How do Minion Builds work?

All,

I made a witch and I know I am only level 5 but man ... zombies die so fast. I just got my Minion Master or whatever passive, and I am constantly re-casting them. I hate having to do lots of re-casts, and I have never cleared the tidal flats and mud flats slower on a character.

So I am sure I just need to pump my minion passives, but it just makes me wonder. Are summoners constantly re-casting minions? Or do they ever become hardy?

And can you build for minions + wands? I kinda dont want to cast spells other than summons, curses, and then direct target wand action. But I am open to other options.

But I guess I am just feeling uncertain based on my struggle so far.

Thanks!

They scale far better at higher level, get to around level 40 and even without any nodes they are pretty tanky (linked with minion life and resists). Until then, keep them up if you need the meat shield and cast spells.

Edit: my current main in Onslaught is a level 38 EK Necromancer and she's doing just fine. The zombies don't die often, and since I'm still personally attacking things, they go down pretty quick.

Minion builds work great.. after about level 30 or so. Until then it's going to be slow moving because zombies do die fast and recasting skeletons feels oddly tedious compared to casting regular spells. Somewhere around act 3 and beyond though summon build gets really really strong, especially against bosses.

they don't get very strong until lvl 50+.

I'm making a summoner in Onslaught, lvl 50 atm. They are still pretty weak, but once I get the dual perma curse, it will help a lot because I'm going enfeeble + temp chains. I find temp chains extremely useful because it slows down everything, that means your minions will have an easier time getting hits on monsters and not taking much damage.

But even at lvl 50, they still get 1 shot by any sort of ranged character. 3 skele archers = 6 zombies dead in 2 seconds.

They work very well, but if you run Flame Sentinels (like me) prepare to play alone :(

I think I was in the mid 30's when the minions started to take over and make the build really easy. I think people who say its a much higher level might attempt to be strong themselves and get the minion nodes.

I only went for the minion nodes until I got them all. People said I'd need more life and I'd need more ES or resists, but it wasn't true. The minion uniques are pretty easy to come by. I'd guess you can get a medium rolled queens decree, boots and amulet for a chaos each. 2 chaos tops if you are patient in looking for a good deal.

Just move slowly behind them, learn what spectres are good, and get minion instability. You'll die once in a while, and that is ok ;). I don't even have 2 curses since things die too quickly. I just use punishment.

Early on, like levels 1-20, you mostly cast a spell like fireball. (I originally did cold damage, but you can't resurrect spectres from shattered corpses. The build sucks levels 1-20. Stick with it though and its one of the most fun and one of the easiest characters I've played.

Good luck!

To the low level summoners out there, I'll give you a Queen's Decree. It's taking up stash space.

IGN: Necromortis

Zombies gain a substantial amount of HP/damage every time the gem levels up, a lot more than other skills scale with level up.

During early days, its quite easy to get ahead of the areas your in effectively weakening your zombies. If you dont rush and grind out your levels periodically you should have no trouble.

As for bosses, get minion instability asap, the first few (A1 at least) you'll be relying on exploding skeletons. Later on its not a problem.

Is it viable to just blast with Wands, and pump the wand skills some? Or am I better off picking up 100% or more fire damage and going with Firestorm and the Unstable minions?

Thanks for all the replies btw!

I would try to take something that complements your minions if going full summoner as that means spectres as the main damage source.

A good combo is flame sentinels + (you) chain lightning + elemental equalibrium, or some other AoE lightning or cold spell. The idea is you hit everything with cold/light making it weaker to fire, and the flame sents destroy stuff. can also give zombies added fire dmg etc.

I like firestorm myself, although i dont think its very effective (i just like it). Fireball is probably better, want skills could work if you have cold or lightning as mentioned above and some sort of peircing attack.

Also AURAS. you probably can't use more than 1 or 2 initially but they make minions substantially stronger. purity is a major one, life regen is big for them (they have about 3-4x your life normally) and the ES one all substantially increase their survivability.

Skeleton totem too (heck put zombies on totem if you have 5L for it, its great for corpse disposal and keeping the army up in a tough fight so you can attack directly).