Summoner Fire Witch Guide (video included)

Spoiler Warning: The contained video shows gameplay footage from act 3.

Today I will be discussing my current build in open beta. At the time of posting I am level 64. The video showcasing the build and describing it in detail can be found here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_wS4On23ko&feature=youtu.be

This showcases my build in act 3 merciless at the docks. This zone will be your finally destination to grind exp before doing maps.



Your passive tree skills should look like this at the following levels ( allowing a small disparity in levels due to optional quest rewards )

Level 20: http://tinyurl.com/summonfirewitch20

Level 30: http://tinyurl.com/summonfirewitch30

Level 40: http://tinyurl.com/summonfirewitch40

Level 50: http://tinyurl.com/summonfirewitch50

Level 60: http://tinyurl.com/summonfirewitch60

Level 70: http://tinyurl.com/summonfirewitch70


The basics of this build are to have an army of zombies with high fire damage. You basic fight consists of approaching an enemy group and dropping a spell totem with summon skeletons attached. These skeletons act as a meat shield between you and your enemies, providing damage in their melee attacks and significant AOE damage to enemies as they explode with minion instability.

The benefits of this build include:
High Damage, Both AoE and single target
High Survivability

The drawbacks of this build:
May be annoying to group members due to summons
Mediocre at lower levels


The gear, gems, and support gems you want with this build are as follows:


Weapon -
Wand with high spell damage and plus level to fire gems.
With this weapon you will have your fireball attached, along with lesser multiple projectiles and pierce attached as supports.

Helm -
Energy shield helm with plus minion level gems.
With this weapon you will have your raise zombie gem, along with increased minion health and increased minion damage attached as supports.

Boots -
Increased movement spead.

Shield -
High increased spell damage.


Other gems and supports:

Spell totem with summon skeletons, and a faster casting gem attached as a support.

Clarity with reduced mana as a support.

Fire trap with increased duration and increased area of effect as supports.

Raise specter with increased minion damage and greater multiple projectiles attached as supports.

Flammability gem.


Fight rotation:

You will start by summoning your zombies and a ranged monster as a specter. Once you approach a group of monsters you will summon a skeleton totem
nearby. This will summon your waves of skeletons that act as a meat wall, and provide good dps as they explode. Next you will cast flammability on the group
to reduce their fire resistance and increase their chance to ignite. Once they are cursed, throw down a fire trap and proceed to spam fireballs until they are
destroyed. Re-summon your zombies as they die, and try to keep them at max.


A note to low levels:
At low levels I believe it is not only safer, but much quicker to run freezing pulse than fireball. You will be using this spell until around level 60 (once you have
gotten some fire talents, and LMP and Pierce attached to fireball). Attach a faster projectiles to freezing pulse (as it does more damage the closer you are to an
enemy, thus making this range extended due to the distance freezing pulse travels with faster projectiles) along with a LMP until you get your +fire spell damage
and lmp and pierce attached.

Leveling a summoner may be harsh at first but mid 30's and especially once you get spell totem with skeletons you will notice a big increase in survivability and
killing speed.



If you found this helpful or to keep up on my builds and guides please subscribe to my youtube page www.youtube.com/voidmoongaming and follow me on my twitch stream twitch.tv/void_moon. I answer questions here live to the best of my ability so feel free to pop in and ask away!

Hey VoidMoon nice write up here Thanks. I'm curious if you think a fire mage could operate well without summons like the army of cold witch builds you see on here. Your build looks great, I just had my mind set on a build staying away from summons as much as possible. Having played up through merciless do you think a pure fire or mix fire/lightning build could work?

"

Teflondon1975 wrote:

Hey VoidMoon nice write up here Thanks. I'm curious if you think a fire mage could operate well without summons like the army of cold witch builds you see on here. Your build looks great, I just had my mind set on a build staying away from summons as much as possible. Having played up through merciless do you think a pure fire or mix fire/lightning build could work?

I believe you could make a pure fire witch that would be excellent in groups, however in soloing it would be pretty difficult.

You'd want to build around high crit chance and crit damage with a fast cast rate. If fireball crits it automatically puts on a burn effect on the target that does a lot of damage in addition to the fireball itself.

Question for ya. Why do you go straight for minion instability? Without any minion nodes I would think all of your summons would just be getting one shotted, so they won't be exploding.

Looks good, is it viable in hardcore?

I did some optimizations on you lev 70 build, I chose more ES, but you could take flasks mana instead. I even got an extra point so I could take the last minion life and damage nodes.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMBB2MI9BHbFm8ZhRpsHNwkPCSqJ6kqjSqYLJwxiDN2NsU22DbpOBtI50kbSTpJUVXGVytabWKsa9ttGXNTeQN8g3_GghCHZYhAj0aQM5HPkjiTJ5eFm6GcLZ2uoW2mrKcIp1yvt7iTvJ-_l8BUwfPJPc36z2XQ0NQZ1p3YJNkL37DjauOf5BHsVfFs8XbyHvqA_c8fAkmyAuOiozvhu9YRUH0Y7Io=

"

KaptainKimchi wrote:

Question for ya. Why do you go straight for minion instability? Without any minion nodes I would think all of your summons would just be getting one shotted, so they won't be exploding.

Even if they get 1 shot they still explode for damage.

This must have been changed because in closed beta minions did not deal explosive dmg when one shot. Personally im going for full pet Energy Shield, CI.

"

Zubei wrote:

This must have been changed because in closed beta minions did not deal explosive dmg when one shot. Personally im going for full pet Energy Shield, CI.

Honestly, CI is garbage now. The only reason to take it before was because of the 50% increase in energy shield. Without it the passive is very poor.

no they did not change minion instability, if the minion is one-shot it does not explode. also CI is still very good because even though it doesn't add 50% more ES it does still give you chaos immunity and lets you use things like blood rage for free

"

Kotumser wrote:

no they did not change minion instability, if the minion is one-shot it does not explode. also CI is still very good because even though it doesn't add 50% more ES it does still give you chaos immunity and lets you use things like blood rage for free

We'll have to disagree here. CI making you lose all of your hp is not worth it in my opinion. There isn't much Chaos damage in the game any way, and the places where it is are easily skipped.