Killing Dominus as a Summoner Witch

I leveled as summoner. Is was not as bad as some people say, but definitely challenging at some points. If it's your first char and you don't already have some gems(if i remember correctly the quest rewards only give 1 minion life gem) and gear(4linked items with the right colours, sidhebreath, aurumvorax..) i wouldn't recommend it. I also want to mention that i focused only on minion life nodes, +minions and life nodes for myself. Not a single minion damage node until very late.

To clear the minions before he appears was not a big deal.

In normal and cruel i basically beat his first form with self cast skeletons(i think i used minion life/damge and added fire for some more auto attack damage) and minion instability. Whenever i had some time i raised zombies and spectres from the ground, too.

In his second form i did it basically like crystalwitch. Summon/raise all the minions before he transforms, keep them alive with rejuvenation totem and resummon them when they die.

There is one little "trick". If you kill his first form and he teleports away he will not go into his second form and will not start the second phase if you stand far enough away from him. That gives you enough time to raise your zombies and spectres etc.

Didn't use curses or necro aegis. I think i used an aura, vitality, in normal. In cruel discipline and vitality.

For merciless it was a more "advanced" setup with 3 auras(+purity), enfeeble, totem and animation flasks.

Some input from i-was-newbie-too summoner. I leveled as pure summoner from lvl1 (i always level as choosen class and buld even it's ineffective, some kind of fetish >_>) and it was pain until act3 normal. After i got burned miscreations as spectres my only job was to keep them alive (3 instaheal flasks of animation). Dominus was quite a fight on normal and cruel while my gems was low lvl. On merciless dominus fight lasts less than minute now.
So i suggest you buy tabula rasa and use snapshoting with spectres (or, if you against snapshot mechanic, then use +2minion helmet for spectres). Raise BM with concentrated effect + remote mine + minion life.

Topic's been dead for a while, and I don't know if Dominus was nerfed since because I started playing PoE some 5 days ago. Anywho, for any first-timers-summoners like myself, that look for ways to beat Dominus here's what I did on Cruel difficulty:

Setup:

Minions:
4L Chest piece: Zombies x 9, Spectres x 3 (Flame Sentinels from Solaris Temple level 2)
Raise Zombie - Raise Spectre - Melee Splash - Minion Damage

3L Gloves: Summon Raging Spirit
Raging Spirit - Melee Splash - Minion Speed

Skills:
Desecrate
Bone Offering

Aura:
Purity of Elements (if you don't have max resistances required for the fight)

Potions:
1 x 40% Speed
3 x HP + Minion HP
1 x Mana

Passive Skills in the fight (minus Sovereignty cluster, as I was few levels lower):


Strategy:
Keep Bone Offering up (cast Desecrate, then Bone offering, repeat) to help Minions stay alive. Watch their HP bars and heal them with potions. If some die, raise more with Desecrate. Whenever you can use Raging Spirit (good to clear trash, totems due to Melee Splash aoe, and lands plenty of hits on Dominus due to Minion Speed. Keep an eye out for your Spectres HP at all times, if some die teleport to town and Head to Solaris to get new ones, WALK back to the waypoint so you don't lose the teleport. If you have trouble in phase 3 due to lack of mitigation, teleport to heal/recharge, repeat until you kill him. And of course, move away from things that hurt :)

Bottom line: If alive, your minions will burn him down fairly quickly, keeping them alive is your priority. DPS youself too, but only if you can manage, I mostly used Raging Spirit in Phase 1 and 2, and Arc + Cast speed in Phase 3. I didn't use any Curse, frankly didn't have the time to as the fight is pretty mobile.

Additional notes:
I didn't manage to get enough armor which made phase 3 a bit tricky. I had to teleport 4-5 times to recharge potions, heal Spectres and resummon zombies. Getting your Resistances and Armor to a required level would make this fight further doable cause you could use another Aura.

I'm a bit of a hopeless POE player, but I recently created my first summoner in Ambush and was VERY worried about going up against Dominus in normal difficulty after reading some of these posts and other threads, because I had focussed solely on minion nodes and bugger all on survivability. And being solo self found my gear was (and is) pretty crap.

Well I just faced Dominus in Ambush with no auras at all and all I will say is THANK YOU Vaal Summon Skellys gem as I really thought Dominus ascendant form would destroy me easily given my low HP and ES (around 450 each). I died once facing his first form so it wasn't boding well as all my zombies were dead and no corpses left to raise. Well luckily I kept my Vaal summon skellys charge for the 2nd form and it made short work of of it when combined with my weak firestorm skill and normal summon skellys skill.

And to top it all off I tried it on a two button touchpad laptop with no mouse so using flasks was very hard.

Very surprised...anyway may help anyone thinking of facing Dominus in Standard as summoner where you've skipped survivability...get the Vaal summon skellies gem early and get it levelled imo.

Try aura build... purity of each element.
I can kill him easy with lev 70 summoner.

My experience in Merciless, Dominus Ascendant fight is that I die to the his corrupted blood curse, within 1 - 2 seconds of entering the level. Sometimes I cannot even cast my auras before I am dead.

I love this game, and it's clear the developers have poured their heart into it, but this fight has a an issue, if the experience is enter level, die immediately, repeat endlessly.