[Major Damage/Mapping Improvements-Update 7.1.22 PoB/Vid] The Fortified Summoner: HoP MI Champion

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Interesting thoughts! I'm not clear what you would use fortify gem with; having to maintain it will be a pretty big pain in the ass, along with lowering damage as you interrupt your cyclone channel (assuming you put it on a movement skill). Also, iit looks with the changes, Elementalist might out-damage necro, so a dualist/elementalist ascendancy could be a thing.

i mainly want to use ascendant because its inquisitor node is different from the actual inquisitor in that it procs consecrated ground on hit and since we cyclone hit a lot then it should always proc, an important defensive layer i think.

as for stun then we choose the juggernaut node for stun immunity and endurance charge generation (endurance charges unlike armour can reduce all sources of physical damage not just hits).

also by the way while leveling the ascendant I found dominating blow + axe to be extremely clunky and makes me vulnerable to die easily. any claw weapon + cyclone + thief torment ring + holy relic on 6 link was way better smooth damage and defense. cyclone + cwc + vulnerability + fortify or poacher. apparently some builds main this setup of "reverse knockback" cyclone which pulls in enemies similar to vaal cyclone. (use a muttering essence on the claw for 20-30% minion damage.)

I don't see how elementalist can be useful for this build, the main source of damage is minion life not you. the defensive layers of champion are better. the little extra exposure isn't worth it. but still scion/ascendant has the advantage here if you want to try the elementalist node, though the necro offers would be more useful, im personally going inquisitor/jugg.

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VioLenceJak wrote:

i mainly want to use ascendant because its inquisitor node is different from the actual inquisitor in that it procs consecrated ground on hit and since we cyclone hit a lot then it should always proc, an important defensive layer i think.

as for stun then we choose the juggernaut node for stun immunity and endurance charge generation (endurance charges unlike armour can reduce all sources of physical damage not just hits).

So the standard build does include endurance charge generation in the Inexorable cluster, although granted not as quickly as you would get with Jugg. You could also pick up Unwavering Stance for stun immunity, for a few points. Given this, and not having a good way to keep fortify up (that I can think of at least), as well as the extra 10% increased enemy damage taken buff, I'd probably pick Champion over Jug.

I do agree that the consecrated ground on hit from inquisitor looks really interesting and powerful, and you also get a nice damage boost from the increased enemy elemental damage taken mod.

Re: Elementalist, PoB was telling me that the extra -20% to exposure was doing more MI damage than the extra 30% minion damage from Necro. Flesh offering self buff would be nice, but might actually cause us to over-cap on HoP minions if we aren't careful (Fortress Covenant could help with this though)

Inquisitor/Champion looks really good though; slightly more damage than baseline champion build, with a few % less physical damage reduction but getting the consecrated ground buff.

Regardless, let me know how the inquisitor ascendancy feels with this playstyle; I'm really curious!

Edit: One additional perk is we might be able to run a double-cluster jewel setup! It looks like we can make it work; example PoB here.

https://pastebin.com/BcW7TT4C

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Peterrabbit_01 wrote:

So the standard build does include endurance charge generation in the Inexorable cluster, although granted not as quickly as you would get with Jugg.

I was wondering why you don't pick up the extra endurance charges on the passive tree? Maybe that question only makes sense for now as I don't have any good cluster jewels and so am not as point starved as I could be.

nice tree i will follow that. to balance some defence and damage i could take chieftan instead of jugg, "covered in ash on hit which increase fire damage taken by 20%" that is a better generic "more" multiplier than exposure from elementalist because I read somewhere that exposure/res reduction etc has limited returns and only best against high res enemy i.e. bosses. plus the defensive stuff from chieftan.

by the way i have boots with fortify implicit or a fortify gem then put 23% quality vengeance + maxed enhance support you will get minimum 41% chance to fortify without the enhance support and a max of 63-64% chance to trigger vengeance which gives fortify when damage taken which is a higher chance than champion passive. sorry vengeance is a trigger and did not activate fortify, shield charge would not work because of necromantic aegis, it might be better to just use vigilant strike which has a longer fortify duration. or any faster melee skill like flicker strike.

and problem in your pob infernal cry applies combust which is fire damage and that breaks your EE. I use immortal call + cwdt and endurance cry on left click. and nice claw to go with that is Al Dhih.

Replica Earendel's Embrace Grinning Fetish for faster zombie explosions to prevent resummoning before they explode.

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VioLenceJak wrote:

by the way i have boots with fortify implicit or a fortify gem then put 23% quality vengeance + maxed enhance support you will get minimum 41% chance to fortify without the enhance support and a max of 63-64% chance to trigger vengeance which gives fortify when damage taken which is a higher chance than champion passive.

Hmm the way I read the champion passive is that it triggers off of OUR melee hits, not enemy hits like vengeance. Since we hit so fast with cyclone, we should have near instantaneous proccing of fortify. The vengeance-fortify link is interesting though; thanks for sharing!

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VioLenceJak wrote:

and problem in your pob infernal cry applies combust which is fire damage and that breaks your EE.

I agree, that is what you would think based on the description, but that's not how it actually works. You can test this (make sure you are using a claw), go to any zone and cast infernal cry on some mobs, then get a hit in with Cyclone, and mouse over the mobs. If combust was working, you would see "resists fire" in their description, but you won't.

My best explanation for this is in the PoE wiki, the combust skill is listed as restricted to certain weapons, and claws are not supported. This means we get the beneficial "covered in ash" mod from infernal cry, but not the counter-producive Combust effect!

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VioLenceJak wrote:

Replica Earendel's Embrace Grinning Fetish for faster zombie explosions to prevent resummoning before they explode.

We don't have any issues with zombies resummoning, it's HoP minions with their cap of 4 that can sometimes overcap.

sorry, fortify never activated i realized fortify does not support vengeance because vengeance is a triggered skill.

shield charge would not work because of necromantic aegis, it might be better to just use vigilant strike which has a longer fortify duration. or any faster melee skill like flicker strike.

by the way since we arent scaling energy shield i pathed to necro aegis via attack and move speed at the cost of 1 additional point. i am currently too slow to finish a temple incursion mission.

and how do you get your holy relic to benefit from elemental army? its skills are physical damage. I added "added fire damage support" to it.

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VioLenceJak wrote:

and how do you get your holy relic to benefit from elemental army? its skills are physical damage. I added "added fire damage support" to it.

For this, you can get 'minions deal added fire damage' on a jewel. It can have other damage types but fire must be the highest.

thanks and thank you for this build it is amazing so far. i got maligaro lens on necro aegis and it made all the difference, now to allocate master of the arena on necklace i got it for 10 c will try if it improves speed.

the most things that stop me from channeling are stun and freeze, stun immune i will get maybe from unwavering. freeze immune from inquisitor ground.

there is no good way yet to get fortify except manual static strike. i guess champion is more attractive to me now if i get unwavering. actually i just put a second cyclone on the boots and altertnate with that it always gives me fortify. it is not worth getting the champion for just fortify and not worth the 4 points to path to unwavering. it is matter of which melee skill is more convenient and there are so many skills so i just use another cyclone.

the good thing with champion taunt is that there is a unique claw replica allure where if you taunt the enemy will receive 10% increased damage. not sure if the +50 health on hit repeats. and it is hard to compete with replica earendel embrace. replica siege breaker belt might apply burning ground as well (since they have avatar of fire). i think i will use those unique claws for survival situations like boss or labyrinth and use the earandel for maps and aoe.

maybe enemies explode chest piece will help more with clear, only way for that so far is al dhih unique claw, since it is not you who kill and minion explode is not a spell (?). and holy relic likes to stray away from me in the back lagging behind me.

edit: i got the stampede boots and put cyclone - cwdt - fortify - immortal call. the speed is very good now with high roll on travel skill cd.

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VioLenceJak wrote:

maybe enemies explode chest piece will help more with clear, only way for that so far is al dhih unique claw, since it is not you who kill and minion explode is not a spell (?). and holy relic likes to stray away from me in the back lagging behind me.

Let me know if you figure out how to make explody work...I think Asenath's Gentle Touch does actually work, but it's physical damage and we don't scale physical damage at all. If we could somehow convert the exlode to fire damage that would be ideal, but that would then screw our EE if it counted as coming from us, so idk.

So i've tried replicating your POB best i could and this is what i ended up with
https://pastebin.com/4vhA6Cfn
it's extremely tanky and i love it but damage is beyond terrible
any tips on how to improve damage and not sacrifice the amazing state of survivability the character has?