The Power of Minions (some feedback)

Well, after 2 months in beta, here is my and my friend's (he's lurking) humble attempt at writing a feedback :-)

1. Characters with minions do way better than no minion ones all the way from Normal Act 1 to Merciless Vaal Oversoul slaying. Minions make a perfect "human shield", that also deals decent damage. So all you have to do is get some decent mana regen and spam minions ftw. Minion builds are not complicated and switch game to "easy mode" (in comparsion to no minion builds).

2. Melee champions without Chaos Innoculation have really serious troubles vs chaos damaging monsters on lategame ("bouns") maps. Level 63 Duelist with 1,2k HP, 1,5k dps, 6% lifesteal and 2 healing flasks dies in 2 seconds to 1 (sic!) poisonous spider at lvl 61 map.

3. Melee champions look much harder to build and play in lategame in general.

If anybody proves me wrong, thanks in advance.

I only played a pure summoner to level 50, but you missed some great weaknesses of this class (which maybe don't apply to hybrid summoners).

Firstly, during the whole normal difficulty, the minions are absolutely useless. They have less than 100 hp until about level 20, so they will die faster than you can summon them, even in easy areas.

Secondly, in all difficulties, any aoe damage will obliterate your entire minion pack in no time, especially when you consider that the minions don't actively dodge aoe damage. Examples include western forest bombers, rocky climb and prisoner's gate wolves and terrace fire bombs.

Summoners are unable to rush through areas without killing, because if an emergency comes up, we cannot instantly start attacking like a caster class can. We first need to take 5 seconds to resummon minions, during which time we are exposed to all damage and dealing no damage ourselves.

Atm summoners' pros are bigger than cons. But the content of the thread goes way far than summoner stuff.

1) Summonners just got elaborated (better AI and proper numbers). So I expect it to be balanced later on.

2) Viper strike chaos damage is really something to be feared as a melee character. Once I get hit I easly burn all my flasks trying to stop the status effect.

3) Indeed. Melee feels a bit off atm. And in my viewpoint it will be quite hard to tweak it! If you increase the survival aspects some build will be unkillable, and if you increase damage output everything will be ohko even easier.

This thread has a lot of potential, as it is bringing together some of the biggest chitchats in the air atm.

iam a pure summoner, i dont actively attack (although iam trying to get to that stage). i died all the time until lvl 60. i was extremely squishy, iam ok now, but i was given a good ES chest peice to wear.


basically what you will find, is that you can go through content pretty safe at high levels while having bad equipement as long as your careful. HOWEVER you will go through it very slowly compared to someone else, to the point of when iam running with a group of other guys, i dont think iam actually killing anything.... all iam doing is providing a distraction. when iam by myself i have to kill every mob, i cant run past stuff. if i do i would run the risk of dying.

Summoners themselves I think are fine. We just need more anti-summoner monsters. Lightning arrow for instance, is great at obliterating skeletons, even if you dual totem spam their creation.

Summoners starts out really weak like many have already mentioned.

They also become really weak later on. Summoners doesnt scale with gear. You cant kill content fast, besides aoe, they also have a lot of trouble with doors, especially if its guarded by a pack of multi lighting arrow.

I think summoners are fine at the moment.

Chaos damage and ranged vs melee you mentioned are entirely separate and different subjects.

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Wain wrote:

Secondly, in all difficulties, any aoe damage will obliterate your entire minion pack in no time, especially when you consider that the minions don't actively dodge aoe damage. Examples include western forest bombers, rocky climb and prisoner's gate wolves and terrace fire bombs.

I've never seen that happen. My minions are incredibly robust, and I am even a bit of a hybrid summoner / cold caster. Yes, they die (infrequently) to AoE, but then they usually kill whoever did that (Instability). Again, I have no troubles whatsoever in any difficulty with my minions, and I am untwinked with terrible gear I find myself. And I have no idea what I am doing, my witch is my first runthrough, and I am by far not a great player. Granted, I like summoning (loved the necro in D2), but still: I have only died once with the witch.

The OP is mostly correct. However this really only means that melee need a buff. I don't necessarily think that summoners need a nerf.

Nerfing is dumb a lot of times and can get easily out of hand.

Yes, I play a summoner as well. It was one of my first classes and even to this point one of my favorite classes to play since I started this game. I don't typically enjoy the summoner playstyle, however in POE I find it quite fun and exciting. If they were to nerf the build in anyway I would be extremely discouraged. Really nerfing is pretty dumb and very annoying.

Anyways, onto the subject. I don't think Summoners will be very strong in PVP. When it comes to defense and offense, 1v1 we just don't have it. Luckily in PVE AI is pretty dumb and mobs will never think to find you and kill you, giving you a pretty much infinite meat shield for as long as your mana can hold out. However in PVP no one is going to try and kill your skeletons. And since you can't raise zombies/specters without killing something first, it's likely going to be the summoners dps skill. And in PVP slow moving skeles are going to suck. But hey, what do I know.

I will admit though, in PVE it's pretty easy. I rarely get my hands dirty, and if I die it's either because I got 1 shot by some random thing, or I went afk in a bad place. My gear is all self made, and its not anything great, but I beat all the difficulties with only a handful of deaths. Compared to other classes like a melee class it's quite different. Melee does feel a bit clunky and weighted down.

The reason why summoners can cope is they take the time to set up the situation with minions, totems, curses rather then having a spam one spell type of build.

You can do the same thing with a melee build if you forgo the min/max trend.