The Summoner Compendium

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PyrosEien wrote:

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Unimatrix wrote:

Sounds awesome with EK. I might want to lvl my shadow further ^^

So we like fire now? What happened? Patch notes I am not aware of?

Well the way I see it, assuming no actual points into damage nodes and assuming these 2 curses(vuln for zombie/skeleton dmg and temporal for control/safety), it'd make sense to use a dot based ability since vuln increases dot by 40% and temporal extends their duration. However short of poison arrow and viper strike, there isn't all that much. Ignite however is a good source and with elemental proliferation and a diamond can be generated at will for strong dot damage.

It's a bit of a particular case I think where fire might actually be good, I'll probably try it once I get some 4L gear, have had the worst luck on this char for gear drops so far as I only got 2 4L total, one of which was a pure evasion and the other are my ES/EV boots I'm using for EK links. I bought a 4L chest too and had to chrom it like 30times to get 4blue for summon links(it's armor/ES though so kinda makes sense).

Arc spam with Static blows is still really good though I think, and Freezing Pulse is brutal dmg albeit shattering corpses a lot so not my favorite for summoner. But with the 2 curses, Ignite suddenly becomes extremely attractive as a mechanic vs shock because it'll do a lot more damage especially against rares.

I use temporal and vuln, and monsters are perma ignited with increase chance to ignite and a quality fireball, humanoids are perm-feared its funny :D I would tend to agree that EK is more damage, but my chain/lmp/fireball is fun, which is more important

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Boozler wrote:

This thread is amazing! If I wanted to not have to respec but still wanted to make the best of my early game should I just rush MI taking the long way or do you have a suggested order?

I am level ~12 at the prison and am struggling to dps stuff down before my minions die.

rushing MI before brutus is not recommended, I find going for it around cruel brutus is ok for me, you can spam skeletons at him to block his hits, and usually the other skeleton will get 1 swing in before he pops too, this is how i kill him every time. Now, if this is your first character you might not have summon skeletons which is the brutus reward. I suggest use fireball 1 shot at a time in between dodgeing hooks. dont try to cast it twice.

Well, since I always wanted to go with fire, you sure convinced me!

Chain fireball with LMP it is then!

Thanks guys.

Oh btw, MI indeed is awesome. It's not game-breaking or anything but it's a very nice to have kinda thing.

I tried rushing MI on this char, like real rush, had it by 12 by skipping the starting nodes and going straight for it via the stats only path, but it wasn't worth it. I'd recommend at least going through the ES/mana/health area then maybe going straight for it as I suggest in the OP, or simply going the normal way and getting it fairly late. MI is good but not necessarily that good before you have a bunch of other stuff. For example atm in merci MI pretty much one shots mobs who kill my zombies, but when I first rushed it it barely did any dmg.

On chain fireball, I don't know, Chain is very expensive mana wise and Fireball only does the aoe explosion on the last hit in a chain so it's not like LA which does stupid aoe dmg if you chain it. I was thinking of running LMP proliferation chance to ignite and fireball itself on a 4L, chance to ignite means you don't even need to crit to spread the ignite and proliferation means you don't need to chain/fork it to get everything ignited.

Great thread!

Just wondering if you take hp nodes even when aiming for CI later on. I skipped the hp nodes at first but i was a bit uncomfortable with only relying on es that eary on so i put some points into hp when i was in cruel diff.
Wasn't really worth it till now (standing before Vaal in ruthless atm) as my shield never dropped to 0 since then, but it just feels safer i guess :D

I was also getting MI fast, but i wasn't skipping the es nodes so i got it at ~20. It feels great in act2 normal when all the skellis do is explode as they can't do anyting else before dying.

Speaking of HC ofc.

€: Just killed ruthless Vaal. I'm happy :)

wondering what stats i should actually aim for(esp on weapons)

im at 53 now, done with the core build and using dual spork totems
all i actually do is spam conductivity and watch the whole map getting jizzed on

only spawning skeles when the mob has like alot of hp so my zombies dont die

using dual wands atm but i dont really know what i should go for

obv ES stats are awesome but what dmg stats if any?

does spell dmg even increase my spork totem dps?

should i get a shield and use the aegis skill or keep dual wanding (i guess the shield variant could be more beneficial)

or even dump wands completly and just aim for awesome stats?

faster castrate and max mana/manareg (so i could run more auras)

really dont know what i should get

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Lostfish wrote:

Great thread!

Just wondering if you take hp nodes even when aiming for CI later on.

I do take health nodes at first and respec them later. There's some easy to access ones, like the Divine Toughness big node near MI, the obvious health points in the starting area and the Fitness node near CI which also has a 30str prereq so it gives quite a lot of health. Don't really need more I feel but picking some of these is useful yeah until you respec to CI.

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cookiereloaded wrote:

wondering what stats i should actually aim for(esp on weapons)

im at 53 now, done with the core build and using dual spork totems
all i actually do is spam conductivity and watch the whole map getting jizzed on

only spawning skeles when the mob has like alot of hp so my zombies dont die

using dual wands atm but i dont really know what i should go for

obv ES stats are awesome but what dmg stats if any?

does spell dmg even increase my spork totem dps?

should i get a shield and use the aegis skill or keep dual wanding (i guess the shield variant could be more beneficial)

or even dump wands completly and just aim for awesome stats?

faster castrate and max mana/manareg (so i could run more auras)

really dont know what i should get

For stats it kinda depends. Cast speed% is good to summon skeletons faster and affects the totem cast speed too(both summoning them and their cast rate for spark). A big +spell dmg% modifier could be nice too since you probably don't have all that much anyway and yes spell dmg% affects your totem spells. Don't think crit% or crit multipler% would be worth it on a summoner dual totem, unless you use diamond flasks then multiplier might be alright but spelldmg% would probably be better until you reach a decent amount.

You could equip a shield for defensive purposes too, like an all resist kite shield, doesn't matter all that much though.

Stats on the weapons aren't too important in my opinion, I'm using crappy blues because they have 3Ls and that's all that matters really. If I had the choice I'd aim for high cast speed% and mana or int as I'm using EK and it costs quite a lot of mana. But what is most useful for me might not be for you, especially if you run totems instead. If you feel you're ok on mana and ok on survivability, then go for dmg stats, cast speed% and spell dmg% probably the best for this.

@cookie If I may throw in my 2cents. I found my mana costs to be rather high, so I went for mana/regen on my gear and regen passives on the tree later on. A 6L zombie is going to cost near 200 mana, and if for some reason you have to build your army fast in a map such as 100% extra lightning damage goatmen, its nice to be able to raise them non stop just in case.

I play in hardcore, I use a angel kite shield for the resists, if you are softcore I would definitely recommend 2 wands, why not increase your clearing speed. As far as stats go for the weapons I would avoid crit and try to get mana and regen on the item, here is my wand




@pyros you are right the first 3 hits on a chain/lmp fireball dont aoe, but the 6 after do, also because of decoy totem they bunch up well; elemental proliferation isnt really necessary as everything will get burned by the 12 chances to ignite (first he hit then the aoe blast)

I tried a Fireball thingie for a bit but not a big fan so far. The main issue is even though everything burns, the ignite dmg isn't very high even with vuln since the base fireball hit isn't very high due to lack of dmg and so on. Might work better with better gear maybe.

It was also beyond obnoxious when I was doing river crossing because the monkeys and the bandits kept running away. I mean that's nice for CC but goddamn that was annoying cause I couldn't kill anything and they'd all spread out. I hate the fear on ignite to be honest, it ruins firestorm just the same and since it doesn't work on everything you can't even make like a fire CC build or something.

In comparison, one or two EK and the whole screen is almost cleared and that's without chain. Only advantage of the fireball build was on rares where I could get next to them and 3x fireball in their face for strong dmg.

I don't know I'll try again later but wasn't convinced, I need to get a chain before I try again though.

thanks for the thoughts

thats what i was thinking :D