[3.4] LL Classic Summoner - Shaper/Elder/Guardian Farmer

Technically you can even do that, but you would have to switch spectres to physical ones (Undying Evangelists for example), which is not worth the time if you ask me. however if you found your first T15 and the vaal orb gave it ele reflect, u CAN still do it.

If you prefer Puppet Master over Mistress of Sacrifice go for it, both are definitely viable, Puppet Master will grant you slightly more single target damage but less clearspeed,
personally i will still go for Mistress of Sacrifice. If you really like having A LOT of Zombies that also grant you some physical mitigation Flesh Binder is an option too, take what you prefer. :)

The fire projectile they spit looks a bit like the one Flame Totems use. You use these guys to farm Guardians/Shaper. Their single target damage is absouletely crazy, especially if scaled with our auras. With the multi target setup they can easily clear T16 maps, their range without the 6th link is not that great, but they instakill anything they attack. And with single target setup they melt even shaper. 5link is recommended to farm Shaper.

Map Clear:
Raise Spectre - Minion Damage - Elemental Focus - GMP - Spell Echo (5th) - Faster Projectiles (6th)

Single target:
Raise Spectre - Minion Damage - Elemental Focus - Slower Projectiles - Spell Echo (5th) - Pierce (6th)

Those got added in 3.0, they mostly spam a light fire projectile, which deals very good damage and is excellent for clearing maps. They also occasionally use a delayed beam, which looks awesome and definitely is not a gymmick - it obliterates packs. At the time of me writing this i mostly use this spectre to clear maps up to T15, their clear is about equal to that of Flame Sentinels and Undying Incinerators, their Single Target seems to be a bit better, they feel awesome to use and create less clusterfuck than some other spectres. I also sometimes switch to one of the other Spectres, but for now these are definitely my favourite.

Map Clear:
Raise Spectre - Minion Damage - Spell Echo - GMP - Elemental Focus (5th) - Faster Projectiles (6th)

Single Target:
Raise Spectre - Minion Damage - Spell Echo - Slower Projectiles - Elemental Focus (5th) - Pierce (6th)

They are very good for clearing maps, even on a 4link, they spam their fireballs a lot and do great damage. Just great spectres overall.

Map Clear:
Raise Spectre - Minion Damage - Spell Echo - GMP - Elemental Focus (5th) - Faster Projectiles (6th)

Single target:
Raise Spectre - Minion Damage - Spell Echo - Slower Projectiles - Elemental Focus (5th) - Pierce (6th)

At long range they shoot fireballs like flame sentinels, but at closer range they start throwing magma orbs. The aoe of the magma orb can overlap, so multiple orbs can hit a single enemy in one cast, causing massive damage. They also cast molten shell ocasionally, however i rarely see any of those explode and they don´t need the armour. My problem with them is that sound they produce with their magma orbs. :D
Map Clear:
Raise Spectre - Minion Damage - Spell Echo - GMP - Increased Area of Effect (5th) - Faster Projectiles (6th)

Single target:
Raise Spectre - Minion Damage - Spell Echo - Slower Projectiles - Concentrated Effect (5th) - Pierce (6th)

They shoot Frostbolts, which deal good damage and freeze/chill a lot of enemys. At close range they cast a water wave, which not only looks nice, but also deals good damage. The only problem is the low projectile speed of the frostbolts, if u can not fit in a faster projectiles support gem that can hurt their clearspeed.

Map Clear:
Raise Spectre - Minion Damage - GMP - Spell Echo - Controlled Destruction (5th or 6th) - Faster Projectiles (5th or 6th)

Single target:
Raise Spectre - Minion Damage - GMP - Spell Echo - Controlled Destruction (5th or 6th) - Slower Projectiles (5th or 6th)

I would say their clearspeed is slightly better than the other ones. They shoot fireballs around all the time (very loud ones) and they also throw down firetraps. The drawback is they are squishier than the other spectre choices and they explode on low life, so you might want to use bone offering versus some T15 bosses like daresso where they otherwhise could die in those flying swords (unfortunately they i could not teach them how to walk out of dangerous aoe damage yet)

Map clear:
Raise Spectre - Minion Damage - GMP - Spell Echo - Increased Area of Effect (5th or 6th) - Faster projectiles (5th or 6th)

Single target:
Raise Spectre - Minion Damage - Slower Projectiles - Spell Echo - Concentrated Effect (5th or 6th) - Pierce (5th or 6th)

These Spectres already work very well on a 4link, so if you are playing on budget gear with a 4l Solaris Lorica you can get some flame sentinels from here and farm currency for upgrades - that´s how i do it at the start of a league. It is hard to hit many blue sockets on a solaris lorica, but you can get the colours 2B1R1G on average for 65 chromatic orbs, which let´s you socket Raise Spectre - Minion Damage - Fire Penetration - GMP in it (switch GMP out for Slower Projectiles against strong bosses). The setup is not optimal obviously, but it works for the beginning and it is cheap.

- Use Bone Offering, NOT Flesh Offering. It makes your Spectres able to survive anything Shaper does.

- Cast Desecrate on the Ground a few times before you start the fight.

- Your Zombies will die during the fight, do not worry, that does not matter. Even if you have mana for it, do not waste time resummoning them.

- Do not panic when your spectres take some damage from the beam, they will leech back to full in a blink. Unless shaper uses 4 Beams in a row (which he does not do) everything is fine.

- This is the most important one: Do not be frustrated if you brick a few sets in the beginning. This build has everything you need to take down Shaper, but it does not guarantee a success. You need practice at the fight to be able to reliably farm him. My first shper attempt was done with no portals left, my second run was a brick. after about the 10th i started to feel comfortable doing the fight,since by then i found out the mechanics of the fight and knew other things i will mention below.

- No problem at all, thanks to your high cold resist you do not get melted by too fast, just move out casually.

- After moving out cast Ball Lightning at him so your Spectres keep attacking him. They will take some damage from the Beam, but they will leech back to full anyway.

- You have to dodge those. I´m using a lv. 20 Purity of Ice and one ball deals like ~6k damage to me. just take a step to the side when he fires a salve. he always fires salves of 3, all 3 will fly in the same direction, so one side step per salve is enough.

- Try to cast a ball lightning between the side steps to keep your spectres attacking.

- That is were you use your quicksilver flask. Use it and run around like an idiot, he will miss. He will probaly hit your minons, but again, doesn´t matter.

- Do not run into your minions. I am not 100% sure, but i think it is possible that he targets a minion with the slam. if he does and you run to that minion... well, rip. got baited.

- If your quicksilver is out of charges, hit vaal discipline instead, you will survive the slam that way. If you have no charges left and vaal discipline is not charged either, something went wrong. In that case just log (especially if playing HC), or run around without quicksilver and pray he targets a minion or misses you by an edge. i never had to do this however.
Edit: Vaal Discipline does not let you tank the slam any more, if you are not feeling confident yet running shaper you might want to bring a 2nd quicksilver flask for the fight, you can replace the topaz or ruby flask, since shaper does not deal any lightning/fire damage anyway.

- Nice! Get back some sweet flask charges!

- Go to the portal he opens, call your minions with convocation and let them do the work.

- Cast some Desecrate so you have corspes for later.

- You can walk around a bit and check if there are any blue orbs incoming so you can pop them at the edges of the arena. if you do that however remeber to cast ball lightning every few steps so you minions stay at the monsters. I never lost zana during this phase.

- Go under zana´s shield and cast desecrate once or twice below you, then use bone offering.

- Wait until he starts the actual attack (when the first dark projectiles are fired), then cast convocation, so your minions do not get hit by the full attack.

- Sometimes the spectres derp out of the shield, but that is not a big problem, as long as they do not get hit by the full attack and bone offering is up everything is fine.

- If a blue orb spawns and is going to come to you under the shield try to trigger it at the edge of the shield, without actually leaving it, then move to the opposite edge. If that happens, it sucks, but if you do not panic it is actually manageable.

- This build kills shaper really fast, there will not spawn too many of them, because the fight is shorter.

- Even if one pops in a bad spot, that´s not a big problem. your minions do not really care for those and you can also survive a while in them thanks to your high cold resist.

- Running through the dot fields the orbs leave on the ground when popped is ABSOLUTELY no problem, again thanks to your high cold resist. do not see them as walls, more like... idk, some dog shit, you do not want to stay in it, but if everything behind you explodes you better walk through it and get rid of it later.

http://plays.tv/video/599aba14cc37e6c1b5/my-first-shaper-run-in-harbinger-league-using-5link-for-show-6link-is-not-necessary-?from=user
A few things about this: i am incredibly sorry about the horrible sound in this video, it stutters a lot and is desynced, better just turn it off. Even the video stutters a bit, i can ensure you that is not how it looks when i play the game. Still i uploaded this to show you can reliably farm shaper deathless, as you can see in the end i get the Challange for Shaper, so it was my first run and not my 20th that coincidentally was deathless so i uploaded it. That was the last time i used Plays.tv however.

Not much.
The passive tree got changed slightly, resulting in us having 1 more skill point to spend (This is a buff.)

Vaal Discipline got nerfed (not surprised about that). I think the nerf was justified, from my testing it still serves it´s purpose however. You find yourself in a massive amount of breach/perandus/strongbox monsters? Pop vaal discilpine + your flasks, casually cast convocation and watch them burn.

Vaal Haste also got nerfed. However IF you were using it previously (i personally prefer vaal discipline over it, but completely up to you) you can stick to it. The duration nerf does not really matter, this build scales enough duration and clears fast enough so you can have 100% uptime on it. The speed values on it also got nerfed, but considering the amount of aura effectiveness we are scaling you still want to use it IF you prefer clearspeed over the added safety that vaal discipline provides.

It is now possible to roll up to +3 to level of socketed gems on unset rings, this is a very big deal for this build! it is important to know that purity auras give an other 1% max resist on level 23. to get your purity aura to level 23 you can now place a lvl 20 purity aura into a +3 ring or a lvl 21 aura in a +2 ring. it is not that easy to hit +3 on a ring, but it is doable, i spent about 500 alterations + 200 augments to get 4 +3 rings (and a lot more +2s).
How i rolled them:

GGG recently announced, that Energy Shield will be nerfed in many ways. Values on items (including unique items) will be reduced, Discipline gets changed, Vaal Pact no longer works with Energy Shield, Chaos Inncoulation no longer has a more energy shield-node behind it, Ghost Reaver will have a reduced ES recharge modifier and craftable Mods get changed.

Now what does this mean for this build? I think it will be fine. Honestly i think most Summoner builds will be.

The defense of this character is made of:
- a decent energy shield pool
- very good elemental mitigation thanks to purity auras and decent physical mitigation thanks to chaos golem and flesh binder ascendancy node, both can be enhanced with flasks
- a big meatshield that keeps most projectiles and monster aggro away from us
- good sustain thanks to fast start of energy shield recharge and very high recharge rate, this synergizes very well with the meatshield, because it gives us time to start the recharge

I value each of them about equally high, maybe with a slight emphazis on the resistances.

Now since we do not care for changes to vaal pact, ghost reaver and chaos innoculation, the only point that gets nerfed for us is the energy shield pool, but at the same time our sustain (recharge) gets a huge buff: discipline provides lower energy shield, but gives additional recharge rate, you can no longer craft %ES on rings, but you can craft recharge rate. the additional recharge rate also synergizes with vaal discipline, since it makes your energy shield recharge. I dont think this patch will be a very hard nerf, it might even buff our overall survivability in the end. Especially if we make up for some of the lost energy shield by for example dropping a jewel socket and getting a few more ES nodes. it might also be cheaper to gear this character, since less people will play low life or energy shield in general.

additionally i heard a lot of streamers saying that some "bullshit meachanics" like volatiles will get reworked, so they might have a wind up, instead of being instant. the point of having a high total es pool is that you can survive oneshot mechanics, IF they remove some of those, sustain gets even more value compared to total ES. however i could not find an official comment from GGG about this, so do not take this one for granted!
Edit: Allright, take it for granted, Volatiles got reworked, now being actually fair in my opinion.

anyway, a build which´s defense previously consisted of a high es pool combined with instant leech and nothing else will be pretty much screwed, but this build has more to offer than just a raw ES number. we will see how much the changes will affect this build, but i will play it in 3.0 as my leaguestarter either way and will let you know about my opinion on what should be changed about gear/passive tree, but i can guarantee you if those es changes are all that changes for this build, i will continue having fun farming T15+ maps and shaper with it each league.

Note that i did not test the build in 3.0 yet, as i did not play Beta, the information i present here are gathered from calculations using Path of Building! At the time of me adding this section 3.0 patch notes are already released and taken into consideration. Anyway, let´s get to the changes:


As expected Energy shield values went down, with good end game gear (including Shavronne´s Wrappings with decent roll, The Vertex Vaal Mask, Presence of Chayula and one Energy from Within Jewel) you previously had about 8.2k ES, after 3.0 release you will have about 6.6k ES. Obviously a nerf, but it does not hit that build as hard as it seems. Take a look at the section above this one if you want a more detailed explanation from me.

Due to the nerf to the Commander of Darkness Ascendancy node we lost some damage, while previously all 4 Spectres together dealt about 2.2 Million dps they now deal about 1.8 Million dps. I do not see this as a problem at all, because math. Infinite minus 18% is still infinte. No seriously, i doubt i will even notice the damage loss, i do not mind if i need an extra 5 seconds for shaper and friends. Note that i did these calculations without Flesh Offering since we do not use it against the hardest bosses.

The Basalt flask got nerfed, just like the "Alchemist" cluster in the Passive Tree (Above the "Lord of the Dead"-Node), both are still worth using/picking up in my opinion.

Apparently (could not check that myself yet as i did not play Beta) there is no Story-Zone where you can desecrate Cannibal Fire-Eaters, which might make getting them a bit more annoying. Once i found out i will tell you what my best solution for that problem is, for now my suggestion is to just put Shore Maps (Tier 8) to the side whenever you find them and (if you want to take down some guardians/shaper) start your sessions with one of those, since they seem to almost always contain Fire-Eaters. I am hoping GGG will implement Log-Out persistent spectres soon, since they finally mentioned it is on their to-do-list. (I think they called it their "eventual goal".)

I think it is also worth noting that life numbers of high map bosses were increased significantly, that makes the ability to take down bosses fast (you asked for 1.8 million dps?) and safely (you asked for meathsield/distraction?) even more important.

At the time of me writing this i do not know which new items will get into the game and might be usefull for this build, i also had no chance yet to test the new support gems, even tho some look very interesting and might turn out to be very nice for our minions. From looking at the patch notes i can tell the following:

- The Spectres we use did not get nerfed, we did not use Wickermen or Tukohama´s Vanguards so that nerf does not matter to us.

- The Minion Life Support gem has been buffed, it now works multiplicatively, resulting in tankier zombies and a tankier golem (not like that guy was going to die any time soon).

- The chill effect Arctic Armour applies when we get hit has been buffed from 10% to 30%.

- Our minions will no longer deal or take damage while we are dead. To HC players this will not matter too much obviously, however for SC players this might come in handy sometimes. When you die your auras will be turned off, resulting in your minions being very weak without the resistances your Purities usually provide. This often causes your minions to die shortly after to some elemental AoE damage (Shaper greets), making the situation even more annoying. Not any more however. I guess this adjustment was done in order to nerf/kill the golem elementalist who could kill any boss while dead, but to us this means a little QoL improvement. :)

- Scriptorium Map is now a T9 map (previously T13), so if you plan to farm a lot of Scriptorium at the start of the league (like me) to get yourself a Shav´s this might have gotten a little easier. However they might have tweaked the drop rate of the "The offering" Div card, so i can not tell for sure yet if it will take longer or shorter.

- Summon Raging Spirits have received a little damage buff, which does not matter for the fully functional build as we do not use SRS, however they are nice for leveling and this comes in handy.

If i forgot anything feel free to PM me here or in game or leave a post in the thread, as always i will be very active in the first weeks/months of a league and usually reply very fast.

Edit: Yes, Spectres received an accuracy buff, but that does not matter for us, since our spectres use Spells, which do not need accuracy.

- Do not level with spectres, that would be a very frustrating experience

- zombies are weak until you get some minion life regeneration

- use Summon Raging Spirit as leveling skill, you can use it from level 4 onwards, it will carry you until the point where you can go full spectres (around level 70). i recommend getting a 3linked Reverberation Rod, put Summon Raging Spirit - Minion Damage - Melee Splash in it (you can use the wand from level 24 i think, until then you can place SRS and whatever supports are available at the time in a life sprig or just in whatever links are free. you can switch in multistrike for melee splash against bosses. you can also go with a tabula rasa if you have one, put SRS - Minion Damage - Melee Splash - Spell Echo - Melee Physical Damage - Minion Speed in there, again replacing melee splash with Multistrike for bosses. Tabula makes leveling easier, but Reverberation Rod also makes leveling easy.

- while leveling best is to go life based, meaning while travelling to your minion nodes you should pick up any life nodes you travel by, also try to find some gear with life rolls while leveling (resists also do never hurt)

- do not be afraid to pick up some +30 strength or dexterity nodes in the skill tree if you need more of those stats to wear gear/level gems, you can respec them later, just like the life nodes

- if you already have a higher level character you can buy the gems the build requires from the vendor next to the waypoint in act 10 town and start leveling them with your summoner, once he can. for that purpose it is a good idea to put some 3 socket weapons in your 2nd weapon set (if you press X you swap weapon sets), you will not use those weapons, but the gems in them gain experience!

- for auras while leveling i recommend using purity of elements, it makes your life much easier. Hatred greatly increases your raging spirit´s and zombie´s damage, however if you run both you will want to use an elreon ring to negate your SRS´ mana cost, you can buy one with -8 to mana cost of skills for 1C on poetrade. if you do not want to use elreon + hatred you can use clarity instead.

- Bones of Ullr got a low level rquirement, you can use those from level 22, 4linking them is not a waste of fusings, since you will keep using them in the late game, making them a good place to put a 4link zombie setup in. Raise Zombie - Minion Damage - Minion Life - Melee Physical Damage is what i usually go with for leveling.

- with your first 2 ascendancy nodes pick up Commander of Darkness, it grants very good damage and those 20% all resist are really nice while leveling (and necessary when starting maps)

- once you got your merciless ascendancy points (pick up Flesh Binder and Soul Weaver) and are about lvl 70 you can do the respec. spec out of life nodes, replace your life gear with the energy shield/low life gear (replace Shavronne´s with Solaris Lorica if you can not afford it yet) and get your aura setup running (do not forget to put in one Conqueror´s Efficiency Jewel somewhere at the tree!). if this is your first energy shield character it will feel very weird in the beginning, since you can not rely on life pots and do not have a large ES pool yet. stay behind your minions and play defensively until you got used to it (and maybe some gear upgrades).
Edit: Getting a vaal discipline will greatly increase your survivabillity!

- on the solaris lorica try to get a 4link with the colours Blue, Blue, Red, Green. Link Raise Spectre - Minion Damage - Fire Penetration - Greater Multiple Projectiles in it. For (harder) bosses switch in slower projectiles for GMP. you hit those colours on the solaris lorica on average every 29 chromes. the setup is very squishy at this point without crystal belt, shav´s and presence of chayula, but also very cheap and - if played safely - able to farm up to red maps until you can get gear upgrades. last league i farmed T13 Scriptorium maps with it for the Shavronne´s wrappings, that is not necessary any more, since shav´s got much cheaper. (energy shield is dead, you know? i´ll tell you something: shaper didn´t notice.)




you do not necessarily have to do everything i mentioned, you can level without any of the uniques, you can level with energy shield gear and just dont pick up life and you could level as a completely different build (firestorm for example), but the things i described make the leveling process much more enjoyable (for me at least) and safe. i know that a lot of people do not like to do respecs, but i really recommend just picking up those life nodes, as ES is really weak while leveling and you get a lot of respec points just by doing the quests. and even if you had to spend a few regrets later ("few" means about 5, not 50.), that would be worth it, considering you needed 4 less hours for leveling and had 20 deaths less.

Controlled Destruction would indeed provide more single target damage, but that would require you to run a 5Blue 1Green setup in your chest, so you can not use Faster Projectiles in your Map Clear setup. In my opinion Faster Projectiles grants way too much clearspeed to be dropped in order to perform an absolute overkill on the single target damage - that is just my opinion of course, if you want that overkill, go for it! :D

I do not recommend going for enchants at all, since it is hard to find a good enchant on a good gear piece - and if you find one, prices can get rediculous - and they do not even provide that great of a buff. Before you read what enchants i would recommend if you want to go for them anyway, let me tell that it is not worth picking up a bad item with a good enchant - do not use that 40% increased Spectre Damage helmet with 100 ES.

Glove Enchants:
Most of them are useless for this build, if you wanted to fit the Summoner theme you could go for the "of the Grave" Enchant, it spawns Icy Skull Minions, which deal a little extra damage. Make sure there is no Enchant on your Gloves that deals fire damage (like the "Inferno" enchant for example), it would proc your Elemental Equilibrium and grant the enemies fire resistance, which you obviously do not want.

Boot Enchant:
"Increased Movement Speed if not hit recently" is very nice here, anything that gives you dodge chance or smth like that is not useless either i guess. Note that none of the enchants applies to your minions, only to you, so there is no use in for example the Elemental Penetration enchant!
Again make sure not to have an enchant that makes you deal fire damage.

Helmet enchant:
If you can pick up a good helmet with a nice enchant, go for it, but as i said i do not think they are worth spending big amounts of money on them.
There is a large Variety of Enchants that are usefull for the build, however i think going for enchants that provide even more damage (inc. spectre damage for example) are complete overkill, and not even that much of a bonus, as we already have a large amount of increased minion damage, adding an other 40% is not a big deal. Because of that enchants i would recommend are

Convocation Cooldown Recovery Speed (yes, im serious, i actually think that is the best enchant, as it greatly lowers Convocation´s Cooldown, granting a bigger clear speed increase than any spectre damage enchant could ever do, while also increasing survivabillity)

Enfeeble Curse Effectiveness

reduced mana reserved for a Purity or Anger (it will free up a jewel slot, as you do not need Conqueror´s Efficiency any more and you have more mana to spend, which is not necessary, but nice if you are one of the poeple that keep spamming ball lightning. :P )

any Bone Offering or Flesh Offering enchant

increased chaos golem buff effect

desecrate creates X additional corpses.


Of course you can go for that Spectre damage/Spectre Cast Speed/Elemental weakness effectiveness or even Zombie damage enchant, but as i said i think they are overkill and do not even grant that much of a bonus.

You need to fit in one Conqueror´s Efficiency jewel, you get it from a quest or you can buy it for an alch on poetrade, it grants 2% reduced mana reserved and will push your mana to an amount where you can cast your spells. I do mention the jewel in the guide, but i lately get that question a lot, so i probably did not point that out well enough.