{3.10} Speaker for the Dead | The Mass Minion Summoner | League Starter, Leveling Guide 💀

Tried it out interesting build.

However the guide is a chore to get through, it would be better if you chop it down to a smaller 2/3 pages guide instead of a book.

There is a lot of bloated information that distracts heavily from this guide.

Took this build all the way to Lv90, a word, or words of thought down below.

-Even somehow you reach the advertised 7k life, because of the lack of extensive mitigation and/or recovery, IT that Fled in any red map will still bop you without any issue.

-With that said, this build does rather well with core game such as elder/shaper, you do enough damage with your skeleton and spectres and the screen is cleaner than betrayal encounters so you can dodge the biggie hits.

-Zombies die, a lot.

-I switched from frost sentinel to solar guards, and plan to switch elemental prolif. to spell echo, feels much better. Feels free to play around with the spectres in the incursion temples.

-A big thing to consider with this build: gem sorting is a pain in the butt, especially when you're levelling up your spectres and don't have 100% atlas progression.

-Another thing to consider is this build has a relatively high budget, be ready to whip out your credit card for a new graphics card. (Mine poped multiple times.)

My self is not considering this build anywhere else. I'll swap out my belt for bisco's leash and make it my map farmer. It's a blast to play with. This is a truly unique build with all the clever gem choices, and the owner of the build is a rather nice person as well.

Curious how much you guys are spending on +1socket weap w/ maim as whenever I search for them I cant even find 1..

also unset shaper w/ spell leech prefix, doesn't really seem to exist as 12-15/hit w/ life roll.. are you guys self crafting these? or just settling for lower rolls. Nearing the end of my character, just need to get these 2 pieces and get more 21 gems / empower. Build is really great just annoying to respawn spectres. Switching to GMP ball lightning & +1 spectres did not do justice to my FPS either..

btw heads up, vaal skele/hatred/generosity 21 are all very cheap upgrades.

Any thoughts on minion instability? Seeing as how we got dying zombies and skellies, would that be a good node to take? If not why? And if so, should one grab more minion life nodes?

@ HarunaYukinoshita:

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HarunaYukinoshita wrote:

So i managed to bring down uber elder, and surprisingly easier than i would think.
Simply put, moving with charge dash is straight up better than moving with shield charge. Vectoring your charge dashed against line/cone projectile and skipping them with the blink iframe is actually strong.
I changed my jewels according to what you say. The lone solar guard manage to survived, but one of the frost sentinel managed to died to shaper's beam, i guess the spectre AI wasn't good nor foolproof.
I'll try to do more run to get used to circling, some of my deathes were because of the physical void from the madness propagators and getting chilled in the wrong places. And i also failed to dodge all the volatile anomalies.

I highly recommand everyone to try this fight because it is somehow the most thrilling encounter in the game playing this build.

Anyway i clear all the objectives i wanted with this build. Grinding for a new characters and making currencies off red maps.

Congrats!

Yeah, the Charged Dash teleport can be very strong when used right. Not only can you bypass any obstacle or projectile because it's a teleport, you can even break out of what would otherwise be impossible to avoid. The Red Elder video shows how it can be used to escape the Elder's stun and siphon, simply by having Charged Dash channeled up. The moment you get stunned you are teleported to your illusion, because the stun ends the channel and you teleport when the channel ends.

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@ Alerean:

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Alerean wrote:

So I just got a Shaped chest, thinking of doing some fossil crafting on it and then try and get that 6L finally. It doesn't seem like there are any good Shaper mods for it though :(

You can view all the possible Shaper body armor mods on poeDB.

Taking Physical Damage as any Elemental Damage is great defense.

+1 to Socketed Active Skill Gems would give Spectres 2% more life/ES/damage, so not worth much.

Other than that, the Item Rarity Support affix is the only other mod of some small value.

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@ Slicester:

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Slicester wrote:

Based on your gear feedback I reworked my line up for level 39. Is this looking better?

So I'm doing alot more melee now (which makes me a bit more nervous to be toe to toe) and it is activating the Agony Crawler. I got rid of Contagion and just have ball lightening as an attack spell but I'm mostly using the melee to get the HoA running.

Quick question about Spectres, I just got the spell and what should I be looking for to raise at end of Act 3 / Start of Act 4. I read from your previous description to get spell casters but not sure which ones are better at my level.

You want a Lesser Poison on Ball Lightning or it won't poison. When you have a Hypnotic Eye Jewel with flat Chaos Damage added to Spells, then you can use Poison Support instead of Lesser Poison Support for the higher % Chance to Poison.

Remember, don't take Elemental Equilibrium until you replace your shield, because right now Static Strike is dealing cold damage because of the shield.

You can craft your helmet to have a "+1 to Socketed Minion Skills" affix. The recipe is under Vendor Recipes. You'll need to find or craft a life flask with the "of Animation" suffix, the one that gives part of the flask's healing to your minions. You can do so with the plentiful Transmutation Orbs and Augmentation/Alteration Orbs.

You don't need two Phantasm gems. Move the higher level 11 one into your chest.

I'd recommend using Pierce Support on your Agony Crawler, it'll help him clear monster packs much faster. You can do this by exchanging the gems between your dagger and shield. On your shield you would then have Herald of Agony, Minion Damage, and Pierce. On your dagger you'd have Ball Lightning and Lesser Poison. You can also have the Holy Relic here or move it to the Zombie's empty blue socket.

Now what about Desecrate? You don't need to use it that often. You can have it on weapon swap, which is a second set of backup weapons you can swap back and forth between with the hotkey X, or by clicking the II tab above the weapon slots. Herald of Agony will be togged off because of this, though, because it's in your first weapon set which is no longer accessible when you swap to your second set, so when you swap back to your first set you must remember to turn Herald of Agony back on.

If you want easier access to Desecrate, then use some Chromatic Orbs on your dagger or find a weapon with 1 blue and 2 green sockets.

Finally, try to recolor your chest with Chromatic Orbs to have 3 blue and 1 green socket, and place Lesser Multiple Projectiles in the new green socket for your Spectres and Phantasms.

"

Slicester wrote:

I just bought the Vaal skeletons spell and replaced the regular summon skeleton spell and I see that it takes time to build up "souls" by killing and then you can summon a whole army of skeletons at once.

In the past I was using the skeletons alot on boss fights and Syndicate encounters where they may run longer then 20 seconds and they kill off my zombies. I would move, spam a skeleton, move, skeley, etc. And just keep spamming skeletons until the boss died.

Is it possible to have two skeleton summon spells at once? the Vaal one for army and the normal one for encounters like this?

"

Thauma wrote:

When you equip Vaal Summon Skeletons (or any Vaal skill) you also receive the non-vaal version of the skill. So you just need to assign a button for Summon Skeleton and another button for Vaal Summon Skeleton.

As Thauma said, Vaal skills now give you two separate skills, the normal skill and the Vaal version. You must add them to different button slots on your skill bar. You can tell the two icons apart by the small blood droplet icon in the top left corner of the Vaal version.

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@ AliveFD:

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AliveFD wrote:

Thanks for the reply. I was paying attention to everything you said. I had no idea about the trick to keep the spectres while changing body armor in town tho. Thanks a lot for that tip.

I guess I'm used to zoom zoom builds instead of minions, completly diferent pacing. Should be a good idea to get the shield charge setup too ahah.

I have no idea on how to paste an item here, but check out my newly craft boots! Cost me 16c to craft that beauty! Gonna try to get double veiled mods with Aisling :D

Nice!

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Currently starting yellow tier maps.. can you take a look at my character and make any suggestions?

I am also noticing that herald of agony isn't procing the minion its supposed to proc, not sure what I am doing wrong. I don't have a lot of currency so I cant afford too many upgrades atm.. just feels Like I am doing something wrong in the build overall.. any suggestions would be super appreciated.. great guide though man!! Currently using the frost spectres.

@ Viktorious1 and KardinalChang:

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Viktorious1 wrote:

Greetings Master Necromancer!
I think I'm going to start working on my gems quality now. My gear is lookin pretty dope. Check out this helm -

Anyways I was wondering what gems you suggest getting to 20 quality first? Spectre, Skele, Phants, Zombies? Then their supports?

"

KardinalChang wrote:

I had the same question today and decided to do the 20/0 to 1/20 thing with all of my support gems. Playing some T9/T10 maps I felt not much of a difference and the gems returned fast to Lvl 12 - 18.

Regarding the minions I tend to Zombies/Skeletons because of more life.

I too would like to hear the Master‘s Opinion.

"

Thauma wrote:

Looking at this build I'd say prioritise Herald of Agony, then Skeletons and their supports. These are your boss killers so the extra damage will have the biggest impact here.

I never bother with the 20q gem recipe. You can simply buy a level 1 gem with quality on it cheaply from another player, buy a levelled gem with quality (~lv15 with 15% quality is often only a few chaos), or buy Gemcutter's Prisms (currently 1c each in betrayal) to top off your gems :)

You don't need quality on Phantasms. You do want level 21 because it gives an extra Phantasm on top of a higher monster level for them. Way better than a measly 10% additional chance to spawn. It's almost insulting how bad the quality is on this gem.

I like to get a 20/20 Raise Spectre as soon as I can, so I don't have to worry about losing my high level Spectres later.

Then I buy the cheap 21/20s, 20/20s, or 21/0 depending on the gem. Might as well get them out of the way. This will vary with league and over time. poe.ninja is great for quickly scouting out which gems currently cost a pretty penny.

For the expensive gems, I want all my minions max eventually, but I balance between the cost and the minion's overall contribution. For example, in Delve, 21/20 Herald of Agony was cheap, so I got it long before I got a 21/- Vaal Skeletons. 21/20 Zombies saves a lot of annoyance, since they'll die less, same with level 4 Empower.

Most support gems I don't bother buying if 1/20 is more than ~5-10 chaos, since many don't need to be 21 and earning 20% quality is just a matter of XP and a GCP. You can easily earn GCP with the vendor recipe. If you're a wealthier player, none of this will matter to you.

Curses get a lot out of quality, so buying 20/20 has a high priority and usually isn't too expensive for an off-meta curse like Projectile Weakness.

If you're just mapping, you don't need to be razor-efficient on your upgrade priorities, and prices tend to drop over time (except when certain streamers do a particular build, or a novel interaction is discovered, which is another reason why getting the cheap gems bought is good). If you're hammering down Guardians and Uber Elder, then you want that max DPS, so use the DPS Breakdown section to help you make those decisions.

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@ ArmedCiv:

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ArmedCiv wrote:

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Hercanic wrote:

I'm not sure, since I didn't expect GGG to make the socketing recipes so hard to get, and right now it's apparently bugged and doesn't drop. Ugh. 1xBlue or 3xBlue may work, but I'm not in a position to test this out myself right now.

As for a Red gem replacement, there's not a lot of options for Spells, sadly. You'll have to lose Minion Damage. If only it was a green socket, you could've used Vile Toxins, Hypothermia, Pierce, Cold Penetration, Ice Bite, or even Added Cold.

1. Added Fire will help Phantasms, but not Spectres. The proliferated Ignites might give your minions Power Charges more often, though.

2. Less Duration would boost Phantasm damage, but I don't know if Spectres might get the damage boost on the sly because of being linked to Phantasms.

3. Cold to Fire would hurt your freeze consistency.

4. Stun might be a nice layer of added crowd control.

5. Fire Penetration would only help the Solar Guard.

6. Empower only affects active gems, so it won't benefit Phantasms, and Spectres don't get much out of their gem level.

I managed to make my belly 3 blue and 3 green. Can you recommend which green is best to replace minion damage?

Which one is best? Vile Toxins, Hypothermia, Pierce, Cold Penetration, Ice Bite, or Added Cold.

And is it too much of a drop off from minion damage? should i keep trying for 4 blues and 2 greens? Or just settle for 3 blues and 3 greens.

Sorry just stuck on this point and not sure how to move forward without consulting the great summoner master himself. Oh lord Hercanic, i will sacrifice many virgins in your name just to receive your blessing and response. Thank you.

Hypothermia.

To minimally chill a 20M Shaper/Elder, you need to hit with 66k cold damage. For a 12M Guardian, it's 39.6k. For a 2.5M map boss, it's 8.25k.

Look at your Spectre/Phantasm PoB numbers and multiply the cold damage of a single hit by 1.2 for Hypothermia's increased chill effect to determine which tiers of bosses you can chill.

Map bosses shouldn't be a problem. Guardians are likely fine as well. Chill doesn't require a crit. Any hit that deals at least 0.33% of the target's life will chill. Even your Agony Crawler with Hatred can chill on hit.

Minion Damage Support is 49% more damage vs. Hypothermia Support's 39% more after the ~first hit, +10% Freeze chance after the ~first hit, and 20% increased chill effect.

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@ GATYGUN:

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GATYGUN wrote:

Tried it out interesting build.

However the guide is a chore to get through, it would be better if you chop it down to a smaller 2/3 pages guide instead of a book.

There is a lot of bloated information that distracts heavily from this guide.

I front-loaded the guide according to expected knowledge. If you are a veteran Summoner, you'll be able to figure out the build just from what's in "Everything You Need." If you're a PoE veteran but new to Summoner, you'll want to read through Overview and Playstyle. Gem Links and Gear will fill in progression knowledge, and the GoogleDoc Leveling Plan would be enough to help you level.

If you're a less experienced or new player, then the rest of the guide is for you. I won't know what you already know, as it'll be different for everyone, so I try to be thorough to help as many people as possible.

For example, the paragraphs after my gear were originally one sentence each, just saying you needed Chaos Damage on Spells to Poison with Ball Lightning and we use EE so watch out for added elemental damage on gear. Then I got question after question about EE and Poison, so I started expanding those initial sentences to cover these common confusions. Admittedly, they became bloated, so I am now thinking of cutting these out and placing them in a new section under New Player Guides entitled, "Mechanics Explained" where I can go into better detail on the nuances of EE and Poison.

Aside from that, was there anywhere else you felt the writing bloated? My sentences are usually to explain, clarify, or entertain, so they should all be serving a purpose.

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@ Ammoconda:

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Ammoconda wrote:

Took this build all the way to Lv90, a word, or words of thought down below.

-Even somehow you reach the advertised 7k life, because of the lack of extensive mitigation and/or recovery, IT that Fled in any red map will still bop you without any issue.

It That Fled deals a lot of Physical Damage with 20% conversion to Chaos Damage. Since these are also Spells, Acrobatics, Block, and Blind don't help. If your Zombies are dying a lot, that means you're losing the Physical Damage Reduction they provide. A Basalt, Granite, and Amethyst Flask would help quite a bit.

"

Ammoconda wrote:

-With that said, this build does rather well with core game such as elder/shaper, you do enough damage with your skeleton and spectres and the screen is cleaner than betrayal encounters so you can dodge the biggie hits.

-Zombies die, a lot.

Your Zombies have about ~12k life, right? You're missing +5 levels and 20% quality, which would put them at 20.2k. They very rarely ever die at that defense.

"

Ammoconda wrote:

-I switched from frost sentinel to solar guards, and plan to switch elemental prolif. to spell echo, feels much better. Feels free to play around with the spectres in the incursion temples.

-A big thing to consider with this build: gem sorting is a pain in the butt, especially when you're levelling up your spectres and don't have 100% atlas progression.

Gem sorting? I'd guess you mean gem swapping, but I don't understand how that corresponds to Atlas completion. Or do you mean having higher tier maps for Spectre level?

If you aren't in a trade league for an Oba's Cursed Trove, pushing Delve depth to 270 can get you a place to spawn level 83 corpses at no cost.

"

Ammoconda wrote:

-Another thing to consider is this build has a relatively high budget, be ready to whip out your credit card for a new graphics card. (Mine poped multiple times.)

My self is not considering this build anywhere else. I'll swap out my belt for bisco's leash and make it my map farmer. It's a blast to play with. This is a truly unique build with all the clever gem choices, and the owner of the build is a rather nice person as well.

Hah, thank you!

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@ austeemo:

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austeemo wrote:

Curious how much you guys are spending on +1socket weap w/ maim as whenever I search for them I cant even find 1..

also unset shaper w/ spell leech prefix, doesn't really seem to exist as 12-15/hit w/ life roll.. are you guys self crafting these? or just settling for lower rolls. Nearing the end of my character, just need to get these 2 pieces and get more 21 gems / empower. Build is really great just annoying to respawn spectres. Switching to GMP ball lightning & +1 spectres did not do justice to my FPS either..

btw heads up, vaal skele/hatred/generosity 21 are all very cheap upgrades.

When I first made this build, the gear I used was cheap and had dozens of listings. Now there's hundreds of you guys competing with each other for the same pool of gear. You can blame each other for your plight. =o)

I think one issue is getting the market to realize there's now a demand for these items, so people have incentive to find/craft them and don't just vendor/roll over them.

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@ xNxBxDx:

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xNxBxDx wrote:

Any thoughts on minion instability? Seeing as how we got dying zombies and skellies, would that be a good node to take? If not why? And if so, should one grab more minion life nodes?

MI represents a loss of 35% of your minions' life for an explosion that can be weaker than a single attack from the minion.

The explosion does not trigger if the minion dies before entering low life. So one-shots, and two-shots that deal 50%-64% of their life, will bypass the explosion entirely. If it takes four or five shots, your minions would probably have done more damage in their remaining third of life than their explosion.

A 5.7K Skeleton will deal a 1.9k explosion. This will not be increased by Melee Physical Damage Support, Bloodlust Support, Hatred, Spirit Offering, Maim, or attack speed from Frenzy Charges. That leaves Minion Damage, Vile Toxins, the more damage from Frenzy Charges, and Elemental Equilibrium.

Remember, these guys deal 276k DPS with their attack. A 1.9k explosion would need a multiplier of more than 100 to even come close.

(1 + 3.94 increased minion damage) * 1.47 MD * 1.5 VT * 1.12 FC * 1.10 EE = 13.4 multiplier.

1.9k * 13.4 = 25.5k total explosion damage.

Even if you added a Minion Life Support affix to your helm, you aren't getting anywhere close to a single 103k melee strike that hits 2.68 times a second.

MI on Spectres and Zombies is even more terrible, since we absolutely do not want these guys to die.

@ mtwilliams717:

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mtwilliams717 wrote:

Currently starting yellow tier maps.. can you take a look at my character and make any suggestions?

I am also noticing that herald of agony isn't procing the minion its supposed to proc, not sure what I am doing wrong. I don't have a lot of currency so I cant afford too many upgrades atm.. just feels Like I am doing something wrong in the build overall.. any suggestions would be super appreciated.. great guide though man!! Currently using the frost spectres.

You have the wrong gloves for the GMP setup. You also don't have any added phys or chaos damage on Ball Lightning, so it won't Poison at all. This is why you aren't gaining Virulence.


Read the affixes on the gloves:

"Socketed Gems are Supported by Level 18 Chance to Bleed"
"Socketed Gems are Supported by Level 16 Poison"

Chance to Bleed allows Charged Dash to inflict Bleeding, and a bleeding foe is what Bloodlust on Skeletons needs to trigger its damage boost. Without this affix on your gloves, the Bloodlust on your Skeletons is doing nothing. You should replace it with Multistrike until you get the right gloves.

Poison allows both Charged Dash and Ball Lightning to gain Virulence stacks more consistently. Ball Lightning also needs a source of added damage that Poison scales off of, those being Physical or Chaos. The easiest way is with a Hypnotic Eye jewel:


"Adds 13 to 15 Chaos Damage to Spells"

Since you don't have this or the right gloves, replace Greater Multiple Projectiles (GMP) Support with Lesser Poison Support. It gives both added Chaos damage and 40% additional Chance to Poison. Now you'll gain Virulence.

Finally, a level 1 Empower does nothing. It has to be at least level 2 before it'll add a level to other gems. Put Empower in your second weapon set to continue leveling, and use Added Fire Support in the meantime.

"

Hercanic wrote:

@ mtwilliams717:

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mtwilliams717 wrote:

Currently starting yellow tier maps.. can you take a look at my character and make any suggestions?

I am also noticing that herald of agony isn't procing the minion its supposed to proc, not sure what I am doing wrong. I don't have a lot of currency so I cant afford too many upgrades atm.. just feels Like I am doing something wrong in the build overall.. any suggestions would be super appreciated.. great guide though man!! Currently using the frost spectres.

You have the wrong gloves for the GMP setup. You also don't have any added phys or chaos damage on Ball Lightning, so it won't Poison at all. This is why you aren't gaining Virulence.

Read the affixes on the gloves:

"Socketed Gems are Supported by Level 18 Chance to Bleed"
"Socketed Gems are Supported by Level 16 Poison"

Chance to Bleed allows Charged Dash to inflict Bleeding, and a bleeding foe is what Bloodlust on Skeletons needs to trigger its damage boost. Without this affix on your gloves, the Bloodlust on your Skeletons is doing nothing. You should replace it with Multistrike until you get the right gloves.

Poison allows both Charged Dash and Ball Lightning to gain Virulence stacks more consistently. Ball Lightning also needs a source of added damage that Poison scales off of, those being Physical or Chaos. The easiest way is with a Hypnotic Eye jewel:

"Adds 13 to 15 Chaos Damage to Spells"

Since you don't have this or the right gloves, replace Greater Multiple Projectiles (GMP) Support with Lesser Poison Support. It gives both added Chaos damage and 40% additional Chance to Poison. Now you'll gain Virulence.

Finally, a level 1 Empower does nothing. It has to be at least level 2 before it'll add a level to other gems. Put Empower in your second weapon set to continue leveling, and use Added Fire Support in the meantime.

Yeah.. take a look at my unset ring, that cost me 40c I can't even imagine how much your old characters would cost in exalts.

I had to cap resists with 2 rolls on abyssal jewels could probably buy better gloves as these were only 30c but oh well.

Some odd stuff happened to me today - perhaps with the last patch:

My spectres die all the time, event in T1/T2 maps. ALL the time, Frost Sentinels in a few seconds.

I did not change a single piece of gear. I did buy MTX, but that should indeed not have an impact...

Given the major hassle getting the specific spectres after each of their deaths that this build requires - I feel like this build is now unplayable for mapping...

I suppose I am doing something wrong with the summoning. I thought it would be okay to desecrate in the hideout. If not, spectre re-summoning is super annoying to be honest.

Everything was fine yesterday.

If s/o could have a look at my gear and give feedback if I am just dumb and some other change is responsible for this mess. I did not do Uber Lab yet, and I miss the spectre points, I know.

Thanks for any feedback.

https://www.pathofexile.com/account/view-profile/CoalBucket/characters?characterName=NetEaseFarmBot