Summoner Ideas after Snapshot/ Pure Summoner
" I think you do it completely the wrong way. Just drop almost all summoner uniques, and focus on passiv tree on minion passiv. You will wear better gear, and around lvl 85/90 , you will have all the minion passiv nodes and you will be very tanky with good gear. On my summoner, the only unique for summoner I wear is Midnight Bargain. IGN TylordRampage
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" And doing that would ignore the entire point of this thread. From the look of it Rathik's Matriarch beginner guide seems like the most feasible after snapshotting is removed/ not playing with snapshotting. But you can't get much further away from that as things are right now. We will have to let our minions die often so a 4l spectre is probably better with 6l zombies that can be resummoned. And just going after passives and ignoring uniques is the exact problem I am having with summoning items. We don't $#@&ing use them! "It's all clearer now
And I hear her now And I'm nearer to The Salvation Code" |
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" What the above guy said. I know i can run better items than mine summoner uniques, lol. But mine build runs around the idea of a full summoner. And i'm waiting for belt/glove/ring for summoners, then i'll run with a 100% unique summoner build. I can't care less about the power, i'm going with the tematical. Is that so hard to understand? XD Ofc, i FELL the lack of damage. The lack of survivability. The lack of everything that all those CoC builds have, or CI High expensive ES builds have, or even ST builds have. (even dual strike life leech owns me in EVERYWAY). Any top build full tematical will destroy a full summoner. And that's one of the list of problems with our Uniques and passive nodes. It need a buff. I don't know, maybe more than 40 ES per equip would help. Or maybe a passive deep into summoning that says: "all your bonus to minions health aplies to you aswell". This way the summoner can have around at least 100% (105%) increase health to help me out a little. Am i asking for too much? :/ Or boost the minions RES and Armor a little, since the HP may trigger more damage on MI (and some people cry about it). As all you guys said, there is NO POINT AT ALL to run a full summoner. Everybody agree that this is wrong and that i'm doing it wrong by using it. So the problem is: the build sux and need a buff. Full summoner needs more love *-* | |
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One thing I had thought of instead of minion health bonuses apply to character as well could possibly be that a summoner unique gives character the reverse of the rare mob with allies cannot die- "You cannot die as long as there is a minion present". I don't know if this would be overpowered or not. End game things like we have been discussing could slaughter the army and let you die often anyway.
"It's all clearer now
And I hear her now And I'm nearer to The Salvation Code" |
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Well snapshotable classes like summoners and Rf'ers were balanced on the fact that they could use that mechanic. We will probably see some changes( maybe buffs?) since those character types no longer have that option and they can modify those skill gems accordingly.
Necronomicon: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1617098
Build: https://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/409940 Summoner Dischord: https://discord.gg/XwWdSUa Youtube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/user/zhoukon | |
" I just don't like to use the word buff regarding these cases since its more of a small balance change rather than making something go from sucky to useful. For RF, the recent manifesto stated that GGG intended RF to be a short burst of damage increase with a drawback. I feel that in this regard RF is sorely under powered. For sucking your ES and Life down to 1 life I think RF should have an on off mechanic so you aren't risking your ass every time you use it as it was intended or make the damage much more impacting so you can sit and recover before going to the next mob shortly. As righteous fire is at the moment, I think the damage bonus is garbage compared to staying fully stocked on health. But these are about the only things RF users can really ask for without getting too greedy. For summoners, I think its still an issue of balance. The passive changes were very welcome but only really helped snapshotters. All the minion life leech and resists mean nothing if it only keeps them alive a few seconds longer. If a full minion passive tree increased minions damage as well as added a solid 30 seconds of surviving or something I think it would be more reasonable for non-snaps. "It's all clearer now And I hear her now And I'm nearer to The Salvation Code" Last edited by PleiadesBlackstar on Jun 19, 2014, 12:15:26 PM
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I was thinking on shower right now... XD.
Think about the passive node that says: your minion HP bonus applies to you, but all other HP bonus nodes dont have the HP effect, just the secondary effect (like keep the mana bonus or chaos res). Another node that says: your minion damage/life leech/Attack speed bonus apply to you but all other nodes of those bonus don't. This you can make a true warrior of undead, with cast when damage taken Skeletons for example, summoning 20 skles to fight alongside you, with a 2-handed sword. It would be sooooooooo coooooooool to watch or to do. I would play a warrior like that. But those are just ideas hahaha. The point of or summoners weakness is too big to left like that. I'm on a guild called "XAL" that have a LOT of strong guys with OP and well-known builds. So when i party with they, i can do NOTHING. AT ALL. If i can run to keep with they will be happy. They just kill everything too fast and go jumping and dashing way. Do you the fell of being so underpowered like that? Even a powerful auramancer of snaps, in a party of those really OP builds that everybody loves, fell like a baby near super-humans. The power gap is too big, it's not even fun. We are slow, we die easily. We can't solo most bosses. Is that right? I just killed mine 1st Xandro (at lvl 80), and that was so painful and so hard, and i was so lucky to be able to do that, i really think i'll do not be able do repeat this again. Mainwhile, our heavy strikers of close combat where soloing Uber Atz.... Oh well. I really hope GGG have some nice new uniques (end-game ones, lvl 60, 70+) for summoners. And more options into passive nodes. I'll never leave mine all-unique-summoner-weak-but-cool anyway, but some power would be nice haha. Now, let's enjoy some holydays here on Brasil hahaha, cya mates. | |
" Those passive changes would benefit somebody who is doing things like dominating blow, not a pure summoner. A pure would be only summoning and not doing direct damage themselves is my view. Which then leads us to the weakness again. I don't know about most bosses. Since I started doing the 4-month leagues I haven't played on my old summoner often and never really did more than a 72 map or higher. I think at least 60% of bosses are likely summoner soloable as it is now without snaps. Whether things like spectres and animate guardian which we want to survive in most cases will survive on top of that is questionable. Maybe for animate guardian at least a timer rather than health would be better. The only way animate guardian is useful is with specific uniques equipped so a timed playtime with one summoned seems like a reasonable idea as long as the timer is balanced. "It's all clearer now
And I hear her now And I'm nearer to The Salvation Code" |
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Updated some of the ideas that others or I had over the last few days.
"It's all clearer now
And I hear her now And I'm nearer to The Salvation Code" |
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As a completely pure summoner, I think I have some thoughts that might be helpful.
Here is some background on my setup:
Spoiler
My summoner is a Templar, which, I think, is the best class for summoning for various reasons. I run summoner unique in every slot except the chest (because I don’t have one) and helm (because I don’t have one, but I’m not completely convinced that Skullhead would be better than a +2 Minion Level Gems helm anyway). I use Midnight Bargain and Matua Tapuna. I use Eldritch Battery (so zero ES) and Minion Instability.
I do not use any sort of snapshoting. I never have. I can honestly say that my zombies almost never die. In fact, they die so infrequently, that I have been considering specing out of MI just to get a passive back (but I think it would remove my Boss killing ability too much since they usually kill the boss when they die). The biggest problem I have is not that I am squishy, because being squishy is fine 99% of the time if you can play smart and keep your minions between you and the enemy. The problem is attacks that bypass your minions. These come in pretty much two forms: top-down projectiles (Firestorm, Rain of Arrows, Storm Call, etc) and suicide enemies. There are some other enemies that always seem to bypass the minions, like the damn snakes from the Sarn Slums and the Marketplace, and the fucking Arc Mages from the Barracks. So the issue isn’t really even that the AOE attacks are killing you, because most AOE attacks still have to clear all the minions out of the way before they can get to you. The issue is that these attacks completely ignore both your damage dealing abilities AND your defensive abilities: the minions. Minions are designed to be either a nice additional support mechanic for just about any build, or with lots of tradeoffs, a build of their own. So let’s look at some of the pros and cons of each use first. As support:
Spoiler
Things you gain from having minions
- A speed bump that slows down the enemies long enough for your character to do something, such as raise totems or cast slow skills/spells. - Do not require much investment, especially for the Witch class Downsides to having minions - Take up one, MAYBE two sockets So as a support function, you are not really gaining much because the minions are not going to live for an awfully long time, but they will still serve a purpose. But on the same note, you are not losing much either because you really only need one socket (raise zombie) or maybe two if you want to put skellies on a totem. Either by the time you NEED those sockets back, you probably won’t need the extra 2 seconds that the minions will give you in terms of survivability, so you can just get rid of the minions. Now, as a full build (this is assuming that you are playing a real-honest-to-God pure summoner that lets the minions do nearly ALL of the damage and that you are trying to maximize your minions in some way (either max damage, survivability, or numbers). There are of course hybrid builds that will still run beefed up Specters but also do good DPS on their own…that’s not what this post is talking about.
Spoiler
What do you gain from having a pure summoner build:
- Survivability: Depending on the type/way you are running them, a huge meat shield that your enemies must wade through to get to you - DSP: Your minions are now additional sources of damage that will act, more or less, without you having to click a button to do the damage. You do still need to direct them for the most part - Skills that other players don’t have access to: Maybe not exactly this, but your specters can be pretty awesome because of the skills they come with…that’s usually how people pick their specters, based on the skills the specters will use. What do you lose by having a pure summoner build: - Survivability: You now have to spend your passives buffing your minions, not yourself. So you can’t get a metric ton of Life/Es nodes, not to mention, the gear sucks in terms of keeping YOU alive - DPS: just like with survivability, you are working to make your minions do the DPS, so you won’t be. And again, the gear sucks at making YOU do damage - Skills that other players DO have access to: I’m not saying that having a pure summoner build prevents you from using any skill; just that you are sacrificing valuable gems slots to be able to run the minions, so you can’t run several skills, plus auras, plus defensive set-ups (CwDT shenanigans). So as you can see from the above, when you run a pure summoner build, you are basically saying that your minions are both your offense AND your defense and you really are putting all your eggs in one basket. This normally isn’t a problem because it works just like any other build where sometimes you can face roll, and sometimes you need to kite. The issue is that there is not a single other build where the enemies can COMPLETELY bypass both your offense and your defense at the same time. Every other build relies on either maxing offense to kill enemies fast enough that defense is not an issue, or maxing defense enough that the DPS can be really low and still live to kill stuff over time, or finding a moderate balance where you have ok levels of each. The Summoner builds tend to have ok levels of each BUT ONLY FOR THE MINIONS. The character is weak both in offense AND defense. So if any enemy bypasses the minions... You’re fucked. So what is the solution? I think the ‘Can’t die while minions are alive’ is way too powerful and breakable by other builds (and minion builds....I am NEVER without at least 1 minion when in combat). It is too easy to just keep two skellies alive while your poison arrow cloud whittles away at a bosses HP. I think a better approach is to have a passive that either makes you immune to damage from enemies if you have a certain number of minions up (this is different from not being able to die) or that causes enemies to always attack the minions first.
Notable Passive: Battle General
Enemies always attack minions before players
This would be great, but I don’t think it would really solve the problem of the AOE attacks that can just skip over all the minions. You can still get killed very easily by taking damage not meant for you. So the only enemies this would really help against are the suicide type (the ones that run straight to you and explode), because the AOE spells/attacks can still hit you even if you are not the target……. and fucking Storm Herald….
Keystone Passive: True Necromancer
Player takes no damage from enemies if player has more than 15 minions
I think this is would be a good passive for several reasons. It benefits only those that are running a Pure Summoner set up by having a number of minions required that is not easy to reach unless you are really invested in minions, and then it is normal to have 15 or more minions. So taking it as any other build would be a waste of a skill point. It does not buff the minions, so they can still be killed just as easily as before meaning that you will need to pay attention and keep them alive and/or re-summon them. More importantly though, it does not make the player immune from dying; DOT effects would still reduce life so it does not create a scenario where the player is invincible. It would not be overly useful in boss fights because it will still require the summoner to be actively avoiding the boss while keeping the minions alive because most bosses can reduce your number of minions pretty quickly unless you severely over level the content. I think some other decent ways to balance the issue more would be a unique item (shield probably) that says something to the effect of: -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Necromancer's Token Archon Kite Shield Requires Level 60, 150 STR, 150 INT +12% to All Elemental Resistances Player Gains +x energy Shield for Each Zombie (*note*: x = 50?) Player Gains +y% Movement Speed for Each Skeleton (*note*: y = 1?) Player Gains +z% to All Elemental Resistances for each Specter (*note*: z = 10?) Player Cannot Deal Combat Damage -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- I think something along those lines would reward players that truely want a pure summoner build, but more importantly, it would fix some of the biggest downfalls we face. Exile
"Bullshit, you get the game for free." -Qarl |
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