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

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Murrens wrote:

What order ascendancy would you go? Thanks for the build just started playing it after my last summoner died

Really all depends on how soon you want to transition to CI versus how quickly you think you can get a 5 link bow. There's no reason to have a 3rd curse if you don't have the links to support it, so if it's your first build of the league or you don't have great ES gear waiting for you in your stash, you can go with Wicked Ward first (in normal) because it will give you a nice chunk of ES and will be helpful in staying alive while you're still playing as a regular caster or a summoner with super weak zombies. If you are ready to go with a triple curse setup you can go for the +1 curse first. Either way, I would definitely save Vile Bastion for last, wicked ward/+1 curse are the staples of the build for mapping. 9 times out of 10 I would go wicked ward > profane bloom > malediction > vile bastion.

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IceyDevil wrote:

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Hakyu wrote:

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.

Do you have two minion resist jewels? You'll have to do a bit of math and add up how much resist they have and make sure you get them capped, that will help a lot. You only get 16% from the tree, and a level 20 purity of elements with all the aura nodes my tree has is like 40%, so you are only at 56% resist out of 75%. I put two 9/10% minion resist jewels in the tree to get them the rest of the way there, this will cut the damage they take from elemental in half.

Zombies don't get the damage reduction that spectres get against bosses, from what I can tell. You will probably have to resummon them a lot, sadly. However, spectres should be able to survive just about everything unless you seriously neglect to convocate them out of damage. I think the only time I lost spectres in my videos I made was when I let them sit in shaper vortexes for too long. You should pretty much never lose any minion to trash mobs. Make sure you are using smoke cloud/consecrated ground flasks on high damage mobs/bosses, that will help a ton as well.

I think you're forgetting the base resistances of your minions, since you're using flame sentinels, I believe they have a 75% cold resist, 0% rest, zombies have a 35% to all except chaos, and guardian has 25% to all except chaos, I feel as though you'd be better just using two +16% damage gems for faster clearing, as your zombies, and guardian will have cap ele resists, guardian with what armor you have him with will also have cap chaos, sentinels would be the only ones I guess to worry about, but I feel they can stay out of danger enough, unless you're really worried about them.

Other than that I like your idea, I may try to do a bit of a modified version of it to fit my tastes, but I like the idea of Zahndethus' Cassock on the guardian, I've been using a Death's Oath with Southbound gloves, and the generic leercast/dying breath combo with some rare boots. Have you tinkered with a different bow spell for the curse on hit? Or have you found that to be the best one?

I personally enjoy the pledge of hands staff when using flame sentinels because it's a possible 7l spectre, the only downside is the less defense to yourself, but it may be worth it to someone who finds their defense is fine, especially given how defensive your build is.

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zyean wrote:

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IceyDevil wrote:

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Hakyu wrote:

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.

Do you have two minion resist jewels? You'll have to do a bit of math and add up how much resist they have and make sure you get them capped, that will help a lot. You only get 16% from the tree, and a level 20 purity of elements with all the aura nodes my tree has is like 40%, so you are only at 56% resist out of 75%. I put two 9/10% minion resist jewels in the tree to get them the rest of the way there, this will cut the damage they take from elemental in half.

Zombies don't get the damage reduction that spectres get against bosses, from what I can tell. You will probably have to resummon them a lot, sadly. However, spectres should be able to survive just about everything unless you seriously neglect to convocate them out of damage. I think the only time I lost spectres in my videos I made was when I let them sit in shaper vortexes for too long. You should pretty much never lose any minion to trash mobs. Make sure you are using smoke cloud/consecrated ground flasks on high damage mobs/bosses, that will help a ton as well.

I think you're forgetting the base resistances of your minions, since you're using flame sentinels, I believe they have a 75% cold resist, 0% rest, zombies have a 35% to all except chaos, and guardian has 25% to all except chaos, I feel as though you'd be better just using two +16% damage gems for faster clearing, as your zombies, and guardian will have cap ele resists, guardian with what armor you have him with will also have cap chaos, sentinels would be the only ones I guess to worry about, but I feel they can stay out of danger enough, unless you're really worried about them.

Spectres are what really matter, everything else can be resummoned and replaced pretty easily. If you do ele reflect maps you can notice a pretty big difference between having resist jewels/purity of elements up and not - without the resists flame sentinels will kill themselves in a couple of casts, with the resists they can pretty much clear the map as long as you make sure to keep their regen up. If you're okay with rerolling ele reflect maps then yeah, you probably don't need resist jewels for most content, but I certainly wouldn't expect to be doing guardians without resist capped sentinels.

Of course, ideally you would have resist AND minion damage on your jewels, but I'm cheap.

Ah, that's fair, I usually am using physical spectres like horrors, or evangelists, I've actually never really tinkered with flame sentinels in high tier maps, I just really enjoy eva's and horrors so I never really noticed the big difference with cap resists or not, and I usually roll necromancer, so I gain the +20% resist aura.

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zyean wrote:

Ah, that's fair, I usually am using physical spectres like horrors, or evangelists, I've actually never really tinkered with flame sentinels in high tier maps, I just really enjoy eva's and horrors so I never really noticed the big difference with cap resists or not, and I usually roll necromancer, so I gain the +20% resist aura.

Yeah, I was going to try evangelists with poison and vulnerability if flame sentinels didn't work out, but their damage is pretty solid.

Hi, thanks for the build, recently hit Dried Lake in merciless and it's going fine so far. Just did the cruel lab and been wondering what ascendancies to pick next. Do you even benefit from the ES regen from Vile Bastion? Same goes for profane bloom, your minion kills don't count as your kills, correct? That would mean that lots of actual good bonuses from Occultist get lost :/

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Starbuckz42 wrote:

Hi, thanks for the build, recently hit Dried Lake in merciless and it's going fine so far. Just did the cruel lab and been wondering what ascendancies to pick next. Do you even benefit from the ES regen from Vile Bastion? Same goes for profane bloom, your minion kills don't count as your kills, correct? That would mean that lots of actual good bonuses from Occultist get lost :/

You get the occasional ES regen from vile bastion when you manage to proc profane bloom and it kills something. But, realistically, no, you don't really get any ES regen from it. I take it for the stun immunity on full ES, it is definitely what you will save until uber lab. You should go for +1 curse and wicked ward for your first 6 points, most likely with wicked ward first and then +1 curse for cruel/merciless labs (because you don't really need the 3rd curse until maps but the 150 ES can save your life).

The main thing we want from Occultist is +1 curse and wicked ward, these are the main staples of the build.

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IceyDevil wrote:

Videos:
Advantages of Necromancer for summoners:
Self-offering, which is nice for some speed or block, but neither will get you to the mobility or durability of blink arrow/wicked ward, in my opinion.

you can go bow as a necromancer with wicked ward have offerings and have 90% increased minion damage

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bendoverxnao wrote:

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IceyDevil wrote:

Videos:
Advantages of Necromancer for summoners:
Self-offering, which is nice for some speed or block, but neither will get you to the mobility or durability of blink arrow/wicked ward, in my opinion.

you can go bow as a necromancer with wicked ward have offerings and have 90% increased minion damage

The extra curse will give you a lot more damage, depending on the rest of your build and gear, in many cases. I don't think self offerings are that useful, to be honest. 30% block chance is way less useful than wicked ward. I'm not sure what you are getting at here implying you can get wicked ward as a Necro.

Sorry i'm new to summoner. i respec my character using your build, what sceptre did you use?
i tried to use eternal lab flame sentinel and i can't even do tier 6 map. i mean i can do it but damage is too low, killing pack was like 1-2 minutes
My Gear(ignore gems):


how can i get good spectres? need advice on this thanks