Blood Mage with minions possible?

[Imyo]

I wanted to make a hybrid build using a staff if possible, i strongly dislike scepters , using Blood Mage with some minions for "utility" (meatshield and whatnot) but doing the heavy dmg myself with physical, bleed and cold, i kinda like themed builds and the aesthetics of it play a big role.


Can i have some advice on this ? im not worried about being the absolute best min maxer i just want it to work properly to be able to do content.

[Sound Zero]

I'd say, the scepter is what makes minions work, since it provides the spirit you need to have them. If you're going staff, I wouldn't bother with minions and just focus on spell damage.

[CHAO$$$]

minions are bad at meatshielding in general
some mobs are programmed to run you down no matter what
most bosses will delete all your minions on accident and repeatedly if you dont heavily invest into them (and some bosses will do it even then)

[Shajirr]

Everything is possible, but should you do it? No.

Take a look at Blood Mage ascendancy.
Do you see anything at all there which benefits minions? I don't.

Thus, there is no point in Blood Mage with minions.
___________

The only build where you're doing damage yourself while using minions I am aware of is Detonatte Dead Infernalist.

You use skeletal brutes, buff their health as much as possible, and blow them up with Detonate Dead via Sacrifice.

[Nightskies]

A couple skeletal minions might be worthwhile as a no cast time alternative to ice walls.

If doing it for aesthetic reason, its not .... A waste. While not optimal, find how to capitalize on the cast time saved in lieu of ice walls. Anticipate where your minions will go and set your curse and static aoe there.

If you can't do that, instead go for more single target damage spells and focus the ones that rush you first. Lighting might be your best bet in that case for more 'fire and forget' style.

I'd not put any emphasis on the minions. They're either all in with scepter and passives, or just a small skill and spirit investment to distract enemies a little.

[Drake]

You could always make a build around minion pact. Having soem minion following you have one of you skill sacrificing them to do more damage.

[Baked Potato]

I tried, all the campaign I was between minions and chaos... and I came to the conclusion its not possible... you can't put point into the passive skill tree on both, minion an spell... the only way you could do this is by making a second Weapon Set with Scepter/Staff, with Second Passive Tree set point and you swap your weapon, but you'll loose your minions on swap since the spirit from the scepter will disappear.

[Drake]

Publicado originalmente por Baked Potato:

I tried, all the campaign I was between minions and chaos... and I came to the conclusion its not possible... you can't put point into the passive skill tree on both, minion an spell... the only way you could do this is by making a second Weapon Set with Scepter/Staff, with Second Passive Tree set point and you swap your weapon, but you'll loose your minions on swap since the spirit from the scepter will disappear.

There is one way, it's to do it with zombies. You'll have to generate power charges to raise zombies without corpses, Zombies, unlike skeletons, don't reserve spirit, so even if you swap set, they'll stay up. So you could have one set geared toward spell damage and another geared toward minions. I would use frenzy and resonance to easily get power charges on pin (with bone cage) or freeze depending on how you want to build your witch.

Another method without sets, would be to use the chober chaber, it's a hammer that makes increase minion damage also increase all of your damage. So you could use it as a stat stick, or go bonking with your minions using mace totems or ranged melee skills (like sunder) and make a proper death knight.

[Nightskies]

I think the zombie second weapon set strategy from Drake is probably the best idea presented. Let us know how it goes, whatever you go with!

[robruckus65]

Minions aren't very good unless you fully invest in them. It takes a ton of passive skill points to get them to where they don't instantly die.

[Lyote]

Publicado originalmente por Drake:

Publicado originalmente por Baked Potato:

I tried, all the campaign I was between minions and chaos... and I came to the conclusion its not possible... you can't put point into the passive skill tree on both, minion an spell... the only way you could do this is by making a second Weapon Set with Scepter/Staff, with Second Passive Tree set point and you swap your weapon, but you'll loose your minions on swap since the spirit from the scepter will disappear.

There is one way, it's to do it with zombies. You'll have to generate power charges to raise zombies without corpses, Zombies, unlike skeletons, don't reserve spirit, so even if you swap set, they'll stay up. So you could have one set geared toward spell damage and another geared toward minions. I would use frenzy and resonance to easily get power charges on pin (with bone cage) or freeze depending on how you want to build your witch.

Another method without sets, would be to use the chober chaber, it's a hammer that makes increase minion damage also increase all of your damage. So you could use it as a stat stick, or go bonking with your minions using mace totems or ranged melee skills (like sunder) and make a proper death knight.

Another easy way to get Power Charges is through one of the Monk spirit buffs called Lingering Illusion.

Simply bait at an attack and roll. You'll leave a clone behind that if hit, grants Power Charges.
Easy to do on bosses.
Add the support gem gives a chance not to consume a charge when summoning a Zombie.

Probably easiest way to do it since you aren't needing to use specific debuffs to acquire them. So no DR on acquisition.
Saves you having to get the conversion passive too.

[Shajirr]

I see a lot of people here don't know what they are talking about.

You can safely disregard anyone mentioning zombies, as they are an absolutely trash minions, possibly worst ones, no one uses them.

Very clear none of these people play a summoner.

Also funny how I pointed a viable and strong endgame build that does use minions AND have you yourself deal damage, but everyone decided to just ignore it and start talking about using the worst minion in the game, possibly setting OP up for failure.

[wulfster42]

Blood mage works great with minions, don't listen to anyone saying opposite.

Blood mage needs to have some source of consistant crits, spell is easiest (due to a node that gives you 15% base crit), but you can make it work with any weapon as well.

The early witch nodes that give spell and minion damage though......also lean towards a spell setup.

You already need int for your minion gems, and spells are based of int as well, so again, going spell is just the easiest. I can make a build for you using bows or q-staff or heck even maces (though mace is my least favorite). I'm gonna focus on spells for now though.

First, with spells you can get a 15% universal base crit, that is without using anything like malice etc to pump it up. You STILL want crit chance nodes, but you need far, far less. 30% is about what you need to pretty much always crit every 2 seconds which is what your aming for (that is only 100% increased crit chance from nodes/equipment).

Sanguicity is better the higher your max health is, so you want to REALLY focus on that both with equipment and strength nodes when you don't need int nodes. Heading over towards the warrior section (which can make using a bow or q-staff very viable due to so many damage nodes) also can give you alot of free strength...for more max health. You need crit chance and max health to make sanguicity work.

Meanwhile minions. You start with a bunch of minion damage nodes. Head either straight up (north) to the outer rim of the tree, or NW (past the mind over matter node). Either way you wanna high tail it for the 12% minion damage nodes and reduced spirit reservation node ath the top north of the tree.

Meanwhile focus on minions that don't get hit at all, or attack from far away so they are not likely to get hit. Arsenists work ok, but vs bosses you want to aim for snipers and SRS.

SRS is your main summon damage, even with snipers etc. I HIGHLY recommend you go with a direct fire spell that can crit as your source of summoning them. You can start off with 2 fire walls (Fortress) to get 10 out right away, but in combat you don't wanna have to be casting them every 4 seconds (duration of SRS), twice, that will disrupt your crits waaay to much.

IT caps at 10, but won't desummon a SRS so if your constantly hitting an enemy 2x a second (4x every 2 seconds) to ensure you get a crit, you will keep the blood orbs flowing. Fire also works well with your minions that do primarily fire damage (SRS again) since you just use flamability on everything to boost both your damage, and your minions damage.

Don't waste time with faster revive for minions. Grab more health for minions if they are right there, but don't go out of your way. Your minions that matter mainly, won't be getting hit very often.

Sanguicity will keep you alive while tanking, you won't need eshield in combo because you will have double your max health as an e-shield. Still max your resists, max your minions resists if you can as well.

You don't have to use ONLY fire spells btw, and can mix in cold spells (like cold snap with the one that sets it off, as that can be ALOT of damage with your crit chance and multiplier).

Vitality siphon is absolutely worthless, do not take it. I suggest getting sunder the flesh for a spell/minion blood mage, which leaves only 1 more choice. It is the biggest reason I would consider going anything but spells, because if you don't need sunder the flesh, you can get crimson power. Crimsonpower can boost your max health by over 1000...which means 2000 because of sanguicity.

For a spell build though I suggest going with open sores as your last choice. The bleed nodes is just not worth it to me. Ifyou get open sores snag the +1 max curse keystone in the tree, it's right there along your path anyway. That lets you have and keep 2 curses on a boss/enemies constantly without having to recast them.

You will still take damage to eshield before health, and it will boost your honor etc, so its' fine to have some eshield, just don't waste nodes on it (and focus on max life over eshield on equipment).

That is pretty much it. Fire spells works great in general, but cold can freeze (allowing all your minions to pound on the frozen target). Cold snap shouldn't be used on frozen targets, just used on the frost spell you freeze things with until it freezes (it's very high damage, but it will get rid of the freeze which is bad).

You can set up 2 weapon sets, one focusing on minion power (sceptre with minion damage +fire/lightning etc damage etc), and a second setup that focuses on malice (cause you still need a sceptre so your minions don't go poof) and specific elemental damage (like cold). You can set your skills to activate with 1 setup or another allowing you to auto switch back and forth while fighting.

Malice boosts crit by adding charges to an enemy, and they don't go away when you swap, so as long as you swap pretty often you will get to the max 10% base crit chance increase. That affects you AND your minions.

You don't just want crit chance for the blood orbs (though that is important). With a base 15% crit chance you can get over 50% crit chance pretty easy without going crazy in the tree. You will/can get a ton of crit multiplier both by gore spike and nodes near/next to crit chance on the tree. A 350% crit multiplier is applied after all your more damage etc, making your spells hit REALLY hard, that is why going past 30% or so crit chance (after increases) is still quite good.

Anyway that is basically it. Make sure your resists are maxed, get as much chaos resist as you can, and have a decent/semi decent spell on a wand for at least 1 of your 2 weapon slots so you can start off casting free damage spells (along with your minions attacking) while you get your sanguicity health capped. After that you will easily maintain the max health with blood orbs while killing stuff (from just base health costs of spells). At max blood orbs heal for over 400 a pop.....so that is alot of healing.

Anyway have fun, it's a total fine way to play and probably more defensive/harder to kill than most.

[Panthaz89]

I use minion blood mage on end game maps just don't take life remnants until the 2nd ascendancy otherwise it will be tough to beat bosses before you have the right stats to sustain the hp cost of it. Some bosses like the Defiler will literally not even drop remnants that are able to be picked up.

[Hiroko]

4s life after death, blind, maim, bleed, wither on hit, exposure.... minions for utility is alright, especially in the sense that it can allow you to do something like 'extra damage to bleeeding enemies' without needing to have a chance to bleed on your damage skill, but you'll pretty much be limited to just one summon type, most likely warriors. They're not going to block enemies without proper minion investment, so forget it from a defensive pov... and forget using offering for spell damage because without a functioning frontline its going to last 0 seconds. Again though, if you think of them like a debuff aura, it should theoretically work decently.