The Summoner Compendium

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Valmar wrote:

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You can summon up to 4 skeletons with the basic spell and you summon two per cast of the spell. You will get up to 10 skeletons via passives, more with unique items.

A little correction here. I don't have uniques nor max level gems, and I'm able to summon up to 12 skeletons (Im at level 50, gem is something like level 10, I got all the passives). Don't know the maximum, but I think 10 is not the max ;)


Regards

Ah right, I forgot skeletons also increase when you level up the skill, my bad, for some reason I thought it was removed like zombies. I'll fix that.

I'm in the process or leveling a new summoner at the moment, using a char I used for the 3H solo race. I tried a full MI rush(as in, go for the stats left right away) and got MI by 12, wanted to check if it was any good. To be honest, it's pretty terrible, the only upside I feel is I could get Divine Toughness very early so I've been sitting at a safe amount of health and almost never get close to dying(I almost died to flicker pirates though, like literally was down to <30hp for 10secs chaining flasks and spamming freezing pulses hoping I'd win). Finished normal difficulty with 700health and 150ES, which is a way safe amount for a summoner, so that was nice and after a few levels you recover nicely anyway. Still not a really useful start.

I've been using Freezing Pulse but just now changed to Ethereal Knives+Vuln, see how that works out, but the mana cost is pretty intense so far with the summons to deal with too.

Also got myself a Queen's Decree to test it out, just need enough stats to equip it but interested in seeing how good skeletons are with it.

Hey guys,

I'm pretty new to the game and am considering a summoner build... Do you think this type of character is suitable for hardcore? What about lategame? Do they scale well or fall off a lot?

Based on intuition, seems like letting your minions tank and take risks for you is a winning hardcore strategy but I would love to have your feedback on the matter!

Thanks <3

I'm actually in merciless act 2, level 54.
Only 2 deaths, one in normal difficulty, because of a big mistake of mine, it was no real danger.
Then, another death in cruel, act2. Somehow ambushed.
One more death in merciless just now, because I stop moving for some reason watching another thing in second monitor^^

Since them, easy. Merciless looks like a walk. No idea in maps or later, perhaps, but atm I'm fine. Zombies look like kleenex in normal and cruel start, but later on they are real tanks and do damage. At least, at the moment.

You can watch some streams or old videos from stremas here if you want to watch him a bit in merciless:
http://es-es.twitch.tv/valmar123
I'm not a pr0 player, but you can watch and see that even in a relatively newbie PoE learning player, the build works.

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Skol wrote:

Hey guys,

I'm pretty new to the game and am considering a summoner build... Do you think this type of character is suitable for hardcore? What about lategame? Do they scale well or fall off a lot?

Based on intuition, seems like letting your minions tank and take risks for you is a winning hardcore strategy but I would love to have your feedback on the matter!

Thanks <3

Summoner is definitely viable on Hardcore. I have a lvl 60 summoner I played during the 1week race and making a new summoner(lvl 50ish atm) that I started during the 3hour HC race. So both hardcore, both without insane items or twinking or anything and both fairly easy. It's one of the best class for HC without another char to feed you gear in my opinion, along with various archer builds.

If you check the recent 1week HC race results, #4 was a summoner witch, Backbeard, who streamed the whole time. He soloed most of the time and grouped only near the end to do maps with #1 and #2. He even posted his build and such on this forum if you search for it, and there might be videos of the race on his twitch account http://www.twitch.tv/depimpe.

It is very good for HC, but not so good for short races because summoner starts fairly slow. You catch up later though as you kill pretty quickly and without much risk at all.

I played a couple summoners already but never to the very end.

Basically all I'm wondering is how the dmg potential stands compared with others? I assume you won't be one-shotting packs like a LA 7 Aura Templar, but how good is it?

Taking a little hit in killing speed for adding that much defensive comfort is worth a lot anyway, just curious to hear from high lvl map runs.

Loved the thread, saw no hardcore late game experience shared, thought I would share mine, I am level 68 on my summoner died last night to a 4 room desync in a turbo vaal pyramid lvl 66 map. Yes 4 room teleport to a room I was never in, right into an extra damage and crit bear with a speed totem next to him, so yea, I died before the desync was over it was only on the resurrect screen that I was able to see what did the damage.


What I am trying to say is, with appropriate respect to endgame content (playing habits) that is what it took to kill me, and I rarely was hit. I'll explain what I did below.

First off here is my build right now as it stands.


The reason for all the (what I call) fitting nodes (the +30 str and +30 dex) is simply because of the totem and curses I run. Having those nodes with a good double attribute onyx amulet allows me to run max Decoy Totem, max temporal chains, and max skill gems chain and LMP. I have played a summoner for a long time and many characters (a lot of which made it past lvl 68 but that was when zombies didn't follow you through zones). Nothing in my experience improves the tank of zombies like decoy totem. A lot of times in really nasty maps I summon 2 decoys to keep the enemies in limbo deciding which totem to go for.

I use skeletons on a totem only, however as someone previously mentioned that the totem keeps summoning and might not allow the minions to get a swing in before they are De-summoned. The easiest way to fix this is to cast a decoy totem (once of twice depending if you have dual totems) and despawn the skele-totem. If for some reason the fight is still continuing and my skele count drops I summon another totem and repeat.

I used to use arc totems with static blows and conductivity etc, but of they killed normal monsters with ease and applied shock easily, but im not worried about normal monsters, im more interested in kill speed of rare/bosses and it NEVER once EVER applied shock (with over 50% chance to) to a creature of this type, so I scratched that idea.

also since my bars are full with skeletons, zombies, curses, decoy, etc, I found having a totem do the damage DIDN'T direct my zombies and when I wanted to be at range my zombies hung out near me even tho arc totem was wailing away. this hurts survivability and there for I needed to choose a spell to cast.

I chose Fireball. I linked it with chance to ignite - lesser multiple projectiles - chain. This is also the reason that I have the first 2 spell damage nodes in the witch starting area (I got these two points most recently). along with a roughly 100% spell damage wand and that's it, the aoe from fireball lmp and chain will hit up to 9 times on close groups and do substantial damage and my fireball is 11% quality, I run with flammability and i have roughly a 60% chance to ignite, this causes accuracy loss chance to flee vs humanoids, and the burn now stacks finally. (this doesn't apply to my build but if a fireball crit occurs and the target was already burning all the remaining damage is applied instantly with the crit and a new burn will occur being the original crit + burn crit damage).

I find that its easier to direct my zombies this way and the added crowd control of burning along with decoy totems means that my zombies RARELY pop to non aoe packs even massive ones in difficult rare maps. Believe it or not I did a rare 64 mountain ledge map and didn't lose a zombie the entire map.

For gem linking I do:

Spell Totem - Skeletons - Increased minion damage (to make up for totem penalty) if you have 4 link I recommend not using health but faster attacks

Zombies - minion damage - minion life - increased melee physical damage
5link - faster attacks
6link - item rarity

Fireball - LMP - Chain - Chance to ignite
Chain is rare so Fire penetration or increased area of effect or even faster projectiles, faster casting - Iron will are good choices (iron will because this build has over 150 str that's + 30% damage)

All my curses are permanent so link w.e you want to use with increased area of effect imo.
I run with Vulnerability and Flammability
In the earlier levels I 100% use only temporal chains, this helped out more than anything of keeping me alive if I had to run and helping out zombies tank but there is another benefit to temporal chains I will explain below:

Temporal Chains, the slow does 1 more indirect benefit that is very powerful, Zombies do not "preload" their attack swing, they run up get in melee range and start to attack. this is fine against melee mobs HOWEVER; vs archers, cobras, anything ranged, or even rhoas, 2 things will occur, 1 is obviously chains slows them down to zombies can get to them quicker and attack them but the next one is what I am on about in the first place. Temporal chains will slow the monster down enough that if it starts moving while the zombie is swinging it keeps them from going out of melee range and the zombie attack missing, this is an indirect dps INCREASE effectively. this is also why faster attacks support gem on zombies is a much higher dps increase than observed.


Clarity - reduced mana
Discipline - reduced mana
I have this + decoy totem in a 4L

On my gear its rather apparent what to go for, Energy Shield, mana, , rarity ,resists.

Speaking of resists, that is the weakness of my builds, I neglect it because I rarely am the target and I would rather have energy shield which for all intents in purposes 500 ES = 475 ES + 5% resist all.

I use all gold rings and amulet try to get + all attribute on amulet try to get + all resists or some variation on rings and + mana on everything, zombies are over 140 mana skeletotem is 220 mana and my fireball is 87 BUT my mana per sec is 87 because I have 1100 mana without eldrich and I have decent mana passives and will probably be going for the next 3 + 8% mana nodes I have available to not rely on it on gear to much.

One last gear tip, in a perfect world try to find an all resist shield with + spell damage, but I use one without it, and try to get at least 40% all resist on that shield. I recommend an Angel Kite shield because it has the 24% base all resist.


Final thoughts, lets say its open beta and you want to play your witch well into level 90s, what to do with remaining passives, well there are two options, for soft-core i recommend getting burning passives and fire damage or whatever increases your damage for your spell of choice. (or wand attack).

for hardcore, i recommend more EHP of course! but DONT get the passives in the center for more ES they are only 6% now not 8%, and since you got dual totems you are next to a Body and Soul circle! which ends on 10% all resist 20% ES 20% Armour. which is one of the strongest nodes in the game!. This also buffs your granite flasks.


Some people wonder about the clearing speed of a summoner compared to other builds, I play with Sparklers, GS, wand templars, lightning arrow builds etc, and I clear slower than them, but I would be shocked if it was more than 10% slower. The reason is I have noticed that past gem level 15 zombies get ridiculously powerful, with vulnerability they easily 2-3 hit most rare mobs in maps lvl 64+ and I had a rhoa crit the white beast boss and 1 shot it on charge. I think between decoy totem gathering them up and faster attacks + high gem quality on zombies + high levels of the gem the developers have put scaling in place to keep them up to speed with other abilities because only gems and passives increase zombies damage, so since you cant get an uber weapon to get strong all of a sudden its easy to balance the numbers on zombies since its highly predictable the damage they can do, therefore they are freaking strong late-game early since you don't have to find that 500+ damage mace or bow.

A good example of confirmed zombie damage is they 1 hit no crit ruthless oak when I was helping someone kill him the other day.
Happy summoning :D


Edit: for tips while leveling I recommend getting both fitting nodes that I mentioned asap to use decoy and temporal early and well.

I really love your approach and I'm glad things I thought about turn in fact out to be powerful.

As we all know, Decoy Totem is ridiculous. I just leveled a LS Templar that abuses it to the last and that's where I learned of it's power. Later on those things are like immortal.

Wasn't sure if it will work out to get all the needed strength, glad to hear you made it work.

You suggested increased melee physical dmg before faster attacks - are you sure about that? You mentioned later how powerful faster attacks is, that's why I'm thinking about using this first, and add the former later, once I got 5L.

Also funny that you use Fireball with Chain, because that is exactly what I was thinking about - just because no one uses it and I thought Chain can make any spell imba :P

I'm not 100% sure yet though, I tend to go Lightning dmg again - even though, there is the problem you mentioned already: The shocked status effect doesn't help you all that much where it counts: On big bad mobs. Because you simply lack the dmg to make it last. With a Spork totem you should reapply it fast enough to make sure your zombies get hits out while the mob is shocked eventually, though. Still not decided what spell to go, but since I won't specialize I can switch whenever I want anyway.

Loved your conclusion about the possibility of Zombie balancing btw - makes sense to me.

The only thing I do not agree on is the Skeleton Totem. I don't think you really lose uptime, unless you use faster casting and double totems maybe. Those buddies are idiots and tend to run away very quickly. The totem makes sure they stay focused and get one or two hits out before getting distracted by a squirrel again.

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Unimatrix wrote:

You suggested increased melee physical dmg before faster attacks - are you sure about that? You mentioned later how powerful faster attacks is, that's why I'm thinking about using this first, and add the former later, once I got 5L.

Also funny that you use Fireball with Chain, because that is exactly what I was thinking about - just because no one uses it and I thought Chain can make any spell imba :P


The only thing I do not agree on is the Skeleton Totem. I don't think you really lose uptime, unless you use faster casting and double totems maybe. Those buddies are idiots and tend to run away very quickly. The totem makes sure they stay focused and get one or two hits out before getting distracted by a squirrel again.

I rolled my 4L with a red and 3 blues, I understand I contradict myself, but thats why I mentioned what I did about temporal chains, please do whatever you prefer, I found that with decoy they dont need faster attacks as much so I opted for more damage when I realized 70% of the time 1 hit was enough to kill a normal monster with IPD support.

The coolest part is, with the obvious incoming nerf to chain, I think that even in its nerfed form, fireball doenst take advantage of the true imbalance of it as compared to lightning arrow or ice shot imo.

My suggestion was for those that want to cancel the summons, I personally keep one up, this is why I dont want increased health on my skeletons, in a perfect world the skeletons are summoned in front of a ranged enemy and they strike once then blow up on said enemy and more are summoned lol.

You are correct, I forgot about the Decoy Totem at that moment. That should make sure they get their attack out. I stand corrected.

True about Chain as well - I'm eager to see what the devs are going to do to it.

About the skeletons, I did the same. I just cast a totem and switched to double Spork once I had them all summoned. Also, I never wanted them to stay alive (so I wouldn't use HP on them or anything), I really just wanted them to land a hit or two and be replaced by then. But I have to mention, that I never used MI. Shocking, I know, since everyone thinks that is so powerful. I'm building a new summoner right now and will skill into it - maybe I was wrong indeed and it is as powerful as people make it sound.

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Unimatrix wrote:

But I have to mention, that I never used MI. Shocking, I know, since everyone thinks that is so powerful. I'm building a new summoner right now and will skill into it - maybe I was wrong indeed and it is as powerful as people make it sound.

I will put my reasoning simply, double curse or even perma-curse is strong right? Well, why not use 1 point in it :D You are right there! Plus i use flammability, extra 40% dmg for 33% * 1.4 = 46.2 of their health in dmg for my minions that is 2500 dmg, not bad. (very estimaty math [yes i made that word up])

Now for the complex reason, sometimes in merciless and ruthless, being able to spam skeletons and have them blow up on kratain, merveil and brutus is useful, and in maps with goatmen (for this build the hardest creature) when 30 of them leap slam your zombies your zombies exact their revenge kill the whole horde easily and not leave you vulnerable for the 5-10 seconds you need to rebuild your army.