[1.1.3] HopelessNecromantic's no-snapshot cheap summoner

EB
EE
most of the aura nodes
*41% reduced reserve
*70% increased aura strength
190% life
100% mana regen
96% mana
All the minion nodes except the Lord of the Dead cluster
*90% life
*75% damage
*4% leech
*2.5% regen
*20% attack/cast speed
*4(3) total spectres
*8 total zombies
*16% res all, 20% chaos (48/75(81)/48/20 @ level 15)

I don't have nearly as much life as most builds I see and I'm fine with that. There are a ton of things that can (and do) one shot me - some of the skill in playing this (or many other) builds is in avoiding those attacks. This is a softcore (Ambush) build - so I'm cool with that too. So far, I've been dying 0-1 times per level, and usually to stupidity (like zoning into a map, taking a step forward and getting triple rhoa smashed because I wasn't focused yet and didn't manually dodge like I usually do). I can't recall the last time "desync" killed me.

Alright! Now to the meat of the thing. "Summoners can't do 75+" maps without snapshotting is 100% bullshit. However, that doesn't mean we CAN do every single map or every single map mod. Honestly I don't think most builds should have that capability - only the most streamlined, exalted out powerbuilds should be able to. Of course, that's not actually the case as there are some balance and exploit (snapshotting) issues that allow some builds to do every single map out there but hey, I don't get too worked up about those things. Games are meant to be fun, not work!

Aside from certain mods (blood magic is the only one, really) you shouldn't have trouble with any of of the maps I don't mention by name. Vaal Skeleton is your friend - swap it in for one of your Zombie supports (I usually take out life or damage) - it goes a long way toward giving bosses other targets and does pretty solid damage too. I used it a ton leveling up, but not so much lately.

Note that I generally don't alc maps utnil 75, so it's easy and cheap to reroll 66-74s. I have no problem rerolling an annoying map - as I said already, I don't expect a build to be able to do everything.

68 Museum: Some people have issues with the bosses, but I didn't - even double boss. Evangelists + Vaal Skeleton swarm and go to town.
68 Ghetto: The boss hits hard and blends in. Much like an exile he can kill you out of nowhere if you're not aware. So be aware!
69 Tunnel & 72 Mine: Were super annoying before smoke mine/convocation because pets would get split and separated and killed. Much less of an issue now.
71 Temple : The first "hard boss" for me. It took me a couple tries to get a strategy down but I could do her pretty reliably by the time I moved on to 72/73s. Close with her quickly & teleport minions onto her face. Maul. Run Purity of Lightning and use Rejuv totem + animation flask to offset her constant damage. Vaal Skeletons can actually be a negative here if they prevent your zombies for surrounding and mauling her. She tends to go down pretty quickly when you are close. I try to avoid mods like -max & +lightning here, but they are doable.
72 Jungle Valley : One of the worst bosses for me. Honestly I just stopped doing these maps. The boss itself isn't hard, but all the adds, the potential for rares with nasty auras, and the general chaos of the boss room makes it a skip for me.
72 Torture Chamber : I've heard this one is pretty bad, but I found it less "scary" than Temple because the fight feels a bit slower paced. The last time I ran one of these I had to go out and re-gather minions once. No big deal.
74 Maze: I have yet to die to Maze Vaal. Just hasn't happened and I've run a ton of these maps with varying mods. I know I've done twinned at least once. Vaal Skeletons works well here to distract one (if twinned) while you work on the other.
74 Residence: It took me a while to defeat Residence Dom. At least 3 separate maps. The fight is tough. Not Dom so much - I can manage him easy enough - the problem I have most of the time is the suicide bombers. They are very hard for me to see in the dark and amidst all the minion spam. The fight got significantly easier after convocation was added. Use Vaal Skellies and regroup your minions to heal with totem/animation flasks as needed. Run all 3 purities. Avoid nasty boss mods. No shame in rerolling a -max, +dmg or twinned Dominus. -max doesn't hurt your minions, but makes it much easier for suicide bombers and an occasional lightning spray or missed lighting-punch dodge to one shot you.
75s - All the 75s are easy! I love them.
76 Crematorium: This is a tough fight. It's not a fight I would choose if I had other map options, but it's doable. Purity of Fire + Rejuv totem + 3 animation flasks + convocation would be ideal. She tears through evangelists like paper with her ground fire, so this might be a good place to try flame curtains. If I get another drop I'll give it a shot with different specs. I went through a ton of zombies last time I did this - run to a far corner of the room, desecrate x3, make 8 zombies and go zerg her a bit, rinse, repeat. I wound up killing her with no pets and just arc :P.
76 Precinct: Cake.
77 Shipyard: Cake. Or Pie.
78 Courtyard: I have yet to kill the bosses. To be fair, I've only tried once and it was twinned+fractured... I definitely can't kill 6x 78 bosses with a room full of blue fracturing gulls. NOPE. And I'm OK with that. That being said, I cleared the entire rest of the nasty map with zero issues. With level 19 NO quality zombies. So we definitely can do 78 maps in general, but bosses may be out of reach. I have another courtyard, so I may just try it blue to see if I can take the bosses at their base strength, but it feels like wasting an expensive map running it blue.... maybe I'll throw a few chaos at it. We'll see.


Note that the following maps haven't dropped for me yet:
76 Academy
77 Shrine
78 Palace
And no corrupted 78->79s.

I'm hoping to be able to try the Academy, Shrine and Palace before too long so I can complete this section of the guide, but I've mostly moved on from this character beyond MF, so we'll see. If I get some spare cash maybe I'll just buy some.

I honestly haven't done many of these in a long, long time since I've spent most of my time focusing on mapping and building a map pool. I never found the multiplying snake that people seem to hate, but I was able to kill every one that I came across. And they seem to have been nerfed once or twice since I leveled up anyway, so most of these should be cakewalks. If there's one in particular you think is troublesome let me know and I'll see if I can farm up a zone and test it.

You'll note that my flasks are kinda/sorta just "whatever". Only one animation flask and some anti-bleed and anti-freeze for popping boxes. Like I said, easy/cheap! I'd recommend at least one anti-freeze and one anti-bleed. Some folks like lots of animation flasks, but generally one is enough. I mean, just make more, right? ;) (There are times where this is not possible in a timely manner, so yeah, more animation flasks would be good. Two is probably a better number!)

*Bones of Ullr - For the 3rd spectre. If you don't want 3, fine go with MF+movement+life+resist, but I like overkill (why I went with 4 specs, and why I will test 5 and 6 once I drop through to standard).
*The usual high life & resist, add +mana regen and moderate ES to that.
*Misc stats as needed for gear and gems. Str for rejuv totem and reduced mana, dex for hatred and haste if you need it.

Zombies still start a bit weak, but not *that* weak. Once you get rejuvenation totem, normal should be pretty easy. I leveled with haste+hatred+purity of elements as soon as I could afford too via the reduced aura nodes+reduced mana and then moved to my current aura setup later.

Spectre-wise, the previous difficulty Evangelists should last you until you can get the next tier. Pre-evangelist I would just raise whatever or forget about spectres.

Also, arc does pretty decent damage now, even with no spell damage nodes - just a decent wand is enough. Normal is really easy in general.

You should be solid by now. Just steamroll onwards. I didn't farm at all. Nothing shou be difficult until the end of the act, where I found that Cruel Dominus's guards were harder than he was (with respect to chewing up minions). Vaal Skeletons helps with them.

Some people will say to farm Ledge or Docks or Piety or Dom runs, but I didn't farm at all -I had enough 66 maps from the alt I leveled to 67 before this one that I just jumped in, possibly before I could even kill Piety. If this is your first character, you will probably need to farm a bit. I prefer Riverways over Ledge if you want to farm to 65 safely and can't yet do Docks or Piety runs. Either way, that's just time to burn and not difficult.

Vaal Skeletons makes Piety much easier.

I don't think I bothered with Dom until I was mid-70s, and by that point he was easy.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgAACGeTOr0nGDz56ILHKPrT--vuV8mofbiTPI5akacI6rpqrNrdna6PRrQMBkkabNDQkydGcRmFpqyboc9lHNzcV-GIgwkkqohA99dVxn_GHpQdqm-eNumQM8y8oqMnqRGWrD_KSuNqhWDB83C7wzqqxIIe2RObtVYtTbnbCy9vGYqsf0QE-wn22hqP

Depending on when you finish Cruel, your tree should be about here. I generally finish early 40s to early 50s, depending on how many corrupted areas I did and what build I'm running.

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgAACGeTOr0nGDz56ILHKPrT--vuV8mofbiTeqo8jlqRpwia4Oq6aqza3Z2uj0bZC0WdtAwGSRps0NAqmJMnRnEZhaasm6HPZfqAHNy_l9xX4YiDCSSqiED311XGf8bxdsk9HpQdqm-eNumQM8y8oqMnqRGW8h6sP8pK42r60hCXhWDB81ptcLvDOhcvRASqxIIeJDzZE5u1Vi1k54bRTbnbCy9vGYqsf1XWJLD7CYCk9toajw==

Yep, I only had 110% life. I didn't start stacking life until I was done with everything else. Softcore, baby!

Obviously grab Bones of Ullr as soon as you can.

I leveled with Skullhead - that and Vis Mortis were my "summoner experiment" for this league (I have played a lot of summoners, I like to try something at least a little different with each new summoner). Skullhead is pretty strong, and goes very well with a 5l zombies - the two together are probably stronger than the +2 helm. Unfortunately, I felt I needed more survivability (and wanted more IIR) going into 75+ maps, so I dropped Skullhead mid 80s. If you wanted to do a 5l zombie build, I'd advise a strong hybrid chest over Vis so you can make up the lack of hp & resists on a helm.

Beyond those three items it really doesn't matter what gear you use, as long as it gets you "enough" resist and HP. Since you'll probably be running some elemental auras, you won't need much resist either and can focus on IIR, life & Mana regen.