[3.0] Skeletal Mage Summoner (7k+ life, double blasphemy curse)

Greetings!

I am Allana and I play pretty much strictly summoner builds. I have previously made guides for golemancers and zombies, you can find these two guides below however they might not be up to date with 3.0 skill trees just yet. It's also a work in progress.

https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1828990
https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1840516

But that's not why you clicked this thread! This is for my character in Harbinger league, the Skeletal Mage summoner. From what I can tell you so far (atm level 75):

*Cheap to start off with - if you can get 2x Dead Reckoning Jewels and a tabula rasa you'll be set for a very long time.
*Fast clear speed and fast to move skeletons around
*Not as derpy AI as other summons. You spawn them where you want them to stand and they'll just go to town. No need to scale minion speed as you'll just summon new ones
*Does not gain a lot from auras so you can use either Mind over Matter or Blasphemy curses instead
*Budget friendly but also possible to scale high with good jewels.

For 3.0 I've chosen to make a life based build as they've buffed life armour while simultaneously nerfing energy shield. I expect to hit maybe 7-8k health later in game without using Kaom's heart

Stats @ Level 90
Spoiler


Skill trees:
Spoiler


Ascendancy:
Spoiler


It's vital to get 2x jewel sockets as soon as possible for the Dead Reckoning jewels. Otherwise we summon normal skeletons instead and no one wants that.

While leveling before you get all gems, I recommend using a lifesprig until act 2 and socket lesser multiple projectiles along with minion damage. Once you get to act 2 if you have a tabula, use the following gems:

Summon Skeleton - Faster Casting - Minion Damage - LMP - Controlled Destruction - Minion Speed
Starting off - Skeletal mages by level 12 (14 points)


More skeletons! (36 points)


To not die, next up we'll put all points into survivability. (58 points)


Continuing to pick up hp nodes and the last interesting minion nodes (96 points)



End-game variant 1: No necro aegis, strong focus on life and life regen


End-game variant 2: Necro aegis and more jewel sockets


Personally I am leaning more towards variant 1. If you use variant 2, you will want to use a shield with as high spell damage as possible. Other mods aren't really relevant.

Gear:
Spoiler

My gear is far from optimised but this is how it looks like right now:



My TO-DO list gear wise looks like this:

1) Get a better chest. I am still not sure what chest I want to use, if it's a rare or unique. Good options include:

Belly of the Beast / Lightning coil - however fairly hard to roll the amount of blue sockets needed unless you use the vorici trick.
Rare chest with high life and resists
Cloak of Defiance is a solid choice if you want to go for MoM.

My personal #1 would be a Skin of the Loyal, corrupted to get +1 gems like this one:
This would be the highest possible damage chest although it will likely be fairly hard to get ahold of this league.

One great thing about a rare chest is that you can craft +1 skeletons for a bit more damage and a nice even number of 10

2) Replace rings. Simply better stats, as much life, mana regen and resists as possible. Extra dex and str helps here as well.

3) Replace belt. Here we can use an essence of fear to craft something with minion life and hope to get as high life/resists as possible. Another option is 'Belt of the Deceiver' which, if I understand correctly, makes nearby enemies take 10% more damage due to the intimidation effect. Pretty solid!

4) Better shield. I am not opting for Necro Aegis just yet so I am looking into getting a beefy Arcon Kite Shield to take care of my resists and as much life as possible. Other good options are Rathpith Globe, Lioneye's Remorse, Saffel's Frame or Ahn's Heritage.

Boots/gloves are decent for now

Let's discuss the weapon of choice. Due to most of the summoner one-handed weapons not doing a whole lot for us or requiring taxing investments (midnight bargain removing 30% life is nuts for us) I've opted to use a rare one-handed wand crafted with a Deafening Essence of Fear for 30% minion damage. I chose a wand because it had 14% implicit cast speed and because I am not using any movement abilities like shield charge or whirling blades. If you want to use either of these skills you can craft a dagger or scepter instead. Good stats to look out for are mana, mana regen, cast speed and resists.

Other weapons that can be used are Severed in Sleep/United in Dream, Mon'tregul's grasp (beefier but less Zombies) or you can opt for the 2h route and use either Queen's Escape or Femurs of the Saints. If you go the 2h route I would use a Victario's Influence as my chest and switch the build up a bit to use some auras or Kaom's heart.

I have swapped my wand for a Mon'tregul's grasp after I noticed Zombies were dying too often in later maps.



Gem links:
Spoiler

Chest armour:
Before you get spell echo:
Summon Skeleton - Faster Casting - Minion Damage - LMP - Controlled Destruction - Minion Speed

After spell echo:
Summon Skeleton - Minion Damage - Greater Multiple Projectiles (Slower/faster projectiles for bosses) - Controlled Destruction - Pierce - Spell Echo. A level 4 Empower (possibly also 3) will deal more damage than a Controlled destruction and should be used if you have one.

Helmet with +1-+2 minions:
Raise Zombie - Minion Damage - Melee Physical - Ruthless support or Maim. The reason for this is that Zombies still pack quite a punch and since you're taking all the nodes that give +1 zombie anyway since they also give skeletons, might as well utilise them.

3-link weapon/shield #1:
Blasphemy - Temporal Chains - Enfeeble or Elemental Weakness. If you instead want to use Mind Over Matter I would use a curse on hit - ball lightning - curse of choice here instead.

3-link weapon/shield #2: Misc gems needed. Desecrate, Convocation, Flame Dash

4-link gloves/boots #1: Increased Duration - Vaal Haste - Flesh Offering - Golem of choice. I prefer to use Lightning Golem since it offers the only damage increase (albeit small) to minions but it also gives me quite a bit of cast speed which helps me summon new mages as quickly as possible. Other good choices would be chaos golem for even more physical reduction or stone golem for some sweet life regen.

4-link gloves/boots #2: Cast when damage taken - immortal call - Clarity aura. The last slot I currently just use for a slower projectile gem so if you want to use another movement skill there you can.




Bandits:
Kill all for extra passive points

Videos:
Spoiler

Uber lab at level 75 with level 17 skeleton mages
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Woi93pJ_jY4

Twinned Kaom with -9 max resist
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKVRrTjdd94


Strategy:
Spoiler
TBA
Last edited by allana on Aug 14, 2017, 4:57:06 AM
Last bumped on Nov 9, 2017, 2:36:36 PM
Going to try making this build now :)
nice im doing a similar build, my skele mage character is at lvl 82 atm and its smooth sailing
one recommendation i have for leveling as a starter without a tabula is reverberation rod/amplification rod, the free spell echo is real nice

i think its much better to run bright beak + victarios charity for mobility/clearspeed and have your weapon swap be your minion damage wand and high spell damage shield for tougher bosses

also for gem swap i would run point blank over slower proj and just cast the skeles right up in the bosses face, since thier projectiles can be dodged real easy by flighty bosses, but if your gonna fight something stationary/slow then i think slower proj is better overall

for the chest, the covenant is probably the best power upgrade, but the bis item would be a 1g5b lioneyes vision the colors are stupid hard to get so its expensive as hell but it will make skeletons do shit loads more damage lol.
Last edited by Doyzord on Aug 11, 2017, 6:15:19 AM
"
Doyzord wrote:
nice im doing a similar build, my skele mage character is at lvl 82 atm and its smooth sailing
one recommendation i have for leveling as a starter without a tabula is reverberation rod/amplification rod, the free spell echo is real nice

i think its much better to run bright beak + victarios charity for mobility/clearspeed and have your weapon swap be your minion damage wand and high spell damage shield for tougher bosses

also for gem swap i would run point blank over slower proj and just cast the skeles right up in the bosses face, since thier projectiles can be dodged real easy by flighty bosses, but if your gonna fight something stationary/slow then i think slower proj is better overall

for the chest, the covenant is probably the best power upgrade, but the bis item would be a 2g4b lioneyes vision the colors are stupid hard to get so its expensive as hell but it will make skeletons do shit loads more damage lol.


Some interesting ideas for sure! If I would use lioneye's vision though I would rather have it be 4b 1r 1g for an empower gem instead of '3' green ones.

I am in the process of uploading my uber lab, cleared at level 75 with level 17 skeletons. Went pretty well!
Your Variant 2 is almost exactly what I have planned out for mine. Sitting at 78 atm since I took a break to play some other builds in order to not get bored.

Current gear(most were a chaos or less):
Spoiler


Current tree: https://tinyurl.com/ybgygsnx

Still need 2 more trials to get uber lab(I keep finding the same ones over and over). Everything has been extremely easy so far.

I have 2 more jewel nodes planned for 2 more To Dusts.

For spectres, I go to Ravaged Square in a10 and just desecrate a couple times then raise the guys with 2handers that cast the proximity shields.

I've thought about swapping to blasphemy curses, but haven't decided yet. I use blasphemy enfeeble/temp chains on nearly every build I play.

Charge around, cast flesh offering, summon mages. Good fun
Reimur: even though you're wrong, why would you have faith in diamond supporters? you're talking about a group of people that are so autistic that they would spend 1000 dollars on pixels. we're almost the most idiotic group of people in this community. second to hardcore players.
Last edited by thelordrahl on Aug 11, 2017, 6:40:11 AM
Added my uber lab video. It's fairly slow but you can skip to the end for the Izaro fight
You have some interesting ideas but nobody here has mentioned pledge of hands. Level 30 spell echo which allows faster summoning and buffs minion dps as well. You also get a 7link at end game. And finally you get 100% Mana for MOM . This staff is built for a mom skele summoner.
Mirror Arrow Summoner: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1422529
Teleports Behind You: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2123293
Magma Orb Deadeye: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2736039
"
dariidar wrote:
You have some interesting ideas but nobody here has mentioned pledge of hands. Level 30 spell echo which allows faster summoning and buffs minion dps as well. You also get a 7link at end game. And finally you get 100% Mana for MOM . This staff is built for a mom skele summoner.


That's true! It's pretty great for the MoM combo.

I have upgraded my gear a bit and leveled up to 82 now - it goes really fast in maps

New stuff:



I am fairly certain that I am going to kill Shaper with this build. Stay tuned!
Can I ask why you say Auras don't really help much? As I understand they are key in the srs minion builds. What is different here?
Cheers.
"
neezi wrote:
Can I ask why you say Auras don't really help much? As I understand they are key in the srs minion builds. What is different here?
Cheers.


Hi! sure thing

For one, hatred is pretty great on SRS since it converts a portion of their damage to cold (their phys part), however all damage dealt by mages are elemental so the auras that would scale for them would be anger or wrath. But these aren't really scaled that well for caster spells by comparison, it just adds a bit of base damage.

Instead I am opting to use a temporal chains for survivability and elemental weakness for damage (mages use different elements so a general resist curse is preferred)

Haste would probably be a pretty good aura, but it would come at the expense of my two curses as I really prefer to use clarity as well for mana regen and the 30% damage bonus of necro ascendancy

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