Wednesday 5 March 2014

Aura support build

I did/do a ton of high level mapping, as you can probably tell. Builds like this one are intriguing and I've kind of always wanted to make one. Fair warning, link's way out of date, but it's the thought that counts right?

The problem with that is, support characters don't do a whole lot solo. Nor in early levels, but then it's easy to run leveling builds. Perhaps in the end with lots of elemental damage from auras, but I'm not sure how that compares with other kinds of DPS builds...there have been characters built for it, to be sure, but I haven't played any.

But what if I had my own little army to buff?

It's been a while since summoning got an overhaul. I've always had rather the vested interest in it, since my first character was a summoner and all, and I wouldn't even be playing Path if I didn't get hooked on "lol I have zombie minions"...yeah I'm superficial, sue me.

The shape of a summoning tree should still roughly be the same, and it's in the general vicinity of all the aura nodes except the lol 5% at US, so the question becomes how many passive points do I have that I can play with after taking summoner and aura nodes. In addition, choice of minion is important now. When I started, it was skeleton, zombie, spectre and that was that. Now, there are quite a number of additional options.

Since it's an aura build with an army, I believe focusing on quantity over quality is important (more aura buff targets) and, if possible, increasing minions' attack speed taking priority over increasing damage (added elemental always swings it this way). 

Minion thoughts:
- CoC raging spirit is a Thing. Yes, really. It's a really cool Thing too. I might even do this separately as a whole different build. Limit 50 and the only way to get them out at any reasonable quantity, given their duration, is CoC. 50, if you didn't realise, is a pretty big number. I like. Totem summoning these is also not unviable.
- Skeletons. From prior experience, totem casting these is a lot more reasonable than self-casting, and frees up the player's actions too. Limit 15~ with all minion gear, 10~ otherwise.
- Zombies. Persistent and durable, so self-casting is OK as I expect not to have to use them often. 10~ limit after gear.
- Spectres are fragile and annoying and I don't think I'll have the sockets for it, but w/e.
- Dominating things is actually really, really awesome. As a note, it doesn't require killing the thing, but only applies a debuff - this means it'll work even with dual totems. 
- Animate weapon is a bit on the gimmicky side, but can consider. Animate guardian...probably with buff effects like Leer Cast. That'll be cool.
- Flesh offering for additional 40% ias. SO GOOD. Bone offering not so much, because nobody really cares if they block.
- Minion Instability, yes please. Only downside to this is spectres, and I'm not using spectres.
- Elemental Equilibrium no thank you, everything's dealing all 3 elements all the time pretty much.
- And yes, planning on quite possibly dual totems. I mean, why not?

Aura thoughts: refer to these threads.

Build to come, oh, this weekend or the next.

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