"The Support Group" Champion Supporter Concept/Advice Needed.

Concept: Use minions from Blink/Mirror Arrow, Mirage Archer, and RATs to apply debuffs and grant buffs for the party.

Purpose:The main gimmick of this build is to pass the penalty of Taunting enemies on to my minions, letting them take the brunt of mob aggro and in turn benefiting from the juicy 20% damage mitigation from Taunt (10%) and Worthy Foe (10%).

Support Provided
-20% less damage taken from Taunted (Taunt and Worthy Foe)
-35% increased damage
-8% increased movement speed
-Intimidate (10% more attack damage)
-Enfeeble
-Temp Chains
-Blind
-Maim gem (30% reduced movement speed and 10% more physical damage)
-Ice Shot (Chilled Ground)
-Rallying Cry
-Frenzy Charge generation (Frenzy gem)
-Max Res (Purity Auras)
-Vitality
-Magic Find Culling (Maybe)

Key Items
-Quill rain or Infractem for maximum mobs hit/second
-Alpha's Howl
-Doedre's Damning
-Asenath's/Temp Chains on hit gloves
-Omen on the Winds jewel

Interesting Shaper/Elder mods
-Cooldown Recovery on boots and belts
-RAT support on boots
-Blind on hit on gloves (global) and quivers (with attacks)
-Frenzy on Kill on quivers and gloves
-Pierce 1 enemy on quivers and amulet
-Increased skill duration and Support on boots
-Item Rarity support on body armour

Gem Setups
This depends mainly on the Shaper/Elder mods I can acquire, and I'm having trouble deciding which minions will best apply each buff/debuff.

1) Mirror-Blink-GMP-Blind/Maim/Pierce/Inc Duration. In boots or gloves depending on Shaper mods.
2) Ice Shot-Mirage Archer-GMP-Blind-Maim
3) RAT-Ice Shot-GMP-CoH-Enfeeble
4) Ice Shot-GMP-Culling Strike-Item Rarity
5) Frenzy (If I dont get Frenzy on kill Shaped quiver).

A shaped quiver with "chance to blind with attacks" and "chance to gain frenzy on kill" would be amazing for this build. Shaped Gloves with "global blind chance and Blind support" and Temp chains on hit corruption would also be amazing. Tombfist is nice too, but I would prefer using Maim gem for the extra damage against maimed enemies.

Any advice or ideas would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

Question: How do you intend your minions to apply Taunt? The only minions that can Taunt are Stone Golems and specific Spectres (like the Enduring Cry bears).

Please note that the 20% damage buff from "Worthy Foe" only applies when you Taunt. As such, your minions can never apply the buff since minion hits/Taunts don't count as your hits/Taunts. Furthermore, using Rallying Cry will count as your Taunt, not your minions'. However, as far as I'm aware, RAT will indeed apply the Taunt (since totem hits are considered your hits) - of course, this means the RATs will be receiving the majority of incoming damage rather than your minions, which counters your original intent of minions doing the tanking (unless I'm misunderstanding your intent).

Have you considered using Projectile Weakness? With Blink/Mirror Arrow, Mirage Archer, and RATs, you'll have a ton of projectiles, which could take great advantage of the pierce and knockback provided by Projectile Weakness. Have you also considered some way to generate all three charges and using Conduit to share them amongst your team members? Perhaps using Romira's Banquet and Voll's Devotion for seamless Power and Endurance Charge generation.

Do you plan on using any other minion skills? Raise Zombie linked to Minion Life and Fortify makes great tanks. Bone Offering might be the best offering for the substantial increase to minion defense. Do you also plan on using any minion-specific items? Modding rare jewelry with Deafening Essence of Fear will give your minions a massive boost in movement speed, which is extremely helpful as it reduces the time it takes for non-stationary minions to move between targets.

Lastly, although Culling Strike + Item Rarity is indeed a viable option for farming, it might reduce effectiveness from team members that may rely on other "On Kill" mechanics. This setup fits fine in the build, but I'd advise to coordinate with team members prior to engaging in combat to ensure no one else is reliant on "On Kill" mechanics.

I hope this sparks some ideas :)

Are you sure that blink/mirror arrow minions and Mirage Archer cannot taunt/apply Worthy Foe? I asked on reddit and someone else said it would work. If not I guess I'll just use dual RATs. But since you say this still counts as my hit, would I still get the Worthy Foe reduction?

I was also under the impression that Taunts cannot be overridden, so as long as a minion had taunted first, my Rallying Cry would only taunt enemies that hadn't been taunted yet.

Projectile Weakness would be really nice but I'm gonna have a hard time squeezing in a 3rd curse.

I plan on running Frenzy or a shaped "Frenzy on Kill" quiver to generate Frenzies. I'm only supporting 2 friends and they are both non-crit, and one is a Jugg so generates the Endurance Charges for us.

I wasn't planning on running any other minions because I thought Archers could apply buffs/debuffs more effectively and I'm already starving for gem slots.

We're pretty casual, non-meta players. Our main goals are not clear speed and getting rich (though that would be nice). We want to play crazy map mods and try to do all the bosses. The first goal of this support is to enhance survivability as much as possible, damage and movement speed is a secondary bonus if possible. I was hoping to use a shaped chestpiece with "Item rarity and rarity against unique bosses" mod because we plan on bossing a lot.

Thanks for the input, you definitely sparked some ideas.

Mirage Archer can indeed apply Taunt since it actually counts as your attack (also note that Mirage Archer isn't a minion - it's simply a support gem). Of course, this means any Taunts from Mirage Archer will count as if from you.

In regards to Blink/Mirror Arrow - Think of these skills as having two phases. The first phase is shooting the arrow and the second is summoning the minion. The arrow from the first phase can indeed apply any on-hit mechanics (like Taunt; this will be a Taunt from you though since you made the hit). However, the summons generated from the second phase are still minions and, therefore, cannot apply Taunt. All-in-all, using Blink/Mirror Arrow will cause you to do the Taunt, not your minions.

Are you still planning on having some sort of Conduit for your friends? If they can't generate Frenzy charges on their own, it might be worthwhile to invest in Conduit somehow so they can gain Frenzy charges that you generate.

Ok so if my mirage Archer taunts on hit, does my character get any damage mitigation?

This video shows that Mirage Archer does indeed count as a seperate entity, and it has some funky interaction with targeting priority or at least projectile hits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLQLg6IG8II

That's too bad about the Blink/Mirrow arrow taunt mechanics. It seems it works the same with CoH, the initial attack can apply them, but not the secondary attacks from minions. They can apply blind though.

What about this: Using Cluster Trap with mirror/blink arrow. So they could taunt and curse with the initial hit via the trap, and then apply blinds/maims/culls with the secondary attacks. Maybe use Asphyxia's Wrath so when the first pack dies the curses spread on their own.

I neglected to mention I will be picking up conduit on the tree.

This build is not going to be an optimal support. But I think it would be cool to have an army of bow minions supporting and sponging aggro for us. I feel like I might be trying to do too many things with it.

Main Goals for this build experiment:

-Self-benefit from the Taunt and Worthy Foe damage mitigation.
-Emphasis on buffs/debuffs that cannot be over-written (i.e. Curse/Taunt Immunity) such as maim, chilled ground, intimidate, blind.
-Use some of the new Shaper/Elder mods.

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Path_Blazer wrote:

Ok so if my mirage Archer taunts on hit, does my character get any damage mitigation? ... This video shows that Mirage Archer does indeed count as a seperate entity, and it has some funky interaction with targeting priority or at least projectile hits.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLQLg6IG8II

Oh, that's definitely interesting. I'm not sure if this was an intended mechanic though, so it might not be around too long if players start abusing it to high heavens. Regardless, if Mirage Archer can indeed Taunt as its own entity, then the mechanics of "Worthy Foe" should indeed apply and the reduced damage buff should also apply to you. If that's the case, then you're in the clear to use Mirage Archer in this manner :)

I'm honestly not sure how linking traps to Blink/Mirror Arrow will interact with Taunt. As an example, let's say that the Blink/Mirror Arrow-linked trap successfully proc'd "Worthy Foe." The target is now Taunted by the trap, but the trap immediately ceases to exist. With basic mechanics in mind, "Worthy Foe" should give you the damage reduction since the trap taunted the enemy. But since the trap is gone, does the Taunt go away? Overall, I'm not certain - you'll have to do some testing.

According to Wiki Taunts end immediately when the Taunter dies. So if the trap is considered the Taunter this idea won't work. But if the Minions are considered the Taunters it should be fine.

I'm not gonna give up on the idea entirely, but I think its gonna take a lot of testing in Standard before its even quasi viable. Also, because I have to hit a target to proc Mirage Archer, I have a chance of taunting the enemies myself anyway which makes it not reliable enough to be worth it.

I'm starting to adjust the build plan a bit.

Dual Totem, RAT-Ice Shot-GMP-CoH-Enfeeble-Mirage Archer. This way I never have to hit enemies myself. I would like to get a shaped quiver with "Chance to blind with attacks" and "Chance to gain Frenzy on Kill" but as of yesterday I wasn't able to find any on the servers with both mods. Blind alone will be good enough for me though. I can use Frenzy-Culling-Strike-GMP-Item Rarity to generate charges/cull and hopefully only occasionally be taunting mobs myself.

With this setup I have to make sacrifices. I can't use maim gem. So I need chance to maim on quiver, or use Tombfist. But I can't use tombfist if I'm using Asenath's Touch to curse Temp chains. If I could find Tombfist with Temp Chains corruption I would be in heaven.

Unfortunately, Mirage Archer can't be linked to RAT, which is a shame because it would totally fit the build. [Here] is a link to that confirmation.

Damned. This build was way too hipster to be potent anyway. Thanks for the advice. I've now become obsessed with Animate Guardian.