[FAQ] Speaker for the Dead | 74-minion Mass Summoner 💀

@ HatMatter:

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1.1 Vile Toxins: Synergies with Herald of Agony are obvious. Non-obvious to me is the "supported skills deal more damage with poison" - do our skeletons have a source of poison?

Ignore it. They don't poison. All we care about is the generic 45-50% more damage bonus from Vile Toxins.

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1.2 Melee Physical Damage Support: Again, there's some extra damage with poison - what's the Skeleton's source of poison? The bleeding part is moot if we have Bloodlust, correct?

Again, ignore them. The gem boosts melee damage by 49% more, and that's all we care about.

The reason these gems have two separate lines of More Damage is because Bleed and Poison are not Hits, so they don't benefit from the first part that only affects Hits.

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1.3 Bloodlust: What are our sources of bleed on this build?

Gloves -> Chance to Bleed mod (only affects Attacks) -> Charged Dash

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2.1 Empower: Actually, I don't have empower yet. Is a Maim Support gem a vialble leveling alternative to fill this slot until I have a +1 level item and an Empower gem?

Sure, that's fine. However, if you don't have Mark of Submission with Projectile Weakness, then Pierce would be even better for the Agony Crawler. It's the difference between the monsters in front dying versus the entire pack falling over at once.

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2.2 Maim: Regardless if by skill or affix - why do we use this? My understanding is that it serves both as a defensive (slowing down) and offensive (maimed take extra damage) and boosts our damage output of both zombies and crawler. Am I missing something here?

The debuff applied by Maim increases all Physical Damage dealt to the target. This includes the physical damage from our Skeletons and Phantasms.

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2.3 Herald of Agony: Are there any infos on what the crawler actually does somewhere?

DPS Breakdown has links to each minion's PoeDB page. The wiki has some info, too. Finally, check out Path of Building. You can find out the base damage, accuracy, and other stats for most minions using it.

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3.1 Ball Lightning: You wrote that you do not level Ball Lightning, so that the balls only serve as a vector for our poison and we dont have to worry baout reflect.

Yes.

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3.2 Cast While Channelling: We want to cast Ball Lightning often, so Level 20 makes sense here. On the other hand, Quality only adds damage which should be moot if we keep the ball lightning on lvl 1, correct? Or is the extra damage for charged dash a relevant thing?

Yes, quality on CwC doesn't matter. It won't hurt either way if Ball Lightning is Level 1.

Some people are using Soulrend (fine for packs, but not recommended for bosses), which deals Chaos Damage (must add a tiny amount of Lightning Damage to it for EE) and thus cannot be Reflected, so they can freely max its damage. In that case, CwC quality would be beneficial.

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3.3. Greater Multiple Projectiles. More levels add extra damage (to be precise, less reduction). Qauality adds extra attack speed and cast speed - does this have any effect on Ball Lightning (I assume not) or Charged Dash I assume this speeds some things up, but is cast speed for the Das really an issue?

Cast speed does not affect CwC.

GMP quality will only help Charged Dash hit more often, which benefits Life on Hit and inflicting Bleed sooner.

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3.4 Charged Dash: Do we actually used Charged Dash to deal damage or is it just a neat source of constant ball lightnings?

Our minions deal damage. We support them. Charged Dash deals negligible damage, and that's fine. We use it for its Teleport ability, to automate casting Ball Lightning for us, to inflict Bleed with an Attack, and to trigger the Holy Relic with an Attack.

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4.1 Fortify: Extra Levels in Fortify grant more fortify duration - this is nothing I'd take extra STR nodes for, but this seems like some extra convenience. Also, it enhances the poison damage we deliver with shield bash (thanks to Herald of Agony). It seems to me that taking Fortify levels is benificial to the build.

Fortify requires 111 Strength at L20. Witch has 14 base STR and we get 100-120 STR from our passive tree. So we easily meet its requirements.

We don't care about how much damage our Poison does, we just want to inflict it. Even if it's only 1 damage it'll still stack Virulence and count toward Vile Toxins.

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4.2 Shield Charge: Is the physical damage anything to write home about? Or is this just movement/Holy Relic enabler/poison vector/fortify enabler

Again, our damage doesn't matter. Shield Charge is pure utility for movement and fortify.

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4.3 Faster Attacks. This speeds up movement, other support gems are less interesting?

It reduces the delay before you can use Shield Charge again.

Faster Attacks had much more impact before 3.7, but now movement skills are basically instant with their attack/cast time paid at the end. You can avoid this payment by "animation canceling" with running normally, then after a few steps you can use it again without ever having to stay still. If you try to use the skill within the time frame that it'd still be delayed, even after animation cancelling, then you pay for it with an equivalently slower start for the next skill use.

For this reason, Faster Attacks is nice, but not necessary. You can replace it.

Right now I'm testing using Flame Dash in conjunction with Shield Charge, alternating between the two for greater speed.

Thank you for taking your time to explain!

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Gloves -> Chance to Bleed mod (only affects Attacks) -> Charged Dash

I'm a bit confused by this and I'd appreciate further explanation.

Your item showcase has Gloves with the elder affix "Socketed Gems are Supported by Level XX Chance To Bleed", which itself has "Supported Attacks have 25% chance to cause Bleeding". Is this what you mean with this mod?

1. Does this enhance the chance to bleed with Charged Dash? I would guess yes.

2. Does this enhance the change to bleed with the chanelled ball lightnings (I don't think so - is this what you meant by only affects attacks?)

3. This will not increase the chance to bleed with shield charge, correct?

If 3 is the case, how beneficial would an actual chance to bleed gem be in the shield instead of the faster attacks?

@ HatMatter:

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Your item showcase has Gloves with the elder affix "Socketed Gems are Supported by Level XX Chance To Bleed", which itself has "Supported Attacks have 25% chance to cause Bleeding". Is this what you mean with this mod?

Yes.

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1. Does this enhance the chance to bleed with Charged Dash? I would guess yes.

Yes, since Charged Dash is an Attack that deals at least some Physical Damage.

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2. Does this enhance the change to bleed with the chanelled ball lightnings

No, Chance to Bleed does not support Spells. In fact, there is currently no way to make any Spell inflict Bleed.

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(I don't think so - is this what you meant by only affects attacks?)

Yes.

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3. This will not increase the chance to bleed with shield charge, correct?

No. Support Gems are not global. They only affect what they're linked to.

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If 3 is the case, how beneficial would an actual chance to bleed gem be in the shield instead of the faster attacks?

Not very beneficial at all. Bleed is only there to activate Bloodlust on Skeletons. Skeletons are mainly only used against bosses. Charged Dash serves this purpose better due to its range, area, and hit speed. You would be better off using the extra gem socket for a Chaos Golem or War/Dread Banner. If you find it difficult to inflict Bleed with Charged Dash, you can replace Bloodlust (59% more damage) with Multistrike (51% more damage overall as of Patch 3.7) and just not worry about it.

Hey, I just picked up an Empower but with Herald of Agony + Empower then Hatred + Generosity it uses 100% of my mana pool. Am i missing something? how do i cast ball lightning now?

@ hazzyhaz:

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hazzyhaz wrote:

Hey, I just picked up an Empower but with Herald of Agony + Empower then Hatred + Generosity it uses 100% of my mana pool. Am i missing something? how do i cast ball lightning now?

Supports built into your weapon function just like the support gems themselves, meaning their mana multipliers are in effect. If your weapon has too many (e.g. Elemental Damage with Attacks has a huge 140% mana multiplier), it'll make Herald of Agony reserve too much.

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Hercanic wrote:

@ hazzyhaz:

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hazzyhaz wrote:

Hey, I just picked up an Empower but with Herald of Agony + Empower then Hatred + Generosity it uses 100% of my mana pool. Am i missing something? how do i cast ball lightning now?

Supports built into your weapon function just like the support gems themselves, meaning their mana multipliers are in effect. If your weapon has too many (e.g. Elemental Damage with Attacks has a huge 140% mana multiplier), it'll make Herald of Agony reserve too much.

i replaced Empower with Enlighten, is this a down play on minion damage?

@ hazzyhaz:

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Belisak wrote:

i replaced Empower with Enlighten, is this a down play on minion damage?

Enlighten only reduces the mana multiplier. It doesn't add any damage.

Empower increases the gem level of active skills. Not only does this improve the Agony Crawler's monster level, which means a higher base damage and accuracy rating, it also boosts all the bonuses the Crawler gets from the gem: added flat damage, increased damage, and increased attack speed. These all have a compounding effect, since you're increasing several different multipliers at the same time. In a +1 weapon, a corrupted Level 4 Empower will net +4 levels to the Agony Crawler, which is stronger than any other support gem they could have.

Looking at your character, it looks like you've already replaced the claw. For some reason, though, you have a craft on the new one that's adding Fire Damage to your Spells. You don't want that, it'll mess with EE. Even if you aren't using a Solar Guard and aren't dealing any fire damage, it's still a waste of a craft slot that could be +2 to Supports, 15% increased Minion Attack/Cast Speed, or 28% increased Minion Damage/Life.

Hey there :D About your build, was wondering if Acrobatics is a big need to have in the summoner build? Won't I die quicker if I have 50% less armor?

Thanks! :)

@ Cowrex:

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was wondering if Acrobatics is a big need

If you only take 60% of attacks, that's like having (1 / 0.6 =) 67% more eHP (effective Hit Points) against large groups. 6k life * 1.67 = 10k eHP.

If you only take 70% of spells, that's equivalent to (1 / 0.7 =) 43% more eHP.

If you further stack other sources of attack/spell dodge, like a Quartz Flask or Vaal Grace, it becomes more and more effective:

50% dodge = 100% more eHP
75% dodge = 400% more eHP

The downside here is that, while against many rapid hits the random nature of dodge statistically evens out and acts like mitigation, against singular big hits, such as from a boss, it's a pure gamble whether you take the full hit or dodge it completely.

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Won't I die quicker if I have 50% less armor?

We don't pursue armor as a defense, giving us flexibility with our gear, so losing half of zero doesn't matter.

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Hercanic wrote:

@ Cowrex:

Full Post

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Cowrex wrote:

Hey there :D About your build, was wondering if Acrobatics is a big need to have in the summoner build? Won't I die quicker if I have 50% less armor?

Thanks! :)

"

was wondering if Acrobatics is a big need

If you only take 60% of attacks, that's like having (1 / 0.6 =) 67% more eHP (effective Hit Points) against large groups. 6k life * 1.67 = 10k eHP.

If you only take 70% of spells, that's equivalent to (1 / 0.7 =) 43% more eHP.

If you further stack other sources of attack/spell dodge, like a Quartz Flask or Vaal Grace, it becomes more and more effective:

50% dodge = 100% more eHP
75% dodge = 400% more eHP

The downside here is that, while against many rapid hits the random nature of dodge statistically evens out and acts like mitigation, against singular big hits, such as from a boss, it's a pure gamble whether you take the full hit or dodge it completely.

"

Won't I die quicker if I have 50% less armor?

We don't pursue armor as a defense, giving us flexibility with our gear, so losing half of zero doesn't matter.

Amazing... thanks for clearing it up! I'll go grab it :D