[2.6] (WIP) The baron Unkillable Summoner Zombie + Animate weapon Guardian

Hey guys, welcome to this quite unusual summoner build. When I discovered that the Baron existed, I decided I had to make a build with it, for those who are not familiar with the item, here it is :

The baron then add both physical damage bonus and life bonus to your minions, which gives them a pretty insane bonus when you reach 1200 + strength.


Before I start :
- English is not my native language, so I'm really sorry if I get a lot of errors in the text.
- This is my first build that I post on the forum.
- This is the first build I make myself that actually seems to work.
- My character using this build is still pretty low level (70) so I don't know exactly how it works in End Game Content.

So, what is this build about :
- The baron helmet.
- A summoner with 1200+ strength.
- A summoner with a lot of life, ES and life leech.
- I am using Zombies + specters + Animate weapons, but you can replace AW with Summon Raging Spirit.
- This build may be 3.0 viable, it depends mostly on if the uniques we use are going to be still droppable in 3.0 or not.
- The build can be quite cheap in 2.6.

Pros of the build

- Ultra tanky and safe summoner build
- Fun to play if you like summoner gameplay
- Quite unusual build.
- Can be played with Templar, witch or Scion
- Not an aurabot
- Can start quite cheap


Cons of the build

- Summoner gameplay is not for everyone
- "fun build" not optimized and made by a complete noob
- Can have mana problem if you play SRS
- Not an aurabot
- Have not tested end game bosses, should be possible but probably way weaker than other top builds


Stats

Offense

Sadly, tooltips don't work for minions. But I can get you the tooltip from Path of building for the minions, animate weapon is not yet supported by the app.

Here are the stats for one zombie with the lvl 100 build and decent stuff, keep in mind that we get 12 of those.


Specters get around the same dps with iron grip, I like to use Flame sentinels due to their range and aoe dps.


Defense


So, here are the stats I have with really cheap gear and lvl 69.



From Path of Building, I get 6k life and 5.5k energy shield with better gear and lvl 100 (with all elemental resistances capped and 26% physical damage reduction).




Gear


Mandatory Uniques

This build have quite a lot of mandatory uniques.

First : The Baron : this build revolve entirely around it. It gives a nice boost for a minions, a lot of extra zombies and life leech on them once you reach over 1k strength. This items, combined with 1200 strength, gives the same amount of damage boost to our melee minions that everything else, including all the minion nodes of the tree, items and support gems.


Then the Alberon's Warpath, we need that for the 15 to 18 % extra strength. try to get a 18% roll, it's quite important.


Now the Astramentis. While not being really mandatory, it heps a lot getting the right amount of strength, and helps a lot with getting enough dexterity for the few gems that needs it.




Other Uniques I use


The Geofri's sanctuary and Shaper's touch combo gives us an insane amount of stats, the most important being a gigantic amount of energy shield : I get 5.3k ES from these items. I don't see why not using them, especially since they are pretty cheap because not used by a lot of builds.


The severed in sleep is an huge boost to damage of minions without costing so much, the upgraded version : the United in dream, would be perfect, but it cost a lot of money, so I don't use it yet.


The doon cuebiyari is a cheap unique that gives us strength, armour and the iron will makes it an ideal specter weapon for this build (it makes the huge bonus from strength applies to spells from specters)




Rest of the gear


That's a ton of uniques, so we will need to get all our resists from our 3 last items. The good thing is that we can get a nice amount of res from the tree, so it's not hard to get your res capped.

For the rings, you look for Strength (you can get 50 easily), elemental resistances (until your are capped). Then life and mana are good stats, especially if you choose to go SRS and not Animate weapon.


For the belt, you want a lot of Strength, elemental res (until you are capped) and a good amount of life.




Other options


(can I get help from forum veteran : is there a way to link items I don't have, from the wiki or something ?)

The meginord's girdle is a nice cheap belt with a lot of strength and a nice life boost. It's a good choice for leveling, but a rare belts gives better stats after lvl 60.

The Prism Guardian shield would be a good choice is we were not an health build. If you try to make it an ES build (rip es in 3.0), this might be a good way to gives buffs to your minions with auras.

The Victario's charity is a good shield for this build. it gives your minions power charges on kill (this includes minion kills). Keep in mind that power charges don't give 50% crit chance but 200% crit chance to minions. The frenzy charges on hit cannot really be applied and I don't see an easy way to do it. The health is a nice bonus too.

The Mon'Tregul's Grasp is a nice boost to zombies, but actually reduce the dps and the tankiness on the group. It is weaker than the uniques I use tho.

The scourge gives a really big AS and DPS boost to your minions, it requiers you to find a way to do hits tho.

The Cloak of Tawm'r Isley is really nice for Animated Weapon build, but it's way weaker than the body armour I use.

Same goes for the Vis Mortis, good boost, but not enough to be used instead of the Geophri's Sanctuary.

The femur of the Saints is a good weapon, but not worth loosing 2 items.

The midnight bargain is a nice item, but I don't like loosing so much life for that low amount of stats.



Jewels


For the Jewels, you need 2 Efficient Training that are going to gives you 90 strength each, transforming most of the intelligence from the witch's tree into strength. You equip them in the 2 jewel slot in the witch's tree (see skill tree lvl 100).

You can then use a Violent Dead to boost your zombies, I use one but I may change it for a better one later on. You equip it in the slot before the triple elemental pack in the templar's tree (see skill tree lvl 100).

Then you have a lot of free place for other jewels, what you are looking for is :
- Minion Damage
- Minion Life
- Strength
- Strength & dexterity or Strength & Intelligence (especially if you go without an Astramentis)
- +(6-8)% to life





Gems


For the headset, you use the +2 to minion gems to boost your minions.
I use : Raize Zombie > Melee Splash Support > Multistrike support > Minion Damage.
But you can use any support for minion or melee you want.


On the Body armour, we set up the Animate Weapon group.
I use : Wither > Cast while Channeling > Animate Weapon > Increased duration > Minion Damage
Same than for the Zombies, you can sue any minion or melee support, I highly recommend the increased duration tho.

Getting a 6 Link might be a priority, since only 2 support on the spell might makes it quite weak.

Wither and cast while channeling helps a lot, because it have a really low mana cost and automatically Animate the weapons in aoe.
You can go without this combo, and with 5 support for animate weapon, but you are going to have amana problems really fast.
You can also get the zombies there and use the helmet for SRS, or get the SRS there, but I don't like SRS because this build have really low cast speed and it cost too much mana.


In the boots or the gloves, we get a few boosts for the minions :
Spirit offering > rallying cry > Convocations > Increased duration
- Spirit offering can be replaced with any other offering that you like, this one gives dps and tankyness to the minions.
- Rallying cry gives your minions a nice damage boost and apply the bonuses from the Guardian ascendancy, care, that spell takes the aggro of the monsters and can get you killed if you don't pay attention.
- Convocation let you recall and heal your minions.


The second 4 link group is here to get you additional spells and boosts :
Animate guardian > Summon chaos golem > Flame Dash > Desecrate
- Animate guardian gives you an additional minion, I may work on it's stuff later on.
- Summon chaos golem gives you extra physical resistance, an extra minion and with all our bonuses he still hit pretty hard.
- Flame dash gives you mobility and let you travel over holes and little walls.
- Desecrate let you spawn corpses, it's really useful against bosses when you lack corpses for the offerings and respawning the zombies.

-You can change animate guardian and summon chaos golem for other things, but I use them because I can spawn them then change the spell, since we lack slot for spells.


In the first weapon, we set our auras.
Haste > Vaal Haste > Generosity
or Hatred > Vaal Haste > Generosity
- Nothing to explain there, these auras helps a lot.


Then, in the Doon Cuebiyari we set up our specter setup, we don't have a lot of them but they are hella strong with all that strength and the lvl 30 iron will.
Raise specter > Minion Damage > Minion speed
- you can use a lot of different bonuses there, depending of what specter you use, I like to use lesser multiple projectile and minion health on flame sentinels for higher tier maps.






Ascension


Guardian : Prayer of glory > Radiant Faith > Unwavering Faith > Time of Need



Leveling


This is a minion build, just go for zombie + SRS and leveling should go really smoothly. The baron is a lvl 26 item, so equip it as soon as possible. I used a tabula rasa to equip both minion gems with the same group of support gems.





Videos

Sry, build is WIP, will post videos later on.


Q&A


Can I play it as an ES build


Yes, it will requiers a big change in the tree tho, and might makes it difficult to get enough strength.



Is it hardcore viable


I never play hardcore, mostly because I usually play while watching streams or series, and die a lot due to inattention. But I never died on this build, it's a minion build so already safe, and it's tankier than classic summoner builds due to the big pool of life + ES and the leech from the Baron.





And, that's all, thx for following the build, and feel free to comment.
Last edited by victo0 on May 24, 2017, 7:09:32 PM
Last bumped on Jan 30, 2018, 7:10:00 PM
i like it

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