Hi all!

I saw u/Previlein's Summon Reaper build on the main sub earlier this week and fell in love with it. I've never been a huge fan of the minion horde builds, and I was VERY excited when Summon Reaper was announced and disappointed when I failed to theorycraft a version that worked. Once u/previlein created one, I had to try it.

That having been said, there were some things about his build that felt a bit difficult to use for me. You can also read this as "Me bad at pushing many buttons" and it'll be just as accurate. So I wanted to see what I could do to tweak the build to be a bit more user friendly without effecting the damage too much.

Take all of this with a grain of salt -- I'm pushing T14+ with the build right now, but I'm definitely not at the end game for it yet. All of these adjustments were tested using u/previlein's PoB to see how much of an impact they would have, and applied to my character after I checked to make sure they weren't too bad.

First thing's first. Asenath's Chant is a godsend for me in this build. Rather than running 4L skeletons in Asenath's Gentle Touch, I dropped it down to a 2L setup of Skeletons + Feeding Frenzy in Asenath's Chant, with Desecrate and Flesh Offering in the other two sockets. This removes the need to self cast 3 spells in one go, but depends on another change. u/previlein uses Ballista Totems for his Ensnaring Arrow to compensate for the lower accuracy available to Necromancers, and this is definitely the way to go for maximizing your DPS. I moved to this build from FR Totems because of how much I hate totems, however. I replaced the Ballista Totem setup with Ensnaring Arrow - GMP - Hextouch - Vulnerability, and used two travel points to pick up Resolute Technique on the tree as u/previlein suggested in his original post. This feels better to use for me as it removes another self cast (Vulnerability) and allows for more control over which enemies are effected by Asenath's Gentle Touch. I thought I was going to need to invest heavily into attack speed to make this feel decent, but the attack speed on Asenath's Chant proved to be more than enough for it to feel fluid. I've also slotted in a level 9 Clarity to compensate for the extra mana costs being triggered regularly.

With all said and done, I have Bone Offering on left click, Ensnaring Arrow on right click, then Convocation and Flame Dash for utility buttons and Reaper on another. MUCH easier for my simple brain to juggle than Ensnaring Totems/Vulnerability/Summon Skeleton/Desecrate/Flesh Offering/Reaper/Flame Dash/Convocation. It also results in a bit more active of a playstyle than a lot of minion builds, which may be a point for or against depending on what you enjoy.

For some numbers: Replacing the ilvl 85 Elder helmet with Asenath's Chant is a 6.9% DPS loss, assuming you pick up the enchant. (Which is MUCH more farmable as of last league -- I wouldn't recommend buying one with the enchant already in place) Culling Strike can be picked up from the new unique flask Vorona's Preparation and applied with your Ensnaring Arrows, allowing you to still have Cullilng Strike, so no loss there. Picking up Resolute Technique will cost 3 passive points -- Best place to take them seems like the Constitution wheel to me. It costs you 316 life to take 3 of the 5% nodes away. Everything else should still be the same -- If you see that I've missed something, please let me know!

A complaint that popped up a lot on u/previlein's post was the cost of his gear. Aside from the core issue with that argument (Do people just buy completed builds and run them? It's a weird thought to me -- Incremental upgrades to a functional build is the best part of the game, in my opinion. And there are a TON of places for incremental upgrades in this build.) I'd like to offer some budget alternatives as you're getting started.

For Asenath's Chant (1.2 ex when I bought mine), you can replace this with a life/ES and resists helmet to help pad out your resists early. Make sure it has an open suffix, and craft the veiled mod "Trigger socketed spells when you Focus, with a 0.25 second Cooldown.". This has tradeoffs with Asenath's -- Asenath's will trigger each spell sequentially, while the Focus craft will trigger all three simultaneously. However, Focus is on an 8 second cooldown (You'll drop Flesh Offering for 3 seconds) and it will still have a button to press. Still an improvement over 3, however.

Asenath's Gentle Touch are absolutely wonderful for clear, but really unnecessary until red maps. Reaper clears just fine all on it's own if you're managing the Reaper dash as necessary in lower tier maps. It's not until you start hitting higher density that Asenath's Gentle Touch really shines. Swap it out for some life gloves. This has the added benefit of improving your bossing early -- If you don't have the Whispers of Doom anointment, you can only apply one curse and the Temporal Chains curse will override the Vulnerability curse from the Hextouch setup. Without Asenath's Gentle Touch, you're just apply Vulnerability, which will improve your DPS. That saves you 3 golden oils as well.

You can pick up a +1 to Intelligence Skill Gems or +1 to Physical Skill Gems amulet with usable life or resists for around 1 ex. Make sure you check that it only has 1 influenced mod -- You can use it as a piece of your +2 crafted amulet later, but the build definitely does well with just the +1.

For your bow, you can definitely drop the Synthesized implicit. As nice as it is, it's absolutely unnecessary until you're pushing the build to its limits. Additionally, the crafting steps that u/previlein takes are deterministic, but expensive. You can get a very usable bow by just Fear Essence spamming the bow until you hit +1 to Socketed Gems -- It's a high weight mod according to Craft of Exile and I've hit it three times now within 5 Essences working to improve my bow. Ideally, you'll have an open prefix that you can craft +2 to Socketed Support Gems into. It's an expensive craft, and it's ALSO an intermediate step -- If you want to save currency as much as possible, you'd want to shoot for open prefix/open suffix and craft "Prefixes cannot be changed" instead, then scour if you don't have usable mods. Alternatively, if you do have usable mods you can save from there until you can afford the 4 exalts required to scour, multimod, and craft the +2 and Minion Attack Speed/Cast Speed. A few steps in this bow, and each one is a good upgrade.

If you're looking for some flexible solutions, consider trying to farm up a corruption on Rearguard. I haven't had much success here yet, but they sell anywhere from 1-3c uncorrupted so it's easy to pick them up as you can to see what you can get. Personally, I'm trying to hit Chain on mine to spread the Asenath's Gentle Touch curse + Vuln deeper into packs. I'm not sure how it'll feel, but I think it'll help. One more upgrade that I can't suggest enough is an AoE Harvest Enchant for your bow. It takes the Asenath's Gentle Touch explosions from useful to screen clearing. I can't wait to get Hillock farmed up to get my quality higher. (Edit: Quick note -- If you're going for Chain it requires a minimum ilvl of 80 on the quiver. Make sure you specify accordingly in your search!)

References: u/previlein's PoB (Note, I have made some adjustments. Please see the original thread for the original version.): https://pastebin.com/MzQYmz9d

u/previlein's Reaper showcase: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CV0aM8YqwWs

u/previlein's video demonstrating budget Reaper damage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DLiR8eFI6mE

My PoB: https://pastebin.com/a5sTG0LU Ignore the open jewel socket -- Just leveled up and haven't figured out what I'm putting there yet.

Hope this helps to anyone who has been considering the build, but hasn't wanted to work with quite so many buttons!

(Edit: Forgot to mention -- Benefit of having Summon Skeletons on your Asenath's Chant trigger is they can serve as food for your Reaper reliably, letting you replace Summon Phantasm Support if you want. I like the Phantasms, but I'm also fighting socket colors on my bow right now and the more I can alleviate that the better. Options are always nice!)