{3.10} Speaker for the Dead | The Mass Minion Summoner | League Starter, Leveling Guide 💀

I have some question:
1. My zombies die alot at ~tier 12 and above and I have to resummon them alot is there any solution to this?
2. Im still doing good at t14-15 with pretty decent gear but get wreck alot by those syndicate (delve, incursion and mapp boss is easy tho), what should I upgrade first with my character? I was thinking about upgrading boost because my spectre is strong but failed to craft +1 spectre because the lack of resonator and fossil.

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Ammoconda wrote:
Holy off colour belly. Is this build late game viable without all the min/maxing? Like the lv21 minion and lv4 empower.


I'm at tier 14-15 all gem is 20/0, no shaper/elder item, no empower,etc and still able to kill everything on my way (except those syndicate, fuck those syndicate)
Last edited by EinUchiha on Dec 13, 2018, 12:39:36 AM
Has anybody tried using Syndicate Marksmen as spectres?
Thanks I will start a new character.

Also I was wondering who do we craft items and how do an ALT character play a role with your main, in terms of items and currency? How are they linked and how to transfer stuff between them?
Also what are recipes I hear other player talking about?
if you got +1 curse on ammy what would you swap out for another curse?
Oh, just a heads up to the couple of people who asked about support priority of the Spectres. I was running some calculations, but hadn't finished them, and not wanting to hold back other answers I left it out of the initial batch. Then it just kept getting pushed back. I didn't forget or overlook it. Just wanted to let you know.

My initial answer was that I had ordered all gems already into their priority (Gem Links and Gear section), but I wanted to make a final confirmation on the usefulness of Minion Damage vs Elemental Proliferation.




@ nico5051:
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nico5051 wrote:
It's just me or that Static Strike and Smite skill feels like shite while leveling? I'm moving towards arc because I can't kill anything.

Smite will kill things early on, but the gulf between a summoner and a specialized attacker or caster widens as the Acts wear on. By the time you use Static Strike, you are not using it for damage at all. Minions are meant to do the work; your attack is just to support them.




@ Alerean:
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Alerean wrote:
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Hercanic wrote:
Well this is awkward... I ran out of room in the leveling guide already. =o\ Do I pair it down, offload some things to GoogleDocs, see if a forum moderator is able to modify post date so we can add another starting post, or something else...
Maybe try the moderator route first haha, but you could do a lot with a GoogleDoc (and make it as big as you want).

The answer was no. =o(

GoogleDoc has no limit, but links take extra clicks, no spoilers to section off and condense long walls of text, and no item linking. So I'm not too keen on that route, as it'd demand an entirely different formatting approach.

Pairing it down is tricky. The more concise I am, the more repeated questions I get. =o\

Another idea is creating a totally separate thread for the leveling guide itself. That'd be nice to organize the responses. People asking leveling questions would have all their questions in the leveling thread, and all regular build questions would be here, making a read through of the comments more targeted and thus more relevant to the reader. However, what other builds take up two entire threads? I think it might be presumptuous of me to do something like that. After all, imagine if every build did it; the most popular builds would hog even more of the first page and crowd out everyone else.

I could also remake the thread, reserve the full first page of the new thread, and edit out the build here with a big link to the new one. I just might have to do this some day, but it'd be best to do it when I have no choice so I know exactly how much space I need to reserve.

Another idea is to just put the leveling guide anywhere in the comment section, maybe reserve out a whole page, and provide links to the specific posts on the front page of the thread. This would give me limitless expansion possibilities, but it's admittedly an ugly solution.

My final idea is to cannibalize yet another post, my first reply to the first comment. This would push the Feedback section back behind another player's comment. It's a pretty nice comment, though, like when movie trailers quote critics, but it is fundamentally a break in the post flow. I think it'll be tolerable, though? I am leaning toward this idea right now.




@ Ammoconda:
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Ammoconda wrote:
Holy off colour belly. Is this build late game viable without all the min/maxing? Like the lv21 minion and lv4 empower.

Off-coloring the Belly was done through the Vorici socket trick, so it wasn't too hard. Just around 1-1.5k Jeweler Orbs in cost. You have to self-link or use the 6L craft instead of buying it linked, but this'll keep your sanity compared to off-coloring with Chromatics.

As was said in Everything You Need, you only need vendor gems for the build to work. All the items just add power to push into the advertised 4.7M DPS (which is technically higher since I excluded all special abilities of the minions). The difference between a lvl20 and 21 is ~10% more. Empower with everything else does add a lot to Zombies and the Agony Crawler (+6 levels = 77% more life, damage, and 59% more accuracy), but I didn't get a level 4 Empower until near the end of Delve league, for 3ex.




@ EinUchiha:
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EinUchiha wrote:
I have some question:
1. My zombies die alot at ~tier 12 and above and I have to resummon them alot is there any solution to this?

Stack levels = more health. You can get up to +6, which gave my Zombies 20,224 life. They almost never died under normal circumstances.

Betrayal encounters might require some changes, though. The Grave Intentions cluster on the passive tree may be much more valuable this league with all the chaos damage.


"
EinUchiha wrote:
2. Im still doing good at t14-15 with pretty decent gear but get wreck alot by those syndicate (delve, incursion and mapp boss is easy tho), what should I upgrade first with my character? I was thinking about upgrading boost because my spectre is strong but failed to craft +1 spectre because the lack of resonator and fossil.

Chaos resistance. That's key this league.

+1 Spectres should be at the bottom of your priorities. That's all of ~58k more damage (or ~242k when gem swapped for single-target). A single Phantasm does 57k, and you can get 11 of them with a lvl21 gem.

Gear Priorities
Going forward, your priorities on what to invest in are:

#1 is elemental resistances (and chaos this league), so items with big resist values are important to get squared away. A solid budget belt, ring, and amulet will carry much of your resistance burden. Boots are also a good source of resists, though 30% movement speed takes precedence.

This depends on market prices, but offhand I'd recommend items with two high 45-55% resists over an item with three low 20-30%. Triple resists usually cost more because of rarity and you don't have to balance so much. Victario's Charity has 30% Lightning Resistance, so you're ahead there right off the bat compared to Cold and Fire.

#2 priority is Life. You can settle for less life if it gets you more resistances. You eventually want to upgrade to the best of both worlds, but in budget land we can only look at the cake.

#3 is Minion Blind, Taunt, and Hinder on ~two Ghastly Jewels. You can settle for ~30 life to start, but eventually you want to upgrade to T1 50 life.

For big items, I'd go 10-20c for 6L Tabula Rasa, upgrade to a 40-80c 6L rare with high life/resists, then finish off with Belly of the Beast. I haven't confirmed if we still have the Vorici coloring trick, though. We want a 6L so our main clear skill can do its job as well as protect us with reliable freezes.

Once you have a 6L chest, you want a +1 w/ Minion Damage Support Elder helm, then a +2 w/ Minion Damage Support, and eventually a +3 w/ Minion Damage Support later into the league. Life and resists are important as well, but don't break the bank unless it's for a perfect helmet that won't come along very often.

Gloves with just a Poison Support affix and high life should be super easy to get. That's all you need at first. You don't need a Chance to Bleed Support affix until you have your helmet situation finished, since Skeletons won't have a socket for Bloodlust until you do.

A Shaper ring with any amount of +LoH from Spells that also has solid life and resists will go a long way toward protecting you while mapping. Ball Lightning hits an absurd amount of times, and with GMP it covers the whole screen. Your life will rarely appear to drop, as you can see from my videos, and part of that is because of freeze and minion body blocking, but the other part is the huge incoming recovery you're constantly getting. But you need to have your Gloves with Poison before you can use GMP and take full advantage of screen-wide LoH.

A Shaper claw with Maim is a good starter. That gives you the protection of Maim's slow and boosts Skeleton DPS. The +1 to gems isn't as impactful until you can afford an Empower Support. Minion Damage Support can sub in for it until then.

You can now start investing more into your jewels. T1 life, T1 minion attack/cast speed, T1 minion attack/cast speed on kill. You do not need any flat damage on jewels. That's just a bonus if it has one, or something you end up with after you try exalting your own T1 3-property jewels.

All that's left are +1 Spectre boots. These are not a priority. Two Frost Sentinels are enough. But once you have a few exalts burning a hole in your Currency tab and everything else is on the higher end of your budget limit, then you can think about luxury boots. Don't compromise on life or resistances and especially not on movement speed.

You're pretty much done, anything more is icing. Eventually you'll want a +1 curse amulet and a curse corruption on gloves.

I was going to add this to the leveling guide when I found out I was over the character limit.




@ Cruamos:
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Cruamos wrote:
Has anybody tried using Syndicate Marksmen as spectres?

Here are the stats of Syndicate monsters. They may not be Desecrate'able, like most league monsters (Breach, Perandus, Harbinger, Abyss, Delve, etc). Incursion is like the only exception.




@ Lexicon91:
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Lexicon91 wrote:
Also I was wondering who do we craft items and how do an ALT character play a role with your main, in terms of items and currency? How are they linked and how to transfer stuff between them?

Your Stash (a chest in town to store items) is shared across all characters within the same league. If you create a Templar character, buy gems he can buy but the Witch cannot, and place the gems in your Stash, your Witch will be able to take them out of the Stash and use those gems herself.


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Lexicon91 wrote:
Also what are recipes I hear other player talking about?

Vendor recipes are when you put a specific combination of items into a vendor's trade window to get a special reward. For example, trading three of the same tier of life flask will give you a life flask one tier higher in return.
@ austeemo:
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austeemo wrote:
if you got +1 curse on ammy what would you swap out for another curse?

You want to pair that with a glove corruption.


Otherwise you can trade Spirit Offering for a curse on CWDT. Just be more careful around Porcupines/Wetas and the like. It's not quite as bad because you're also freezing/shattering a lot of bodies before they become corpses anyway.
Last edited by Hercanic on Dec 19, 2018, 7:31:12 PM
Hercanic, this guide is honestly the work of a mad genius. There's so many different elements to it that obviously come together amazingly.

I was trying an arc build in Betrayal but gave up and decided to go back to necro as I've always loved the playstyle. I'm still working through the leveling part of the game using this build and loving it so far, but have a couple of questions:

- I'm not used to using shield charge as my main movement skill and I'm finding it pretty clunky. I'm much more used to flame dash from previous leagues. Other than proc'ing fortify is there a particular upside to shield charge I'm going to miss by changing to flame dash?

- If I do change to flame dash I'll have a couple of free gem slots in the shield. I see you mention in the FAQ using an animated guardian. I've previously used grimlock9999's skele build (https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/2114607) and found the set up for animated guardian he used made my minions feel way faster. I'd also give it minion life.

If I was to do the above would I be missing much versus using shield charge/fortify? You're obviously better at theorycrafting than I am so just double checking I'm not missing something important!

Thanks again for the great guide!
Hi thanks for a awesome build!
Been trying to figure out why you use CWDT - Spirit offering without mistress of sacrifice?
Is there a easier way to ressurect your frost spectres without having to go back to the bridge area? Its a pain in the ass to specifically target them when there is dead ribbons everywhere.

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