[3.9] Impale Spectral Spirits Summoner. Intangible minions tearing up the Atlas



Build
So I wanted to try making a build using the spectral spirits minion generated from the essence of insanity as they are adorable little floating skulls that are
+ Immoral
+ Aggressive
+ Fast
+ Floating
+ Cheap

I decided to make this my league starter for metamorph and its gone very smoothly. Now up to T16 maps and taken down Sirus (although I did die plenty not knowing how his black holes work)

One neat thing about the skulls is since they are immoral and permanent this character can run any map mod. Many summoners get shut down on reflect + no mana regen maps but it just slows this one down a bit

Defence
- 7-9k ES
- 10% less damage taken (Jinxed Juju)
- 25% less elemental damage taken (incandescent heart)
- Blinding minions
- 121% faster start of ES recharge
- 18% spell block (28% with rumi's)
- Bastion of Hope occasional block

Damage
Melee splash spirits & 4-link Skeletons

- Spirits - 490,081 x 3 = 1,470,231 DPS
- Skeletons - 231,754 x 10 = 2,317,540
- 3,787,873 total DPS

Swapping Melee splash into Maim gives

- Spirits - 721,337 x 3 = 2,164,001 DPS
- Skeletons - 257,711 x 10 = 2,577,110
- 4,741,121 total DPS


Videos


Gear
Spoiler




Gear Breakdown

Weapon
Spectral spirits Crude bow. I explain how to craft one in the section below

Quiver
Soul Strike for faster start of ES recharge

Chest
Incandecent Heart. This is the best chest for elemental protection on a CI character and super cheap. If physical damage is more the problem then a high ES chest would be better. I also like that this chest rolls red sockets easy. If rolling 3 red sockets on other gear wasn't so annoying I would probably upgrade my skeletons into a 6-link here

Gloves
ES and resistances

Boots
Rainbowstrides are probably best here. Resistances, spell block and good ES. I went Sin Trek for a little bit more ES and 5% movement speed and once I had enchanted them with movespeed I didn't want to swap out

Belt
Bated breath is tempting but we need darkness enthroned for the 2 boosted abyss jewels. Spectral spirits have horrid base damage and need to get it all from jewels

Rings
Resist and ES. Aspect of the spider can be on any rare slot but they are kinda expensive early league so might be better dropping that part at first

Amulet
Jinxed Juju for best defence (10% of damage redirected to spectres) and best damage (15% increased aura effect)

Helmet
ES and resists

Gearing
Chest, boot and amulet are good slots to change from their uniques into rares with resistances if you are struggling there



Crafting the Spectral Spirits Bow
Spoiler


First Bow Craft
First step is the buy a crude bow as they have the lowest dex requirment
https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Metamorph/YpVkj9bFY

get at least ilevel 50, higher ilevels can roll higher tier resistances but its only a chance. Balance the cost vs item level as you might not even need the resistances

Next you want to quality and 6 socket the bow (no need for linking)

Next you should use alterations on the bow until you roll "Item has reduced attribute requirements" this will lower its hidden dex requirement of 14 down to 10 which lowers the average chroming cost from 257 down to 172

Use chromes until you have 4Red 1Blue 1Green sockets on the bow then use your essence of insanity on the item which guarantees you to get the spirits.

The hope is to get resistances and an open prefix to craft minion damage. Open prefix is easy to hit but resistances is harder so don't waste too much currency trying unless you have money to burn

You could go through the same process with a reflex bow base to get an extra 6% movement speed but it will cost an extra 2800 chromes using the Vorici 3R crafting bench option which is a tad annoying. I would only go through the effort if you were planning on multicrafting the final result.



Multicraft Option

This requires the multimod craft acquired from pale court and the highest tier of minion attack/cast speed from unveiling weapons as well as 2 ex. Not reccomended for early league when your crafting bench is still missing options

Essence of insanity your bow and hope for 1 free prefix and 2 free suffix (orbs of annulment can be used to hopefully remove an extra suffix) for an endgame bow of

- Anything (prefix)
- Anything (prefix)
- Minions deal 80% increased damage (crated, prefix)
- Spectral Spirits (suffix)
- Can have up to 3 Crafted Modifiers (crafted, suffix)
- Minions have 27% attack speed (crafted, suffix)




Ascendancy
Spoiler

Guardian
I went Radiant Crusade first for resistances and conditional onslaught. Good for leveling

Next was Radiant Faith for some extra ES

3rd was Unwavering Crusade for extra minion damage

Last was Bastion of Hope which gives 10% spell block and occational regular block. The stun immunity kicks in pretty often with rumi's active



Flasks
Spoiler



Bleed, Ignite and Freeze immunity are needed. Quicksilver for clearspeed. Rumi's helps give extra time for ES recharge to kick in



Jewels
Spoiler

This build gets 5 Ghastly eye jewels and all of them should have high flat physical damage on them. The base damage on spectral spirits is horrible so this is the stat that gives them the most DPS.

https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Metamorph/02BlJR7Ig



You also want 2 of them to have minion resistances to bring your minions up to cap. One jewel with chance for minions to blind will keep all metamorphs perma blinded which is good defense

The other slots you want minion attack speed and flat ES the most

Flat mana and other miscellaneous minion stuff is also decent


The build uses one energy from within jewel at the top of the tree. Healthy mind is almost as good in this slot but the character doesn't get enough flat mana to make it better



Passive Skill Tree/Path of Building
Spoiler

Links

My Lvl 91 Tree
www.poeurl.com/cFqH

https://pastebin.com/MrR8Ca2n

A big source of damage for the build is impale. I show the math on the bow.

Golem commander is good damage per point but even with the extra life I cannot rely on the golem to survive in real endgame content like the support spectres can

Endurance Bond is also tempting but just a few too many points out of the way



Gem Selection
Spoiler


Bow


Best damage gems for Spirits. I use them as my melee splash minion as they are fast and don't need to be summoned. Splash can be swapped for maim on big bosses but I have enough damage that I don't tend to bother

Chest

4 link aura setup. lvl 2 enlighten is only needed if you have aspect of the spider up. Generosity doesn't boost pride but is very good on dread banner


This minion doesn't have enough base life and sometimes dies on T15+ bosses but is still worth having for 10% more damage during clearing. If there was room for things like maim and feeding frenzy that would be nice but this minion could be dropped altogether if you want to 6-link the skeletons

Helm

Vaal summon skeletons wrecks bosses. Upgrades would be making this a 6-link in the chest or getting a "supported by minion damage" helm

Gloves

Support spectres. I use 2x Carnage Chieftens and 1x Host Chieften. With max resistances and this setup they have just enough life to survive the Sirus encounter. They need blood magic to spam their charge giving spell, just remove this to summon them

Boots

Phase run is my preferred movement skill. Smoke mine or lightning warp are other options


Discipline for extra ES and I use flame dash to hop ledges and such

Other options
6-linking the skeletons in the chest is an option. Vulnerability curse was a part of the build for a long time but remembering to use it became an issue. Flesh offering would be nice but there is no room for desecrate

Dropping the Carrion golem and flame dash for one of these is reasonable. Unset rings would also help but make it harder to find resistances


Pantheon
Spoiler

Soul of Brine king to prevent stunlocking

Soul of Abberath for burning ground immunity


Leveling
Spoiler

Skill
I leveled with SRS then infernal legion skeletons then after getting enough damage nodes full melee splash skeletons

Spectral spirits have a level requirement of 50 so if you've made your bow you can add them in as soon as you hit lvl 50

Gear
Skeletons need very little. I just threw on ES rares and was fine


Tree

www.poeurl.com/cFqO

General progression path towards CI getting the better damage/ES nodes on the way

Bandits
Kill all

Auras
I used discipline and skitterbots with infernal legion for a while then once skeletons were doing real damage I swapped into
Dread banner - Pride - Discipline which is the endgame setup

I looked to add in aspect of the spider around lvl 85 when I had a lvl 2 enlighten and ring with the mod. This is the point where I took the extra mana reservation from sovereignty and its surrounding nodes

Last edited by WaffleT on Dec 31, 2019, 1:53:36 AM
Last bumped on Apr 28, 2023, 5:30:03 PM
reserved
Very cool unique build once again, would you consider this for endgame as well or just as a league starter? Tankiness and damage seems to be there though clear seems average.
Last edited by foojin on Dec 18, 2019, 3:01:02 AM
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foojin wrote:
Very cool unique build once again, would you consider this for endgame as well or just as a league starter? Tankiness and damage seems to be there though clear seems average.


Its more of a boss killer but its also hard for me to tell as needing to pick up all the organs and the 5x monster life on endgame content has made it so I can't just compare map clear times with my previous leagues. The spirits aggression do mean that on clean layout I can just walk through and they clear everything

In terms of endgame I did take down Sirus with this character and expect to be able to take down the rest of the endgame when I get the fragments.

I did choose to make this a budget character not 6-linking or investing too highly into my gear. There will be other characters that will benefit more from high cost items then this one. Awakened support gems and a mana = ES watchers eye are all that comes to mind for this one
Do you have a variant that isn't ES based? I think the build looks really interesting, but I really hate ES builds because of the gearing.
Thanks for sharing this! Didn't know spectral spirits even exist. Would love to see vids of smashing Sirus and others.
I tried combining this with my zombie guardian from previous league. If we ignore zombies but still stack strength and use Baron, half of our strength gets applied to the spectral spirit increasing it's damage. I'm bad at making builds but might be viable?
If you were to 6L the skels, what would be the preferred extra support gems and what would you give up, the carrion golem?
"
Do you have a variant that isn't ES based? I think the build looks really interesting, but I really hate ES builds because of the gearing.


I understand but I can't really see a good way of getting enough life nodes to make this life. The aura and minion nodes are surrounded with good ES stuff and the guardian gets an extra 10-15% more ES from mana for practically free.

Also I dislike being reliant on life flasks. Faster es recharge is more to my taste

"
bonewall wrote:
I tried combining this with my zombie guardian from previous league. If we ignore zombies but still stack strength and use Baron, half of our strength gets applied to the spectral spirit increasing it's damage. I'm bad at making builds but might be viable?


I had that in the back of my mind as I've done strength stacking in the past. Needs shapers touch gloves to work which is kinda expensive this league so havn't make a tree for it

"
puaiohi wrote:
If you were to 6L the skels, what would be the preferred extra support gems and what would you give up, the carrion golem?


Yeah probably drop the golem - minion life. Also don't really need the flame dash so could drop that
Hi there,
that's a damn nice build!
What are your thoughts on building this one as a necromancer though?
I understand that you decided on guardian because of all the defensive mechanics and ally buffs.
But how do you think would a necromancer fare with all of the specific minion buffs?

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