The Headbang Gang 2.0 - Raging Spirits madness - now with cheap version + leveling guide

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Thoughts on going Totems with Raging Spirits? Seams 2 or 3 Totems would have the advantage of less travel time ( You put the totem near the fight ) and 2 totems would get out more then one single case?

Dual totems is exactly what the previous iteration of this build was about. It works, but here are the reasons I like self cast better and will probably not be going back :
The 50% damage penalty is pretty harsh, you don't get much more skulls out with totem + faster casting than with self cast and echo (for 1 less support), and totems get killed all the time.

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I would personally have the totem priority as Arc - Spell Totem - Elemental Proliferation - Faster Casting with Totem Resistance being the 5L. Just because it isn't your main damage dealer and getting the totem up quickly (and surviving) would be more beneficial than LPen (imo).

Also with levelling, I would probably just roll a flameblast/arc caster speccing into spell/elemental damage nodes, and then use the respec points you get from quests to get the minion/duration nodes. Another option to consider is some kind of elemental buzzsaw build due to getting a lot of the aura nodes anyway. Both options are very cheap and effective.

The reason behind me putting a high priority to Lightning Pen is that you will be activating EE for lightning on the first cast, putting most mob's light res to the 75% cap. In that situation and without penetration, the totem has almost no chance to shock anything (so ofc no proliferation either). Shocking is a very important part of the totem's job, and it gets 140% better at it with penetration rather than without.

For leveling, that's pretty much what I would do - trying to keep the respec reasonable at a dozen or so points maximum. Although in a SC setting with twink gear, you could just go for the final passives directly while doing buzzsaw or flameblast and carve your way to merciless very fast. I honestly can't tell at what point SRS becomes good enough to be used as a main skill, but I suspect it can be quite early. It kinda sucks at boss killing at that point but Vaal Skeletons fits that role perfectly. I'm still trying to think of a more robust approach in the case of a HC setting for if the one-month ends up being HC only.

Looking forward to trying this out in the new 4 month leagues. I may even give it a go in the 1 month, but I doubt I would have the time to really make it shine. I can always try standard, but I don't have the currency to afford anything there anymore, lol.

So it happens the 1-month league is SC, which is good news to me (I suck at HC).
I've been trying for a while to see if/how this build could work without the more difficult to obtain elements, most notably the Empower and the +3 staff. I've been using the build with wand+shield and the Spirits in a (5l) chest, and I'm pleased to say that it works just fine. With some purposefully mediocre gear, I was able to clear 77s quite comfortably (although not very fast, to be honest). This is all stuff that should be attainable in a few weeks without having to play like a madman for it.
Here is a sample of what it looks like : http://www.twitch.tv/buttersplayspoe/b/544407821
Here is the gear used for the above : http://www.twitch.tv/buttersplayspoe/b/544412131
Some of the gear is way better than it needs to be. I'm leaving the 6th link in the chest blank. It would work just as well with less stats all around, especially on jewelry (although those are far from GG either). Here my resists are way overcapped and my mana pool/regen are much higher than needed, so more "ghetto" gear should work just fine.

With this, I'm pretty sure I will be doing this build (or rather the cheap variant of it) for the 1-month league !

Is the Melee Physical gem better than the Minion Damage gem in the main link due that it is a multiplicative bonus and not added bonus?

Just curious, would you consider Minion Instability to counter AoE even faster? I mean, if your main DPS is on a timer anyway, making them convert the last 33% of their life to AoE fire damage does not seem like a bad choice. Zombies and Spectres are just as replaceable with this build.

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sct14 wrote:

Is the Melee Physical gem better than the Minion Damage gem in the main link due that it is a multiplicative bonus and not added bonus?

Yes, as it stands now*, Melee phys gives more damage than min damage. You are also giving a big boost to their elemental damage with EE as, inherently, 50% of their physical is converted to fire.

*I am one of those hoping for a huge minion gem overhaul/buff when snapshotting is removed in 1.2.0

I also notice you don't pick up Inner Force. Would that be a good cluster to consider since we rely on auras and vaal haste? I doubt it would affect flesh offering, but it would boost our auras considerably.

The boss pwning potential with raging spirit seems awesome. I think I have an idea to take this build a step forward in potential. Am thinking about combining this with my own build. Traditionally bosses has been the bane for summoners but I think raging spirit has some huge potential to cover the usual weaknesses with the last update.

Two weapon setup:

Regular
1h - empower + arctic armor + convocation
shield - flesh offering + Idur + Vaal haste/Defensive Vaal skill

Boss-Killing
2h staff(ideally Pledge of Hands) - (Raging spirit + echo + empower + mstrike) + extra + extra

head(alpha howls) -
1. arc mages for shocking(easily replaces your shock totems, mobile shocking spectres)
raise spectre + echo + light pen/minion dmg + elepro
or
2. Evangelist for that more defensive bubble option with damage that scales with hatred

chest(lighting coil/tabula rasa+1) - raise zombie + mstrike + faster + meleedmg + empower + splash/miniondmg

glove - Reduced Mana + clarity + purity + hatred

boot - Reduced mana + grace + vitality + curse

90 points

Basically the regular summoner setup but an added secondary weapon for clearing hard bosses. Passive tree is more or less the same. Am opting for more tankiness. Arc mages to shock instead of dropping totems. Or evangelist to deal aoe/bubble-coverage. Zombies to single or multi dps.

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Is the Melee Physical gem better than the Minion Damage gem in the main link due that it is a multiplicative bonus and not added bonus?

Yes, as it stands now*, Melee phys gives more damage than min damage. You are also giving a big boost to their elemental damage with EE as, inherently, 50% of their physical is converted to fire.

This is correct. It's not as simple as multiplicative vs additive, but that's what it boils down to in this case because we have quite a lot of increased modifiers already - 105 passives and ~60 multistrike, which make the 92% increased from Minion Damage be only an effective ~35% more. [(100+105+60+92)/(100+105+60)=1.347]

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I also notice you don't pick up Inner Force. Would that be a good cluster to consider since we rely on auras and vaal haste? I doubt it would affect flesh offering, but it would boost our auras considerably.

The self-buff auras we use are Haste (cast speed) and Clarity. Mana regen is not really a problem here so the boost to clarity is not worth the points. As for cast speed, 21% effect will give me ~3.5% increased cast speed for 3 points, which is not very good at all. Even factoring it Vaal Haste, that's 8.6% increased cast speed on top for 12.1% total when you have Vaal Haste up. There are two regular 12% increased cast speed 3-point clusters directly available on the tree.

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Just curious, would you consider Minion Instability to counter AoE even faster? I mean, if your main DPS is on a timer anyway, making them convert the last 33% of their life to AoE fire damage does not seem like a bad choice. Zombies and Spectres are just as replaceable with this build.

I toyed with MI for a bit. It's difficult to assert it's effectiveness among all the stuff that is always happening on screen. What I found is that buffed to high levels (even just 22, which is what I am playing now) they have high enough health to be one shot by very few things, and as they have 4% leech from the tree and a lot of damage, they can actually heal back quite well after a hit. Considering this, there's a fair chance that the minion that explodes could have survived for a couple more attacks (or longer), which makes for a lot more damage than the MI explosion does. I have taken it out and am not planning to take it back.

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The boss pwning potential with raging spirit seems awesome. I think I have an idea to take this build a step forward in potential. Am thinking about combining this with my own build. Traditionally bosses has been the bane for summoners but I think raging spirit has some huge potential to cover the usual weaknesses with the last update.

This is very interesting. I haven't really seriously played a "normal" summoner so I'm not very familiar with its issues, but I don't see why this would not work, and quite well at that.
Although personally I prefer to use Spirits as my main ability, not only for bosses - they are very good at that, but do also fairly nicely in general map clearing too. This is purely personal taste I guess, but I always found that having to go fish for a specific type of monster to Spectre and pray that they never get killed or have to backtrack to resummon them was extremely annoying. This is one of the main reasons I haven't played summoner much, and not a problem at all with my current build (I just raise whatever I come across or feel like, preferably the tanky ones but not necessarily. I've had good fun with golems (unkillable !), puncture statues, archers, flickerers, etc).