The Summoner Compendium

You can certainly make MI hit harder with EE, wether or not that's useful is another question.

You definitely don't want to run dual elements abilities. EE was changed, supposedly, on alpha, to instantly give the resists so that a hit that hits for 2elements give the resist for both and reduce only the element you didn't hit for(and if 3 elements it's basically always a damage loss). Now that might not be exactly how it works or how it'll work on live but that's what I read so far, which makes hitting for anything but pure elements actually bad. What you could do however is run 2 spells, one cold one lightning, no added damage on them(which isn't a big deal to begin with) and alternate to get the bonus while keeping fire always low.

The main concern I have however, besides the clunkiness and the liability in a group setting, is simply that MI isn't all that much of your damage. Sure when a zombie pops it does insane damage and generally one shots mobs, but zombies don't pop very often either. Maybe if you specifically avoid minion health nodes I don't know but I don't feel making your zombies squishy is such a great idea. Most of my damage in maps was coming from EK(my spell of choice but that's entirely dependant on the player) and zombies hitting stuff. Skeleton exploding in the few cases I needed to summon them, but mostly just zombie slaps and pointy knives. Not so much MI. Even on goatmen maps, as long as I'm in range of the zombies with discipline/purity and reanimation flasks, they pretty much don't die. And that's alright cause zombies hit really hard, so the longer they're alive the more damage they do anyway. I see MI as an insurance, if your zombie is going to die instead of just being "wasted", it pops and does even more dmg while you resummon one.

With that said, it could be a way to increase the damage, by making the zombies more easy to kill(so no discipline and dropping a few minion health nodes), linking increased aoe to them and then using Elemental weakness/Flammability/EE to reduce most mobs to 0 or negative before sacrificing zombies. So why not, sure.

I said a few times in my original post but summoner isn't really a rigid build you have to follow, nor are most builds in the game. There's a ton of variants so feel free to test stuff out and play the way you like.

Alright, thanks a lot.
I heard they were gonna change Elemental Equilibrium, but I didn't know how. (I'm gonna look for the according post, but maybe you could link it for me?)

One remark though. Especially for this build, the change is not that bad because the Nova+Lightning+EP+Totem is not supposed to do a lot of damage in the first place, the only real disadvantages are that shocking won't work very well and wrath/hatred are not worth taking anymore (beside the fact that any party would kick you instantly, I guess).

Since Minions don't have EE, they can still do lots of fire damage, if I use EE with 2 elements. I hope I understood this right.

That beeing said, a more viable alternative might be to just use 2 arc/spork totems to get the shock ailments ... and drop EE :-(

EDIT: Okay, I think I got it now. A lightning hit causes +25% LR, -50% FR and -50% CR (or something similar). Then I can just use a pure lightning skill to push fire and cold damage of the minions; so I can use hatred and still get some shocks in. I think EE still helps a lot.

EDIT2: of course there's the problem of minions not exploding. That's true and I don't have a lot of experience in that. I'm currently testing this build on my lvl 58 witch. Don't know how it'll work will CI in OB, but so far it's okay. Only problem is that I don't have high level zombies, but oh well.

The problem I see with dual totems is if you can't cast firestorm or something, its hard to guide the zombies there where you want.

Zombies look to stay around you if you just move. And they look to attack the one you target (with curses, attacks, or spells). So you are forced (if dual totems) to attack weith your wand (and can only do to the ones in front), in spite for (lets say), firestorming the necromancer, or the boss or rare monster with aura there if you want the zombies to kill him the first.

I'm not sure how well will a Solo summoner using 2 totems work in OB because of this. I think we will need to test it.

First of all, thanks for all the great info in this thread.

I'm still somewhat new, and trying to figure out a more offensive style summoner build that utilizes Power Siphon as a damage source, along with MI + basic minion damage.

Base build:


Late-game


There are a lot of different options to take with this, so I'm open for suggestions. I opted for double totems for Skel totem + Decoy. Zombies will at least have Minion Life and Minion Damage.

I'm not sure all the wand skills are worth taking - is it better to be grabbing crit chance and crit damage instead? I also haven't used Powerful Blast either, so I'm not sure if it's worth the investment.

Auras may depend - I want to run the standard defensive ones, but if damage isn't enough would it be worth throwing in Wrath/Hatred/Anger?

i think i will start trying standard summoner with firestorm+fire dps, 2x(or triple curse with the unique boots)curses and just one spell totem for summoning skeletons which i will use as bombs.

i wont take the 2nd totem and invest the remaining skillpts into fire dps i think.

"

Atum84 wrote:

i think i will start trying standard summoner with firestorm+fire dps, 2x(or triple curse with the unique boots)curses and just one spell totem for summoning skeletons which i will use as bombs.

i wont take the 2nd totem and invest the remaining skillpts into fire dps i think.

I'm thinking about something like this:

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMB37CCECycSRuvt4dlnC0fAjbFNtjxbOxVl4WIG9gkpwidrhJpFxxxeY9G0NCboUjnGmzkIilPgpvUfOdqeubZCyqY-oD318y8EJdEBAelAuNr230YSbJVrkSrj6Yqje-FtQRdxkbX7SDhc4uMjmT3prb6VysHY-aBEVA74eL3pyttGcHzw23sODrYTdiePIFvjHaLevrSZp5xTZrPQ2O3MVj1ncS4kwx9EH_GnhHbCPQxiHkDBLMUTQJx8B-iABo4p4SQVRmFJKo26eNqz2VVxhZv6-6ESH1Tn988Be98

What would you change?
I'm planning on firestorm summoner mostly. But not sure if this is gonna be viable in hardcore.

PS: I put too many points because I guess in open beta there will be more, something like 120 or so. I know you can only get all of those after leveling a lot, but I don't mind.

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Valmar wrote:

The problem I see with dual totems is if you can't cast firestorm or something, its hard to guide the zombies there where you want.

Zombies look to stay around you if you just move. And they look to attack the one you target (with curses, attacks, or spells). So you are forced (if dual totems) to attack weith your wand (and can only do to the ones in front), in spite for (lets say), firestorming the necromancer, or the boss or rare monster with aura there if you want the zombies to kill him the first.

I'm not sure how well will a Solo summoner using 2 totems work in OB because of this. I think we will need to test it.

As far as I have seen the alpha content on Kripp's stream, you can still cast stuff normally. The only difference is, that you are not dealing any dmg.

I just jump to the conclusion, that casting alone, even if not dealing any dmg by doing so, will still "guide" your zombies as it does when you actually deal damage (i.e. are not using dual totems).

So that shouldn't be a problem at all. If anything fails you can still spam curses, that's what I sometimes did on beta as well, when I was too lazy to cast anything else.

"

Unimatrix wrote:

As far as I have seen the alpha content on Kripp's stream, you can still cast stuff normally. The only difference is, that you are not dealing any dmg.

I just jump to the conclusion, that casting alone, even if not dealing any dmg by doing so, will still "guide" your zombies as it does when you actually deal damage (i.e. are not using dual totems).

So that shouldn't be a problem at all. If anything fails you can still spam curses, that's what I sometimes did on beta as well, when I was too lazy to cast anything else.

Yup didn't know that. If you can cast with no damage, then its not as bad as I thought. Thanks for clarification.

On your build:

It's looking quite good. Not much of a summoner left, though.

But even Kripp mentioned a summoner hybrid (ES/HP) as one of his "top candidates", so you should be golden. It's a more active approach, which should grant you a better clearing speed.

Your defense is looking pretty good, should get you some nice ES and HP to get a healthy amount of EHP.

I'm still not sold on fire completely, but if that's what floats your boat, nothing wrong about it.

Later on you might also use Fireball with LMP(GMP) and chain or some crazy stuff like that. And that is some really nasty stuff right there. While I personally always liked the comfortable targeting of Firestorm as well.

So yeah this should work. Also for HC if you ask me.

Thanks mate.
I did full summoner on one week race (finished 67th on level 75 without dying, mostly playing alone except in the end maps las 2 days).

So pperhaps I will try an hybrid for this OB, and so my question comes, because I did not try a fire or hybrid before. I know fire is weak, but I love the effects and think it's fun.

Just no idea if going full ES geared or mix armor. I think probably pure ES. And with totem skeletons or decoy depending on circumstances I think it should work.