Fighting bosses with a summoner, advice needed

My witch is currently up to lev 15 and so far mostly invested in summoning/cold skills.

Aside from some brain-dead AI on the part of my summons (running away from mobs), I'm managing ok.

And then I get to Marveil(sp?). She is in her own, tiny zone. Which means when I zone in, I have zero minions.

She kills my skeletons just about as fast as I can cast them. I tried spamming her with ice spear, but can't keep it up due to be frozen and I had to run away, over and over.

I'm not asking for a nerf or buff of anything, just some advice on how to proceed. I suppose I could use a lame out by continually popping town portal; back to town, heal up, back to fight, and whittle her down that way.

But I was hoping for something a little more direct. Any advice?

For a summoner, minion instability is a great skill to get from the tree. When your minions are low on life, they explode for 100% of their max life as fire damage to surrounding enemies. While it does not happen all the time for the Skeletons (probably cause of such little HP that instead of going to low HP they just go straight to death :p). Just keep spamming Skeletons and they will whittle down her health pretty fast.

luckily I went pyro/necro so I have decent +fire and I just spam fireball. If you dont pick up some skills or passives that aren't based on summoning I don't think it'll be a viable build.

I cleared all the content with a summoner 2 totem build.

one totem with summon skeletons, increased damage, and added lightning damage.

another totem with ice spear and lesser multiple projectiles

i also cast zombies and Spectre while my totems are up to support them.

i use hatred aura for added cold damage on the minions.

i grabbed all the minion passives i could reach, as well as minion instability.

minion health gems are a bad idea, as you actually want your minions to die and explode.

i found this to be highly effective.

hope this helps :)

I've struggled with my first Marveil kill on normal mostly because she kills skeletons in one hit. The trick was to ignore minions for that fight and kill her with direct damage spells (but to make it work you need to have 75% cold resist and decent energy shield, dispel Frozen pots also help) - once you get that just nuke her as she burns through your ES and some life, then hide behind wall and recharge, you can also open portal to city to regen pots if needed.

On further difficulties this fight becomes much easier as you summon multiple skellis per cast (with added damage and increased health support runes) and watch them do the work.

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minion health gems are a bad idea, as you actually want your minions to die and explode.

Not quite. If your minions get one shoted they don't explode.

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vanzi wrote:

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minion health gems are a bad idea, as you actually want your minions to die and explode.

Not quite. If your minions get one shoted they don't explode.

Plus, the more HP they have, the harder the explosion hits for in the end.

Would you place more HP on skeletons or on Zombies for a build like that? HP on zombies means your meat sheild lasts longer since its a permanent summon, more HP on Skeletons = bigger explosion dammage more often due to their limited summon time? Id like to know.

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Tarngold wrote:

Would you place more HP on skeletons or on Zombies for a build like that? HP on zombies means your meat sheild lasts longer since its a permanent summon, more HP on Skeletons = bigger explosion dammage more often due to their limited summon time? Id like to know.

Well, Skeletons will not explode when their summon time expires if they are not at low health (or at least mine never have), they will simply vanish like they usually do. They do explode, but only when hitting the low health mark.

Since I have my Skeletons connected to a totem, I used the HP gem on my zombie meat shields. Most of the time, I don't even have to do anything except watch all the enemies on screen die.

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GoatEatingToilet wrote:

Well, Skeletons will not explode when their summon time expires if they are not at low health (or at least mine never have), they will simply vanish like they usually do. They do explode, but only when hitting the low health mark.

Since I have my Skeletons connected to a totem, I used the HP gem on my zombie meat shields. Most of the time, I don't even have to do anything except watch all the enemies on screen die.

Good to know, sounds kinda boring :P

Also has anyone tested fire damage nodes to see if the explosions do more damage? seems like you'd be able to optimize your zombies and Skelly's based on testing incoming damage were that the case, get enough HP nodes to tank enough damage, and put the rest into +fire damage to get the most out of that amount of HP. Added bonus of being able to do fire damage with your other spells on the side.