[3.17][Summoner] Dominating Blow Speeder - ~13.5mln/20mln Sirus/mob DPS

Dominating Blow Speeder (previously known as Dominating Blow Battlemage)

PROS:
- Interesting, non-meta build, perhaps semi-meta, great scion versatility usage
- Well balanced between dps and surivalabity
- Pretty cheap (doesn't need old influenced items, but needs corrupted uniques for high end)
- Fast movement speed (with speed aura stolen by rare sentinel of dominance, pretty impressive), high clearspeed

CONS:
- terrible league starter (scion progression, lot of passive skill changes, needs lots of color sockets, need to switch to shav with mana and life reservation)
- build is not great at significant bosses (with high end gear handles well enough), better for juiced mobs
- having no sentinels around you makes you vulnerable
- you should speed all the time generally, because if you stop for too long, sentinels will despawn

OTHER TRAITS (that can be seen both as pro or con, matter of taste):
- requires specific skill, see below, survivalabity is much lower if you are too passive

DEMOS:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yUmbRPcjVf4
Map: T16 rare, delirium 40%, beyond from map device and boosted from atlas tree, 4 scarabs. Not difficult map mod set.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sQjzbYBbV-w
Map: T16 rare, delirium 60%, beyond from map device and boosted from atlas tree, 4 scarabs. Not difficult map mod set.

General description
This is on hit/kill minion build. Therefore there is very low minion defence investment, only stuff that is cheap to have by the way of something else: passives/skills/mods/items. The build is best at mob combat, both speed farming as well juiced mobs.
The most tricky thing is when you have no dps minions yet around you or you play a strong boss without meat. You need to attack and avoid dmg to spawn first sentinels, then it goes easy.
Most bosses are doable at budget gear, its just slower, require skill and for some might be impossible to do it deathless. See list at the end of the post in which I estimate boss combat difficulty.
You can get most equipment and skill gems for this build very cheap. The most tricky thing are lots of off color sockets and need to socket/link corrupted items. Some other stuff for ceil of the build also gets expensive.

Estimated Sirus DPS: 13-14mln.
Juiced mobs power: Handles t16, 80% delirium with no difficult mods and with mild beyond. Normal enemy single target dps - over 20mln.
Details:


Min budget to make it generally endgame content viable rough estimate: 10ex (extremely low end) - 15ex (decent start)
This includes the cost of making off color sockets and/or linking the weapon, for low end not 6-link or not corrupted. Key gear:


PoB code link: https://pastebin.com/Pk8VuZgb

PASSIVE:
https://www.pathofexile.com/fullscreen-passive-skill-tree/AAAABgABcwnZEFEQexEPEVAWbxcvGYYZihpsGo8bJRzcHRQdTx4IHxggnCLqIzEkqiSwJ3MrGC_aNuk6xjrpOw07KDxLSU9Kn0uuTDJMs025UUxR-1XWVi5YF1xrX7Bg-GL0ZOdmVGaeaqtr220ZcbJ4x3yDfRh98YCkhEiExYVghXuJa4m8i3qNC48aj0aVZpctmE2bnJuhm7WiPqaspwinK6p_qqmqxKxHrJi1BLhdvKq-OsEAwzrDbcZFyA3KRspKzLzNFtAf2VvbGt2S34rireNq6QLr7uw47j3v6_LS9Uv22vfB99f60vsJFgAAAAEAAwAFAAcACQALAAwADQAPABAAEgATABQAHgAfACAAIQAiACQAJQAmB1xFuF25Rap_hk-bnJYXKxiRRsZFi-Jqq4XCffE=

BANDIT: Kill all.

PANTHEON: Lunaris and Garukhan.

Current gear at lvl99:


Skill list (for details such as supports, link config, alternate qualities see gear):
A) Full or mostly dps: Dominating Blow, Herald of Purity
B) Defensive (excluding auras): Steelskin
C) Support (excluding auras and aura-like): Raise Spectre, Vulnerability, Flesh Offering, Desecrate
D) Auras and aura-like: Discipline, Pride, Precision, Dread Banner, Flesh and Stone, Aspect of Avian
E) Movement: Withering Step, Leap slam
F) Trigger method: cyclone + cwc

Skills that can be used before reaching final config: Summon Skitterbots and Vitality (instead of Aspect of Avian and Flesh and Stone pair), Intimidating Cry, Battlemage Cry, Rallying Cry.

Jewels

- large and med clusters for minion dps
- small cluster jewels for ES
- watcher's eye for good ES recovery and 3rd extra mod depends what you get, can be intimidate on hit with pride, attack speed with precision, es regen with discipline
- abyss for blinding and taunting minions
- standard jewel for extra stats: ES, ES start, minion damage, self elem reses, minion elem reses to make spectres more tough - also it helps keeping sentinels full life more often, which allows to better benefit from Renewal notable on large cluster jewel
- best implicits: reduced effect of shock, ES recharge, avoid being poisoned, minion life, aura AoE

CORE OFFENCE:
1) Pure physical minions that are spawned on hit/kill.
2) Investment in impale and phys dmg boosting.
3) Cyclone + cwc for triggering utility damage boosting spells
4) Offensive auras.

CORE DEFENCE
1) ESESS - Energy Shield, Evasion, Spell Suppression
2) Investment in ES recharge and some regen btw
3) Current ES at lvl99: over 7.8k
4) 5 mostly defensive utility flasks
5) High speed, elusive from withering step, They of Tul snowcloak

BOTH OFFENCE and DEFENCE
1) Spectres in defensive/support gem config: minion life, meat shield, feeding frenzy, culling strike. So spectres provide general support both offensive and defensive.
2) Spectres: demon harpy, they of tul and/or carnage chieftain. Carnage chieftain will boost your dps, because even with 1 frenzy charge on minions, boost is good, but they won't be as efficient as they can be, because sentinels of dominance are recreated when you hit/kill enemies thus they will hardly reach more than 1 frenzy charge. So I prefer to use they of tul - it gives massive defence boost, because snowcloak combined with withering touch elusive gives you nice extra layer of defence with all dmg avoidance chance. Also snow cloak chills enemies by 10%. Speed is important, but there are plenty of cases in which you need to stay near a stronger monster for a while. Demon harpy is a must have, 2 of them is also good, because that boosts speed of applying increased phys damage taken and they will use the screech more often on average as they have independent cooldowns. So my prefered spectre config is: 2x demon harpy and they of tul. Other possible configs:
- demon harpy, carnage chieftan, they of tul
- 2x demon harpy, carnage chieftain
- 1x demon harpy, 2x carnage chieftain

3) Scion high reservation both mana and life, 7 skills with reservation total

LEVELING INSTRUCTIONS:
This is complex, as this is scion.

Acendancy Order - Necromancer, Witch Starting Point, Guardian

Part 1.
In that part you can do just some phys melee.
Go to Righteous Army notable. Path or the warrior, Constitution, Sanctity, Precision, Retribution, Spiritual Command, Purity of Flesh, Redemption and Righteous Army. In between you can alloc warcry cluster with Deep Breaths and take more life nodes. Before cyclone with cwc you can use battlemage cry to trigger utility spells.
Now you can switch to Dominating Blow as well as Herald of Purity. Next reservation you can add gradually. Until you switch to full life reservation with Shavronne on, you can allocate life nodes as you see fit.

Part 2.
Go to jewel socket near Zealoth's Oath. Allocate cluster jewel nodes, you can use cheaper versions (that e.g. have more passives) of the target jewels.
Allocate evasion/suppresion/movement speed near scion nodes up to Reflexes

In this part you can switch to EV/ES defence. At some point you can also exchange passives left to scion. So to link with scion/templar/marauder exit, you can switch to take regen nodes, Shaper and jewel socket, instead of phys dmg ones as that doesn affect your minions. From this moment you make take reservation passives and masteries as you see fit.

Part 3. Changing root
Link cluster jewel entry node with Witch's starting point. Taking Herald Cluster for reservation BTW, as well as ES node Arcane Focus. Lord of the Dead is in the way

Deallocate whole link from Scion starting point up to jewel socket on scion/templar/marauder exit.

You should switch to shavronne somewhere in that stage. Then Zealoth's Oath will be important to allocate. When you reach full life reservation or most life, deallocate all pure life nodes as they are now mostly waste.

Paet 3a (can be done simultaneously with part 4)
When you switch to cwc from battlemage cry usage for spell trigger, you can deallocate whole part from spiritual command to Deep Breaths as well.

Allocate path down from Zealoth's Oath - Insightfulness, Enduring Bond and jewel socket on with/templar exit.

Part 4. Late game allocations
Go to nodes right of scion/shadow/ranger exit - Charisma, Void Barrier. I took also +1 ES per 8 evasion on boots mastery there. More effcient than having all helmet, gloves, boots mixed. Pure evasion boots and pure ES helmet. Gloves can be either pure ES or ES/EV.
Finally take Death Attunement for extra spectre.
Practical Application near witch is good if you dont have enough str and dex. It also gives all elemental reses so this is quite efficient allocation.


Bosses difficulty estimation, scale is: easy, medium, hard, impossible. + denotes intermediate value (higher difficulty). The difficulty estimate is based on how much skill is needed, how fast it takes to kill the boss and how many deaths I did it the best so far. For low end gear, estimates are without Maven support and area doesn't contain very difficult mod combinations, for higher end gear everything gets much easier. Any boss that is not on the list, means I haven't combat it with this build yet or its generally too easy the be worth mentioning. I don't do Sirus, Maven, because I find no fun playing with such absurd level complicated boss mechanics.


Tactical tips for the build:
- you must speed to keep sentinels around you
- general hit and run behavior with budget gear, because you need to spawn sentinels and trigger spells, but if you have to run away try to stay enough close for higher pride effect, for run aways using whitering step elusive is proper time
- when bossing and you cannot attack them on the run when you have many sentinels, you have to attack to trigger sentinels, again attack as much as you can then run away. For bosses its good to switch leap slam for manual cast desecrate
- cycle between dominating blow and cyclone

interesting build, I'm doing something similar currently (only life/ES based Hybrid and block) and I felt free to steal your battle-mages cry idea.

thanks and keep up the good work ;)

Thanks. Yup battlemage cry is now great, because of no extra mana cost on triggered spells.

Steelskin is less efficient than if you would do it on cwdt, but costs less mana and saves gem slot. For most summoner builds its always the problem that there are not enough gem slots. So hungry loop and rare unset ring to get as many as you can.

In the past cyclone + cwc was great for that purpose, but now it doesn't work as there would be too high mana cost and you dont need to trigger all those spells like every < 0.5s

EDIT: In fact, resigning from warcries in favor of cyclone + cwc greatly boosted the build. So its not battlemage title anymore :)