[2.0]Rathik's NEWBIE FRIENDLY FUN&CHEAP FARMER, DPS Summoner. High AOE DMG, SURVIVAL."The Matriarch"

"

GoatEatingToilet wrote:

Hmm...I have not made it to Dominus yet, been too busy to devote much time to playing right now. But if all I'm reading about the fight stands true, I may just shelve my summoner for the time being and give the Immortal Shuriken build a try.

Makes me a sad player though :(

The immortal shuriken so far is a huge success, I cant believe how much that build got buffed.

Currently working on two Attack based Scion builds. They are looking godly on paper.

Well, I made it through Dominus on Normal with a summoner build.

I was overlevelled (level 42, Upper Sceptre of God is level 35) with 9 skeletons, 6 zombies and 1 spectre. By this stage my minions were wrecking pretty much everything else in the game, except the new trapper boss in the Sceptre of God. I bought a Spell Totem gem and Sidhebreath amulet from trade chat.

Zombies had Minion Damage, skeletons had Spell Totem and Minion Damage, Spectres had LMP and my character's attack was Freezing Pulse with LMP. Those were all the minion-related support gems my character had. I was using the Sidhebreath minion amulet, Clarity as my only aura and casting Temporal Chains (which was permanent). I tried Enfeeble in prior areas, but Temporal Chains gave better results.

Details (skip if you don't want any tips or spoilers):



By way of comparison, I died a couple of times in the fight against Piety - once due to lag, the other getting caught on the wrong side of a column when she transformed to the Ice Spear attack. I pretty much expect a couple of deaths against Piety, which is why I don't play HC. But I can see how it would be possible to survive against her. I can't say the same about Dominus.

I'm glad I got through to Cruel, but I'm not looking forward to the next Dominus fight to get through to Merciless :(

And I'm going to skip it entirely on Merciless - as far as I know there's no reward, so apart from bragging rights there's just no point to it. Maybe if I get to level 80 or so I'll try it (right after levelling up!).

My personal opinion is that almost all builds (unless they're completely broken) should be able to get through Normal solo with gear that's typical for what you might pick up on the way. Cruel and Merciless then weed out the weaker builds and impose tougher gear requirements. I really enjoy playing a summoner, but so far it's barely viable in solo SC and I can't see it being viable in solo HC. Perhaps it'll work better as a party support character.


Summary: the whole fight seems ridiculously hard unless you have a super-tanky character, and I think build diversity will suffer greatly.

Looking forward to test out your build at friday (currently at vacation)

Wouldnt you try out life with the new changes at all?

First of all: Thank you very much for keeping this build up to date!

I started this build in Domination league on launch day. I had leveled a minion witch to lvl38 pre 1.0 on normal with this build (pre 1.0 version).

As we all started off with no items in stash on domniation (so not a bunch of regrets orb available e.g.) I focused on minions nodes from the very beginning. Until level 30 or so I have basically leveled with spark and freezing pulse and my minions have only assisted me.

At a certain point I just didn't do enough damage to keep proceeding at a reasonable pace. Mainly because I had not chosen any nodes to support my attack spells (and I had really bad drops). That's the point where I bought a melee splash gem for an alch and a multistrike gem for a gcp. I had sold some stuff and dropped some currency early in game so I was able to buy that stuff. I then switched my strategy to use only zombies for damage (and what ever the spectres were able to add). Multistrike+Melee Splash really make the difference for me. Another thing that helps a lot is to have life flasks with minion mod.

I literally pathed through the skill tree to get all minion nodes that are in the original build before I got anything else. I than got dual curse, some more energy shield and went CI at 1500 energy shield at the beginning of merciless (maybe should have waited longer but that poison arrow snipers got on my nerves pretty quick).

I killed Dominus on normal with a few deaths. I linked skeletons to minion life and minion damage and did NOT(!) use a spell totem. I rather stood away from the boss as far as possible and kept drinking mana pots while spawning skeletons either at the boss, or at his minions should they appear. I also had already taken the "minions explode on low life" node (too lazy to look up the name) and that helps a lot in that fight because you don't have to rely on the skeletons to do damage (which they rarely do due to the insane amount of damage the enemies do in the boss fight). The main reasons for me not to use a spell totem is a) the increased health pool and thus the higher explosion damage b) the totem will die quickly with the amount of enemies and ae damage and c) I can choose where to cast the skeletons and kind of target mobs that should be dealt with.

The first phase will basically stay chaotic and you will die there quite sometimes until you zerged the stuff down, but the second and third phase are pretty much doable that way (at least on normal). No idea how you would do that on hardcore though.

I agree, the new areas+mobs seem to be designed by a minion hater. But they also give you a really powerful spectre: the undying evangelist. They stay away from the fight, lay there mines and do awesome damage while being tanky due to their shield and respectable health pool. You can also abuse their shield by standing in it with them to protect yourself. Still they do not help that much in the sceptre of god - but try them anywhere else in the game if you haven't (I know this is not a secret information, but if you haven't - try them! On Cruel, go to scepter, get two evangelists and farm docks forever)

I had to party up to kill dominus on cruel. I had zerged him down to phase 3 on cruel with something like 30 deaths but had a disconnect and all zones reset (fun!). Not recommending to do that. Party up and get it done ;) You will actually be of help to the others if you just spawn the skeletons everywhere.

I know I am not a pro, but I thought I'd share my experience with this build and how I made it to level 58 (starting vaal pyramid on merciless now). I haven't mapped yet and I can imagine that the lightning trap things will be very annoying. But up to now it's been really a lot of fun :)

Yea, the fight is not minion friendly but doable non the less.

Mana regen on that fight is crucial. 1-2 remove granite with remove bleeding also.

Use chains/enfeeble, clarity, spam summon skeleton + faster casting + fire penetration/chance to ignite (basically anything that adds to minions explosion)

I am actually glad they removed the quantity gem. Now you can use something else to help your zombies. Life leech or minion and totem resist are good choices.

Doh, got my summoner to 64 (this is my first character passed 60) on Domnination, wanted a good MF build and heard how good summoners were at it, I decided to roll one. Thought it was just me being a bad summoner but after reading other people's comments it seems 1.00 just added a bunch of summoner unfriendly mobs... sigh I sort of learned to deal with it but it can be very frustrating at times, debating rerolling.

You can help your minions by playing Purity/Totem and Minion Elemental resistance and Necromantic Aegis.

It could had a total of 100% elemental resistances to the specific minions.

Hope it could help.

Do minions start with negative resists in merciless like players or 0%?

To everyone asking if this guide is still viable in 1.0 i have to say yes. I started in domination on launch and have solo'd all the way to A3 merciless. I got lucky with drops and power leveled myself with summoner uniques. At one point i had 10 zombies, 12 skellys, and 4 spectres.

I toned back on minions for MF gear later in the game. Double curses and auras really do help a summoner big time. Weakest point was the first 20-25 levels because zombies get wrecked so quickly. Once i got my 5L chest around level 35 i had Zombie - multistrike, minion damage, melee splash, and IIR. and it was a breeze. At this point i started using vulnerability curse and chains curses.

For leveling passives i got all the close by summoner increases, then double curses, then minion instability. Last thing i focused on was auras and ES (both of which i'm still working towards).

"

xxxsirkillalotxxx wrote:

To everyone asking if this guide is still viable in 1.0 i have to say yes. I started in domination on launch and have solo'd all the way to A3 merciless. I got lucky with drops and power leveled myself with summoner uniques. At one point i had 10 zombies, 12 skellys, and 4 spectres.

I toned back on minions for MF gear later in the game. Double curses and auras really do help a summoner big time. Weakest point was the first 20-25 levels because zombies get wrecked so quickly. Once i got my 5L chest around level 35 i had Zombie - multistrike, minion damage, melee splash, and IIR. and it was a breeze. At this point i started using vulnerability curse and chains curses.

For leveling passives i got all the close by summoner increases, then double curses, then minion instability. Last thing I focused on was auras and ES (both of which i'm still working towards).

Like xxxsirkillalotxxx the build will work on nemesis at the cost of some IIR/IIQ.

That said, with the diminishing returns of IIR/IIQ you don't have to stuck as much now.
And in a 6L you can use another gem like life leech or minion res since you don't have IIQ gem.

We don't know the exact resist stats of minions since GGG haven't released it. We don't even know there base damage/attack speed.

Using enfeeble + chains on monsters is the best way to go vs those new monsters.

You can also use instead of arc, a cold spell for the added benefit of the chill/freeze effect. Ice spear is great at that because of is high chance to crit.

There are plenty of ways to debuff monsters.