Frontfrontfrontbeards week race summoner build

Hi I am frontfrontfrontbeard aka Backbeard. I just recently did a weeklong race where I came in 4th overall with a pure summoner build.


When I was streaming (at twitch.tv/depimpe) I kept getting lots of people asking about what I did spec wise throughout the game and if I had any general tips.

What I did to start this race:

I made a Templar named Gemsongemsbeard where I proceeded to level as fast as I could and grab all the skill gems from the quests up to merveil. I chose to grab:
Phase Run - Medicine Chest
Raise Zombie - Glyph Wall
Raise Skeleton - Brutus
Minion Life - Run straight to cavern and get this

Grabbing these four skill gems on a different character allows you to focus on grabbing damaging spells on your witch to help with your early game. As a summoner your weakest time is going to be doing all of the first difficulty.


After that I made Frontfrontfrontbeard where I chose the skill gems
Ice Nova / Spark (depending on what you want) - Medicine Chest
Firestorm - Glyph Wall
Clarity - Brutus
Minion life - Merveil cave.


As I leveled up on frontfrontfrontbeard, my spec doesn't start to get much better until you hit the 30's. That is when your minions start getting much better, not to mention you get another aura called Discipline which gives your minions some energy shield which really helps out with their tanking.

This is the start of my build (levels 1-28ish)
http://tinyurl.com/a4t4lal

Note: My overall plan with this build is to grab all the minion life nodes I can. No reason to rush Lord of the dead right off the bat because your minions wont be tanky, I suggest getting it after Arcane Focus, and then move on proceeding to make that U shape.


Once you get to 28, that is when you want to start looking at the talent Leadership(on the U near Necromantic Aegis) it will make your aura for Discipline much larger.

My spec around 35ish:
http://tinyurl.com/ayovu9q

Pretty much right after grabbing leadership I go straight for Minion Instability, once you get to this point that is when your spec starts to really pick up.


My spec in the 40s-50s:
http://tinyurl.com/b5v2ltx

At this point I grab the minion life nodes next to the additional spectre, than I grab Hex Master. After that, depending on your gear and what you need, you may want to grab the Deep thoughts node before grabbing the minion damage cluster in the bottom.

Also around 48ish you will be heading to ruthless waterfall cave level 1 / ancient pyramid and by that point in the game the chaos damage you will be seeing will be starting to get really scary, this is when I suggest getting CI, also grab the energy shield delay nodes right after, I find those so useful in staying alive.

My almost late game build:
http://tinyurl.com/atnhkxx

This spec you finish off all your minion nodes, than you should grab the five 6% max energy shield nodes in the middle, that proceed to grab Inner Force.

Advanced trick:
You see how I have my spec now? In the top left of the tree I have started to work my way to body and soul and once you get to the point I have in that tree (you have 1 point already into it) you want to go back and get 5 refund points at least than use those on the 6% max energy shield line you just maxxed out. Take all of those points and max out Body and Soul, you will end up gaining more overall max energy shield, not to mention armor and All Res. After that I proceeded to max all those energy shield nodes as I didnt want to die.


In the end my spec looks like this overall at level 80:

http://tinyurl.com/b8c5q7u

(Note: I did kill all bandits every difficulty)

Double note: I got that Savant point (+30 int) much later into the game(after maxxing all those mid ES nodes and getting Body and Soul)

Overall the spec is very straightforward and very relaxxing. If you have any more questions feel free to come chat and ask me questions at my stream twitch.tv/depimpe and I dont mind helping you out with what you need. You will generally see marauder / summoner gameplay along with practices for races.

Thanks for checkin out the spec and I hope you enjoy it


Items used:

couple of questions:

1. what do you think of additional +minion gears such as midnight bargain? i see you only have bones but you can get more

2. what do you think of going life and regen instead of ES+CI? great thing about templar start vs. witch start summoner is templar has access to much more life nodes. what do you think about a templar/life summoner?

3. do you think anything can be made use for necromantic aegis?

thanks

Thanks for the build and the complete explanation. I Try in open beta : )

1. I really like Sidhebreath as a necklace, it seems very useful.

As for the boots I really enjoy using them because it still gives me movement speed, and I also can get the spectre and zombie from it.

The thing about the other uniques that summoners can use is:

#1 - Midnight bargain is not for the spec I run with summoner. I haven't ever tried to get some type of health summoner action working but it is a definite option if you are doing an hp build, but in my build I cant afford to try and stack HP.

#2 Queen Decree - Its a good weapon, but in terms of surviving especially in late game, I am going to be lacking because I dont options like a pure ES shield or getting something along the lines as a Kite shield. Being able to get kite shields with 24% all res just are very crucial in a short race like this weeklong, because then you dont have to focus purely on getting resistances on your gear and you get focus on getting ES.



2. I personally feel like if you are going to get the HP I suggest starting at a templar, I feel like your much closer to getting life nodes and it would be beneficial overall to do that, but personally I prefer the style of CI with my summoner spec late game. It is just too useful being able to be immune to chaos damage, let alone have a massive pool of health as energy shield.

3. No real need in hardcore to ever use it, maybe possibly default specs but why sacrifice your own survivability for your minions to live longer. Maybe if you weren't doing a Minion Instability build, because having both of those is sort of counter intuitive.

To starting as templar for more health, I don't really agree. You might be getting, but it's not really going to matter all that much, if you focus on tanky skills witch can get very tanky early on and as a ranged character you don't need to be THAT tanky.

With 25points, a "standard" tank witch start would be:


This is similar to beard's build where you start on the right side toward the U shape instead of rushing MI(which is debattable, matter of taste I guess, I prefer rushing MI via the top path then unspecing the points once I've completed the U shape, as MI makes you stronger earlier).

You get 82%life, 50str and 49%ES.

If you do a similar Templar start, with 27points you get something like this:


That's rushing health even though you take the worst caster nodes, generally you'd prefer going up for the elemental dmg+elemental resist then back down but that adds 4points, you'll do it next and respec most likely.

You get 96%life, 60str, 44%armor, 38%ES and 1%regen life and 10%resists

A more likely opening is this


which gives 62%life, 40str, 44%armor, 38%es, 20%resist


It's definitely a more tanky build, however how much of that needed? In reality, it's fairly overkill. I've been playing a crit witch on HC and I did a similar opening to the one I linked, in fact I didn't take the 3 nodes at the bottom toward the U shape because I'm going toward the Shadow tree instead and I skipped one of the 3 health nodes at the start. I didn't even come close to dying to anything in normal and that's without fairly tanky zombies in large numbers. I even face tanked Vaal's punch because I derped and he punched one of my zombie(I used zombies as a distraction) while I was behind and still didn't come close. Finished the normal playthrough with like 750health and 180ES and that's with a lot less health nodes.

That's even more true as a summoner when you start getting 5-6zombies that are decently tanky, all that health suddenly become very superfluous.

The issue with the templar opening is that while you're a lot tankier, you're also going to have to be a "pure" caster for a much longer time, because the minion nodes are further away, especially with Lord of the Dead being so close for the starting witch.

It's still viable though and is a safer start for sure, but if you're not playing reckless, it's not so bad as a summoner.

Oh and one final thing, on spells used before you reach critical mass of minions, while I used firestorm on my summoner, my new crit witch is using Ethereal knives and I think it's pretty good. Just need to make sure to trade for a faster projectiles asap for increased range, but otherwise being physical means there's no mob that are especially strong to it, everything dies equally. Firestorm was annoying at times against skeletons in dungeons.

Thank you for sharing this, and great work in the race.

thanks for the build, i will try it when i roll my summoner

What Auras do you run/how many?

"

owbe wrote:

What Auras do you run/how many?

You can see all his spells on his gear. He ran Discipline, Clarity and Purity, and he had Wrath equipped but never used it, just in case of he wanted to use it it was leveled up.

what strategy you use in high level maps , and when in high lvl maps you can clear they fast as summoner?