Summon Skeletons

After 60 levels of witchery, the current Summon Skeletons seems pretty much perfect to me. Base values and level progression are well balanced. Skill idea is solid and well executed.

Many tactical options for different builds, none too strong nor too weak. From pure summoner's primary boss tool to minionbomber's living nukes. Fun skill to play with - their slow speed, limited duration and limitless stupidity rewards player skill nicely.

Gotta like the audiovisual aspect as well. Their sounds and animations really make them feel like the brittle, brainless temporary summons they are.


Only bad thing (concers all POE summoning skills):
Lack of information! Damage? Damage mitigation stats? Just how much do summons inherit from their casters?
At lvl 30 as a pure summoner build, i feel the thing really holding me back is the skeleton stupidity.

The bigest problem rises when i have to face a big mob including enemies that summon more enemies (necromancers), especially elite ones. Some fights took ages not because i would have been too weak, its because even if i summoned my skeleton on top of the necromancer, they would just walk acroos the room to hit the skeletons that were beeing revived indefinetly.

Honestly the only thing i feel that needs tweaking is the minion AI at this stage. The minions are not too strong, and not too weak, they die pretty fast just fast enough to still make it a active playstyle, and not just summoning an army and walking around with it.
It would be nice if the stupidity could be tuned a little down. Not too much, but just a little...
Would be awsome if you could implement small little icons showing how many servitors of the different types u momentarily posses (so 3 Icons for Zombie, Skeletons, Spectres)
Those could popup in some corner with a small number in em though u can always see how many servitors u got.
I suggest this, because its sometimes hard to figure out,how many of that trillion zombies in some dungeons are actually yours and not enemys :D
IGN: _Gildarts_
I don't like the 2 Minion each cast limit. Like I said this will only result in players using 2 Skeleton gems 1 linked with a totem and another one for manual support.

Still Melee or ranged characters can exploit them as a punchingbag like they did before.

There must be a way to restrict the punching bag abuse like 1 skeleton each totem and give pure summoners the chance to cast at last 4 with one cast for example count them as projectiles, so you can summon many weaker skeletons.
the 2 minion per cast for pure summoner seems weak

how about adding a 1/2 or 1/3 minion per cast for each skel added on the passive tree.
this would make it 4 or 5 skels per cast at a heavy cost on the passive tree for nonsummoner builds
Hey, I love the minion changes for the most part, but I do have a gripe...

I have a 68 necro-witch. After the last two skill tree revamps and the change to summon skeletons, my build is pretty much useless. I had to completely regear and change the way I kill things.

Basically what I was doing before was using skeletons as bombs. I'd drop 5 of them on top of whatever I wanted to kill, and I used no minion life passives, only a minion life gem. At lvl 67, I was using Ice Spear with 150dps to crowd control; all my other points went into defensive stats, buff stats, aura, mana, str/dex so I could wear any gear, etc.

Since the last change, I'm down from being able to summon 5 skeletons on top of a mob to 2 skeletons, down from 15 max to 9 max. When I would previously throw skeletons on top of mobs, hit them with Vulnerability, and then chill them, I now find Summon Skeletons to be almost entirely useless. I'm only using it now to kill mobs that stand in a corner where I can't hit them with Frost Wave (which I had to boost up to 750ish dps to kill things).

I could previously run 3 spectres, which would stay by me (I only spectre ranged mobs), 7 zombies to guard me, and 15 skeletons whose death was my main dps. I ran discipline, purity, clarity lvl 11, wrath, (sometimes vitality), and a rejuv totem to keep them alive. Wrath now seems to be fairly pointless; I've now thrown in an added lightning dmg gem in lieu of that aura.

I'd like to request that you consider altering Summon Skeletons so myself and a few other necros I know of can use our suicide minion tactics. It's a slower way to kill things than just spamming 750ish dps and 5 zombies, but if I wanted to run an ele-witch I wouldn't have used the minion passives. What I'd like to see is a return to the ability to summon more than 2 at a time and a bump back up in the max amount summon-able. If you feel it's necessary for balance reasons to tone down their hp/damage to do that, no problem, but the way that skill is tuned now is HIGHLY disappointing.

Thanks!
well i'm using gem supported skeletons too, lv 31. i'm pure minion master getting all minion related passives and have the boot unique for increasing max number of skeleton and zombies. my skeleton (and zombies) currently have both 35% increase from support gem (lv 6) and 50% increase from passives. they live for marginally longer time than before patch but i too wish the count wasn't reduced. thier hp boost is negligable but at least they explore more reliably. but it's 3 skeletons worth of hp for 2 skeletons and instead of having 4 of them up at once...kinda dramatic change.

slightly more reliable bombs and damage for not fully able to use them for defense or "popcorn".
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soul4hdwn wrote:

slightly more reliable bombs and damage for not fully able to use them for defense or "popcorn".


They're not very good for defense now, either. If I got swarmed before, all I had to do was summon them all on top of me and they would both intercept hits and splat whatever was trying to hit me. They were VERY good for defense before, although they killed incredibly slowly.
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silentwolfxvx wrote:
"
soul4hdwn wrote:

slightly more reliable bombs and damage for not fully able to use them for defense or "popcorn".


They're not very good for defense now, either. If I got swarmed before, all I had to do was summon them all on top of me and they would both intercept hits and splat whatever was trying to hit me. They were VERY good for defense before, although they killed incredibly slowly.
i was agreeing with you though, yes that is exactly the major and key difference.

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