The Summoner's Guide to the Galaxy.

This will be my sister post to my Spectral Scion Build. Its here to answer as many basic summoner questions as possible.

In light of a quad-billion summoner related questions on reddit and the main forums I thought of making some general Q&A to answer simple questions and address misinformation.

Q: What is the best summoner build? Es, HP, Hybrid?
A: I see this question asked a lot and the Answer is THERE IS NO BEST BUILD. Build according to your playstyle, experiment, and most importantly HAVE FUN.

Q: How does Minion Instability work?
A: When a minion reaches 35%(or below) of their max life they explode dealing a small aoe fire damage equal to 33% of their max life. This effectively cuts your minions life by 35% in exchange for a damaging explosion. If a minion were to get one-shotted the explosion will not trigger.

http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Minion_Instability
has information on which support gems work with MI.

Q: Does Conduit Work with Minions?
A: NO IT DOES NOT. However you can indirectly give frenzy charges to your minions by raising a frenzy gorilla from act 2.

Q: Remote Mine: Does it work with minions?
A: Yes it does.

Q: Necromantic Aegis
A: You give all of the implicit and explicit properties of the shield to your minions. So no shield for you shield for minion. Yes, even block chance.

Q: Passive points and how they interact with minions?
A: minion life nodes increases minion life, minion damage nodes increases minion damage(but not degeneration type damage). Necromantic Aegis gives all implicit and explicit shield stats to your minions. Nothing else affects minions. Some nodes however affect minions indirectly. EE lowers resist.

Q: How does Elemental Equilibrium work with minions?
A: Minions themselves do not trigger EE. Your character(or totem) can trigger EE for your minions. For example, you cast ice nova those mobs now have +25% ice res and -50% fire and lightning resist. Your minions fire and lightning portion of damage will now deal more damage.

Q: How does support gems interact with Minions?
Most support gems work with minions. Treat Zombies and Skeletons as a melee character and spectre as either a melee, spell caster, or projectile attack based character(depends on what you raise).

Q: Summoner Uniques info (Warning: contains bias opinions)

Midnight Bargain: Verdict? TRASH
This is one hell of a “Bargain” reducing your life by 30% in exchange for 1 spectre 1 zombie 1 skele and some minion stats. Thats like saying hey monsters its 30% easier to kill me have at it. (Prob viable with a shav thou)

Sidhe’s Breath: Verdict? Good, only if you use the snapshot mechanic

Bones of Ullr: Verdict? Great!
This is an awesome unique. +1 spectre + 1 zombie and 15% movespd. It has the good stuff with no negatives(besides the low defensive stats)

Chobber Chabber: Verdict? Good, only if you use the snapshot mechanic

Mon'tregul's Grasp: Verdict? Fan-effing-tastic
This thing turns your zombies into killing machines. You can snapshot the grasp first than unequip and summon your regular zombies bypassing the half zombie mod. Zombies that deal the killing blow on a monster trigger infernal blow dealing 20% of that slain monster in an aoe fire damage.

Q: Spectre specific Questions (only going to talk about the popular choices unless requested other wise)

Burning Miscreation(BM):
These guys are found in Lunaris Temple 2 and 3. They cast their version of righteous fire called unrighteous fire which (I believe) deals a high flat fire damage to targets. It does not drain their health. From what I seen BM's auras do not stack with each other.

Supports that increase their damage:
increased burning damage
minion life
nothing else!

Increasing support options?
Increased Area will increase the aura range

curses that increase damage?
flammability
elemental weakness
vulnerability

Flame Sentinels

Tentacle Miscreation

Post here if you have any burning(pun intended) questions about summoners. I will do my best to answer them and add to the QA.

oh wow I did not know about that Montregul's can also be used in snapshot manner. Time to get one! Do you think this snapshot technique/exploit will sooner or later be fixed in a patch? It sounds just too good to be true >__<

ps Enjoying all your minion post! Can't wait too see your Scion summoner build! Thx!

Sorry, but wtf is 'snapshot' in this context?

can you post a summoner build for scion please?

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Zedda wrote:

Sorry, but wtf is 'snapshot' in this context?

I have same question.

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Zedda wrote:

Sorry, but wtf is 'snapshot' in this context?

When you raise a minion, its stats are fixed at the time it is raised, so it is a snapshot in time rather than dynamically updating if you switch equipment thereafter. This is also true for the support gems you use with the raise/summon active skill. So you can pull all the supports and replace with other gems after raising minions and the minions' stats will not update/change (you have to leave the raise/summon active skill gem or the summons will disappear).

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bubblehulk wrote:

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Zedda wrote:

Sorry, but wtf is 'snapshot' in this context?

I have same question.

me too !

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Torgh wrote:

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bubblehulk wrote:

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Zedda wrote:

Sorry, but wtf is 'snapshot' in this context?

I have same question.

me too !

Check out my post just above yours :)

Okay, so snapshot is, in fact, completely ineffective.

I'm not summoning a bunch of zombies then running around slaying everything with immortal zombies. My zombies are constantly dying/exploding and need to be re-summoned often. This is especially noticeable in 69+ maps. Snapshot is a nice theory but just doesn't work for summoners.

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Zedda wrote:

Okay, so snapshot is, in fact, completely ineffective.

I'm not summoning a bunch of zombies then running around slaying everything with immortal zombies. My zombies are constantly dying/exploding and need to be re-summoned often. This is especially noticeable in 69+ maps. Snapshot is a nice theory but just doesn't work for summoners.

End game zombies and especially spectres are very tough. Zombies can get over 10k life, and spectres are relatively safe and hard to kill if they are ranged. However, if you are going with minion instability, it's much less effective to snapshot zombies since you want them to die and explode.