[3.9] Impale Spectral Spirits Summoner. Intangible minions tearing up the Atlas

T16 Tower Clear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BTJ9tUY1e5Y

T15 Palace Clear
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13mf1zPiQrg

Gear Breakdown

Weapon
Spectral spirits Crude bow. I explain how to craft one in the section below

Quiver
Soul Strike for faster start of ES recharge

Chest
Incandecent Heart. This is the best chest for elemental protection on a CI character and super cheap. If physical damage is more the problem then a high ES chest would be better. I also like that this chest rolls red sockets easy. If rolling 3 red sockets on other gear wasn't so annoying I would probably upgrade my skeletons into a 6-link here

Gloves
ES and resistances

Boots
Rainbowstrides are probably best here. Resistances, spell block and good ES. I went Sin Trek for a little bit more ES and 5% movement speed and once I had enchanted them with movespeed I didn't want to swap out

Belt
Bated breath is tempting but we need darkness enthroned for the 2 boosted abyss jewels. Spectral spirits have horrid base damage and need to get it all from jewels

Rings
Resist and ES. Aspect of the spider can be on any rare slot but they are kinda expensive early league so might be better dropping that part at first

Amulet
Jinxed Juju for best defence (10% of damage redirected to spectres) and best damage (15% increased aura effect)

Helmet
ES and resists

Gearing
Chest, boot and amulet are good slots to change from their uniques into rares with resistances if you are struggling there

First Bow Craft
First step is the buy a crude bow as they have the lowest dex requirment
https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Metamorph/YpVkj9bFY

get at least ilevel 50, higher ilevels can roll higher tier resistances but its only a chance. Balance the cost vs item level as you might not even need the resistances

Next you want to quality and 6 socket the bow (no need for linking)

Next you should use alterations on the bow until you roll "Item has reduced attribute requirements" this will lower its hidden dex requirement of 14 down to 10 which lowers the average chroming cost from 257 down to 172

Use chromes until you have 4Red 1Blue 1Green sockets on the bow then use your essence of insanity on the item which guarantees you to get the spirits.

The hope is to get resistances and an open prefix to craft minion damage. Open prefix is easy to hit but resistances is harder so don't waste too much currency trying unless you have money to burn

You could go through the same process with a reflex bow base to get an extra 6% movement speed but it will cost an extra 2800 chromes using the Vorici 3R crafting bench option which is a tad annoying. I would only go through the effort if you were planning on multicrafting the final result.



Multicraft Option

This requires the multimod craft acquired from pale court and the highest tier of minion attack/cast speed from unveiling weapons as well as 2 ex. Not reccomended for early league when your crafting bench is still missing options

Essence of insanity your bow and hope for 1 free prefix and 2 free suffix (orbs of annulment can be used to hopefully remove an extra suffix) for an endgame bow of

- Anything (prefix)
- Anything (prefix)
- Minions deal 80% increased damage (crated, prefix)
- Spectral Spirits (suffix)
- Can have up to 3 Crafted Modifiers (crafted, suffix)
- Minions have 27% attack speed (crafted, suffix)

Guardian
I went Radiant Crusade first for resistances and conditional onslaught. Good for leveling

Next was Radiant Faith for some extra ES

3rd was Unwavering Crusade for extra minion damage

Last was Bastion of Hope which gives 10% spell block and occational regular block. The stun immunity kicks in pretty often with rumi's active

Bleed, Ignite and Freeze immunity are needed. Quicksilver for clearspeed. Rumi's helps give extra time for ES recharge to kick in

This build gets 5 Ghastly eye jewels and all of them should have high flat physical damage on them. The base damage on spectral spirits is horrible so this is the stat that gives them the most DPS.

https://www.pathofexile.com/trade/search/Metamorph/02BlJR7Ig



You also want 2 of them to have minion resistances to bring your minions up to cap. One jewel with chance for minions to blind will keep all metamorphs perma blinded which is good defense

The other slots you want minion attack speed and flat ES the most

Flat mana and other miscellaneous minion stuff is also decent


The build uses one energy from within jewel at the top of the tree. Healthy mind is almost as good in this slot but the character doesn't get enough flat mana to make it better

Links

My Lvl 91 Tree
www.poeurl.com/cFqH

https://pastebin.com/MrR8Ca2n

A big source of damage for the build is impale. I show the math on the bow.

Golem commander is good damage per point but even with the extra life I cannot rely on the golem to survive in real endgame content like the support spectres can

Endurance Bond is also tempting but just a few too many points out of the way

Bow


Best damage gems for Spirits. I use them as my melee splash minion as they are fast and don't need to be summoned. Splash can be swapped for maim on big bosses but I have enough damage that I don't tend to bother

Chest

4 link aura setup. lvl 2 enlighten is only needed if you have aspect of the spider up. Generosity doesn't boost pride but is very good on dread banner


This minion doesn't have enough base life and sometimes dies on T15+ bosses but is still worth having for 10% more damage during clearing. If there was room for things like maim and feeding frenzy that would be nice but this minion could be dropped altogether if you want to 6-link the skeletons

Helm

Vaal summon skeletons wrecks bosses. Upgrades would be making this a 6-link in the chest or getting a "supported by minion damage" helm

Gloves

Support spectres. I use 2x Carnage Chieftens and 1x Host Chieften. With max resistances and this setup they have just enough life to survive the Sirus encounter. They need blood magic to spam their charge giving spell, just remove this to summon them

Boots

Phase run is my preferred movement skill. Smoke mine or lightning warp are other options


Discipline for extra ES and I use flame dash to hop ledges and such

Other options
6-linking the skeletons in the chest is an option. Vulnerability curse was a part of the build for a long time but remembering to use it became an issue. Flesh offering would be nice but there is no room for desecrate

Dropping the Carrion golem and flame dash for one of these is reasonable. Unset rings would also help but make it harder to find resistances

Soul of Brine king to prevent stunlocking

Soul of Abberath for burning ground immunity

Skill
I leveled with SRS then infernal legion skeletons then after getting enough damage nodes full melee splash skeletons

Spectral spirits have a level requirement of 50 so if you've made your bow you can add them in as soon as you hit lvl 50

Gear
Skeletons need very little. I just threw on ES rares and was fine


Tree

www.poeurl.com/cFqO

General progression path towards CI getting the better damage/ES nodes on the way

Bandits
Kill all

Auras
I used discipline and skitterbots with infernal legion for a while then once skeletons were doing real damage I swapped into
Dread banner - Pride - Discipline which is the endgame setup

I looked to add in aspect of the spider around lvl 85 when I had a lvl 2 enlighten and ring with the mod. This is the point where I took the extra mana reservation from sovereignty and its surrounding nodes