[2.2] Army of Zoom (with Video) - Necromancer SRS, Spectre, Zombie build

Victario's Charity is certainly a new class defining unique and brings Summoner play to a whole new level. It is something I feel Summoners have needed for quite some time. And yet it does not feel overpowered since giving up that shield loses your chance to block and those much coveted resists and other stats often found on a shield. But we gladly give this power to our Minions so that they may pave our path for us.

The primary abilities of the shield are of course the chance for all nearby allies to gain frenzy and power charges. You need to grant all shield bonuses to your Minions by taking the Necromantic Aegis key stone on the skill tree. Your Minions can have 3 frenzy and 3 power charges. That is a huge boost to minion attack/cast speed (15% increased per frenzy charge), increased move speed (15% per frenzy charge), MORE damage (4% per frenzy charge) and chance to crit (%200 per power charge). This gives you an army of super charged, super fast, super hard hitting minions. And to top it all off, you get the charges as well providing you with 4% increased cast and move speed per frenzy charge.

How you gear from here can allow for a lot of flexibility as long as you consider your build carefully as losing your shield will make you extra squishy. You need to be prepared for that when you make the transition. Most of my gear recommendations are similar to AngryAAs so please refer to his guide that I linked above. Here are the differences.

I would not recommend going with a Tabula Rasa as the loss of stats (health, armour, resists) makes you just too squishy. In my case this is especially true since I am not going all the way to "Acrobatics" on the skill tree. I feel the cost is just too high for what you get. A 30% chance to dodge is nice but it is pseudo-random so you can still get a couple of hard hits back to back. Evasion is based on an "entropy" system meaning it is less likely to get many hard hits in a row and many misses in a row. And to top it off, you lose 50% armour and energy shield. This greatly diminishes the value of running "Discipline" and various keystone you get throughout the skill tree like "Sanctity" and "Sentinel". As such, I recommend to not get Acrobatics and instead invest in a solid armour/shield chest piece. A good 400 armour, 100 shield chest 5 link only costs a few chaos. And you save yourself a bunch of skill points which you can invest elsewhere.

https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAABAMDAQQHBLMGSQj0DlwQlxNsFm8W8xzcHRQi4iL0JKok2CY8KPoqTSqYL50y0TWSNuk5CzpYOuE_J0GHRAREikVHRX5FnUZxR4VH4krITLNNuVFMU1JUglXGVytakWjyakNqrGr6a9tsC20Zbqpvnn0YfVuCx4MJg9uFMoVghW2IQI8aj0aQM5MnmuCbipuhoS-iAKPvpDmmrKcIqH2qxKxHrJiwd7Xytz64k7zqvYK-T76Kv5fAVMBmyT3KSsy80B_T-9WB2CTYvdkL2V7fiuNq6QLr7u_r8B_yHvJF99f56PqA-tL-Cv6B_rM=

A big focus of this build, aside from the obvious minion focus, is its cast and move speed. Cast speed, and to a lesser extent move, is life in this game. The more time you spend in one spot spamming skills, the more likely your are to get hit. So the faster you can cast what you need to cast and keep moving, the better. And this of course has the benefit of fast clear speed.

The other point to note is some investment into your Auras. You are not a full Aura bot since you are only running 2, but you can get 16% increased Aura effect for only 4 skill points. A worthy investment.

+2 Helm: Raise Zombie + Animate Guardian + Minion Life + Fortify. Before you are ready for your AG, run Minion Resistances. Don't be afraid to get him some decent gear. I used armour gear with a lot life with high armour and some resists (remember that Victorio's Charity has lightning resist on it which will be applied to all your minions). Head and weapon you will be running Dying Breath and Leer Cast of course.

Essence Ring 1: Haste. I find this to nearly be a must when running with Minions. Move, attack and cast speed are all extremely valuable when it comes to the effectiveness of your minions.

Essence Ring 2: Hatred. For a Summoner build, Hatred is the best damage scaling Aura. Run Purity of Elements before you have enough resists on your gear and three minion resist jewels on the skill tree.

Weapon: Desecrate + Spell Echo + Summon Stone Golem. The important thing here is having Desecrate on Spell Echo. The fast extra corpses ensures you and your minions will get maximum benefit from Flesh Offering as quickly as possible. Quickly casting 6 corpses instead of 3 also means you won't have to cast your offering as often, nor will you need to get duration passive skills from the skill tree. This leaves more time for you to be moving around, or spamming SRS.

Gloves: Flesh Offering + Convocation + Increased Duration + Faster Casting. Anything that you are casting during combat should be on faster casting or spell echo. Again, speed is life. The extra duration of course means you won't need to cast offering as often and your minions will be healed for a longer period of time when you convocate.

Armour: Summon Raging Spirits + Minion Damage + Spell Echo + Melee Splash + Melee Physical + Multistrike/Empower. Typical SRS 6L setup.

Shield: Flame Dash + Summon Skeletons + Faster Casting. Flame Dash can be replaced with Whirling Blades as your movement skill. Summon Skeletons can be swapped out if desired but I like having it for certain situations. You can spam it at the start of a number of fights for a bit more DPS and it also allows you to place some DPS exactly where you want it and then move on. I find this useful for Malachai.

Boots: Raise Spectre + Minion Damage + Spell Echo + Poison. For Spectres, you will be running Undying Evangelists. They scale best with the Hatred Aura as well as Poison. Their pack clear speed is awesome, their single target damage is amazing and they have the defense shield to boot. When running Hatred, running 4 links is more than enough freeing up your SRS to benefit from your 5/6 link. Using Spectres that deal elemental damage pretty much requires you to be running 5 or 6 links to be as effective. And they of course don't have the shield bubble.