Will there be any mix-mashing of Ascendancy classes?

I personaly really love if someone is creative enough to take a different approach to an issue and tries to solve it and/or build around it.

Many people think that Necromancer is the best and most optimal choice for any summoner spec in PoE when 2.2 hits. Necromancer might be the best for a generic summoner (who knows, it might not be in the end) but there are other options to consider:

What does necromancer really offer if you break it down?

- Minion Damage
- Skill effect duration
- cast speed
- minion life
- (conditional) physical damage reduction
- chaos resist
- chaos damage
- a chaos form of Minion instability


Minion damage is always nice but if you are jewel heavv and have already 200%+ minion damage and some other form of buffs and other generic sources of damage the additional damage from the ascandancy tree would not mather that much (ok you could kill a boss probably 1-2 seconds faster than without it) but trash can be killed just as fast without it.

Skill effect duration is very nice to get but nothing you can't get otherwise. 30% increased duration isn't that much if you are already heavy speced on duration - that might be another 1.2 seconds endgame at most. Some minion builds don't even make use of skill effect duration at all.

Cast speed is nice but nothing you can't invest in in many other different ways. For some summoner typs cast speed is irrelevant.

Minion life is only noticable if you are really going for it - usually the support gem and a few passives on the tree give your zombies 12k+ life even without empower. SRS don't need extra life and most good specters don't need it either.

The physical damage reduction is a conditional unique mechanic which nearly every other class have to offer in some unique form - so nothing you can't get elsewhere if you really want it

Chaos resist and chaos damage can also be aquired somewhere else if needed. Same for minion instability or by using a similar mechanic like abyssal cry



So you can see there is actually nearly nothing you can't get somewhere else besides some unique benefits which give you easy numerical stats.



Let us look at some other classes that could be used by summoners:

Guardian:
As already mentioned by others templar's guardian allows they player to build multiple auras and tankyness for himself and their minions at the same time. +100% spectre life is nothing compared to the defensive boost a guardian can provide for his minions. Attack- cast- and movementspeed boni from warcrys for minions and yourself also doesn't sound that bad - a really good choice for a defensive aura mancer approach.

Hierophant:
A full minion summoner is always starved on jewel sockets and links right? Not so much if you choose the templar's hierophant class which can provide 3 extra free 5-links for you and your minions. Up to 4 Aura totems which cost zero mana could provide tons of additional buffs for your minions and your self if you choose to go this way or get really strong defeses and build a unique looking MoM summoner. Sounds like a really good and versatile hardcore option for me.

Champion
Wanna go perma fortify tanky life based? Then duelist's champion would be your choice. A tanky dominating blow character for example could make use many of those ascendancy passive in duelist - attack speed and damage nodes are already nearby. Fortify is the obvious one but also the increased damage an movementspeed for you and your minions are great benefits. Removing status aliments and some armour/evasion also sound like really nice boni.

Occultist
Wanna focus an multi cursing, chaos damage and some additional es based defenses? Then witch occultist might be the class for you. Curses provide huge offesive and defensive benefits to you and your minions. Faster ES regen that can't be interupted when startet is great for summoners because they won't get hit that often usually with thier wall of minions infront of them. Casting supportive chaos based spells like abyssal cry, wither or even going for an hybrid chaos caster/summoner build wit essence drain/contagion could be really strong if you think about it for a while.

Saboteur
Yes even shadow's saboteur could be build as a creative hybrid summoner/trapper. Traps could benefit and support your minions greatly an combat while providing some defensive mechanics on top of it. The blind specialization could also be utilized with chaining and multiple hitting skills/traps to augment your build; chill/freeze/shock/ignite and poison are great availabe tools if you choose to use them. You also could use Kong Ming's Strategem and smoke mines to create smoke clouds paired with evasion and dodge combined with a wall of minions infront of you to create a vaible form of mitigation against any form of attacks on top of that.




What i wanted to say with this wall of text is that it only takes some creativity - you just have to look behind the obvious stuff and get creative. PoE is a game with nearly endless possibilities you only have to get up and do it!
If you are lazy and not creative enough to figure some cool build out yourself - just pick some "proofed meta build" from the forums or reddit and have some fun. If you wanna figure out some new stuff yourself... maybe it is you that will create the next meta build, who knows?


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But it is all about clear speed in the end - isn't it?

Nope sry, that isn't really a valid arguement for a summoner build those days. If you wanna have the best clear speed in the game play COC Discharge or COC "anything" or go crit bow/projectile/spell AoE ranged and stop playing summoner.
If you wanna be versatile instead as your top goal, summoner is definitly a solid choice :^)
Last edited by Wiesl_1404 on Feb 12, 2016, 7:07:45 PM
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There WILL be optimal path (other than the CoC discharge stupidity we have rightnow).


Everyone will copy-paste my endurance discharger guardian build.
It can only generate charges every 4 sec, but at least no more 0.25 sec cast time, OP.
I could as well just group with someone who pump charges inside me, nohomo.

Btw I really don't like that everyone is playng discharge, I will rather wait for the new skillgems, maybe some will introduce some mechanism that beats this coc shit.
Last edited by krenderke on Feb 12, 2016, 7:09:38 PM
Yet again I have 0 idea why people believe this.

Diversity right now basically means "I can pick whatever character skin I like the most." There is almost no difference between any character class other then like 1-2% difference in power (assuming obviously you choose the class near the nodes you want). That isn't real diversity because diversity means "variety" or "an range of different things."


Will I play a mara/duelist summoner pre-patch? No because it would completely suck, would I play a mara/duelist summoner after patch? No it would completely suck.

Is witch still the most "optimal" character for summoner after patch? Sure, is templar still the 2nd best summoner after patch? Yeah sure.

What changed really other than the option for more interesting class builds. People need to get over character model = new build or some shit. Diversity isn't the amount of character models that can play a build.

Diversity is the amount of total viable builds and variants that you can play ~.~
Last edited by RagnarokChu on Feb 12, 2016, 8:40:09 PM
Occultist Infernal blow witch? I think so.

-Blasphemy melee tri-curse with abyssal cry makes it a 28% health explosion for fire and chaos. Not to mention 12% increased damage vs mobs who are tri-cursed, oh yeah and the fact that they're tri-cursed with Ele weakness, Flam and Enfeeble....

Possibilities like this is ALL the "mix-mashing" you'll ever need. This will pretty much complete the game in my eyes and i have been watching and playing this game since it began in the public eye.
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Pewzor wrote:
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rdespair wrote:
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Pewzor wrote:
As a hardcore min/maxer it's pretty idiotic to make a summoner not going necromancer witch.


I'd say you're not a very good player if you think that when other classes clearly have very powerful advantages for summon builds.

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Hierophant seems to be totem focused and guardian is clearly geared towards support/buff bitch.


Summoners frequently go heavy on support to boost their summons making Guardian an obvious choice. But let's look at Hierophant since it's less obvious.

Summoners are frequently starved for slots and with one passive, you turn all your 4-slot equipment into 5-slot equipment gaining LV3 Elemental Penetration, LV1 Life Leech, LV1 Increased Area of Effect. Lots of fun things a summoner could do with that setup. And note how Ritual of Awakening says "less totem damage" not "less damage" so the penalty gets completely ignored if say you're using Raging Spirit Totems, Skeleton Totems, and/or aura totems. Alternatively, if you don't want to support your minion efforts with totems, just go the Sanctuary of Thought route and make yourself super tanky while also giving yourself all the mana you could possibly use.


I dont know if you ever played HC before, or just bad.

I have zero issues surviving HC in all current contents, and I don't really group hug to do maps.
And all the shit you mentioned will not come close to the bonus provided by necromancer.
And the super tanky part... why would I need that if I am literally afking HC tier 15 maps with 150 iiq already? tbh if you can't really afk any map as a summoner you have failed.

And using totems to support my summons is just stupid and extra work for lower return than that necromancer talents provide since all I am looking for is damage.

The only annoying part are my spectres sometimes getting one shot in some extreme instance and how are you beating 100% extra life and damage on that?


Actually, most of what he mentions is pretty much more powerful than the necromancer stuff.
You dont get any of the small "minion damage" nodes, but the big nodes, the *important* nodes are weaker.

On the other hand, those nodes are kickass for a melee witch build i am planning to make.

You just need to be a bit creative. But i know thats not a thing in Path of "look at the forum and copy FOTM build".
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Cataca wrote:
yabiyaba


Still waiting on your creative build that will clear faster than LL volls discharge.
The real hardcore PoE players and the elites sit in town and zoning in and out of their hideouts trading items. Noobs that don't know how to play PoE correctly, kill monsters for items. It's pure fact, it will never change.

Welcome to PoE.
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Pewzor wrote:
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Cataca wrote:
yabiyaba


Still waiting on your creative build that will clear faster than LL volls discharge.

Any ranged builds that does similar damage.

I mean if you're one shotting anything then the only thing that matters if you can output that damage faster and across multiple screens faster then another build.
Last edited by RagnarokChu on Feb 13, 2016, 3:54:01 AM
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RagnarokChu wrote:
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Pewzor wrote:
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Cataca wrote:
yabiyaba


Still waiting on your creative build that will clear faster than LL volls discharge.

Any ranged builds that does similar damage.

I mean if you're one shotting anything then the only thing that matters if you can output that damage faster and across multiple screens faster then another build.


No? If you oneshot anything its all about the speed at wich you can run, while oneshotting everything. (wich ofc is a lie, there is nothing that can oneshot anything).

I personally agree with the OP though, there will be one way to do builds, that is better then the others. Thats just the way the game is designed. If you wanna go something creative and fun, be prepared to drop some % effectiveness on the way.
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Zhatan wrote:
I personally agree with the OP though, there will be one way to do builds, that is better then the others. Thats just the way the game is designed. If you wanna go something creative and fun, be prepared to drop some % effectiveness on the way.

Yep. This'll always be the case when there's choices to be made. Luckily, Ascendancies won't really change that at all, it'll only shift around a bit.
And here i thought this was the end of the whole meta debacle </3

It's almost as if efficiency is a cornerstone of the creation process :(

Peace,

-Boem-
Freedom is not worth having if it does not include the freedom to make mistakes

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