[2.4] The Poet - SRS + Blasphemy Enfeeble+TempChains

- Izaro Strategy - Demonstration of Izaro strategy, where I beat Merc lab at level 72 to get my 5th and 6th Ascendancy points.
- Voidheart farming - Demo of running double beyond Strand maps to spawn Bameth, then use From the Void prophecy (2ex) and a Blackheart ring (2c) to create Voidheart (2.5ex at the time it was bugged).

Pros
-Fast clear speed. I have +174% movespeed while running with a Haku Karui spirit to the goal.
-Exceptional large boss killer, especially talky bosses with cinematics
-Can run red maps
-Can start a league being relatively inexpensive to gear, acquiring pieces as you go
-A summoner build with a couple spare sockets; Not as chromatic-devouring as other summoner builds I've played
-Poet cosplay

Cons
-Wrecked by surprise Hexproof monster packs if you're reckless
-Traps, bearers, and other effects unaffected by curses can/will kill you
-Medium-range shooters like Flame Sentinels and Antalie Nampora hit very hard from just outside Blasphemy range if you haven't qualitied and leveled up your aura radius
-Gargantuan mana requirements and math required to optimize
-Problematic map mods greatly hinder the build trying get runnable rare red maps. My setups has some hotswaps that help compensate.
-Still pretty squishy when monsters get lucky due to lowish evasion
-No Whirling Blades

We choose Witch for her innate cast speed and minion damage minor Ascendancy nodes.
-(Normal) Mistress of Sacrifice: Offering now affect you. This lets us "heal" with Spirit Offering, run and cast fast with Flesh Offering, and put Bone Offering into our Cast When Damage Taken setup.
-(Cruel) Commander of Darkess: helps us get resistance capped (using a low level Clarity not on Generosity) and strong if we already have our Victario's / Alpha's Howl aura stacking going.
-(Merciless - recommended level 80+) Spirit Eater is ok, giving lots of minion damage and some cast speed when we kill corpses.
-(Endgame) - Nothing good unless you happen to run Zombies. I'm actually thinking of choose the two remaining small nodes for the 15% minion damage each.

Get life, the most efficient minion nodes, the skill duration nodes by scion, the Templar's aura wheel, and an extra curse when you're ready to double up your Blasphemy.

Getting just 14% reduced aura reservation from Soveriegnty in Templar gives us BARELY enough mana with Conqueror's Efficiency's additional 2% to make the setup function.

Level 74

Resistances will be hard to cap and the passive tree can shore up those problems.

Oak (life), Alira (cast speed), Skill point (summoners normally don't use charges)

Leveling is easy - just get Summon Raging Spirit as quest reward and use it, adding auras and additional gems as you unlock them. Lone bosses are super easy - Izaro in the lab mostly just falls over.

Vaal Haste can be pricey early - I use a Vaal Orb on a Haste gem and I always get lucky. Witch can't get Haste (or Anger or Increased Duration) so you have to get them from drops or other players.

Add auras and blasphemy as you get them.

Spend Gemcutter's Prisms as you get them on SRS since it'll give movement speed to spirits. An alternative is to quality up a level 1 Empower in your weapon switch (in a +6% quality to socket gems "Haku's" weapon).

Here is a breakdown of how I acquire my gear for this character in a new league:
- Get SRS gem in a 3-link
- Buy Reverberation Rod (2c or 3c early in the league, otherwise 1c), SRS 3link in it (+ Minion Damage + something like Added Lightning Damage)
- Get a four-link for Animate Weapon in gloves or boots or chest or helm
- Get Spell Echo and a four-link +1 to Minion Gems helm, put SRS in it (+ Spell Echo + Minion Damage + Minion Speed)
- Don't need Reverberation Rod anymore, so buy an Aurumvorax and a Crest of Perandus for good defense to do Labyrinth in Normal and Cruel
- Buy Victario's Influence (might be only 1c, up to 5c), get 5 sockets for it, use Blasphemy + Temporal Chains or Enfeeble, also Anger, Wrath, and/or Haste
- Buy Pledge of Hands (around 10c early in the league), spend jewelers to get 6 sockets, try to 5 link it, put SRS inside (don't need Spell Echo anymore)
- Buy or find +2 minion gems helm and put Animate Weapon inside it
- Buy well-rolled Victario's Influence (20% aura radius, 15% non-curse aura effect), get 6 sockets and double 3 link and begin using it when acquired double curse (Whispers of Doom on the passive tree) for Blasphemy + Temporal Chains + Enfeeble, and Anger/Wrath/Hatred/Haste + Generosity. Set old Victario's
- From here, get an Advancing Fortress for weapon swap and a Victario's Charity.
- Buy gear for an Animate Guardian
- Farm enough currency to get a 6link chest and transition to something else. :)

I personally bought a 6link ES chest and also a Heretic's Veil for 6ex total to make a more purely Animate Weapon summoner - I just like summoners. This is around the time a "flavor of the month" witch build rises to the top and you can copy it (like an Elementalist). For example, I made at least a hundred exalts in Perandus respecing my Summoner to ZiggyD's Voltaxic Sparker (it did take around 1ex in gear and 50 regrets to get her up and running) and it was by far my most profitable character ever.

Chest - Victario's Influence
The crux of our build, providing both our offensive auras and defensive (curse) auras. I got mine for 2 chaos already with 5 sockets. Then I got another good roll for 4 chaos to sink all my Jeweler's until it eventually 6 sockets. Go for the Aura effectiveness stat if you can.

Everything inside the chest is linked to a level 1 Generosity - we can override that by socketing our own leveled and qualify Generosity gem for better damage auras. Likewise, Blasphemy will get mana reduced by this chest.

We actually use a double 3-link (my only build that does) inside the chest:
-Generosity (level 20) + any two of Hatred, Haste, Wrath, or Anger
-Blasphemy + Enfeeble + Temporal Chains

When you equip the chest for the first time and get it up and running, you should feel a remarkable power increase, to the tune of an entire extra aura or Blasphemy curse.

Victario's will reduce the aura reservation by 20%, making all this possible if you have the Soveriegnty cluster and a Conquerer's Efficiency from the Merciless Golden Hand quest. You will have just a smidgen (2-4%) of mana left.

Sometimes, I change the gems around for map mods. For example, in a Curse Immune map, I turn off my Blasphemies and instead turn on a Haste aura (inside my helm Alpha's Howl - it takes up more mana% but I get the bonus). If monsters have huge cold resistance, I swap Hatred out for Haste. Only do this within reason - I never Chromatic my chest around. If this build gets to 90 (currently 87) I might have a secondary colored chest to swap for very hard red maps.

Note that in order to get the Witch's 20% all elemental resistance bonus from Commander of Darkness, you need an aura affecting you (something outside of Victario's Influence). I use a level 1 Clarity in my gloves (ideally is an unset ring). Another option is Blood Magic Support + a high level Clarity in your helm.

Weapon-Pledge of Hands
While leveling, I just used a Aurumvorax + Shield and my SRS in my +minion level helm. But once you get to maps, you want a Pledge of Hands. I bought mine for 4chaos (?!) because it had a bad spell damage roll. We don't care about that - it only makes Flame Dash dealt some extra damage.

Pledge gives us an automatic level 30 Spell Echo and a huge mana pool (and some block). I manually 5linked mine and was using a 4link one up to yellow maps. It's also super easy to color with Chromatics because SRS loves blue and red sockets! It's easy to use extra blue or red sockets in the staff for utility skills like an Offering, Warcry, or Leap Slam.

Summon Raging Spirit
+ (-automatic level 30 Spell Echo)
+ Minion Damage
+ Melee Splash
+ Melee Physical Damage on Full Life
+ Melee Physical Damage
+ Empower? (I don't have 6 links)
Can also use minion speed, faster attacks, or added fire damage if your socket colors force you to. Note that the mana cost will go up and up with each link, and out crazy cast speed makes it very painful. That's why Multistrike is not very good - it's 180% mana multiplier is too expensive.

An extremely good gem is Culling Strike. The quality bonus gives attack speed and cast speed and the mana multiplier is only 110% which is cheap, and it's powerful against Izaro and Atziri.

You can swap the Melee Splash in and out for boss fights if you want to min max on the fly.

I don't have a +3 to fire gems rare staff. I hear it's nutty and deterministic to craft, but Pledge of Hands is just 4 chaos even in the first week of the league so it wins for me.

Pledge of Hands gives a much needed 100% increased mana pool. We need a level 1 Clarity active if we have chosen Commander of Darkness, leaving 54 mana for one cast of a 5link SRS. You need at least 2000 mana to make this work.

Ways to get mana include bonuses to mana from gear, %increased mana from tree, added intelligence (1 mana per 2 int), and leveling up! Seriously, you will want to reconfigure your mana situation every few level ups.

"Sustaining" SRS is being able to continuously summon them up to the maximum of 50. You'll need strong mana regen bonuses, Clarity, and perhaps a mana flask (and you need to experiment on exactly which mana flask with which prefix Catalysed or Saturated you're better off with). I usually only have 25ish at a time while clearing. If you can cap out 50 SRS very quickly, you might have too much mana and you can respec tree points out of mana into life.

For me, the sweet spot is that I can NOT continuously SRS unless I have my Rallying Cry active, then I can.

Animate Guardian
In the lone 6th socket we put an Animate Guardian. Level the gem up so he has life or he will just die. Trade for these items from 1alc to 1chaos each:
Leer Cast
Dying Breath
Ambu's Charge
Southbound / high resist and life gloves / MAYBE Grip of the Council?!
Rare boots with 100%+ resists and NO movespeed

This makes a tanky guardian the makes our curses and auras stronger from the unique Dying Breath auras

If the Guardian is in trouble, weapon swap and he will disappear to safety, awaiting to be resummoned later. The Guardian is saved between logins, as long as he doesn't die in battle.

Helmet- Alpha's Howl
I play lots of summoners who use lots of Alpha's Howls. The evasion rating is appreciated here and we don't really need more auras here besides a Vaal Haste and maybe a normal Haste if we have to turn off out Blasphemies in a curse immune map.

Vaal Haste + Haste + Increased Duration + Rallying Cry (could have Generosity)

Boots- Rare with movement speed, life, resists
I have armor ones, easier to chromatic for:

Cast When Damage Taken level 1 + Immortal Call + Increased Duration + Bone Offering

Since we have Mistress of Sacrifice from normal Labyrinth we want defensive Bone Offering. I have found it doesn't work to put Desecrate in this setup because Desecrate has lag. In places without corpses (like Izaro or the Harvest boss run) you could try manually Desecrating some corpses into the arena during the cinematic. Note that Convocation doesn't work with SRS.


Gloves- Rare with life, resists
You can craft +10-15% increased minion damage from Catarina over an open prefix here.

Some room in the gloves:
Clarity level 1 (to get the 20% all res bonus from commander of darkness, this is the only aura we affect ourselves with)
Lightning Golem (gives cast speed and team buffs)
Flesh Offering (steroids for minions and us, use this after deploying SRS and move quickly to the next pack)
Flame Dash (movement)

Jewelry- Rares
Life, resists, mana and mana regen, some cast speed if your mana can sustain.

Fiddle with the aura calculator to see if your auras will work before spending too many chromatics and passive points before realizing you broke your build.

https://poe.mikelat.com/#fDd6JMJd/BWlVb.JjUc/tr.

Socket an Animate Guardian in the lone red link in your main or offhand and you'll have the ability to weapon swap to "unsummon" your Animated Guardian if he's about to die. You can resummon him after you weapon swap back. This trick I learned from projectPT and it's saved me tons of chaos orbs trading for new Guardians that almost died.

We use the bread and butter Guardian that's like another Aurabot for our army:



For boots, just get the highest resistance rolls you can find with no movement speed (we want the Guardian to be slow to engage enemies). These are all between 1alchemy and 1chaos already in week 1 of Prophecy, so a guardian is 5alchs ~ 5chaos to reassemble. The Leer Cast and Dying Breath are incredible for damage and also make curses better. The rest just keeps the Guardian alive. Another decent chest is the Zandethus's Cassock.

I have recently been opting to NOT using Southbound because I have Culling Strike in my Advancing Fortress with Shield Charge and Animate Guardian. Culling Strike is really strong in Atlas of Worlds with the huge emphasis on boss-killing. A 3+ Essence mob with regen is often more than a match for your entire army, and killing at 10% is huge.