[Major Damage/Mapping Improvements-Update 7.1.22 PoB/Vid] The Fortified Summoner: HoP MI Champion

Hey dude! Awesome build and I have been looking for something like this for a while. I made this build into a witch though so my minions gets a bit stronger tooc I go bone barrier and unnatural strength as well as commander of darkness. Just One question, can I Victario's Charity or Lioneye's Remorse instead of a secondary claw? I havent tried it yet, it will get more defensive that way, maybe bad for the clearing speed though. I will go as a belt Siegebreaker though and see the difference.

Also When you link zombies on boots or gloves, what support gems do you get rid of and which ones do you use? Im thinking of going Spectres and Zombies instead of HoP.


EDIT: How important is the summon skitter bots for the build?

"

Haagie wrote:

Hey dude! Awesome build and I have been looking for something like this for a while. I made this build into a witch though so my minions gets a bit stronger tooc I go bone barrier and unnatural strength as well as commander of darkness. Just One question, can I Victario's Charity or Lioneye's Remorse instead of a secondary claw? I havent tried it yet, it will get more defensive that way, maybe bad for the clearing speed though. I will go as a belt Siegebreaker though and see the difference.

Also When you link zombies on boots or gloves, what support gems do you get rid of and which ones do you use? Im thinking of going Spectres and Zombies instead of HoP.


EDIT: How important is the summon skitter bots for the build?

Thank you for giving it a shot! So let's see about your questions:

1. Shield vs claw: how aggressive are you being? are you spending a lot of time in melee? Not sure how tanky you are as a Witch. My first thought is that you will be loosing a good chunk of regen from the life gain on hit. This is our primary mechanism of recovery. You will also feel it in the loss of minion damage (assuming you have that on your claw), but won't make or break you. Maybe a shield would be good for you; have you taken all the armor nodes on the PoB? Might help. I would just try it if you want and see how it feels!

2. I know a lot of people like siegebreaker. Take it if you want to; I still prefer the speed off Perseverance.

3. Skitterbots are used for the shock. it's a 15% more damage taken mod. Powerful since it affects all damage you and your minions do, but can be difficult to find the mana to reserve it. Aspect of the spider will get you similar results for 10% less reservation (minus the chill effect).

Link me up your PoB if you have it; would be interested to see your witch variant!

Hey again! Sorry for the slow reply but been busy until now with exams XD

Anyhow here is my pastebin: https://pastebin.com/apE8Ecbj

Note that I have my resistances over 100 already because of necromancers ascendancy with the minions, I was just a bit lazy to not put it in. The minions are insanely tanky, and I will switch my gear later because I just started with the maps so this is just a budget version of everything so far. I get insanely high physical damage reduction without having too much armour as well and the bone armour skill. I will later on move to heart of the warrior node too, change my helmet, and rings for on hit with flammability and more life (Im good on the resistances). Thats basically the goal right now, the minions deal insane amount of damage when they explode and also my zombies/sceptres are tanky as well never dying, same with even my golem. I also got rid of blood and sand but kept flesh and stone.

Please feel free to comment for improvements. I just have started the build my life is like only 4k so not that much, there is lots of room for improvement. Want to be on 6k life around tier 10+ maps.

Final 3.9 league update is posted! I ended up iterating quite heavily on the initial build to remove basically all dependency on permanent minions. Intial build with perma-spectres/zombies is still just fine; I was just getting tired of loosing the occasional minion on the nasty t15+ metamorphs.

Oh, and I figured out how to get reliable HoP MI detonations :D

Thank you again for all the interest this season! As always if you have feedback just drop me a line here.

"

Haagie wrote:

Hey again! Sorry for the slow reply but been busy until now with exams XD

Anyhow here is my pastebin: https://pastebin.com/apE8Ecbj

Note that I have my resistances over 100 already because of necromancers ascendancy with the minions, I was just a bit lazy to not put it in. The minions are insanely tanky, and I will switch my gear later because I just started with the maps so this is just a budget version of everything so far. I get insanely high physical damage reduction without having too much armour as well and the bone armour skill. I will later on move to heart of the warrior node too, change my helmet, and rings for on hit with flammability and more life (Im good on the resistances). Thats basically the goal right now, the minions deal insane amount of damage when they explode and also my zombies/sceptres are tanky as well never dying, same with even my golem. I also got rid of blood and sand but kept flesh and stone.

Please feel free to comment for improvements. I just have started the build my life is like only 4k so not that much, there is lots of room for improvement. Want to be on 6k life around tier 10+ maps.

So I've been meaning to try out the Necro ascendancy with this build for a while and your post gave me the push I needed to try it. A few days of leveling later, and here is what I came up with:

https://pastebin.com/u6Y5LZby

Long story short: yeah....it works. It works really well :) . The champion variant is still a better bosser due to the Lense life gain mechanic, but I have no issues whatsoever tearing up 100%+ quanitity T16 maps at level 84.

Pretty massive update to the guide just finished; this build has gone through many iterations and tweaks over 3.9, and it got to the point where the original guide was quite out of date. I have gone through and updated the skill gems, build details, gearing, and PoB links to the final version for 3.9. I am really happy with how this build turned out in 3.9; the Fortified Summoner has taken on every bit of content thrown at him, and exited stronger and more polished than when he began.

Much thanks for all the comments and suggestions; if you have used this build this season be sure to drop a line here and share your experiences!

It looks like Delirium will bring several great cluster jewels for us to play with! I will be updating this guide in the following few days so stay tuned.

Interesting. I've played the hell out of the necro version and I love it. Just stumbled across this and I'm intrigued.

What do you suggest for leveling prior to Dom Blow?

Would you recommend this for an HC league start?

Thanks for the guide.

"

Moridin79 wrote:

Interesting. I've played the hell out of the necro version and I love it. Just stumbled across this and I'm intrigued.

What do you suggest for leveling prior to Dom Blow?

Would you recommend this for an HC league start?

Thanks for the guide.

Thanks for the interest! this was my league start build in 3.9, and it worked just fine. Prior to dominating blow I just used cleave; you can use pretty much anything you want though tbh.

As for HC; I honestly have never tried HC so I really can't speak from experience, but I can say this build feels exceptionally safe overall. I got to mid 90's pretty much without any effort whatsoever, and that was diving in to red maps from the high 80's onwards and pretty much ignoring map/meta mods.

I do recommend you use a more defensive variant of the build for HC though; specifically using Determination and (ideally) a good watcher's eye. I'll probably update the guide with this version when I rev to 3.10 as an alternative for those who want maximum safety for a slight damage penalty. As an added bonus, running determination+watcher's eye lets you use a much wider variety of chest armor without dropping down to dangerously low armor levels. I might even use this as the default build option because of that in 3.10.

One final note: this build relies heavily on you being in proximity to your minions when they die, as each death heals you for a large chunk via our shield. It does take some practice to move at the right speed not to outpace your minions and loose out on the regen they offer. Definitely keep that in mind for HC.

I hope this helps! Defensive build variant posted below.

https://pastebin.com/ywLye3uL

Initial 3.10 update posted; basically this is the 3.9 final build with recommended gem notables. Once PoB gets updated expect the build to be tweaked quite a bit more, but the 3.9 tree is fully capable as-is. This will be my league starter tomorrow, see you then!