Need help with my Witch summoner.

Hi, I recently made a new character and I went with a witch summoner.

This is my current skills tree



Question 1.
What should I go for now. I wanna focus on getting auras for my minions but also surviving if I get attacked.

This is my current gear



Question 2.
Should I even bother getting good gear or wait until I am level 60+? For gear what should I look for so I can prepare myself.

Last question.
What gems should I use and where should they be placed in sockets.
My minion setup are 9 zombies, 3 Flame Sentinel, skeletons and vaal skeleton.

Thanks for helping

You should definitely take some defensive nodes on your tree: Increaseed life or Increased Energy Shield. Really simplified: Life is strong because potions are really strong and you're probably going to want to use healing pots for your minion army anyways. It's also a bit easier to gear for than energy shield. Energy shield is strong because it can rech much higher numbers and can recharge when not taking damage for a short duration. It's more complex than that of couse so if I were you I'd look up some gameplay videos to see which playstyle you prefer.

I would try and replace the white items fairly soon. It shouldn't be too hard finding something better.

For links, a lot of people put their Zombies in a helmet that has "+2 (or +1) to level of minion gems in this item" as a mod since Zombies become much tankier with each level. Other good supports are minion life, melee physical damage and melee splash.

I wouldn't link skeletons with life leech, they don't persist for too long and if they die you can just summon new ones. They'd do better with damage supports like melee physical or added chaos.

Flame Sentinels don't get any use out of added fire as they don't deal any physical damage. I'd recommend ditching it for something like fire penetration, faster casting, spell echo, concentrated effect and/or minion life. Lesser multiple projectiles is really good with them for sure though.

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Mokihiki wrote:

Flame Sentinels don't get any use out of added fire as they don't deal any physical damage. I'd recommend ditching it for something like fire penetration, faster casting, spell echo, concentrated effect and/or minion life. Lesser multiple projectiles is really good with them for sure though.

Sentinels already shoot 3 balls. Each ball does X dmg, so it is 3X dmg unmodified. With LMP each ball would do 0.65X dmg, and with +2 to projectiles count we will have 0.65*5=3.25X damage. So it is 0.25/3=8% damage increase (maybe a little more if gem is leveled). Good but I wouldn't call it "really god for sure".
+1 to everything else
BTW, OP, buy or ask someone for Bones of Ullr, they are cheap and WAY better that your current boots.

Flame Sentinels don't just have implicit +2 projectiles as far as I know. They shoot "augmented fireballs", which means they sometimes shoot 3 projectiles, sometimes one which forks and sometimes they just shoot a single one (it might be supported by concentrated effect or something, I'm not really sure). Adding lmp means that sometimes the situation you described happens (5 projectiles), sometimes they shoot 3 projectiles which then forks on hit and somtimes they just shoot 3 projectiles (which may or may not be dealing more damage per ball than normally).

I find Flame Sentinel's AI for deciding which fireball to use is pretty good.

Still need help where to go next on my skill tree anyone got a updated guide or something maybe?

You could aim for something like this maybe: http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMA34rpAv6zVyu9gm0ZfRgI9CL07Ipr28BUbAtMs2pDDY0EBxzcg9t_xpMnyT1VxsHFtAzviL-XOljsGIhCRnH5N_IerJhwu4_6gh6wd-GIgwnXz_fX2RPw1dsLHapJsZuhzLwvb0lRlS6PRkQEqsQHHqcIEJeFYBVQ2Qu4k9rdna5NuSqY6-4abPqAKPqa4BZvpqyCx0WdJKqIQPno0_tTUjbpkDNBh6h9E2zjavrStz5akQZJFy_-CmqsZOfyRdi9VdY64TWSgKSmV_6PTeMnqX5Z
It's pretty generic I think and it's not a tree I'm using or anything but it could work. Run Arctic Armour, run some auras, maybe use a Belly of the Beast.

Or if you want to find some tried and tested trees to look at head over to the Witch subforum. There should be some there probably.