Fire Minion Big Damage Summoner - Build Guide - 0.8.3E

[Thyworm]

💀My BEST necromancer yet💀- Last Epoch Build Guide - 0.8.3E

build planner: Necromancer, Level 100 (LE Beta 0.8.3e) - Last Epoch Build Planner
loot filter: Temp Minions Fire.xml (15.8 KB)

Hello lovely people, Thyworm here with a build guide for Last Epoch Patch 0.8.3D. I made another Summoner, and this one does a lot of damage and has a very active playstyle.

You can find a written guide, this script, on the forum. The build is available in the Last Epoch Build Planner. See the description for all of this. If you enjoy content like this, consider liking or subscribing, it helps out a ton and I really appreciate it.

Let’s start with the build philosophy

[BUILD PHILOSOPOHY]

This build is a continuation of my previous build. There, I attempted to create 5 permanent minions, and this time we’re swapping it around, we’re going for a much more active playstyle, and we’re trying to really push the damage. Currently, I’m running 170 corruption without any issues, the build feels and plays really smooth, and it’s a very decent summoner.

I’m using both skeleton skills as permanent minions, scaling crit and fire damage. I have a bunch of wraiths that are temporary, which I use as a buffer to protect me and my other minions. Transplant provides movement and mana, while Dread Shade is massive more multiplier, really elevating the damage output. Because all minions are ranged, they tend to stick together, and they benefit a lot from a single, powerful dread shade.

I tried swapping the wraiths for volatile zombies. Damage is good, but the playstyle gets a lot more clunky, so I didn’t like that. You can swap wraiths for a golem, but I honestly don’t find the need to have a golem take aggro, since I have wraiths to soak damage. I tried going ignite as well, using the Serpent’s Milk amulet and converting the poison stacks to ignite on the mage, but I found minion damage over time with ignite lacking, despite a high attack speed. It just didn’t feel as good as hits and crit scaling.

So, what do you need in terms of stats? Here’s the wish list.

[WISH LIST]

In terms of defences, make sure to get res capped of course, and get 100% crit avoidance. The blessings in the monolith can help a lot here. You want a bit of health, and I’m using a shield with 45% chance to block, which mitigates a lot of damage. Summoning Wraiths costs mana, which you get from transplant.

Most important are your minion stats of course. Give them health, damage, and some dodge. I am scaling minion fire damage, and minion crit chance and crit multipliers. And a whole lot of attack and cast speed.

Let’s look at the skill specialization and skills we’re using

[skill specialization]

I’ll make a few highlights in the skills, but you can see everything in the build planner yourself. I have a few extra skill points here and there from gear.

I’m starting with the permanent army, the skeletons. We’re taking as many skeletons as we can, so in summon skeleton, you take all the +1 skeleton nodes. Unholy Rage gives them a lot of attack speed, Sweeping Strikes and Necrotic Conviction are good more multipliers, Mightier than the Sword lets you have only archers, and I gave those archers a few points in fire arrow, for clear speed.

Summon Skeletal Mage has the same idea. You’re taking the additional mage. You’re scaling cast speed, using the frenzy nodes as well as the multiplicative cast speed of argonautic speed. Depending on how many points you have, give them a chance for additional projectiles, which really helps clearing monoliths. Finish it off with pyromancers for the fire scaling, and take crit at the bottom for crit chance and crit multipliers.

By picking these nodes and the passives we’ll cover in a bit, you end up with 5 mages and 9 archers.

Summon Wraith is a temporary minion. Covenant of Souls in the top left lets you take 2 additional wraiths, bringing the total up to 8. I found that to be plenty of them. I went flame wraith to scale fire damage. Take the crit nodes in the bottom left, for minion crit scaling, once again. Dark scythe is great too, because it’s a multiplicative attack speed modifier, which works really well with all the other attack speed we’re scaling.

Summoning wraiths costs mana, which we recover using transplant. This skill has 4 functions. First, it’s a movement skill. Second, it provides some defences, using bone armor nodes, in the top left of the tree. Third, mana recovery, using Pale Blood, and Fourth, culling strike, using Violent Emergence. This is very useful on bosses. We’re not taking Last Laugh, 60% minion damage, but that’s just increased minion damage and really not that impactful, considering how much damage we already have for our minions.

Finally, the skill that ties everything together, the very powerful Dread Shade. Without any skill points, this skill drains minion health and provides a flat necrotic damage buff to all minions, plus 50% increased necrotic damage. We’re not scaling necrotic damage, but this skill is still very good. First, take Lone Watcher, which stops the shade from draining minion health. You can now just cast the shade on your ranged minions and it stays there for half a minute. Increase the area of the buff with spectral presence. Dying Coven gives every minion in the area 24% attack and cast speed, which is massive. Grim Fate increases the area further and provides a more multiplicative modifier to minion damage of everyone within the area. This is massive extra damage. I took a point in Duskheart, so my minions apply Damned, which reduces healing. And finally, Martyrdom, for some extra armor.

Time to look at the passives.

[passives]

I will just highlight a few interesting decisions. In the base tree you can get a lot of resistances and early on I suggest you take that. Unnatural preservation and Forbidden Knowledge give a lot of freedom in your gear. In the end game, the blessings give you resistances, and you can spec out of these nodes and invest in health.

In the necromancer tree, I take Risen Army for attack and cast speed. I’m taking every node that gives me an additional minion, as minions are also a more multiplier. I’m taking Aegisfall to shred armor, 2 stacks per minion hit. It’s hard to calculate exactly, but rough estimations are that I’m shredding 10k armor on a single target, increasing their damage taken by 54% of fire damage, and almost 80% of physical damage. It’s very strong. 5/5 Effigies is a great node for this build. It’s a life saver as well, because at low life you have a chance to eat a minion and heal to full, which saved my runs a lot of times already. Because I’m scaling crit and crit multi, you’re taking everything top right.

Take Rite of Undeath, which gives your minions a lot of damage, and you a lot of res. Cling to Life works well for minion tankiness. I’m taking Veins of Malice as well, which is up roughly 50% of the time, giving my minions frenzy, which is increased attack speed, which is more armor shredding, which is more damage.

Then, also very important, Gear

[Gear]

I’ve been farming a lot, so my gear is really decent. I hit lvl 100 yesterday actually, for the first time ever. I chose to get a lot of base crit for the skeletons on my gear, in the helmet and chest. You then use minion crit multipliers to scale the damage, so I have 2 turquoise rings and the unique amulet Death Rattle, giving another 95% minion crit multiplier in my case. It makes your minions take increased damage, but I found that it’s not too bad actually. Death Rattle drops from level 36 and higher, and it’s a common drop. I incorporated Raven’s Rise into the build, which is a random drop unique, but it’s very rare. It makes minions take less damage when moving and gives skill points to wraiths and mages, so it’s pretty good. You can take any other glove as well, the +2 isn’t vital, it’s just min-max. Most other items just have minion stats, intelligence or player health on them. I’m also still using the unique wand Reach of the Grave, which synergizes well with the skeletons. Reach of the Grave is a random drop, and it’s very common. For a lot of people it’s the first unique they find. I tried a few other 1-handed weapons, but I keep going back to this one. I did some experimentation with Abberant’s Call and the Dragonflame Edict, but you lose a lot of defences because you don’t have a shield anymore, and the damage increase was not really noticeable. Those uniques are fun, but better suited for different builds, in my opinion.

[Idols]

For idols, make sure you have at least one idol that grants mark for death on minion hit. Even at 4% chance, this is awesome. I run only fire minion scaling and some health.

[Blessings]

For blessings, I’m pretty much taking all the resistance blessings, because I don’t want to deal with resistances. There are some really great minion blessings as well, but they’re in the same pool as the crit avoidance one, for example, and I prefer once again to not have to deal with too many defensive restrictions.

[Loot filter]

I have one end game loot filter that’s pretty strict, but does have everything you need. I will attach it to the forum post, see the link in the description.

[Levelling]

Levelling is super easy. Minions do well across the campaign and scale decently into end-game.

Let’s talk some Monolith modifiers

[Monolith]

Generally, I don’t mind giving enemies a bunch of damage or some health. All the things like chill or slow on hit are fine. Crit is fine too. It might kill your minions, but it won’t kill you, because you’re crit immune.

Modifiers you really want to avoid are dodge, because we’re a hit build. Don’t give them crit avoidance, because we’re scaling crit multipliers, and glancing blows also feels pretty terrible to be honest.

And that brings us to the playstyle of the build.

[play style]

Here’s the build in action.

The main idea here is that you buff your ranged army with a dread shade. Don’t forget to occasionally reapply it. To protect yourself and the ranged army, I’m summoning wraiths close to the enemies, so the enemies start attacking the wraiths and leave me or my ranged minions alone. This tactic works really well, because enemies typically aggro the closest unit.

There’s a bit of a rotation I’m using. I’m summoning a bunch of wraiths, which drains mana of course. I then use transplant, which triggers the veins of malice passive node, giving my minions frenzy, as well as giving me mana. It does drain health though, which I recover using a health potion. Using a health potion triggers hunger for my minions, from the passive tree, which lets them heal up when they hit enemies.

Minions otherwise stay alive because they leech crit damage, and overall my army still survives comfortably around 170 corruption. It takes a long time to push corruption, I realized, so I can’t say what will happen at 300 corruption, but so far the build shows no signs of slowing down. I think it might go pretty far, but I didn’t want to grind another week to get to 300 corruption, so instead I just wanted to share the build already.

I had a lot of fun creating this build, all the way from start to finish. I hope you enjoyed the video. If you did, give it a like, toss a sub to the channel, and finally, thanks for watching. See you soon, love you all, bye bye.

[Leandrys]

You got me with the “highly active playstyle in the video”, i never play minions/familiar/pet/whatever classes because they tend to make me fall asleep all over the keyboard and quickly disconnect, for the first time i’m gonna give it a try in LE.

I’m not thanking you !!

More seriously, thanks, it’s always cool to play different, and efficient, builds, and it doesn’t seem to be one of these infamous “S tiers” builds that turn out to be ZDPS without multiple T7, very rare uniques and of course, a perfect set of idols and empowered blessings, while still being slow and meh DPS even so.

[Thyworm]

thanks! Ï try to keep it reasonable, also because I’m not a full-time LE player, so I simply don’t have that gear. Glad you enjoyed it!

[Leandrys]

So far so good, Majasa died while healing for the first time, tomorrow i’ll start monoliths, thanks again.

[Leandrys]

Small bump/update, couldn’t play her for like 10+ days, did start the first monoliths, content was trivialized by the build, Shades of Orobys dying in a few seconds, echo’s bosses quickly deleted and clearing quite good for a minion’s mastery.

Small personnal iteration, i’ve got rid of necrotic melee wraiths with two adorned idols boosting chances to spawn Flame Wraiths, replaced Dark scythe node by Locus of Death. Wraiths can’t move anymore but now they’re all ranged shooting fireballs so who cares, it helps me a lot to manage the aggro and pull offscreen packs/strong rares which did ease a lot clearing and improved my general survivability. And they hit for 100% more damage, they can deal by themselves very quickly with almost everything, sometimes i cast a few, forget them, then the echo’s boss dies offscreen.

Gates and monolith’s Arena are a walk in the park, Vessels and Beacon a playground for your angry bones and echo’s bosses are almost instantly sent back to the bin.

Meanwhile i can positionnate my angry bones like i want, it’s very cool, easy but interesting to play, efficient and very strong. The principal weakness is survivability, timing and momentum are your keys, play her well and you can deal with a LOT of things, make a mistake in positionning and you’ll pay it instantly if teleport is down. Fair trade imo.

Ironically, the skill i use, BY FAR, the most is the attack/move command for minions. I constantly keep them in front of me and add Flame wraiths dependign of situation/modifiers. I keep Transplant only for escaping.

Plus, well, basically you’ll need the whole content with one freaking unique weapon level 4… The less craft, the happier, i’m not a fan of Fracture Epoch.

Give it a try people, it’s much stronger than a lot of so-scaled “S Tiers” necro builds made by people clearly editing file’s characters, and it’s cheap. Gonna push her to level 100 i guess now.

[torquadon]

I like the build but the filter seems to be wrong, or am I missing something here? There is no minion life marked in any affixes, you have hidden all shields. Would you mind having a quick look?