Pure Summoner Build

Wish one of the Devs would answer this question as well.

I'm under the impression that zombie damage is separate from any passives unless noted (minion damage/life), including the MI effect.

If that is the case then minion life passives and gems would be the only way to increase the damage they deal from blowing up.

But, again I would like some absolute verification.

There is a dedicated thread on the subject here: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/44587

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/44402#p586520

Is this what you are looking for?

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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WhiteBoy88 wrote:

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Magnamuz wrote:

4) "Minion Instability" makes a fire explosion, so if I increase fire damage in the skill tree, does this explosion do more damage?

It doesn't currently, but I think this is supposed to change in the future.

This is not going to change - you minions deal that damage, not you. Your minions do not have your passives, you do. So your fire damage passives will not apply to this damage, because you're not dealing it.
However in future this will be affected by your minion's stats, so if your minion (not you) has increased fire damage, or added cold damage, or chance to ignite, those will all apply (by the same token your 'minion damage' passives will apply, because those give 'increased damage' to your minions as you summon them). But for now none of these can apply because it can't be dealt as actual damage yet.

The same logic answers your question about the auras. You have your passives, your allies do not. Your allies have their own passives. Everyone gets the stats from the aura, and then their passives affect them, not anyone else.

Looks like it to me.

Great, thank you for the confirmation!

Time to start adding +fire damage gems and +ignite gems to my minion summons.

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Sickman wrote:

Merveil is such a pita to try and use skeletons since she can destroy them as fast as you cast them.

As an experiment I kited her around that lump of rock near the entrance so that she was in MI range when she one-shotted the skeletons. Probably not as efficient as slapping on 2 Cold Resist rings and nuking her though. On that (unrelated) note, I've been keeping a pair of resist rings for each element in the stash, upgrading them as I find better replacements. It can help all of your characters on quite a few boss fights.

Nice. Thanks Saya.

I finally plotted out my next 16 skill points (level 80) and decided to focus on my own personal survivability and take all the max health nodes close to the build path first then work to the next closest which will require some +int nodes before reaching the +max hp.



I also threw in a 3% cast speed to even it to 80. Above that is a mystery and probably something I will have plenty of time to decide, but I will most likely go for the faster cast nodes close to the build path as they seem to make the most sense.

I will focus on a different defense build than I did while leveling this character and just stick with the cloth gear with high ES and try to get the mods for Item Rarity,increase cast speed, max mana, max life and of course the gem number and links I want to use the gems and combinations I had through this character's build.

One minor change I will probably make will be the skill on the totem, I might go for spark with projectile speed and lesser multiple projectiles. The added bonus to shocked mobs will definitely help and I think it would pretty damn cool to have the screen filled with little bouncing sparks of death. Aesthetics are important to me :)

I'm currently using a pure-cold witch, but I'm a fan of summoner characters as well, so my plan is to make a summoner after this one.

After thinking about some witch-summoner builds but then I had another idea of a summoner templar.. and since this seems to be the largest discussion on pure-summoners and you've discussed of a shadow-summoner as well I decided to post here..

The idea is about Necromantic Aegis, wich should grant to the minions the bonuses of shields, and since templar has access to more shield nodes, and uses strenght wich is good to have for many auras/spells as a summoner, i thought it may work well.. I'd also like to know if tempest shield + necromantic aegis allows your minion to have tempest shield on.. would be just wonderful..

We could make stronger minions (who still, if killed, will explode) with block chance, more auras easily avaible, and tempest shield dealing extra dmg. I have been also largely ispider from this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LEDc5lSk87k . The totem + Lightining warp means that the totems will work as extra minions.. doesn't it sound good?

I still don't know if it's viable, and I still will continue my cold witch until open beta probably (don't know yet), so I'm just trying to talk about general ideas and not specific builds, but since I'm quite new to this game I ask you for a feedback..still not 100%sure about these mechanics..!

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Ows wrote:

The idea is about Necromantic Aegis, wich should grant to the minions the bonuses of shields, and since templar has access to more shield nodes, and uses strenght wich is good to have for many auras/spells as a summoner, i thought it may work well.. I'd also like to know if tempest shield + necromantic aegis allows your minion to have tempest shield on.. would be just wonderful..

One of the most important things you need to know about Necromantic Aegis is that only the base stats of the shield are translated to the minions. No passive what so ever effect the bonus that NA gives.

You can have +20% block and +100% es from shield passives. with a shield that has 30% base block and 100 base es. It will only give 30% block and 100 es to the minions. (and not 50% block 200 es)

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Mark_GGG wrote:

The tempest shield spell does two things:
1) Puts a buff on you that grants 10% additional block chance with shields.
2) Deals lightning damage to anything you block damage from.

If you have Necromantic Aegis, you won't benefit from the blocking buff because you're no longer using the shield. And since you won't block anything, no damage is dealt by the spell.

That would have been the only reason I'd want to take NA -- to run a shield with inherent damage reflection and Tempest Shield. Otherwise, I want my minions to take hits, and I want the added defense if I'm mobbed up before I get my minions rolling.

I'm currently planning on building with pure Skeletons supported by Added Chaos Damage, Minion Health, Damage, and Speed, MI and the Hex cluster on the skilldrasil, as well as the other obvious stuffs. (Super expensive with higher levels of Summon Skeleton, so there will be a second skill gem cluster supported only by faster casting if I need to spam decoys for whatever reason)

If I'm not mistaken, the added chaos damage and minion damage supports should apply to MI in a future patch, but otherwise the chaos damage is there as a secondary damage source if the splodey fire damage isn't enough. Minion damage should also enhance the chaos damage inflicted.