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

the build is viable the highest risk you are facing are high phys damage dealers like chargers and flicker striker mobs due to the lack of armour

If you get hit by 2-3 chargers without your granite up in a map you are pretty much dead, even without nasty mods

I'm currently lvl 81 with this in onslaught.

My skill tree looks like this atm, and I have 5 unallocated passive skill points atm, as I'm still considering my options

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMBB2MI9Ax9EH8QlxSwFm8ZhRpsHNwkPCSqJ6ko-iqYMYg26TowOuE74UGHRARGcUjnSVFNuU3jVcZXK1ptWpFr220Zc1N5A3q4fRh-WX_Ggh6Cx4VgiECI8Yt6j0aQM5MnlSCboZ2uoqOmV6aspwinK6dcqH2pbqrErFmsmK6TtAy18rc-uJO8n7-XwFTB88aexq7JPcy8z2XQ0NP71BnZC9rd2wvi9-Nq45_nY-vu7IrxdvIe8kX31_qA_gr-jw==

Eldritch battery was the last thing I took near lvl 80.
When (rarely) soloing or doing easy content I get machine gun titties while spamming skele totems with quality faster cast and a blind gem, and mow everything down from afar. Zombies are Zombieng, enfeeble is my standard curse and I drop firetraps as my sole spell.

I really enjoy it - short of ****ing piety or vaal or some super crazy augmented fireball/firestorm mobs theres nothing that really stops me, and I'm sure I'll figure out a way to do those too, eventualy.

When running maps with other people, I get the Dot bears from waterfall cave.

Currently run Clarity, Discipline, Vitality, Purity and Grace

I'll post another update when my gear is straightened out, I figure out where to best dump my next 5+9 (aiming at lvl 90) skill points/and if or I can cut a few of the extra minion points.


EDIT: 2-3 flasks of Instant recovery or Instant when on low life (2/1 here) are a must! I cant count the times where mashing those buttons has saved my life. Currently looking for a perpetual granite and iron skin flask.

why go for so much health? why not ES and immune to chaos dmg and 1 hp ?

First of all: THX for that great guide.

As i'm not really experienced, i play only SC and so i made some slight changes. I specced straight to all minion nodes i can reach. Yesterday i've completed cruel act 1 without significant problems so far. My skill-tree actually looks like this:


With the next few skill points i'll connect the lower route near the leadership notes, which needs four skill points, but so i can respec six skill points from the upper route.

I play mostly with self-found or self-crafted items, the only item i bought was a very cheap Bones of Ullr.
Here you can have a look at my gear, i'd be happy for every hint to improve it:


So i can actually rely on 8 zombies and 3 spectres (fire sentinels with augmented fireballs, linked with minion damage, faster projectiles and fork), with three auras (grace, clarity and disciplin...the only three i have at the moment, will try to trade others when needed). My favourite curse is "Enfeeble", thinking about using "Flammability" to improve spectre damage.

My zombies are linked with "life gained on hit", because i have no melee damage or added fire damage gem left. In large groups of white or magic mobs, i sometimes also link melee splash with my zombies...works really great. For keeping my minions alive i use rejuvenation totem.

The skelettons are still summoned manually, because i have only one red socket und i usually just need them when fighting bosses...all groups of mobs were pulverized downright by the zombies and spectres ^^

Ok, it's just SC, but when i started playing this build, i couldn't imagine my little army would deal such tremendous damage so far. I think the summoner witch will be my favourite character :)

A+ for your build ^^

Melee Splash on Zombies act like a Minion Damage gem when leveld.

To be frank, theres probably ways to run this as Hybrid life/es (I actualy really liked it that way until picking up Eldritch - I just couldnt run many auras and in maps I started facing chaos dmg per sec maps which would negate my ES puffer regen and force me into eldritch mode without actualy using ES! ) or as a chaos inoc witch.

Probably some variations as templar, marauder and shadow too. I'm just not familiar with those.

When I started Poe a few months back I did alot of research before making my first toon, and coming from a necromancer background and just generaly enjoying the summoner playstyle and the way this was written up I knew this is the build for me. I died at level 70something for no real reason than impatience - took a few months break and when onslaught came out poe started to tempt me again and boom the addiction hit. I dont regret it =)

I picked up dual curses and am now lvl 84 with 3 unallocated passives. I hit 4k lp and run 2 granites, 2 seething and 1 panicked flask .. endurance charges are fun too, but I really suck at keeping those up with enduring cry for the most part.

If you wanna play a build similiar to this but more tanky, you might wanna look into templar based builds with high armor.

Success story:

When Onslaught came out, I decided to switch from SC to HC/Onslaught. I made several characters myself, got to around ~55-62 before I realized they most likely wouldn't make it to Maps and/or would die getting there if I progressed any further. What interested me the most about your build is nothing requires a 5L. Every other build that says "no 5L required" really means "hey, you need that 5L, though."

Leveling progression: followed your guide exactly. Freeze Pulsed my dick off with LMP until Merciless Ledge. Then I started ripping shit like no other. Grinding out levels was pretty boring at some points. It can cause you get careless. But when I was in the home stretch I just grinded it out at Merciless Docks for a few hours. It was good practice keeping minions alive and how to help them survive (because everything up until Docks is pretty face roll and your minions can facetank anything)

Anyways, got a Map drop at Docks. Hit the EXP debuff so I decided to run the Map and see what happens. Destroyed everything in seconds with 2 Tentacles and a Voidbear. There was like 20 mobs on the boss and I only lost 1 Tentacle Specter.

Thanks for making this guide and sharing your build. If you want to get in to HC/Onslaught, I definitely recommend this because of the amazing survivability and the only item you 'need' is only 2-7 Chaos, depending on how important 15% MS is to you (spoiler; get the 15% lol) You'll have all the money you need to buy your gear/Ullrs by the time you hit Merciless Ledge.

Yeah, reading your success story, I can really relate as well as I had been having loads of trouble finding gear as it is ridiculously expensive/impossible for a casual player to do most builds without dishing out real money to questionable websites for currency. I share the sentiment of not having to use a 5L at all in this build and still being able to pretty much manhandle everything. Used at most maybe 5 gcp worth of currency and disemboweled Merciless Piety at level 69 with no tps used and no deaths. Thank you very much for sharing this build, I definitely recommend it.

nvm

Looking at your gear and spotting no "blood magic" gem while saying you use 6 auras tells me:

Another build ruined by the last patch which fixed "Covenant" "Malachai" "Alpha Howl" etc snapshot trick. No way to reserve as many auras with no "reduced reservation" in passive tree or gear, am I right?