Empower VS minion damage for zombies.

L89 Summoner here, I have read every post in this thread. A little background:

Gear-wise, I have Tabula Rasa for zombie snap-shotting, 18/30 and 20/30 Midnight Bargains, a perfect Sidhebreath, a 27/94 and 26/100 Mon'treguls, and like 5 pairs of good Ullrs. I have every summon gem 20/20, multiple 20/20 supports and a L3 Empower and Enhance. All gems leveled myself with my minions, not bought.

Endurance Charge on Melee Stun instead of Empower or Minion Damage. Your zombies will pick up charges on nearly every hit, they gain double the damage reduction and resist bonus for every charge. I use it on my zombies and they do a great job surviving 73-76 maps.

"

z3nny_1 escribió:

L89 Summoner here, I have read every post in this thread. A little background:

Gear-wise, I have Tabula Rasa for zombie snap-shotting, 18/30 and 20/30 Midnight Bargains, a perfect Sidhebreath, a 27/94 and 26/100 Mon'treguls, and like 5 pairs of good Ullrs. I have every summon gem 20/20, multiple 20/20 supports and a L3 Empower and Enhance. All gems leveled myself with my minions, not bought.

Endurance Charge on Melee Stun instead of Empower or Minion Damage. Your zombies will pick up charges on nearly every hit, they gain double the damage reduction and resist bonus for every charge. I use it on my zombies and they do a great job surviving 73-76 maps.

I can't afford a mon'treguls,


Does ECoMS work with normal zombies? Or on bosses?

"

Waves_blade escribió:

Does ECoMS work with normal zombies? Or on bosses?

You do not need montegruls. At all. It's a 'bonus' item, or 'fluff' item. It is not essential in any regard.

My char is now 83, I farm Dominus with ease, he takes no more than a minute or two solo, and have cleared every map solo I've had as a drop thus far up to most of the 72-74, some higher ones. It's all RNG which maps I get, as I solo 99.9% of the time, but I'm not finding any issues. Summons are disposable, so just summon them infinitely. Mana regen is a key aspect. Currently @ 300mana/sec.

I do this with an active ~400hp, 2400ish ES even.

It's all how you play. Throw down skeletons ahead of you to uncleared map areas to ensure you aren't targeted or given aggro.

As long as you maintain summons, mainly skeletons ahead of you drawing aggro, and making sure the entire pack of skeletons doesn't wipe, you will NOT be targeted by most attacks. This is absolute KEY. Piety wipe all your pets? Doesn't matter. Hold down the skeleton summon to ensure she never targets you.

Here is the crappy gear I'm doing all this in, the entire kit 1ex, and that 1ex was for the Midnight, which is the ONLY item I bought. The rest have been found by myself:



Again, only item bought was the Midnight. The midnight is not essential, but anything adding # of pets is BiS for summoner. People tell me I'm wrong with this, but I will never agree.

For note, I have no active attacks. I have 2 curses and totem. Beyond those, all I do is summon. I have no need for active skills on this character. Waste of time. Most often used skill is skeletons. I throw them down ahead of me non-stop. They will also lead all your other pets to the aggro. Cast them into any unexplored area of the map before setting in myself always. They start marching towards something, just start summoning them till max count and throw the curses/totem etc. Don't go running in like Rambo.

I will probably do a full build write-up when I have time.

"

gr00grams escribió:

"

Waves_blade escribió:

Does ECoMS work with normal zombies? Or on bosses?

You do not need montegruls. At all. It's a 'bonus' item, or 'fluff' item. It is not essential in any regard.

I am aware, my own summoner can run high level maps just fine.

I started this thread as a way to discuss optimizing the build. The enduring cry on stun seems interesting to me, but I was curious if normal zombies could proc it enough, or even proc it on bosses.

"

Waves_blade escribió:

"

gr00grams escribió:

"

Waves_blade escribió:

Does ECoMS work with normal zombies? Or on bosses?

You do not need montegruls. At all. It's a 'bonus' item, or 'fluff' item. It is not essential in any regard.

I am aware, my own summoner can run high level maps just fine.

I started this thread as a way to discuss optimizing the build. The enduring cry on stun seems interesting to me, but I was curious if normal zombies could proc it enough, or even proc it on bosses.

You could try it.

I would suggest blind on skeletons over it though, it will increase all minion survival tenfold, especially with enfeeble/temporal chains. Chains will increase the blind duration to 6 seconds base as well, not counting the 20+% you get leveling the blind gem itself, and enfeeble lowers chance to hit even further. I just love the interaction between the 3 skills. It is one area that feels truly rewarding for specializing in curses/minions. The interaction is superb. Absolutely fantastic.

Thanks for the info. Ill be offline a bit but ill watch this closely i still have many questions to. Give.
By the way ANY to all (Awesome New Year)

If you ever want to run or talk shop, feel free to look me up in the game.

My IGN is Cinnamon_Spider, I'm on just about every day.

I run a small guild for summoners: League of Necromancers <SUMMON>

We hang out, talk about whatever, do lots of runs and maps.

We don't bother with weaksauce skeletons ;)

if you guys want entertaining leveling skill for summoners , get a 20q shock nova, and get static blows for that 50% shock chance.


blue lightning is cool lightning.

"

gr00grams escribió:

You could try it.

I bought a level 18 ECoMS and ran a 71 map colonnade map to try it out, to see if it was workable.

-They could proc it on almost every hit off of white/blue mobs, rare mobs generally gave a charge when hit.
-However, because of the # of minions, they would be stumbling over eachother to get at the enemies, plus my spectres were also killing mobs. I would often see a few zombies with 2-3, but most with 1 or no charges. If I summoned my skelly army, it would get worse.
-I also started to get tired of hearing the charge dissipating sound over and over again.
-Because of how quickly charges expire, especially since some zombies might not even get a hit in on a pack, you have VERY LITTLE downtime if you want to keep their survivability peaked. So, stopping to ID your inventory or going back to town to empty it would cost your minions their 12% damage reduction, and that forcibly changes the pace I go at.

The real killer however was the following:
-The reason I wanted to try it was to see how it would work VS bosses I'd want it used against, I.E. hard phys-hitters like kole. 12% damage reduction could be more valuable than 1-2k extra HP from empower, which is why I wanted to try it out to begin with. I killed off all the other mobs, ran away to let the endurance charges wear off, then went back to fight him. The zombies did not gain one charge while fighting him. Zombies cannot trigger it off the bosses I'd want to use the ECoMS against without the grasp.

Sadface, ah well, back to grinding XP for empower.

Edit:

@Z3nny

I ran a full summoner group once, it was hilarious, and obnoxious. I couldn't tell whose zombies where whos', I never knew when to use my flasks :P.

Pointless summoner talks, and whoever say midnught bargain is thrash, Please, show me you can beat my double boss kill time without using cast on death. I am on nem so that gem dont work for me. And montregul is just luxury and not necessity. I have soloed all map content without problem.


Fyi, its best if u have a valid char in nem or hardcore, as cast on death can be used anytime on softcore