Minion supports for weapons and armour. Greater customisation and a fix to the instability problem.

Proposal

Replace minion damage support with minion weapon supports that increase damage while visually altering the summoned minion. Different weapon supports (blades or bows) could alter minion behaviour and capabilities.

Replace minion life support with minion armour supports that visually alter the summoned minion and increase survivability without increasing its life.

(By default all unsupported minions would be summoned unarmed and unarmoured)


Justification

Current minion specific supports are just too plain. They don't really feel like you've buffed or customised your minions and aren't very interesting. Furthermore with instability there is the problem that it's just more effective to stack their life and turn them into nothing but walking bombs.


Implications

1) Different weapon supports alter minion stats and performance.

- Sword and shield for improved armour and block chance. This could be required to enable tempest shield (with necromantic aegis).

- Bastard swords for more damage and greater accuracy.

- Dual claws for faster attacks and life leech.

- Warhammers for slower attacks but higher damage and greater stun duration.

- Bows for ranged attacks.

2) Different armour supports for greater customisation.

- Minion Heavy Armour (armour)

- Minion Medium Armor (evasion)

- Minion Light Armor (energy shield)

(In this scenario the off-hand bonuses for increased armour, evasion and energy shield from Necromantic Aegis become more relevant to your minion setup)

3) Different skins for cash shop purchases.

- Weapon skins, armour skins and animation sets for minions could become desirable cash shop purchases for the discerning necromancer. This could be in addition to minion skins.

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Any thoughts or comments please share them. If you like the idea please comment and help get it noticed.
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The probleme with your idea it s the balance , the minion must be effectiveness without your support gem , and this same support gem must have got utility too without take minion over powered. But it can be a good idea.

Impossible with spectre because you can summon a spectre of a monster (who can t take a wearpon , because no arms :D )

Animation of wearpon and armor muste be create with all summon possibility , all combinaison , not easy but possible.

Balance shouldn't be an issue since at its base implementation there are only two gems that do essentially the same thing as the two existing gems they would replace.

Minion Weapons does exactly the same thing as the current Minion Damage gem except for the fact it alters the summoned minion visually by giving it a weapon.

Minion Armour is a little different but it seeks to remove the imbalance Minion Life currently has when combined with Minion Instability. As a summoner there really is no reason not to take instability and support your hordes with more life since its just so much more effective than anything else.

Both these gems would only apply to zombies and skeletons since spectres are a direct recreation of a slain foe complete with its equipment. The tasks required for implementing this idea would include:


Skill changes

- Enable Raise Zombie and Summon Skeletons to set the model and animations used by a summon based on the combination of linked supports.


Animations:

- Armed zombie
(could use existing skeleton animations as stand in)

- Unarmed skeleton
(could use existing zombie animations as stand in)


Models:

- Unarmed skeleton
(use existing, delete sword and shield)

- Armed skeleton
(use existing, delete shield)

- Armoured skeleton
(use existing, delete sword)

- Armed and armoured skeleton
(use existing)

- Unarmed zombie
(use existing)

- Armed zombie
(use existing, add a sword)

- Armoured zombie
(use existing, add a plate vest)

- Armed and armoured zombie
(use existing, add a sword and plate vest)


Summary
Assets required for this could be produced quickly and cheaply with small modifications to existing assets. The biggest problem would be modifying the skills to set the model and animations used by the summon. Without knowing how the game works internally we can only speculate as to the difficulty of achieving this.

Of course if zombies and skeletons were adapted to work similarly to the player entity in that the player can dynamically equip weapons and armour then the game play possibilities this would unlock are truly immense.

GGG, you'd have the only ARPG on the market with minion customisation capabilities rivalling the incredible squad customisation options of Dawn of War 2.

And you'd open up a huge array of purely aesthetic cash shop possibilities at the same time.

Just to expand on the idea, I'd like to see minion supports that do more to alter minions than just boost some invisible background stats. For example a support to cause minions to release a toxic cloud (like poison arrow does) when they receive a critical hit. Or something to enrage them when their master is attacked.

I liked the part of having the ability to choose if you want your minions to melee, or be archers, or tanks to give you time, but not with a life gem or a damage gem but like an equipment gem.

It may be something like: "+50% life, -25% damage", or, "-50% life, added ranged damage"

I don't know, just throwing ideas, I'm sure there could be other ways too like people here suggested, I don't have much thinking on me right now, sleepy u_u

+1

Honestly I think this idea would be made easier by, instead of creating a slew of new support gems, to instead create new skill gems to go with the whole summoner concept.

Raise Zombie
Summon Skeletons
Summon Skeleton Archer (Summon 1 skeleton archer instead of 2 skeleton warriors, 5 cap before uniques)
Raise Deathknight (Raise a heavy armored greatsword undead, possibly melee AOE, 1 cap before uniques)
Raise Liche (Raise an undead spellcaster that casts a random element spell each attack, possible ranged AOE, 1 cap before uniques)
Raise Spectre
Summon Wight (Summon a crawler-undead with claws, uses reave and whirling blades, 3 cap before uniques)

Something like this kind of list of new skills which can each gain the normal benefits of minion life, damage, resistance, speed.

This may be a little much however, since Raise Spectre pretty much covers every creative possibility anyway.
I do very much like the Liche and Deathknight ideas though, I imagine them to be like the generals of your undead army. Maybe they could be like totems and you can only have 1 champion at a time.
Oh hey, champion, there's a cool idea.