The Poison Arrow/Summoner

Why poison arrow?

It does some seriously high dps dot damage without the need to spec into any damage increasing nodes/mods

Not a mana intensive skill

Dex grants you access to Hatred, Phase run, Haste, Grace

Very far range aoe when combined with multi shot + piercing

PROS
1. More damage than a standard summoner build
2. No need to spec into any damage increasing nodes saving you a lot of points to beef up your minions or your own character
3. poison allows you to soften targets or outright kill them, this combined with minion auto attacks + all your auras + minion instability = a lot of damage
4. not gear intensive

CONS
1. equipping a Bow doesn't let you have access to a shield or Necromantic Aegis
2. You will need some dex nodes (thankfully there are two close +30 dex nodes)
3. Bows often drop with green sockets requiring you to change the sockets to fit more blue gems in


Passive Skill Build

current lvl 45

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQMABExkwwWqm1UPZkxME2sjvhi6bYQhrjv2KxP-Iy9PnYYv1U9iNiMFVzbrxVREDfVESiZLGUsMhrpVyGzAXa1vr2BHBMlh2FWJYhby42M6v8hmEqjuZsc122gNYZloxUAZdQ8h_3pxx_x8hsoZfPbQmoKqKcSEmCbzmFSqZKEImb-hqnwEo1mqTabEp_-nLlnOtA7yLrlKBka_f_fiwL_LyMS4hTzGIRMCy0EdEdR8MYvdR4vN4EtstuIy-3XjhsAn5E26Su0lMkvt17l47uvQ7fPzVm4=

1. Grab Lord of the dead as your first node goal
2. Work towards minion instability next
3. Next grab all of the +minion summon skills
4. Work towards Dex nodes, minion life, minion dmg nodes, aura range
*after this build is up to you
5. Work on hp/shield/mana pool (survivability)

Active Skills

Poison Arrow - your main dps skill ( combine with pierce and multiple projectile gem and elemental proliferation)
for AOE goodness

Summon Skeletons -
great for huge crowds to take agroo off
start your zombie/specter army when u enter a map
summon them to block projectiles
summon them right on top of monsters as minion instability bombs
support with minion life + skill duration,

Summon Zombie -
support with +fire/ice/light/chaos dmg, minion life, minion dmg, melee damage
if something does kill your zombie it deals huge minion instability damage

Summon Specter -
best used on rangers/mage/or hard hitting and tanky melee mobs
support with +fire/ice/light/chaos dmg, minion life, minion dmg

Various Auras
Wrath, Hatred, Discipline, anger ect (whatever floats your boat as long as you have to mana pool for it)
Auras can be used then swapped or even physically switched our from your equipment and it will still remain for that instance

Curses
Temporal chain - for annoying fast moving bosses
Venerability - for 2 purposes increase your poison damage and increase your minion damage
Warlord - minion gets endurance charges i think??(i'll test this out soon) I know they can life leach and it does give you more charges

Others
Phase Run for running away and travelling faster

Equipement

A 4 socket linked blue helm with the mod +minion skill gem socketed into this item

glove and boots with enough sockets for minion gem, and 3 support gems

Bow with +1 bow skill (for more poison arrow dot)

armor with as many slots as possible

accessory and belt to boost stats required to wear/use certain equips/skill gems

This is a good build and guide, thanks.

Happy to see someone else with this idea as well. As you point out poison arrow is great fun since it is basically totally skill level dependent. I Like your build a lot but worry about all the wasted points (spell damage, fire damage) that are there. The problem is Lord of the Dead is the best single node aside from instability, but it's surrounded by crap for this build. So, as a counter point, here is my build. This is stage one:

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQMAlhxlajLquewhedp69Tm6j_2YbdO9IbtWzcpmY0lHOJw_nl9N4jL7dWjFQBlmEqju4Etstt1Hi813ABYJGLpthHyGyhl89tCa1Hwxi4SYJvNdrW-vdQ8h_2IW8uOnLlnORA31RHnSvml3rHErGknwSblKBkYTayO-5E26Snpxx_wPZkxMtA7yLg==

As you can see I bypassed LotD but added some +energy shield passives to add survivability. ES is my preferred defense for this build.

Later we add some more stuff in the middle (same ones you have)

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQMAlhxlajLquewhedp69Tm6j_2YbdO9IbtWzcpmY0lHOJw_nl9N4jL7dWjFQBlmEqju4Etstt1Hi813ABYJGLpthHyGyhl89tCa1Hwxi4SYJvNdrW-vdQ8h_2IW8uOnLlnORA31RHnSvml3rHErGknwSblKBkYTayO-5E26Snpxx_wPZkxMtA7yLpZmtQ3ZCR3Zi7FwpDpp3-5jOr_IxLiFPKbEp_82IwVX95J9zfPzVm7jhsAnL0-dhu0lMkujWapNIa479r9_9-I=


After that this gets a little nuts, but the only passive nodes in the game that make poison arrow more effective are the +skill duration nodes (increase poison/cloud duration) near ranger start. It's a long trek but you can pick up some helpful +run speed on the way. I would consider this optional and would like some feedback

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAQMAlhxlajLquewhedp69Tm6j_2YbdO9IbtWzcpmY0lHOJw_nl9N4jL7dWjFQBlmEqju4Etstt1Hi813ABYJGLpthHyGyhl89tCa1Hwxi4SYJvNdrW-vdQ8h_2IW8uOnLlnORA31RHnSvml3rHErGknwSblKBkYTayO-5E26Snpxx_wPZkxMtA7yLpZmtQ3ZCR3Zi7FwpDpp3-5jOr_IxLiFPKbEp_82IwVX95J9zfPzVm7jhsAnL0-dhu0lMkujWapNIa479r9_9-IUFSRXQkzWvDbg-NBD_nJt_Bu-mnS_i6lJ3JkQsEvyZZ3CjJdEXA-hwhGIcO8eEl9Jth9taiLrvHUqkzVMvMhBVOi2WQ==


So there ya go!

How does critical hit affect Poison Arrow?

There are 2 parts to poison arrow, the arrow and the cloud.

The arrow gets all your regular damage modifiers and crit modifiers, but also gets a decent % of physical damage added as additional chaos damage. So a crit would increase this damage.

For most later game builds, the main benefit is the DoT cloud. This cloud is dependent only on 1 thing - the skill level of the gem (one exception is the +skill duration passive). Crits don't affect the cloud at all.