Void Manipulation,Poison and Zombie

If the meme is to go for ''chaos'' minions then this

is also an option,granted - no aura,but you get the poison as unofficial 7th link to whatever minions you have,and the possible chance to upgrade the weapon in future. If the non-upgraded version is an option (costs between 20-60 chaos depending on time of the day and supply) added chaos damage support might be a better option than void manipulation.

So if the current set-up is:
Summon Zombies + Summon Chaos Golem + Minion Dmg + Melee Phys Damage + Poison + Minion Life.

It might end up looking something like:
Summon Zombies + Summon Chaos Golem + Minion Dmg + Melee Phys Damage + Added Chaos Dmg + Void Manipulation.

Basically the problem is that the poison gem is eating up a very,very valuable gem slot since minions need whatever little bit of extra damage they can get in whatever way you want to build them.
Up until now it was generally not worth it simply because there is basically no real way to properly make a poison summoner without sacrificing a whole heap of damage due to slot being taken up by a poison support,with Severed in Sleep and United in Dream it no longer is an issue since your minions have that extra 7th ''link'' no matter what,so now you have all 5 (4 in this case) extra slots to be used for scaling.

The only issue that i can see in this,is that there might be an issue with stacking the poison up to a point where it's actually worth the investment,zombies are slow,so is the chaos golem. It might work,in fact it will,but your friend will have to sacrifice damage for minion defenses in order for them to live long enough to stack the poison up.
The general approach,and one i am trying to an extent,as dual totems summoner just because...i can - is SRS,simply because those little buggers can still dish out serious raw damage,and actually do it so quickly that poison can actually be a very effective way of killing.

As for your friend - sadly he has picked up quite expensive build type to minmax,it's doable but it will either take a while to find the gear,or will get quite expensive no matter what. Not mention that minions as they are even in most basic sense,are quite tricky to figure out how to scale best for optimal result,and since chaos minions is a rather new(ish) thing,there is really no proper data other than few people having success with builds of different variations,and some basic spreadsheets.

"

Daiena wrote:

If the meme is to go for ''chaos'' minions then this

is also an option,granted - no aura,but you get the poison as unofficial 7th link to whatever minions you have,and the possible chance to upgrade the weapon in future. If the non-upgraded version is an option (costs between 20-60 chaos depending on time of the day and supply) added chaos damage support might be a better option than void manipulation.

So if the current set-up is:
Summon Zombies + Summon Chaos Golem + Minion Dmg + Melee Phys Damage + Poison + Minion Life.

It might end up looking something like:
Summon Zombies + Summon Chaos Golem + Minion Dmg + Melee Phys Damage + Added Chaos Dmg + Void Manipulation.

Basically the problem is that the poison gem is eating up a very,very valuable gem slot since minions need whatever little bit of extra damage they can get in whatever way you want to build them.
Up until now it was generally not worth it simply because there is basically no real way to properly make a poison summoner without sacrificing a whole heap of damage due to slot being taken up by a poison support,with Severed in Sleep and United in Dream it no longer is an issue since your minions have that extra 7th ''link'' no matter what,so now you have all 5 (4 in this case) extra slots to be used for scaling.

this actually is not really as large an issue because most physical minions dont have many good damage gems in the first place.

for example let us assume you have a 7l with united in dream .. well what exactly is your 7th? for poison you basically have faster attacks , and void manipulation neither of which are particularly efficient on physical minions

the core damage of zombies and chaos golems is effectively done at a 5l with empower melee physical minion damage and multi strike/conc effect

"

The only issue that i can see in this,is that there might be an issue with stacking the poison up to a point where it's actually worth the investment,zombies are slow,so is the chaos golem. It might work,in fact it will,but your friend will have to sacrifice damage for minion defenses in order for them to live long enough to stack the poison up.
The general approach,and one i am trying to an extent,as dual totems summoner just because...i can - is SRS,simply because those little buggers can still dish out serious raw damage,and actually do it so quickly that poison can actually be a very effective way of killing.

well... about them being slow...

+250% ms zombies say hi

As i said,it does work,but zombies and golems (mostly zombies) are not exactly expandable to a point where you can use them as handcannons during a boss fight or large pack fights and refresh them as you please.

Imho the whole summoning thing is messed up,one can argue over it for ages,what we need is an actual way to see the damage in-game (hopefully 2.6 or 3.0 will address this)

My point is: it works,but it's nowhere near optimal. And when you reach t15/16/shaper,every bit of damage matters.

Ah,I forgot about Empower,thanks for reminder Saltychipmunk <ok>

And yepp,my pal also uses Queen's Escape for turbo moving minions,he just loves the sword,and how tiny girl with a huge sword,almost as big as she,looks in game.
About damage,and poison...well,I trolled him by gifting Primordial Pool,and telling him it's very easy map.With his current setup he managed to clear it entirely (gave him white map) at lv 67-68,with a bit messed passive tree.Before he even finished act 3,or got merciless ascendancy points.
Yet he started to complain that his zombies started to dying,and thanks to you Saltychip I'd have a perfect solution for that - Empower.

That's his 2nd character in PoE as he is completely new to the game,so I wanted to design something working,and not requiring anything expensive - well except Tabula Rasa +1 all gems,but that lucky bastard got it for free.A dude who gifted it to Zbyszko_Ognistoreki,if you read this BIG THANKS for you;you made a newcomer so happy :)

Also that's build is a testbed for one I'm designing for myself,but I have stuff like United in Dreams,and got lucky Vis Mortis drop.

About efficiency of summoner builds - well there are plenty of vids on youtube where pure necromancers kill Shaper,well maybe not based on zombies + skeletons.That's enough recommendation for me,and till he gets to Shaper,or Guardians even he will learn complexity of PoE,and what dangers await there;for that goal the poisoning minions build is sufficient.

That's true,summoners are and should be the most user-friendly to begin playing the game with,the only issue is the little amount of feedback and quite unclear scaling methods,especially when it comes to unorthodox approaches.
Clear speeds might not be the most amazing,but they are the most efficient. Be it zombies,golems or raging spirits - let them loose,and they will dig up every mob within view range and kill it.

When you have the chayula sword, is this...

... a good necromantic aegis shield?

not really . pure chaos damage scaling wont really double dip with physical minions and even then it wont compare to victario's charity which gives charges to all minions

and charges on minions are absurdly powerful

Gonna rise the tread up,as I have another question.
Assuming I have uniques:

and allocated Necromantic Aegis which aura would be better - Haste or Envy?

I would use haste since envy scales better with things that have small hits and hit often (srs/animate weapon) rather than the big clunky zombie hits. That said, I am planning a combo build of Zombiesrs which will try to use both auras

realistically envy isnt even that good with srs . the only minion it is a really good dps boost to is animate weapon because of the 250% more multi weapons have for added damage.


in many cases i view haste and envy as bonus auras that should not be considered core.

but yeah if you can runs it . haste. envy is junk.