Path of Exile

Zaphid said:

Do you have a tree in mind ? I have been avoiding SRS, since the indirect nature bores me, but if I can roll around with dual golems murdering everything on top, I might give it a try. Anyway, there's no reason to NOT go CI I think.

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Can run low life for more auras, summon builds generally make very good use of auras, SRS especially makes use of all 3 of the damage auras and Haste very well, as well as Discipline obviously. Purity if you run killable minions too, and you can blasphemy dual/tri curse also fairly easily and shit, so yeah LL is a very viable alternative, although it's super costly in comparison.

Tree is probably the same tree as usual, Witch start through ES nodes, then decide wether you go left through Lord of the Dead(good for zombies) or right then down through the Scion ES node, branch up for spectre nodes(not necessarily to use spectres but because of attackspeed scaling) and double curse, and towards templar minion nodes for dmg node and life regen(especially if you use zombies), down towards scion for duration and the best minion node, then go back to witch start and branch right towards shadow to grab CI/ES nodes. 2nd duration node is annoying to get to if you're not Life and you can live without it, it's most annoying while leveling but Necro compensates a good amount. Can spec through lifewheel and into it, then respec out of it once you go CI. Definitely want templar aura node if running LL but for CI you might not want to bother.

Adding golems really doesn't change much of anything for a SRS build, other than limiting your gem options and reducing your potential damage output from SRS itself since you can't use a +3 staff. But skill tree wise it's exactly the same. You used to put more emphasis on cast speed nodes too but with the changes tbh you can probably ignore all of them and just rely on flesh offering.

Seems they're really making golems a thing, the jewels seem to be very potent and you can get a lot of golems as a result. Not too sure on map mods and what not but on the video he's melting bosses pretty fast and unlike spectres, you don't have to spend time grabbing them everytime you relog/die/they die, which is a massive plus. I think fire golems will replace spectres for the traditional summoner build, it just seems a lot less annoying to play and seems to perform about the same. It's also less boring if you get the jewels that give an increase on summon, since you'll be constantly resummoning them instead of just running around casting a curse then looting(although that's a very viable playstyle too).

Can also mix and match with SRS if you want, especially since you can support 2 6links setup with a staff+chest. The single target damage output should be pretty crazy.

It's a bit surprising they didn't advertise these changes more, considering summoners have been asking for more variations and more summons and this basically opens an entire new viable path(not skeleton nonsense).

Well he said he tested that when he was at GGG's office, so they probably had a prebuilt setup for him to use rather than a full minmaxing setup. He does mention GMP in the description, but there's a fair amount of good supports for the build and the aoe seems relatively decent even without GMP due to having a bunch of golems. Shotgunning could be possible sometimes but not sure how often it'd be relevant withotu frostwall, I guess it kinda shotguns bosses with mobs around them with the overlapping explosions but otherwise you need to push the boss into a wall. He has spell echo in there as he mentionned which is to summon 2golems at once for them to benefit from the jewel increased damage on summon, but you could easily cut that for something else to scale better.

Getting the jewels will probably be a pain in the ass now that he made that video however. But I assume the build will clear fine even without jewels until higher tiers, so you should be able to ease into the build.

If I play this league I'll probably play that anyway, seems pretty fun and I like me some summoner builds, over half of my chars now have been variations of summoners. I was kinda leaning towards chaos poison animate weapon this time around since nothing new seemed terrible too interesting but fire golems sounds cool.

Also think the 30% golem effect jewel might see some interesting abuse if stacked with certain non damage golems. Like making someone super tanky with chaos/stone golems in an elementalist build or some shit like that. Not sure how viable it'd end up, but it's interesting that they didn't put a limit on those jewels(like say 3).

Caliane said:

Big issue is this is all locked behind specific uniques. Making it not especially ideal for league starter. Necro is solid yes. But you will be VERY bored leveling with zombies/skels until golem. And then, still just normal golem until you get the clayshapers/jewels.

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You could easily level as SRS or AW or whatever you want, and respec slightly once you get the uniques though. Summoner builds are very similar to each other by nature. You definitely shouldn't play skeleton summoner for any reason other than lulz. Could go spectres but spectres also require the unique boots to really function so it feels like a bit of a waste.