Description

Interested in making a minion build? like seeing rage spirits swarm over mobs protoss carrier style? Well this is the build for you!

Suggested Leagues: Standard

Passive Skills

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• Minion passives, where to start
• Auras, totems, and skill duration

Gems

Chest: drop spell totem for empower on soul mantle

Spell Totem
Summon Raging Spirit
Summon Skeletons
Minion Damage
Added Chaos Damage
Multistrike

Auras: Generosity would be linked here but I do not see it listed.

Hatred
Wrath
Anger

Wand:

Raise Zombie
Minion Damage
Minion Life

Boots/Gloves:

Elemental Weakness
Increased Area of Effect
Increased Duration
Flesh Offering

Boots/Gloves: Spell echo would be the final gem here

Summon Raging Spirit
Minion Damage
Added Chaos Damage

Shield:

Raise Spectre
Vaal Summon Skeletons
Minion Damage

Bandits

Help Kraityn in Normal Difficulty - Rewards +8% to All Resistances
Help Alira in Cruel Difficulty - Rewards +4% to Cast Speed
Kill all the bandits in Merciless Difficulty - Rewards 1 Passive Skill Point

Gear

Ideally:
Head: Alpha's Howl
Wand: Midnight Bargain
Shield: Matua Tupuna
Chest: Soul Mantle
Boots: Bones of Ullr (Craft to get 4 sockets)
Amulet: Sidhebreath
Rings: socketed ring with Chaos golem, resist ring
Belt: Resist Belt
Gloves: Resist gloves crafted with 15% minion damage

Truly ideal would be a 6L Queen's Decree, but good luck getting that with the colored sockets you need.
Double Midnight Bargains would add even more minions and DPS, but the 60% life reserve will leave you paper thin.
You want to prioritize that which gives you more minions which only comes from uniques. Survivability is less of a concern to you due to your meat wall but there will be situations where mobs break past them and swipe at ya, so it's always nice to have.

Guide

Synopsis
The idea of this build is to capitalize on the synergy between your minions and your auras. The more minions you can field the more DPS you'll get out of your damage adding auras and vice versa. With a swarm of zombies, skeletons, vaal skeletons, and 3 totems plus yourself spamming rage spirits you'll have a lot of summons to take advantage of hatred wrath and anger.

Pros:
Solid meat wall
Engage mobs from off the screen
AI controlled spells seek out and swarm over targets for you.
Reflected Physical and Elemental damage doesn't concern you in the least.
Good chance of living through lag spikes due to minions.

Cons:
Can be quite squishy when mobs slip past your guards.
AI controlled spells make it difficult to target priorities, and makes Vorici's quests nearly impossible.
Only so many rage spirits can attack 1 mob at a time.
The curses from soul mantle are annoying at their best, deadly at their worse.

Typical play style:
Just drop one skeleton summoning totem along with a couple rage spirit totems at the edge of the screen when you're about to engage and let them do the work for you while you curse, flesh offering, and spam rage spirits into the fray. After your max number of skeletons are up you can switch out to triple rage spirit summoning spell totems to really flood the screen with them!

Tips and tricks:
Cast your skeleton summoning totem instead of face checking rooms.
Totems can block projectiles for you, 3 make an effective wall.
Totems can also block rage spirits, using one to block a door will cause the ones outside to wander aimlessly. Block with a skeleton, and summon rage spirit totems inside the room.
Bone offering works regardless of distance. Cast it at the start of a new fight with the pile of corpses from the previous fight.
You don't need to resurrect right away if you get killed. Often your minions can finish boss fights while you're dead.
Rapid firing range creatures make the best specters. They're good at avoiding agro and make the most of your auras. I prefer the Plumed Chimerals at Act 4's The Harvest
Either you go the whole map without losing one zombie or they get ground to a pulp by a boss fight. If that is the case then cast multiple skeleton totems at the edge of the boss's vision and kite. The skeletons will die quickly but chip down the boss's health with minion instability.
Zombie and Specter AI will make them stay on screen, but will move in whatever direction you cast a spell. Use this to direct them towards mobs.
Skeletons and rage spirits however will move towards any enemies in their threat range regardless of where you are, but won't follow you around. This makes casting Vaal skeletons within range of the enemies important, otherwise they'll never engage.

Passive Tree Leveling:
First priority is anything that adds minions or buff minions. There are jewels that do this as well so don't neglect that option. Next you'll want to take buffs to auras and skill duration. The latter will help with both the duration of your spell totems and how long your rage spirits stay out attacking mobs. Avoid any passives that say "Increased spell damage" or something similar as these do not add to minion damage. Don't take ancestral bond until you're ready for it. At earlier levels you'll do fine using the buff from wrath to boost lightning spells that you fling around the battlefield. When you switch over to rage spirits minions will be doing all damage for you, so not being able to deal damage on your own isn't an issue. After you take all the aura passives and get Alpha's Howl you'll be able to support 3 auras at once. Around this time you'll probably need more mana to be able to spam spells with what little bit isn't reserved. Take increased mana passives over mana regeneration passives to help with this.

Variations:
A 1h/shield combo with necromantic aegis opens up some interesting options but to be honest the survivability of minions shouldn't be a big problem. Prism Guardian could allow you to squeeze in more auras. While leveling you can drop an aura in favor of increased area of effect. Often your minions will engage targets off screen and 1 aura is better than none. If you had to keep just one I'd go with hatred. At the moment I'm trying to squeeze in Vaal Haste if I can find it, possibly on a socketed ring or linked with increase duration.

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