Summoners in the CB:

Plus idk if anyone has thought about this, but you can link fortify with minions... mon'treguls grasp + fortified zombies.,, THINK ABOUT THAT FOR A SECOND LOL

Im a hybrid life/es dual curse lvl 83 summoner in beta. I would say summoner is actually stronger in beta then live. I got bones of ullr from a guild mate and the rest is self found and i clear 76 maps without a problem on 4 links. My total life pool is 8400 (with good gear it would be 10k+), my zombies have 11k hp in a +2 helm with fortify, 21k life chaos golem unlinked, and i don't even run a damage aura.

Leveling a Summoner is started in cruel. Start out taking the first 6-8 witch damage nodes, craft a +1 wand, use dual wands, grab basically any leveling spell and thats all you need till cruel. At the end of act 4 you can buy spell echo and multistrike from the vendor, respec the spell damage nodes to es nodes and life becomes very easy.

Targeting isn't a problem you just cast ball lightning a couple times with curse on hit and everything dies. Summoner is easily one of the cheapest and safest specs in the game.

"

boogboi wrote:

Plus idk if anyone has thought about this, but you can link fortify with minions... mon'treguls grasp + fortified zombies.,, THINK ABOUT THAT FOR A SECOND LOL

mon'treguls isn't worth using anymore with the increase to minion life, fortify and jewels. Midnight bargain, dying breath or even a aurumvorax are better unique summoner weapons imo. You can also just use a 2-3 resistance weapon.

"

SnowCrash wrote:

Im a hybrid life/es dual curse lvl 83 summoner in beta. I would say summoner is actually stronger in beta then live. I got bones of ullr from a guild mate and the rest is self found and i clear 76 maps without a problem on 4 links. My total life pool is 8400 (with good gear it would be 10k+), my zombies have 11k hp in a +2 helm with fortify, 21k life chaos golem unlinked, and i don't even run a damage aura.

Leveling a Summoner is started in cruel. Start out taking the first 6-8 witch damage nodes, craft a +1 wand, use dual wands, grab basically any leveling spell and thats all you need till cruel. At the end of act 4 you can buy spell echo and multistrike from the vendor, respec the spell damage nodes to es nodes and life becomes very easy.

Targeting isn't a problem you just cast ball lightning a couple times with curse on hit and everything dies. Summoner is easily one of the cheapest and safest specs in the game.

"

boogboi wrote:

Plus idk if anyone has thought about this, but you can link fortify with minions... mon'treguls grasp + fortified zombies.,, THINK ABOUT THAT FOR A SECOND LOL

mon'treguls isn't worth using anymore with the increase to minion life, fortify and jewels. Midnight bargain, dying breath or even a aurumvorax are better unique summoner weapons imo. You can also just use a 2-3 resistance weapon.

How do you get 11k hp on zombies? With only minion life support gem + minion life nodes? Currently level 22 zombies are only 3011hp, so that life buff must have been hudge.

"

SnowCrash wrote:

Im a hybrid life/es dual curse lvl 83 summoner in beta. I would say summoner is actually stronger in beta then live. I got bones of ullr from a guild mate and the rest is self found and i clear 76 maps without a problem on 4 links. My total life pool is 8400 (with good gear it would be 10k+), my zombies have 11k hp in a +2 helm with fortify, 21k life chaos golem unlinked, and i don't even run a damage aura.

Leveling a Summoner is started in cruel. Start out taking the first 6-8 witch damage nodes, craft a +1 wand, use dual wands, grab basically any leveling spell and thats all you need till cruel. At the end of act 4 you can buy spell echo and multistrike from the vendor, respec the spell damage nodes to es nodes and life becomes very easy.

Targeting isn't a problem you just cast ball lightning a couple times with curse on hit and everything dies. Summoner is easily one of the cheapest and safest specs in the game.

"

boogboi wrote:

Plus idk if anyone has thought about this, but you can link fortify with minions... mon'treguls grasp + fortified zombies.,, THINK ABOUT THAT FOR A SECOND LOL

mon'treguls isn't worth using anymore with the increase to minion life, fortify and jewels. Midnight bargain, dying breath or even a aurumvorax are better unique summoner weapons imo. You can also just use a 2-3 resistance weapon.

That might be true if the only reason to use montys grasp was the added hp. Montys is the single biggest increase to zombie dps-> 100% more physical and aoe % based fire explosions

Also the fact that they're getting hp buffs means nothing because defensive stats, and ESPECIALLY vitality only get better and better as zombies get more hp.

Dying breath is just trash as a 2 hander, you lose out on a shield slot for some trashy 17% damage bonus and im not even going to comment on aurumvorax rofl

"

ivkoto77777 wrote:

"

SnowCrash wrote:

Im a hybrid life/es dual curse lvl 83 summoner in beta. I would say summoner is actually stronger in beta then live. I got bones of ullr from a guild mate and the rest is self found and i clear 76 maps without a problem on 4 links. My total life pool is 8400 (with good gear it would be 10k+), my zombies have 11k hp in a +2 helm with fortify, 21k life chaos golem unlinked, and i don't even run a damage aura.

Leveling a Summoner is started in cruel. Start out taking the first 6-8 witch damage nodes, craft a +1 wand, use dual wands, grab basically any leveling spell and thats all you need till cruel. At the end of act 4 you can buy spell echo and multistrike from the vendor, respec the spell damage nodes to es nodes and life becomes very easy.

Targeting isn't a problem you just cast ball lightning a couple times with curse on hit and everything dies. Summoner is easily one of the cheapest and safest specs in the game.

"

boogboi wrote:

Plus idk if anyone has thought about this, but you can link fortify with minions... mon'treguls grasp + fortified zombies.,, THINK ABOUT THAT FOR A SECOND LOL

mon'treguls isn't worth using anymore with the increase to minion life, fortify and jewels. Midnight bargain, dying breath or even a aurumvorax are better unique summoner weapons imo. You can also just use a 2-3 resistance weapon.

How do you get 11k hp on zombies? With only minion life support gem + minion life nodes? Currently level 22 zombies are only 3011hp, so that life buff must have been hudge.

I actually don't run minion life gem and its actually 10.4k life with a lvl 19 gem. The life buff was huge.

"

boogboi wrote:

Plus idk if anyone has thought about this, but you can link fortify with minions... mon'treguls grasp + fortified zombies.,, THINK ABOUT THAT FOR A SECOND LOL

mon'treguls isn't worth using anymore with the increase to minion life, fortify and jewels. Midnight bargain, dying breath or even a aurumvorax are better unique summoner weapons imo. You can also just use a 2-3 resistance weapon.

"

boogboi wrote:

That might be true if the only reason to use montys grasp was the added hp. Montys is the single biggest increase to zombie dps-> 100% more physical and aoe % based fire explosions

Also the fact that they're getting hp buffs means nothing because defensive stats, and ESPECIALLY vitality only get better and better as zombies get more hp.

Dying breath is just trash as a 2 hander, you lose out on a shield slot for some trashy 17% damage bonus and im not even going to comment on aurumvorax rofl

My minions get capped resistance from jewels they gain nothing from the 25-30% all res on mon'tregul's.

Mon'tregul's adds 80-100% increased physical damage, not more. Minion damage gem adds far more damage then Mon'tregul's since the change to minion damage gem. Besides you can get 15% increased minion damage on each jewel and master craft 15% on gloves already. The AoE fire damage is from zombie death and only thing that kills them is Hast if im not running purity of Ice so far. My opinion is its not worth using, since i gain very little from it and lose half my zombies.

Dying Breath is actually pretty good if you plan to go 3-4 curse. You gain 36% increase effect of curses, 18% radius of curses, 18% radius of auras and the 18% increased damage to all my minions. With good gear you will still have 9-10k total life without a shield.

Aurumvorax certainly isn't the best weapon to use but its a very cheap unique to over cap resistances with and allow you to run a ton of MF gear.

"

SnowCrash wrote:

My minions get capped resistance from jewels they gain nothing from the 25-30% all res on mon'tregul's.

Mon'tregul's adds 80-100% increased physical damage, not more. Minion damage gem adds far more damage then Mon'tregul's since the change to minion damage gem. Besides you can get 15% increased minion damage on each jewel and master craft 15% on gloves already. The AoE fire damage is from zombie death and only thing that kills them is Hast if im not running purity of Ice so far. My opinion is its not worth using, since i gain very little from it and lose half my zombies.

Dying Breath is actually pretty good if you plan to go 3-4 curse. You gain 36% increase effect of curses, 18% radius of curses, 18% radius of auras and the 18% increased damage to all my minions. With good gear you will still have 9-10k total life without a shield.

Aurumvorax certainly isn't the best weapon to use but its a very cheap unique to over cap resistances with and allow you to run a ton of MF gear.

You do know that curse mobs exist right? and that over-capping zombies on resistance isn't really a bad thing, even if it isn't the most optimal.

Secondly it doesn't really matter if its just increased physical and it doesn't matter what the minion damage gem gives because mon'tregul's and minion damage aren't competing for the same slot lmfao; not that anyone would use minion damage for zombies anyway .Currently the most optimal setup is a +1 all helm with
zombie + lv3 empower + multistrike + added melee physical. Zombie gem cannot be swaped out, removing empower means your zombies lose 4 levels so that isn't an option, multistrike also has to stay, so the only choice is melee phys which is being replaced by fortify as BiS anyway

Thirdly, this just proves you don't know what your talking about lol

"

50% reduced number of Zombies allowed
+2000 to Zombie maximum Life
(25 to 30)% increased Zombie Resistances
25% increased Zombie Size
Zombies deal (80 to 100)% increased Physical Damage
Enemies killed by Zombies explode dealing Fire Damage

Minion instability node is what does damage when summons die, not mon'tregul's grasp

I'm not really one to judge builds, but dying breath is just straight trash and using more than one mayyyyyyybe 2 curses is just a total waste of time/points/item slots. monty buffed zombies, hell, even most summon builds besides MF specs will blow up a pack in the time it would take you to curse it once and will kill most bosses before you could even land your third. The only curses worth using are enfeeble/tempchains to stop your zbomies from being nuked by magic damage, but that is being fixed with a hp buff and fortify. Then there is elemental weakness if youre running a ball light + curse on hit setup

Edit: not to mention you lose out on the 1 hand + shield combo which isn't worth it in and of itself. The only reason SRS builds run 2 handers is because they get +3

I havn't played the beta so far but I consider myself an experienced summoner. I think summoners so far have been in quite a solid place. The few problems regarding summoners however aren't that easy to get rid off. Let me elaborate.

1) The sheer mass of gems that are required to max your build. Let's get this straight:


Now tell me, how the hell is one supposed to fit a chaos golem in there?! It's simply too many gems. And you really need them.

2) The Spectre problem. Now this is a bit tricky. I really think that you can face nearly any content ingame and keep you spectres alive. I've seen people doing Apex of Sacrifice with a classic summoner setup. But I don't think that a classic summoner could face Uber Atziri. You simply can't keep your spectres alive during that fight. And once your spectres are dead the run is over. You'd have to waste portals to get your spectres up again.

"

boogboi wrote:

"

SnowCrash wrote:

My minions get capped resistance from jewels they gain nothing from the 25-30% all res on mon'tregul's.

Mon'tregul's adds 80-100% increased physical damage, not more. Minion damage gem adds far more damage then Mon'tregul's since the change to minion damage gem. Besides you can get 15% increased minion damage on each jewel and master craft 15% on gloves already. The AoE fire damage is from zombie death and only thing that kills them is Hast if im not running purity of Ice so far. My opinion is its not worth using, since i gain very little from it and lose half my zombies.

Dying Breath is actually pretty good if you plan to go 3-4 curse. You gain 36% increase effect of curses, 18% radius of curses, 18% radius of auras and the 18% increased damage to all my minions. With good gear you will still have 9-10k total life without a shield.

Aurumvorax certainly isn't the best weapon to use but its a very cheap unique to over cap resistances with and allow you to run a ton of MF gear.

You do know that curse mobs exist right? and that over-capping zombies on resistance isn't really a bad thing, even if it isn't the most optimal.

Secondly it doesn't really matter if its just increased physical and it doesn't matter what the minion damage gem gives because mon'tregul's and minion damage aren't competing for the same slot lmfao; not that anyone would use minion damage for zombies anyway .Currently the most optimal setup is a +1 all helm with
zombie + lv3 empower + multistrike + added melee physical. Zombie gem cannot be swaped out, removing empower means your zombies lose 4 levels so that isn't an option, multistrike also has to stay, so the only choice is melee phys which is being replaced by fortify as BiS anyway

Thirdly, this just proves you don't know what your talking about lol

"

50% reduced number of Zombies allowed
+2000 to Zombie maximum Life
(25 to 30)% increased Zombie Resistances
25% increased Zombie Size
Zombies deal (80 to 100)% increased Physical Damage
Enemies killed by Zombies explode dealing Fire Damage

Minion instability node is what does damage when summons die, not mon'tregul's grasp

I'm not really one to judge builds, but dying breath is just straight trash and using more than one mayyyyyyybe 2 curses is just a total waste of time/points/item slots. monty buffed zombies, hell, even most summon builds besides MF specs will blow up a pack in the time it would take you to curse it once and will kill most bosses before you could even land your third. The only curses worth using are enfeeble/tempchains to stop your zbomies from being nuked by magic damage, but that is being fixed with a hp buff and fortify. Then there is elemental weakness if youre running a ball light + curse on hit setup

Edit: not to mention you lose out on the 1 hand + shield combo which isn't worth it in and of itself. The only reason SRS builds run 2 handers is because they get +3

I was mistaken with the fire damage of mon'treguls until today i hadn't used it since the snap shot days.

Either way I've tested it now along with a 5 link dying breath and midnight bargain. I lose over 1k total life with dying breath am still much safer. I do pretty much the same damage with damage curses but it's certain not as consistent with curse resistance mobs and maps. Midnight bargain is the most damage. I do lose 1500 life but at least i have a massive army in front of me. Mon'treguls is just the odd man out for me. I do more damage with midnight bargain and dying breath brings 3-4 extremely strong curse to party play.

I think you high underestimate a triple to quad curse set up in end game maps and a party or maybe you've just never been to end game content in beta yet. Maybe you aren't even in beta and don't understand that mobs have way more hp and hit harder. I can guarantee you will get one shot all day long with your mon'treguls 3k es snake build in end game maps. You certainly wont be running 76+ 100% quant maps safely like i am and you wont be doing deathless atziri runs like i am.

Mon'treguls is good weapon but no where near as valuable as it use to be.

"

SnowCrash wrote:

I was mistaken with the fire damage of mon'treguls until today i hadn't used it since the snap shot days.

Either way I've tested it now along with a 5 link dying breath and midnight bargain. I lose over 1k total life with dying breath am still much safer. I do pretty much the same damage with damage curses but it's certain not as consistent with curse resistance mobs and maps. Midnight bargain is the most damage. I do lose 1500 life but at least i have a massive army in front of me. Mon'treguls is just the odd man out for me. I do more damage with midnight bargain and dying breath brings 3-4 extremely strong curse to party play.

I think you high underestimate a triple to quad curse set up in end game maps and a party or maybe you've just never been to end game content in beta yet. Maybe you aren't even in beta and don't understand that mobs have way more hp and hit harder. I can guarantee you will get one shot all day long with your mon'treguls 3k es snake build in end game maps. You certainly wont be running 76+ 100% quant maps safely like i am and you wont be doing deathless atziri runs like i am.

Mon'treguls is good weapon but no where near as valuable as it use to be.

Sure cursebot setups in endgame maps is "ok" but it doesn't really contribute much as you think. Im not sure what groups youre running with but trash tends to just get blown up so really you would only be cursing blues rares and bosses, which is ok i guess, but I would much rather have a MF culler or someone with more DPS than a cursebot. Then there is the problem of curse immune maps like you mentioned and the fact that it just makes solo play as a summoner slower than it already is. There is just no place for cursebot summoners right now.

It is laughable that you think I run this kind of gear in ubers (wdf is a snake build rofl). and even more so that you think me some kind of fool who thinks 3k ES is acceptable for uber atziri. I run low es setups in 75 maps becuase I can get away with it. current endgame in the beta is a little over 7k es, which still isn't optimal but beta is over in a week so I don't really care

I have to be honest, this was a fun little discussion at first but you're really due to lose the snide remarks.

I assure you im perfectly capable of doing atziri and high q maps, Really unless i goof or desync into a flameblast atziri doesnt even hit me half the time, the trial bosses die in under 15 seconds and vaal souls both die nearly instantly. What is there to die to?

EDIT: actually now that I think about it if i swapped purity for Light/fire/ice for max resist buff on zombies and dropped arc for enfeeble and used basic attack to micro summons I could probably even do uber atziri

"

zinsid wrote:

I havn't played the beta so far but I consider myself an experienced summoner. I think summoners so far have been in quite a solid place. The few problems regarding summoners however aren't that easy to get rid off. Let me elaborate.

1) The sheer mass of gems that are required to max your build. Let's get this straight:

Spoiler

Raise Zombie + Minion Life + Multistrike + Melee Splash + Blind - This is a must have in your +2 Helmet
Raise Spectre + Inc. Duration + Inc. AoE + Conc Effect + Minion Damage + Trap + Remote Mine + Spell Echo + Faster Cast - These are all viable choices for Undying Evangelists
Inc. Duration + Flesh Offering + Vaal Haste + Vaal Grace + Vaal Dicipline + Bone Offering
Reduced Mana + Hatred + Generosity
Reduced Mana + Haste + Purity of Anything + Clarity + Dicipline
Convocation + Desecrate

Not to mention: Movement skills Lightning Warp + Reduced Duration + Faster Cast and
survivability CwDT + Enduring Cry + Immortal Call + Inc. Duration and AA

Bold skills are imho must have in a classic summoner build.

Now tell me, how the hell is one supposed to fit a chaos golem in there?! It's simply too many gems. And you really need them.

2) The Specter problem. Now this is a bit tricky. I really think that you can face nearly any content ingame and keep you specters alive. I've seen people doing Apex of Sacrifice with a classic summoner setup. But I don't think that a classic summoner could face Uber Atziri. You simply can't keep your spectres alive during that fight. And once your spectres are dead the run is over. You'd have to waste portals to get your specters up again.

Nobody uses blind, minion life, or a +2 helm in end game setup rofl. BiS helm for zombies is a +1 all helm with zombie + empower + multistrike + melee physical damage (soon to be fortify)

The only required gems for caster specters are spell echo + faster casting and soon to be minion damage that leaves 3 slots for whatever you want. Myself as well as another summoner i know chose to just run 5l specters and slot desecrate in our chest.

vaal grace and bone offering are pretty bad considering were getting fortify and the auras just come down to pure preference and setup, some people run as many as 10 some people run as few as 2 or 3

summoners don't need nor should they ever use lightning warp or CwDT so that basically leaves your weapon(3-6 slots), your shield (3 slots) and your boots/ gloves ( 4 slots) that's 10 slots you're free to do whatever with.

Golems aren't meant for summoners, we don't need the buffs and they don't contribute any significant DPS

Silly questions here:
eg: Does Eldritch battery only effect active spell casting? Or does it still work with auras so shield will be reserved before mana?
Is golem gem worth it to take like in ring?
Does dual curse work with Elemental equilibrium?
Whispers of doom, so ball lightning can active EQ +1 curse.
Mind over matter is now pretty easy to pick. Recommended leftover mana pool to take it? 1000 min?

Is this viable for summoner with 5l SRS? Rest points for nearest life nodes and jewel sockets(1-3).
Zombies, skeletons and spectres are atm 3l. A bit worried because old build is basically copied from guide.