Oblivion and Blighted Summoning

[visage]

If you have a bunch of summons with Blighted Summoning -- it's probably overkill to use all of Shadows, Hounds, and a Worm -- you can use that to summon the Herald. The Herald gets Blighted Summoning as well; it probably doesn't care much about the Bone Shield or the Virulent Disease, but I have to assume the bonus spellpower helps boost its damage. As for landing Nihil: Nether is already a reasonably useful source of damage for a summoner, since its attacks will pass harmlessly through your minions.

This doesn't work so well against undead, though.

[Snarvid]

I was thinking along similar lines, considering whether my Harold build would benefit from Blighted Summoning at 42 instead of Windtouched Speed and either Controlled Horrors or Friend of the Worm (definitely the latter if you also go Tinkers - viral injector ftw) instead of Meta. (I would also drop Augmented Movement for Entropy, since you no longer get TKwielding from the former and the loss of Meta will leave you wanting something to destroy sustains, and probably kick that decision out to later category points while grabbing Oblivion earlier, but that's not specific to the Blighted Summoning interaction.)

The other nice benefit to Blighted Summoning is that Hideous Visions, Hounds, and From Beneath really like having Bone Shields, given that two of the three will be tanking for you and the last you can already resummon fairly regularly with Command: Blink but it's going to be way tankier when it pops back into existence with Bone Shields in place.