[2.0] 200k+ DPS, 7k hp, on a 1ex budget: The Summoner

Pro's:
-Zombies tankier
-Freed up some gem slots
-Jewels are great for summoners
-Runs 2 curse now
-Room for specter
-Going hybrid makes 7k total health fairly easy

Con's
-Loss of about 25% overall damage
-Cant maintain haste, hatred, and clarity
-Some act4 bosses/mobs kill minions really well

I'd say over all 2.0 was a slight nerf

Assumptions:


SRS Damage:


Zombie damage:

104,751 from SRS + 90,144 from zombies puts us pretty close to 200k. Add in things like vaal haste, skeletons, specters and you're sitting pretty close to 250k.

Bandits: Oak - Kill All - Kill All

Leveling


End Game
[Spoiler]
At this point your are mostly picking up HP and ES. Any further points go into the health or ES wheels. All of your gear should have a MINIMUM of 100 es. You should be running all 3 auras by now, possibly you may need Jewels to make this happen.

http://cb.poedb.tw/us/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAwMA34rpAv6zVyu9gm0ZfRhr2-yKTLMEB4PbVcY6WKyY99fMvEQETbmFYKrEm6FI549GpwjZCyqY-oDr7jLRRUeIQKaskDOa4EWdU1Ic3I8auJMo-pitgscdvjOHA-7T-2qsWpGoffnoQYe3Pv4K2L01krXybqpKyD8nX5hZbc8yIvRsC8k9v5fyHgj0wFRqQ8BmBLOiALzqGGo5UlgHeC985S2LH8cdFPrSFy9k51XWgKRXyQ18EVA1uacrhEhca8NtE2wGSRCXS64bJdlbkyfviPk3189JsQ==

1) Zombie - Multi Strike - Minion Damage- Minion Resist
2) Clarity
3) Hatred - Generosity
4) SRS - Echo - Minion Damage - Multi Strike - Minion Speed OR Melee Physical OR Empower (lvl 3+)
5) Elemental Weakness - Curse on hit - Vulnerability- Ball of lightning
6) Summon skelly - spell totem
7) Desecrate
8) Vaal Haste - Increased duration
9) Chaos Golem
10) Summon Spectre
11) Discipline

On #4, the SRS slot i wouldn't swap out melee splash on a 5l with anything short of a lvl 3 empower.

Nothing is really mandatory on this build. Except a +2 helm (or Geofri's Crest) and sidhebreath. But here is some general advice on gearing.


-You want either a good +2 summon helm or Geofri. Geofri ‘s pretty hard to beat so you probably just want to pick up one of those. If you go with Geofri make sure you have an empower in it, even if it is only lvl 1.
-You’d be a fool not to get a sidhebreath. It's full of stats that are excellent on the build. And they run 1-2c depending on how good they are.
-Unset rings are great in this build and typically cheap. Through spectre or vaal haste in them. TBH vaal haste is better but spectre is more fun.
-I don’t think boots of Ullr are worth it. You want high hp/es boots, between geofri and sidhebreath not giving much hp. Avoid Ullr other than for leveling.
-Mon'tregul's Grasp is bad. It has "increased damage" not more damage. This means your giving up a massive amount of zombie damage, and not allowing yourself to use a staff.
-If you can get a +3 staff, you don't need highly linked armor since zombies will be in your hat.
-A 5l +2/1 staff is the point where it makes sense to convert over to staves. Make sure this won't drop your health (life+es) below 6,000.
-Once you get a +2/1 all staff you want to pick up a lvl 3 empower next.
-In terms of rares defense stats are by far the most important thing to look for. Everything should have ES and life. You should have capped resistances. The only stat that helps your dps in any significant way is cast speed. Even this is fairly marginal (mostly due to mana constraints). Defense Defense Defense.
- IIR: Not having to buy DPS stats on rares makes your gear typically very cheap (that's why we can do this build on 1ex). This makes IIR on gear very affordable.

-#1 expensive buy is a 6l +2 fire +1 all staff.
-21/20 or 21/0 SRS and Zombie. SRS first.
-6s Lightning coil is a potential buy. This in of itself isn't that expensive. But you need to be able to maintain max light defense and that is costly.
-Amazing UNSET rings. There is lots of gems
-IIR/IIQ/Cast speed on rares. Pick up as much on rares as possible while maintaining +HP on everything and max resist.

-For trash cast priority: Vaal haste > Ball of lightning > SRS
-For non-trash cast priority: Summon Skelly Totem > Max Zombies > Vaal Haste > Ball of lightning > Flesh offering > SRS
-Your alternate weapon slot should be filled with SRS gems. When they hit 20 vaal them all. Sell all the bricks and use any that hit +1 if you are so lucky.
-Totem walking: On higher level maps often you can get murdered by being ambushed by leaping goat men or devourers. On any map 74 or higher I typically totem walk. This means casting a totem as far is can in front of me, running half the distance to the totem, then recasting it at max range. You repeat this process as you walk. This way your totem is always infront and it draws the agro of any potential ambush. You probably wanna cast a totem before you run in a room also.

Q. Why EE?
A. A huge portion of both zombies and SRS damage is actually elemental. Generosity passively buffed hatred is super strong. SRS is half converted to fire. Since minions don't proc EE 1 spell gives you this benefit and it stays on.


Q. What should I do with extra gem slots?
A. Lots of vaal gems are good with this build, vaal skellies is probably best

Q. How do you get base minion values?
A. https://docs.google.com/a/grindinggear.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ahqk9lptRHcMdHdjM1hTNTV1NzhBeEtQYlVvM1NvSFE#gid=4

Q. How do you change for party play?
I swap vulnerability and elemental weakness depending on my party occasionally to elemental specific curses (fire or cold). Any of these curses give almost identical DPS to you. Playing with melee is pretty awesome. Odds are your auras/curses will boost their dps. Your minions soak a lot of damage for them.

Q. In group play what do i do about EE?
A. You can always swap out ball of lighting for fireball if they are lightning. If you have fire and lightning in your party go with artic breath.

Intro: The best part of this build is that the entry point is so low. You can easily hit 200k damage on found gear and have no problem clearing any map in the game. It's fully Aztiri capable. The build also provides a lot of room for IIQ/IIR making it an ideal first build in every league. It's has a fairly low skill cap, meaning brand new players can use this build to clear 78 maps easily. Yet at the same time there is substantial room for growth in skill, skill will go a long way to upping your clear speed. Gear also has a lot of upwards mobility. You could easily do 200k on this build in all white gear provided it had the right sockets and links. But my currently 12ex-ish geared character does 1 million peak dps to bosses.

Maps are a cinch, the only maps that should give you any problem are ones with lots of AoE (which can be played around) and one with 0 regen. I can typically clear 10-12 lvl 75+ maps in an hour. This is mostly thanks to Vaal Haste. With your increased duration nodes and an increased duration gem on vaal haste it nearly has 100% uptime. This means you zoom through maps. Since every minion is linked with a melee splash gem you have substantial aoe.


The only uniques in the build run about 6c total. Very few stats on rares significantly up your DPS (really only cast speed and +1 minion on a chest). This means almost all of your stats can go exclusively towards defense cheaply. Check the price point difference between a 100 res ring with 50 hp and a 100 res ring with 50 hp and cirt and physical damage. Not needing damage on items lets you pick up top end gear for a few chaos.

The other nice thing about the build isn't only how cheap damage comes but the defense provided by zombies and a skelly totem can't be over stated. Every second you're summon 2 skeletons each with about 1,500 hp. That's 3,000 a second + the 100,000 hp in zombies. By the time something does 150,000 damage you've typically killed it, a few times over.

This build also has great synergy with other people. Odds are they will benefit from at least one of your auras. You provide them EE. You can swap out elemental weakness with vulnerability for almost 0 damage loss.

It also has some massive massive advantages. Reflect immune, curse immune, can deal with -max res if you are careful. There isn't a single map mod you can't do.

So first things first, since I suspect most people find the damage numbers unbelievable so let's get the damage calculation out of the way:


IGN: ArmyOfCrow Feel free to message me with any questions

DAMAGE CALCULATION:
Assumptions:



SRS Damage:


Zombie damage:


67k from zombies + 143k from srs is 210k min. This doesn't even include the damage from skeletons or curses. Again this isn't even an optimal number you will peak at a much higher dps. Most of the time i'm doing somewhere between 200-250k. Not at all bad on 1 ex.


GEAR and the BUILD:
My Original Gear [Aztiri capable was doing 76/77 maps on this]:


My current Gear and build (With Vaal Haste up damage is over 1M):


Gem Slots:



Gear Tips:


Im rich and I wanna spend more than 1ex what do I buy?



Bandits: Oak - Kill All - Kill All

Leveling Guide:


Final Form Of the Build:



PLAY STYLE:


Play tips:


Q/A