Zombie Summoner help

Hello all.

I have been playing a specter / zombie build for nearly all of my POE career.
After hitting 70+ maps and having specters die, then wasting my time finding more, or using lackluster ones in the maps. I decided to drop them.
This was a great move, and now with my zombies in a 6L with with +2melee gems and +1all gems, with a level 2 empower they have +3 levels and their melee supports all have +2 levels. They perform well through maps up to and including 73. I basically do not loose any and can do most bosses. I run Rare maps with any opts except blood magic (and 0% regen cause its annoying)

Now that i have my setup out of the way, and i hope someone finds that useful also, i need help on where to go from here?

Heading into 74/75 maps i am loosing zombies quite often, and with the 6L they cost a lot to re-summon. Meaning i have to drop auras to summon them back which takes a while during a fight.

I have tried swapping out dps supports for defensive supports. Leech/Minion resists/Hp. All they seam to do is delay the minions exploding. And meanwhile their clear speed is VERY slow.

Is this something i just need to except if i want to still use zombies? that i cannot run end game or is there something great i am missing?
I know most people will tell me to regret over to SRS build and i might just do that until zombies/specters get fixed. But on the slight chance there is someone successfully running zombs into the higher maps i decided to post this.

Thank you reading.

That's just part of zombies. I've personally never had fun with specters. But I use to do a zombie build last league. Moved to SRS this league.

I suggest putting raise skeletons in a spell totem. Cast the totem and the totem will spawn up zombies. They will do decent damage and they will act as meat shields. Saving your zombies a little and adding even more defense to you yourself.

I even use this with my SRS to distract bosses and large mobs. I barely take damage because of it.
I'll probably even use this when I make my arc witch. It's fun and works very well as a defensive measure. If you link culling strike to them it really is fun.

I'm not the most experienced player but that is my suggestion.

You could also do a desecrate-cast-raise zombie. Every time you take a certain amount of damage you automatically create corpse and raise zombies. It's also fun.

Cannot tell you anything about your problems since you havent linked anything but the botw ll bm summoner does pretty well in any map (any mods) and doesnt even have a 5/6link. With 6links is pretty weird they die even in 74 maps

Trelga,
You mean to say the spell totem will raise up skeletons right?
I used to have this setup, but the skeleton's seam to get in the way of my zombies.

I like your desercrate/cwdt/zombie trick but then it would be raised without any supports which would meant it would get 1 shot. I like the thinking behind that though :)


Leary93,
I am not particularly fluent with posting on forums, and as such never looked up how to link things.
I tried to include as much detail in my setup as i could in my previous post. And if there is anything else you would like to know i can share.
On a different note, i had no idea what botw ll bm was. So i googled it and found the witch LL BM summoner build.
It has some good info and I had not read that one before. Thank you for that and i will continue to read the rest of it.



Also tonight, I changed discipline for purity to help my minions resistances. Whilst i lost 1800es, it made a noticeable difference to the zombies. Hopefully it did not gimp me too much in the process. More mucking around in some 73/74 maps over the next few nights to be sure.

I think Spectre's are the minions with the best clear speed, only beaten by SRS that is supported properly. Because Spectres can have innate AoE damage, that is one less support to put in. SRS does waay higher damage, but they're transient and annoying to use for me.

Anyway, your setup, you have no explained it. 6L is a not very descriptive, and we only know you have +3 to Zombies. What links do you have, do you run Necromantic Aegis, what shield do you use with it, what supports do you have, do you run Alpha's Howl with your minions, what other interesting uniques do you have that can affect your minion damage?

As above said, spectres have better clear speed. 3 spectres will out dps 9 zombies against trash mobs. The longer your zombies have to tank the more likely you are to lose some. As a pure summoner your job is to keep your minions going. Max resist on zombies is huge as is life pool. On my recently deceased summoner i very rarely lost a zombie with them at effective level 20, 4L with all damage supports, and running only purity for defense + all minion nodes besides the shield node. This is in sub 75 maps and bosses were a different matter. Piety, shock and horror and even JV spider all decimated my zombies (map kole may have got a couple). Convocation helps a lot when zombies are spread out 1v1ing mobs. Rejuv totem is great especially with aura effect nodes. Insta minion life flasks are a must and drop instability, waste of a node when your goal is to keep minions alive. Vaal grace is nice in that tough fight as well as vaal haste. I run flesh offering pretty much full time but dabbled with bone offering against tough bosses.

I was always told it's best to run zombies in a +2 to level of minion gems helm because zombies get the most defense/offense gain from gem levels...unless you have a level 3 empower in a 6 link, then you essentially not only get +2 to minion gems but all gems!


But sometimes death is unavoidable, I just watched a video of pohx kappa's minions getting a 1 shot from an exile in a 78 map, almost killed him as well! And his have like 11k life becaise of Mon'tregul's Grasp!


And the new map is a summoner killer as well! Extra large righteous right, Pohx left game...as soon as fight started his minions were doomed lol!

It's the GGG way! Get content out, put zero thought behind it!

as others said before, get your specters back! ;)
i have two different chestpieces, a 3b3r for melee spectres and a 4b2g for ranged ones. that allows me to find useful spectres on practically any map and i don't have to rely on underleveled mobs from the campaign.
on easier maps, ranged spectres will drastically improve your clear speed. i prefer tentacle girls (lmp, chain, chaos dmg, lightning dmg, minion dmg) or the vaal constructs with built in lmp (chain, proj speed, chaos dmg, minion dmg, spell echo) for maps up to ~72 and voidbearers (gmp, faster proj, chaos dmg, minion dmg, echo) up to 76.
melee spectres are the most versatile though, melee splash, multistrike, melee phys dmg is the baseline support i use for all melee minons (except leap slammers who get fire dmg instead of melee splash) and with that you can pick up practically anything. flicker strikers or leap slammers for good clear speed, big statues/skeletons/vaal zombies/skeleton beasts as nearly indestructible tanks (they will still get oneshot by 78+ bosses though ;)) or pretty much anything else for a core troupe that keeps the enemy busy when your zombies start dying (which for me happens around map lvl 76).
i wasn't very impressed with the evangelists that everyone seems to love so much, probably because i don't have an all blue chest. and yeah, never use underleveled spectres.

I think the first thing to try is to remove minion instability. Works great at low levels, not so useful at higher levels. Removing that btw, increases your zombie (and spectres) hp by 33%!

Thank you all for more responses.
Although i still have no idea how to link my spec. I did find out how to link my items.

( do have a leveled added melee damage i swap in for the iiq gem whilst trying harder maps)
Thoughts on melee attack speed support? I am considering swapping my Haste aura to my gloves so both hatred and haste get generosity. If i do that, and also pickup Vaal haste, would i be better of with another damage support instead?


I do not have minion instability.
I have every single minion mode. Nearly every reduced mana reserved / increase aura effectiveness.
Rest of points into es (have +330%)

This allows me to run Hatred + generosity / Vitality / Purity of elements / haste.
I also have flesh offering but ran out of room to use it with inc duration. I am thinking of swapping this for vaal haste as it will benefit from my +aura nodes. (have about +52% aura effectiveness)


As for the specter thing. Maybe you are correct and they clear faster. I HATED the fact that you made one stuff up or met one hard mob and you have to spend the next few mins finding more specters. I prefer the no downtime with zombies. This is off topic though as i just really want advice on my zombie setup.
I know

To justinmm - Not entirely true. Empower only effects active skill gems, not the supports. So for me empower only gives my zombies + levels. I do have my empower in a +1 to gems weapon though, so if i was lucky enough to get a level 4 empower i would have +4 to zombies.


I notice all you guys replies are early/mid morning for me. I would love to watch how your specters setup's compare to my zombie setups in 75 maps. This should be possible on the weekend if i hop on in the morning. If any of you would be up for that please add me in game and see if we can organise it :)