[2.4] Occultist Summoner - You will never want to play Necro again!

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Hrk_gFx wrote:

Hello, thanks for great build.
Please, do you have some tips for lvling?
When should I start to use a bow (from which lvl or which item need)?

Thx

Leveling as a pure summoner is pretty hard, spectres don't do a lot of damage until cruel act 4 or so, and zombies are hard to keep alive. However, you can level with summon raging spirits pretty easily if you want to focus on putting your points into minion damage as you go. I have leveled this build both as a regular casting, using bladefall or flameblast, or as a summoner with summon raging spirits.

A tree I would make might look something like this before respeccing
www.poeurl.com/NJX

You can start using a bow pretty much whenever you get one, but I would probably wait for "end game" at least (act 4 merciless). Once you start using a bow your ability to do damage yourself is going to go down a lot, so you will want to wait until the point where spectres can kill everything for you. Quill Rain isn't very expensive and is a great start, and you could use any quiver to start with if you wanted. Soul Strike is the main reason for using a bow, though, so it might not be worth the trouble if you don't have one yet.

You can respec CI pretty much whenever you feel safe doing so, it really depends on the overall quality of your gear. This build is perfectly viable as a life/ES hybrid, too, and I have played it up to level 88 before respecing to CI.

In general when I level up I swap to a bow around the time I'm ready for maps. Farming dried lake is usually easy enough, so you can get to level 70 or so with any regular leveling build. Then you are high enough level to use hubris circlets and vaal regalias and have a chance to get some decent starter ES gear and can make good use of the soul strike/wicked ward combination. Even 4k ES or so, which should be easy with the big ES notables and discipline, should make white maps pretty trivial with this combo.

Sadly the price of Soul Strike has gone up a ton now that CI has become the flavor of the month, but you can probably start using a bow pretty much whenever you can afford one and can equip it.

Really nice build; it looks really solid!

One thing I was wondering: if you're simply using the bow as a stat stick with links, why not forgo 30% minion damage for the 25% phys damage mitigation from Darkscorn? It works amazingly with CI, but most builds don't want to give up damage. In your case however, it would basically be like a free 6 endurance charges.

I'm very interested in this build.
Quick questions as I haven't played in awhile. ( 1.5-2years. )

1. Can you tell me where to go on the tree while leveling? What path(s) first?

2. What do I want to avoid on the tree before this 'respeccing' point your mentioning

3. Respeccing didn't exist when I played, is it easy to do?

thanks, would absolutely love answers as I really am interested.

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Kroughfire wrote:

Really nice build; it looks really solid!

One thing I was wondering: if you're simply using the bow as a stat stick with links, why not forgo 30% minion damage for the 25% phys damage mitigation from Darkscorn? It works amazingly with CI, but most builds don't want to give up damage. In your case however, it would basically be like a free 6 endurance charges.

It's definitely a possibility, however, it's a pretty slow bow. If you don't care about that it's definitely a solid choice, but I already felt slow enough with my 1.7 speed bow to be honest, it was hard to give up quill rain but the 6 link + extra ~15% or so DPS made it worth it. If I had a 6 link quill rain I would probably use that for sure.

It's a good idea, though, if I was really wealthy I might keep one ready to swap for fights like Minotaur. But, one thing to also remember, the more dex a bow takes the harder it is to color, and we want 3 blues for curses. Also, the more dex it takes to equip. The nice thing about quill rain and my short bow here is that they don't require any dex so they are easy to use.

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Matoks wrote:

I'm very interested in this build.
Quick questions as I haven't played in awhile. ( 1.5-2years. )

1. Can you tell me where to go on the tree while leveling? What path(s) first?

2. What do I want to avoid on the tree before this 'respeccing' point your mentioning

3. Respeccing didn't exist when I played, is it easy to do?

thanks, would absolutely love answers as I really am interested.

1. I posted a mocked up tree that you would probably aim for around level 60 a few posts back. Sadly, leveling summoners is kind of a pain and most people would agree to just level as a generic spell caster instead, which is how I would play most of the time as well. In general, you can path toward all the main minion damage clusters and grab the nearby life nodes and the big life cluster near Scion, using something like bladefall, firestorm, flameblast, or whatever you like as you go. Once you get to cruel act 4 and can raise flame sentinels you can finally start to play a real summoner, as spectres will finally start being viable.

2. The energy shield nodes, auras, and curses are the last priority. While levleing you won't have access to good eneryg shield gear so those nodes won't do much for you. Curse effectiveness is pointless until you have your +1 curse from merciless lab (as I would take Wicked Ward first), in my opinion, and the aura nodes are basically just there to make your purity of elements/discipline better, which isn't a huge deal until you've respecced. While leveling as life your priority will be to grab life nodes, a few sources of spell damage if you want it, and the minion clusters.

3. You get 24 respec points for free from quests (clearing the fetid pool, finding the golden hand in the crypt, saving Deshret's spirit in the mines, finding the busts) which should be close to enough to undo the life nodes you've grabbed and any spare spell damage nodes you no longer need when you switch to a pure summoner. It's possible, if you go too much out of your way for life/damage, that you will end up needing a few regrets, but it shouldn't take very many if that. I usually don't need any with the way I level (using the tree I posted earlier in the thread - it requires 21 respec points which is under budget)

currently playing this build in ehc, level 82 and just did uber lab easily with 11k es! really enjoying it, thanks!

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checkingstatus wrote:

currently playing this build in ehc, level 82 and just did uber lab easily with 11k es! really enjoying it, thanks!

Glad to hear it's working out for you!

Hi I am currently trying your build out. It is really amazing defense wise but I feel it is really lacking in clear speed and dps is there anything I can do to improve mt dps?



currently at 15k ES

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Hakyu wrote:

Hi I am currently trying your build out. It is really amazing defense wise but I feel it is really lacking in clear speed and dps is there anything I can do to improve mt dps?

currently at 15k ES

15k ES is pretty nice! As a summoner, clear speed isn't going to be anywhere near what you can pull off with a 90% movespeed archer or a number of other builds. I would just be very aggressive with your movement, blink arrow into packs and then convocation. With curses up your flame sentinels should pretty much one shot anything that isn't a map boss, even in t16s, so the only thing slowing you down clear speed wise is making them keep up with you. If you run around with quicksilver and blink arrow, you can outrange them and make them leash teleport to you. Outside of that though, there isn't much you can do, spectre summoners aren't known for their amazing clear speed. It's more about being absolutely impossible to die, very easy and relaxing playstyle, and being able to handle pretty much all content in the game without needing super expensive gear or twitch reflexes. There had to be a downside somewhere :P

What about minion survival ability, my minions(zombie and spectre) gets rekted in higher maps, I don't know if it's just I'm playing it wrong or something? I've never played a summoner before. Any tips on how to keep them alive during boss fights? The golem and guardian survives pretty good tho.

@Hakyu

Couple tips:

Use empower level 3 instead of fortify. That extra life for zombies should help alot.

If you're already incredibly defensive

is not a bad idea. Vinktar = 50% more dmg, overflowing chalice, atziri promise, dying sun = huge clear speed boost. Huge burst of damage on your 1-5 keys for single target/bosses. I been absolutely melting bosses with atziri promise + linking poison in a green gem slot before the fight. Sulphur flask under your minions also gives them a huge amount of sustain, 4% regen is a lot. Stibnite completely counters any attack based bosses.
KArui ward also keeps your minions alive through anything, after 3s or so they go back to full life.

As for clear speed I make sure any spectre I pick is projectile based and I make sure to run GMP + Faster proj as my links. Faster proj is very underrated, doubles your clear speed. Other then that I believe shorter convocation cooldown is the best possible enchant. Bring it down to 5.6seconds which means u can aggressively convocate into packs and dodge boss mechanics. Minions has a ton of damage potentially the problem is delivering that damage to your target since the AI is well... Retarded.