Cadet's Elemental Equilibrium EB Aura Tank Summoner [0.10.7b] [SC]

The path this build takes is pretty typical. Starting from the witch, within the first few levels, you go up the right side to take Lord of the Dead, then continue for the life and ES nodes. Level 14. Then you pretty much just straight-up rush to Minion Instability, and the extra spectre node. 32 points in. From there, at any point you feel comfortable, you should take Elemental Equilibrium, but until then, just keep picking up goodies along the path. If you want, you can also take Hex Master. 59 points in. If you decide to take Whispers of Doom, I recommend keeping 4 respec points open, because later on, you will want those points somewhere more useful. Hex Master remains quite useful, though. Beyond that level, you generally want to start moving towards EB, so that you can really open up your aura tankiness. 77 points in.

From this point, the possibilities are pretty open. You want to keep picking up minion nodes, but they're not crucially important - my build currently has 8 zombies and 12 skeletons, and does just fine. Inner Force is a nice cluster to have. Speccing down to Elemental Adaptation gives you 86% capped resists with purity and inner force. You will need to take some dex nodes, and stack some dex on your gear, because some of your most important support gems are pure dex (GMP, Faster Projectiles, Faster Attacks).
A potential late-game build: 105 points
My current not-quite-endgame build: Merry Sunvale

Summoner Uniques come in a few varieties.



You can get Sidhebreath pretty cheaply, and it is immediately useful pretty much right into endgame. You eventually want to replace it with something that makes you tankier and tougher, but it is still a very nice piece of equipment.



Bones of Ullr are kind of the priciest "must have" for this build. While it is unfortunate to be unable to stack more life/ES/res on your boots, the +1 spectre makes it something you simply cannot do without. Make sure if you buy them that they have itemlevel 28 or higher, or else you will not be able to 4L them, and you will want every slot you can get on this build for auras, curses, and assorted utility like Arctic Armor.



A +2 to minion gems helmet is an absolute must for this build. It's the difference between kinda strong, tough zombies and 18k-health monstrosities with damage oozing out of every pore. Also, Added Fire Damage is considerably better than Melee Physical Damage for this build mainly because of how much you destroy enemy fire resistances.



I'm sure some higher-level summoners will tell me how wrong I am, but I think that if you play summoner and you're not running the full brace of 4 spectres, you are doing it wrong. That's how stupidly good spectres are in this game. Queen's Decree has the annoying side-effect of high str/dex requirements, making it hard to use early on, but sooner or later you will want that much strength and dexterity for support gems on your zombies and spectres either way. Try to get ilvl 50 or higher, because, as stated earlier, you will want every slot you can get; links aren't quite as important for quite a lot of them.


5L Chest/Queen's

The difference between a 4L and a 5L spectre is huge. You need a bare minimum 4L to make spectres even decent, but with a 5L and the correct colors, you become a force of nature, destroying entire landscapes of dudes with mass-produced fireball prefabs. Tabula Rasa is also worth considering. A shitty 5-6L is better than all but the godliest lesser-linked chests. If you can 5-6L your sword? Even better.


Midnight Bargain

I have no experience with Midnight Bargain. I hear that it plus a nice armor/ES shield with good resists is miles better than Queen's Blade, but I couldn't say. If anyone wants to donate one to the cause for... *ahem* "testing" purposes, I would not say no. It also happens to be the priciest summoner unique by a mile and a half.

-Summon Zombie (in +2 to minion gem helmet) + Melee Life + Melee Damage + Added Fire Damage. There may be a better option for that last slot; I have yet to find it. Also, Summon Zombie is probably the #1 gem to get in quality, because it raises the life of your meatshields, and 20% of 15k is a lot of life.
-Summon Skeleton + Spell Totem + Faster Casting (+ Culling Strike + Added Fire Damage). If you have your skeletons in a 5L, you've probably gone overkill trying to link your sword or you're forgetting how important spectres are. The first three links are what makes this build tick between level 30 and level 50 - setting down a skeleton totem just completely gimps half the bosses in the game, and only a few mobs really cause problems when faced with an army of expendable, exploding troops.
-Summon Spectre + Greater Multiple Projectiles + Life Leech + 2 other minion-specific support gems, usually minion life/minion damage and Faster Projectiles. This needs its own section.

Something I see a lot of summoners get wrong is the spectre setup. Specifically, they get the wrong spectres, then don't understand how this build is completely and utterly broken beyond belief. Let's talk about spectres for a moment.

GOD TIER:
Flame Sentinel (+ GMP + Life Leech + Faster Projectiles + Minion Life/Damage)
Carrion Queen (+ GMP + Life Leech + Faster Projectiles + Minion Life/Damage)
Undying Incinerator (+ GMP + Life Leech + Faster Projectiles + Minion Life/Damage)

GOOD TIER:
Tentacle Miscreation (+ GMP + Life Leech + Chain + Minion Life/Damage)
Voidbearers (+ GMP + Life Leech + Faster Projectiles + Added Chaos Damage)
Merveil's Attendants or similar (+ GMP + Life Leech + Faster Projectiles + Minion Life/Damage)

"I'VE RUN OUT OF SPECTRES IN A MAP AND THESE ARE WHAT I HAVE TO WORK WITH" TIER:
Burned Miscreations (+ Culling Strike + Increased Area of Effect + Minion Life)
Cinder Elementals (I honestly don't know.)
Undying Alchemists (+ GMP + Life Leech + Faster Projectiles + Minion Life/Damage)
Chamber of Sins LA Skellies (+ GMP + Life Leech + Chain + Minion Life/Damage)
Blackguard Mages/Sparking Bones (+ GMP + Life Leech + Fork + Minion Life/Damage)


DON'T EVEN BOTHER TIER:
Pretty much everything else. If you have to, pick whatever has the most life and the longest range projectiles, and if it interacts nicely with GMP, Chain, or other assorted skill gems you have.

Flame Sentinels are probably the best minion overall - they maneuver well through tight areas, have a ton of life and ES, do solid, wide-stretching damage, and quite possibly the nicest thing about them: their AI is cowardly. If they take a hit, they will commonly run back and regroup, often leaving a row of skeletons and zombies between them and whatever hit them. This makes them live quite a while in maps. Shame they're such a pain to gather.

Carrion Queens are incredibly strong, high-damage minions with some of the highest life totals of any mobs in the game. Their fireballs with GMP have incredible coverage. They move very slowly though, and so are not well-suited to certain indoor maps - if their size and movement was more akin to the Flame Sentinels, they would be the best minion by far. As is, they are still really amazing, and generally quite easy to gather in Marketplace. Faster Projectiles is, in fact, mandatory with these guys. Seriously. Get your chest to GGBBR.

Undying Incinerators are very frail in comparison to Flame Sentinels and Carrion Queens. They have decent but not spectacular movement, their range is solid, but what makes them stand out as one of the best minions is that they simply have, far and away, the highest DPS. There is no other mob with that much damage output. They are kinda fragile, so be careful you don't lose them while mapping, but in general, they just hit incredibly hard. If you want to farm, bring these with a single burned miscreation and watch everything catch fire.

Tentacle Miscreations have great damage, incredible spread, and they'll often offscreen mobs while shotgunning ones you can see. Great on maps like Dried Lake and Cemetery. However, their AI will often move them closer to the enemies than you'd like them to be, and they are very fragile. Additionally, they are liable to explode themselves on lightning thorns.

Voidbearers with GMP and added chaos do obscene damage, much of it bypassing energy shields and armor. Not quite as much as Incinerators, but if you stack them on top of each other it looks like some sort of CGI anime giant laser beam. That's a plus. What's a minus is that they will often rush into melee range, which simultaneously does pathetic damage and opens them up to getting bopped - they don't have a ton of health, either. Also, they will one-shot themselves on lightning thorns. Don't rely entirely on them in maps.

Merveil's Attendants (the ones that do temp chains on hit) are definitely the best of the merveil's daughters, but they're all quite solid mobs. Sure, they're slow, but they're reasonably tanky and we all know how good GMP freezing pulse is by now. The damage is considerably worse than with any of the mobs above, but they are still quite decent.

Burned Miscreations get a special mention because running one of them in your party, especially for things like docks or fellshrine runs, is demonstrably hilarious, and they provide lovely burning aura support for your more effective mobs. Don't rely on them in maps.



On the subject of links: I have heard very good things about the damage boost from Remote Mine. I haven't seen it in action, though, I'm going to do some experimenting.

The main auras you want to run, in order of importance:
- Vitality (Keeps your spectres healthy, added bonus of making you able to run chaos damage maps)
- Purity (Keeps your spectres and you healthy)
- Discipline (Keeps your spectres healthy, added bonus of being free mana if you run EB)
- Haste (...I don't have the specs to run 2 40% and a 30% aura at the moment. But this one is good.)
- Anger/Wrath (Nice on spectres and zombies and skellies, with EB you can support these)
- Clarity (if necessary, especially for the stuff below)

Curses:
- Flammability. Notice how every top tier mob in the above list, save for the merveil's daughters, were fire? Yeah.
- Elemental Weakness. Because that LA ranger in your party won't get off your case about giving mobs +25% lightning res.
- Enfeeble. Because getting one-shot by Ironpoint and Piety is just not as much fun as you envisioned.
- Temporal Chains. This curse is normally meh; with hex master, it's suddenly really, really great.
...Basically, pick and choose one or two offensive and defensive curses for any given situation.

Utility:
- Arc. This is where the Elemental Equilibrium comes in, because when you hit a monster with arc, they get -50% fire resistance. -50%! And your mobs will not reset that. Don't level it; damage won't ever be enough to matter, and you may want the mana for other things. But between Arc and Flammability, I cut 90% fire res off of mobs. That puts almost every enemy in the game into the negative, where my flaming zombies and fireball mobs make short work of them. I cannot overstate how awesome this is as a utility. It works on literally everyone, is a huge help against guys who cannot be cursed, and generally makes murdering lots of dudes considerably easier.
- Arctic Armor. If you can muster the mana regen for this at higher levels, it provides amazing damage reduction. Voidbearers literally cannot do damage to me now, and neither can tentacle miscreations. This helps shore up some of the defense you lose from taking EB.

Level 1-30: party carry. Just... trust me, don't bother fighting through this, it sucks. You're going to be weak and pathetic and nothing you can do will change this. Find a party, or twink yourself out with Silverbranch, or something like that, just don't rely on your zombies and skeletons, because those will not be genuinely good for a while.

Level 31 through act 2 cruel: At this point, you should have +1 spectre, MI, and summon skeleton+spell totem(+faster casting). This on its own will shut down a lot of the game. You should also have Bones of Ullr, so you can run 3-4 spectres, and you should have LMP or GMP so that these spectres are of the "room-clearing" variety. My advice: get zombies, then go to act 3 to get spectres, then go to wherever you want to be. There are no good spectres in act 2, and almost no good spectres in act 1; you'll usually be better off just getting the lower-level spectres. You can tailor your spectres to the location, too - obviously, Queens are less practical in Chamber of Sins and Church Dungeon, but Tentacle Miscreations are amazing in fellshrine for farming. Try to set up as many auras as you can - vitality is the biggest, most important one, but other ones are good. The best gear is generally ES/AR. Use Arc to direct mobs and lower fire res, and feel free to pepper mobs with curses. Throw up a skeleton totem in front of anything particularly threatening.

After getting EB: Get more auras, use Arctic Armor, generally standard operating procedure. Really, for most of cruel and act 1 and 2 merciless, you can pretty much faceroll the content, because this build is just that dumb. I did fetid pool at level 50. 50! No deaths.

Fighting Piety: party. No, seriously, don't fight Piety unless you're with someone who can do reliable DPS. You're still a great support, but her attacks will kill your minions too damn fast, and after that, you're stuck with skeletotem, whatever zombies you can muster from what she creates, and curses. It's technically doable, but it's not very fun unless you overlevel. In fact, I strongly recommend skipping piety in Merciless, and just going ahead to maps until you're a little less underleveled.



Bosses that get more or less neutralized by Skeletotem:
- Hillock
- Kuduku
- Brutus (just watch for the slam)
- The Burning Menace
- Fairgraves
- Merveil (placement matters here)
- White Beast
- Calaf Headstaver
- Alira
- Geofri The Abashed
- Monkeys from Dread Thicket
- All Blackguard Elite Uniques
- Kole (see Brutus)
- Spinecrack
- Chatters
- Unique Necros
- Oozeback Bloom
- ...etc. This build is dumb.

Q: "What makes you think you're qualified to make a guide on this game?"
A: "Fucked if I know!"

Q: "What do I do about Cinder Elementals?"
A: "Run away, hope it dies before it rolls your spectres to death."

Q: "What are the most dangerous mobs?"
A: "Piercing serpents are really nasty, but they're kind of obvious. The other big one you should watch is Undying Grapplers - flicker strike isn't that bad, but what is is Discharge, and their discharge is harsh."

Q: "How do you know how to write an FAQ when nobody's asked you anything?"
A: "...Shut up."

I'm level 75 at the moment, with 2.8k life, maxed ele res, -6% chaos res, and low reduction.

Merry Sunvale