[2.0]Rathik's NEWBIE FRIENDLY FUN&CHEAP FARMER, DPS Summoner. High AOE DMG, SURVIVAL."The Matriarch"

Rathik, you should try faster attacks instead of minion damage for your zombies and see how you like it :).

Anyone confused on what spectres to get, I recommend the degen bear from waterfall cave 1 and burning miscreation. They're degen effects stack and they are based on the enemies hp, these 2 spectres combined are the best so far from what I have used. Thing get destroyed, all I support them with is minion life, increased aoe, and minion elemental resist. Which you don't need any of, they're degen effects aren't affected by minion damage (burning miscreation is affected by burning damage).

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xSJx wrote:

Rathik, you should try faster attacks instead of minion damage for your zombies and see how you like it :).

I know, I tried it, I just don't like the green color socket.

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Anyone confused on what spectres to get, I recommend the degen bear from waterfall cave 1 and burning miscreation. They're degen effects stack and they are based on the enemies hp, these 2 spectres combined are the best so far from what I have used. Thing get destroyed, all I support them with is minion life, increased aoe, and minion elemental resist. Which you don't need any of, they're degen effects aren't affected by minion damage (burning miscreation is affected by burning damage).

The entire build is based on NOT to have any specific specter.
Also, Krip made a video about them along with the frenzy buff gorillas few weeks back.
In the video he also said several times "If I can keep them alive".

I am still against of building your build around specters.

You go in a map with 5 more people and your specters die. You just lost your effectiveness if you were counting on them. You can't go out to get them again because there are no more portals.

And the hole concept of going to an area to pick something to make me effective is not my cup of tea.

I prefer my build to be combat ready, anywhere, anytime.

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something people might want to consider is putting added chaos damage support gem on their skeletons. I know that by it's self the added chaos damage gem seems a bit unless in a lot of builds but when you add it to skeletons because you can have 6 skeletons to start out with it is like multiplying the damage of the gem by 6 assuming all your skeletons are hitting 1 monster.

at level 1 added chaos deals 16-25 damage. That means total is is giving you 96-150 added chaos damage. a level 20 added chaos damage with only 6 skeletons would be dealing an extra 486-732 damage.

one more thing if you have your skeletons on a support totem it is good to know that each skeletons gets at least 1 hit in before getting replaced.

now I dont have the late game to test this out yet but I feel like it will make skeleton spamming bosses much better.

From my experience, all bosses, expect temple piety, are a joke. Sometime I don't even notice that I pulled the boss.

I tried chaos (just for the sake of leveling the gem), I didn't notice any difference, might as well stick an IIR gem to the socket.
Skeletons are not used that often anyway and they are not your primary source of damage.

I wouldn't focus on them.

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Rathik2 wrote:

I prefer my build to be combat ready, anywhere, anytime.

Any summoner build is ready anywhere, anytime - just pick GMP and whatever spectres you come by - voidbeares, tentacle miscreations, mervail choosen, archers, mages, anything really. They all boost dmg and most maps have at least one strong spectre type, quite a few of them can sustain through many maps.

I've somewhat different aproach to summoner: exept skeletton totem+spectre+zombie i utilize detonate dead & conversion trap (last one is #1 for high lvl maps against immortality rare mobs mod and immortality totem), spectres - just getting by with whatever is on hand. So i provide enough aoe dmg for spectre dmg to be neglegible (well i try to allow them to lasthit for extra IIQ on bosses&rares).

Thing is that your build is pretty mainstream exept your main aoe source will get blown up on maps with "skills chain x times" "x additional projectiles" combined with %cold/fire/lightning dmg (few regular archers can easilly wipe all zombies with that mods in play in high lvl maps)or maps like Torture Chamber where every room is full of tentacle miscreations and undying incinerators. I've tried 5L zombies as main dmg source and AOE with melee splash was great, but thing is that they were fine where anything was fine - then enter unfavourable maps and spectres still are #1 becouse they just don't get "in your face" or have significantly more lifesteel with support gem allowing them to "tank" longer.

Atm i'm under impression that zombie centered build is possible only with necromantic aegis and archon/angelic kite shield with combined 60-70 resists essentially bumping your zombie resistances to positive 60+ with purity & minion resistance support gem. This will allow them to tank ele dmg and sustain with multistrike/melee splash/live leech even in 5L, but: giving up shield requires pretty good gear to survive, it's nearly impossible to come by that shield rolled that good (at least i couldn't find such, and if i could i wouldn't be able to afford it sadly).

Atm zombies are too weak becouse: with +29% res from purity, they're sitting at -31 res essentially reducing their EHp from ~20K to ~15.2K, with resistance support gem they'll be lucky to stay around 20K EHP. If you take for example 5K ES CI witch with 79 res, then her EHP would be ~23K that outweights zombies "insane" hp, and tbh it's pretty easy to die with 5K ES/79 all res. You might say that witch is 1 and zombies are 8, but that's where multiple projectiles/splash projectiles/hordes with % ele dmg modes and etc. factor kicks in resulting in couple incinerators wiping all them zombies in 2 hits. Factors also affecting their perfomance: AI, being melee (that's generally a bitch in this game without great gear).

So what i wish to add:
1) you didn't provide solution for main summoner problems (be it "spectre" build or "zombie build" - essentially the same).
2) You're talking about being ready in group play but not mentioning that 95% parties have heavy corpse shatter builds like crit dagger shadows, freeze pulsers, spear totems etc. cripling us even in attempts to resummon zombies.
3) Build itself not utilizing our IIQ/IIR becouse our last hitting is unreliable (it's more reliable to pick arc/culling/chain/IIQ/IIR and spam in yourself then count on whether zombies will cull it or not).
4) Build generally being frawn upon in party play - melees hate zombies (it already sucks to melee between all that projectiles spam), you've more chances to get in a good group just riding on 3 curses& high IIR/IIQ with reliable culling spam.

P.S. By no means i'm saying that summoner can't run high level maps, i've runed loads of 73-75 maps solo and cleared any mods (exept for blood magic ofc - i just reroll it with chaos) - it's just that our "reliable" dps source (zombie) is made of paper on many map mods and our "unreliable" dps source (spectre) are often coded good enough to stay back and remain alive through few map runs. Also i'm pointing out that there's no difference between "spectre" build and "zombie" build - it's just a gem focus on one or the other and where one of them will strugle, other will strugle too.

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Crizisrf wrote:

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Rathik2 wrote:

I prefer my build to be combat ready, anywhere, anytime.

Any summoner build is ready anywhere, anytime - just pick GMP and whatever spectres you come by - voidbeares, tentacle miscreations, mervail choosen, archers, mages, anything really. They all boost dmg and most maps have at least one strong spectre type, quite a few of them can sustain through many maps.

I've somewhat different aproach to summoner: exept skeletton totem+spectre+zombie i utilize detonate dead & conversion trap (last one is #1 for high lvl maps against immortality rare mobs mod and immortality totem), spectres - just getting by with whatever is on hand. So i provide enough aoe dmg for spectre dmg to be neglegible (well i try to allow them to lasthit for extra IIQ on bosses&rares).

Thing is that your build is pretty mainstream exept your main aoe source will get blown up on maps with "skills chain x times" "x additional projectiles" combined with %cold/fire/lightning dmg (few regular archers can easilly wipe all zombies with that mods in play in high lvl maps)or maps like Torture Chamber where every room is full of tentacle miscreations and undying incinerators. I've tried 5L zombies as main dmg source and AOE with melee splash was great, but thing is that they were fine where anything was fine - then enter unfavourable maps and spectres still are #1 becouse they just don't get "in your face" or have significantly more lifesteel with support gem allowing them to "tank" longer.

Atm i'm under impression that zombie centered build is possible only with necromantic aegis and archon/angelic kite shield with combined 60-70 resists essentially bumping your zombie resistances to positive 60+ with purity & minion resistance support gem. This will allow them to tank ele dmg and sustain with multistrike/melee splash/live leech even in 5L, but: giving up shield requires pretty good gear to survive, it's nearly impossible to come by that shield rolled that good (at least i couldn't find such, and if i could i wouldn't be able to afford it sadly).

Atm zombies are too weak becouse: with +29% res from purity, they're sitting at -31 res essentially reducing their EHp from ~20K to ~15.2K, with resistance support gem they'll be lucky to stay around 20K EHP. If you take for example 5K ES CI witch with 79 res, then her EHP would be ~23K that outweights zombies "insane" hp, and tbh it's pretty easy to die with 5K ES/79 all res. You might say that witch is 1 and zombies are 8, but that's where multiple projectiles/splash projectiles/hordes with % ele dmg modes and etc. factor kicks in resulting in couple incinerators wiping all them zombies in 2 hits. Factors also affecting their perfomance: AI, being melee (that's generally a bitch in this game without great gear).

So what i wish to add:
1) you didn't provide solution for main summoner problems (be it "spectre" build or "zombie build" - essentially the same).
2) You're talking about being ready in group play but not mentioning that 95% parties have heavy corpse shatter builds like crit dagger shadows, freeze pulsers, spear totems etc. cripling us even in attempts to resummon zombies.
3) Build itself not utilizing our IIQ/IIR becouse our last hitting is unreliable (it's more reliable to pick arc/culling/chain/IIQ/IIR and spam in yourself then count on whether zombies will cull it or not).
4) Build generally being frawn upon in party play - melees hate zombies (it already sucks to melee between all that projectiles spam), you've more chances to get in a good group just riding on 3 curses& high IIR/IIQ with reliable culling spam.

P.S. By no means i'm saying that summoner can't run high level maps, i've runed loads of 73-75 maps solo and cleared any mods (exept for blood magic ofc - i just reroll it with chaos) - it's just that our "reliable" dps source (zombie) is made of paper on many map mods and our "unreliable" dps source (spectre) are often coded good enough to stay back and remain alive through few map runs. Also i'm pointing out that there's no difference between "spectre" build and "zombie" build - it's just a gem focus on one or the other and where one of them will strugle, other will strugle too.

LOL, wanna bet?

I didn't read your entire post, i stopped at the bolded part.

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Rathik2 wrote:

LOL, wanna bet?
I didn't read your entire post, i stopped at the bolded part.

You're free to avoid reading and keep "LOLing", but if you want to bet then post a video of +2 (you're free to try more) projectiles torture chamber map with whatever % ele dmg mod you wish, would like to see how long it'll take you to crawl your way through on zombies back.

What league is this build for?

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Crizisrf wrote:

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Rathik2 wrote:

LOL, wanna bet?
I didn't read your entire post, i stopped at the bolded part.

You're free to avoid reading and keep "LOLing", but if you want to bet then post a video of +2 (you're free to try more) projectiles torture chamber map with whatever % ele dmg mod you wish, would like to see how long it'll take you to crawl your way through on zombies back.

Craft one map and give it to me. I'll run it for ya.