Kay's Summoner Memorial Page | New Guide is linked inside!

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hyperion1984 wrote:

What's your opinion on spectre to use until Redeemer? I can't decide between Frost Sentinels, Solar Guards, or Slave Drivers. I haven't done enough test runs to have true times to compare between them.

For new Base Build, change between spectres is only a few gem swaps. So if you don't like one spectre, just easy change.

I think I will use Solar Guard. Don't need high power to kill white tier map bosses, so better clear speed is more important.

Frost Sentinel ability makes map hard to see. I don't like it.

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kayella wrote:

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Furywrath wrote:

I have tested the levling a bit and im realy strugling with act bosses? Do you have any tips for them. Mervile and Dominus especially. I can pop in a Animate Weapon for mervile but dom just kills of al my minions? how do any of you speed runners deal with em?

My plan is to make a video about early levelling tips! I hope I have time to make it. (・・；)

For merveil, use two sapphire rings is really important. To fight her I put HFT near her and then cast some SRS and then move, cast SRS and move. But I'm thinking of switching build to skeleton because people are having trouble with SRS.

Dominus is similar. The most dangerous part is the adds before him actually. If zombies die then you can just ignore or find a safe place to desecrate and raise again...

Also remember to make Flask of Animation!

Simply buy Vaal Skeleton Gem asap (Should be 1 Alch - 1 Chaos at league start).....Destroys Bosses.

I'm also planing to take spell damage passive first (respecc later) and simply cast Orb of Storm here and there to gain a lil bit XP while moving....no idea if those 5 spell dmaage nodes make SRS better, will try it out too. :)

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Prevy wrote:

Still fine. VB stacking is horrible value if you want to go the Megalomaniac route.

Precise Commander is slightly weaker but way easier/cheaper to stack.
My CI crit Spectre Build has 3x VB and 6x PC.

Thats 108% Critmulti lost. My build dropped from 13m down to 9.8m per Spectre with all the changes. Still overkill. My first showcase video had a spectre dps of ~5m and was one-shotting Guardians and could do 100% Delirious T19 maps.

Yeah I think GGG changed all crit multi builds, so super high end builds lost the most DPS. It's OK I guess. Just takes 5s to kill boss instead of 1s ^^

High end clusters will be expensive too. I think GGG will nerf mod weighting really bad for crit stuff.

hi Kay sama
is Pastebin updated for 3.11? thanks

I did a test run a few days ago and I really struggled to keep my Slave Driver Spectre alive in act 5, so I went back to using Skeletons + Zombies and buffed them with Chieftain Spectres from act6 onwards. It kinda worked, but I guess if I could keep the Slave Driver alive, clear speed would be much better. It's just not worth it if I have to stop, desecrate, hover over the corpses for 5 minutes to find the right one, every couple of zones.

Any tips on how to keep them alive? Or should I just not bother while leveling and stick to Skellies/Zombies until maps?

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gehirnmutant wrote:

I did a test run a few days ago and I really struggled to keep my Slave Driver Spectre alive in act 5, so I went back to using Skeletons + Zombies and buffed them with Chieftain Spectres from act6 onwards. It kinda worked, but I guess if I could keep the Slave Driver alive, clear speed would be much better. It's just not worth it if I have to stop, desecrate, hover over the corpses for 5 minutes to find the right one, every couple of zones.

Any tips on how to keep them alive? Or should I just not bother while leveling and stick to Skellies/Zombies until maps?

Yup thats the downside of Summoner....the leveling process is quite slow compared to other starter.

You can grab Solar Guards @ Act 8 but those are not that strong till a ceartain gem LVL (Same for Slave Drivers).

Means you play SRS/Skellis/Zombies (And maybe SG Spectres) all the way to maps and level the gem that way...or rush Corners for Conquer spawns to get redemtion sentries.

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gehirnmutant wrote:

I did a test run a few days ago and I really struggled to keep my Slave Driver Spectre alive in act 5, so I went back to using Skeletons + Zombies and buffed them with Chieftain Spectres from act6 onwards. It kinda worked, but I guess if I could keep the Slave Driver alive, clear speed would be much better. It's just not worth it if I have to stop, desecrate, hover over the corpses for 5 minutes to find the right one, every couple of zones.

Any tips on how to keep them alive? Or should I just not bother while leveling and stick to Skellies/Zombies until maps?

Pick up the sacrifice wheel. Pickup the regen node next to death attunement. Spectres should never die outside boss fights after that. Pickup up the +2 to minions in cruel lab is a must IMHO. Huge jump in DPS and survivability.

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gehirnmutant wrote:

I did a test run a few days ago and I really struggled to keep my Slave Driver Spectre alive in act 5, so I went back to using Skeletons + Zombies and buffed them with Chieftain Spectres from act6 onwards. It kinda worked, but I guess if I could keep the Slave Driver alive, clear speed would be much better. It's just not worth it if I have to stop, desecrate, hover over the corpses for 5 minutes to find the right one, every couple of zones.

Any tips on how to keep them alive? Or should I just not bother while leveling and stick to Skellies/Zombies until maps?

Your spectres should stay alive all the way from lvl28-30ish to endgame with a few exceptions:
1) Dominus Act 3 fight, Minion Phase
2) Piety Act 4 Fight, because of the beam.

In order to make them tanky enough you will need:
1) Indomitable Army, pathing through phys reduction passive
2) Death Attunement, pathing through Minion Damage, Minion Damage and Leech and taking the Minion Life and Life Regeneration right next to Death Attunement

A life flask that grants a portion of recovery to minions can also help, but is not mandatory.

I recommend Flame Sentinels or Stygian Revenants with the following links: Minion Damage, Elemental Focus, Controlled Destruction, Spell Echo; socketed in +1 to level of minion gems Helmet.

P.S. Sacrifice rush is a trap, get Death Attunement and Indomitable Army first.
P.P.S. Holly Flame Totem is huge quality of life, granting a lot of regen through consecrated ground effect

Hi there!

Got one question: as i play only ssf since betrayal, and haven't really touched summoner since blight, i wonder:
When it is good time to switch to cluster jewels? Getting 25lvl SS will take me some time, and the base tree looks good, but i see many of You have way more DPS than 1M per spectre :)
Do Clusters give such good DPS? And what are your thoughts about going this route in SSF?

Thanks in advance, and big thanks for OP for the insights and all actively posting here :)

Just want to say sorry if I don't reply to all posts from now. I'm busy making update for 3.11.

Firstly: the build guide on page 1 is still 3.10! Please wait before planning your build.

The levelling guide is correct for 3.11, so you can try it for levelling practice. Act 1 - 5 is new style. It's more general now and just highlight important stuff (mostly gem links) Maybe you will find a mistake here and there (please tell me!). Also the minions are all fire based for levelling. It's actually better and easier to level than Slave Driver!

I changed the passive tree a lot compared to 3.10. It's more like 3.9 life build tree actually. It has similar total hp as 3.10 build, but is better for cluster jewels.

For 3.11 I will make 3 build guides. Base build for league start and SSF, Pure Spectres (used to be EB/MoM) and Spectres and Spiders. Pledge of Hand is retired now. The DPS is actually less than EB/MoM and also less survivability.

Base build is more general now, so you can use different spectre with just a few gem swaps. I think we focus on Slave Driver too much in the past and forget other good spectres. And it's fun to try different ones! Same as 3.10, I built it with my self-crafted rares and no uniques. The idea is something you can play as SSF. It's more like spectres + friends. EDIT: it has 3 gem set ups for fire, cold, lightning.

Pure Spectres is new version of old EB/MoM. So it uses Devouring Diadem and focus on big DPS. Actually, it doesn't use MoM anymore (actually I think survivability is better now). Also, I will include option for meta-crafted helmet instead of Diadem.

Spectres & Spiders is same as before. But I have some new tricks for even faster mapping and more bossing DPS!

For PS and S&S, I will include 3 levels: no cluster, single cluster, double clusters. So there is a nice upgrade path if you can afford it.


I'm planning 5 parts for the build guide videos.

Part 1 is for Base Build. I hope I can finish and upload it tomorrow.

Part 2 is tips for Act 1 - 5 levelling. I will talk about the ideas from levelling guide. Also about how to kill the difficult bosses. Something like that.

Part 3 is updated spectre bank guide.

Part 4 & 5 is PS and S&S.