Summoners, get in here

How did you build your summoner? Class, passive order, support gems? I'm trying to get all the "Increased Minions" passives before hoeing into the "Increased Life/Damage for Minions" ones. I'm a Witch.

After that I'm not sure what I'll do - I'm trying to get a large amount of stats and health so that I can summon with impunity, equip what I please and tank mobs when they refuse to pay attention to my zombies. I sort of wish I'd gone with Templar for the tankiness, and I'm considering going for Blood Magic - but sadly, being a Witch, that will waste a lot of my Intelligence. Guess I'll stick with mana...

I went for unstable minions, most +1Zombies expect the templercluster(too far away), not that much interested in minionlife, minion-dmg-passives if they are cheap and not that far from the highway, some dex-passives that lead to daggers for the crits, planning to go to the dagger-poisons-on-crit(perhaps with lvl60).

I still have a short way to either go for powercharge on miniondeath or meleecrit, havent decided on this one yet.

The +2 Powercharges is considered in. Just feel i should pump some dex earlier for the elemental-hit-gem and viper-strike-gem. For now i level both of them, and decide witch one is better when i have the daggercritpoison-passive.

I feel that i wont be able to achieve a high energyshield, wanted to try chaosinnoculation too, but thats perhaps to expensive.

Spent some points on the early mana and flask passives, and have way to much mana now, perhaps that was the mistake.

Does spell crit affect the zombies at all? Do increased spell damage/fire damage passives increase Unstable Minions? (I have it too)

I made 2 posts in the builds thread about my witch pure summoner on hc legacy, at 35 and 42.

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Dreggon wrote:

passive order

1) NW to get the big cluster
2) Minion Instability

Then it's just a matter of taking the ones closest to the built highways:

3) NN
4) W
5) N
6) NE
7) S (can do this one much earlier if you need dex for gem reqs)
8) WW
9) Hex Master (haven't got there yet, but that's the long term plan)

Notice that i've completely focused on shortest path to minion/minion-related passives only. It's probably not optimal, i haven't studied where i could branch off for some super powerful passives nearby, e.g. cast speed, flask recovery.

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Dreggon wrote:

I'm trying to get all the "Increased Minions" passives before hoeing into the "Increased Life/Damage for Minions" ones.

I dunno, i always get all the minion passives in a cluster when i get there. They are hard to pass up, you spend ~10 points to reach a cluster and it's only 2 more points for the life and damage ones. Has to be worth more than getting your next +1 minion 2 points sooner. I could be wrong.

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Dreggon wrote:

After that I'm not sure what I'll do - I'm trying to get a large amount of stats and health so that I can summon with impunity, equip what I please and tank mobs when they refuse to pay attention to my zombies. I sort of wish I'd gone with Templar for the tankiness

I'm finding i don't regret switching to Witch from (lvl 2 :P) Templar for summoner. Mobs are very rarely on me. Plus it's on HC, sounds like you're on default (discussing blood magic heh), so it's even less of an issue.

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Lachdanan wrote:

I went for unstable minions, most +1Zombies expect the templercluster(too far away), not that much interested in minionlife, minion-dmg-passives if they are cheap and not that far from the highway, some dex-passives that lead to daggers for the crits, planning to go to the dagger-poisons-on-crit(perhaps with lvl60).

Dagger Summoner, neat.

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Lachdanan wrote:

I still have a short way to either go for powercharge on miniondeath or meleecrit, havent decided on this one yet.

Can someone direct me to roughly where Power Charge on Minion Death is located?

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Dreggon wrote:

Does spell crit affect the zombies at all?

I don't see why it would, but i'm not an expert.

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Dreggon wrote:

Do increased spell damage/fire damage passives increase Unstable Minions? (I have it too)

Known Issue: "Minions Exploding is not currently damage - This means it is only affected by resistances and minion life. Fire damage, Criticals and burning do not apply to minion explosions at the moment."

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Can someone direct me to roughly where Power Charge on Minion Death is located?

From witchstart head right through the crit ones.

But i decided for meleecrit, dualdaggers are fast and provide a good chance of basecrit.
Increased AoE is located next meleecrit, which was another reason for me.
Unsure if Inc-AoE passives apply to minion instability.
If not, wouldn´t be that tragically to the build, they still help shocknova or discharge.

So far I'm rocking 6 zombies and 5 spectres. I recently found (on the ground) a +5% quality Raise Zombie gem. I also recently added a Lightning Damage gem to my original Raise Zombie gem.

I socketed the quality gem, but picked up an Increased Minion Damage support gem from Tarkleigh for killing Hillock. I moved the lightning gem to my quality Zombie gem, and put minion damage on my no-quality, but higher-level gem.

Links to my gear:


You'll notice a lot of Increased Rarity and Increased Quantity: the minions kill stuff so I don't really need any damage stats, which lets me pimp out on item drops.

I use the quality Zombie gem as Minion Instability bait, though I have trouble keeping track of:
1. how many minions I have
2. which gem each minion is linked to
3. where my minions are (jesus christ they run away so much)

Two more skill points will give me yet another +1 Zombies/Spectres, then I'll start going into the Minion Damage passives, and after that Minion Life. I'm also considering going for a joke build with 8 Summon Zombie gems. You'd zone in on Cut-throat and just get swarmed.

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Lachdanan wrote:

From witchstart head right through the crit ones.

Thanks. Hmm that line seems viable for pure summoners, i might add it to my build. It's only 4 more passive points:

* 10 intelligence
* 8% increased Mana Regeneration Rate Per Power Charge
* Gain a Power Charge when a Minion Dies
* +1 Maximum Power Charge

I don't know much about charges - anyone know the base maximum # of power charges for a witch?

There are accessible 20% mana regen nodes (5 points and you get 2 of them), so it would have to be a decent number for 8% per PC to be worthwhile (if not using any other PC-related passives).

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Lachdanan wrote:

Unsure if Inc-AoE passives apply to minion instability.

The known issues would indicate it doesn't, but it's not super-clear: "Minions Exploding is not currently damage - This means it is only affected by resistances and minion life. Fire damage, Criticals and burning do not apply to minion explosions at the moment."

Passives are specific to your character and only affect the things (s)he does. Therefore, only passives that state that they are minion specific will in fact work on minions.

Minions cannot have charges :(

Minions CAN be buffed by supports, but they must actually be able to support the type of attacks they do. Supports that would modify an attack such as life leech can be given to your zombies and multiple projectiles should work for casting or archer spectres.

By that logic, an AoE support gem should increase the AoE of instability, but that really depends on the mechanics of the game. I don't know for sure if it works in 0.9.5

http://imgur.com/M5t2M

that is what makes me wonder, i can understand the damage and supportgemsituation.

I think its better to test it with an Supgem, accidently i have none of those kind for the moment.
the Misc-category sound like something globally.

But as i sayed i dont care much for desired effekt on the build, more about the correct way to explain it to new users of Pathofexile.
4% increased area of effekt on skills. Skills again is a wide definition.

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rabidwolf9 wrote:

Minions CAN be buffed by supports, but they must actually be able to support the type of attacks they do. Supports that would modify an attack such as life leech can be given to your zombies

But would this heal the zombie when it attacks, or would it heal you? Both are good, but healing my Witch would be better since I have a lot of zombies and I want them to explode.