Summoner Levelling Tips

So I'm one of those guys who reads a summoner guide, looks at the levelling section, sees "Use Fire Trap, then Flame Totem, then Firestorm until Act 3 Merciless" and thinks to myself: If I wanted to play a fire witch, I would play a fire witch. So when I play a summoner, I play a summoner from the time I get Raise Zombie in Lioneye's Watch. It's slow at times, but I just like playing a summoner. So after many different seasons, here are a few of my tips for levelling as a summoner! Note that these tips are for new summoners who are levelling. Once you get up to level 70ish, there are lots of guides out there for high level summoners.

1) Use Minion Life in your Zombie setup. These guys are your shield and your defense. The tankier they are, the easier time you'll have keeping your spectres and yourself alive.

2) Use Purity of Elements. So this season was my first time to ever use this while levelling because normally I'm more focused on trying to go fast and do more damage, and WHAT A DIFFERENCE!!! This one aura makes your minions live SO MUCH LONGER. And because you're not spending all this time raising zombies and trying to find good spectre corpses, you can do fun things like casting Desecrate, Flesh Offering, and Summon Raging Spirits (henceforth referred to as SRS)

3) Don't be afraid to grab minion life and resist passive tree nodes as you level. Most summoner guides will have a passive tree, and that passive tree will skip clusters on the passive tree that give minion life. Things like Puppet Master, Grave Intentions, or the right half of the Death Attunement Circle. If you're following tips 1 and 2 and your minions are dying on anything other than the biggest bosses, grab a couple minion life nodes or minion defensive nodes. My personal favorite clusters that people might skip are Herd the Flock and Grave Intentions. Resists are pretty great for minions.

4) Skeletons are not fun to level with. There's a new Skeleton Summoner guide getting a lot of attention right now. I tried leveling with skeletons and was just super frustrated. The primary reason I found it so difficult to level with skeletons was the mana cost. They don't follow you around, so you have to recast them at every pack of enemies and it's just a lot of mana...

5) Use SRS instead of skeletons. When you are in Act 1 Normal, you'll get your zombies first. I freely admit that using zombies and fireball is not very fast and not very effective. But as soon as you get SRS things really do pick up quickly. Melee Splash is a HUGE boost to SRS while leveling.
The skill duration nodes (Potency of Will) are a fantastic boost to SRS and Flesh Offering. I highly recommend getting them sooner rather than later. Plus they are right next to the Gravepact circle and the life nodes next to the Scion start point.

6) For Raise Spectre, try to make your support gems a little bit generic. Before you get to around Act 3 Merciless, Spectres are a bit squishy. That's just the way things are. So if you're really picky about what you're raising, you'll have to keep going back to the correct zone over and over to find the right minions. Not fun. So instead of thinking "I'm only going to use Flame Sentinels" and linking a fire penetration, multiple projectiles, and spell echo, think to yourself: "I'm going to use an elemental projectile minion" and link Minion Damage (which you should be using anyways), Elemental Focus, and multiple projectiles.

7) Good, cheap SUMMONER SPECIFIC uniques for LEVELING (if you're not aware, you can search for items to trade for on poe.trade):

Sidhebreath (amulet) as soon as you can afford it

Bones of Ullr (boots) at level 22

Unending Hunger (jewel) For most people, this will go in the spot north of the witch start on the passive tree, so you'll need to get the Int nodes leading into it and out of it up towards Death Attunement.

Reverberation Rod (Wand) at level 24 - Good for SRS.

8) Other Uniques you should try out, but aren't for everyone

Victario's Charity - Only use this with the keystone passive Necromatic Aegis. It generates frenzy and power charges for ALL your minions, and minions actually get even better buffs from charges than player characters. http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Monsters#Charges

Midnight's Bargain - Gives an extra specter, but reserves a lot of your life pool. If you're not ever coming anywhere close to dying, and you're feeling really tough, give this a shot. I would not recommend it for hardcore beginners.

Mon'tregul's Grasp - Changes up your zombies a bit. It used to be really expensive and a stable of summoner builds. It's super cheap and still just as good as it was. I guess the novelty wore off?

9) Levelling passive tree guides are SUPER opinion based. Summoner trees tend to branch out all over the place, visiting the templar area and scion area for life, up north for an extra spectre and maybe an extra curse, to the upper right for Eldritch Battery, aura effect, and curse effect, and just to the upper right of the scion start for things like Necromantic Aegis (if your using Victario's Charity), Harrier, and the aura nodes. The bottom line is that good summoner passives are EVERYWHERE, and you should just go for whatever you need at the current moment. If you're dying, get a life or life/ES hybrid cluster. If your minions are dying, grab minion resist and life nodes. If you're not feeling fast enough, get more minion damage or cast speed for SRS. Be flexible while you're leveling and try different things out. By the time you get up to level 70 or 75, you can just buy a few regret orbs if you're out of passive respec points.

10) I highly recommend Flesh Offering with an increased duration support (you'll have to find this or trade for it, the vendor won't sell it to a witch). The obvious benefit is the attack and cast speed buff, but maybe even better than that is the move speed buff. Zombies that are able to get to their target faster are way better not only at attacking, but also soaking up damage that would otherwise hit you.

So those are some of the more helpful things I've learned while leveling. Hope it's helpful to some people out there.
Last bumped on Feb 21, 2018, 12:12:02 AM
Skeletons + spell totem + minion speed, can be EXTREMELY useful, especially in a large crowd. More targets, less likely you get attacked. Skeletons are A LOT of fun to play with, cast into a crowded room and watch.

SRS is meant to be used as a summoner, after all, SRS is a minion and benefits from the passives tree that affects minions. And it is very effective and allows the caster themselves to be able to attack, instead of just standing around. SRS + minion speed + spell echo + minion damage

If you want zombies to last.... raise zombie + minion life + totem minion resistance + FORTIFY. (note: anything that is melee really REQUIRES fortify, after all, it changed the game and monsters to account for that spell.....use it.)

ZERO special equipment needed to play... ZERO. Simply 4 socket items and enough resistance/str/dex. I've made it through the game many times now with and without special equipment. I've also made builds with life or using energy shield. Both can get a little hard, need a lot of points for either.


NOTE: I have been playing summoners for many years now, all level 70 and above, very few deaths. With 2.4 and limited time, i'm to to 58 again. I am ripping through pretty well and fast, and still do not have haste yet (a great gem to have for summoners).

I guess i will probably post a summoner build once i get up to a higher level again. Most summoner builds have similar trees, after all there are limited nodes for minions.

And to level up from level 1 to level 4, probably fireball until you can use SRS. then SRS for the rest of the game. You can only choose so many nodes in the tree, might as well use a gem that will directly benefit from a summoner tree, all other spells really useless since again, limited nodes you can choose.
I also forgot to mention that for ascendancy passives, Commander of Darkness is amazing for starting out. It not only grants damage and defense boosts, but it can compensate for poor resists on your gear. Normally I get to Merciless and then have to stop and go trade for gear with resists. Not the case with this passive.
I can level with spectres/zombies and they never die even during the leveling using this belt http://pathofexile.gamepedia.com/Umbilicus_Immortalis.

If u are good with flasks and watch hp of your minions even normal spectres from level 30 can be used.
Last edited by xprimalfuryx on Sep 10, 2016, 7:08:44 AM
This is my first main and I'm really enjoying so far .For both my zombie summons and SRS I added echo support as soon as possible and it made them so much more effective.

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