[0.10.1] HC Necro-Witch Guide | How to survive and progress as a pure summoner.

Can you make a video of you build? That would be awesome i guess. Then players can see what you can do with your build.

Another interesting fact:

Your level route is mainly based on FP dps most of time, and reach full minion army power around 100 points?

My level route is only based on minion dps, and reach full minion power at 50~60 points.
Since Act2, the minion army is my 90% dps and defense. I am having fun of powerful minion army in early games, and dealing all the progression difficulties by pure minion army.

Who is the pure summoner here?

I think your endgame build is strong and similar to other necro-witch endgame builds.
But your leveling path makes you a hybrid FP/minion witch most of the progression time; and you cannot enjoy the fun of having strongest army in early game.

Therefore, I think you may change your topic to "HC FP Necro-Witch Guide | How to survive and progress as a hybrid summoner." :P lol.

"

SpencerRelly wrote:

Awesome! Glad to know this build works at the highest level. Yeah, I'm looking to replace my wand. I want one with chaos res but haven't really seen one that I thought was worth throwing currency at yet. Out of curiosity, why do you use Molten Shell over Enduring Cry? I have a molten shell leveling in my off weapons, but it seemed to me like EC was giving more % physical reduction? I'm not in game to test, but that was a few levels ago and my Molten Shell was pretty low. What are the advantageous? I would love your opinion! Also, I want your chest armor. Gimme gimme.

Edit: And yes, currently solo. My computer can't handle the craziness in groups :(

I was also looking for dex + chaosres + another res weapon for long time, but just couldn't find any.

And about MS vs EC, I wasn't using any defensive ability until recently (as you can see my MS is only lv12). And using EC didn't even cross my mind, maybe I have misunderstood it's usage but isn't it an aoe-taunt also? So when shit is gonna hit the fan it doesn't sound appealing to use aoe-taunt on that situation, correct me if I'm wrong :)

And that chest....I spent maybe 15 chaos to get decent rolls on it (95% inc armor/es, 97hp, 64mp, 22% fireres), tried to exalt for trires...oh well.

I am playing softcore and I am on level 45 and still dont die ... :-)))

I dont take any point into energy shield and life ...

I plan much less HP only 140% bonus, I simply still didnt find any occasion in which anything attacking at me at all...

I will go with double totem with really high crit chance, which will freeze and shock enemies at once :-D

I will let you know when I will die ... but until now .. HP is not required at all

Darla + SpencerRelly:
I dont know how it will look like later in the game but I can say that as a summoner "pure summoner" only first levels are hard, where your minions arent strong enough but, you very quickly tak minion instability and you can use your minions as bombs ....

later on you will take all summoners items and with 4 spectres, horde of zombies and skeletons ..... you wont receive any hit..... Even final bosses dont know at all what to do, and when they start attacking monsters they will blow up into their face ... you can simply just summon skeletons and thats it...

Absolutely easiest play from all the characters which I have ... But its getting easier from "normal act 3 - until that time its really little harder than other classes, but you will still not die, if you will not do any "big mistake".

I am going currently with one spark totem - this will change later and I will go for spark totem with + ice spear totem or freezing pulse totem. (static blow is must even with really high crit which I plan on my build).

This is first class where I dont need to take care about survivability, for other class I need to have crazy HP, HP regen etc etc

"

nilso1992 wrote:

Can you make a video of you build? That would be awesome i guess. Then players can see what you can do with your build.

I'll see what I can do!

"

I am playing softcore and I am on level 45 and still dont die ... :-)))

I dont take any point into energy shield and life ...

I plan much less HP only 140% bonus, I simply still didnt find any occasion in which anything attacking at me at all...

I will go with double totem with really high crit chance, which will freeze and shock enemies at once :-D

I will let you know when I will die ... but until now .. HP is not required at all

Good luck doing 70+ maps with 140% life.

"

Another interesting fact:

Your level route is mainly based on FP dps most of time, and reach full minion army power around 100 points?

My level route is only based on minion dps, and reach full minion power at 50~60 points.
Since Act2, the minion army is my 90% dps and defense. I am having fun of powerful minion army in early games, and dealing all the progression difficulties by pure minion army.

Who is the pure summoner here?

I think your endgame build is strong and similar to other necro-witch endgame builds.
But your leveling path makes you a hybrid FP/minion witch most of the progression time; and you cannot enjoy the fun of having strongest army in early game.

Therefore, I think you may change your topic to "HC FP Necro-Witch Guide | How to survive and progress as a hybrid summoner." :P lol.

Look I'm not exactly sure what you're trying to get me to do here. Lots of builds use a safe leveling path until what they are focused on becomes viable. The point of an ARPG is the end game, at least in my eyes. My build is an endgame pure summoner. I have provided the best way that I have found, in my experience playing the game, to safely level through the content. And that's really all I can offer. If you don't agree with the leveling process feel free to write your own guide.

In regards to your last message, I'm sorry to hear about your account, I hope your new character is going well.

I actually have leveled a summoner that takes early summons nodes. I've leveled ~5 different summoner witches, both in CB and OB. In my experience, summons are painful to use and a waste of time until the mid 30s, even if you are investing heavily. You are forced to constantly re-cast, MI takes a while to get to, and in general it slows down the pace of the game. When I level I am trying to get past the content as fast as possible. Summons do not allow you to do that in the early game. If you enjoy that gameplay-great. I do not and because of my reckless playstyle and my tendency to fly through the content I would often die. Therefore I personally think that it is better to forgo summons, pick up all your HP nodes first, use abilities that are inexpensive, commonplace, and effective for leveling and then pick up all my summons at once later on in the game.

It is clear that we disagree. Happy leveling.

Can you put your old build up, in a note or spoiler at the end? It would be interesting to be able to compare and contrast them.

@Darla and Antarian

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antarian wrote:

Darla + SpencerRelly:
This is first class where I dont need to take care about survivability, for other class I need to have crazy HP, HP regen etc etc

Yep, when u make it past act 3 merc without being 1 shot punctured or 1 shot by an alchemist bomb crit or some other ability, and can still type /deaths with a result of Zero then come back and tell someone that a spec they have posted to try and help others is a bad idea - until then consider writing your own guid maybe?


71 witch HC farming maps, Fire\summoner (a rather different passive tree than suggest here but with the same principles of supporting minions and stacking survival)... i know all to well that if i hadn't taken all the Survival nodes i would have died at leased twice maybe more. playing in the HC league that is at leased 2 deaths to many. In fact i died on my first FreezPulse witch summoner at 51 HC cruel act 3 to puncture because i went for dmg+minions instead of survival. it might be rare that a mobs attacks you directly, but unless you have been favored by the RNG gear gods when they do it will hurt!

Good guide Spencer, tho i do have a question... wth do you do to kill time after u place your totem and have curses up?,i cant spot 1 dmg spell in your kit so its got me interested. me i spam fireballs, others they spam ARC\spark or w/e.

Minions stop being weak when you get spell totem + raise skeleton in my opinion. At this point, with minion instability, you can get very high damage even against tough mobs which kill your summons quickly, and you don't run out of mana as easily because you no longer have to spam skeletons yourself.

"

Yep, when u make it past act 3 merc without being 1 shot punctured or 1 shot by an alchemist bomb crit or some other ability, and can still type /deaths with a result of Zero then come back and tell someone that a spec they have posted to try and help others is a bad idea - until then consider writing your own guid maybe?


71 witch HC farming maps, Fire\summoner (a rather different passive tree than suggest here but with the same principles of supporting minions and stacking survival)... i know all to well that if i hadn't taken all the Survival nodes i would have died at leased twice maybe more. playing in the HC league that is at leased 2 deaths to many. In fact i died on my first FreezPulse witch summoner at 51 HC cruel act 3 to puncture because i went for dmg+minions instead of survival. it might be rare that a mobs attacks you directly, but unless you have been favored by the RNG gear gods when they do it will hurt!

Good guide Spencer, tho i do have a question... wth do you do to kill time after u place your totem and have curses up?,i cant spot 1 dmg spell in your kit so its got me interested. me i spam fireballs, others they spam ARC\spark or w/e.

Well, at least someone gets it.

Thanks for the kind words! As to your question, I answered a little bit earlier, but essentially I don't feel it is worth it. I'll try to put up a video at some point but with correct spectres you simply fly through the content. I use Burning Miscreations most of the time and any trash mob that has my Ele Weakness curse melts in less than a second. I also just don't have the slots with my auras curses and summons already in my gear, and there isn't really much I can drop.

Moral of the story, if there was another 4L on some pants I would have a single target DPS spell set up ;)