{3.10} Speaker for the Dead | The Mass Minion Summoner | League Starter, Leveling Guide 💀
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" " " @ April_Spades: Thanks! @ Paxlolz: You can do either or both. In my Poor Man's 11k ES Hybrid variant, I am swapping between a L21 and L1 Ball Lightning when doing reflect or unID maps. The reason for this is because I took the Soul Thief notable passive. It's 100 less ES than Foresight but gives 0.3% ES Leech. I took it to see how well it would perform, giving a bit more ES regen while mapping. A L21 Ball Lightning also triggers the Power Charge mod on Victario's Charity more often. Nonetheless, doing all this means I have to pay attention before I go into a map, so it's a little less relaxed. @ IchiMorghulis:
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" " You got your wish! Pyroclastic Mine looks really cool, so many explosions from the mortars. The delay of throwing and detonating feels pretty vulnerable on first contact, like Contagion and Essence Drain. For my GC miner, Artune, I would just have to hold down my GC button while tapping the detonate button and the auto-targeting of the mines would wipe out everything around me. Auto-Skeletons and Zombies would help protect you against that first contact delay by attracting monster attention, and Dash would ideally allow your Skeletons to jump right on top of spread-out monsters so you don't have to worry about aiming your Dark Pact mines. While Dark Pact will be great for bosses, I do worry about its clear speed. If it is slow, you could try swapping in Soulrend Mines for its greater projectile range and seeking behavior. The High-Impact Mine Support looks like the best option for Skeletons, giving both them and Dark Pact a chance to deal Double Damage. Blastchain Mine Support will be better for Soulrend Mines that won't be close to the targets they are hitting. Skitterbots will give a Shock and Chill aura, so that's pretty cool. Hypothermia will be a good support against bosses in that case. Smoke Mine will be a teleport skill with movement speed afterwards, so pretty nice. We can detonate mines in mid-air now, too. Link CWDT with Detonate Mines and you could also throw it before opening something like a Strongbox. The moment you take damage you'll be teleported out.  Machina Mitts are really cool. With 20% regen from leech and Flesh and Stone's blind aura, we pretty much have all the unique elements from the current Saboteur ascendancy. You could be a miner with potentially any ascendancy if this holds true after the rework. I hope the Necromancer rework addresses her poor recovery in some way, too, so that The Baron helm isn't our only practical option. " Great! What made it different for you, compared to your previous leveling? Last edited by Hercanic#3982 on Aug 29, 2019, 2:27:21 PM
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@ everyone:
Many of the reworks have been leaked! These may be fake or undergo changes before release, so I'll discuss them in a spoiler for those who really want to know right now. When GGG makes their official announcement, I'll make this public as well. EDIT: Necromancer has been officially revealed! Only difference is Bone Armor is actually L20, not L1. "Bone Armour is a Guard skill like Steelskin that also applies to your minions." - Natalia_GGG  8 nodes! From left to right:
We lost all minion-specific nodes. No Soul Weaver for 100% increased Spectre life, so I hope the Spectre gem makes up for this. No Zombie clouds, so only the new unique belt will bring that back. No guaranteed Skeleton accuracy. No Convocation cooldown reduction or 2% minion regen. Necromancer is now clearly oriented toward corpses. Four nodes require corpses in some fashion. So here's what I'm thinking for Ascendancy order: ES Hybrid variant = Mistress of Sacrifice -> Mindless Aggression -> Bone Barrier -> Unnatural Strength. Acrobatics variant = Mindless Aggression -> Unnatural Strength -> (Bone Barrier or Plaguebringer) -> (Plaguebinger/Commander of Darkness or Corpse Pact) Corpse Pact and Plaguebringer offer great damage and mitigation, but we must spawn and consume corpses. This will require a change to the build. The simplest would be CWDT + Unearth + Offering, but that means many bonuses won't be in effect until we're hit. Triggered corpses may not count as "Corpses you Spawn". So we'd need to make room for manually casting Desecrate every four seconds. That doesn't sound fun. Commander of Darkness would be an alternative to Plaguebringer, but it's weak when not stacking auras. Not optimal for us. So this is why I'm leaning toward Hybrid ES, as it gains the most without any headaches.
Passive Tree Leaks
 
Last edited by Hercanic#3982 on Aug 30, 2019, 6:18:03 PM
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Oh man, I haven't theorycrafted this hard pre-league since, well, ever actually. Feels good to go back to my roots and play minions again. First successful character I made was an SRS necromancer. (and by successful I mean she didn't get absolutely slaughtered by rare devourers in act 2) I've got all sorts of ideas though, so this'll be fun!
My first thought is that Carrion Golem could be really good. Looks to be able to keep up with other minions, while doing respectable damage and having a pretty juicy AoE. The fact that it adds flat phys damage to all other minions is awesome, as we can scale that up with Hatred. How much that buff will add up to remains to be seen. We'd have to drop a skill for it though, and I'd personally get rid of Herald of Agony. We would no longer have to keep up poison stacks, and could even drop Ball Lightning altogether. We would lose the ability to easily apply curses to the entire screen via Mark of Submission + Ball Lightning + GMP, but it eases up gearing and allows our main skill, Zombies, and Carrion Golem to take whatever sockets they fit best in. My current idea is to drop Charged Dash for Cyclone and put it in our weapon (preferably a claw due to high base APS and life gain on hit), supported by Fortify, Maim, and Chance to Bleed. One of those last two has to come from the weapon itself. Maim is a shaper mod, bleed is an elder mod, so we can use either one. We can also use that skill to apply curses either with Mark of Submission or a curse-on-hit elder/shaper ring. The LGoH from the claw will keep us alive easily in packs of monsters, but won't do much during boss fights. The stun/knockback immunity while Cycloning is nice too. Makes for pretty smooth clear. This leaves our glove slot open, as we no longer need poison and chance to bleed supports from it. Could go the conversion route with the new Triad Grip gloves, or just use it to make gearing way easier. Zombies and Carrion Golems can be placed in our glove slot, or if the golems deal enough damage, they could get the slot all to themselves and zombies could be somewhere else. It depends on how the new support gems work out. (We have more space now that Fortify is in our main link instead of on shield charge, so we could drop that skill entirely and zombies could be placed in our shield with 2 support gems dedicated to making them tough as hell. Meatshield + Minion Life, maybe? Or pick one and have space to throw in Flame Dash?) If Carrion Golems are self-sufficient, (they can survive and provide buffs without needing any gem links) they could stay in one socket and open up space for something else. Flesh and Stone + Maim would give us a stronger maim for bossfights, and a solid defensive aura for mapping. Purity of Elements would help cap our minion's elemental resists and make gearing even easier. If we invest 4 passive points into picking up some reduced mana reservation and move the golem into an unset ring, we can even do both! Keeping Hatred linked to generosity, socketing Flesh and Stone/Maim/Purity of Elements/Enlighten LVL3 into our gloves, and taking Sovereignty on the passive tree would leave 5% of our mana unreserved. This also means we don't need Cyclone to maim, so we either have an extra socket or can use whatever 1-handed weapon we want. My other, significantly less reliable idea, is to jump ship from necro and build a stupid tanky Mana Guardian bosskiller instead. With a lot of power being moved from the Necromancer Ascendancy and into the skills themselves, non-necromancer summoners are looking like potential hidden gems. |
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@April_Spades
Let me know how you end up with your non-Poison/HoAg variant. Would love to try it as well since poison lagg is what keeps me playing this build now. Tried another necro build which went much smoother for my PC/CPU. I am also keen on trying a cyclone guardian summoner aurabot :D |
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" I've tried to put these changes roughly in the Hybrid build POB by adding a jewel with all those bonuses. What stands out:
Spoiler
- Seriously overcapped on resistance, making the rest of the gearing a bit more flexible - More damage for HoA because of the extra levels. Skeletons bit less damage as they lose the "hits can not be evaded". I am considering the same passives as you had for the hybrid build. For the dodge build, would it make sense to add desecrate on the CwC setup? Or would that make it so that we don't have enough poison stacks? All in all a serious rework but nothing build destroying for any necro build? |
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@ everyone:
Atlas rework revealed!  Source @ April_Spades, Rakio, and NeoLearner:
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" " " I am starting to feel optimistic about Zombie survival: +2 to Minion Gems, 20% more Minion Life, 38% minion life on gem itself (which seems to act as a More multiplier back when I casually tested with Golems and Animated Guardian, but I could have made a mistake back then). They may in fact be a worthwhile full replacement for the Crawler. Not only would this free up another support for Zombies, but with Shaper or Elder mods they can easily become 7L+ on a 3L when we don't have to worry about mana reservation. There might not be enough of these 4-support mod weapons to go around, though, so that's one caveat. But what really has me hopeful is the Feeding Frenzy gem turning them aggressive. Alternatively, Meat Shield can make them tankier. If Zombies don't hold up, though, the Carrion Golem may be even better. Shaper claws can have: [Prefix] Added Fire Damage [Prefix] Elemental Damage with Attacks [Suffix] Melee Splash [Suffix] Faster Attacks [Suffix] Increased Critical Strikes [Suffix] Maim [Suffix] Enemies have 20% reduced Evasion if you have Hit them Recently Elder claws can have: [Prefix] Melee Physical Damage [Prefix] Brutality (don't want this, cancels out Hatred) [Prefix] Ruthless [Suffix] Multistrike [Suffix] Increased Critical Damage [Suffix] Poison [Suffix] 35-50 Life gained for each Blinded Enemy Hit by this Weapon (Cyclone + Flesh and Stone) +1, +2 ascendancy, +2 to supports (crafted), L4 Empower (boosted to L7 by +1 and +2 to supports), and L21 gem = L30 Zombies * 1.38 * 1.2 life. My 20k life zombies were only L26. A quick estimate results in 2.43 more life, or 48.5k total life. We're also getting +50% minion movement speed with another 20% from Onslaught. Plus whatever bonus Feeding Frenzy gives. Strike skills, including Zombie and Skeleton attacks, with Melee Splash will deal exponential damage against Blight's lane monsters when they stop and stack up to fight our minions. So that'll be a huge plus to making Zombies aggressive. If we use the Triad Grip gloves, since we needn't use poison gloves any longer, we can convert all our physical damage to elemental. Cyclone, CwC, Ball Lightning, GMP = 2G2B = 50% cold, 50% lightning. Phantasms with Elemental Proliferation would not only freeze better but shock as well, increasing the damage of all minions. For our curse we could use Elemental Weakness. Ball Lightning could still be used for EE with Avatar of Fire (but for a Hybrid variant using the Glorious Vanity jewel this may not be practical). Since we don't need to worry about maintaining Virulence, the only reason to use a rapid-hitting spell is for LGoSH, ES on Hit (Watcher's Eye), and triggering Frenzy Charge generation. We could use Firestorm, Winter Orb with Avatar of Fire, Storm Brand with Avatar of Fire (if using Triad Grip), Armageddon Brand, or just straight up use only Cyclone with a bit of added Fire or Lightning damage and Fortify + 54 Life Gain on Hit Support + Area Support in gloves with Faster Attacks and Additional Accuracy. That'd be around 800-1000 life per second per target. Or trade LGoH Support for Raging Spirits, because MORE MINIONS, who would gain benefit from Fortify, Faster Attacks, Additional Accuracy, would last 8.5sec and cast every 0.35 sec to reach 20 spirits within 7 seconds, and plugging all that in gives me 23k Shaper DPS per minion or 460k for all 20. In other words, things become a lot more flexible here. With our freed up mana we could run Discipline (for Hybrid and ES on Hit Watcher's Eye), Flesh and Stone (blind aura), Precision (minion accuracy), and/or Skitterbots (Chill & Shock auras). " Virulence will be very hard to maintain above 30 against a boss if you cut Ball Lightning in half (can't remember if CwC skips skills on cooldown or if it wastes a cast -- if it does skip then this could work). At that point it's probably better to just axe the Crawler for another minion. Unless you use the Golden Rule jewel to double poison applications. Or you could use Aukuna's Will gloves, slotting in Poison Support, causing Zombies to count as corpses and be much easier to resummon. Once we have all the numbers in, I can make more conclusive decisions. " We'll probably be dropping Bloodlust one way or another, so inflicting bleed will no longer be necessary. The damage on the new minion supports are unknown, but Multistrike alone will be worth 58% more damage. Dropping Bloodlust for one of those will give us more flexibility with our gloves. " Just to point out: Projectile Weakness is not an option for those rings. Elder = Poacher, Warlord Shaper = Assassin Last edited by Hercanic#3982 on Aug 30, 2019, 5:01:52 PM
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@ everyone:
Necromancer Ascendancy has been officially revealed!   Source You can read more about my analysis and effects of the rework on Speaker a few posts above here. The L20 Bone Armour skill is essentially Steelskin that also applies to minions. Now we know what the small nodes are, and they're what we'd expect. ES Hybrid variant = Mistress of Sacrifice -> Mindless Aggression -> Bone Barrier -> Unnatural Strength. This will grant the following: MINIONS +2 to level of all Minion Skills 90% increased Minion Damage (30+15+15+15+15) 10% increased Minion Attack/Cast Speed (1.1 level * 1.1 level * 1.18 damage * 1.05 speed = 50% more Minion Damage) 30% increased Minion Life (10+10+10) 20% more Minion Life ~2209 damage absorption (estimated L20 Bone Armor) (1.1 level * 1.1 level * 1.15 life * 1.2 mlife = 67% more Minion Life) 30% increased Minion Movement Speed 70% increased Minion Duration (30+30+10) (20sec * 1.7 = 34sec Vaal Skeletons; 17sec Phantasms) SUMMONER 10% Physical Damage Reduction 30% to all Elemental Resistances 30% Recovery Rate of Life and Energy Shield ~2209 damage absorption (estimated L20 Bone Armor) 40% Skill Effect Duration (30+10) Spirit Offering (L8) also affects You 7.5%-13.5% of Life as Extra Energy Shield Heals ~750-1500 ES per CWDT trigger (0.25sec cooldown) 18% to all Elemental Resistances 17% of Physical Damage as Extra Chaos Damage 7.7 to 10.5 second Duration (= 5.5 to 7.5 * 1.4) This is all very much a buff from what we had before. Now the question is: does any other Ascendancy beat these benefits for us? Last edited by Hercanic#3982 on Aug 31, 2019, 7:01:09 AM
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Another Ascendancy besides Necro?
Makes little sense if GGG goes that way... Thanks for your thoughts on removing the HoAg. Looks reasonable to me. I do want to try out the buffed zombies and skeletons. Having an army of them is awesome. The Big DPS spectre build I have been trying, uses Armageddon brand and it works out well (other uses though). |
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While it's much harder to gear (due to lack of resists) I wonder how Aukuna's Will plus Plague Bringer and Corpse Pact would do.
The Zombies will have a huge amount of life (+150%), 10% more damage done and 10% reduced damage done aura around each Zombie (good coverage) plus would each Zombie summoned with Aukuna's Will count for the purpose of auto shock and auto chill aura? Would the aura's stack? Basically pathing to Unnatural strength and Corpse Pact. Last edited by Max_zero#4553 on Aug 30, 2019, 9:05:15 PM
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ABOUT - Why did you direct me here?
Blight 3.8 brings with it significant changes to summoners, which necessitate key changes to the build from its original Delve 3.4 to Legion 3.7 run. The guide grew fairly comprehensive over these past 11 months. Any change must not only be reflected in the main guide, but also the leveling guide, FAQ, videos, endgame boss guides, trade & craft guide, minion and mechanic explanations, etc. Leaving any of these out will cause readers to become confused when they come across conflicting or outdated information.
This patch is the single greatest change to the build since its creation. Two days from patch notes to league launch is not feasible for me to rewrite such a significant amount of content, especially when so much is still unknown about the performance of these new features. In order to avoid as much confusion as possible, I have instead directed everyone to this one post, where I will be covering all the major changes as if it were a fresh build guide. There is plenty of valuable information in the main guide, so it's still worth a look. The core build can even still be played with a few tweaks. My aim, however, is to take full advantage of new features to bring you the best possible build, and that will require bigger changes. So just keep that in mind when looking over the original guide until I am able to fully remodel it. This post will become a template for the eventual rewrite, so I hope you can bear with me until then.
CHANGES - Key differences from Original Build
We have dropped Acrobatics and Belly of the Beast in favor of Energy Shield nodes and gear. This allows us to take catastrophic hits that we couldn't have otherwise survived before, but this also creates a new problem: lack of ES recovery.
To solve this, we use the Mistress of Sacrifice ascendancy combined with L1 CWDT (Level 1 Cast When Damage Taken Support) to trigger a L1 Desecrate and a L8 Spirit Offering. Mistress causes our Offerings to affect us, and the key component of Spirit Offering for us is it grants 3% of Life as Extra Energy Shield per consumed corpse, up to 15% for 5 corpses. We can achieve ~2000 flat life, ~200% life, and ~200% ES. So Spirit Offering works out to grant us (2000 * 0.15 * 5 =) 1500 ES. This not only increases our total ES, but also heals our ES for the same amount. Meaning we gain 1500 ES back every time Spirit Offering triggers. When we take at least 528 damage, CWDT fires off Desecrate, creating 5 corpses, followed by Spirit Offering, which consumes those corpses (gem order in item = trigger order, so make sure Desecrate comes first). This can happen up to 4 times per second, or 6000 ES per second. Needless to say, this is fantastic protection, which is why we are scaling both Life and ES on our passive tree and gear now. (Unearth will be replaced with Desecrate after 3.8 released) It is not invulnerable, however. Rapid hits can overcome CWDT's 0.25sec cooldown, and big hits can't trigger more than one cast of Spirit Offering despite being well over 528 damage. So how do we solve those? First, we use Cyclone instead of Charged Dash. It grants phasing, stun immunity, knockback immunity, and keeps us mobile. This allows us to control how surrounded we are, so as not to be overwhelmed by rapid hits. Most monsters have a delay in their attack animation before they actually deal their damage, which means if you are no longer at the spot they were aiming you'll completely avoid their attack. Mobility is supreme. Second, with 6k life and 3k+ ES, we have at least 9k eHP. With Spirit Offering up, this becomes 10-11k eHP. We can survive a surprising amount of things that would one-shot a 7k life build, giving us time to pull back, chug a flask, and let recovery rate enter the equation. We now also have Bone Armour, a free L20 Steelskin from the Bone Barrier ascendancy, that we can pop on during these dangerous moments. Cyclone is a channeled skill, which allows us to cast a spell every 0.35 seconds with CwC (Cast While Channeling Support). We use Ball Lighting because it can hit a target 7 times or more per second. Through these rapid hits, we can recover life and ES with two particular items: a Shaper-influenced ring with 15 Life per Spell Hit and a Watcher's Eye jewel that grants 30 ES per Hit while affected by the Discipline aura. With both these items we can recover 105 life and 210 ES per Ball Lightning per target hit. We launch nearly three balls per second, becoming 300 Life and 600 ES per second per target. Shoot those into a pack of 10 or 20 monsters? That's 3000-6000 Life and 6000-12000 ES back in a second. Needless to say, unless you take a big hit, your Life and ES won't even appear to move even while Spirit Offering is rapidly firing off. Ball Lightning also performs other duties for us. Its rapid hits ensure Victario's Charity is generating max Frenzy Charges for our minions in less than a second, and its Lightning Damage is also perfect for applying Elemental Equilibrium. This keystone causes targets to have -50% Cold Resistance, -50% Fire Resistance, and +25% Lightning Resistance when we hit them with Lightning Damage. Because our minions only deal Cold Damage through Hatred and Fire Damage through Added Fire Damage, we don't have to worry about Lightning Damage being buffed. We have dropped Herald of Agony. Ball Lightning was also our way of rapidly Poisoning to build up Virulence stacks. While the Agony Crawler is massively powerful, clocking in at 1-1.5M DPS for us and being a beast while clearing, it comes at some high costs. Namely the rest of our mana, after Hatred has taken its half. This meant we couldn't use Discipline or the ES on Hit Watcher's Eye without something absurdly expensive like an Aul's Uprising amulet to make Hatred reserve no mana. While the Watcher's Eye can also be a tad expensive, it isn't anywhere near how rare and in-demand the amulet is. We have dropped Shield Charge. With our switch from Charged Dash to Cyclone, we lacked a teleport. So we're using Flame Dash, despite having virtually no cast speed. Patch 3.7 made movement skills instant on first use, followed by an animation we can skip through. Most movement skills now work great without any supports, unlike before. You can also try Leap Slam if you don't like the charge system of Flame Dash. We have dropped Mark of Submission and Projectile Weakness. Its main benefit was the Pierce it gave the Agony Crawler. Since we are no longer using Herald of Agony, we don't have as much use for the pierce beyond our Spectres. Phantasms already pierce, though the damage buff was nice for clear speed. Knockback may prove very powerful against Blight lanes, so there is cause for possibly bringing this curse back into play. We have dropped Vile Toxins and Bloodlust. We needed room for the new support gems on Skeletons. By dropping Herald of Agony, we no longer Poison. By moving Cyclone to our boots and dropping Chance to Bleed, we open up our glove slot for something like Grip of the Council. Overall, it makes Skeleton damage less conditional and uncomplicates a key part of the build. We now have many competitive damage supports to take their place, too.
GEM LINKS & GEAR
Skeletons (in helm with +3, Minion Damage affix, and optionally Minion Life but this takes up your Life prefix) + Feeding Frenzy (for Dash) -> Deathmark (if the Dash isn't useful enough) + Melee Physical Damage + Minion Damage (until you upgrade your helm to have it built-in) -> Multistrike (if no sources of Knockback) / Fortify / Melee Splash (potentially very powerful against congested Blight lanes) / Deathmark Spectres (in ES chest) + Summon Phantasms (since we get 4 Spectres without gear investment now, you can achieve similar base DPS without Phantasms, and Phantasms will fall behind once Soul Eater comes into play, but then again dropping 11 minions goes against the theme of the build so it's a tough choice; if you want to go pure Spectres, I recommend using Goatman Fire-raisers with the Fearsome Force passive cluster to take full advantage of AOE overlap damage.) -> Spell Echo + Minion Damage + Controlled Destruction -> Elemental Proliferation (might be very strong against Blight lanes) -> Elemental Army (if pure Spectres) + Greater Multiple Projectiles + Faster Projectiles -> Elemental Focus (if pure Spectres and wanting damage over clear speed) Zombies (in weapon, ideally a claw, with +1, Maim, and any other built-in supports; alternatively, use Spiders from Arakaali's Fang, or focus Zombies on defense and use a Scourge claw) + Feeding Frenzy / Meat Shield (depends how these feel with Cyclone) -> Herald of Agony (original build, beware of mana reservation with regard to having too many built-in supports) -> Carrion Golem + Empower Hatred (in shield) + Generosity Flame Dash For any aura or minion skill in your weapon slots that you don't want to deactivate every time you weapon swap, just place another of the same skill gem in the same socket number of your second weapon set. Cyclone (in boots with Fortify affix) + Cast While Channeling + Ball Lightning -> Summon Raging Spirit (~500k DPS but harder to generate Frenzy Charges; you will also need to add some Lightning Damage to your attack to trigger EE, such as a ring mod/craft or jewel) + Fortify (until you trade in your boots for ones with Fortify built in) -> Poison/Lesser Poison (if using Herald of Agony) -> Greater Multiple Projectiles (easier aiming, greater coverage) -> Infused Channeling (8% less phys damage taken) -> Minion Damage/Melee Splash/Combustion (if using Raging Spirits) -> really whatever you want. Cast When Damage Taken (L1) + Desecrate (make sure this comes before Spirit Offering, so it triggers first) + Spirit Offering + Purifying Flames (6% regen and 100% crit chance) -> Convocation -> Immortal Call (might interfere with Bone Armour) -> Curse -> whatever you want. Discipline (if using Watcher's Eye with ES on Hit) -> Skitterbots (20% more damage) -> Flesh and Stone (Blind aura) -> Projectile Weakness (in Mark of Submission ring if using Herald of Agony) -> Animated Guardian (in Hungry Loop ring with Minion Life, Meat Shield, Fortify, and Empower/Combustion/Culling Strike/etc; equip him as detailed in the FAQ) Ring itself is just a junk ring from when I was trying out using only Cyclone without Ball Lightning, so I needed Lightning Damage added to Attacks to trigger Elemental Equilibrium. Holy Relic -> Chaos Golem (for 5% phys reduction) -> Carrion Golem -> Stone Golem -> Convocation -> manual curse -> whatever you want. Precision was just to simulate upcoming minion accuracy buff. Nothing special here. Life, resistances, and some DEX will be good. Room to craft +1 Minimum Endurance Charges on all your jewelry is ideal for another 12% phys reduction, stacking with the 10% from Bone Barrier and any other sources. For jewels, you want:
Then try to get as much Life, ES, and Minion Attack/Cast Speed as possible on your jewels.
LEVELING
I have given the Path of Building pastebin a full suite of passive trees for each stage of leveling:
 The original leveling guide should work mostly the same, aside from the passive tree and Ascendancy order (1. Mistress of Sacrifice -> 2. Mindless Aggression -> 3. Bone Barrier -> 4. Unnatural Strength). We also want to use the new Feeding Frenzy on Zombies and Skeletons, but don't gain access to it until level 31 after Act 3's "A Fixture of Fate" quest.
LEVELING GEAR & EARLY GEM LINKS - An example from my own leveling
I wouldn't stress too much about leveling gear. We're extremely flexible and gear-independent. Just cap your resists, stack movement speed and life, and get to maps quickly. As long as you have all the linked sockets possible, even if they're white items, you're golden.
Here's the gear and gem links I used for each Act: ACT 1 You're just going to go for anything with linked sockets. Use whatever fits the colors, don't bother trying to use Chromatic Orbs. Got a green socket on Zombie link? Use Lesser Poison, Added Cold Damage, or Onslaught. Just use whatever's available and make due. Don't worry, Act 1 is easy with just a few minions and a few supports. Take a look at the original leveling guide for more information. ACT 2 Leveling is going swell. Skitterbots do in fact run up to enemies, exactly what I hoped, but had feared they'd only interact with mines. If you're not doing Discipline/Watcher's Eye, then definitely use Skitterbots. It's 20% more damage for all our minions and all our Blight towers, with only 35% reservation compared to, say, Zealotry's 50%. Its only downside is its small area, so it gives an incentive to invest in Minion AOE. During a Blight, I like to build mostly Minion Towers. Holy Relic heals the minions and Smite gives them added Lightning. Skitterbots increase the damage monsters take. So it works out well. Don't forget to use your crafting bench to add resistances to your gear! ACT 3 When you arrive in Sarn for the first time, you must immediately do one thing: head to the arena and dominate.  After a few dozen deathless kills, everyone ran away. I don't know why my new friends left so quickly. I had hoped to add them to my collection... ACT 4 Static Strike is great, everything falls over while I waltz past. Feeding Frenzy on Zombies is a little hard to tell the difference unless I sit still or just casually run around. On Skeletons, though, that Dash is very awesome. Seeing them zip everywhere is very satisfying. Build is completing every single Blight encounter without issue. ACT 5 Once high minion movement speed comes into play, Feeding Frenzy becomes crazy-good. Carrion Golem is doing quite well for himself. I am considering using my anointment for Golem Commander for the time being. ACT 6 GGG's forum seems to be having trouble linking items. Last post I couldn't even post my chest armour without it throwing back an error. Same error again with the body armour. It's a different chest, so it might be from the skill gems in the armour: Raise Spectre, Phantasms, Volley, Minion Damage. In any case, damage is so insane that I am just running through areas and everything falls down. Mini-bosses fall down. Bosses fall down. Phased bosses instantly phase. It's a good time to be a summoner, that's for sure! ACT 7 Looks like the bug is fixed; I can post the body armour finally. ACT 8 So if you noticed from the previous Act, I had Spirit Offering and Desecrate in the wrong order. The colors wouldn't line up on a pure DEX item, so I just let it be. As a result, the protection of Mistress of Sacrifice and Spirit Offering was unreliable. In the end, I just grabbed a white melee weapon with the right linked color order from a vendor, slammed an Essence of Fear on it, and called it a day. Now it's working as it should, regularly triggering and giving a fantastic 500 ES when I only have 2000 life. I'm kind of in the same situation with the shield. I like the movement speed implicit, but I really want 3R. This is because Static Strike with Life on Hit Support is incredibly strong. Like, Delve Darkness runner strong. I am still using Volley with my Flame Sentinels despite having access to GMP. The reason is due to how Volley keeps the fireballs close together even at a distance so when they explode they are more likely to overlap. Flame Sentinels also have extra projectiles, so it works out. Feeding Frenzy continues to be amazing. I fear GGG will hit summoners with nerfs next league as a result. =o( ACT 9 Volley is great in Blood Aqueducts. Keeps all projectiles flying straight down the corridors. Frost Sentinels received a visual update, becoming a soft white instead of a glowing blue. Much easier on the eyes. The ghostly shader of Spectres themselves were also updated to be much, much softer on the eyes. It's a great improvement. I should swap Static Strike to Cyclone + Fortify + Life Gain on Hit Support (1G2R). It'd be far better defensively. My corrupted amulet can't be anointed, which is expected but also a little disappointing. I should probably try to get a different amulet. Diamond Skin or a DEX notable are both cheap. The DEX would save me a passive point. Since I don't have gems, I skipped all jewel sockets. ACT 10 Not too much time to play, so I'm still leveling... ACT 1 0. We take the shorter outer path and skip the minor minion nodes due to their inefficiency when compared to all the new minion clusters we could take. The first few levels go by very quickly in PoE, so they're not even worthwhile as a temporary measure. 1. Practical Applications - Gives Strength so we can continue leveling Smite/Ancestral Call. You can skip this if you solve your stat requirements another way, like an amulet. 2. Arcane Will - Solves early mana problems. 3. Lord of the Dead - First boon to minions. More Zombies and Skeletons. ACT 2 4. Death Attunement - Second boon to minions. More Zombies and Skeletons. Temporarily take the 1% life regen after it to solve early attrition damage when outside of combat, where Holy Relic doesn't cut it. 5. Alacrity & Physique - Replaces Practical Application. Take both if you need even more stats. Skip if you solve it another way. ACT 3 6. Ravenous Horde - Minion movement speed. 7. Written in Blood - Early life, a bit more STR. Skip until later if you want to pursue damage first. ACT 4 8. Heart and Soul - Life and mana. 9. Spiritual Aid - You now benefit from minion damage. Gives regen to summoner and minions, so the 1% regen near Death Attunement can be removed. ACT 5 10. Redemption - Minion movement speed. 11. Purity of Flesh - Life and STR. 12. Jewel socket - First socket. Take earlier or skip depending on what you have for jewels. We get a jewel reward in Act 2, and two more jewel rewards in Act 5. ACT 6 13. Quick Recovery - Life, life regen, mana regen. 14. Retribution - Damage and STR. ACT 7 15. Discipline and Training - High life. 16. Sacrifice - Life regen. Minion life regen and ele res. 17. Spiritual Command - You now benefit from minion attack speed. 18. Sanctity - Life regen, ES, STR. ACT 8 19. Gravepact - Minion accuracy, double damage chance. 20. Jewel socket - Skip if no jewels. ACT 9 21. Constitution - High life, lots of STR from travel nodes. ACT 10 22. Devotion - Life and STR. Drop Physique, you probably don't need it anymore. Drop Arcane Will, mana should be fine by this point. 23. Melding - Life and ES. T5 Maps 24. Complete Heart and Soul cluster. 26. Jewel socket. 27. Jewel socket. T10 Maps 28. Wicked Ward - It's right there for 1 point. May or may not be useful. Once ES recharge starts we can continue to take damage and not lose the regen. Good for countering degen ground effects. 29. Elemental Equilibrium - You can go for this earlier. I held off since leveling gear can be a wash and worrying about added elemental damage is a pain. By this point your gear should have come together and so this'll be less of a concern. 30. Indomitable Army - Our minions will start to need more tankiness in higher level maps, as well as Uber Lab. 31. Foresight - It's time for more ES. 32. Arcane Focus - More ES. T15 Maps 33. Grave Intentions - Unholy Might. 34. Jewel socket. 35. Constitution cluster - Start earlier if you need more life. Endgame 36. Finish Constitution cluster. Final 37. Jewel socket or Unnatural Calm. 38. Complete Purity of Flesh cluster.
3.8 INFO - Chronological reactions and analysis
3.8 PoB Pastebin: https://pastebin.com/esibGJaW Includes multiple leveling trees through all Acts, maps, and endgame. Ascendancy order
Bandits - Kill All, we want passive points. Pantheon
 ES Hybrid, originally an experimental variant in 3.7, is now the official version of Speaker for the Dead. In this new version, you can:
Gem data has not been added to PoB, so not everything will be accurate until after 3.8 releases. Notably, I plan to use Feeding Frenzy on Skeletons and possibly Zombies (or Meat Shield). Precision is used to represent the upcoming accuracy buff for all minions. Jewels are just what I used in 3.7 on a very low budget. Yours can be much better. Minion Elemental Resistances are now covered on the tree, so the resist jewels are no longer needed. All you want are Life, ES, and minion damage/speed. You want one source of Minion Taunt and Minion Blind, but do not need to stack it. If you do not have good jewels, skip the sockets. You can direct those points toward completing the Life and ES clusters sooner. If you want more damage, take the Fearsome Force, Aligned Spirits, and/or Enduring Bond clusters. FAQ General questions can be found in the original FAQ.
Ingame donations
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" " In all honestly, I would really appreciate that. I'm not attached to my personal progress, and working up to endgame means less time rewriting the guide and capturing endgame video of the build in its reasonably ideal form. For anyone who wishes to donate, lend, or assist in any way, whether in Blight League or Standard League, please first send me a PM and we can make arrangements from there. I tend to get a lot of random ingame Friend Requests from fans of the build, so I have no idea who is who. Depending on how many offers come up, I'll update this post with any specifics on ideal gear and such. As an aside, in all this time, I've only had one person donate something, completely out of the blue, which prompted me to create the new Special Thanks category in the Cenotaph.
Melee Splash - Overcome trouble/crashing in Blight maps
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" " If you are crashing in Blighted maps, and if it's because of too many monsters/minions, then the best solution would be to clear faster. Easier said than done, right? Well, there's a trick: use MELEE SPLASH on Skeletons and Zombies! Their Default Attacks are considered Strikes. These Strike Attacks have a small, shaped AOE built in that matches the physical path of their swing. Meaning everything a Skeleton's sword passes over as it swings down will actually be hit. And Melee Splash triggers on EVERYTHING HIT by a Strike. Meaning a tight cluster of 10 monsters all hit by a Skeleton's strike will deal 59% Splash damage to each of their neighbors, and in turn take 59% Splash damage from the other 9 monsters. 9 * 59% = 531% more damage. A cluster of 20 monsters? 19 * 59% = 1,121% more damage. In other words, damage becomes EXPONENTIAL the more monsters there are! This is perfect for clearing faster and faster the more monsters pop out! So try Melee Splash to see if it'll help your crashing problem.
Unending Hunger is super expensive right now!
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" " I'm honestly kicking myself for not grabbing one when I saw them for 8 chaos on Day 1. Oh well. Luckily this build is not a pure Spectre build, so we don't depend on something like Unending Hunger. We can just wait it out and continue to play normally until the price drops.
Differences between each Spectre?
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" " Frost Sentinel - Twice the range of most Spectres, allowing them to react much sooner. You know how long-range the Solar Guard beam is? That's how far the Frost Sentinel can target with its Ice Spears, with no charge-up or cooldown like the Solar Guard's beam. Has extra projectiles + better range = larger cone of coverage. Cold damage = chill, freeze, and more damage from Hatred. Goatman Fire-raiser - Higher base damage than Solar Guards, but 50% reduced cast speed. Soul Eater gives 5% increased cast speed per soul, so the Reduced will be completely countered by the Increase with only 10 souls. Their Fireballs have a larger base radius than Solar Guard fireballs, too. Meaning AOE overlaps more, so a group of monsters or a boss against a wall are more likely to be hit by multiple Fireballs from the same cast. Also has a Magma Orb ability that it uses against medium-ranged targets. Like the normal Magma Orb, this can also hit a target multiple times. In 3.8, the new Fearsome Force gives minions 36% increased area. More area = more AOE overlap, making Fire-raisers very competitive for compounding damage. Solar Guard - Solid and standard in many Spectre builds for many leagues. Its once-OP beam has been nerfed several times, though. Originally, it would charge up its beam and with Spell Echo the beam would rapidly fire three times without further charging. Then GGG fixed it so it only fired twice. Then they fixed it again so it had to charge up again when firing the second time. In the end, its beam became a liability due to how long the charge-up time takes out of it throwing Fireballs. Host Chieftain (Power) / Carnage Chieftain (Frenzy) - Charges have triple effect on monsters, and minions count as monsters, so this makes Victario's Charity, which can grant charges to minions, very powerful for summoners. These Spectres can also generate charges, so if you're playing SSF and can't get the shield then this is a good alternative for our free bonus Spectres while still having 2 Frost Sentinels and 10-11 Phantasms for clear.
Convoking Wands?
" It's tempting for sure, but we get a lot out of Cyclone. You could totally make it work, using a channeled spell like Wither, Blight, Scorching Ray, or Winter Orb with Avatar of Fire. Or just manually cast Ball Lighting with Unleash. The main thing, though, is we really want to keep on the move as much as possible. " Monsters scale up by ~5% damage and ~6.5% life per level. Minions are considered monsters. Most minions are Monster Level 70 with a L20 gem, and gain two monster levels per gem level. Meaning they gain roughly 10% more damage per gem level. 3.8 might have made some changes to scaling, but we don't know yet. Charges have triple effect on monsters, because, unlike players, monsters don't have any ways to get more than 3 of each charge. Minions count as monsters. Three Frenzy Charges give our minions 45% increased attack/cast speed, 15% increased movement speed, and 12% more damage. Three Power Charges give our minions 600% crit change, with a base crit chance of 5% (= 35% chance to crit with Power Charges) and a base crit multiplier of 1.3 (30%). +1 wand = ~10% more damage, ~13% more life, +addition minions at certain breakpoints. 3 Frenzy charges = 12% more damage, 45% attack/cast speed (= ~23% more damage), and 15% movespeed. With other minion mods on the wand, like Minion Damage and Attack/Cast speed, it should be competitive. You do lose out on 70 life, 9% block (24% vs 15% dual wield bonus), 20% aura radius, and ele/chaos resistances of the shield, though. The issue will come down to how rare these wands are, and how expensive they are to roll well. " Someone asked this earlier. If you are not using Herald of Agony, and thus don't need to poison, then you only need to:
Carrion Golem?
Alright, let's calculate the Carrion Golem's true DPS. Here's what we know:
Info from Rory_GGG
" (3D model) 372 base damage (= flat damage is very effective for them) 0.9 sec attack delay / 1.11 attack speed 80% more damage with 10 nearby minions (60 unit radius) Leap Slam Attack = 4sec cooldown, cannot Multistrike 670 (180%) damage, 0.9 sec attack delay 1206 damage with 10 nearby minions Bone Cascade Attack = 4sec cooldown, can Multistrike 242 (65%) damage, 1 sec attack delay (10% less attack speed), hits 1-5 times (up to 1210 damage) with multiple small AOEs 436 damage with 10 nearby minions = 2178 damage @ 5 hits Combo Attack = No cooldown, Multistrike plays through the first three combo attacks, then the final three, causing no visual difference but makes the combo play out faster and with more damage on the second and third hits (= Multistrike is really good). 1. 502 (135%) damage, 0.9 attack delay, wide cone AOE 2. 502 (135%) damage, 0.9 attack delay, wide cone AOE 3. 603 (162%) damage, 0.3 attack delay (200% more attack speed), smaller rectangle AOE = 1607 damage in 2.1 seconds 4. 603 (162%) damage, 0.3 attack delay (200% more attack speed), smaller rectangle AOE 5. 603 (162%) damage, 0.3 attack delay (200% more attack speed), smaller rectangle AOE 6. 603 (162%) damage, 0.3 attack delay (200% more attack speed), smaller rectangle AOE = 1809 damage in 0.9 seconds All six combo strikes = 3416 damage in 3 seconds = 1139 DPS = 2049 DPS with 10 nearby minions For comparison, a L20 Zombie deals 1059 base damage, 1.18 attack delay (0.85 attack speed), or 900 DPS. A L20 Skeleton deals 1338 base damage, 0.8 attack delay (1.25 attack speed), or 1673 DPS. Individually, the Carrion Golem is 128% stronger than a Zombie (or put another way, counts as 2.28 Zombies) and 23% stronger than a Skeleton, not counting its inherent AOE for clear speed. As a skill, however, both Zombies and Skeletons easily have 10-11 minions, meaning their boss DPS can inflate by a factor of 10+, or 9k and 17k respectively. One Carrion Golem is therefore only 23% of Zombie single-target DPS, meaning they're beat out by most support gems when sharing a link. You need at least 2 Golems for them to be competitive (46%). To replace Zombies, you need at least 4 Carrion Golems (92%). EDIT: According to PoB, the base damage of a L20 Carrion Golem is 250-375, or 313 average. Did the value change since Rory's post, did Rory make an error, or is PoB wrong? In any case, that would lower the Carrion Golem's damage calculations by 0.84, meaning their Combo Attack would deal 1721 DPS. It would then only be 91% stronger than a Zombie, and 19.1% of Zombie single-target DPS. To be a competitive link with Zombies, you'd need 3 Carrion Golems (57%). To replace Zombies, you'd need 5 Carrion Golems (96%). EDIT2: Gaardean has made the astute observation that 0.84 aligns with the 84% damage listed in poeDB. It's very probable that Rory overlooked or forgot to mention this modifier when quoting the base damage value for the Carrion Golem. This would mean both Rory and PoB are right, with Rory being technically correct, the best kind of correct. WHAT ABOUT THE DAMAGE BUFF? The flat physical damage buff from the Carrion Golem provides 34 average damage @L20, or 41 @L23. If we were to also spend 4 passive points for Golem Commander, the 70% increased buff effect would boost the L23 amount to 70 damage. With this much investment, it becomes worth 6.6% more damage for L20 Zombies who have 1059 base damage. Or 3.2% @L20 with no investment. But if we also increase our Zombie level to 23, their base damage becomes 1425. This drops the value of the buff down to 4.9% more damage. If we push our Zombies to level 30, the value of the buff drops further to 2.5%. Without the Golem Commander cluster, it drops to 1.5%. You'll get the best return from minions with low base damage. L20 Phantasms have 763 base damage. They also have a hidden 50% more Added Damage multiplier. For them, 70 flat phys is worth 13.7% more damage. Or 6.7% more for 34 flat damage. L23 Raging Spirits have 324 base damage. 70 flat * 0.85 less Added Damage = 18% more damage. Last edited by Hercanic#3982 on Dec 15, 2019, 10:46:34 PM
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