1.1.3 Puppet Master Summon, aura, curse, EE Newbie built, newbie friendly :) Low cost, high impact

I was inspired to make this build from a variety of sources, most notably;

- Rathik's "The Matriarch" http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/479976
- mattc3303's "The Spectral Gods" http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/409940
- blacksheepnz's "Lord of Dead" http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/114301
- Kripparrian's support summoner http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tEwhvzBl_I8
I'd recommend reading each of them.

However, this build is either slightly different, or more recent than the above.

The primary damage comes from zombies, with spectres in support.
- This means that damage progression is not reliant upon you finding the next awesome weapon; your weapons auto level as you progress!

The build then supports its minions with auras, curses and applies Elemental Equilibrium. You will be able to take quite a few hits before dying, but I wouldn't call it a tank.

IIR/IIQ is easy to boost, using a culling IIQ/IIR arc on bosses. As you're not gear dependent any currency is yours to keep!

I've currently played up to lvl 75 maps. Story line Merc Dominus is now easy and a regular farming ground.

The great thing about mapping with minions is that most modifiers don't effect minions.
Vulnerability? No problem.
Temp chains? Not on my minions!
Minus max resists? Pfft.

Your role is to stay alive and push your minions in the right direction.

At no stage does that mean you should be at the front!

Minions can be pushed through doors by firing cursees / arc / attacks through the door. After all it's only polite to let them go first :)

With gear & auras;
Life @ 1.8k
ES @ 3.8k
All ele res @ 77+%
Chaos res @ -30% - I need better gear!

Tree
Generally the aim of the tree is first get more minions, then buff them, add Minion Instability, curses and personal survivability.

Step 1: Get more minions
The first step is to get more minions, and start to buff them:


Step 2: Survivability
Make yourself less likely to die:


Step 3: More minions
We're aiming for more minions but you may want to pick up some Str / Dex / Resists nodes depending on your gear:


Steps 4 & 5: Choose 2nd Aura or cross the tree
The first branch, either start running a 2nd aura:

Or cross the tree to start grabbing the minions nodes etc over that side:


Step 6: More minions
Grabbing the life nodes on each means that Minion Instability does more damage. You'll probably still be running skeletons at this point so make them do more of a punch!


From this point on you should have a pretty good handle on what your build needs; extra curses, auras, minions, EE or survivability. Here's my build as it stands at the mo:
Current Tree @ Lvl 87

If you're starting from fresh you'll have Lvl 1, Q1 Raise Zombie and Raise Spectre gems.

The Minions these produce won't survive the increases in difficulty through the content. This means both the build and the play style must change subtly as the gems level up to the upper tiers.

At lower levels you shouldn't be using snap shotting at all, and should aim to get both add skeletons as a skill and use Minion Instability in the passives.

Towards the later game skeletons lose any punch, and get in the way of the zombies. At the same time zombies survive far longer and so Minion Instability is better substituted for personal survivability.

I'm a fan of playing self-found, and as a newbie without currency in standard league I had little choice. I leveled this build 100% self found until Cruel where I bought some Boots of Ullr (1c), these weren't essential but nice to have. That took me up to around Merc Sceptre of God (SoG). At that point I was using a 5L ES chest which I found at a vendor (lucky!!). Here's my old 5L which took me to the end of A3M;


As you can see it's not got much going for it other than the sockets.

Merc SoG is brutal and my level ~16 zombies didn't last more than a second or two. Then the severe under-leveled nature of the chest above meant my survivability was practically non-existent.

So I bought a Tabula Rasa (1 ex + 20c) and a Skullhead (10c). With these, level 18 zombies and a chest just offering survival, I was then able to take down A3 SoG and Dominus.

Since then I've traded for better rolled Chobers (5c for a perfect 40%) and Queens Decree (2c for 15%) as the ones I found were min-rolled.

So this build has costs me total of about 2.5 ex and very little trading. With more patience / better luck on the RNG I could probably have done this 100% self-found.

There are no essential items, I've played what I found - the only thing bought here is the unique Boots of Ullr. These are not essential but definitely a nice to have. They are commonly advertised for just 1 Chaos (i.e. cheap!!).

The things I value in the gear are;
1. The build needs strength to use Rejuvenation Totem (my belt) - Totem isn't essential and is mainly used to mitigate phys reflect maps.
2. Resists.
3. Energy shield.
4. IIR / IIQ.



Flasks
The thing to look for is "Grants x% to minions", you're aiming for 58%, and I normally run with three life, one mana and one map specific (e.g. granite, amethyst).

Curses; Vulnerability & Temp Chains, Enfeeble (if minions are having issues)
Auras; Purity (depending on area), Hate, Discipline
Minion buffs; Flesh Offering, Bone Offering, Rejuvenation Totem
Utility / EE / MF; Arc - Culling strike - IIR - Faster casting, Desecrate
Survivability; CwdT - Frost wall - Molten Armour - Arctic Breath

The general combo is; Temp chains - vulnerability - arc.
Temp chains slows the mob so the slow moving zombies can engage more easily, while vulnerability and arc add huge multipliers to damage.

The others are options that allow you to balance clear speed against risk. Small mobs will die in seconds, but for larger mobs I use Flesh once a few are dead to keep clear speed up.

Large mobs of decent ranged (e.g. Flame Sentinels) may make me switch in Bone instead, and throw a Rejuv Tot in during the fight.

Enfeeble I mainly switch for vuln in hard map affixes such as high added damage with added attack speed.

The survivability combo is also very useful - keep the CwdT and attached gems to a low level and they fire for most hits. Frost wall then pushes back any melee attackers or blocks the LoS for ranged, Arctic Breath slows the attacker and Molten Armour just adds some armour.

I've kept my Arc at level 1 - why? Because it's not there to damage, that's what my minions do. Arc is there is apply EE, cull bosses for IIR and push my minions to attack a specific target. Finally Arc is cheap at lvl 1, though with Arc chain update in 1.1.2 I might test leveling for the chains.

Desecrate is a utility spell used; a. during snap shotting to get free corpses for zombies and spectres, and b. prior to combat to proc and offering prior to engaging a really difficult pack / boss (or when farming Dominus just to kill the bosses quicker).

Once you reach the later levels snap shotting becomes almost a must. It means you can have high damage, with AOE Zombies that survive.

Minions always keep the properties they had when you cast them - the don't change if you change gear. So I equip items like this and snapshot them;


Snapshotting does take time at the beginning of a session, so is only worthwhile if you can keep minions alive at least semi-permanently.

Tabula Rasa is also a god-send as a relatively cheap 6L (~2-3ex). But it is not essential - I didn't have mine until roughly lvl 60 (i.e. well into Act 3 Merciless). To make the most of Tabula you need to use the gem swap trick. This enables the build to use Tabula to summon minions, then by switching the gem to the same socket in a different chest, use a chest armour with much better survivability.

See the vid below for a talk through of the process.

Raise Zombie - Minion Life - Melee Splash - Melee Damage - Remote Mine - Faster Attacks
Raise Spectre - Faster casting - Increased Area - Remote Mine - Minion Damage

Why Remote Mine?
As I understand it, in POE there are two types of buffs, "+% increase" and "% more damage". The first is an addition, the second is a multiplier.

Minion Damage is a % increase, so adds to base damage not what we get off the tree. Alternative Remote Mine is % more damage, and so multiples base damage plus what we get off the tree.

So the first thing to do is always to go get your minions. That means putting the snap shot gear on and going to any monster clear area (e.g. eternal lab).

Why?
- Zombie level depends on the gem used, not on the area. A level 20 zombie raised from the A3M Scepter of God (lvl 67) is identical to one from the A1N mud flats (lvl 4).

The snapshotting process is:

1. Go to any area, cast Desecrate to make corpses and raise your zombies.
2. (If neccessary) Go to your favourite spectre location. Cast desecrate, summon spectres. - Note that Spectre level DOES rely on the area level.
3. Go back to town, put on your general gear.
4. Kill everything you see :)

For me, my preferred spectres are Evangelists - they simply don't die, where as I've had sentinels and t-bits go down in battle.

So I always go to the Scepter of God. The waypoint area is normally clear (check the corners!) so I raise both zombies and spectres from there. If I'm playing easier maps that's it and this takes less than 2 minutes total.

If I'm going to hard maps (e.g. Jungle Valley, Residence) I'll do the above but play through to the Upper Scepter where the Evangelists are lvl 68 rather than 67.

How to snap shot & explain of the minion setups


Farming Dominus


Jungle Valley boss

Added section for self found and explanation of skills.

Add tree at levels & transition.
Add vids.