{3.10} Speaker for the Dead | The Mass Minion Summoner | League Starter, Leveling Guide 💀

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Hercanic wrote:

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Viktorious1 wrote:

I just reached that point and put all of them linked in a helm but I'm confused. Ball lightning doesn't cast while channeling Shield Charge. Lesser poison already applies to Shield Charge and Ball lightning. So wondering what the point of Cast While Channeling is?

Shield Charge is a different skill from Charged Dash. We do use both, but Shield Charge is not a channeled ability so Cast While Channeling Support cannot work with it. Charged Dash, on the other hand, is a channeling ability. We link Charged Dash with Cast While Channeling Support and Ball Lightning, which causes us to shoot out Ball Lightning when we channel Charged Dash. Lesser Poison adds Chaos Damage to Ball Lightning, enabling it to inflict poison based on your Chance to Poison. This amount will be 20% Chance to Poison from Herald of Agony and 40% from Lesser Poison Support. This means 60% of the hits Ball Lightning does will poison, and thus grant you a stack of Virulence to supercharge your Agony Crawler minion.

Also, make sure all the sockets in question are linked. You'll see what looks like a bridge connecting two sockets in a chain. All sockets in the same chain can affect each other. Sockets that have no links, or whose chain doesn't connect anywhere to another chain, will not affect gems in those unlinked sockets.

When you hover your mouse over a socketed support or skill gem, all gems that are interacting with it will glow. If a gem isn't glowing, that means it either cannot interact with the gem you are highlighting, or their sockets are not connected.

Oh I'm an idiot. lol. Never even realized you were saying Charged Dash instead of Shield Chard. Thanks for all your help and fast responses. It's a really fun build, but I've only played 2 seasons before so still a noob so appreciate the help and guide!

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DieKao wrote:

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Hercanic wrote:

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Alerean wrote:

I don't think I've got any of that, so at the moment I haven't spec'd into Elemental Equilibrium. Could you maybe elaborate a bit on how this works (chaos/physical = poison?!)? Also I do have lesser poison, unfortunately I just don't have a spare socket. Does it matter what it's attached to?? Thanks again for this, I'm working my way through Act 5 and already this feels so smooth!

Just as Ignite requires Fire Damage, Poison requires Physical or Chaos Damage to be inflicted. So even though Herald of Agony gives you a 20% Chance to Poison on Hit, Ball Lightning only deals Lightning Damage by default. We must somehow add Physical or Chaos Damage to our Spells, such as all the possible sources I listed. The source must specifically say it applies to Spells or it won't work. If it doesn't, then by default that means it only applies to Attacks.

Yes, it matters what you link a support gem to. They only affect what they're linked to, not your whole character like the passive tree. They are skill modifiers, not character modifiers.

Elemental Equilibrium is for lowering monsters' elemental resistances to increase the elemental damage of our Spectres and Hatred aura. It has nothing to do with Poison or Virulence.

That is not entirely true AFAIK. If it says "Adds 5-10 physical damage" it will work. What doesn't work is anything that specifically says "... to attacks", that would still add the damage to Charged Dash, but we do want phys/chaos on Ball Lightning.

Shit, I missed that distinction, thanks. So, the claw in my inventory will do the trick, but my Iron Ring I have on won't?

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DieKao wrote:

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ArmedCiv wrote:

As someone who is enjoying your build very much because it is my first Summoner Build and it's nice to have such a comprehensive build guide to refer to for help, great job on it by the way. Really like it.

The one thing that was tricky for me was the mechanic to create the specters. I think it could be improved slightly, I ended up getting additional help elsewhere and they were able to walk me through it nicely, which really made it much easier to learn. So maybe a demonstration video on that section would really benefit people like me that don't quite understand it and never seen it or done it before.

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I felt compelled to chime in, since I was bored for a second so here you go:

How to raise Spectres

Please excuse the accent and general stumbling through the video. I hope it still helps.

Thanks for this, this was very helpful! I'm not at a level where I'm really thinking of min/maxing everything but this clears up a lot of confusion I had about Spectres. At the moment mine are still dying so I'm just summoning w/e xD. I had no idea you could reset an instance instantly like that.

One question though about Desecrate, I just logged in to try this and it's telling me that I can't cast it directly and it's greyed out. What am I doing wrong?

Edit: Okay don't answer that I'm an idiot, I made the mistake of replacing Summon Holy Relic with Cast While Channeling Support...I'll leave that there though in-case any other first timers do that.

I was thinking - does word of inferno (gloves enchantment from lab) interfere with elemental equilibrium in this build (or at all)? Currently got it on my gloves and I've no idea how its mechanics works.

Anyway, it's really well written guide, but there're too many huge artworks for my taste. I mean - it's a lot of scrolling to get to that juicy walls of text (and I enjoy reading them). Maybe author could try resizing them?

Take care.

Hi !
thanks for the guide, just one quick question, how do you get the 3 Spectres ? I only have 2...

Everyone to whom I have not replied, from pages ~14-19, don't worry, I have your posts quoted in a big Notepad doc. I fully intend on responding to everyone, I just need some time to catch up! =o)

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@ Scoorczybyk:

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Scoorczybyk wrote:

How exactly do you proliferate the ignites from the solar guard?

Elemental Proliferation Support is linked to Raise Spectre. You create Spectres one at a time, which means you can choose to have multiple different Spectres, like how we have both Frost Sentinels and a Solar Guard. Even though the Spectres are different, they share the same support gem links, like Elemental Proliferation Support, Minion Damage Support, etc.

Since Solar Guards deal Fire Damage, Elemental Proliferation Support causes them to Ignite enemies they hit and proliferates that Ignite in an area around the target. This includes around its corpse, too, for the full Ignite duration, unless the corpse was shattered from freezing or destroyed by a corpse-targeting ability like Spirit Offering or Detonate Dead.

Frost Sentinels deal Cold Damage, so Elemental Proliferation Support causes them to Freeze enemies they hit, and proliferates Freeze and Chill in the same way.

Since monsters shatter if they die while frozen, there is no corpse to continue proliferating the freeze after they die, so this is one limitation of freeze compared to other ailments. Or an advantage, depending on the situation, like shattering Unstable Weta corpses in Delves so they don't detonate after death.

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@ Alerean:

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Alerean wrote:

I confused myself with this part of the leveling guide: with Spectres and Hatred, it is time to take "Elemental Equilibrium". Just make absolutely sure none of your gear adds fire or cold damage, or EE won't be worth taking until you replace those items.

Ah, okay, I should add an explanation of Elemental Equilibrium at that part. I was assuming knowledge on part of the reader, or that they'd look into the description of EE if they're confused. But since this is the Leveling Guide, I should always keep in mind new players who might not even know where to find that kind of information.

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@ ArmedCiv:

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ArmedCiv wrote:

The one thing that was tricky for me was the mechanic to create the specters. I think it could be improved slightly, I ended up getting additional help elsewhere and they were able to walk me through it nicely, which really made it much easier to learn. So maybe a demonstration video on that section would really benefit people like me that don't quite understand it and never seen it or done it before.

Is it just that you needed to see it? (e.g. visual/audio learner) Or was there something specific in my guide that was lacking or confusing?

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ArmedCiv wrote:

On this subject, there are times when you mention some things again where I have no idea how or why or what you are saying, which makes it hard to comprehend the detail of what you are actually saying. So times like that, it might need more clarification and explanation in the guide. We aren't all seasoned players that know so much about the game. It was the bit about Act 4 in leveling where you mention unending hunger or violent jewel. But i figure I don't have spare jewel slots anyway, so I just ignored it anyway, so it's alright anyway. But if I had a slot available it would be nice to understand better what it would do and how it would work within the build and where to put it just more detail about it, or at least convenient link to that information elsewhere, which I looked at wiki anyway, so maybe a link to there at the very least.

I see. I usually like to add links like that, but there will probably be places I overlooked. If you find any more like that, let me know!

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ArmedCiv wrote:

I love the artwork on display too. However when referring back over and over to look over things to check i'm following things correctly, it would be more convenient if the artwork was also in it's own "show" link, so it was an optional choice whether we look at it.
It's just that after a while i've seen it over and over, i don't need to keep seeing it over and over more. I know it's you're guide and you do you and all that. But this is just practical feedback, it would help your followers follow your guide ever so much. And those that love to see the artwork can click on it and leave it open the entire time to enjoy, we all win in that situation. But it's your guide if you have to leave it leave it. But a link with a nice description of the artwork would still be interesting as most people will still love to click on it to look at it without it taking up so much space unnecessarily. It would just be a neat additional extra candy to enjoy that would be neatly tucked into your guide rather than the loud in your face approach you've chosen.

A good argument and nice suggestion. Is it all the artwork that exhausts you, or just the ones that are vertically long? Part of the purpose of the artwork is to serve as a visual break from text. If I were to crop some of the longer pieces and put the full piece into a spoiler beneath, that might serve as a compromise. Or I could put every piece into a spoiler like you suggest, but there are some places where I worry this will look odd.

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ArmedCiv wrote:

I love your guide and a big reason for picking it as my league starter is your attention to detail and the quality of your guide, so please don't take my feedback the wrong way, i love what you've done.

Will comment on anything else i notice, but love your build, love your guide and hope to reach a really high level this league with it and to make enough currency to retire happily with my loyal minion slave army at my service. Which leads to my last piece of feedback and request, could you add some advice to help new players on how to make lots of currency with your build. Like from start of maps, all the way to the end, and how to best approach map completion and best strategies to juice as much currency as possible out of it. I want to become super wealthy this league. I only made about 15ex last league and it felt underwhelming compared to some others who had hundreds of exalts.

Thank you

You're welcome, and thank you for your input! As for wealth, that's almost an entirely different game that I personally have never played. It'd be cool to add it, but I am not the best person to write it. I literally just started selling last league, with only a handful of transactions. All the years prior I've basically self-funded all my purchases (Chaos recipe) and never bothered to try selling anything. That's one of the nice things about summoners, they're cheap.

I could start a basic section, moving How To Trade out of Shopping List and putting it in New Player Guides, and then expand on it with stuff like the Chaos recipe and how to find out whether a drop has trade value. But if you're looking for a Wolf Of Wall Street-type flipping guide, I would be out of my league and you're better off seeking out a proper guide elsewhere. I suppose that's the issue, that level of trading has nothing to do with the build itself, so trying to add it would be an overreach. A list of links would be fine, though.

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@ EinUchiha:

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EinUchiha wrote:

Solid starter build, I destroy yellow map with almost nothing. The start was hard because this is my first minion build and the minion keep dying, but the moment I reach ~act 6-7 the minion become THICC and destroy everything in my way. I read on reddit that minion build is bad this league because of bad clear speed and hard to kill monster temple in time but I always have around ~20s after I clear all the monster so I can assure anyone still have doubt that this build clear fast, really fast and I still use a white weapon.
The only question I have now is which weapon should I buy as league starter, I still use a white weapon and was thinking about The Scourge but it's so damn pricy at the start of the league.
Once again thank you for your awsome build.

A Brightbeak will help your mobility and resistances until you can get a +1 Shaper claw with the Maim Support affix.

The Scourge claw would put your Skeleton DPS at 3,358,642 if you use Maim Support instead of Empower Support with the Agony Crawler and Zombies. However, Agony Crawler will drop down to 375,110 DPS, and Zombies drop to 24,677 x 8 = 197,416.

You gain:
596,228 Skeleton DPS
199,184 gem-swapped single-target Spectre DPS
= 795,412 DPS

You lose:
414,571 Agony Crawler DPS
140,896 Zombie DPS
= 555,467 DPS

= 239,945 net DPS gain.

Since you aren't level-stacking, Zombies would only have 12.6k instead of 20k, so I don't think they'd be worth keeping. You do get wolves, which can spawn from proliferated Ignite kills, but this won't help against bosses.

If we change Zombies out, losing their 197,416 DPS, for Minion Damage Support, we can get the Agony Crawler up to 568,212 DPS with 13% unreserved mana to spare. That's a gain of 193,102 DPS, so only slightly less than Zombies and it's guaranteed not to die off. (Hm, Dread Banner might actually be even better...) We'd lose Zombie body-blocking and Physical Damage Reduction, however.

So Scourge vs. +1 Maim/Added Fire claw =
240k boss DPS (but less clear DPS) + Puppet Master DPS gain vs. 20k life Zombies, Flesh Binder's 8% Phys Damage Reduction, and ~140 or more LoH per sec per target (The Scourge is % life, not flat life on hit).

The Scourge should be easier to get than a +1 Maim/Added Fire claw, and it'll be cheaper than a level 4 Empower. I'd say it's a solid alternative, better offensively but less defensive.

If we take Dread Banner and Puppet Master or Commander of Darkness, I wonder if we could break 4 million on Skeletons alone...

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@ DieKao:

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DieKao wrote:

That is not entirely true AFAIK. If it says "Adds 5-10 physical damage" it will work. What doesn't work is anything that specifically says "... to attacks", that would still add the damage to Charged Dash, but we do want phys/chaos on Ball Lightning.

Wow, okay, at some point GGG added "to Attacks" to all the "Adds flat x damage" affixes on non-weapon gear. I even had to go back to look at my Red Elder video where I mouse over my Bloodgrip amulet, in order to verify this wasn't just changed this patch.

It used to be that spells never had any source of flat damage on gear, so added damage was only ever for attacks. Since there was no possible conflict, GGG didn't need to specify it was for attacks. Or that's what they thought. Of course, this led to much confusion where people thought it applied to everything and it often had to be explained how it was attack-only.

I'm actually really glad they made this change. I just completely missed when they did it. Thanks! I've learned something new.

GGG still has a lot of work left to do on their clarity and consistency, though. They're still assuming an understanding of local vs. global mods on weapons vs. other gear. For example:


All that added elemental damage should say "to Weapon" for clarity, since they are local mods rather than global.


Which gets even more confusing when they're inconsistent like these two items. The amulet just says "Adds 21 to 35 Cold Damage" while the gloves say "Adds 7 to 15 Cold Damage to Attacks and Spells."


Other places they give you numbers, like for the %life explosion effect, while on Mon'tregul's Grasp they don't. Oh, the first one should also say, "Enemies you kill with hits..." or something because degens and minions don't work.


Did you know the poison chance here only affects hits with this weapon? Yeah, it's not global, despite global sources of chance to poison looking identical.

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DieKao wrote:

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ArmedCiv wrote:

The one thing that was tricky for me was the mechanic to create the specters.

I felt compelled to chime in, since I was bored for a second so here you go:

How to raise Spectres

Please excuse the accent and general stumbling through the video. I hope it still helps.

Excellent video! Very thorough. Might want to add an annotation that Shaper's Realm and Oba's Cursed Trove's last area are in fact level 84.

Typing /global 820 in chat will cause you to join a chat channel dedicated to helping people find/complete things, like Uber Labyrinth trials, league challenges, and portals to a completed Shaper's Realm for Spectre raising. I think there's also a summoner Discord group for the same thing, but I haven't joined so I don't know where it is.

As a sidenote, when you get down to Delve depth 270+, you can hop into any completed mine node at that depth or lower to get level 83 Spectres for free on demand.

Would you mind if I added your video to the Liber Mortuorum?

@ Chadocan:

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Chadocan wrote:

Hi !
thanks for the guide, just one quick question, how do you get the 3 Spectres ? I only have 2...

Answered on page 18:

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Hercanic wrote:

1 as default
1 from Passive Tree notable "Death Attunement" (@ top by Minion Instability keystone)
1 from fossil-crafted boots, but these aren't necessary. Two Spectres are plenty.

Third time's the charm, so looks like I need to make this clear somewhere more visible. Can you tell me whereabouts in the guide you found yourself confused? That'd help me know the best place to explain.

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@ Hemaka1:

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Hemaka1 wrote:

I was thinking - does word of inferno (gloves enchantment from lab) interfere with elemental equilibrium in this build (or at all)? Currently got it on my gloves and I've no idea how its mechanics works.

Anyway, it's really well written guide, but there're too many huge artworks for my taste. I mean - it's a lot of scrolling to get to that juicy walls of text (and I enjoy reading them). Maybe author could try resizing them?

Take care.

It does, but it has a 10 second cooldown so it won't affect you very often. If you open your character panel, you'll see a horizontal list of all your abilities. Among them will be your glove enchantment, where it'll give you some details on what it does. You can also look it up on the wiki.

I'm thinking on a compromise for the art. I have them there for several reasons, but I understand if you frequently check certain sections it'll become a hindrance.

@ Viktorious1:

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Viktorious1 wrote:

Oh I'm an idiot. lol. Never even realized you were saying Charged Dash instead of Shield Chard. Thanks for all your help and fast responses. It's a really fun build, but I've only played 2 seasons before so still a noob so appreciate the help and guide!

NP! Both skills have "Charge" in the name, so it's understandable that you could get confused.

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@ Alerean:

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Alerean wrote:

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Hercanic wrote:

The source must specifically say it applies to Spells or it won't work.

Shit, I missed that distinction, thanks. So, the claw in my inventory will do the trick, but my Iron Ring I have on won't?

Neither will. Added damage on your weapon applies locally to hits with that weapon only.

GUIDE UPDATE
I have collapsed most of the artwork into their own spoilers so they do not hinder repeated viewings of the sections. Let me know what you think!


Art by Karim Fakhoury

Awesome build and guide, Hercanic. Truly top-notch. I'm testing a Champion variant in league SSF and finding it extremely fast and effective so far. We'll see if Champion is a viable alternative to Necromancer.