to this for now. I am still in the leveling/gear hunting phase so my running build is a bit different. maxroll.gg/d4/planner/cv9710zm

[@olegvalenko2635]

@@sinitarpku thank you very much