Any Good Summoner Builds?

[Pizzarugi]

I don't expect a full blown summoner since Feeding Swarm and Hunting Swarm are in a bad state (though the devs are aware of this), but I would like to know of a build that still utilizes Livor Mortis and Parasite.

I'm only fresh into Champion of Stormfall around level 43 and I picked up most of Plaguebringer with the exception of the -life/shield nodes and I picked up Siegebreaker for tankiness. Besides the two minion skills, I use Thunderstrike, Juggernaut, and Wrath of Baapheth. For attributes, I go 5/5 on Ferocity and Toughness. I feel like I'm not putting out enough damage and still fragile to enemies despite going hard on stacking all resistance.

I could use some pointers on improving my build. Different skills (keeping the two minions though), gear, attributes, passives, whatever.

[J-Cool]

Maybe dip into exorcist and assassin for some more material damage. I honestly can't think of too many ways to make summoning "work" given the general state of things, but duplicating livor mortis may be your best bet. I believe most people use plagueburst and toxic annihilation, and use the plagueburst to sacrifice their ♥♥♥♥ minions with that toxic cloud rune, but that doesn't feel summoner to me, though it may work in the meantime.

[gringoboy70]

There aren't really any good summoner builds post 100+, but hopefully they will at least be able to entertain the chance of 100+ after they buff things in the next patch. I played to about 110ish with the skeletons and golem using bleed/poisoin/burn. You get bored quickly after realizing how slow it is to run a rift though.

[Acronen]

Sadly, there really isn't any way to play a minion focus build. Even your Livor Mortis will mostly just exist to absorb some damage for you with a certain rune on it.

That said, I am pretty dedicated to it and making it work as well as possible till they buff it/fix it, so here are some pointers.

Use the rune on Livor Mortis that makes it shadow, and stack occult damage. If you have some shadow damage from your gear it will apply curse debuff which makes you deal more damage to whatever it is hitting.

For a summon build, even your feeding swarm and hunting swarm minions won't have survivability problems with the summon nodes taken, and with a way to heal them. Best way to keep your minions healed is Bulwark of Dawn, with the rune that makes it follow you and extends its duration. Then you can just run around keeping them healed. You should also take the damaging rune, and if you stack up occult damage on gear (preferably aether and shadow so you do stasis and curse) this is a great source of damage along with survivability.

Sadly, thunderstike probably isn't too good for this kind of build or playstyle. You are better off using abilities like anomaly, solarflare (or whatever the giant holy beam is called) bulwark, plagueburst and the like. This keeps you mobile and able to run around healing your minions while also tossing out damage. I recommend switching out to have both anomaly and bulwark of dawn, you can get the bulk of your damage from these 2 abilities and keep your minions.

For gearing, if you really want to go minions it is probably best to stick with a staff, and going for as much +spell damage type (not % but whatever type of damage you want based on ailments you want to apply, or just the highest numbers you can find) on your staff, belt, rings, and amulet. Try to get so each slot has 2 of these modifiers. (Example a staff with +20-30 aether damage and +18-25 fire damage or some such.) All other stats on this gear are secondary, if you can then get crit damage after that, and whatever else you may want lastly. For hybrid, still stick with finding main hand weapons you can get spell damage on. (Minions do count as spells and are boosted by this kind of damage, just not very much currently.)

Good talents to take are the talent in one of the outer ring mage trees that makes the enemy take damage again 1.5 seconds later if you have applied stasis to them. (You will want to have enough +aether damage for it to be your highest bonus if you take this so your spells will prioritize stasis ailment)

If you want to get the most out of your little minions and still use them, keep in mind at the current time this is of course not optimal, but to get the most out of them here is what I would suggest. Duplicate skill, and you can get multiple Livor Mortis going for both damage and helping you survive. Both the runes that make it a mage, and a shadow warrior are not bad. They will still have plenty of survivability and can actually contribute some damage. (I had stacked a lot of occult damage, so I used shadow warriors)

For Feeding Swarm, change them into whatever damage type you have stacked and what ailments you want them to apply (I like the aether ones, works with the extra stasis damage talent.) Getting an extra one through the rune that adds a zombie, then also the rune that increases size, health, and damage but reduces the number by 1 are recommended. Their damage is actually about the same as your Livor Mortis minions. (not great again, but again to get the most out of it.)

For hunting swarm, same deal. Just take whatever kind of damage you want them doing or potentially applying ailments for. Take both the piercing and exploding runes, their ammo can both pierce through enemies and explode multiple times as it passes through each enemy. Once they fix this to actually be doing decent damage, I suspect this will carry the load on monster packs since mechanically it has a lot of potential, just numbers wise it is currently pretty bad.

[Pizzarugi]

Thanks for the information so far.

I would like to clarify that I'm not tied to anything in my build beyond Livor Mortis and maybe Parasite, and am willing to undergo an otherwise complete rework to make something more effective.

[Georg]

take Livor Mortis + duplicate + duplicate.

[Pizzarugi]

Originally posted by Georg:

take Livor Mortis + duplicate + duplicate.

How effective is a trio of golems?

[gringoboy70]

Originally posted by Pizzarugi:

Originally posted by Georg:

take Livor Mortis + duplicate + duplicate.

How effective is a trio of golems?

Not effective at all. Ive already told you they do zero damage compared to what you do. At high levels you need high damage reduction and high damage. Summoning spells do neither of those. Let me put it bluntly. The difference between an empty skill slot and one filled with a summoning skill is negligible.

[AH-1 Cobra]

I wish it was just 1/2 as good as a Golem mancer in PoE.

[Pizzarugi]

Patch 1.0.5.0 just landed and out popped a number of what looks like serious minion buffs.

Anyone had a chance to try it out? Are the minions respectable yet?

[Kaliz]

the problem with a summon build is that it doesn't have anything to help it scale. They should be able to scale off the players stats but it doesn't which means you still need to pick a spell to use or a skill.

[gringoboy70]

Is it confirmed that they don't scale? I wasn't sure if they just didnt scale or that their stats were so bottom of the barrel low that even your gear couldn't make up for how bad their base stats were. I'm leaning towards their stats were so bad that even a gear multiplicative of 1000% wouldn't bring their numbers up by much.

[Hefutoxin]

Originally posted by gringoboy70:

Is it confirmed that they don't scale? I wasn't sure if they just didnt scale or that their stats were so bottom of the barrel low that even your gear couldn't make up for how bad their base stats were. I'm leaning towards their stats were so bad that even a gear multiplicative of 1000% wouldn't bring their numbers up by much.

There was a poster who said they scale as spells.

So spell damage, crit, and ailment chance.

[Pizzarugi]

Originally posted by Hefutoxin:

Originally posted by gringoboy70:

Is it confirmed that they don't scale? I wasn't sure if they just didnt scale or that their stats were so bottom of the barrel low that even your gear couldn't make up for how bad their base stats were. I'm leaning towards their stats were so bad that even a gear multiplicative of 1000% wouldn't bring their numbers up by much.

There was a poster who said they scale as spells.

So spell damage, crit, and ailment chance.

Is this confirmed anywhere? The closest thing I've seen of minions scaling with player stats is their health.

[gringoboy70]

This could easily be answered by intern level ui additions such as actual dmg breakdowns for the summons or having summon damage number show up in combat. Instead here we are having to jump through hoops just to figure out if gear helps summon skills.

[Acronen]

Originally posted by Pizzarugi:

Originally posted by Hefutoxin:

There was a poster who said they scale as spells.

So spell damage, crit, and ailment chance.

Is this confirmed anywhere? The closest thing I've seen of minions scaling with player stats is their health.

It was adding damage before patch (not much, and honestly it could have just been a bug interaction of some sort) but after patch the only thing that scales minions are the nodes in the passive tree, the runes you take on the skills themselves, and the level of the skill itself (as far as I can tell anyway.)

So keep in mind when testing any minion builds, if you haven't kept them leveled up (or don't spend the primordials to level them) they will be doing low damage still, but are actually decent now as you raise the skill level.