TyrantKeel's Blood Raven Archer Summoner

Weapon/Chest - RRRGBB
Raise Zombie - Melee Physical Damage - Multistrike - Added Fire - Faster Attacks - Minion Damage

Weapon/Chest - RRGGBB
Tornado Shot/Split Arrow - Cast on Crit - Raise Skeletons - Summon Raging Spirit - Multistrike - Melee Physical Damage

4Link 1 - RGGB
Reduced Mana - Hatred - Purity of Elements - <Spare>

4Link 2 - RRRR
Cast When Damage Taken - Immortal Call - Increased Duration - Enduring Cry

4Link 3 - RGGG
Vaal Haste - Vaal Haste - Increased Duration - Blink Arrow
Adding blink arrow here makes it slightly better from the Increased Duration but not a big deal.


Spare Gems
Blink Arrow - a summoner with blink arrow!
Desecrate - useful to replenish your zombie supply on rare occasions when no corpses are around because your bow is shattering all of them
Convocation - good if you have a spare blue socket, but not very important because minions dying doesn't matter to this build
Flesh Offering - a nice DPS boost which I would be using if I had a spare blue socket
Herald of Thunder/Ice - If you are focusing on doing bow damage, Herald of Ice or Thunder can fit in here nicely. The down side is you will no longer have enough mana to summon zombies without temporarily disabling an aura, which would certainly be awkward in combat. In practice, this doesn't matter very much because if a boss or tough rare kills are your minions, you generally don't want to bother with zombies at all. At that point just focus on beating them with weapon damage and Skeleton/Raging Spirit spawns and replenish your zombies between fights.

When the expansion hits, I will replace the CwDT combo with a Golem. I'm really looking forward to that.

Become Blood Raven, from Diablo 2. As a Necromancer Archer, you will be able to maintain a full group of zombies and skeletons, and a few raging spirits, all fully buffed by the minion passives from your tree. The constant skeletons appearing wherever you shoot will provide you with a strong defensive meatshield, keeping effectively infinite minions between you and any sort of danger. As an added perk, when you are facing dense packs of mobs, you will generate more Raging Spirits, buffing the already substantial damage.

Inspired by the upcoming unique bow Null's Inclination, this build does what that bow does, but with significantly better damage and reliability, particularly against bosses. Where Null's Inclination will not be able to support any minions except when you kill things, this build can effectively maintain your minion army in any situation regardless of your enemies' ability to ruin them.

I've experimented with SRS and Skeletons, just Skeletons, just SRS, and with and without an Animated Guardian to buff myself and minions. What I've found is that Skeletons are quite strong when they are always being summoned precisely on top of their targets. They are also much more effective at drawing aggro than just SRS, which will really help you against tough bosses which can kill all your zombies.

Animated Guardian has the same ruinous drawbacks he always has. He's a great buff for a while, then he dies and takes away your nice Hyrri's Ire, Leer Cast and Dying Breath, and then you have to go get new ones. It's annoying, and I don't even bother with him anymore. Spectres have much the same problem. They aren't reliable when you need them the most.

The variation I've shown is the one I prefer for it's overall reliability and versatility. Since I started playing it, I've cleared Twinned Torture Chamber with Ele Weakness, Palace with Temp Chains, and a nice Double Beyond Courtyard, including all of the bosses, without dying.

Another variation you might try is replacing Minion Damage and Faster Attacks in the Zombie link with Split Arrow and another Cast on Crit. That would make it easier to keep zombies around in situations where a boss is killing them quickly.

You can expect to have 7 zombies, 11 skeletons and 4-6 Raging Spirits most of the time, on top of whatever damage your bow can do. For tougher packs, you'll easily have 10-15 Raging Spirits without any additional duration nodes. It truly is a hybrid build, in the sense that your bow and minions are both contributing significantly to overall damage.

Basic Tornado Shot DPS: 4700
With 7 power charges: 6700
Add Vaal Haste: 8600

With Herald of Ice/Thunder
With 7 power charges: 8400
Add Vaal Haste: 12k

There is no other class that could do this build as well as the Scion, but even for her it takes a lot of points to get enough minion and dps nodes for the build to be effective. I wouldn't expect it to work very well unless you're level 80+.

Bow damage version, gets a lot of minion nodes and elemental damage nodes

Pure-minion variant, gets all of the duration nodes, and will able to field a lot more Raging Spirits, as well as benefit a lot more from Vaal Haste

If you are using Windripper and can get Weapon Elemental Damage on your rings, amulet and belt, I recommend the Bow Damage version. Even without any links, the damage from your Windripper crits will be enough to shatter most mobs, and really does help a lot. So much so that the increased duration for more Raging Spirits is not really missed, because most packs will die before very many spirits can be summoned.

Normal: Kill all
Cruel: Kraityn for 8% Attack Speed
Merciless: Alira for the Power Charge

Despite what you may think from the gear I'm using, this build does have a viable budget version. Instead of going for DPS from your bow and minions at the same time, just focus purely on the minions and use your bow strictly as a tool for deploying your skeletons.

Windripper is best-in-slot for this build. Rare bows just can't compete with the combination of attack speed and high crit rate for CoC. Next best is a harbinger with 1.36 APS and 9.4% crit chance, which wouldn't be too hard to roll (both are suffixes, so you would need to regal until you get them, but you don't need anything else on your bow). That would be more than enough to make the build work.

The other required item is a 5L at minimum, but preferably a 6L, Voll's Protector. You want your Skeletons and Raging Spirits to have as many links as possible, as they are already losing slots from Tornado Shot/Split Arrow and Cast on Crit.

Other than that, look for crit multi, WED, accuracy and crit chance, in that order, on amulet and rings. Maligaro's Virtuosity are best in slot for gloves. Don't forget to look for a belt with Weapon Elemental Damage, and if you also have phys damage on your rings, getting a rustic sash base is another little boost.

You will also need to get dexterity on a few pieces of gear. The tree gets a lot, but still needs about 60 or so in order to use Windripper.

If you're on a budget, you can just basically ignore your weapon damage entirely. Get attack speed, accuracy and crit chance on jewelry and use your bow purely to spawn minions. Accuracy is important in either case, as there won't be room for much on the tree.

Varkhan wrote a great levelling guide here

Note that +1 arrows items are not necessary for this build to work. If I didn't have them, I would just use Split Arrow instead of Tornado Shot, and would adjust my tree for more minion life and survivability over the elemental and projectile nodes. If you're not focused on weapon damage, you can get a +1 arrows corrupted quiver very cheaply. I suggest one of the many corrupted Blackgleams, for their attack speed, or the cheapest one with crit chance that you can afford.

If you can find some, I do recommend the Maligaro's with Ele Weakness on Hit. It's a great free boost to dps for you and all of your minions, but again, the build works well without it.



Btw, the reason "Chance to Flee" is linked with my Zombie is just because I didn't want to recolour my Windripper for this build. Ideally I would put Empower or Minion Damage in that slot.

I will be adding videos over the next week or two.

Gorge Run

I really enjoy Summoner builds, but the problem is that they require way too much setup, which is a strong deterrent from taking on the harder bosses. It's incredibly annoying when Spectres or the Animated Guardian die, because you can't revive them in the middle of the fight. This forces you to go to extreme lengths to make your minions tanky, like Necromantic Aegis with Saffell's, Purity of Elements, Skullhead regen, etc, and even when doing everything possible you're still screwed when they die. I wanted a strong summoner build where this wouldn't be an issue, and I got one, and it's very fun to play.

The build can do literally any map mod with a little bit of preparation.

For Ele reflect, replace the DPS diamond rings with Diamonds without the elemental damage on them. For no regen or blood magic, replace the rings with Elreon rings, so the already very cheap tornado shot becomes completely free. You lose out on Hatred and Purity in that situation, and won't be able to summon zombies in the map but it is perfectly doable.

I'm fully aware that even the "budget" version of this build is very expensive by most player's standards. Sorry about that, but the current version of the passive tree just doesn't accommodate hybrid summoners very well. I began this build as an experiment, and I'm a little surprised it works as well as it does even with GG gear. If you happen to have the currency lying around and are looking for an interesting build, I would recommend it, it's fun. I wouldn't really bother aiming for this in a temporary league unless you really struck it rich with drops and trading.