Marinxar's "Behold my army" build. Very easy and cheap for new players.

Hi

I decided to play around with some of the new summoning skills, and was very surprised at the effectiveness. So decided to share this for those who wants to get to literally stampede through and farm lower tier maps very easily and without breaking the bank. With some currency invested, Im easing it through yellow maps. Still room to improve. Easy to get the "Behold my army" achievement as is.


Pros :

Very easy and quick to maps.
Sturdy. You only die if you play pac-man with Avarius's orbs.
Very cheap. You can play to maps with probably a few alcs or maybe a chaos or two. Rest pickup gear.

Cons :

Slow movement speed. Can sacrifice the +1 Specter and +1 Zombie for speed though if you want.
You have very little control over the wave of destruction spewed fourth from your hand. So not a easy build to hunt beasts with.
Not the fastest map clear speed, but still decent. This is inherent of all summoner builds.
Not for people who like to control everything. You run and tag enemies, your army then spreads out and do their thing. You just run after the angry mob, pick up loot and tag more enemies when your mob tins out.
When you get to 80-100 allies the game starts behaving little weird.

Play Strategy :

The way I use this build is, run and tag, basically. Convocation on CwdT helps keep the pace up of the slower minions as you go along, as they will be summoned to your position every time you engage a group. So all you need now is your point of contact to maximize your splash area and dominate as much of each group as possible.

Skill setups :

Helm : Dominating Blow / Melee splash / Increased duration / Fortify support
Body : Raize Zombie / Summon phantasm on kill / Minion res support / minion dmg support / minion life. When you get 6-link, you can shift things around. To speed up my maps I added multistrike and melee phys dmg.
Boots : Raise specters / minion life / minion dmg / minion res
Gloves : Cast when dmg taken / Convocation / Phase run.
Weapon : Summon stone golem / minion life support / Vaal Summon Skeletons
Shield : Shield Charge / Auras


Recommended uniques :

Ornament of the East. This one is quite important, or if you find another weapon with "hits can't be evaded". Reason is, this saves you a lot of points you would have spend on accuracy and attack speed in the passive tree, which we now use for survivability. Actual dmg is not important, since your army does all the dps.
Bones of Ullr . Can be beast crafted under unique boots. Quite a good % chance.
skullhead . Can buy one for cheap from poe.trade
Violent Dead. Free quest reward.

Specters :

I'm using 3 Chieftains with "Frenzy allies" mod, from Ashen Fields or Springs T3 map. There is Something poetic about the chaos of having 50+ minions with 3 frenzy charges.

Flasks :

Life / Granite / Amethyst / Jade / Quicksiler or Stibnite depending on play.

Auras :

Haste / Grace / Vitality . This really depends on your play style and requirements. I use Haste more often than not, but in poison maps etc I will switch to Vitality, etc etc.
Clarity. We use very little mana, aside from the initial summoning of the zombies.


The build :

https://poeplanner.com/AAwAAP8ADDMAAHzfiukC_rNXK72CbRki9GwLyT2_l_IefRhr2-yKLJwreB_HTLMEB4PbVcY6WKyY99fMvEQEEJdNuREtfIPr7jLRRUeIQKaskDMqmPqA2QsabDbpJKoWb-NqwGYEs6IA8B9o8q9sC2HGrprgRZ1TUq4-Z5vkUVBH7w4UIF8_PC2DX8T2r6cczitQDc3-VIPMtz7-Cti98kU64aZXQYf56Gh02mIYVoLHHb4zhwPu0_sTbAZJaqzQH-_rqsSFYKh9WpEI9GpDGj7yLwxfHKdTpXy4KS7xrFcN85toZdIh8kGCB0V-Dlxq-jGe7IPTj0eFOQubir5PFSeMsQAAAAAA


On request I made a video of running a map. Never done this before, so was quite nervous. Keep in mind, with this I spend some currency on gear and QL gems in order to run T5 and T6 maps. Please give feedback. Map mod was probably also bad, as the slowing zombie goo slowed my roll, but still managed average army size though unable to maintain it.

https://youtu.be/cM-HfUu9aoQ

Special thanks to Narnach ( Watch his stuff on Youtube. Awesome content ) for helping me iron out a few kinks.

Updated after some more tweaking.

Before considering this build for the listing, there are a few details that I believe need ironing out. Dominating Blow doesn't see a lot of play for mechanical reasons, and I would like to have those reasons resolved through your own thoughts or example.

Specifically, dominating blow requires that you, personally, hit an enemy shortly before it dies, it becomes a raised ally for a duration. With an '80-100 allies' clearing party with frenzy charges, I wonder how many monsters you actually reach to auto attack. I believe you are hitting some of them obviously since you aren't reaching 80 minions otherwise. Would just like to see that in mid-tier maps, and how it starts without any dominated minions and only your entourage to start with.

Your own character gear or stats would be nice, as currently all we have is a poeplanner and a level 93 tree. We have no evidence that you have played the build. That is a significant oversight, but some additional work on the guide will resolve this.

As I mentioned before, a video would be amazing. It sounds interesting, and I'm sure it would be beneficial to a lot of players considering playing your build if they could see it in action.

64 Dexterity is light, where and how are you meeting your gear and skill gem requirements?

You clearly have mana reserved for auras, and as a summoner you rightfully should have auras to support them... yet no mention of auras in your skill gem links?

Still a WIP, but msg me when it gets closer to complete and I'll consider it again for the listing.

Cheers

"

Kwitch wrote:

Before considering this build for the listing, there are a few details that I believe need ironing out. Dominating Blow doesn't see a lot of play for mechanical reasons, and I would like to have those reasons resolved through your own thoughts or example.

Specifically, dominating blow requires that you, personally, hit an enemy shortly before it dies, it becomes a raised ally for a duration. With an '80-100 allies' clearing party with frenzy charges, I wonder how many monsters you actually reach to auto attack. I believe you are hitting some of them obviously since you aren't reaching 80 minions otherwise. Would just like to see that in mid-tier maps, and how it starts without any dominated minions and only your entourage to start with.

Your own character gear or stats would be nice, as currently all we have is a poeplanner and a level 93 tree. We have no evidence that you have played the build. That is a significant oversight, but some additional work on the guide will resolve this.

As I mentioned before, a video would be amazing. It sounds interesting, and I'm sure it would be beneficial to a lot of players considering playing your build if they could see it in action.

64 Dexterity is light, where and how are you meeting your gear and skill gem requirements?

You clearly have mana reserved for auras, and as a summoner you rightfully should have auras to support them... yet no mention of auras in your skill gem links?

Still a WIP, but msg me when it gets closer to complete and I'll consider it again for the listing.

Cheers

Thank you for taking the time to compile this. Appreciate it.

I will fill in the details as you requested. No problem. Since this is a first attempt at contributing to your list, there was bound to be some oversights.

almost no build goes through without some consideration from me, but most are surface level, such as these. It's a pretty decent guide, good work on it.

i could make suggestions, like finding a way to move around faster, shield charge perhaps. convocation could also be nice, and punishment / haste seem like personal choice curses etc. But i mean, it's dominating blow, the fun here outweighs efficiency.

"

Kwitch wrote:

almost no build goes through without some consideration from me, but most are surface level, such as these. It's a pretty decent guide, good work on it.

Thank you.

When I do next one, I will have learned how to properly link the gear etc :) Always learning and improving.

"

Kwitch wrote:

almost no build goes through without some consideration from me, but most are surface level, such as these. It's a pretty decent guide, good work on it.

i could make suggestions, like finding a way to move around faster, shield charge perhaps. convocation could also be nice, and punishment / haste seem like personal choice curses etc. But i mean, it's dominating blow, the fun here outweighs efficiency.

Ah yes of course....I forgot about Shield Charge since my build was initially build with 2 handed weapon. That will definitely improve clearing speed.