The Summoner Compendium

You are right about the one point. I'm not even sure why I didn't get it tbh. I was thinking I didn't want my minions to die anyway and didn't think about my skeletons at that moment or whatever.

True on the goatmen. My summoner has been there. I hated the whole area. The goatmen as well as the exploding dogs kept tunnel-visioning myself and thereby gave me a really hard time. Especially because my zombies thought it would be a good idea to stand right in the middle of the left fire pools and slowly burn to death . . .

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Unimatrix wrote:

You are right about the one point. I'm not even sure why I didn't get it tbh. I was thinking I didn't want my minions to die anyway and didn't think about my skeletons at that moment or whatever.

True on the goatmen. My summoner has been there. I hated the whole area. The goatmen as well as the exploding dogs kept tunnel-visioning myself and thereby gave me a really hard time. Especially because my zombies thought it would be a good idea to stand right in the middle of the left fire pools and slowly burn to death . . .

Unless I'm in groups I never do patches of fire on ground maps... ever.

Yeah I wouldn't do that either ^^

On a different note: Since we were talking about totems, is it me or do they benefit from your own health pool? I can't help but feel that totems tend to last way longer on my HP stacking templar.

Totems don't benefit from your health, but if your templar is double totem and your other char not, you get like 25%health on totems in the double totem node.

Atm lvling a new summoner that I'll probably run through maps for a bit, I'm using EK on a 4L with Increased Fire dmg, Fork and Faster Projectiles. I could replace Fork with Chain but the mana cost would jump quite a lot and while better, the main issue of the spell is single target dmg, in aoe everything blows up instantly anyway. I might run fireball or firestorm later on though.

I use 2 curses atm but don't have the dual curse keystone yet, I use Vuln for dmg(it also boosts EK dmg which is nice) and Temporal for unique bosses so they don't kill my army as fast. Temporal is absolutely brutal vs Vaal, on Ruthless he died while summonning more mobs only once, rest of the time he was casting super slow lazers on zombies and couldn't even manage to kill them due to reanimation flask healing, which is quite sad. Granted it wasn't Merciless yet(just hit act2 Merci) but the fight was very very easy because of temporal. It was also very useful for Oak so he doesn't eat all your skeletons non stop.

Well a couple of my witches have double totem as well but still the totems on my templar feel more endurable. Might just be my imagination though.

I like your idea with EK - actually wanted to do so myself but was scared of the dex req. I played a Shadow with EK just to grab some quest gems (LMP, faster projectiles) and liked it so far. How does Fork or even Chain look like with it? Single projectiles getting chained/forked? I have to see this for myself.

Sadly it really is very costly in terms of mana.

Oh and I can confirm what you said about TC. I never had it, always wanted it but forgot about it then. This new summoner of mine seems to be lucky, I just found it. I'm mostly using Vuln. but it is indeed very powerful. Can't wait until I can get it to a higher lvl and permanent.

Each of the 10projectiles of EK can Fork or Chain, that's why Chain is insanely strong but without putting it on a 5L for mana leech or something similar, it's just not very viable I think. With Fork the cost is high but acceptable with 2 perpetual mana flasks.

On the Dex req, I grabbed one of the +30dex node and have dex on my onyx amulet too so I have a fair amount of dex, it doesn't cost that much either(it's split dex/int after a few levels, not pure dex) and you need some dex for fork/faster proj anyway(or for whatever you'd use really unless you go firestorm).

I might switch to fire in a dozen of levels or so when I can grab 2 curses though, Vuln+Temporal would make the Ignite dot so stupid strong, one diamond flask for big rooms/strong rares, pop it to force a proc and see the mobs melt. Add Proliferation to it, could be pretty nice. Don't think I'd have enough to run 3diamonds though without sacrificing survivability unless I go CI and not sure I want to, my first summoner was CI and I wanna check how not going CI works out.

Sounds awesome with EK. I might want to lvl my shadow further ^^

So we like fire now? What happened? Patch notes I am not aware of?

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Unimatrix wrote:

Sounds awesome with EK. I might want to lvl my shadow further ^^

So we like fire now? What happened? Patch notes I am not aware of?

Well the way I see it, assuming no actual points into damage nodes and assuming these 2 curses(vuln for zombie/skeleton dmg and temporal for control/safety), it'd make sense to use a dot based ability since vuln increases dot by 40% and temporal extends their duration. However short of poison arrow and viper strike, there isn't all that much. Ignite however is a good source and with elemental proliferation and a diamond can be generated at will for strong dot damage.

It's a bit of a particular case I think where fire might actually be good, I'll probably try it once I get some 4L gear, have had the worst luck on this char for gear drops so far as I only got 2 4L total, one of which was a pure evasion and the other are my ES/EV boots I'm using for EK links. I bought a 4L chest too and had to chrom it like 30times to get 4blue for summon links(it's armor/ES though so kinda makes sense).

Arc spam with Static blows is still really good though I think, and Freezing Pulse is brutal dmg albeit shattering corpses a lot so not my favorite for summoner. But with the 2 curses, Ignite suddenly becomes extremely attractive as a mechanic vs shock because it'll do a lot more damage especially against rares.

Hm, I didn't think of the dot buff. That could get ridiculously strong indeed. What spell are you planning to use? Fireball with chain?

This thread is amazing! If I wanted to not have to respec but still wanted to make the best of my early game should I just rush MI taking the long way or do you have a suggested order?

I am level ~12 at the prison and am struggling to dps stuff down before my minions die.