[3.23] [SC+HC] Summon Homing Missiles (SRS) Necromancer: Starting, Leveling & Endgame Mapping

If you want the PoB for this build, use this pobb.in link: https://pobb.in/u/ACGIFT/SummonHomingMissiles (make sure you are using the Community Fork of PoB, not the "original" version of PoB by OpenArl)

Update: This build has been updated for 3.23/Affliction League. The PoB is fully updated to reflect everything PoB supports, such as the new transfigured gems. (It's sparse on league-specific content, however) There may still be inconsistencies between the progression described in this guide & the PoB, so in those cases, trust the PoB. I'll try to iron out the wording here as time goes on.

Overall, I'd mark the patch changes as a substantial improvement to this build. Pinnacle DPS in excess of 10 million is pretty possible.

Introduction

Summon Raging Spirit (SRS) is a bit of an oddball skill in Path of Exile. It's a minion-summoning skill that has a remarkably short duration, effectively making them very disposable. This guide will show you how to lean into this heavily, turning your "raging spirits" into "homing missiles." This will allow you to effortlessly power through the main campaign, as well as do mapping and a lot of other endgame content, all with minimal investment in gear. Aside from one or two key items, (that are still far from chase uniques) this is all but SSF-viable, as well as HC-viable.

Contrast to other common builds using SRS (and even exploding SRS) this build does not rely on anything else for its damage. Our other minions are there purely for defense.

This is meant to be a comprehensive guide, starting in Act 1, able to play the same build all the way through into the far endgame, and covers the aspects of passives, gems, gear, and playstyle strategies.


Why Summon Raging Spirit?

While Summon Raging Spirit in general is a fairly niche, low-popularity skill with some downsides, it has a number of established strengths as well:

• + Ready to go from mid Act 1 onward; unlike other minion builds, there's no delay before you can really start doing your build.
  
• + Strong "fire and forget" gameplay; raging spirits won't drop their target to come follow you as you run away, allowing for a far more mobile strategy than normal for a minion build.
  
• + Fairly strong bossing potential, able to dump a very large amount of DPS onto a single target.
  
• + Usually fairly tanky and survivable, similar to other minion builds.
  
• + Very cheap to build: uses no chase uniques, and can start working on gems alone.
  
• - Requires a lot more activity than typical for a minion build, as you constantly have to summon more.
  
• - Somewhat mediocre clear ability outside of bosses.

In particular, taking this route adds a few more quirks as well:

• + DPS scales much higher, reaching into the millions.
  
• + Non-boss clear is more reliable, especially during leveling, allowing one or two casts to be trusted to kill an entire pack of monsters, leaving you to quickly advance.
  
• + Technically an example of a "universal build," that can handle every type of content, ranging from Act 1 through the far endgame.
  
• + The satisfaction of explosions that remove big, visible chunks of a boss's health bar (assuming the boss isn't just instantly deleted itself)
  
• - Requires a couple of league-specific drops to truly show its full power.
  
• - Distinct delay (of up to a few seconds) between casting and your damage coming out; this can leave you in a tight spot if you get swarmed.
  
• - Much more hands-on than even normal SRS: it plays less like a minion build and more like a spellcaster build.

Basic Concept


Summon Raging Spirit is a spell that creates a short-lived minion that ignores your commands, and attacks whatever is nearest to it. Its base damage is physical, but it has 100% physical to fire conversion. Because this is inherent to the skill itself, it can't be overridden: SRS hits will always be 100% fire damage, even if you use something like a Triad Grip to convert your minions' damage.

Minion Instability (MI) is a keystone passive, that causes your minions to self-destruct should their life drop to 50% of their maximum or below. (i.e, "low life") This causes an explosion that kills them, and inflicts fire damage (to anything near them) equal to 33% of their maximum life. Do note that this does not activate should the minion die or be de-summoned (or otherwise disappear) before its life reaches 50%. Thus it will not activate just because the duration expired, or you summoned too many and it de-summoned your oldest.

To make Minion Instability work with SRS, we need to use something that will cause our raging spirits to take continual damage, and reach the 50% threshold before their duration expires. We have two tools to do this with: in act 1, we have access to the Infernal Legion Support gem, which inflicts area damage over time (AoT) around the minion, as well as make them take continuous fire damage. Later, we use the Legion League-specific unique, Tavukai, as it applies damage faster, buffs our SRS, and frees up a gem slot for a more useful DPS gem.


Everything else we do in the build will work off of this: since our damage scales with our minion's life, we stack as much as we can; each point winds up being slightly more valuable than minion damage. A pleasant side-effect is that this makes our other minions extremely durable.


Class and Passive Skills

For this build, we're going to be using the Necromancer ascendancy class. While many have asserted that the changes in 3.19 have made Necromancer unplayable, it's still incredibly viable for SRS, and the alternative other summoners have flocked to (Scion) is too focused on actively casting buffs, which doesn't work for this skill. We'll want to pick up our notables in this order:

• Mindless Aggression: This is an all-around speed & damage increase for our minions. By the time we get to our first labyrinth, we'll still be relying a fair bit on the normal attack damage of our SRS, so this definitely helps.
  
  
• Bone Barrier: Since life is also damage for our SRS, this 20% more (not increased!) is a big jump up. This also yields a fair bit of survivability for ourselves. Bone armour is a nice spell, even if later we'll prefer molten shell.
  
  
• Commander of Darkness: This is a more modest damage increase; SRS won't be benefiting much from attack speed, but a mild bit of cast speed helps us. The main consideration here are the elemental resists: while it can truly help in dealing with the penalties after fighting Kitava, we want to try and avoid this while we're still relying on Infernal Legion, as giving our minions more elemental resists will make it take longer for them to explode.
  
  
• Plaguebringer: this provides the least-significant benefit to us, so we take it last. An overall 10% more damage & 10% reduced damage taken is nice, but not critical.

For our passive tree, I've provided examples of our tree at numerous points in the game (including for each act) but there's also some explanation for the important things we take and why:



Gem Setup & Progression

This build is relatively flexible with what other skills you have, but there's a very clear ideal progression to use for SRS. Fortunately, it does not absolutely need maximum gem sockets early on; even a 2L or 3L will work in the early acts.

For starters, the newly-introduced "Transfigured Gems" offer us a new route of progression:

Use the following support gems with SRS:

Besides our main skill, we'll be using the following other skills in support of it.

Gearing the Build

While the outright requirements of this build are mild, there are a few things to keep in mind and stay on top of, especially as you level through the acts of the main campaign. On a slot-by-slot basis, this is what you'll want to do:


The Pantheon

As usual, the Pantheon provides some critical survivability here:

• Major Power: Soul of the Brine King. Defensively, this is hard to beat for any build; protection against stunlock can make Unwavering Stance more optional, and importantly, you can get the upgrade for Cannot be Frozen & 50% Reduced Effect of Chill on You, largely eliminating those grave threats. Grab the first upgrade as soon as you can, and the latter not long after.
  
  
• Minor Power: Soul of Shakari. With the Archnemesis rework, chaos DoTs (through the "Toxic" mod) are incessant. Though this will require the upgrade 5% reduced Chaos Damage taken/25% reduced Chaos Damage over Time taken while on Caustic Ground to actually help here.
  
  
• Minor Power: Soul of Abberath. Another DoT that we see a lot from the Archnemesis rework, this is basically the same thing but for fire DoTs. It'll help with ignite right away, and Unaffected by Burning Ground may prove better once you have enough chaos resistance.

Leveling through the Main Campaign

Though a lot of this is already covered above, here we'll break down our "step-by-step" instructions for what to keep track of as you go through each act. But first, some basic gameplay tips to keep in mind while doing this:

• The goal is to try and get through as fast as possible. Don't worry about trying to clear side-content. Feel free to skip quests that don't offer something useful, like a passive point or a quicksilver flask.
  
  
• This goes double for loot; try not to spend too much time looting.
  
  
• Once you have SRS, your basic strategy is to cast it once or twice near a pack of monsters, and then immediately move on (running, using Flame Dash, etc.) to towards the next pack, casting a couple times, etc. You can trust that between their attacks, the Infernal Legion DoT, and their explosions, that they will kill most or all of the packs. This will easily keep you leveled enough to survive content.
  
  
• Try to avoid getting sources of minion elemental resistance until you have Tavukai; up before then, you are relying entirely on your Raging Spirits taking fire damage to trigger their explosions, so giving them more fire resistance slows this down. Likewise, avoid any passive that would grant them chaos resistance, such as from the Grave Intentions cluster.
  
  
• Once you have Mark of the Red Covenant, be mindful of how many Raging Spirits you have out at once: if you summon a 6th, it will just de-spawn the oldest without it exploding. The quicker your Raging Spirits explode, the more rapidly you can keep summoning more, but at first it's best to pace yourself and only summon one every second or so at most.
  
  
• As you build gear & passives, one of your goals is, by the end of each act, have a maximum life equal to 300 times the current act; e.g, 300 life at the end of Act 1, 600 by the end of Act 2, etc. This will ensure you're fairly survivable. If you find yourself falling a bit short, make sure you're grabbing the recommended life nodes, and look for gear that grants life.

With that in mind, these are the instructions to keep in mind for each act. If you over-level and have finished every passive listed for an act, proceed onto the instructions for the next act. If you're under-geared (or somehow under-leveled) at the end of an act, just keep following its instructions in that area until finished, then proceed on following the respective instructions for the next act.



Endgame Content & Strategies

While mechanically SRS plays a bit different from most other builds, it can handle a wide variety of content surprisingly well. The following are some things to keep in mind:

• General Strategy: Once you finish Act 10, the strategy of "cast near a pack of monsters, and move on" doesn't become less important. In fact, it becomes more critical for a different reason: staying mobile is how you will stay alive, especially with the buff to Archnemesis Rare damage. Make use of your Flame Dash, quicksilver flasks, and anything else to stay fast. Unless you are freezing in place to cast a spell (such as SRS) you should never be standing still. In maps, I recommend skirting around the edges of each monster pack, rather than wading right into the middle. Cast a single time, and then move on. If you do this fast enough, this will safely avoid them before they can try and connect a hit on you. This is a technique that will take practice to get right, but will pay off tremendously with substantial improvements to both clearspeed and survival.
  
  
• Map Mods: In theory, this build can handle every single map mod in existence. The closest to a no-go is Players Cannot Regenerate Life, Mana, or Energy Shield, simply because we rely so much on mana regen. You can work around this by swapping for a mana flask, but this will be a miserable time. Curse mods, for instance, don't affect your minions. And because you deal no damage yourself (unless you're using a spell like arc to apply Elemental Equilibrium and/or curses) you do nothing that can be reflected.
  
  
• Incursion: this build works surprisingly well for incursion; it can get a little scary if some incursions place you surrounded by monsters and running for cover before your summons can take things out, but you clear fast enough, (even though kills by minions award less time) though I recommend the "Time Dilation" Atlas Passive for this; without it you can find it difficult to clear some rooms in time if you aren't durable enough to play aggressively.
  
  
• Betrayal: As expected, the only remotely difficult part here are research encounters, as they require a degree of speed that means you generally outpace your minions. (and thus damage) Everything else is very easy.
  
  
• Delve: This build can handle delve, but given the nature of the darkness and the delay on your damage, you generally can't go terribly fast; if the crawler leaves your raging spirits in the darkness, then their explosions won't do much of anything. Barring the speed, it works well: it's solid on Delve encounters, but overall I would not use this for farming Delve.
  
  
• Strongbox, Essence, Harbinger, Abyss, Blight, Metamorph: all of these are rather easy as you can hang back and spam SRS. Like most other minion builds, this makes an excellent choice for doing Blighted & Blight-Ravaged Maps. For blighted maps you also need to worry less about damaging towers, as the caustic/burning ground from your Siegebreaker or Replica Siegebreaker will generally be sufficient to wipe the vast majority of monsters.
  
  
• Legion: this one mechanic is the one that this build is pretty weak at. Given the delay on your explosions and the way your minions target, it's difficult to get more than a handful of monsters or chests revealed. Strangely, it does passably okay (or rather, not any worse than most fast builds) at the Domain of Timeless Conflict. I would not use this build for mass-farming 4-way & 5-way domains, but it'll do for unlocking your 5th map slot. (which requires completing a 4-way Domain)
  
  
• Breach & Ritual: these are the two encounter types most likely to kill you, given the cramped confines and the chance of being swarmed. If you have favorable geography & positioning however, you can generally just sit in place and spam and be fine. Otherwise I recommend avoiding these at higher tiers until you've got a fair bit of practice at mobile casting with this build.
  
  
• Map Bosses & Maven Invites: This build will delete map bosses within a handful of hits, often before you can realize there's even a fight going on. This build likewise handles Maven Invites pretty strongly, though given the lack of corpses for Plaguebringer & replenishing your zombies, I recommend packing along a Desecrate gem for these even if you don't normally use it.
  
  
• Pinnacle Bosses: this build is strong enough to generally handle your initial encounters for the Epilogue quests. However, given how rippy they can be when at level 85, that might mark the one true limit for this build.

Final Thoughts

I originally set out to write this as an example to prove that the Necromancer ascendancy class wasn't dead; a rebuttal to the countless players wailing that the 3.19 patch had rendered her unplayable.

It was only as I went along that I realized that this actually marked perhaps a true "universal build," that could be thrown at all content and still fair decently. This versatility, coupled with the accessibility of its gear, makes this something that should see a lot of play in 3.19, and hopefully this guide will help spread it.

A special thanks to b0moodc, whose insight & inspiration was instrumental in this guide ever happening.

very helpful! thanks

hi , can you upload it on pob

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oyoya wrote:

hi , can you upload it on pob

Whoops, I knew I was missing something!

I've fixed that; there's links to the PoB in the guide, as well as one right here: https://pastebin.com/EKfHrCA2

The PoB includes all 12 passive trees, maxed gems, (minus no awakened empower) and a selection of the gear shown. I didn't bother including any particularly high-tier gear, though I did edit the stats on Tavukai (nerf) & Mark of the Red Covenant (buff) to reflect their stats as they'll drop in Kalandra League.

I think SRS needs to be reworked, too clumsy ability. Relative to other summons, SRS has too specific map clearing. But the guide itself is very detailed, good job.

Can u verify the PoB? I can't import

"

EhoBafio wrote:

Can u verify the PoB? I can't import

You might need to update your copy of PoB. I made that PoB on the latest version of the Community (aka LocalIdentity) fork. I have tested repeatedly, and it works with the current version.

I did also just update it once the 3.19 patch game live; in practice the two PoBs are exactly the same, just that the trees in the old one are tagged for 3.18. (they do not change when updated for 3.19, however)

For ANY POB right now, you need to use the latest release of the Path of Building Community Fork.
The POB made by OpenARL is not supported, nor recommended, as it has not been updated in many years.

That link will auto update whenever a new stable (not pre-release!) build comes in.

Edited for grammar and better quotability.

Is there a video?