Kay's Summoner Memorial Page | New Guide is linked inside!

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WavedashToSchool wrote:

Hi Kay! What are your thoughts on the "Trigger socketed spell when you use a skill" cd nerfs? Do you think they hurt the skeleton uptime too much for the build to be viable? Thanks in advance!

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Miguel_KP wrote:

Thank you so much, Kay!!!

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Graiaule wrote:

One quick question -- can we switch to Syndicate Operatives with the starter build?

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kayella wrote:

Hi everyone it's Kay!

My summoner build is designed to take you from league start to end game. You can play with a minion army or specialise in one type of minion. The passive tree and most gear is the same, so you can easily change between all my specialised builds!

This build is based on my own character as well as the suggestions and theorycrafting of many other players. So a big thank you to everyone who has contributed!










15 APRIL 2021
League Starter build - Forum update
Youtube video guide: Minion Army Necromancer League Starter
Now with new thumbnail art and video intro!

"

1. Introduction

2. Latest Updates

3. Videos

4. Build Guides
ㆍ4.1 Minion Army (League Starter) [3.14]
ㆍ4.2 Pure Spectres [3.13]
ㆍ4.3 Spectres & Spiders [3.13]
ㆍ4.4 Minion Bomber [3.13]

5. Animate Guardian Guide

6. Levelling Guide & Walkthrough

7. Recommended Spectres

8. Crafting Guide

9. Frequently Asked Questions

Build Guide: 3.14 - Minion Army Necromancer League Starter

Build Guide: Pure Spectres

Build Guide: Spectres & Spiders

Build Guide: Minion Bomber


Levelling Guide: ACT 1 + ACT 2 + ACT 3 + ACT 4


How-To Guide: Spectre Bank Guide

How-To Guide: Animate Guardian Guide

Key mechanics: Minion Army League Starter

KEY MECHANICS

League Start & SSF is designed for league start and solo-self-found. It is completely made from rare items, that you can pick up or self-craft. There are no uniques needed for this build.

The build uses a small army of minions: Spectres are the main damage dealers, golem and zombies are meat shields, raging spirits help add extra damage for tough monsters like bosses and the skeletons are extra meat shields as well as damage.

I recommend using the Frost Auto-Scout spectre. It’s the best all-round spectre with good damage and survivability.



DEFENCES

The build has several defensive features.
• Meat shield minions to take incoming attacks instead of you.
• A large life pool so you can take a hit and not instantly die.
• Good amount of block, and life recovery on block.
• Several defensive flasks that increase damage mitigation.
• Blind and taunt from your minions.

Passive Tree & Jewels, Ascendancy, Pantheon and PoB Pastebin

PASSIVE TREE & POB PASTEBIN



POB PASTEBIN

https://pastebin.com/e9hTB7s9




JEWELS

You can craft or buy ghastly eyes. Mod priorities:
#1: life
#2: Taunt and blind
#3: increased minion attack/cast speed or increased minion damage

Highly recommend for Sirus fight
'Corrupted Blood cannot be inflicted on you'

Recommended Unique Jewels:
Anatomical Knowledge: +flat life & 8% increased maximum life
Unending Hunger: 50% chance for minion to gain Soul Eater

*Skip Unending Hunger if it too expensive.



CLUSTER JEWELS

See Pure Spectres build for cluster jewels.



BANDITS

Kill all

*Help Alira if you need extra resistance (good for HC or SSF)



ASCENDANCY

1. Mindless Aggression
2. Unnatural Strength
3. Bone Barrier
4. Mistress of Sacrifice



PANTHEON

Major: Lunaris
Minor: Shakari

Gear, Gems Links & Flasks

HELMET

Crafted +1 helmet -> life helmet -> Crafted +3 helmet

Extra DPS Minions - SRS 1 red & 3 blue.

BODY

5L rare -> Tabula Rasa or 6 link rare -> 6 link +1 spectre

Frost Auto-Scout 6 link: 5 blue& 1 green.

Swap for mapping:

GLOVES

Crafted gloves

Meat Shield Minions: 3 blue & 1 red.

BOOTS

Crafted boots

Skitters and Aura: 2 blue, 1 red, 1 green.

1. Skitterbots chill and shock enemies.
2. Hatred Aura for more damage.



WEAPON & SHIELD

WEAPON:
Wand or Sceptre with minion damage

Weapon: 1 green, 2 blue.

1. Desecrate spawns corpses.
2. Bone Offering consumes corpses to increase block chance for minions and necro, as well as some life recovery.
3. Skeletons add extra minions for pulling agro (and taunt if you have it on a cluster or ghastly jewel).


SHIELD:
High life/resistance -> Crafted Shaper/Warlord shield with 'recover 5% life when block'

Shield: Elemental Equilibrium & Curse 3 blue

Storm Brand reduces enemy ele res (Elemental Equilibrium -50% and Frostbite curse -44%)



BELT

Stygian Vise with high life/resists.

Socket Ghastly Eye with Taunt and Blind.



AMULET

Any amulet -> amulet with +1 to all intelligence gems.

Early in league: Anoint with Alacrity
+30 Dex to help with gearing

Later in league: Anoint with Ravenous Horder
Minions deal 20% increased Damage
Minions have 5% increased Attack Speed
Minions have 5% increased Cast Speed
Minions have 10% increased Movement Speed
Minions have 10% chance to gain Onslaught for 4 seconds on Kill

RINGS

Rings with high life/res.

1x Unset Ring

1x Coral or Vermillion rings

RECOMMENDED FLASKS

Bubbling Divine Flask of Staunching - instant life flask & remove bleed
Basalt of Warding - phys damage reduction & remove curse
Quicksilver of Adrenaline - increased movement speed
Quartz Flask of Heat - 10% Dodge, phasing & remove freeze
Granite Flask of Iron Skin - extra armour (physical damage reduction)

Recommended Unique Flasks:

Upgrading after League Start

This build can carry you to level 100 and Sirus A8. But if you have currency and you play in the trade league, think about upgrading to Pure Spectres or Spectres & Spiders.

The easiest upgrade is the Pure Spectres build. I recommend upgrading in this order:
1. 4 spectres (Raise Spectre gem level 25)
2. Cluster Jewels
3. Devouring Diadem + reserve Haste aura
4. 5 spectres (6L delve body)
5. Awakened Dems
6. Unending Hunger*

Please check the guides below as well as the video guides on youtube for more information.

Key mechanics

KEY MECHANICS

The Pure Spectres build uses Devouring Diadem to boost DPS and quality of life.

devouring diadem + sovereignty
Firstly, it reduces mana reserve. So, combined with the sovereignty notable, you can reserve 100% of your mana with 2 auras and skitterbots.
Secondly, it gives eldritch battery, which uses energy shield instead of mana for skills. This will allow you to do maps with ‘no mana regen’.
Lastly, feast of flesh gives a large amount of life and energy shield recovery.

Passive Tree & Jewels, Ascendancy, Pantheon and PoB Pastebin

PASSIVE TREE & POB PASTEBIN



POB PASTEBIN
You must use POB Community build to open my POB Pastebin.
https://github.com/PathOfBuildingCommunity/PathOfBuilding/releases

https://pastebin.com/gwnY3MJt




JEWELS

Unending Hunger*
Ghastly Eye
Cobalt

*Skip Unending Hunger if it too expensive.



CLUSTER JEWELS

SINGLE CLUSTER:
• One 8-passive Large jewel, with feasting fiends, renewal, third notable (don’t allocate).
• Two 4 or 5-passive Medium jewels, with vengeful commander, replenishing presence.
• One 2-passive Small jewel, with surging vitality.
• One 2-passive Small jewel, with enduring composure.

DOUBLE CLUSTER:
Same large and medium as SINGLE CLUSTER.
• Two 2-passive Small jewels with Surging Vitality.

BANDITS

Kill all

*Help Alira if you need extra resistance (good for HC or SSF)



ASCENDANCY

1. Mindless Aggression
2. Unnatural Strength
3. Commander of Darkness
4. Mistress of Sacrifice



PANTHEON

Major: Lunaris
Minor: Shakari

Gear, Gems Links & Flasks

HELMET

Devouring Diadem. 1 blue, 1 red, 2 green

Vaal Haste and Hatred linked to Generosity will give a big boost to DPS. Skitters don’t benefit from generosity, but need the reduced mana reserve from diadem.

Enchant: Spectre damage, minion ias, or flesh offering ias

If Devouring Diadem is too expensive. Just use a normal helmet and don't reserve Haste Aura. You can use Vaal Haste for speed boost against bosses.



BODY

Crafted delve body armour with +1 spectre number. 3 blue, 3 red

Swap for endgame bosses:

GLOVES

Grip of the Council. 1 blue, 3 red

BOOTS

Fossil-crafted boots with +1 spectre gem level (Elder influence) 3 blue, 1 red

WEAPON & SHIELD

WEAPON:
Convoking wand or Temple wand with Trigger craft 1 blue, 2 green

*added fire or lightning damage to spells on your wand or a ring.
This will allow your blade vortex to apply EE without self-casting anything!


SHIELD:
Shaper or Warlord influence shield 3 blue

BELT

Stygian Vise with high life/resists.

Socket Ghastly Eye with Taunt and Blind.



AMULET

Amulet with +1 to all intelligence gems.

Anoint with Death Attunement
When you anoint Death Attunment on your amulet, you can refund the passive points and use them in another place.

+1 to Maximum number of Spectres
Minions have 8% increased Attack Speed
Minions have 8% increased Cast Speed
+1 to Maximum number of Raised Zombies
+1 to Maximum number of Skeletons



RINGS

Recommended: Vermillion, Coral

One ring with curse on hit: frostbite.
Craft added fire or lightning damage to spells, if you don’t have it on your wand. This allows your triggered blade vortex to apply EE without any self-casting.



RECOMMENDED FLASKS

Bubbling Eternal life of staunching for instant life recovery and bleed removal.
Rumi's Concoction for extra block.
Quicksilver flask of adrenaline for big speed boost.
Quartz flask of heat for phasing, dodge and remove burning. (or Warding for curse removal)
Jade flask of reflexes for evasion.

Key mechanics & How to play

KEY MECHANICS

1. Spiders
Arakaali’s Fang summons spiders that have high movement speed, are extremely aggressive, and will attack everything on-screen and off-screen. They hit with physical and chaos damage, and will proc poison. They are also immune to damage.

2. Speaker’s wreath & spider’s poison
Speaker’s wreath blocks your spectres and spiders from killing monsters with hits, because they cannot ignite the monsters.
This means all monsters will die from spider’s poison.
And any kill from a minion’s poison will count as a player kill.

3. on kill effects
Spider’s poison kill will proc any ‘on kill’ effect, such as:
• Re-spawning spiders
• Life and ES recovery



HOW TO PLAY

To start mapping, let spectres hit the nearest monsters. They will reduce the monster’s life to 0, but they won’t be able to kill them because of Speaker’s Wreath.
Walk close and kill the monsters with your Arma Brand. This will spawn spiders.
See build guide video for demonstration.

Passive Tree & Jewels, Ascendancy, Pantheon and PoB Pastebin

PASSIVE TREE & POB PASTEBIN



POB PASTEBIN
You must use POB Community build to open my POB Pastebin.
https://github.com/PathOfBuildingCommunity/PathOfBuilding/releases

https://pastebin.com/wQiDYvUG




JEWELS

• Ghastly eye-jewels with minion leech and minion blind
• Watcher's Eye with Phasing/Haste.

CLUSTER JEWELS

• One 8-passive Large jewel, with vengeful commander, cold-blooded killer, third notable (don’t allocate).
• Two Medium jewels, with Replenishing Presence, Vengeful Vommander.
• Two Small jewel, with Surging Vitality.

Recommended:
• One Small jewels with Enduring Composure.

BANDITS

Kill all

*Help Alira if you need extra resistance (good for HC or SSF)



ASCENDANCY

1. Mindless Aggression
2. Unnatural Strength
3. Commander of Darkness
4. Mistress of Sacrifice



PANTHEON

Major: Lunaris
Minor: Shakari

Gear, Gems Links & Flasks

HELMET

Speaker's Wreath with 3 linked gems, 1 unlinked gem

UNLINKED:

BODY

Crafted delve body armour with +1 spectre number

Gems for Melee spectres:

Gems for Syndicate Operative:

GLOVES

For Melee spectres:
Grip of the Council

For Syndicate Operative:
Triad Grip (4G)

BOOTS

Fossil-crafted boots with +1 spectre gem level (Elder influence)

DUAL WEAPONS

WEAPON 1:
Arakaali's Fang (summons spiders)

WEAPON 2:
Rare sceptre with added fire/lightning damage to spells, trigger craft

BELT

Stygian Vise with high life/resists.

AMULET

Amulet with +1 to all intelligence gems.

Anoint with Death Attunement
When you anoint Death Attunment on your amulet, you can refund the passive points and use them in another place.

+1 to Maximum number of Spectres
Minions have 8% increased Attack Speed
Minions have 8% increased Cast Speed
+1 to Maximum number of Raised Zombies
+1 to Maximum number of Skeletons



RINGS

NOTE: One ring must have Frostbite curse.

If using Syndicate Operatives, need one Unset Ring with Convocation:

RECOMMENDED FLASKS

Fife of staunching for instant life recovery and bleed removal.
Rumi's Concoction for extra block.
Quicksilver of Adrenaline for speed boost.
Cinderswallow Urn for life and ES recovery.
Jade flask of reflexes for evasion.

Key mechanics

KEY MECHANICS

1. The raging spirits are aggressive and can fly over, and around all land features. They will even fly off-screen to kill monsters and bosses.

2. Minion Instability
Minion Instability makes minions explode for 33% of their life pool when they reach low life. The explosion damage can be scaled by both minion damage and minion life.

3. Tavukai
The tavukai unique amulet deals damage over time to the raging spirits. So, after a short time, they will explode from minion instability. It also gives a big boost to the explosion damage.

4. Earendel’s Embrace
The minion bomber build also uses skeletons to help with map clearing. Earendel’s embrace deals damage over time to the skeletons. So, they will also explode from minion instability. In addition, the skeletons will increase fire damage taken by enemies.


5. Replica Siege Breaker
To help improve clear speed, replica siegebreaker spreads burning ground when the raging spirits and skeletons die.

6. skitterbots + profane proxy
Skitterbots normally have a shock and chill aura, but profane proxy will replace one aura with the socketed curse. So, the skitterbots become a mobile flammability curse aura.

7. Support minions
This build also uses spectres, zombies, and a golem for extra protection. The zombies and golem are meat shields.
And the spectres are the Undying Evangelist from Act 3: sceptre of god. Their special spell is the proximity shields, which helps defend against any hits from outside the shields.

Passive Tree & Jewels, Ascendancy, Pantheon and PoB Pastebin

PASSIVE TREE & POB PASTEBIN



POB PASTEBIN
You must use POB Community build to open my POB Pastebin.
https://github.com/PathOfBuildingCommunity/PathOfBuilding/releases

https://pastebin.com/vdtjmPAR




JEWELS

• Ghastly eye-jewels with minion blind

CLUSTER JEWELS

Mid-level build:
• 1x 12-passive Large jewel, with raze and pillage, feasting fiends.
• 2x Medium jewels, with hulking corpses, feasting fiends.
• 2x Small jewel, with surging vitality.

High-level build:
Two sets of cluster jewels.
• 1x 8-passive Large jewel, with seal mender and 2 other notables (only seal mender is important).
• 2x Medium jewels, with hulking corpses, feeding frenzy.
• 2x Small jewel, with surging vitality.

NOTE: Avoid large jewel with Ancestral Inspiration or Arcane Adept.



TIMELESS JEWEL

Elegant Hubris with 80% minion damage, 80% minion life.

NOTE: Every Elegant Hubris jewels is different and give different notable passives. Check carefully for the right passives!



BANDITS

Kill all

*Help Alira if you need extra resistance (good for HC or SSF)



ASCENDANCY

1. Commander of Darkness
2. Mindless Aggression
3. Unnatural Strength
4. Bone Barrier



PANTHEON

Major: Lunaris
Minor: Shakari

Gear, Gems Links & Flasks

HELMET

Elder influenced helmet

BODY

Crafted body armour

GLOVES

Only need storm brand for endgame bosses. So, you can link Infernal Legion to skitterbots for extra clear speed.

BOOTS

Crafted rare boots

DUAL WEAPONS

WEAPON 1:
Shaper influence melee weapon with Trigger craft.

WEAPON 2:
Earendel's Embrace

Set cast when damage taken to 20% of your total life.
Leave void sphere and convocation at level 1.



BELT

Replica Siegebreaker

AMULET

Tavukai

Cheap Anointment: Sacrifice
Minions have +10% to all Elemental Resistances
Minions have 20% increased maximum Life
Minions Regenerate 1% of Life per second
Regenerate 1% of Life per second

Expensive Anointment: Thunderous Salvos
30% increased Critical Strike Chance for Spells
Skills supported by Unleash have +1 to maximum number of Seals



RINGS

Left side: Profane Proxy

Right side: Crafted rare with increased mana regen

RECOMMENDED FLASKS

Bubbling Eternal life of staunching for instant life recovery and bleed removal.
Rumi's Concoction for extra block.
Quicksilver of adrenaline for big speed boost.
Quartz flask of heat for phasing, dodge, freeze remove.
Basalt flask of Iron Skin for extra armour.