A lot of questions about necro builds

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RTC_ wrote:

people usually dont run specres, srs and zombies

they do , just not in the way you think.

a very common practice is to use zombies and srs as damage dealers and then use spectres in a support roll such as bubble buddies or frenzy and power charge generators

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Miathan51 wrote:

I actually dislike montreguls because an important defensive aspect of summoner imo is body blocking by minions. Having half the amount of zombies means you end up taking more damage. So I run with 10 zombies and a Queen's Escape. Which, btw, is not only good for skeletons, but also for Vaal skeletons. Having a Vaal army that can zerg through an entire abyss and stay much longer in boss fights is a huge benefit. Also since Queen's Escape is a 2 hander, you can 5 (or even 6) link that Vaal army, which makes a very strong side skill even stronger.

montre has one and only one reason to exist. to keep zombies alive in end game while not hurting their damage or clear speed.

however most people use it because lycosidae is a large dps boost for minions and you cant use lycosidae with queens.

Thanks for the long replies

I was also thinking today about spectres, since abyss league is giving us a lot of flat phy to minions are there any physical damage spectres that can compete with fire damage ones that seem to dominate right now?

I know it's really hard to compete with -50 fire res from EE off arc, and an additional 24% from TV spectres. But right now im getting probably 50-60 added flat phy from 4 jewels on my tree. The only ones I've tried is heralds, but I think thier AI is a bit weird and single target damage isn't even on the same plane of existence as TV+wickermen or the clear speed of special beam cannon on solar guards.


Edit: I also had another really big breakthrough in my build by scrapping my 2nd CWDT setup (now self casting moltenshell and enfeeble) and replacing the cwdt gem with an animate guardian.

Equiping it with Leercast+ambus+windscream+Asenaths+DyingBreath means I have a ~36% increased dmg aura, and im able to curse bosses with temp chains and enfeeble without having to invest in extra curses on myself. Even with no links the gaurdian is basically immortal, since it has 15k hp, capped resists, 5% hp regen a sec and any boss or hard to kill rare is double cursed with increased effectiveness.

This really took the build up a notch just changing one gem out, and tbh self casting enfeeble isn't a problem and it's much more reliable. I may scrap molten shell for something to attach to my guardian, and I could also swap a gem out in that 4L and have my stone golem get effected by it too. The choices would be Blind, Maim, or culling strike. However I unfortunately need an extremely expensive recolor on my chest before I can move my golem onto that 4l.

Also is the 36% increased damage aura actually a 36% increase in all damage?

Played around more with guardian and scoured the wiki for unique, still think what I have in the post above is best. And really just treat it as a walking aura/+1 curse bot you dont want to die. All the items cost ~5c, but what really sucks is buying them from 90% afk people on poetrade.

unlinked it does normal mapping fine, except for a few bosses like t13 malformation piety will rape it every time with beam unless you can kill her instantly. Did t15 basilica and t14 palace just fine. However I found that unlinked guardian will die if a breachlord spawns in a breach sometimes, and it can get quite sketchy during some lich fights. Considering the time and money investment it's probably worth logging out to save it unless you are in lab. You can also just remove the gem temporarily before a fight to keep it safe.

basically its amazing if you are running maps you know the boss isn't a danger to it. However I've dropped molten shell and attached minion life to it for ~20k hp pool and it is regening about 1000 hp a second now.

I've considered dropping my 3L CWDT + IC + ID setup in favor of running both my stone golem+Gaurdian in a 4l w/ minion life and forify or possibly blind instead of fortify (degen effects seem to be what kills them anyways). But im not quite sure how to gauge how important that 3link cwdt setup is. Ideally it is up for 0.8 seconds every 3 seconds or so granting me physical immunity, but in my experience I dont see it up much and in this build i have a really beefy front line tanking most of the time anyways.


Anyone have any thoughts on the use of guardians in summoner builds?

guardians are annoying. generally speaking its hard to get them to a hp pool which will allow them to survive shaper level content.

and apart from their interactions with burn based minions guardians tend to provide minor bonuses for what you need to invest in them

I've managed to make it to 92 without dying and my build is kinda nearing it's end. I still have a lot of questions though, but it will be specific to the build im running now and again any help/advice is really appreciated.


In terms of offense and clear I think the build is in a good spot, does t15 easily and kills virtually any map boss in under 10 seconds. That's using 2 vangaurds and a wickerman with 5 montegruls zombies, a stone golem, and a guardian using the setup I talked about in a earlier post. I was worried zombies would be a bad choice to replace SRS but they clear faster than I can move through the map with shield charge unless there's a really tanky rare in the mix.

But looking at my gear, I think I can increase my dps by switching out my helm for a similar rolled bone helmet, and possibly picking up grip of the council gloves as well. However I'm a bit afraid of how much losing ~800 armor will effect my defense. 6 linking my chest is another obvious answer, but at around 600c to do so I think there would be better places to spend just to get swift affliction on my spectres. Since im using zombies, I think montegruls is pretty much BiS. My spectres don't hit so united in a dream is sort of wasted. Really just leaves scourge but im a bit afraid of how losing 5k life on zombies and the extra clear from explosion will effect the build since it relies on zombies much more than a build using SRS.

Defensively im at around 7k armor base, i think near 20k with granite. I have around 17% reduced phy damage taken from AA+zombies. 78% all resistances and ele weakness capped. 29% block. The usual CWDT IC ID setup w/ fortify on shield charge and 7k life. Flask setup is in character page, it's what I normally run on any life character it just lacks dousing/poison removal/shock removal. Im not sure if I can reasonably increase my defense by much unless I try to hamfist in MoM, but I think finding gear and rings for that would be a nightmare. Also possibly looking at using a different shield, but losing +3 all res and the good life/armor base it's hard to fathom.

If anyone wants to take a look at my gear or tree, recommend anything that might help even corruptions etc... would be nice. And again thanks to everyone that's responded so far it really has helped me make my build not shit and just understand minion builds in general better.