[1.1.3/HC] Qhorrin's Blinding Dual-Totem, Dual-Curse CI EE Summoning Sporker
Overview
This build is a Dual-Totem, Dual-Curse Chaos Innoculation Elemental Equilibrium hybrid Summoner-Sporker. It was designed around the following requirements:
IGNs: - Kaelessia (DT DC CI EE summoner-sporker, Standard League) - Keiramantha (DT CI EE summoner-sporker, Ambush League) - Kerimanthe (Summoner, Invasion League) and some others :)
Background
I loved my low-life RF sporker (before the 1.0 release nerf). I liked the cleverness of the build, covering the screen with sparks, melting groups of mobs and collecting the loot. But I didn't find a Shavronne's Wrappings or make enough currency to buy one so would die really quickly on maps with chaos damage.
I liked my dual-curse CI summoner. I liked the chaos damage immunity, liked having 2 permanent curses, liked the mayhem that resulted when my minion army crashed into a group of monsters. But I observed that once the skeletotem has created a full complement of skeletons it served no further purpose. The original idea behind this build was to replace the skeletotem with a spork totem once the number of skeletons reached the maximum, but then I decided to see if a dual-totem approach would work. That evolved into combining my summoner and sporker to get the best from both worlds. I also wanted a build that suits casual players:
Reflections
This build was an experiment, but it's worked out well. I'm able to solo maps up to level 72 (haven't found any higher maps yet) without a problem. So far I've gone for maps with extra pack size, more magic/rare monsters, extra chaos damage, extra frenzy charges, chaos damage, cursed players and twin unique bosses. After experimenting with different options, I've come to the conclusion that there are 4 core features that work well together for this build:
Enemies are first hit by the sparks from the totems, which blind them and trigger vulnerability to fire and cold. They're then hit by ranged attacks from the spectres, which deal extra damage due to the vulnerability and continue to blind them. Due to the way EE works (it's triggered by totems but not by minions) the mobs remain vulnerable to fire and cold even when minions are dealing fire and cold damage. Note that in this build the skeletons are used to provide a distraction and to blind enemies, the zombies are the real damage-dealers, and the spectres are somewhere in between.
Pros
Cons
Flexibility
Hardcore viable?
Good news! Since the Summoner Patch (1.0.6), it is. I tested it out in Ambush, and survived both the Normal and Cruel Dominus fights (which were previously the hardest ones for a summoner) with no deaths. I'm currently repeating this in Invasion, and so far it's going well - level 58 in Act 1 Merciless. Frankly, prior to 1.1.3 the Invasion bosses were far more difficult than anything in the regular content (1.1.3 'rebalanced' them). Be careful around them, but otherwise I don't foresee any problems. Both Dominus fights were comfortable, and by the time I reached Cruel Dominus the minions were tanky enough that most of them survived the battle.
Skill and Support Gems
There's a lot of personal preference when it comes to minion support gems, so feel free to experiment. These are my current favourites: 4L for Skeletons: Summon Skeletons + Minion Damage/Minion Speed + Blind + Multistrike 4L for Zombies: Raise Zombie + Minion Life + Minion Damage + Melee Physical Damage 4L for Auras / Curses: Reduced Mana + Clarity / Purity of Elements + Discipline + Haste / Hatred 4L for Spectres: Raise Spectre + Blind + Life Leech + Minion Life 3L for Spork totem: Spell Totem + Spark + Fork 3L for utilities: Rejuvenation Totem + Enfeeble + Increased Area of Effect Squeezing in a second curse is actually a bit tricky, you'll need to sacrifice Increased Area of Effect, use an Unset Ring, or have a 5S/6S chest armour.
Tips
Gear
You want as much ES as possible, as much resist as possible, and as much MF as possible - in that order. Other mods that most benefit this build are spell damage, cast speed and lightning damage. All armours should eventually be 4L, and the wand/shield should be 3L. Maximize the ES on head, chest, gloves, belt and boots, then fill out resistances with amulet and rings. Once resistances are capped, use the highest MF items possible. If the area is reasonably safe (e.g. levelling at The Ledge or Fellshrine), just put on the best MF amulet and rings and go for loot. Tip: For the shield, consider a kite shield with +24% resist all (or more) instead of a pure ES shield.
My gear
This is the gear I used when I started doing maps in Domination. It's really not that great, but was all self-found. Armour: Jewellery: Wand: Shield: Since then I've upgraded the gloves (bought), wand (bought), belt (bought), chest (found) and shield (crafted): The Perandus Blazon is primarily there to increase Strength and Dexterity; the increased item quantity is just a bonus. These tend to be valued based on their item quantity roll, so it's possible to pick up one with reasonable (26+) attribute bonuses and low IIQ for 1-2 chaos. Those with perfect (30) attributes and high IIQ are usually much more expensive.
Improvements
Once you've got the basic build working, improve or change it with the following uniques: - chest: Soul Mantle. This is a tough call - having a third totem is good (one of my other characters is a Triple Ice Spear Totem witch), but the ES is average and so is the spell totem that comes with the armour. - gloves: Aurseize for 40%-50% IIR and +5% resist all. - belt: Perandus Blazon for dexterity, strength and IIQ. I like it solely for the dexterity and strength, the IIQ is a small bonus. - boots: Boots of Ullr for extra minions. The ES on this is low, so if you don't want the extra zombie and spectre then ES boots with resistances and IIR might be better. - wand: Moonsorrow for a boost to spork damage (unless you have a really good rare wand). It comes with an implicit Blind support gem, so put the spork totem gems on the wand to reduce the effectiveness of mobs. - amulet: Sidhebreath for minion improvements. - rings: Doedre's Damning for an extra curse or Andvarius for MF if you can handle the resistance penalty. Berek's Pass looks like it could be handy if there's a chance you'll get frozen.
Auras
Initially I run Clarity, and then add Reduced Mana and Purity of Elements when this becomes possible, and then Vitality. Once I switch to Chaos Innoculation I switch to the setup described above with Reduced Mana + Clarity/Purity of Elements + Discipline + Haste/Hatred. Discipline provides a nice buff to ES, but with all the minions and totems it's not often that I get hit often enough for the extra energy shield from Discipline to be useful.
Curses
Enfeeble is always good. Assuming a dual-curse build, the second curse depends on which spectres are in play, keeping in mind that spork totems deal lightning damage:
Temporal Chains + Enfeeble is probably the best combination for general support, and should work well in any party.
Quest Rewards
These will get you most of the gems you need for the core setup, including:
Gems that can't be gained from Witch quest rewards include Reduced Mana, Blind, Melee Physical Damage, Endurance Charge on Melee Stun and Life Leech. There's a reasonable chance you'll pick up some of these along the way, otherwise you'll need to trade for them (or get them from quest rewards for another class). In my experience I usually collect enough currency along the way to buy 5-10 chaos worth of items, so you should be in a good position to complete the build via trading once you reach Act 3 Merciless. Notes:
Quest Reward Gems
Act 1 Normal Freezing Pulse - Enemy at the Gate Spark - Mercy Mission Raise Zombie - Breaking Some Eggs Summon Skeletons - The Caged Brute Fork - Siren's Cadence Act 2 Normal Raise Spectre - Intruders in Black Minion Damage - Sharp and Cruel Act 3 Normal Enfeeble - Lost in Love Minion Damage - Sever The Right Hand Temporal Chains - A Fixture of Fate Act 1 Cruel Discipline - Enemy at the Gate Minion Speed - Mercy Mission Clarity - The Caged Brute Minion Life - Siren's Cadence Act 2 Cruel Spell Totem - Sharp and Cruel Act 3 Cruel Purity of Elements - Lost in Love Melee Splash - Sever The Right Hand Elemental Weakness - A Fixture of Fate Act 1 Merciless Faster Casting - Mercy Mission Conductivity - The Caged Brute Spell Totem - Siren's Cadence Act 2 Merciless None :( Act 3 Merciless Multistrike - A Fixture of Fate
Passive skill tree
This is what I consider to be the core passive skill tree for the build, but tweak it to suit your gear, e.g. get elemental resistances, dexterity and strength from passives if you don't have them on your gear. When your gear improves, refund the passives and get more damage nodes (alternatively, keep the passives and use MF gear instead). Core passive skill tree Minion Instability works really well against melee attackers (Kole, Piety, second form Dominus), but is less useful against ranged mobs. Ideally I'd like to use it on skeletons but not on zombies or spectres. I use it while levelling if my minions aren't doing enough damage, and spec out of it once they stop dying (if enemies die before the minions are reduced to low life, it's pointless). My Domination tree at level 77. Elemental Equilibrium works very well with this build. It's triggered by totems but not by minions, so the mobs hit by sparks become vulnerable to cold and fire as well as being blinded. This gives spectres that do fire and cold damage a boost, so Flame Sentinels and the Freezing Pulse Archivists are excellent choices. Because minions don't trigger EE, they won't reset the resistances and mobs remain vulnerable to cold and fire. For bonus points, use Elemental Weakness as one of the curses.
Progression
The 2 major checkpoints are the Normal and Cruel Dominus fights. No other regular monsters should give any problems (note: Invasion bosses are a whole other kettle of fish!). Normal Dominus passive tree (level 39ish) Cruel Dominus passive tree (level 58ish) After filling out the core passive tree it depends on gear and personal preference. Options include Body and Soul, Deep Thoughts, Phalanx or the ES on Shield nodes from Bulwark.
Bandits
I killed them all in each difficulty for the passive skill points. The +8% resist all in Normal was the only option I had to think about, but 8% is low compared to what can be found on gear once you reach late Merciless / maps.
Playstyle
1. Use skeletons to get zombies. 2. (Optional) Use zombies and skeletons to get your preferred spectres. If you don't care about having specific spectres, skip this step and raise whatever you find. 3. When in an area:
General tips
References
Change history
- added suggestion about putting spork totem on Moonsorrow so that sparks blind enemies; added links to gear and current passive skill tree. 2013.12.11 - added Quest Reward section; updated title from "1.0.1" to "1.0.2" (the patch made no difference to this build). 2013.12.21 - tweaked Skill and Support Gem section; updated title from "1.0.2" to "1.0.3" (the patch made no difference to this build). 2013.12.29 - updated comments about Minion Instability and corrected some out-of-date info; add comments on Elemental Equilibrium; updated title from "1.0.3" to "1.0.4" (the patch made no difference to this build). 2014.01.09 - updated gear and passive tree; formatting updates. 2014.01.11 - updated title from "1.0.4" to "1.0.5" (the patch made no difference to this build); formatting updates. 2014.02.11 - updated title from "1.0.5" to "1.0.6" (the summoner patch made this build so much stronger - it's great!). 2014.02.20 - updated passive tree for level 77. 2014.03.12 - updated title from "1.0.6" to "1.1.0" (no change); change name (can't think of a better one at the moment). 2014.04.12 - updated title from "1.1.0" to "1.1.2" (no change); corrected in-game names. 2014.04.23 - updated section about hardcore viability; revised text thoroughly to reflect current thinking about the build. 2014.05.10 - updated title from "SC" to "HC"; updated hardcore section. Last edited by Qhorrin#5518 on May 9, 2014, 5:01:51 PM
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What's the point of using a spork totem that is (almost) unsupported by passives and support gems? I used to run a summoner/dual spork hybrid in HC before release and the spork damage was incredibly low (350 dps) although i took several passivs / gems to boost its damage. Even with only few minion passives the main damage came from the spectres (and that was before the nerf). With your setup the spork damage probably is negligible. I doubt the lightning damage makes it past the 300ms threshold, so no shock stacks either. What is the reason for using it (aside from some aesthetical bias)?
You could have a rational for it if you were using Elemental Equilibrium, although arc + chain would be a better choice to trigger EE. |
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Hallo, thanks for your comments.
I use the spork totems because: - I like the dual-totem playstyle. I think it fits well with a summoner, because for both one tries to stay out of danger and let the proxies do the damage. - Once all skeletons are in play, anything that adds extra damage is a good thing. With my pure summoner I run into the middle of the action and blast away with Freezing Pulse, but in some situations that can be quite dangerous. To reduce the danger it seemed like an obvious move to deploy a spork totem. And the only thing better than one spork totem is two spork totems, right? - DPS isn't everything. Spork totems punch well above their weight in terms of tooltip DPS, and I'm happy with the damage mine are doing, even with little passive/gem support. - Aesthetics. I like causing havoc in games (my favourite trick in Syndicate was to load a train with explosives, then hit it with a Gauss gun when it went past a target...). About the spork totem being unsupported: last night I bought a Moonsorrow wand, linked it as RGB and switched my spork totem from my shield to the wand. This gave the spork totem an implicit Blind support gem and worked exceptionally well. With both the Flame Sentinel spectres and spork totems supported by Blind, any mobs that weren't instantly killed by the fireballs and sparks were blinded and then ripped apart by zombies without fighting back. This was on an Arcade map with more magic monsters that frenzied every 30 seconds, and it was so effective that I didn't need to deploy skeletons. Funny you should mention Elemental Equilibrium - I was already intending to try it out when I next get a passive point to spend. My plan is to gather fire-based spectres, probably Flame Sentinels, then use Freezing Pulse to trigger fire and lightning vulnerability and let the spectres and spork totems shred things. I'm not sure how well it will work, so I haven't included it in the build guide yet. In particular I was concerned that it will once more involve running into the middle of the action and blasting away with Freezing Pulse, which I was trying to avoid, but in light of the results from Moonsorrow I doubt this will be a problem. If it works it'll probably be overkill against normal and magic mobs, but more useful against rares and uniques. My challenge right now is to maximize my MF. I'm considering reducing the damage done by my spork totems so that they still blind mobs, but keep them alive so the zombies (which I have linked to Item Rarity) get the kill. Perhaps the best approach is to have 2 sets of Spell Totem + Spark + Fork gems, one levelled up and the other not, and switch depending on whether damage or MF is desired. |
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do you have a link to a dual spork totem (pure) build?
SHOP : http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/682434
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" Yes - in the References section, Dominion's dual-spark build is a dual spork totem build. |
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" last edited on june and august.... i dont think they are updated for 1.0.0 SHOP : http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/682434
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I'm trying this build out, already 47 and so far I'm doing fine. Although, I kinda wish my spark totems did more damage. Idk half of what im doing lol but are the lightning nodes that branch out to the left from the witch's starting point worth getting if I want the totems to do more damage? Or are there better nodes out there?
Also, I'm using Ice spear+LMP+Power Charge on Crit. Is what I'm doing helping my damage with the power charges? Or should I switch to Freezing Pulse once I get Ancestral Bonds? http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/614871 - my stuff in a shop, come visit! :D
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" Yes, if you want to focus on totem damage rather than summoning then the nodes to the left are worth getting, and so is Lightning Weaver to the northeast. You may need to sacrifice a summoner cluster (e.g. the Death Attunement spectre cluster to the northwest or the Grave Expectations zombie+skeleton cluster to the west) to get sufficient passive points to spend on those nodes though. I've recently put my spork totem gems into a Moonsorrow wand, and the combination of the built-in Blind gem for the spork totems and the Blind support gem on my spectres (typically Flame Sentinels or other ranged attackers) works a treat. Almost all the enemies I engage are blinded, and the zombies can tear them up. Best of all, Moonsorrows are fairly cheap in Domination at the moment (1 or 2 chaos). " It should do - using Ice Spear + PCoC is probably the safest way to do this, because the crit chance for the second form is huge and you can stay at a safe distance. To hit from a safe distance using Freezing Pulse you'd need to link it with Faster Projectiles. I'm using Freezing Pulse, but primarily for smashing groups of pots/barrels/baskets. A couple of days ago I got another passive point and added Elemental Equilibrium, so I'm now using FP to trigger fire & lightning vulnerability on mobs. I'm not sure how effective this is - the mobs I hit seem to be dying more quickly, but it's hard to tell because they don't usually live very long anyway. I am a little concerned about how close I have to get to hit them with FP, so I might switch to Frost Wall or Ice Spear. Once I figure out if this is worth doing I'll update the guide. |
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Thank you for the tips!
I'm also thinking about Elemental Equilibrium in the future when I get to Merciless. Gonna check out the Moonsorrow wand when I can as well. For a 5L though (got lucky xD), which should I put? Zombies+? Kinda having a hard time deciding because my helm has +1 to minion gems. Currently it has spark+fork+totem+faster casting+item rarity. The problem with that is my damage comes from zombies more I think? http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/614871 - my stuff in a shop, come visit! :D
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" I'd move my zombies to a 5L (if I had one!). Probably something like: BBRRG: Raise Zombie + Multistrike + Melee Splash + Minion Damage + Blind since I'm pretty happy with how Blind is working on my others. Zombies are easy to raise, so no need to try and keep them alive with Life Leech or Minion Life. Having a green socket in there gives some nice alternatives, too: Faster Attacks, Added Cold Damage, Chance to Flee, Culling Strike. And if your zombies are killing quickly enough, e.g. when farming a low-level area, it's nice to swap out Minion Damage for Item Rarity and get some better loot. |
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