Reduce the number of notable passives for Summon Skeletons

Currently, one needs to pick up 6 notable passives to maximize the number of Skeletons.
The nature of Summon Skeletons skill requires as much Skeletons as possible, these 6 notables are almost mandatory,
which limits the potential of the gem as a main skill a lot.

Reducing the number of Notables associated with Summon Skeletons e.g. to 4 notables, will solve a lot of non-viability Summon Skeletons has now.

(I have not checked the new skill tree yet.)

There's only 5 passives for skeletons, the spectres keystone doesn't give additional skeletons.

even still , it is alot of notables, i would prefer if they removed a few and simply added to the others and make them 4 stat or 5 stat bubbles instead of a bunch of 3 stat ones all over the place.

While I see what you're getting at, I think I can phrase it better, cause right now I disagree with your proposition:

We want the Summoner bonuses condensed. A couple main wheels for skeletons, A couple main wheels for Zombies, a Couple (well, one) main wheel for specters (which we have) a couple generic minion bonus wheels, rather than what we have right now which is a bit of skellies here and there, a bit of zombies everywhere...

By differentiating, we can dissuade summoners from feeling obliged to "run everything!" and run out of sockets and hopefully push them more towards the "pick and mix" selection of summoning. Should help diversify them a little bit.

Besides - we already don't have enough slots to run all the summons, we have to drop 2 already, and the golems are another being added. Diversifying the tree and making it so every flavor of summoner doesn't have to pick up the same 56 nodes would be great...

The problem with this being balance. Right now, going full summoner takes a MASSIVE passive investment. Condense them, or reduce the number for X minion type, or consolidate them, and it takes a lot less passives. Which lets summoners splash hypercurse, or mid-dps for status effect (shock ftw), or full-on aurawhore.

The only way this could work in theory is by gating the now-separated/condensed/reduced nodes behind a bunch of junk which people will complain about being forced to take.

In fact, auras provide a better example of why this would be bad. Right now auras are intentionally spread all over the map to make it expensive to get them all. Because, you know, having them all together, or be fewer nodes, would be crazy OP. same principle.

I think each summoned creature has its pro and cons, and should have distinctive features. In case of skeletons, it requires a lot of cast speed, and this should not change because it is an intentional mechanism which requires players choice to invest in cast speed or not. On the other hand, giving more accuracy to skeletons will be a bit of problems, since it is contrary to the design of the gem.

From the action of GGG removing the elemental penalty from skeletons, I also think that they do not have much of ideas toward the gem. I personally think removing the penalty from the gem was quite a bad remedy, since this resulted in there were fewer differences within the summon gems. Skeletons could focus on and specialize in physical damage, especially because there would be a lot of gems synergies with physical damage in the coming patch, but this idea had gone now.

I thinks this current situation can be solved if the notable passives for skeletons are compressed to 4 to 3. And these compressed notable passives can be mutually exclusive in a way suitable to not make them over powered. For example, some notable tied to skeletons can affect slightly negatively against specializing in Zombies or other summoneds.

Each paragraph in order:

1) You don't *have* to take cast speed for skeletons. You can stick em on a spell totem, or use Queens. Not sure what you're talking about with accuracy.

2) I have no clue what you're talking about with removing the elemental penalty. If it's from the beta, keep in mind that most of us aren't familiar with it. Regardless, IF they do remove the less elemental damage, it will be a simple balance choice. Given the way that the summoning meta has changed over time, it makes sense. Generally, with both zombies and skellies (and non-spell minions) people focus on phys dmg first, then scale it elementally with Hatred/Added Fire (and possibly some other stuff) now. So the reduced elemental damage modifier is no longer needed to deter people from flat elemental auras.

3) This, however, is both a good point and an interesting idea. I would totally dig notables (or more likely keystones) and/or uniques that do things like this, as well as allow you to reduce the number of points needed to invest while remaining balanced. Well done, sir!

"

tsftd wrote:

Each paragraph in order:

1) You don't *have* to take cast speed for skeletons. You can stick em on a spell totem, or use Queens. Not sure what you're talking about with accuracy.

2) I have no clue what you're talking about with removing the elemental penalty. If it's from the beta, keep in mind that most of us aren't familiar with it. Regardless, IF they do remove the less elemental damage, it will be a simple balance choice. Given the way that the summoning meta has changed over time, it makes sense. Generally, with both zombies and skellies (and non-spell minions) people focus on phys dmg first, then scale it elementally with Hatred/Added Fire (and possibly some other stuff) now. So the reduced elemental damage modifier is no longer needed to deter people from flat elemental auras.

3) This, however, is both a good point and an interesting idea. I would totally dig notables (or more likely keystones) and/or uniques that do things like this, as well as allow you to reduce the number of points needed to invest while remaining balanced. Well done, sir!

Thank you for organizing my post.
1) Usually no one focuses on cast speed when using Skeletons as a main skill, and the result is it is not viable (to clear in a good speed.) If one invests in cast speed, then there will not be enough skill points and not viable. Totems half the status of skeletons, which means it replaces the full power self cast skeletons once the number of skele reaches its max. Also if you cast 2 totems with self cast skeletons, first 2 totems followed by self casting, which takes a lot of time, by the time you summon max skeletons, most other builds would clear the pack of mobs engaging.

2) I heard they have removed ele penalty in closed beta, not confirmed yet though. Simply more different each skill, the better in my opinion. For example, the change made to EK to cast faster was a big mistake in my opinion but each has their opinions, it's ok.

3) There are too many way to solve the current situation, so I hope ppl in the thread share ideas. Usually GGG share the problems but they always find their own solution, so it might be more efficient to talk about "the root of problems".