[3.2]Blink & Mirror Arrow Necromancer * Shaper down * Build of the Week * Deadeye version added*

This build is stronger than ever in 3.2. The update also introduced the ability to create a Deadeye version of this build. Deadeye will have very similar DPS to the Necromancer version. This is because Deadeye can summon 2x as many clones as Necromancer, although they have about 30% less damage and last for a shorter duration. Thanks to high attack speed and movespeed from Tailwind, Deadeye feels a lot faster while clearing maps. However, it is arguably a bit less defensive than Necromancer, and it's highly impractical to get Mind over Matter on the Deadeye version. Please see the Deadeye section below if interested in this variant. However, the majority of this guide will focus on leveling and gearing up a Necromancer summoner.

Necromancer skilltree

Necromancer Path of Building

Bandit choice – Kill all
Ascendancy order - mistress of sacrifice > commander of darkness > spirit eater

Deadeye skilltree

Deadeye Path of Building

Bandit choice - Kill all
Ascendancy order - Gathering Winds > Fast and Deadly > Powerful Precision > Rupture

Clones
Gems listed in order of priority; if you do not have a 6-link, use the gems at the top of the list:
Blink/Mirror Arrow
Greater Multiple Projectiles (swap with Faster Attacks for single target)
Pierce (remove this gem once you get a Drillneck Quiver)
Minion Damage
Elemental Damage with Attacks
Elemental Focus
Added Lightning Damage

If you have difficulty getting all of the proper colored gem sockets in your bow, you can also use a Slower Projectiles gem.

Auras
Generosity + Anger+ Wrath
I also equip a level 1 Clarity aura, for extra bonuses from the Ascendancy node Commander of Darkness.

Curse/Elemental Equilibrium Application
Split Arrow + Curse On Hit + Projectile Weakness + Elemental Weakness

Utility
Summon Stone Golem
socket this in a Redblade Band ring if the Golem is dying too much.

Cast When Damage Taken + Unearth + Greater Multiple Projectiles + Spirit Offering
I have found that this setup provides great defenses. It allows you to recover a large portion of your ES pool every time you take >500 damage. Another option is to use Bone Offering for defenses, or Flesh Offering if you want more DPS.

Vaal Clarity + Increased Duration
Use this for maps that have no-regen mods.

Faster Casting + Flame Dash

A good bow
I recommend Storm Cloud or Roth's Reach until level 66, then switch over to Lioneye's Glare. See rationalization for Lioneye's Glare in the FAQ section.

A good quiver
A quiver with Increased Projectile Damage or Increased Elemental Damage with Weapons will give increased damage to your clones. Flat physical or elemental damage on the quiver will benefit your minions as well. Quivers with increased critical strike chance or multiplier will benefit your clones, but since the clones have a low critical strike chance to begin with, it will not be very powerful. Drillneck’s damage to pierced enemies will also benefit your minions. For my build, I prefer Drillneck or any quiver with Pierce.

Skillpoints
The only nodes in the skilltree which benefit your minions are nodes that have the word "Minion" in them. Nodes that do not affect your Mirror/Blink arrow clones include:
-Trap/Mine nodes
-Bow nodes
-Elemental damage nodes
-Critical strike chance/multiplier nodes
-Attack Speed nodes

Support gems
Any support gem that affects Minion Damage, Projectile damage, Elemental damage, or Attack damage will affect your minions.

The Trap Support gem will NOT increase your minions' damage, because the modifier only affects damage dealt by traps. However, the Multiple Traps and Cluster Traps gems WILL decrease your minions' damage, because they contain a general "Less" modifier which is not specific to Traps alone.

Auras
We will use flat damage from elemental auras to increase our dps. Wrath + Anger > Hatred. Use Generosity to multiply your auras' effectiveness. You can also use Empower or +gem levels to boost your auras' damage. Items which grant +gem levels for your auras include Alpha's Howl, Geofri's Crest, Voidbringer. You can also craft a Bone Helmet with an Essence of Delirium to get more aura levels.

Elemental Equilibrium
Wrath and Anger are supported by Generosity, which means that our player character deals 0 elemental damage. This is great, because if we get a ring/amulet/glove that deals at least 1 cold damage, we can apply Elemental Equilibrium on enemies and make them have -50 fire and lightning resist. This is a huge damage multiplier, and should never be left out of the build.

Curses
Elemental Weakness and Projectile Weakness. Can also use Temporal Chains or Enfeeble for defense.

Attack Speed
In patch 3.0, the attack speed cap of our clones has been removed. Since a lot of our damage comes from Wrath and Anger auras, it is a good idea to use fast bows – Lioneye’s Glare fits this role perfectly. You can also acquire a ton of attack speed through Flesh Offering, Vaal Haste, and Deadeye's Tailwind node.

Cooldown Reduction
This mod is currently available in Deadeye's ascendancy node, Fast and Deadly. You can also acquire cooldown reduction via The Flow Untethered belt, or a Shaped Belt.

Intimidate
10% more damage, not much else to say here. Use a Tombfist glove or Belt of the Deceiver.

Skilltrees
Level 7 skilltree
Level 20 skilltree
Level 30 skilltree
Level 40 skilltree
Level 55 skilltree
Level 66 skilltree
Level 66 skilltree (after switching to Lioneye's Glare)
Do NOT start using Mind over Matter with Eldritch Battery if you have less than 500 Energy Shield. You will always feel short on mana. Instead, just use Eldritch Battery without Mind over Matter until you acquire a high enough ES pool.

What skill gems do I use to level up?
After you kill Hillock, pick Freezing Pulse, Magma Orb, or Lightning Tendrils from Tarkleigh. Then, go to Nessa and in her second shop tab, purchase a Fire Trap gem. You are ready to begin!

After completing the Breaking Some Eggs quest, pick Summon Raging Spirit as your quest reward. Stick it into an armor socket; it's not strong enough to use just yet, but we will level it up as we travel. You can also purchase a Flame Totem gem from Nessa to help kill some baddies.

After you defeat Brutus, purchase a Melee Splash & Minion Damage support from Nessa. You are now ready to start casting SRS linked to Melee Splash. Continue using Fire Trap for supplemental damage. When you complete the Siren's Cadence quest, pick up Arc as well. You can use Arc to debuff enemies once you pick up the Elemental Equilibrium node on the skilltree.

Once you hit Act 3, make sure you grab the Hatred aura, and start using it along with the Generosity support gem. You should also get the Anger and Wrath auras, stick them into a spare gem socket somewhere, so that they can level up. You will need these two aura gems later on. Complete the Fixture of Fate quest in act 3 to gain access to all of the aforementioned gems.

Continue levelling up, using the Summon Raging Spirit + Melee Splash + Minion Damage gems. In act 4, acquire a Curse On Hit gem, and set up a 3-linked Arc + Curse On Hit + Elemental Weakness. This will allow your Arc to lower enemies' resistances considerably. You should also acquire the Summon Stone Golem gem and Spell Echo. You can use Spell Echo if you acquire a 4-link for your SRS.

As you progress through the game, the most important gems to keep levelling up are Anger and Wrath. Once you get to level 66 and acquire a Lioneye's Glare, add the following support gems as you can afford them:

"

Mirror/Blink Arrow - Greater Multiple Projectiles - Pierce - Minion Damage - Elemental Damage with Attacks

Then, allocate the Eldritch Battery keystone. With the Eldritch Battery keystone, you will have the ability to reserve 100% of your mana. Then, you can use the links Generosity - Wrath - Anger in order to superbuff your clones. Make sure you have the Generosity support gem linked to your auras, otherwise your auras will mess up the Elemental Equilibrium buff!

Make sure you also allocate the Zealot's Oath keystone. With a Stone Golem summoned, you should be able to easily sustain all of your mana costs - even as a Deadeye. Enduring Cry is also a good way to rapidly regain ES for casting minions.

What gear do I need while levelling up?
Gearing for SRS is very simple. All you need to look out for is items with as many linked sockets as possible, preferably Intelligence-based equipment. This kind of gear will greatly help your Summon Raging Spirit gem. You can also use Nycta's Lantern but it's not mandatory.

At level 66, you can use the trading website poe.trade to acquire the key unique item: Lioneye's Glare. It is usually very cheap, about 1 chaos or even less.
Other good items to help you meet your Dexterity requirement:

• Careful Planning (socketed in the jewel socket near Mind over Matter
• Leer Cast
• Hyrri's Bite

All of those items are very cheap and provide a decent amount of dexterity for your build. This helps you meet Dex requirements to equip Lioneye's Glare.

Early on, you can use Victario's Influence body armour for a cheap DPS boost. (See "Budget version" in the "Gearing" section above.) Also try to acquire a Drillneck ASAP, as this allows you to drop the Pierce support gem in favor of a stronger support gem.

It is possible to use Blink/Mirror arrow socketed with the Trap/ Cluster trap support gems. The Trap support gem will not boost your clones' damage, but the Cluster trap support gem will reduce your clones' damage. This is due to the wording of both gems. The benefit of playing Blink/Mirror arrow traps is that you can spawn multiple clones in a split second. You also rely on the cooldown of Traps rather than the cooldown of blink/mirror arrow themselves. Blink/Mirror arrow traps work great on a budget, because you can use the unique Deerstalker boots as a pseudo-5linked item.

The following is the best version of blink/mirror arrow traps I have seen. It is made by user Thailesk. He uses several Hair Trigger jewels to reliably spawn clones, and the Tinkerskin chest helps him sustain energy shield and life. He has defeated Shaper with this setup. His DPS far exceeds mine, however he has a bit lower survivability and completely different playstyle.

Shaper run

Deadeye is similar in DPS to Necromancer, but clears maps a bit faster. However it is a bit more reliant on getting jewels with %inc minion damage. Deadeye cannot achieve high Energy Shield, so its defenses are simply 6k life + acrobatics + phase acrobatics. Below is my Deadeye in Bestiary, leveling guide to come in the future.

Skilltree
Path of Building

Why Lioneye’s Glare?
Lioneye’s Glare is good for several reasons:
1) No elemental damage. This means that we can reliably apply Elemental Equilibrium using Split Arrow.
2) High natural attack speed. This pairs remarkably well with flat added damage from Anger & Wrath auras.
3) Cannot miss. Comparing an average level 70 minion’s accuracy versus an average level 70 minion’s evasion, clones are likely to miss >70% of their attacks. Even if you got the strongest mirrored bow on standard, you probably could not match Lioneye’s DPS or reliability because you’d be missing almost 1/3 of your attacks.

Reach of the Council is a strong contender for Lioneye’s because it allows us to replace GMP with a stronger gem. However I still prefer Lioneye’s for clearspeed – if your minions can one-shot small mobs, missing attacks will slow down your mapping speed considerably.

Why don't you use Traps in your endgame gem configuration?
1) In order to work reliably, traps require Clever Construction, Hair Trigger jewels, or Sunblast + multiple Cheap Construction jewels. This requires a large skilltree investment compared to self-cast.
2) Traps have a delay time before triggering, which slows down your clearspeed.
3) Traps have a very similar cooldown as mirror/blink arrow. Aside from the initial burst potential of throwing out 3 sets of traps, the dps of trap builds is very similar to self-cast builds over a long period of time (i.e. in long bossfights).

Since self-cast requires less skilltree/gear investment, it can end up much tankier than trap builds but with similar dps.

Hardcore Viable?
I don't have the internet connection or patience for hardcore. That said, this build is just as hardcore viable as any classic summoner/SRS build.