Input on a Summoner Shadow: CoC Raging Spirit

I've never played a summoner before and I'm trying to craft one right now. It would make use of wand Barrage casting Raging Spirit via Cast on Crit. Zombies will be used to help keep mobs away from me as well as deal a little bit of damage.

I chose to start as a Shadow because of the nearby Evasion/ES nodes. As far as auras go, I'm thinking Grace and Anger. If I need more defense then maybe Grace and Discipline.

Gems:
Barrage - PCoC - CoC - Raging Spirit - Minion Damage(?)
Zombie - Minion Life - Minion Speed - Minion Damage
Reduced Mana - Grace - Other Aura - Curse(which one?)

Here's a preliminary tree. Like I said, I've never played a summoner before so it might be entirely shit. Any advice is appreciated.

What exactly is the benefit of CoC? And what is PCoC?

You need like.... 12 links to support crit, minions and ranged in one item. Being a summoner demands full attention on auras and minions, else they will suck.
All the crit nodes take away nodes of minions and auras.

Even if you just take one curse, I would 4-link it with Increased Duration + Increased Area of Effect + Reduced Mana.

Zombies are linked with Melee Splash + Multistrike + Minion Damage, if not even as a 6L with Melee Physical + Fire Damage. They are your main force.
Minion Speed is ultra crap. Minion Life is redundant for Zombies since you can recast them or give them Life Leech.

Raise Specter + Minion Life + Minion Resistance + Life Leech for easy handling supporting caster-specters.

Auras are Clarity + Reduced Mana + Discipline (CI!!!) + Purity/Hatred

Also you can take a brotem Spell Totem + Summon Skeleton + Faster Casting

Check Rathik's witch summoner guide, it's good.

Basically you have to decide if you want full summoner or full DPS.

^ this with the full attention. When i run maps all i do is cast my two curses, use bone or flesh offering (depending if they are getting facesmashed or if i think they can roll through them) and then resummoning zombies that die. I don't have time to cast spells.

Leveling might be ok with that as zombies didn't get insanely good until the 40s for me.

This is my witch summoner/aura build focussed on MF via CI:

http://www.pathofexile.com/passive-skill-tree/AAAAAgMBVysHY3NTa9t9GOyK5oERULvWO-Hi96cri3ptGcHzoqN_xsHFLL-GrhXX14ZWY0-_HdlDVOwYw20c3JMnv5fJPfIetAxGceGIHar-STQKN2YspqbrN4PqupDWKPqCx9P7E2wGSah9WpFqrPno6-64k6cI2QsqmPqAj0bQ0JuhSOf318y8EJdEBE25qsSFYKyYFLA6MDlSvDdObVgHEZZwu9kTL28dFPrSFy9k54bRJLBV1oCkgwmESDyOAW9XyQD9dFV8zuvkXyo=

Whispers of Doom + Hex Master are a must for a summoner, cause you cant do damage anyway! You can best do damage with Raging Spirits yourself, since they are not spells but minions.

Only if you really don't want MF, you can take Life instead and spec a bit into DPS nodes...but there is no way around ALL minion nodes and most adjacent aura nodes.

Playing summoner like this is pretty fun and classic:

- Summon brotem for skelly spam
- Curse enemies
- Revive Specters and Zombies for your horde
- Activate auras
- Run over the map, offering bones and flesh and killing stuff with Raging Spirits

Don't listen to the naysayers. The whole fun of this game is that you can do any combination your imagination allows, and Barrage casting Raging Spirits and Skeletons on Crit is actually hilariously awesome. I would focus on crit and auras vs minion nodes though. You don't have enough points and socket links to go crit AND auras AND minion support.

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feyith wrote:

Don't listen to the naysayers. The whole fun of this game is that you can do any combination your imagination allows, and Barrage casting Raging Spirits and Skeletons on Crit is actually hilariously awesome.

^^ Pretty much this ^^

Now if you go this route will you be obliterating lvl 78 maps in 5 mins? Definitely Not. But can you make a build such as this work to an extent? Sure!

"

feyith wrote:

Don't listen to the naysayers. The whole fun of this game is that you can do any combination your imagination allows, and Barrage casting Raging Spirits and Skeletons on Crit is actually hilariously awesome.

stupid question, but why skeletons (which are limited in number and need a bit of time to hit the enemy) and not frost wall?
frost wall should offer a better mitigation than skellies, and probably better damage too.
and raging spirits being flying creatures, they should be able to go through the walls.

that's what i'd try personally.

Honestly, for no other reason than I saw this thread, wanted to see what I could make work and that was what was in my stash. :) Frost Wall is better. Flame Totem is pretty loltastic too and combines well with GMP.

Update: I actually just ran a map with Raging Spirits and it's awesome. They chase after any runners, so your party can stick together and not worry about strays getting away.

Gonna keep it this way for a while.



Edit: Someone just posted their build. Looks pretty cool!

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/782331

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feyith wrote:

Now if you go this route will you be obliterating lvl 78 maps in 5 mins? Definitely Not. But can you make a build such as this work to an extent? Sure!

This build would struggle in content areas.

As said, the OP requested a summoner build. My answer is: If you want minions, you have to focus on them because crappy 1k life zombies just get oneshotted and it's in no way easy or fun or entertaining to recast every 2 seconds while trying to dish out some damage. Also since the latest patch zombies are the main DPS source, if you waste your 6L on any main attack you will lose horrific amounts of damage.

This critbuild is very experimental and I heavily suggest the OP to play a real summoner first.

I recommend thinking about 'minion instability', the nod next to hex master. If you summon massive number of weak spirits/skels as in your build, they can die quickly, explode and do massive dmg. In this case, as you summon several guys per second, you want them to be one-shotted, they'll kill very fast. What the point in giving raging spirit and skel more life anyway

One problem with your concept is you can't hope to survive "lightning thorns". I've tried something similar when leveling but this buff will kill you from many screens away. Be very careful.

Barrage alone is very crappy, but with greater projectiles or chain the procs are good. No point in using it alone though