Guide: The Unrighteous Summoner

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iowercase wrote:

4) Aura activation. The best I can tell, BMs activate their aura when they want to perform an action but get interrupted or obstructed in some fashion. Either by getting stunned in the middle of an attack or movement, or having their pathing blocked when they aggro onto an enemy. You can observe this pretty reliably when you WP into docks, if you can find a group of enemies on the other side of that wall and engage them by casting skelly totems around the corner, your BMs will then try to engage but they'll find the wall is in their way, get pissed and then set themselves on fire every time. This is consistent with my longstanding observation that BMs light up much faster on indoors maps (more obstructions) than outdoors.

Thanks for the tip! Definitely going to try this out. So aggravating zoning into a new area and watching the BMs use their melee attacks for like the first 3-4 packs until they decide to cast UF.

With the nerf to chaos degen bears coming in the 11.4 patch, I'm wondering what other spectres you guys are using to pair with BM's. Been trying out the barracks arc mages but not super impressed by them so far.

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Lightfighter1580 wrote:

I'll have a debate between going to body and soul and more life nodes depending on es, life and armor values etc. And I might be able to use more of a damage type zombie. Because mobs are stunned. But in reality the zombies do very little damage in comparison.

This works because I am using the unique gloves Asenath's Gentle Touch. These cast temp chains on hit. Temp chains+cold snap=mobs not moving for 5 seconds. Mobs seem to die a hair slower with temp chains (slower degen effect) not sure about this, but it seems to be the case. But I will take the slightly slower death to ensure the specters don't die.

1. The choice between life and ES in generally depends on your chaos resistance. ES will have a higher impact than Life in terms of increasing your health pool but you can't use pots to refill it and it does not help vs chaos damage.

2. I tested temp chains and it does not increase the damage of the burning miscreations. However you are completely right that it helps with the survivability.

Suicigoba

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iowercase wrote:

I'm running a BM-mmoner only at level 66 so far, but here are my impressions and differences in build:

0) My build: http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMBVysHY3NTa9t9GOaBEVC71jvhbRni96cri3rB86Kjf8bBxSy_hq4V19eGVmMc3JMnn3t4urQMEQ-wd4IeTC0XUAD9dFV8zuvkXyoUsKyY99fMvBCXRARNuZuh0NCPRqcI2QsqmL-XyT0dFJit-tJmnnFNms9DY7cxWPWdxMAaWfOsqift893E9j0PJIt8u548TdiMdhNbZOdV1trdflnsGMNt

It looks good but is rather low on Survivability. Your pathing will lead to around 5-6k ES max endgame and you have less zombies to tank. You won't be completely safe in maps.

1) Springleaf springleaf springleaf. I opted for necro aegis, and springleaf is the bomb with these guys. The 7.5% regen/second at lowlife (including Vitality) lets them bounce back from serious punishment.

I'm interested how springleaf serves you in maps versus a resist based shield. Keep me posted!

2) CI + 2 spectres only.5-6K ES is entirely possible with just medium-tier equipment.

As an end game comparisson: I run with 2.8k life and 6k ES. There will be combinations that you can't safely do solo with 6k ES. Test the waters slowly before doing 69+ maps.

3) Zombie resists get maxed with just Purity + Springleaf (32-64-32 innate)

How do you figure out the innate zombie resists on Merciless? I would love to get to know the source of this.

3) Minion Life - I could be wrong, but I am still strongly under the impression that BM's unrighteous fire damage scales off their life total, just like righteous fire. It's sort of a moot point since you want to max their life regardless.

Minion life does not affect their damage, however your second point is correct.

4) Aura activation. The best I can tell, BMs activate their aura when they want to perform an action but get interrupted or obstructed in some fashion. Either by getting stunned in the middle of an attack or movement, or having their pathing blocked when they aggro onto an enemy. You can observe this pretty reliably when you WP into docks, if you can find a group of enemies on the other side of that wall and engage them by casting skelly totems around the corner, your BMs will then try to engage but they'll find the wall is in their way, get pissed and then set themselves on fire every time. This is consistent with my longstanding observation that BMs light up much faster on indoors maps (more obstructions) than outdoors.

Very interesting. Hard to 'exploit' but amazing you managed to figure out a way to at least influence it.

I hadn't though to try decoy totem yet, but it would definitely help with the biggest problem these guys have, which is trying to goad them into rooms with tiny doorways while multiproj frost skeletons hammer the entrance with dozens of shots a second.

I would suggest frostwall + decoy totem in those situations. Basically you spam the entire room with frost walls and toss a decoy in there asap. This helps a lot to clear most rooms. The only tricky situation is mass alchemist or pierce mobs. In those situations the fastest way is to do some tanking yourself however that is not without risks.

Thanks for the feedback and additions!

Suicigoba

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dessloc wrote:

With the nerf to chaos degen bears coming in the 11.4 patch, I'm wondering what other spectres you guys are using to pair with BM's. Been trying out the barracks arc mages but not super impressed by them so far.

Good question.

In my opinion its best to just use 3 burning miscreations. This increases the chance of 1 of them turning on the aura asap and decreases the chance that you lose all of your BM and are forced to play gimped.

Would be interesting to hear what others use.

Suicigoba

Are you sure minion damage doesn't increase the unrighteous fire damage?

You should throw shock stacks into the build as well. It will increase the burning damage by 120%[more].

Am gonna be using the Frenzy gorilla + BM, since my zombies are faster attack + multistrike + melee splash. That extra 15% more atk spd will make my zombie dps even higher.

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Suicigobo wrote:

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dessloc wrote:

With the nerf to chaos degen bears coming in the 11.4 patch, I'm wondering what other spectres you guys are using to pair with BM's. Been trying out the barracks arc mages but not super impressed by them so far.

Good question.

In my opinion its best to just use 3 burning miscreations. This increases the chance of 1 of them turning on the aura asap and decreases the chance that you lose all of your BM and are forced to play gimped.

Would be interesting to hear what others use.

Suicigoba

Hello,

Just like you, i tried out arc mage but give up rapidly the idea because those spectres are not fast enough. I find that using 2 BM is better even if damage does not stack : more area covered in an open map and one can light up faster than the other one. Plus if one dies, you still have killing power with the remaining BM.

The real power of BM is 360° damage, even while moving. No downtime.

But it's true, the main inconvenient of those spectres is that their aura switch off each time you change area.

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maxric2 wrote:

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Suicigobo wrote:

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dessloc wrote:

With the nerf to chaos degen bears coming in the 11.4 patch, I'm wondering what other spectres you guys are using to pair with BM's. Been trying out the barracks arc mages but not super impressed by them so far.

Good question.

In my opinion its best to just use 3 burning miscreations. This increases the chance of 1 of them turning on the aura asap and decreases the chance that you lose all of your BM and are forced to play gimped.

Would be interesting to hear what others use.

Suicigoba

Hello,

Just like you, i tried out arc mage but give up rapidly the idea because those spectres are not fast enough. I find that using 2 BM is better even if damage does not stack : more area covered in an open map and one can light up faster than the other one. Plus if one dies, you still have killing power with the remaining BM.

The real power of BM is 360° damage, even while moving. No downtime.

But it's true, the main inconvenient of those spectres is that their aura switch off each time you change area.

Honestly, i agree with you.
Having 2 really kill lot faster than 1 due to area coverage, and i just felt, sure having arcmage is a plus but is the killing speed become lot significant, with or without them?

Copypastaing my post from the minion guide thread with info from tests I ran with the burning miscreations since it is relevant here:

POST BEGINS

TL;DR Executive Summary: Minion Life DOES increase the damage of UF, as does Increased Burning Damage. Minion Damage and Remote Mine do not materially affect the damage of UF.


I had a bit of time and tested out BMs/specter gem combos. All tests were conducted using one Act 3 Normal BM from Lunaris 2 vs Cruel Twilight Strand Hillock. I made sure the BM had turned on unrighteous fire before getting to Hillock. No auras, curses or summoner uniques were used. All gems were level 16. I started my stopwatch as soon as the BM lit up Hillock. Of course, I did not attack Hillock at all with my summoner.

Baseline: Unsupported Raise Spectre Gem

Run 1- BM kills Hillock in 26.97 seconds
Run 2- BM kills Hillock in 26.99 seconds
Run 3- BM kills Hillock in 27.11 seconds

Combo 1: Raise Spectre + Minion Life support gem

Run 1- BM kills Hillock in 20.95 seconds
Run 2- BM kills Hillock in 22.32 seconds
Run 3- BM kills Hillock in 21.25 seconds

FINDING: Minion Life support gem increases the damage done by UF.

Combo 2: Raise Spectre + Minion Life + Increased Burning Damage

Run 1- BM kills Hillock in 14.00 seconds
Run 2- BM kills Hillock in 14.90 seconds
Run 3- BM kills Hillock in 14.63 seconds

FINDING: Increased Burning Damage support increases the damage of UF

Combo 3: Raise Spectre + Minion Damage

Run 1- BM kills Hillock in 25.95 seconds
Run 2- BM kills Hillock in 26.92 seconds
Run 3- BM kills Hillock in 26.78 seconds

FINDING: Increased Minion Damage support does not materially affect UF damage

Combo 4: Raise Spectre + Remote Mine

Run 1- NA (Hillock kills BM in 22.35 seconds)
Run 2- BM kills Hillock in 26.20 seconds
Run 3- BM kills Hillock in 26.55 seconds

FINDING: Remote Mine support does not materially affect UF damage.

Didn't have time to test out a few other scenarios, for example using 2 BMs with different support gem combos (expected finding: degen damage should not stack based on game mechanics). Maybe tomorrow if I have time.

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Suicigobo wrote:

Summon spectre: “The little boys”

Spoiler

The little boys will burn everything down as long as they don’t die. You should at least run increased minion life and resistance. After their survivability has been increased you can think of focusing on increasing their damage.

Gear: Chest

1.Summon spectre

2.Increased burning damage

3.Increased minion life

4.Increased minion and totem elemental resistance

5.Increased Area of effect

I run a 4 link which is surely viable. A 5-link will greatly help tho

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If you had a 6L for these guys, because you used Queen;s Decree, what would you put in it?