Bringer of Minions: Not your Normal Minion Build

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mariox1011 wrote:

chance to flee is a waste of a support. If you want more survivability on your zombies u should just get necromantic aegis. (chance to flee doesn't work on mobs that matter; rares and bosses)
put remote mine or somethin instead.

This build has a pitiful health pool. You probably have trouble surviving in docks with this much. try getting like 250% health instead of your 90%.

I'd recommend redoing your build when you get some experience.

I couldn't agree more that chance to flee is a complete waste. I've spent, to date, 5 stacks of chromatics on that helmet tring to get RRBB or RRRB.

RRGB is as close as I've been. I, for the life of me, can't figure out anything else decent to put in this spot.

I have no trouble surviving on maps up to 70 so far. I stopped taking health nodes once survivability became a non-issue. I'm near the templar start nodes, so if tank becomes and issue I could always take those.

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mattc3303 wrote:

gear swapping is valid. Its a game mechanic why else would it be in the game.

Are you able to say that with a straight face? I can't even read it with one! :))

This is BETA and they still do not have all the code done correctly.

*cough* alpha howl, reduced mana swapping, Malachai's Simula, etc

Anyway, back on topic, I almost have the vids of some 66 maps uploaded. I'll run a 69 map here in a moment then upload that as well.

I tried vulnerability after your suggestion and it is really nice! Thanks for that!

I still think MI is pretty awesome and don't understand why you wouldn't take it when you are right next to it. Even if your minions don't die often, when they do, it's extra damage they would've otherwise not done.

I keep seeing people touting a need for 4000 health to survive level 69/70 content, and I just don't see why. I can see that kind of health on a melee char, perhaps, but a ranged char with lots of meat shield surely doesn't need that level of tank.

Lastly, I forgot to mention, I took the path on the skill tree towards the center in case I wanted to try necromantic aegis. I'm curious if there is perhaps some unique shields with interesting mods that would work well with spectres?

The reason I don't take MI is because I want to boost my minion (especially my spectre[BM's] survivability as much as possible) I don't need to trigger MI to kills things. Pretty much whites die in instantly, blues 3-5 seconds, yellows 4-10 seconds. AS shown in the video. Even the boss died instantly. I find zombies deal more dps when alive than having to re-summon them.
Basically I want as large of a minion health pool as possible to potentially tank big bursts which do come in high level maps with nasty map affixes.

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I keep seeing people touting a need for 4000 health health to survive level 69/70 content, and I just don't see why. I can see that kind of health on a melee char, perhaps, but a ranged char with lots of meat shield surely doesn't need that level of tank.

Even with 4k+ hp, 80 all resist, 30 chaos, 30k+ armor i've been pretty close to dying, its all about the map affix you roll.

I personally got one-shotted by the thicket map boss on my first attempt at a vitality based summoner witch that was not using IR and had a lot less armor (similar to your build). I gave Matt's build a shot and I'm pulling over 24k armor when I pop both my granite and my adrenaline flask of evasion, so I no longer have such concerns (I have yet to be one-shotted, *knocks on wood*). I agree though, the gear-swapping/gem-swapping get really annoying and I too believe that MI is too good to pass up.

I still feel MI is too inconsistent. IMO its only good as bossing no need to explode for 10k damage to kill a white mob. Maybe if your optimized for burning damage. Maybe like.

6-link chest
Raise Zombie + Minion life + Minion Damage + Burning Damage + Ele pro + Firepen

Using the chober as your 2h as a main weapon 6-link
Summon Skele + Minion life + Minion Damage + Burning Damage + Ele pro + Firepen

Using a 20% quality flammability to give you ignite chance for the proliferate

+ Elemental Weakness

3rd Curse, Doedres, Temporal chain makes the burn last twice as long so doubling your damage.
or Vulnerability for a 40% burning damage boost.

EE with Frostwall(Ele Proliferate should go through the wall)

I might just make a summoner build just around that MI node. Sounds like fun.

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For my current summoner Unrighteous fire just owns everything too fast so I just focus on their survivability.

Wait a minute I just thought of something that can fit in your Red slot Take out chance to flee for added fire damage. Added fire damage is a huge boost. All you need is

R-R-R-R and for bringer of rain that is easy.

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mattc3303 wrote:

The reason I don't take MI is because I want to boost my minion (especially my spectre[BM's] survivability as much as possible)

Are you saying that MI lowers minion survivability?

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mattc3303 wrote:

Wait a minute I just thought of something that can fit in your Red slot Take out chance to flee for added fire damage. Added fire damage is a huge boost. All you need is

R-R-R-R and for bringer of rain that is easy.

I'm confused. Wouldn't that be RRRB? That is one of the color sets I've been trying to chrome (either RRBB or RRRB), and have been as so far unsuccessful.

Also, OP is updated with videos.

Oh right. My bad yeah than even culling strike is better than chance to flee if that green slot is impossible to get rid of.

MI does lower minion survivability think about it. At 33% life they explode. if a explode has 20k hp they explode at 6600. That is 6600 life they are missing. Same goes for spectre they lose 33% of their hp.

@ your vids. Holy crap don't you feel scared with just 2k hp pool?

Hello,

I think that using MI is dependant of your play style. As a user of BM minion, just like Matt, the only thing that is important is to keep them alive because they are my main source of damage. If they die, i will struggle a lot more to kill mobs. I think that this MI keystone is almost forbidden for BM users. It's just too risky to let them explode at 33% life.

As a lazy player, i prefer let my BM do the job rather than having to cast zombies or skel all the time.

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mattc3303 wrote:

Oh right. My bad yeah than even culling strike is better than chance to flee if that green slot is impossible to get rid of.

MI does lower minion survivability think about it. At 33% life they explode. if a explode has 20k hp they explode at 6600. That is 6600 life they are missing. Same goes for spectre they lose 33% of their hp.

@ your vids. Holy crap don't you feel scared with just 2k hp pool?

Wow, I just reread MI. Somehow I missed the "low-life" part!

This is interesting thing I will consider, but for now, I think I will stick with it.

In those vids, you can see that the Lvl 66 maps are no sweat. I never get close to dieing.

On the level 69, the only things that give me trouble are the charging skeleton things. Even then, I take one shot and run away to survive.


Edit: I just re-re-read MI description and it's clear to me now that the minions only explode when the reach low-life. If a minion gets one shot, there is no explosion. I'm going to have to carefully evaluate this node. If I find my skeletons are getting one-shot, I might have to respec out of this. Thanks for your notes concerning MI, I would not have re-evaluated it otherwise.