[3.15- DEAD] Summon Reaper - Bleed them to death, become the AG/Specter

Hello all,

TLDR: POB https://pastebin.com/eNY7q8RH

Finally, a new summoner skill to use and try to get it working.

Now all this is before we know the true numbers and any other nerfs to gems, passives, and ascendancies.

The problem is to overcome the pain in the neck who needs to eat minions to survive and somehow make bleed do damage.

Minion Problem:

No AG means a lot of the comfort buffs we enjoyed are gone so our choice is limited to the Phantams, Raging Spirits, and Skeletons.

No spectres mean we cannot readily get charges to scale the speed and damage of the one minion

Bleed Problem:

Somehow need to force the enemy to move to increase the damage they take.

Survavability Problem:

One minion to do stuff means you have to live long enough for it to do the thing to make the enemy dead.

SOLUTION:

Guardian Ascendency:
Necro is for an army and there is little to use from the ascendency when you are limited to the number of minions.

Harmony of Purpose, by using a spell such as bladefall or something that hits a lot we can proc it to get the charges, which we then share with our minions. Support Spectres Solved. Also featuring Culling strike to make enemies deadr faster. No Only works on allies, trade it in for a Victario's Charity and Time of Need

The Crusades (Unwavering and Radiant), Permanent Onslaught (no need for passive). Resistances, Attack and movement speed. Minions Damage, Multiplier and Intimidate. Good things to have in a small minion package.

Bastion of Hope, the hope to stay alive and block your way to victory. (Live long enough for the minion to do stuff). Got life and block elsewhere to

Bleed:

Credit goes to TheGAM3Report1 for finding a way of making this work. - Do note that the number of minions is important to make it work

Long story short there is a medium cluster notable called "Bodyguards" that gives a chance to knockback an enemy, which is movement that will then scale the bleed. So big hit like ruthless with multistrike then push enemies with minions (why we use skeletons) with fast attacks.

That's a general idea maybe it will work maybe it won't but fun nonetheless.

Thanks for writing this up.

As one refinement -- I like the idea of linking Knockback Support to Summon Skeletons to generate the "bleeding while moving effect". Giving up one support on a secondary minion seems like less of a cost than investing in multiple Bodyguard nodes.

Also, I looked at your PoB, and the plan of getting p/f/e charges to minions from Bastion of Purpose won't work, as minions are allies and not party members. FYI.

I've been tinkering with a MoM version of same build to add more defenses, here's what that looks like: https://pastebin.com/8WiERVFF

Thanks for taking a look at it.

Dam, that is a bummer about the charges went over my head (guess it would have been too good otherwise)

To your build, yeah that is super tanky. Always wanted to use MOM when I could. One thing though is the anoint for horde, I do not see the point since it really is only 20% damage and 5% speed. The extra 3 levels of minion gem is very nice, but I think it really needs those charges.

I also have been tinkering with an Absolution Build.

But back to the main attration:

Based on the feedback I had revised the build to this:

https://pastebin.com/RrWy5j93

Dropping the shield I had for a Victario's Charity. This hurts but should help in constantly having Frenzy Charges, with some power charges from cull.

Harmony of purpose is gone and instead use Time of Need, as we lose the life on block. Curse reduction is also nice, if I am correct you can bring it to 100% with Sanctum of Thought.


I am reminded that knockback is a set speed and duration meaning you need to a certain number of hits in a sec to get the most of it.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1NvmQx-NhP93xwP5Wku_S5qjPfFpUw50SO4nKw6EBY-c/edit#gid=0

The spreadsheet above covers the basics but that means I need more investment to my nodes. As such I went up to 2 large clusters with 40% chance to knockback.

Loosing the spell block suck so dropped the War Banner and put in Flesh and Stone to try to cover for a portion, plus gives a reliable survability while only loosing a little of physical damage. Although leaving us a bit mana starved after the brand.

Liked your inclusion of Whirling Blades so I replaced shield charge with that.

I like the changes.

Agreed that it would be great to get frenzy charges as they're amazing for minions... But I think you'd need Necromantic Aegis to get consistent charge generation for that. And that's a lot of extra passives.

At only 5% to generate with Victario's, and a chance your minion is not "near" enough at that exact moment, getting enough Bladefall hits to make charges seems like a challenge. But maybe you can test it in standard and see if that is practical to expect.

Maybe get an "extra curse" item, and use Poacher's Mark to get frenzy charges that way instead?

"

One thing though is the anoint for horde, I do not see the point since it really is only 20% damage and 5% speed. The extra 3 levels of minion gem is very nice, but I think it really needs those charges.

Minion move speed I think is important to stack as high as possible because (a) skellies are slow and (b) the reaper needs to be moving at light speed if we want enough clear speed...

Necromantic Agis would be nice, maybe this is something to consider for an energy shield build. Right now I don't see a viable path to Energy Shield that makes it worthwhile from the tree.

Yeah, the "near" element is a bummer. But if they are saying they will nerf the multiplicative gems on damage and leave the support ones. Meat Sheild will be left untouched, thus you can cut like whatever gives you the worst damage boost and put in Meat Shield keeping the reaper near you, while also giving movement speed. Overall you should be in the thick of it, so you can keep em near.

Did a small experiment and it seems like the setup in question does reasonably generate the frenzy on packs, does suck on a boss but I believe it can be achieved.

Etra curse maybe on a body, would lose concentrated ground unless getting that stationary enchactment. The mark may be hard cast or ring.

I think I'll give this a try.

However, since there is bladefall, I'd go with an animate weapon (w/ unleash) instead of skellies then, AW is fast enough.

Found a decent idea to test - Speakers Wreath + Hemophilia, it makes bleeding explosion from minion damage (since bleeding damage from minions is considered as players damage). That's how we can solve the clearing issue.

Guardian is a safe choice for 3.15 anyway, so even if reaper won't do good, respec won't be a problem.

sounds interesting

maybe u can combine this with dominating blow (+battlemages cry + absolution)

for bleed multiplicator u could use weapon swap quill rain with ensnaring arrow (+inc duration + gmp), so the enemy counts as moving. hopefully this is just needed for bigger bosses.

and maybe holy relic (+feeding frenzy + carrion golem + culling strike) could still synergies with reaper

I tried to build my own build with battlemage and absolution.
I still try to somehow implement carrion golem and flesh offering, but it looks more like a meme at this point.

https://pastebin.com/cdQQPsut

Well there is the real option to just ditch skeletons altogether, use a wand convoking wand and use ballista support.

@ ElSuckerina, Unfortinetly impale with its associated bonus being moved into the tree hurt us. Same for reservation so HOP now needs that item to force it to only reserve 45% mana. Think convocation is not needed if you ever run a reaper he will just kill any minion you have and you will kinda be using the active skill to direct him.

@Monik390, the explosion gloves are a great idea. And can only kill ignited is a great workaround as we only wait on bleed pop.

So, what are we thinking boys? I think I should league start with this. Even if it fails, it;s just too interesting.