[1.0.4] Summoner, Fastest clearer ~ [Animate Guardian/Burning Miscreations]

Passive Tree


Bandits
Normal - 8% resist (recommended) or skill point
Cruel - skill point
Merci - skill point

Level 81 Gear
Spoiler


* 6.7k ES, 89.9 mana/sec, 129% rarity, 10% quantity, 220+ rarity on weapon swap (for bosses).

* Boots of Ullr have bad stats, but the extra Spectre increases clear speed.
* You want a high es chest with as many links as possible for your Spectres, or Shavronne's.
* For weapon, + skills for your auras and mana/regen %. Standard ES/resist shield. Use Midnight Bargain if you have Shavronne's.
* Perandus Blazon is actually strong on this build due to high stats roll. Resists aren't needed due to purity.
* You will need an armor/es helm to get appropriate sockets for Animate Guardian with +2 minion skills

Explanation of Build
* High-life, High-dps, amazing AoE Animate Guardian that does fire damage
* Burning Miscreation Spectres x3 from Lunaris III with Minion Life (Unrighteous Fire scales with HP), Minion Damage, and either Fire Penetration or Increased Burning Damage (both if 5L)
* Dual curse Flammability/Elemental Weakness, as well as elemental equilibrium for -183% fire resist.. with Enfeeble for when needed

AURAS

Clarity (~lvl 8), Discipline, Purity, Vitality

LINKS
4L Spectre/Minion Damage/Minion Life/Fire Penetration
+ Burning Damage
+ Minion Speed or Rarity

4L Animate Guardian/Minion Life/Melee Splash/Cast on Death (quality gem)

3L Lightning Warp/Reduced Duration/Faster Cast for movement and proc'ing elemental equilibrium (-50% fire/cold resist on bosses/totems)

+1 skill wand for discipline and purity

Animate Guardian
Spoiler
Can't link it obviously.


* Ideal weapon is Dyadus which you can generally get for 8-15 chaos. Any decent 1h rare, phys or elemental will do alright, but Dyadus is absolutely best in slot.
* Zahndethus' Cassock chest for consecrated ground, ~5% hp/sec aoe heal (the AoE is increased by quality on cast on death gem)
* Either perandus shield or a good rare with life/resists and high armor or es
* Blood dance boots, very helpful for more health regen and can be synergized with gorilla's from old fields (grant party frenzy charges) for hard maps if you feel it necessary.
* Nice rares for glove/helm


Cast on death gem at 20% quality and level 20 gives 304% MORE damage (multiplier) and 60% increased AoE. This AoE increase applies to the melee splash and to consecrated ground.

The animate guardian (AG) reloads each time you zone. When this happens, the gems linked to AG are checked and applied. Simply create the animate guardian without the gem equipped, and then equip the cast on death gem afterwards and you're done. If you are worried that you may die, unequip the cast on death gem after zoning into a map, or else if you die you will cast AG and overwrite one of his items (almost always weapon, don't ask me how I know this).

Your AG will have ridiculous hp, lots of sustain on his own and more from vitality, and be fairly unkillable (I sometimes die, AG does not). The high fire damage from Dyadus will do extra damage from dual curse + EE, and he will 1 shot packs of white mobs (60% AoE) and kill blues/yellows very quickly.

The most important purpose of the AG is to kill mobs as soon as you zone into a map, before the burning miscreations turn on unrighteous fire and you can go into full speed clear mode.


Burning Miscreation
Spoiler
Mob in Lunaris Temple floors 2 and 3 (get the ones from floor 3, lvl 66). They have fire on their hands. As a Spectre, they cast unrighteous fire doing high fire damage in a medium-size AoE around themselves. The damage scales both with the health of the mob (which will be very high with passives and minion life gem) and also with minion damage and Fire Pen/Burning Damage gems as well as curses from the player (Flammability/Ele Weakness + Elemental Equilibrium) for a total of 183% potential less fire resist on mobs.

I usually just single curse white/blue mobs though as it's faster.


Playstyle
Spoiler
* Start off map with Flammability/Enfeeble while AG kills.
* Once Spectres turn on Unrighteous Fire, simply run full speed past and around packs, stopping just enough time to double curse and watch loot drop.
* Keep running.
* Use two Granite Flasks with % armor. Your minions will be doing extremely high damage AoE around themselves as they follow you. If you quicksilver and sprint away through packs, the summons will teleport to your position after they get too far away, and with practice you will know exactly when they will teleport to you for sniping packs perfectly. You can run most of the way then lightning warp to the edge of the screen and they will all stack on you. Curses are only really necessary for fire resist mobs and blue/yellow/boss as white mobs will die instantly and blue mobs even pretty quickly in 66-72 maps (tested so far).


Disclaimer
Spoiler
The fast playstyle of this build is probably not viable in 6 player party - this build is most powerful solo or in a small party. If mobs aren't dying fast then the Spectres will take a lot more damage.

That said, this build clears 66-70 maps faster than any of my other chars (88 spectral thrower with 25 exalt wep for benchmark). All this while wearing some pretty sketchy magic find gear and still having 6.7k es with max resists... and things just die too quickly to be dangerous.

Please let me know if you have questions about any aspect of this guide or just to give your experience with the build.

Last edited by tidus1492 on Jan 9, 2014, 2:49:12 AM
If you use "cast on death" with your guardian will he come back with all the gear he had on previously if he died?
"
gertpacu wrote:
If you use "cast on death" with your guardian will he come back with all the gear he had on previously if he died?


No, if the guardian dies you lose all the gear. If you die but the guardian doesn't, if you have cast on death equipped it will randomly equip a white piece of gear off the ground onto the guardian, which is pretty bad. You can, however, remove the cast on death gem after you zone into a map or other area and he will keep the 60% aoe/304% dmg until you go up to town or a new zone. This makes it so if you die the guardian spell wont be cast and you wont equip a useless item on him. I personally don't bother but its good practice.

The guardian himself though is extremely tanky. When a bunch of projectiles go off from blue mobs and you look up at his health expecting the worst, he's usually at full health and never much below.
Sweet thanks!

I am most confused about the guardian and what kind of gear you can give him. I have a lot of those (white to blue) enchants so I just use random Armor/ES gear along with a spiked evasion/ES shield for returned damage and claw for +HP on hits.

Can you add extra gems/spells to your guardians gear? If you added tornado or whatever would he use that skill or are you bound by what support gems you can use with the guardian?

Also, I was a little confused about swapping gems. Right now I use minion life, minion damage, and melee splash. Once I enter an area he will keep those skills and I can add other support gems to give him other abilities (until I go to another zone)?

Sorry about all the questions. I shouldn't be asking all this at level 55 but I am still new to animate guardian. I had a 15% one drop so I figure I should try it out. I was running around with 8 zombies and 2 spectres. I do change out support gems with spectres based on if I have a ranged or melee spectre.

One last question, I see a lot of people either 3 spectres. Is there something that I am missing? Is the 3rd spectre on a piece of gear?

3rd specter is on bones of ullr boots which are pretty cheap to get.

Animate guardian doesn't use spell gems on the gear or anything like that. The idea for my animate guardian is that you invest into him a fair bit, he does very high damage and is very tanky, and should never die. I would recommend using a cheapish but decent dps 2h physical weapon on him if you can't afford dyadus, but with the dyadus he does insane dps because of -fire resist curses x2 and he can use a shield. The block from shield allows him to proc consecrated ground on the lightbane unique armor.

Animate guardian can gain frenzy charges from kills while wearing blood dance and can proc consecrated ground off lightbane raiment while blocking, but can't use any skills other than his melee attack. You can augment the melee attack with melee splash, multistrike, faster attacks, etc, but you cannot make him use infernal blow or something like that.
Back in Closed Beta there was a popular build at the time with poison arrow Ranger with chaos dmg buffs to wipe out groups quickly but the problem was apparently when they died from the poison/chaos damage clouds your IIR/IIQ did not apply to the mob.(Just returned a few weeks ago so I am a noob again)

Do you know if this same mechanic affects your minion aura's so your MF does not transfer through?

Last edited by arcon97 on Jan 8, 2014, 3:38:54 PM
I have no way to know objectively but subjectively i'm getting a lot more rares and uniques than i get on other characters with less rarity. I'm fairly sure it works.
item rarity/quantitry do work now with BM's
Hear this words but once and they will echo in your nightmares forever!
"
* Ideal weapon is Dyadus which you can generally get for 8-15 chaos. Any decent 1h rare, phys or elemental will do alright, but Dyadus is absolutely best in slot.


you do know about poe.xyz.is, right ? the cheapest B/O for dyadus is showing up as 2 ex. It's a powerful weapon, hard to believe it was ever going for 8-15 chaos.

still this is a great idea for a build, i'm happy to see someone making using of animate guardian.

and now i have something to do with all those uniques i've been collecting.
I bought 2 recently one for 8 chaos other for 13 and there are a bunch on xyz for 15 chaos... The 8 chaos one was a pretty good deal though
Last edited by tidus1492 on Jan 8, 2014, 6:55:01 PM

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