Leveling Guide: Witch Infernalist Minion Army Summoner

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Fae_Lyth#6750 wrote:

Finally found the thing that I have to keep correcting and help people spec out from for the past days.

What a headache.

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Devilator#4354 wrote:

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Fae_Lyth#6750 wrote:

Finally found the thing that I have to keep correcting and help people spec out from for the past days.

What a headache.

Not a fan of this build? Asking because I had started following yours at some point, then bookmarked this one instead because it looked very similar and had an easy to follow page. I had saved your youtube comment, but well, a maxroll page is more convenient.

I haven't looked too closely at what these builds do different approaching the endgame. I am sure that if you want to comment here about how your build differs, it would be appreciated by everyone looking at Infernalist minion builds so they can pick the one that fits them best.

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Fae_Lyth#6750 wrote:

1. First of all, the premise

Energy Shield is not a great source of defence to rely on throughout the campaign.
And even late game, building Energy Shield will be much, much more expensive (think in the several hundreds of Exalts to get a *usable* amount)

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Fae_Lyth#6750 wrote:

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Devilator#4354 wrote:

"

Fae_Lyth#6750 wrote:

Finally found the thing that I have to keep correcting and help people spec out from for the past days.

What a headache.

Not a fan of this build? Asking because I had started following yours at some point, then bookmarked this one instead because it looked very similar and had an easy to follow page. I had saved your youtube comment, but well, a maxroll page is more convenient.

I haven't looked too closely at what these builds do different approaching the endgame. I am sure that if you want to comment here about how your build differs, it would be appreciated by everyone looking at Infernalist minion builds so they can pick the one that fits them best.

Happy to oblige.

1. First of all, the premise

Energy Shield is not a great source of defence to rely on throughout the campaign.
And even late game, building Energy Shield will be much, much more expensive (think in the several hundreds of Exalts to get a *usable* amount) than just picking Mind over Matter + Eldritch Battery alongside some mana regen nodes + passives.

What makes MoM *really* shine though are "% of damage taken recouped as mana" you obtain from Adverse Growth and Midnight Braid.
This mains, you take damage, it hits your mana, then your mana refills.
Anything that is not specifically a one shot can't hurt you.


2. The passives

Not starting at the left side (minion damage) and taking Energy Shield instead will gimp you.

Pathing to Ingenuity is good on Witch regardless of the type of defence, and this build does not do it.

Having Arsonists (physical attackers) and not getting the Entropic Incarnation node is a headscratcher.

And why are there no minion survivability + revive nodes in this minion build?


3. The skills + supports

Enfeeble is a waste of a gem early. You do not need it.

Essence Drain with Arcane Tempo?
No, use Pierce + Controlled Destruction instead.

Arsonists should have Scattershot + Magnified Effect.
Arsonists fire bombs at the enemy, and the explosion can hit multiple targets.
Scattershot + Magnified effect makes it so that they can hit many targets many times from a single attack.
This makes Arsonists truly shine.
Taking anything else compromises your damage by a lot.

Martial Tempo + Minion Mastery also benefits Arsonists more than the Fire Penetration
this build is rushing.

Also, the moment you obtain SRS, you can switch off from the Essence Drain + Contagion combo.

Bonestorm is not worth it without a significant investment in cast time.
You are better off just spamming Flame Wall, keeping your SRS up and having Arsonist bomb the enemy.
Everything will melt faster than you can charge Bonestorm.
It is a really bad pick.

This is why Flame Wall should have Fortress, even after the SRS limit per cast to 5.
Arsonists fire physical projectiles we want to convert with Flame Wall.
Without Fortress, if they end up on the other side of Flame Wall, sucks to suck.

Flame Wall should have Arcane Tempo + Inspiration.
Flame Wall is the skill we put on RMB and the single skill we spam.

The single most important support for Hellhound is Fire Exposure.
Followed by CC supports such as Ruthless, Maim, Splinter, Culling Strike.

Pain Offering should be boosted with Elemental Army + Persistence to last longer and not die as quickly.
Font of Mana + Ablation for lategame options.

Skeletal Storm Mages for shock are a nice idea, but bosses die too quickly for them to be worth it.
Just add another Arsonist.

One Skeletal Cleric should be included, with Ingenuity and Last Gasp, to support your reviving minions.

Grim Feast after the SRS fix is not worth it.

Fire Infusion + Feeding Frenzy (Martial Tempo as a placeholder) are much more important on SRS than Elemental Focus.
You can take Elemental Focus 5th, after taking Immolate and Fire Mastery as well.

Flammability should get Heightened Curse + Ritualistic Curse.
As stated above, the Inspiration is better put on Flame Wall.

Meat Shield and Blind are good supports for Skeletal Warriors.

The first Jeweled Orb goes on Arsonists, not SRS.
Arsonists contribute much more to damage, especially if you get some Spirit.
Ideally you use it to get Martial Tempo after Magnified Effect + Scattershot.

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Fae_Lyth#6750 wrote:

Finally found the thing that I have to keep correcting and help people spec out from for the past days.

What a headache.

"

Hoffen#2482 wrote:

"

Fae_Lyth#6750 wrote:

Spoiler

Happy to oblige.

1. First of all, the premise

Energy Shield is not a great source of defence to rely on throughout the campaign.
And even late game, building Energy Shield will be much, much more expensive (think in the several hundreds of Exalts to get a *usable* amount) than just picking Mind over Matter + Eldritch Battery alongside some mana regen nodes + passives.

What makes MoM *really* shine though are "% of damage taken recouped as mana" you obtain from Adverse Growth and Midnight Braid.
This mains, you take damage, it hits your mana, then your mana refills.
Anything that is not specifically a one shot can't hurt you.


2. The passives

Not starting at the left side (minion damage) and taking Energy Shield instead will gimp you.

Pathing to Ingenuity is good on Witch regardless of the type of defence, and this build does not do it.

Having Arsonists (physical attackers) and not getting the Entropic Incarnation node is a headscratcher.

And why are there no minion survivability + revive nodes in this minion build?


3. The skills + supports

Enfeeble is a waste of a gem early. You do not need it.

Essence Drain with Arcane Tempo?
No, use Pierce + Controlled Destruction instead.

Arsonists should have Scattershot + Magnified Effect.
Arsonists fire bombs at the enemy, and the explosion can hit multiple targets.
Scattershot + Magnified effect makes it so that they can hit many targets many times from a single attack.
This makes Arsonists truly shine.
Taking anything else compromises your damage by a lot.

Martial Tempo + Minion Mastery also benefits Arsonists more than the Fire Penetration
this build is rushing.

Also, the moment you obtain SRS, you can switch off from the Essence Drain + Contagion combo.

Bonestorm is not worth it without a significant investment in cast time.
You are better off just spamming Flame Wall, keeping your SRS up and having Arsonist bomb the enemy.
Everything will melt faster than you can charge Bonestorm.
It is a really bad pick.

This is why Flame Wall should have Fortress, even after the SRS limit per cast to 5.
Arsonists fire physical projectiles we want to convert with Flame Wall.
Without Fortress, if they end up on the other side of Flame Wall, sucks to suck.

Flame Wall should have Arcane Tempo + Inspiration.
Flame Wall is the skill we put on RMB and the single skill we spam.

The single most important support for Hellhound is Fire Exposure.
Followed by CC supports such as Ruthless, Maim, Splinter, Culling Strike.

Pain Offering should be boosted with Elemental Army + Persistence to last longer and not die as quickly.
Font of Mana + Ablation for lategame options.

Skeletal Storm Mages for shock are a nice idea, but bosses die too quickly for them to be worth it.
Just add another Arsonist.

One Skeletal Cleric should be included, with Ingenuity and Last Gasp, to support your reviving minions.

Grim Feast after the SRS fix is not worth it.

Fire Infusion + Feeding Frenzy (Martial Tempo as a placeholder) are much more important on SRS than Elemental Focus.
You can take Elemental Focus 5th, after taking Immolate and Fire Mastery as well.

Flammability should get Heightened Curse + Ritualistic Curse.
As stated above, the Inspiration is better put on Flame Wall.

Meat Shield and Blind are good supports for Skeletal Warriors.

The first Jeweled Orb goes on Arsonists, not SRS.
Arsonists contribute much more to damage, especially if you get some Spirit.
Ideally you use it to get Martial Tempo after Magnified Effect + Scattershot.

Spoiler

The build does not rely on energy shield through the start of the campaign until the very end of act 2 cruel or start of act 3 cruel.
By that point you probably have 500-1000k ES.

You barely need any defensive nodes through the campaign which is why basically almost all nodes are taken for minion damage, faster minion revive and minion life. Later life recoup is taken.

The MoM route is a good option but you loose a lot of damage by pathing sub-optimaly for the mana nodes when you could have taken a lot more damage.

For end game ES is by far better than MoM will ever be or can be currently, sorry to say but MoM is garbage in comparison to ES at the end game.

You can easily reach 5k ES without Grim feast with cheaper items and then you would have 10k ES with grim feast fully up. Currently I have 9k ES which gives me 18k with grim feast.

The campaign tree starts on the minion damage nodes not the ES nodes. Stop looking at the wrong skill tree....

The end game has ingenuity?

Again what tree are you looking at?

In the end it all depends if you need the Int or not, if you dont need it that point is wasted.

You really need to research more before you make dumb comments, Entropic Incarnation is complete garbage it adds minimal damage increase, you can look at the ingame fire bomb tooltip to see that the increases is basically the same as a 10% node.

Minion survivability nodes outside of having 80% max res are basically useless when you reach higher tier maps and bosses (I guess you are not there yet).
I have all revive nodes, what are you talking about?

Did you come in here and complain about a different build ?...

Your minions will stay alive longer by having last gasp linked with arsonists and deal more damage because you can spend those points on pure damage nodes instead.
You might as well use enfeeble against bosses early on, there is no reason not to.

Essence drain is pure single target damage is replaced soon after and I am not going to have new players cut gems that they will stop using a few levels later.

Magnified effect is a wasted support gem, conc is more damage and all three bombs still hit the same target unless it is the smallest enemy.

Minion mastery is a level 3 gem, pen is lvl 2 and is swapped out as soon as you find lvl 3 gems.

The guide points out you basically never use essence drain after getting raging spirits, did you even check the guide?

after casting two flame walls you have time to do one bone storm before srs despawn and you need to summon them again........

I have fortress with my flame wall ?....

You are clueless if you think grim feast is not worth it after the srs bug fix
Aronists do not deal more damage than SRS early on because you have very few of them with your limited spirit, they will do a lot more damage later when you have more spirit yes.

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Devilator#4354 wrote:

Spoiler

Woah ok, I am glad that my request to Fae started this discussion and analysis - I might have got a little more than I expected!

First of all thank you to both posters for going a lot more in depth into their version of the build. I hope the discussion goes on, and also that it remains civil.

I will refrain from commenting on everything I wanted, since the two guide authors talk directly to each other, (and provide tons of information for us in doing so). I will just say that I agree with lots of the points Fae makes. However I am not in the endgame yet, and not everything that works in the campaign will work in maps. And a lot of my reasoning is based on my experience with PoE 1 mechanics, which might not always translate to PoE 2. It seems that vanilla ES is the way to go, after all.

At the moment I am mixing and matching a little. I use Hoff's support setup, but I did trade one of my Arsonists for two Clerics. The uptime feels better; if there is any difference in DPS, I haven't noticed it yet. But I am at the point where the builds start to diverge more, hence my interest in both.

A couple of points:

Fae, you never mention Midnight Braid in your guides. It seems like a big deal for the build!


Hoff, Fae meant use Ingenuity support with the Skeletal Cleric, not the Ingenuity node on the passive tree.