Brief help with +x to skill gems items

I am playing SSF Ruthless and thus can neither craft nor trade, and I am playing with what I have been able to find, so far it's been a minions kind of necromancer:
https://pobb.in/bscV4cUsADZN
I suppose I am a hybrid SRS-Skellyspam necromancer with zombie meatshield and support spectres.

My main kind of broad question is this: I realize how important +x to skill gems are in general for casters, and I suppose also for summoners (?), but are they important enough that I need to forsake critical modifier slots like life or resists?

I ask because I have finally found a +1 to all skill gems amulet, and a +1 to all minion skills shield, but both have otherwise crap modifiers and I have no meaningful way to alter those and keep the +1.

Specifically: I have finally managed to get a 21/20 Raise Spectre gem, all of my other main skill gems (SRS, Skelly, Zombie) are either 20/20 or 20/23. I'm hoping my SRS is next to get corrupted upwards.
With my current gear, I have +3 to all minions, giving me lvl 23 SRS and lvl 24 spectre.
Q1: If I understand PoB correctly, raising my SRS one more level will just get me a tiny, seemingly insignificant increase in damage. Can I be misreading this?
Q2: Getting Raise Spectre to the next breakpoint = lvl 25 Spectre would allow me to get an additional spectre summoned. This seems like a good deal -- but not at the price of dying, which seems more likely considering I would have 200 less life and subpar resists if I change the amulet or the shield.

Any advice appreciated, thank you in advance!

Yep, it will be particularly useful for your specter limit. If you are getting another specter that's probably pretty big.

Some skills benefit more than others from plus to levels.

Your POB is a good guide.

If the other stats are not good enough for you to use even with the +skills, might be a good item for hanging onto until you can try some crafting.

In settlers league combination is available and that might be a good candidate. I haven't played ruthless during settlers, so not sure exactly how it works in that mode, and how difficult it is to get up and running, but it might be something to work towards. As with most crafting there is a risk of loosing the item, but it might be a way of getting a very powerful item from an item you won't be using otherwise.

I would not be under capping res in HC for a small damage bonus. You obviously have a pretty good idea what you are doing getting to lvl 91. If you're adding a powerful spectre it might out way some of the down sides, but it would seem like a good project for crafting to me. I know how hard the currency is to come by, but +1 all skills is also pretty rare. Might even be worth trying to craft it with a safer method. It's not extreme rare, I saw a few people getting them while playing ruthless standard and it's not good enough to use on its own with other bad stats in most cases once your build is established, but does have potential crafting or other uses.

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Belegur85#5784 wrote:

Yep, it will be particularly useful for your specter limit. If you are getting another specter that's probably pretty big.

Some skills benefit more than others from plus to levels.

Your POB is a good guide.

If the other stats are not good enough for you to use even with the +skills, might be a good item for hanging onto until you can try some crafting.

In settlers league combination is available and that might be a good candidate. I haven't played ruthless during settlers, so not sure exactly how it works in that mode, and how difficult it is to get up and running, but it might be something to work towards. As with most crafting there is a risk of loosing the item, but it might be a way of getting a very powerful item from an item you won't be using otherwise.

I would not be under capping res in HC for a small damage bonus. You obviously have a pretty good idea what you are doing getting to lvl 91. If your adding a powerful spectre it might out way some of the down sides, but it would seem like a good project for crafting to me. I know how hard the currency is to come by, but +1 all skills is also pretty rare. Might even be worth trying to craft it with a safer method.

Thanks for the quick reply!

What safer method of crafting, or any method of crafting really, are you suggesting? Aside from recom (which IIUC has a large chance of losing the +1, since I only have ONE ammy, e.g., with +1), how wouldd you recommend I craft?

PoB seems to suggest 23 to 24 SRS is "meh" at very best -- can that be right?

Yeah it might be that the srs minions don't scale that much. They are attack based I think, that might have something to do with it, like how attacks don't scale as well as spells. Not really sure though, if that's what POB says, it's likely correct.

Can you link the items?

I'm not really an expert on crafting so don't want to give too specific advice. Some things are safer than others, but you are also limited in options in ruthless, both by cost and what methods are available.

If I was in settlers ruthless currently I would probably be looking at combinating. It's pretty complicated though to optimize the probabilities and I don't know if there are differences in how it works for ruthless. Some of the other town mechanics are slightly changed so combinating might be different.

There are other options too. You probably want advice from someone who knows a bit more about this if you are going to try and craft it. If it is worth the cost/ effort and which method is best to try.

It's mainly going to be good if you get an extra spectre, otherwise it mightn't be worth crafting and just hang on to it for now.

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onomastikon#6270 wrote:

What safer method of crafting, or any method of crafting really, are you suggesting? Aside from recom (which IIUC has a large chance of losing the +1, since I only have ONE ammy, e.g., with +1), how wouldd you recommend I craft?

Recombinator probably eats rare mods like the +1 with higher probability than less rare mods. So while its good in general in this particular case its not.

If they havent changed the way Fossils work in Ruthless then you can probably get a +2 wand with them. Level 82 base with Corroded + Metallic + Shuddering. If they didnt change them then "more likely" part doesnt work properly if at all.
Edit: Use https://www.craftofexile.com/ for understanding etc.
Edit 2: But it doesnt have a "Ruthless mode" far as I know so the results do not transfer directly.

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onomastikon#6270 wrote:

PoB seems to suggest 23 to 24 SRS is "meh" at very best -- can that be right?

You can see SRS stats on poedb https://poedb.tw/us/Summon_Raging_Spirit#RagingSpiritSummonedSkull
Life is probably the "Spectre" version in the chart. For level select the required -to-use gem level. And they also get accuracy.