Zombie Summoner help

Had to post again since there was some more pointed at me ;)

Regarding Vitality. I agree it would be the next aura for me to drop.
I only partially keep it for the regen for zombies. I mostly have it for regen for me. Being CI i have no ES regen. Having Vaal pact (2 points out of the way) and Vitality lets me have some ES regen. It has already saved me multiple times from being killed slowly.
Instead of hanging back and time wasting, i can keep going.

As mentioned though, I could quite happily drop this if i figure out something better.

At Leary,
I am sure i can get my spec to work on 78 maps, just need to figure out how.
As i mentioned in my first post i hate the downtime associated with running specters. And i hate the lame SRS summoner. Not a real summoner IMO.


@Tmaaciak - Yeah sorry for the brain fart there. Getting items confused. But thanks for confirming a good rare would be best :)

Regards,
Faarq

"

Enky wrote:

Had to post again since there was some more pointed at me ;)

Regarding Vitality. I agree it would be the next aura for me to drop.
I only partially keep it for the regen for zombies. I mostly have it for regen for me. Being CI i have no ES regen. Having Vaal pact (2 points out of the way) and Vitality lets me have some ES regen. It has already saved me multiple times from being killed slowly.
Instead of hanging back and time wasting, i can keep going.

As mentioned though, I could quite happily drop this if i figure out something better.

At Leary,
I am sure i can get my spec to work on 78 maps, just need to figure out how.
As i mentioned in my first post i hate the downtime associated with running specters. And i hate the lame SRS summoner. Not a real summoner IMO.


@Tmaaciak - Yeah sorry for the brain fart there. Getting items confused. But thanks for confirming a good rare would be best :)

Regards,
Faarq

What downtime becomes associated with spectres? I summon twice a day. Before I go in maps, and when I run a palace. My spectres never die (unless running my 300+ MF spec, but im stil able to do the bosses regardless, like courtyard boss). Not even on palace dom etc. I dont even need to use minion life on them

btw, with an MF spec, maybe you should not worry on minions dying. I mean, I run Saffell's frame with NA and blind on the zombies, for huge mitigation.

anyways, Ive figured out some things:
1. Swap FA for either melee physical (which is more, instead of increased) or blind for tankiness, increased dmg gem after that should be minion dmg or Added fire (added fire can be swapped, so is obvious). Srs works the same as zombies for supports and for them FA is inferiour too
2. Use Enfeeble If you want to minimize dmg from enemies, not temp chains, enfeeble is more effective. Otherwise, use vunerability for dmg enhancement (ohh, and blue slot is easier exhangeable for this too)
3. what links do you have in your chest btw? Is it 6-socketed?
4. Flasks, are you using them? tho if you arent low life they are probably not as strong (im using 1 panicked divine of animation which heals around 1.5~ k instantly (very strong saver) and 1 cautious eternal, to heal ~3k over 4 seconds. Really strong too. More so because im also running vitality :P)

to be fair the whole point of investing in minion life nodes is so you.. dont use minion life gems .

gems like minion life , minion speed , minion damage and minion resistances are gems specifically for the use of summons by non summoners

this is especially true for life , speed and resistances as minion damage is versatile enough to have multiple applications and roughly equates to a 30% more multi depending on how much minion damage you have on gear and if you dont currently own alevel 3+ empower gem.



if it is about what hp pool you want your minions at, then it should technically be whatever is high enough not to be one shot. and that number usually can be accomplished with an hp pool just under 8k


no the big things that keep minions alive , is the max resistances and the block in conjunction with multiple healing sources like leech regen and flasks of animation.

max life became second fiddle the moment ggg nerfed minionlife and added the entirely pointless and unusable armor stat that scales with almost nothing.

Update - Seam to be running 75 maps easily now. Skipping boss's though...

@Salty.
I agree with you on that, grab all the multipliers from the tree than use the additional's from gems. Good info.


@Leary
I was never able to keep my specters alive. Thats the reason i dropped them. I only ever grabbed the level 69 desecrated evangelists, and they still done ok. How do you avoid them dying to 1 shot's from rogues or bosses?
This is probably the question i should have asked before respecting away from specters.

I only run a slight amount of MF. Just enough to get a few extra orbs drop and enough rares to use all the 6 ports carrying stuff out.

I have a Melee physical damage gem i am leveling in my chest. I swap it and IIQ sometimes when i find an extra hard rogue.
In regards to FA vs MPD, i tried both of them (Before i started using haste aura though) and FA was clearly better. Less damage per attack but as most mobs die in 1 attack (Multistrike) they spend less time attacking air and more attacking mobs which ended up in a noticeable clear speed increase.

Enfeeble - The only reason i chose Temp chains over that is because with temp chains i can just move away from the enemy and not get hit at all.
I have a lvl19 vulnerability i will max out as i get room. I was using duel curse but dropped it when i respected. It definitely is a good curse but i chose temp chains to stop me dying :P
I moved away from duel curse cause i want to be more balanced. Not exceptionally well against most mobs and under par on curse immune. (get quite a few of these map mods)

Chest is ES based Atziri's Splendour. have 4L def setup + 2 spare sockets leveling gems. (4L6s)

Flasks - Granite + charge recovery + armor
1 x Quicksilver + charges + stun recovery (still looking for better opts there, you recomend + speed +?)
1 x Mana flask - with increased time. For 50% / 0 % regen maps.
2 x Seething Divine life flask of animation.

Biggest thing i am interested in hearing here is if you use low level evangelists from campaign and if so, how you keep them alive through lv 74 residence boss :)

Regards

"

Enky wrote:

Biggest thing i am interested in hearing here is if you use low level evangelists from campaign and if so, how you keep them alive through lv 74 residence boss :)

why would you want that, you can just pick up the maul statues on your way there and they'll smack him down. he'll probably kill your zombies but the statues will outlast you in probably every situation.

@enky

Multiple defenses for the evangelists:

1. Minion life (not even that much tho, i miss 3 minion life nodes)
2. Res-capped (with PoE) and the res node from the tree. Chaos res is in there too
3. Attack dmg gets blinded from my zombies
4. Regen and Life leech from tree and vitality (yes, i actually run this)
5. Pots (too op)
6. the fact that they only have a 1/15 chance to get targeted (10 zombies, 4 eva's, me)
7. Baubles that have a huge uptime during increased duration AND (very important) dont have inc AoE. Inc AoE makes them die soo much easier

"

crappuccino wrote:

"

Enky wrote:

Biggest thing i am interested in hearing here is if you use low level evangelists from campaign and if so, how you keep them alive through lv 74 residence boss :)

why would you want that, you can just pick up the maul statues on your way there and they'll smack him down. he'll probably kill your zombies but the statues will outlast you in probably every situation.

well if your zombies are doing their job and your specters arent being full retard , then your specters should not be taking any damage .

mine don't ive been taking ilevel 68 evangelists to palace dominus for 2 leagues straight now

if there is one thing an animate guardian can do very well when on a 0 link - 1 link its being able to proc consecrated ground while under bone offering which puts ur minion life regen to 6.5% 9% with vitality and 11% if you have good animation flasks and 12.5% if you happen to have a rejuvenation totem (which i do for no reason other than to say i do)

so a level 20 rejuvenation totem will regenerate about 160 hps , which is a pretty good alternative to vitality if you are fighting a boss.

@crappuccino
Because the statues then suck for clearing. So i would be forced to go back and grab Evangelists again after. That is what i am trying to avoid.

@leary
Out of your list i have all the hp nodes, and that is what i ran before.
My thoughts on what you are running. I hope for a rebuttal to convince me :P
Whilst not running inc area of effect does help the specters stay alive. And running Inc duration helps keep them alive. They still randomly die sometimes. They are quite brittle if something hits them. But that is only the minor point, if your not running Inc area then their bubble only hits an area as big as zombies splash, and hits for less. So the point seams mute. Your thoughts?
I have to ask to be sure, you have tried my current setup in game yeah? Everything you have mentioned so far i have already experimented with and was unable to get to perform as well as you say you do.

Hopefully if we keep chatting we can figure out where i am stuffing up :)

@Salty
Good tip with animate guardian, I have not mucked around with him yet.

Regards,

I don't really like the evangelists! I started using Flame Sentinels with the passive EE + reduced elemental curse + flammability curse. Shit just melts, to me they spit out fireballs way faster than evangelists does there aoe..and the fireballs go way off screen so things die before you even get there! lol

I also use Haste on a generosity gem instead of hatred for Spectres cast speed, coupled with quality faster casting and spell echo...its insane how fast those fire balls fly, and it gets better with you use flesh offering!!!

You get -50 resist from EE
-39 from ele weakness
-39 from flammability

Ontop of the curse effectiveness of the curse on hit gem, and 6% if you take the double curse nod, and you can pick up 18% more that I know of!

"

justinmm1988 wrote:

I don't really like the evangelists! I started using Flame Sentinels with the passive EE + reduced elemental curse + flammability curse. Shit just melts, to me they spit out fireballs way faster than evangelists does there aoe..and the fireballs go way off screen so things die before you even get there! lol

I also use Haste on a generosity gem instead of hatred for Spectres cast speed, coupled with quality faster casting and spell echo...its insane how fast those fire balls fly, and it gets better with you use flesh offering!!!

You get -50 resist from EE
-39 from ele weakness
-39 from flammability

Ontop of the curse effectiveness of the curse on hit gem, and 6% if you take the double curse nod, and you can pick up 18% more that I know of!

I preferred flame sentinels as well until i could run both haste and hatred auras under generosity.Flame sentinels sucks vs any difficult boss and don't have all resistances in base stats like evangelists.

Revisited them at lvl 83 in some blue/yellow 7x lvl maps. They still clear packs of white/blue mobs a bit faster than evangelists, but they more likely to die when flanked and they lack single target dps vs rare mobs and bosses.

Also proximity shield evangelists contain is huge survivability boost for you and your zombies against projectiles and spells.