[3.2] ✮ MrBones Wild Ride Dancing Dervish Melee Skeleton Summoner ✮ [400% Movement Speed]

I don't think EB works for this. You are completely reliant on recharge to get ES back, and as you got MoM and use ES to cast skeletons, your only way to recharge is it to do nothing and don't take any damage for 2 seconds.

If you cannot get a way to restore your ES without gimping your life restore (as with zealots oath), I think your better of dropping EB + MoM and try to get enough mana + regen to be able to spam cast skeletons. Would make it Hc viable as well, as you got 5k health and 2-2.5k ES.

Maybe an heratic's Veil to get mana reservation reduction for your two curses would allow you to run clarity to get your mana regen up a bit.

And is minion instability worth it? You don't have any fire damage scaling, and your minions don't have an insane amount of life. I doubt it will do more then 5k+ damage per explosion.

Edit: I'm not convinced about the curses as well to be honest. You want to stay as far away from bosses as you can as a summoner. I think your curses just won't be in range :s.

"

alygaming wrote:

What about leveling section and some League starter tips (if this build is starter viable)?

Good idea I'll put a leveling section in. But Typically it will be Summon Raging Spirits for normal leveling and a Summon Skeleton totem for bosses till you get Bone Sculptor which allows you to drop Raging Spirits.
Crafting a +1 to Fire Gems Wand/Scepter with SRS + Melee Spash + Minion Damage
Totem + Skeletons + Minion Damage + Melee Physcial Damage till you main spell them
Slightly slower than spark but safer for Hardcore.

It's Starter Viable for sure as it gets most of it stats from Ascendancys and Only noticeable uniques are Queen's Escape or The Dancing Duo which are mid-tier uniques. you can also use The Dancing Dervish if you cant afford a Duo yet works about the same just one less Dervish spawns.

"

Tortunga wrote:

I don't think EB works for this. You are completely reliant on recharge to get ES back, and as you got MoM and use ES to cast skeletons, your only way to recharge is it to do nothing and don't take any damage for 2 seconds.

If you cannot get a way to restore your ES without gimping your life restore (as with zealots oath), I think your better of dropping EB + MoM and try to get enough mana + regen to be able to spam cast skeletons.

Maybe an heratic's Veil to get mana reservation reduction for your two curses would allow you to run clarity to get your mana regen up a bit.

And is minion instability worth it? You don't have any fire damage scaling, and your minions don't have an insane amount of life. I doubt it will do more then 5k+ damage per explosion.

Edit: I'm not convinced about the curses as well to be honest. You want to stay as far away from bosses as you can as a summoner. I think your curses just won't be in range :s.

Nice Questions.

Its much easier and cheaper to use Zealots Oath here is why. Skeletons cost 40-50 Mana Per Cast at 3+ Casts a second is 120-150 Mana a second.
Getting this in pure mana regen requires a lot on rares or in the tree.
lvl22 Stone Golem gives 116 Flat Life Regen and 2.7% from the Tree.
BUT you are right you do Gimp your Life Regen while you have it so I like to use a halfway point which I mention in the build.
The Sorrow of the Divine Unique Flask Grants Zealots Oath for 5-6 Seconds Plus 6% life regen.
While still allowing you to use Health pots and The Writhing Jar so no downside. If you find that annoying taking Zealots Oath instead of Minion Instability in the tree is fine.

True but I predict with the new Occultist Heratic's Veil will increase in price again and dropping +2 to minions and 40% increased minion damage from a Bone Helmet is a hard hit.

Ehhhhh. Minion Instability is fun. I do mention anything with resists make it useless. We specifically avoid elemental damage because of how annoying and costly ele pen is. For one point its completely optional. But I will remove it if I find it detrimental.

I get a lot of questions on mana as its kind of confusing and skeletons are known to be costly so Ill make a section.

Curses are more for mobs on the off chance a boss gets close. I mention staying far back a couple times but I'll Mention it more. :P

Some further questions or stuff to think about:

Do you really need minion speed on your skellies? Your two swords deal enough damage to clear most maps on it's own already, you won't really need the skellies for clearing that much. You can use it as a personal preference, but it has a very high mana cost modifier. Personally I would just change it to something ells.

What's purity of element for? Your minions are resistance capped without it. Is it just for the -resistance maps?

As for the EB + MoM thing, I'm still not convinced it's worth it, even if you do the half thing with the flask. It just looks to much hassle. I changed some stuff around in your tree and gem-set up to get to 86 mana regen, which is enough I think.

- Got 9 points by removing EB, MoM and the aura nodes (you don't need them anymore)
- Changed minion speed to main, dropped the mana cost from 43 to 35.
- Put 3 points in the mana regen + life nodes, and 2 pionts leading to Deep thoughts.
- Put vulnerability to a curse on hit set-up, as you don't really need it for clearing (and I would argue you shouldn't be in range for bosses). I didn't checked if you had space for the gems.
- Equipped level 20 clarity.

Skellies summon 3 skeletons now, so you don't have to spam them really. You got enough regen to support casting it ~2.5 times a second, which sounds enough to me. (Your base mana + the amount you regen over 1 sec is more then enough to cast it 4 times quickly to get 12 skellies up and running).

What you get is a larger effective lifepool, as you are hybrid now and picked up 14% increased life, 4 points to spend elsewhere, and saved a flask spot.

Downside is your vulnerability isn't an aura anymore. (Plusside is you don't have to be close to the boss anymore).

One last question: How does pure physical damage compares to elemental damage with hatred and EE? Is it a lot of difference or it isn't that bad?

And ow try to sneak in a level 1 clarity if you can somehow. Gives your minions 3% attack speed (Not a lot of extra damage but still :p).

"

Curses are more for mobs on the off chance a boss gets close. I mention staying far back a couple times but I'll Mention it more. :P

I would definitely put vulnerability on a curse on hit support then. You could even link punishment to it as well, as long as the boss isn't 24/7 next to you (and so affected by TC the whole time) it provides a pretty nice damage boost to your skellies. (In PoB you got to turn of your TC).

"

Tortunga wrote:

Some further questions or stuff to think about:

Do you really need minion speed on your skellies? Your two swords deal enough damage to clear most maps on it's own already, you won't really need the skellies for clearing that much. You can use it as a personal preference, but it has a very high mana cost modifier. Personally I would just change it to something ells.

What's purity of element for? Your minions are resistance capped without it. Is it just for the -resistance maps?

As for the EB + MoM thing, I'm still not convinced it's worth it, even if you do the half thing with the flask. It just looks to much hassle. I changed some stuff around in your tree and gem-set up to get to 86 mana regen, which is enough I think.

- Got 9 points by removing EB, MoM and the aura nodes (you don't need them anymore)
- Changed minion speed to main, dropped the mana cost from 43 to 35.
- Put 3 points in the mana regen + life nodes, and 2 pionts leading to Deep thoughts.
- Put vulnerability to a curse on hit set-up, as you don't really need it for clearing (and I would argue you shouldn't be in range for bosses). I didn't checked if you had space for the gems.
- Equipped level 20 clarity.

Skellies summon 3 skeletons now, so you don't have to spam them really. You got enough regen to support casting it ~2.5 times a second, which sounds enough to me. (Your base mana + the amount you regen over 1 sec is more then enough to cast it 4 times quickly to get 12 skellies up and running).

What you get is a larger effective lifepool, as you are hybrid now and picked up 14% increased life, 4 points to spend elsewhere, and saved a flask spot.

Downside is your vulnerability isn't an aura anymore. (Plusside is you don't have to be close to the boss anymore).

One last question: How does pure physical damage compares to elemental damage with hatred and EE? Is it a lot of difference or it isn't that bad?

And ow try to sneak in a level 1 clarity if you can somehow. Gives your minions 3% attack speed (Not a lot of extra damage but still :p).

You are going deep I like you.

The Swords do enough damage but they don't tend to clear fast.
Skeletons with just 200% Increased Movement speed are fast clearers and do 5x the damage.
They split up and hunt monsters independently for an even clear.
Plus start the Rampage and give you something to do with your hands.
at 400%+ Movement is Insane they dart around like wasps.

Purity of Elements is for Commander of Darkness. Allows me to take that over Mistress of Sacrifice which doesn't help us much. It also overcaps Minions against ele pen which is their biggest weakness and makes our Build Cheaper to gear.

Haha I get what you're saying but at 42 Mana a cast. (3-4) Casts a Second is (126-168) Mana a second to spam it freely without ever missing a frame. Getting that in Mana regen is more work than 4-5 Points on the tree. It needs it on gear and more than 5 points in the tree plus you lose an aura.
Plus with a large pool of ES you can cast PAST incase while leveling your regen isnt quite there yet. Its a nice safety net as you probably wont cast through youre entire ES pool with a 42 Mana cost spell. you'd already be using Stone Golem as it gives the best stats for us and you have regen in the tree already as well so. With MOM your ES functions basically the same way but now its mana/life.

Self Casting Vulnerability is always a good option I mention it in the leveling section. I Automate it cuz I'm lazy and most boss arenas are small enough anyways. You could Run Discipline instead no problem.

Physical Damage is much less likely to be Mitigated so every point of Damage basically is Raw Damage. With Elemental Damage like Hatred your extra damage can be mitigated up to 75% which you need to account for with EE.
Which means I need a setup to trigger it costing at least a Gem Slot Somewhere which I could use to selfcast Enfeeble/Vulnerability and would also give them Res on that Element which hurts party play. Then it still is 25% Res Left to Mitigate.
Then you'd need to get a Ele Pen Gem which takes a socket and only affects the hatred auras damage so isn't efficient for the damage as a whole.

Clarity Costs 30 Mana at least. I have 10 mana so I'd need to triple my mana in order to run it. Or Grab a reserved mana node. at that point I can grab life or something more important than 3% attack speed :P

EDIT:

"

I would definitely put vulnerability on a curse on hit support then. You could even link punishment to it as well, as long as the boss isn't 24/7 next to you (and so affected by TC the whole time) it provides a pretty nice damage boost to your skellies. (In PoB you got to turn of your TC).

Summoners are strapped for gem slots as is and an on hit set up is 3-4 Links at least. But Self Casting them is an option ill test out more. I'm usually lazy and want to cast as little as possible though. In a tough fight ill already be kiting and casting skeletons. Curses also have 40% Effectiveness on Bosses and 20% on Shaper/Pals so not having them on the boss every second isnt the biggest loss out there for the casual gameplay of doing nothing extra. :P Summoners dont like work.

I'll test running Vulnerability self cast with Discipline/Enfeeble, Temp, and Purity if I can find the slots.

Fair enough.

I would change vulnerability to punishment if you are using it as an aura. The buff they get lasts 4 seconds so I think it's better if vulnerability won't be active all the time. I think the damage they provide are pretty similar.

And yeah I have never used Dancing Dervish so I don't know how fast they clear. Maybe a second sword flying around would be enough. Even then is 44% increased movement speed that noticeable for your skellies when you got 350-360% already?

Anyway thanks for your clarifications was going to play a skelly summoner as a starter, might try to include the Dancing Dervish as it looks pretty fun. I went the elemental/aura way and no EB/MoM as I play hc and want the ES pool for survivability, but might look into pure physical. Don't know how much of a difference it will be.

Ow btw I doubt the writhing jar gives rampage stacks. Wiki says "Enemies that award no experience—including spawned or resurrected monsters, summoned minions, and the lesser creatures that appear after killing a fractured monster—do not count toward the rampage counter."

Maybe use a scourge + shield or queens degree for weapon swapping on bosses.

Umm in POB pure physical is 160-200k damage, if we go elemental it's 400k damage, so are they similar after taking monster elemental resistance into the picture ? why is pure physical better ?

"

Tortunga wrote:

Fair enough.

I would change vulnerability to punishment if you are using it as an aura. The buff they get lasts 4 seconds so I think it's better if vulnerability won't be active all the time. I think the damage they provide are pretty similar.

And yeah I have never used Dancing Dervish so I don't know how fast they clear. Maybe a second sword flying around would be enough. Even then is 44% increased movement speed that noticeable for your skellies when you got 350-360% already?

Anyway thanks for your clarifications was going to play a skelly summoner as a starter, might try to include the Dancing Dervish as it looks pretty fun. I went the elemental/aura way and no EB/MoM as I play hc and want the ES pool for survivability, but might look into pure physical. Don't know how much of a difference it will be.(My first impression would be higher clear speed damage, lower boss damage as I wasn't planning on casting spells for EE while clearing).

Ow btw I doubt the writhing jar gives rampage stacks. Wiki says "Enemies that award no experience—including spawned or resurrected monsters, summoned minions, and the lesser creatures that appear after killing a fractured monster—do not count toward the rampage counter."

Maybe use a scourge + shield or queens degree for weapon swapping on bosses.

Punishment is a strange Curse that only applies on melee hits and I have like 13 Skeletons running around alone that would all need to be hit to trigger it Vulnerability is slightly worse but is more of a catch all. :P Lazy

Two Totally helps and putting some Inc AOE and Swapping blind for damage you could see some clearing but they move in straight cyclone lines from one mob to the other. Mixing them with skeletons is a good combo skeletons dont like getting hit these things blind. These things can only travel straight lines and skeletons like to split up. Match made in heaven. After 400% you might stop noticing a difference but getting as much as possible is Such a QOL you wont be able to go back. They are SOOOOO slow.

You lose some one hit protection but with MOM/EB it still works as life just fine as long as you have above 30% of your max life as total ES but forgetting about Mana for such a small cost is worth it. Also I have a HC section it mentions Swapping To Dust Jewels with Rare Cobalt Jewels with Player Life/Minion Damage. Max roll gives you 62% Life which is near 1k Life extra with a Self cast curse and Discipline giving you 600 Extra ES you have around 9k EHP by 90 with ok gear. Also Enfeeble is way safer skeletons already do tons of damage so swapping out for Enfeeble is recommended. Pure Physical is just more damage but limits your choices for increasing damage. Clear speed Increases Slightly and Boss killing Increases Immensely. With at most a cast of Vulnerability here and there on a rare or boss its much less work.

Mmm I've heard that. Watched someone use it in 3.1 though so I think its a case of nobody uses DD so the wiki isn't up to date or DD is able to keep it going as its also the only one able to Get Rampage off uniques. As I don't remember seeing a change in the patch notes.

Scourge is a Guardian only Unique that tends to be very expensive in HC always and at the start of league pricey in standard. But if against bosses losing 100+ movement speed is ok. But when it comes to Dervish you can easily get (100-200)% Increased minion damage against a boss so in a way its expensive and unneeded.

"

Umm in POB pure physical is 160-200k damage, if we go elemental it's 400k damage, so are they similar after taking monster elemental resistance into the picture ?

Tricky isn't it. Like most things in poe there is always another option. Say the boss has 75% All Res. With no pen you are doing only 100k elemental. Physical doesn't worry about that problem the damage you see is usually what you get.

Physical Damage is point for point pure damage nothing will take it down safe I think a nemisis mod called Armoured, End Charges, and some Grandmasters that have armour. It takes less work to build around and in a summoner that saves valuable gem slots. Having a unified Damage type also means its easy to increase all damage done efficiently. This allows for steady damage increase each upgrade.

Elemental Damage first of all unless you convert it all to elemental is inefficient for increasing damage. That takes Item's or Points on an Already Staved Tree which means less flexibility. Then you also have to worry about Resists which by end game everything has. Elemental Pen is usually not universal so you have to pick a element to invest in. You end up using more modifiers to counter resists and with the inefficient damage scaling it all evens out.

Conclusion:
Elemental is more effort to make work, is costly, and can be Inefficient but has Shock/Ignite/Chill.
Physical is easier to increase efficiently, cheaply and takes less to make work but no status.

When it comes to skeletons which already do 100% Physical it being a minion means there aren't many items to convert it to one element type. I think best you can do is 50% lighting with the Physical to lightning Jewel. Increasing this you have to choose if you want to up the physical or elemental part of the damage so now all modifiers you apply are basically Half as effective you see. Lets say we also have Hatred at 50%. So we have 50% Cold 50% Lightning 50% Physical. Now any modifier you apply is 1/3 as effective on your damage as a whole.

If it was a player though there are lots of items and nodes that convert damage to all types of elements and is much more efficient. So for Minions that do physical its kinda easier to stick with physical.

Witching char might be an exception for keeping rampage going then. I just remembered rampage had that limitation thought it wouldn't work for rampage as well. The weapon switching part is just in case it doesn't work, as the sword just doesn't do anything. Might as well switch to something that at least gives you something, even if it's just some extra ES/Life from a shield.

I might give skeleton speed a go then. Haven't played with 400% movement speed skellies before, I always just resumed them if an enemy was to far. (Or I did the only time I played them, like 1.5 years ago).

Anyway I will stick with Hybrid and no EB/MoM for now :p. I'm just not a fan of it, even if it works perfectly fine. Just personal opinion (And I don't really want to drop To dust gems, they are just to good :s).

As for damage Ele vs phys, I think it's more about how much you value damage vs defences as well. Ele will pull ahead by a fair amount if you can invest in it heavily (Grip of the council is a large reason for this). But physical allows more defences, especially if you curse on hit. No need for a hatred aura.

Anyway I don't mind spending a bit longer on bosses (250k+ dps per skelly is just overkill, 100-150k is more then enough), so I might go physical for the extra defences. And I don't have to do any EE, avatar of fire shennigents.

"

Punishment is a strange Curse that only applies on melee hits and I have like 13 Skeletons running around alone that would all need to be hit to trigger it Vulnerability is slightly worse but is more of a catch all. :P Lazy

Skellies still got to hit the enemy even with vulnerability active :p. I doubt it will matter that much to really care, but if you want to min-max punishment is slightly better.