What's good in summoner builds?

Hi I was thinking about playing a Summoner (Witch) next league but I have no idea how it should be played so it would be nice if some experienced overskilled summoner master player answered my noobish questions.

What mods should I look for to boost damage of my minions?
Can you give me some kind of summoner tutorial about affixes that are good to look for or even items (also for leveling)?

Do my stats (like "to maximum life") somehow influence them too?

Maybe if there are differences between zombies, skeletons and golems...

Also types of golesm. I suppose Ice golems do Ice damage etc, but it would be weird if there was 7 golem types that differs just in dmg type.

TY!

Summoners are VERY good league starters.
They can go deep into red maps with bad gear, and scale well with gear.
Most people dont play them because they dont like the "passive" playstyle.


Faq for summoners:

Your summons are NOT you.
Any bonus you get will NOT effect your minions unless it specifically says so.

Look for gear that has the word MINION
Like "15% increased minion damage" or "10% increased minion elemental resistance".

You can put "minion" into the search bar on the skill tree, to see all the minion nodes.

Minions have a default of 40% elemental resists, and 20% chaos resists.

Minions do NOT get the -30% resist penalty that you do for killing Kitava

Minions are NOT effected by "players have" map mods such as "players have -10% to maximum resistances" or "players have enfeeble"

Most minions scale REALLY well with gem levels, so a wand with "+1 to all spell skill gems" is valuable.
A leveled Empower Support gem is huge.

Suggestions:
(Assuming you are a Witch)

What you level with MAY not be what you use to map with, you can easily switch from one kind of minion to another, particularly if you go Witch Necromancer.

Summon Raging Spirits is VERY good leveling early, but is bypassed by other minions later. (Yes you can make a good endgame SRS, but zombies/skels/spectres/golems are stronger in my opinion)

You can get SRS as soon as you get to underground passage after mud flats, take the waypoint in the underground passage back to town and pick up SRS as reward.

Zombies are very squishy at low level, but get very strong and tanky later on.
Not so great on clear speed, but super duper good at boss killing.

Skeletons are great both start and endgame, but the drawback is they need constant resummoning as they dont follow you around, they are completely "untethered". If you dont mind re casting them for every enemy pack, they are VERY VERY STRONG early game, and still strong late game. (Vaal Summon Skeleton in a 6 link is a crazy good "I WIN" button) Summon Skeleton gem is a level 10 gem, that is a reward for killing Brutus.

Spectres are weak at first, and get super strong late game.
Some use dps spectres like Slave Drivers, others use specters to generate frenzy and power charges for all your minions (carnage chieftains, host chieftains)

Golem focused builds are not recommended as a league start, as they require unique jewels to do good dps, and such jewels are expensive early league (they come down in price)
But a Golem Elementalist is very strong end game due to amazing defense from stacking golem buffs.

Here is a link to a lightning Skeleton/spectre league starter build guide i wrote.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2855844
(You can easily replace skeletons with zombies if you want less button pushing)

To put it very simple.
Everything that affects you, does not affect your minions.
Everything that affets your minions, does not affect you.

Only exception to this are auras.

Summoners usually don't restrict themselves to one type of minion only.

In general, skellies and spectres are the most typical. Some builds may use zombies and one golem (limited to one without any special gear or passives) as meat shields and buff effect only. Other builds find ways (possibly expensive ways) to scale their numbers and damages so zombies and golems (could have as much as 8 golems with the right gear and passives) could eventually become their main attack line instead.

SRS have short duration and can't draw that much aggro to protect you from harm, so they are usually meant for a short while during your leveling process. However, you can find ways to make them useful if you are creative and knowledgeable with the multitude of unique gears.

There are several less mentioned type of minions such as animated weapons, sentinels of purity, sentinels of dominion, phantasms, ursa, rhoa, snake, etc. In those builds, the character usually fights alongside them.

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jeerinho wrote:

Other builds find ways (possibly expensive ways) to scale their numbers and damages so zombies and golems (could have as much as 8 golems with the right gear and passives) could eventually become their main attack line instead.

My last golem elementalist had 11 golems.
1 inherant
1 tree
2 elementalist
3 amulet
2 dual wield +1 golem weapons
2 anima stone + pirimordial jewels

Curious what that golem build cost you. Rough is fine.

the cost of a golem build is mostly dependent on the price of golem jewels.

These jewels are very expensive early in league, then come down in price as the league ages, so the cannot be priced accurately pre league, as this price variance is MUCH more than with other gear.


For example, in delerium league, anima stones started out at over an exaulted, but after a month were in the 25 chaos range.

You only need one of them, though.

Primordial harmonies, you need a lot of, 5-10 of them.
Early league they can be 50+ chaos each, more for good rolls.
After a month they can be 5-10 chaos.

But next league who knows.


In any case, its affordable for a casual player, just not as your first toon, on day one of a league.


What I do, if I want to run golementalist, is start as a NECRO, zombies/spectres/skeletons, what ever, as they are super cheap league starters.

Then, after a week or two, or a month, or how every long it takes you to use the necro to get enough currency, you use a bunch of regrets to turn it into a elementalist, and buy the golem jewels.

Golementalists are VERY tanky, compared to a regular necro, the more golems you have, the tankier (golem buffs scale with number of golems, for elementalist, so stone golem regen, and chaos golem phys dam reduction can get to ABSURD levels.

They damage is great, not as high as a well crafted spectre necro, but high enough.

Thanks, that's helpful. I generally do 3-4 builds a league so waiting a month is no issue. Golems have been on my list to try, and it's always nice when you can do a build for a few exalts total instead of a few exalts per slot. That's becoming harder and harder these days.

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Odif wrote:

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jeerinho wrote:

Other builds find ways (possibly expensive ways) to scale their numbers and damages so zombies and golems (could have as much as 8 golems with the right gear and passives) could eventually become their main attack line instead.

My last golem elementalist had 11 golems.
1 inherant
1 tree
2 elementalist
3 amulet
2 dual wield +1 golem weapons
2 anima stone + pirimordial jewels

My bad. I didn't actually count them exactly. However the +3 amulet does cause you to be unable to have non-golem minions. That isn't the biggest issue since golementalists only use golem minions.

On a side note, I found that necros (except skeletons and SRS) can be rippy to play because their minions always lag behind the character. That 3 second cooldown on Convocation is too long. No wonder everyone goes for life nodes to avoid the top part of the tree save for an anointment to get that extra spectre.

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jeerinho wrote:

On a side note, I found that necros (except skeletons and SRS) can be rippy to play because their minions always lag behind the character. That 3 second cooldown on Convocation is too long. No wonder everyone goes for life nodes to avoid the top part of the tree save for an anointment to get that extra spectre.

Ya, its why Golementalists were popular in Delerium, the fog was so rippy, the extra defenses provided (compared to necro zombie/spectre) made a huge difference, and were ample compensation for a bit less clear and or boss damage (compared to zombies/spectre necro)

With 11 golems, you can get 1000 life per second and 40% phys dam reduction JUST from the golem buffs, which can then be stacked with any other layers of defense.