Can anyone help me improve my summoner's build (newish player)

So this is my second real build, I'm running minions and I seem to be super squishy in maps, could barely Alva's temple mission or a yellow map I was given. Bossing is fine. Feels a little underwhelming since I was flying through campaign.

Anyways, here's the build so far:

Character Stats:

PoB:

Gems:

Gear:

Ascendency:

Any ideas? We can PM over discord (Bazaboo#7258) if you would prefer as forums are pretty slow.

What immediately comes to mind is adding my Animate Guardian which I have been building. Other than that, not sure if my life is too low or if its my armor. I know my res is low because I just finished Kitava but I don't think that in itself will make or break the build, cause I've had some issues with squishyness in the past with capped res.

For some weird reason, PoB is not showing DPS like it does with my ranger...

Anyways, I really do appreciate any help. Also, like I said feel free to reach out to me on discord (Bazaboo#7258)

Quick look, your gear is very sub-par. Your shield is trash.
If you want a good build that uses Glancing Blows have at look at Odif's Necro thread.
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2883137

Thanks to the above poster for mentioning my build guide.
It is optimized for newbies.

Here are my initial thoughts on looking at the original posters build.

Spectres.
Link Blood magic to the spectres.
Use Carnage Chieftains and Host Chieftains.
They are both found in Act 7 Crossroads.
Carnage Chieftains gives allies Frenzy Charges.
Host Chieftains give allies Power Charges.
Minions get a much bigger bonus from charges than players.
Blood Magic lets the chieftains spam their abilities, as otherwise they are too mana starved to cast them often enough.

Drop Herald of Purity.
Heralds only effect you.
The purity minion will not do enough damage to justify having to get in close and do damage to summon it.
Focus on Zombies and SKeletons for dps.

Replace HoP with Summon SKitterbots.
The skitterbots auto shock enemies, even big bosses. Huge dps increase.

Change the supports for Zombies.
Remove Melee Spash. Zombies have a SMASH attack, that does a big aoe, it is by far the source of most of their dps. It is unnafected by Melee splas. Replace with Melee Physical Damage. (Or Fortify if you want tankier zombies.)
Remove Meat Shield. It makes Zombies too passive. Replace with Predator Support. You can then use Signal Prey to have zombies lock on to bosses and hard rares.

Replace Summon SKeleton with Vaal Summon Skeleton.
A 4 link Vaal Summon SKeleton is INSANELY good on bosses.
Supports: Melee Physical damage, impale, Feeding Frenzy
Feeding Frenzy does no damage, but gives skeletons the DASH ability, greatly increasing uptime.)

Vulnerability curse, get it.

USE AN OFFERING
Bone offering if you take Mistress of Sacrifice instead of Commander of Darkness in the Ascendency.
Flesh offering other wise.
You can link to Increased Duration.

Get two golems, the buffs really help.
(You have golem commander on the tree, this lets you have 2 golems)
Stone and Chaos. Stone gives you life regen.
Chaos gives you physical damage reduction.

Gear:
I cannot tell for sure, but it seems from looking at your gear that you lack underdstanding of how minions function in this game. Bonuses ONLY HELP MINIONS if it says MINIONS or ALLIES. Unlike other games like Diablo 3, increases to player damage in PoE have NO EFFECT on MINIONS.

Get a wand that helps your MINIONS.
Minions gain the most from gem levels.
Wands can have "+1 to all spell skill gems", "+1 to all minion skill gems" "minions have x% increased attack and cast speed" "minions have x% increased damage" "Minions have x% chance to do double damage"
Minion wands can get VERY expensive.
Start out with a wand with "+1 to all spell skill gems", then craft on some minion mod.

ALL RARE GEAR other than weapon, should have a GOOD LIFE ROLL.
80+ life for an armor piece, 60+ life for jewelry.

Make sure your elemental resists are capped.
Get chaos resist if possible.

Get a jewel with "minions have x% chance to taunt on melee attack".


Ok, I see you are SSF FLashback.
You will need to alt spam a Convoking Wand, higher ilvl the better. Stop when you get EITHER +1 all spell skill gems, or +1 all minion skill gems.
Alt spam a Ghastly Eye Jewel to get the minions taunt on hit.
Use Vaal Orbs on Summon Skeleton gems until you get a Vaal Summon SKeleton. You can buy partially leveled skeleton gems in act 1.

Skill Tree.
Since you are no longer using SRS, get rid of Potency of Will Cluster. SKels last plenty long enough.
Fill out Enduring Bond Cluster.
Fill out the Sacrifice Cluster and the Indomable Army Cluster, dead minions deal no damage, even the small nodes help alot in minion survivability. Similarly throw one point into the minion life regen node in the Death Attunement cluster.
(You will need a few levels to get all these, but levels come fast at the level you are at.)
Otherwise the tree looks really good.

Ascendency:
I prefer Mistress of Sacrifice to Commander of Darkness.
You are SSF, so maybe you need Commander to cap resists.
But...In my opinion, minion necromancers do PLENTY of damage, its survivability that can be a problem. Mistress of Sacrifice + Bone Offering is HUGE for defense.
Take Bone Barrier when you have access to Uber Lab.

P.S.
Skeletons do significantly more damage than Zombies.
You MAY want to swap the two.

Put vaal skeletons in your 5l, and zombies in the 4l.
(6l for skeletons when you get a 6l)

Vaal Skelton supports
Minion Damage, Impale, Melee Physical, Feeding Frenzy.
6l: Multistrike

Zombie supports
Multistrike, Impale, Predator

Best of all, if you can craft a helmet with +2 (or +3) to socketed minion gems, you can put the zombies there, to have a pseudo 5 link. (if it is an elder helm it can also roll with "socketed gems are supported by level 20 minion damage" for a pseudo 6l.)

P.P.S.
Auras!
I forgot about auras.
You are using Pride, it needs to be linked to Generosity
EDIT: as pointed out in the next post, Pride cannot be supported by Generosity, my bad.
You are going minion impale. That means you need to use Dread Banner. Link it to Generosity.
I recommend you also use Skitterbots, as they give a nice Shock for more damage.

All three of those reserve 95% of your mana, too much if you want to cast skeletons and vulnerability.

So, you will need to spend 4 points on the tree into the Sovereignty cluster, to get 14% reduced mana reserved.

This will require a few more levels.

"

Odif wrote:

P.P.S.
You are using Pride, it needs to be linked to Generosity.
You are going minion impale. That means you need to use Dread Banner. Link it to Generosity with Pride.

Are you sure Pride is affected with generosity? In the gem itself it says "Cannot support curse auras, or other auras that only affect enemies".



Another thing is, I see that OP take Necromantic Aegis and Glancing Blows.
I don't think that works. It should be either one, not taking both. And there are only few specific cases when you want to take Necromantic Aegis - e.g. with Victario's Charity shield.

Like Odif said, I'd go with skelies over zombies. But I prefer other damage support gem other than feeding frenzy. You can put feeding frenzy on other minions and get the buff anyways. The dash effect from feeding frenzy is cool but with only 5 links, I think it's better to go for more damage.

"

suxerz wrote:

Are you sure Pride is affected with generosity? In the gem itself it says "Cannot support curse auras, or other auras that only affect enemies".

You are right, I am wrong.
Been so long since I did a physical damage minion build, I forgot pride can't be supported by generosity.
Dread Banner should still get generosity.

"

suxerz wrote:

Like Odif said, I'd go with skelies over zombies. But I prefer other damage support gem other than feeding frenzy. You can put feeding frenzy on other minions and get the buff anyways. The dash effect from feeding frenzy is cool but with only 5 links, I think it's better to go for more damage.

Yes, it's a choice, less damage for skells with Feeding Frenzy support, but more uptime on enemies. They can dash from pack to pack.

It's a choice, neither is bad. Go either way and it's fine.

"

suxerz wrote:

Another thing is, I see that OP take Necromantic Aegis and Glancing Blows.
I don't think that works. It should be either one, not taking both. And there are only few specific cases when you want to take Necromantic Aegis - e.g. with Victario's Charity shield.

HOLY COW!
He changed his tree, ALOT, it was very different when I make the post a few hours ago.
Either that or I was hallucinating.

The tree as it is now, is bad, should not try to path over to the right side via the ES nodes.
He has Elemental Equilibrium on a phys damage build.
He has Resolute Technique.
So much wrong.

Here is an alternate version, for a level 72 necro, using impale skels and zombies.

www.poeurl.com/c7ct
It gets important minion nodes, some life, and plenty of block. With a spirit shield that has some spell block on it, you could get to 75/75 block chance with Bone Offering and Mistress of Sacrifice.
Or for less block, you can dual wield wands with +1 all spell skill gems for more dps, at the cost of less survivability.

P.S.
Here is a level 90 version of the above tree, much more life nodes!

www.poeurl.com/c7cu