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

@ everyone:
I've recently started work on a game, so I will not have time to respond to most questions until further notice. I would like to finish updating the main guide, but I honestly cannot make any guarantees.

Thank you to everyone who has played Speaker for the Dead! It's been a crazy year and a half, that's for sure! I wish you all favorable probabilities in the many loot rolls to come!




In other news, 3.10's Delirium League has been announced! (Video) (Reddit)

  • Four new skills.

  • Three new support gems.

  • Kinetic Bolt - Wand attack that fires forking projectiles. (Video)

  • Stormbind - Channel and charge up runes on the ground before detonating them. Looks like a grid-shaped lightning version of Flameblast. Maybe each rune can hit?

  • Blade Blast - Detonate blades from blade skills.

  • Blade skills (like Bladefall, Blade Vortex, Ethereal Knives) will now leave behind blades that Animate Weapon and certain other skills, like Blade Blast, can use. (Video)

  • Cluster Jewels - Extend the passive tree from the outer jewel nodes with custom passive clusters. 280 new notables.

  • Blessed Rebirth - A new notable passive from a Cluster Jewel that grants, "Minions created Recently cannot be damaged." This is like what Traps and Mines get from the Clever Construction notable. This will be especially good for guaranteeing 4 seconds of Skeleton damage no matter the situation.

I will be playing this league, but only casually. I probably won't play summoner, but we'll see. The reason is burn-out. As much as I love summoner, since making the guide I felt obligated to play summoner every league for the last 1.5 years, even when I was more inclined to try something else. A change of pace should do me some good.
Last edited by Hercanic on Feb 26, 2020, 5:48:34 PM
"
Hercanic wrote:
Thank you to everyone who has played Speaker for the Dead! It's been a crazy year and a half, that's for sure! I wish you all favorable probabilities in the many loot rolls to come!


And thank you for the build sir! I also intend to play something else this league (I've never leveled a Shadow or Ranger, thinking of going Poison for a complete change), but then again leveling this with typical Tabula/Goldrim/etc will be a bit ridiculously easy if whatever build I try turns out to suck.

Also of course, the new Cluster Jewels are gonna create a clusterfuck of options, builds are gonna be all crazy. The future looks... interesting, but also difficult.

Thanks for all your work! I hope whatever game you're working on comes to fruition readily!
"
Hercanic wrote:
@ everyone:
I've recently started work on a game


Huh?

You're making your own game?
Wouldn't be surprised if Hercanic got a job with GGG.

Thanks for the build guide and gl.
@ everyone:
The newly revealed Spellslinger Support opens up a great opportunity for those who want to use wands with Speaker. Instead of Cyclone, you'd trigger Desecrate and Spirit Offering with a wand attack using Spellslinger. Those two spells would reserve 30% mana, so you'd lose Skitterbots/Discipline. You could also add a third utility spell, like a curse or movement spell, bringing it up to 45% reservation.

All spells are triggered together. With a 0.5 base cooldown and bonus recovery speed earned per gem level, it'll actually trigger the Spirit Offering combo much faster than the sequential 0.35 trigger rate of CwC.

With a Convoking Wand, we can add up to +3 levels to all our minion skills with the mods +2 to All Minion Skills and +1 to All Spell Skills. Unfortunately, Phantasms do not benefit from this, since they are a Support and not a Skill.

Zombies would lose a lot of damage if they stayed in the wand, since they're not getting any Support Gem mods from the wand. Instead, we could convert them to a defensive minion with Meatshield Support.

Fortify would have to come from a Kingmaker AG.

For wand attack, the choice would be Power Siphon (cull, auto-target), Frenzy (Frenzy Charges), or Kinetic Blast/Barrage (if you have a good amount of Life on Hit). Elemental Hit would mess with EE, and the new Kinetic Bolt remains to be seen.

For sockets, there'd be 4 free from dropping Cyclone, 2 free from dropping Skitterbots, and 1 free originally. That gives 7 sockets, or a 4L and 3L. At a minimum, we'd need 4 sockets for Spellslinger, Spirit Offering, Desecrate, and the wand attack. That leaves 3 discretionary sockets.




@ APlear:
"
APlear wrote:
What is Better? Chaos Golem or Carrion Golem?

The Carrion Golem's buff is best for minions who deal low but rapid damage, such as Phantasms, Raging Spirits, and Animated Weapons. For most other minions, the Carrion Golem doesn't offer much more than 1-2% more DPS.

In our case, use the Carrion Golem for better clear with Phantasms. Otherwise, use the Chaos Golem for better defense.




@ Kirian42, Orca_Orcinus, Swaggmann:
Full Posts
"
Kirian42 wrote:
And thank you for the build sir! I also intend to play something else this league (I've never leveled a Shadow or Ranger, thinking of going Poison for a complete change), but then again leveling this with typical Tabula/Goldrim/etc will be a bit ridiculously easy if whatever build I try turns out to suck.

Also of course, the new Cluster Jewels are gonna create a clusterfuck of options, builds are gonna be all crazy. The future looks... interesting, but also difficult.

Thanks for all your work! I hope whatever game you're working on comes to fruition readily!
"
Orca_Orcinus wrote:
Huh?

You're making your own game?
"
Swaggmann wrote:
Wouldn't be surprised if Hercanic got a job with GGG.

Thanks for the build guide and gl.
"
Orca_Orcinus wrote:
You're making your own game?

Yep! I'd love to say more about it, but it's too early in development to reveal anything yet. I will say it's a turn-based tactical game with some very original mechanics. =o)


"
Swaggmann wrote:
Wouldn't be surprised if Hercanic got a job with GGG.

Oh, I'd love to work at GGG someday! =oD

That reminds me, I actually designed a unique system for automated trading that quite literally solves every problem GGG mentioned in their Trade Manifesto and abroad. I did it mainly as a design challenge for myself, since it's something no ARPG has had a good answer to. I'd like to polish the write-up sometime to post it, but have had too many other priorities as of late.


"
Kirian42 wrote:
I hope whatever game you're working on comes to fruition readily!

Thank you!
Last edited by Hercanic on Mar 3, 2020, 12:02:44 AM
Greetings, Herc and fellow Speakers.

This build managed to get me to the OG Atlas for the first time in 3.8. I've loved the build idea of mass minions and I was trying to work out how to league start 3.10 with it.

Maybe I'll make 2 Necros...

Anyway, my idea is to stick to the core of the build: lots of minions on the field and turn that into a low/no-budget build, that can scale upwards as you acquire currency over the league, as well as some clear progression goals for where to target your upgrades.

In fact, the new Spellslinger support idea looks good (I've never tried Power Siphon so that's exciting) though I will miss my hyperactive little robots.

But anyway, I've never used AG before so I'm a total newbie to how to summon it, functionality, etc. But since this won't be a deep Delving Necro build I figure I can test that one out, too.

Is there anything important about AG I'm missing besides the obvious uniques? I noticed in PoB there's multiple gloves and chestpieces used; is that even possible or just options to pick from?

Thanks in advance. May our armies conquer the new Atlas!
@ AlexMagusaka:
Full Post
"
AlexMagusaka wrote:
Greetings, Herc and fellow Speakers.

This build managed to get me to the OG Atlas for the first time in 3.8. I've loved the build idea of mass minions and I was trying to work out how to league start 3.10 with it.

Maybe I'll make 2 Necros...

Anyway, my idea is to stick to the core of the build: lots of minions on the field and turn that into a low/no-budget build, that can scale upwards as you acquire currency over the league, as well as some clear progression goals for where to target your upgrades.

In fact, the new Spellslinger support idea looks good (I've never tried Power Siphon so that's exciting) though I will miss my hyperactive little robots.

But anyway, I've never used AG before so I'm a total newbie to how to summon it, functionality, etc. But since this won't be a deep Delving Necro build I figure I can test that one out, too.

Is there anything important about AG I'm missing besides the obvious uniques? I noticed in PoB there's multiple gloves and chestpieces used; is that even possible or just options to pick from?

Thanks in advance. May our armies conquer the new Atlas!
"
I noticed in PoB there's multiple gloves and chestpieces used (for AG); is that even possible or just options to pick from?

They're just options. If you're using the latest PoB pastebin, there's an Item Set for the AG.



The set is also associated to the AG skill, so PoB is able to show its MotSD regen.



Just note, it's still an unfinished PoB. There's a few more things I had wanted to add, and I needed to do a final pass. For example, Oskarm for the AG is wrong. That was from the double curse idea using a +1 curse chest, but this AG is set to use EG for its chest armor.

For the gloves, I would most likely aim for a pair of Hunter-influenced gloves with the Intimidate on Hit mod. But I still needed to look into how hard that'd be to acquire. Especially ones corrupted with a curse on hit. No other stats matter on the gloves, so even junky blue gloves with just that one Hunter mod would be fine.
"
Hercanic wrote:
@ everyone:
I've recently started work on a game, so I will not have time to respond to most questions until further notice.


Thanks for making this guide and good luck in your future endeavors! I started playing PoE at the start of blight league and my love of d2 necromancers led to me choose this build. I was playing on a laptop w/out a graphics card and the resolution would get so bad that I couldn't remotely see what was going on, but that didn't stop me from cruising through T16 maps w/ very little gear investment. (never beat uber elder bc the game would freeze for 10 sec upon entering the portal lol). Anyway, now that I have a gaming rig I'ma try this again in 3.10 so I can see it in all it's glory. I have a boatload of probably noobish questions, that hopefully somebody else on the thread can help answer:

1) In the current PoB, I don't understand how EE and frenzy charges from Charity are being triggered, as you are not using ball lightning or another skill that hits. How does this work?

2) I'm intrigued about the idea of triggering desecrate and spirit offering w/ spellslinger in the upcoming patch. Frenzy and power siphon were mentioned as possible wand attack skills - how do frenzy/power charges added to the player, not the minions, help us?

3) What would be good gems to link to the wand attack skill? I'm thinking greater multiple projectiles and added lightning damage (to trigger EE) but there are probably better ones.

4) With this setup the zombies would go in our boots or gloves. Lets say we don't use zombies at all. what would be a good 4-link to have instead? Perhaps a CWDT link of some sort? I was also thinking adding discipline or skitterbots back in via blood magic could be cool, but don't know if it would be worth it.

5) Anticipating some mega nerfs to necromancers are coming, what are some other less conventional ways of boosting this build that may still be viable? (pure speculation at this point, I know)

I hope these questions are not stupid and generate some discussion, this is a fantastic build and I hope it stays viable even after a big necro nerf.
@ BootsButt:
Full Post
"
BootsButt wrote:
Thanks for making this guide and good luck in your future endeavors! I started playing PoE at the start of blight league and my love of d2 necromancers led to me choose this build. I was playing on a laptop w/out a graphics card and the resolution would get so bad that I couldn't remotely see what was going on, but that didn't stop me from cruising through T16 maps w/ very little gear investment. (never beat uber elder bc the game would freeze for 10 sec upon entering the portal lol). Anyway, now that I have a gaming rig I'ma try this again in 3.10 so I can see it in all it's glory. I have a boatload of probably noobish questions, that hopefully somebody else on the thread can help answer:

1) In the current PoB, I don't understand how EE and frenzy charges from Charity are being triggered, as you are not using ball lightning or another skill that hits. How does this work?

2) I'm intrigued about the idea of triggering desecrate and spirit offering w/ spellslinger in the upcoming patch. Frenzy and power siphon were mentioned as possible wand attack skills - how do frenzy/power charges added to the player, not the minions, help us?

3) What would be good gems to link to the wand attack skill? I'm thinking greater multiple projectiles and added lightning damage (to trigger EE) but there are probably better ones.

4) With this setup the zombies would go in our boots or gloves. Lets say we don't use zombies at all. what would be a good 4-link to have instead? Perhaps a CWDT link of some sort? I was also thinking adding discipline or skitterbots back in via blood magic could be cool, but don't know if it would be worth it.

5) Anticipating some mega nerfs to necromancers are coming, what are some other less conventional ways of boosting this build that may still be viable? (pure speculation at this point, I know)

I hope these questions are not stupid and generate some discussion, this is a fantastic build and I hope it stays viable even after a big necro nerf.
"
In the current PoB, I don't understand how EE and frenzy charges from Charity are being triggered

The Necromantic Aegis keystone shifts Charity to our minions, instead of ourselves, so their hits and kills will trigger the charge mods.

EE is applied by hitting with Cyclone (or the wand attack in the Spellslinger example). You must ensure your weapon or attacks deal at least 1 point of Fire or Lightning Damage to trigger EE. Easiest way is on a ring (craftable) or Abyssal jewel. The Avatar of Fire keystone, for 1 passive point, is also an option, as it causes you to only ever deal Fire Damage.


"
Frenzy and power siphon were mentioned as possible wand attack skills - how do frenzy/power charges added to the player, not the minions, help us?

They don't especially help us. The cast/attack speed of Frenzy Charges is nice for our movement skill, plopping down Skeletons, and attacking (Cyclone hits per sec for Life on Hit; more responsive wand attacks). They are also good for longer Phase Runs.

However, with Charity and NA, we'll get plenty of Frenzy Charges from our minion attacks. So the main draw for Frenzy is its More Attack Speed (better hit-n-run) and the fact that it's a green gem, and thus can go into a green socket on Triad Grip.

Power Charges would be nice if we had anything that needed us to crit. Like Tailwind boots, or Nightblade Support (requires dagger/claw) for Elusive. Hunter-influenced boots can give a Piercing prefix and Tailwind suffix, so they'd go well with the Power Siphon variant.


"
What would be good gems to link to the wand attack skill?

Ideally nothing, because there's a lot of other things we can do with sockets as a summoner. Which is why I'm leaning toward Power Siphon, due to its 8 base projectiles giving great coverage.

Otherwise, Life on Hit Support would be a good one. Power Siphon + Barrage + Life on Hit holds promise with up to 12 projectiles returning 44 life each (528 life * attack speed * accuracy). Kinetic Blast with Barrage might be even better at 4 explosions * 5 projectiles for ~25 potential hits on a single target (up to double that with piercing and a wall immediately behind).


"
With this setup the zombies would go in our boots or gloves. Lets say we don't use zombies at all. what would be a good 4-link to have instead? Perhaps a CWDT link of some sort?

Unless you're dropping Triad Grip or going for Lightning conversion, Zombies cannot go into the gloves. With Zombies in boots, though, you could turn them into a 5L with Fortify boots. It'd give them another 34% more melee damage.

For a CWDT setup, assuming no overt changes to Spirit Offering, I'd recommend another Desecrate+Spirit Offering combo. It would function independently and in tandem with the Spellslinger trigger, giving you both a reactive and proactive ES heal.


"
I was also thinking adding discipline or skitterbots back in via blood magic could be cool, but don't know if it would be worth it.

Unless you plan to use Shavs and stack ES, I wouldn't recommend sacrificing 69%-82% of our all-important Life for a measly 221 flat ES or ~34% more damage.


"
Anticipating some mega nerfs to necromancers are coming, what are some other less conventional ways of boosting this build that may still be viable?

If Spirit Offering is hit, such as a cooldown restricting its trigger rate, Life/ES on Hit from the original build is still an option. Spellslinger with Animated Weapon and Raging Spirit could be interesting.

Zombies being hit would be fine. I could see GGG making Baron much more rare, which wouldn't affect us.

Skeletons may be hit, but I'd honestly be surprised if they were dethroned from single-target.
Last edited by Hercanic on Mar 5, 2020, 11:43:37 PM
@ everyone:
Metamorph League will end on the 9th. On the 11th, Patch Notes will be released, so we'll finally see how bad the summoner nerfs are then.


Changes to Spectres (link)
350 new monsters to test as Spectres! These include monsters from Abyss, Betrayal, Delve, Synthesis, Legion, Breach, Harbinger, and Conquerors!

Some monsters are tricky to find, as they do not have a specific spawn area. Here's a list of NULL area monsters.

Raise Spectre is entering a new frontier of possibilities. Will we find the next Slave Driver or Solar Guard?

I was always saddened by how neglected Spectres were when every expansion added monsters that couldn't be raised. So this is an incredibly exciting change that restores the magical curiosity of Raise Spectre.


Monsters of Interest
I'll be editing in any new monsters that look interesting or come to my attention here.





Movement Skills
Second Wind Support gives another charge. Dash and Frostblink are gaining distance with level, solving their worst attribute.

Frostblink + Bonechill would mess with EE (unless using Avatar of Fire) until you hit with Cyclone or Power Siphon, but the chilled ground means a guaranteed chill for Bonechill (and Hypothermia). This would be good when you can't use Skitterbots, like if you wanted to use Discipline or Spellslinger instead. The fact that it's also an Instant skill means you will not interrupt Cyclone when casting it.

If Second Wind is green, it could pair with Dash on Triad Grip for our main movement skill.

I'd really like to use Dash, since it's green (Triad) and a teleport, but its biggest strike was the short range. If it gains enough range from this upcoming change, I will be seriously considering it over Smoke Mine (fantastic utility but clunky) and Whirling Blades (fast mobility but no teleport).






Vicious Bites
This is HUGE. It's worth another 10% crit chance for minions (5% base * 200% per charge), putting them at a 45% chance with 4 charges. 70% crit multi becomes worth ~32% more damage.

The two downsides are it only affects three minion types (Spectres/Zombies/Skeletons; no Phantasms) and generating Power Charges for minions is limited to on Kill with Charity or anytime but with a 6sec cooldown from Host Chieftain Spectres (eating up a Spectre). This means, either way, it's hard to get them on Skeletons against a boss.


I overlooked the word Minimum, and assumed Maximum. So the above is incorrect. Minimum would still be really good, but GGG has since nerfed the node to a simple 50% increased crit chance and 50% multi. This translates to +2.5% crit chance instead of +10%, but will stack with three Power Charges (37.5% crit w/ 3).

Without any Power Charges, the notable is worth 4.4% more damage. (4.5% of 6% in total)

(The pre-nerf version was worth 13.3% on its own -- 13.5% of 15% more in total.)

With 3 Power Charges, it becomes 17.6% more damage. (19.5% of 30% more in total)

With a Kingmaker AG and 3 PC, it's 16.2% more damage. (20.75% of 48.75% more in total)


Skeletal Atrophy
Chaos conversion looks a little better with this. You could get away with only 3 white sockets on a Triad Grip and have most of their damage as Chaos. Meaning you wouldn't be dependent on Temple and could get white sockets from Syndicate with Vorici on Research.

If paired with the Withering Touch support, Skeletons would have a 35% chance to inflict Wither.


Feasting Fiends
Nothing special here. We get 0.2% leech from pathing to Death Attunement. For 1 point by Sacrifice, we could grab 0.6%, but we ignore this.

For other builds that don't go to these locations, though, this opens up opportunities. So that's good.




SPELLSLINGER VARIANT (link)
We trade out Cyclone and Skitterbots for the new Spellslinger Skill-Support, Convoking Wand, and Power Siphon. This lets us trigger Spirit Offering much faster than CwC (potentially double with cooldown reduction), as well as boost the level of all our minions with a Convoking Wand. We lose an easy source of Fortify, but can still eventually have it with a Kingmaker Animated Guardian (expensive).

Replacement Overview
Skitterbots -> Spellslinger
Cyclone -> Power Siphon & CWDT
Zombies -> Moved from weapon to boots.

Up to you if you want to work in a Holy Relic and/or Chaos Golem, but it'd come out of the Zombies, CWDT, or AG.


PASSIVE TREE - Same tree, though we'll want the northern outer jewel socket for a set of Cluster Jewels. We can recover the points from Warrior's Blood to fund our cluster excursion. If you don't want to use your anointment on Ravenous Horde, you can use a medium-range Thread of Hope jewel to take Ravenous Horde, opening up your anointment to be something else (like Cleansed Thoughts).


BANDITS - Same 2 points. Cluster jewels put even greater value on this than ever before. Sorry bandits, you all have to die for our sake.


PANTHEON - Solaris/Arakaali & Shakari. Chaos Damage has steadily become much more common, and it's the bane of our primary defensive layer of ES. Shakari gives Poison Immunity. Solaris gives protection from AOE damage and crits, while Arakaali gives us Chaos Resistance.


LEVELING - Check out the old 3.8 build guide.


HELM - Same +3 Minion Damage helm.
1. Skeletons
2. Melee Phys
3. Feeding Frenzy -> Deathmark swap (non-mobile endgame bosses)
4. Melee Splash -> EleDmg w/ Attacks swap (endgame bosses with no dangerous adds)


BODY ARMOUR - Same ES chest w/ 10% Life as Extra ES craft.
1. Spectres (Frost Sentinel -> look into new Spectres)
2. Phantasms (if Frost Sentinels)
3. Minion Damage
4. GMP
5. Elemental Army
6. Faster Projectiles


GLOVES - Same 1R3G Triad Grip.
1. Dash -> Smoke Mine
2. Second Wind (if green) -> Phase Run -> Frenzy (if no Power Siphon)
3. Hatred
4. Generosity


WEAPON - New +3 Convoking Wand (+2 all minions, +1 all spells) with increased minion damage and minion attack/cast speed.
1. Cast When Damage Taken
2. Desecrate
3. Spirit Offering


SHIELD - Same Victario's Charity with Necromantic Aegis keystone.
1. Spellslinger
2. Desecrate
3. Spirit Offering


BOOTS - Same rare Fortify boots (34% more melee damage), or Hunter-influenced boots with Tailwind and Pierce mods.
1. Zombies
2. Minion Damage
3. Melee Phys
4. Feeding Frenzy

2b. Meatshield
3b. Chaos Golem -> Carrion Golem (if you want more clear speed with Phantasms)
4b. Holy Relic

2c. Meatshield
3c. Power Siphon
4c. Pierce / Chain

1d. Power Siphon or Kinetic Blast
2d. Barrage (Pierce swap for clear, Pierce jewel, or Pierce boot mod)
3d. Life on Hit
4d. Support minion or further attack support (Attack Speed, Accuracy)

1e. Power Siphon
2e. Cast on Crit (21% total crit chance = 7% base * 200% increased chance = 120% chance from charges + 60% from skill + 20% from quality)
3e.
4e.

1f. Power Siphon
2f. Curse on Hit
3f. Curse #1
4f. Curse #2 (amulet corruption or take Whispers of Doom) -> Pierce/Chain (if not, or if using curse on hit gloves/ring)


RING 1 - Same rare Unset with DEX, Life, resists, ES, and +1 minimum Endurance Charge craft.
1. Power Siphon
2. (For second ring, if not using Hungry Loop) Holy Relic (regen) or Chaos Golem (phys reduction stacking)


RING 2 - Hungry Loop (if too costly, just repeat Ring 1)
1. Animated Guardian (Gear: Kingmaker, Mask of the Stitched Demon, Garb of the Ephemeral, Hunter-influenced gloves with Intimidate on Hit and curse on hit corruption, Victario's Flight)
2. Meatshield
3. Minion Life
4. Empower
5. Melee Splash -> Fortify (if AG does not have Intimidate and Curse on Hit)


AMULET - Jinxed Juju; or rare with high Life, ES, and +1 minimum Endurance Charge craft.

BELT - Same Stygian Vise with room to craft Cooldown Reduction.

JEWELS - Same ES/Life Ghastly Eyes with minion attack speed stacking, and one source of Blind and Taunt.
Last edited by Hercanic on Apr 11, 2020, 5:02:52 AM

Report Forum Post

Report Account:

Report Type

Additional Info