I play melee, my girl plays a summoner....

At first this was cool because she didn't have any minions at low levels. Now that she has like 9 skeles and i think about 7 zombies, it just drives me up the wall! Little by little its just getting annoying to target anything and destroying my POE experience. I am not sure if anyone has played with a summoner before but its a horrible experience as a melee character. Now I was thinking maybe you guys can add like a aura around her minions, maybe like a bright glowy outline so I know which ones are her minions. I don't know maybe someone else can bring up a better idea or something to help out this situation when playing with a summoner.

Thank you

Many feel the same. Personally necro's are my favourite build and I love having a horde but sometimes it gets tough to know what's going on even playing solo. I also tend to avoid party play as summoner because it becomes impossible, except when the horde can help others pass a boss fight that's causing them trouble.

I think some sort of "half as many, twice as strong" minion keystone or support gem would be a cool addition for summoners.

"half as many, twice as strong" - how freaking genius is that? Would love to see that as a keystone although may be a bit op. Halves the maximum minion count.(rounded down) Increases minion life and attack by 100%.

Well done, BlastMonkey. Try to post this on feedback forum or try to catch Chris on some stream and ask him in person. As GGG is one of the most open developers we've seen, this idea has a good chance on having an actual response.

Yah it gets pretty nuts. I played a summoner to L40's, but got distracted with other builds.

Don't you guys play with any auras? That could help identify her minions most of the time (except when facing rares with auras). Aura stacking is very powerful with minions as they also benefit from them. My summoner witch is life based instead of CI, has Eldritch Battery and runs: Discipline, Clarity, Wrath, Anger, and Purity. She also casts spork (spark + fork) as a support damage spell and to add shock debuffs.

the only class summoners group well with is another summoner. ranged classes can do well with summoner since they can simply target the endless hordes of skellys that are spawning on the screen. but the lag will still be quite significant.

my personal suggestion is to abandon your melee and either start a ranged class or another summoner. if you insist on on staying melee, then you have to go with a pure flicker build. this way you don't actually have to target the mob.

Yeah it really sucks that I will be forced to roll another class. At the moment I lost desire to even log in and play. The minion auras help, but problem is when you go into other rooms with other zombies and skeles. Not to mentioned when mobs have auras also its just a huge problem. I have never played a range or mage class in any MMO, I typically like melee classes so I don't know if going range will help but I will try.

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FriarJon wrote:

auras? That could help identify her minions

Certainly, it's a key part of being a summoner. I used to pick an aura and a curse with opposing colours so I could highlight friendlies and hostiles. Problem is that many auras have orbital effects that overwhelm the scene when affecting a group.

I think if only the orbital effects were removed from anything not actually running an aura and the "affected by aura" effects were much more subtle than the "currently running aura" effect then things would be a lot better.

There's a feedback thread on this issue here if you'd like to offer support.

I like that half as many twice as strong idea.

I had to laugh when reading this. The one, and only, time I went summoner (found a summon zombies gem) when in a race I died in Cavern of Anger as I could not distinguish between my zombies and the exploding spawn of Merveils daughters. This is not an isolated issue though as I have started to play In parties and wonder how annoying my ice nova must be to te tank members of my party

I mentioned that problem around 2-3 months ago in my feedback thread....I feel u :D