The Summoner Compendium

I wouldn't say fire is weak. Your spells will hit like a truck given decent gear, no matter what element you use. It's just the old status alignment thing.

Freezing for max safety and shock for max dps. Burning is kinda meh.

But where it matters (bosses, champions) you usually can't shock them all the time anyway, because you would need big hitting lightning spells, which is hard to achieve and lightning is additionally affected most by rng due to the dmg ranges.

Firestorm is a really nice spell that lets you focus down best - as I'm sure you are aware of because you like it already ^^

Gear wise, I'm not sure. I usually played CI. As a hybrid char I would probably still wear ES gear. As you dive into the templar goodies, you might also wear a couple armor/ES hybrid items. Not sure how much armor you can achieve realistically, though. It's probably better to equip ES mainly and have those armor bonuses for using granite flasks, that should work like a charm.

How gear friendly is this build? Meaning can I still do good with a summoner even with crap gear? And don't say something like you can do that with any build, no you can't. I'm trying to compare this build in effectiveness to others based on gear, or lack of.

At what point does this build start to shine? For example, my cold-crit witch didn't start to shine until I had lesser multiple projectiles linked to freezing pulse and spell totem linked to ice nova (late normal mode). And I had to get help for brutus + mervil, because I couldn't solo either in normal, but destroyed them in cruel and ruthless.

What piece of gear does a summoner need the most?

Is this a good build to make for early open beta when decent gear won't be as available as it is right now?

I think it is.
As I said, I did in the HC ONE WEEK RACE without dying (and being almost a noob in PoE).
Thar hardest past, as Pyros said in post #1 is the early game. You can play it as a caster or better with friends.
Later on, things go better. Other builds need to find a weapon, need to find tons of armor, but not summoner.

Ofc you can get gear too. I started to go better and safer once I reach over 5k-6k Energy Shield.
But I finished merciless with something like 3000 ES I guess, and with negative resistances. Without dying in hc. True, with negative resistances with no granites and with no resis flasks, playing safe. And alone the entire merciless.

So I guess yes, you can do it without gear better than other builds. Just dont think you can do it as fast or kill as fast as others.
I also think you can reach endgames and remove some ES gear and take some item quantity and item rarity pretty easily and still kill well. And then, start to find items for your others character that need them more to survive.

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crimsonedge11 wrote:

How gear friendly is this build? Meaning can I still do good with a summoner even with crap gear? And don't say something like you can do that with any build, no you can't. I'm trying to compare this build in effectiveness to others based on gear, or lack of.

At what point does this build start to shine? For example, my cold-crit witch didn't start to shine until I had lesser multiple projectiles linked to freezing pulse and spell totem linked to ice nova (late normal mode). And I had to get help for brutus + mervil, because I couldn't solo either in normal, but destroyed them in cruel and ruthless.

What piece of gear does a summoner need the most?

Is this a good build to make for early open beta when decent gear won't be as available as it is right now?

I agree with everything Valmar said.

If you want a specific moment, like the one you described, that would be lvl 31 and thereby being able to use Spell Totem. For me at least this is very true. Nothing is more annoying than having to summon those buddies yourself. Others, however, prefer it even and never use Spell Totem for Skeletons.

It's a very flexible and easy-ish to play character. I always had negative resistances and it didn't really matter. Of course you'll have to dodge more, the squishier you are. So once you got some decent defense you have a higher personal dps uptime - so to speak.

Useful informations, thanks alot!

I would disagree on the spell totem thing but that's because I like summoning my skeletons. It's around that though, I'd say it gets better a bit earlier, I find for Vaal on normal, summoner is already quite good. Partly because Vaal "helps" you with a ton of corpses you can raise as zombie and even as spectres. Before that it's not too bad but it's not very good, however I find leveling a witch early game with say freezing pulse is very easy compared to some other stuff, it has decent range, good damage, freeze/chills, costs low mana and casts quickly. It's a great spell to use without any points in stuff, other than Merveil(bring fireball/firestorm+firetrap).

My plan for OB, in terms of early game and stuff since I'm still not sure about the build, is to roll 2 witches at first and do glyph quest on both. I'll get Fire Trap+Freezing Pulse from first reward and Firestorm+Raise Zombie from 2nd reward, then I'll keep going with all these on one char. I'll lvl Firestorm for Merveil/Brutus, Firetrap+Freezing Pulse for normal killing and Raise Zombie well because that's obvious.

On gear dependency though, it's definitely the least gear dependant class in the game, more so than dual totems because unlike totems, none of your gear stats transfer to your minions(besides uniques with minion stuff obviously, and I guess +1minion helms). You can literally run around naked and still kill stuff fine as a summoner, granted it'll be slower than if you're actively nuking stuff.


Also on kripp's comment, his hybrid comment was in relation to health/ES hybrid, not like nuker/summoner hybrid. It's an health/ES hybrid as opposed to CI build which is pure ES but is probably not a good idea until later levels.

I wouldn't take kripp's word as law however, he tends to be very critical of builds he hasn't personally played at high level, regardless of knowing the exact figures or not. A lot of critics on summoners I see from people who have never played one is how you "don't do anything" or how "it takes forever because minions don't do damage". Both of which are wrong, unless you specifically build to make them right. If you're not doing anything while your minions are killing stuff, I think you're simply doing it wrong. That's like using Dual Totems and not casting spells yourself(in CB), that's a choice you make because nothing prevents you from actually doing stuff and speeding up the killing.

Pyros, why not run after Brutus (30-40 minutes or so max,probably less) and pick summon skeletons and then clarity or main.


I will do hands down.


I think Clarity help a lot, specially in the start, when you need to cast skeletons yourself, zombies die, and you keep casting frezzing pulse/firestorm while.

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Valmar wrote:

Pyros, why not run after Brutus (30-40 minutes or so max,probably less) and pick summon skeletons and then clarity or main.


I will do hands down.


I think Clarity help a lot, specially in the start, when you need to cast skeletons yourself, zombies die, and you keep casting frezzing pulse/firestorm while.

Yeah I'm considering it too, just not sure it's worth it getting skeletons that early since they suck anyway, and I could just trade something for it. And running to Brutus takes quite a bit longer, especially without phase run, quicksilver flasks are nice if you're constantly fighting but if you're trying to run through an entire map, you get like 20secs of speed and then no speed at all unless you TP to town. That makes the run from ledge to brutus annoying.

True. Didn't think about it.

In Kripp's latest video, he talks about a possible change to CI to come with open beta, in which you would no longer be immune to chaos, but have a strong resistance and have to take some connected nodes to get the Energy Shield boost that CI provides currently. How would that affect this build?