Summoner keystone/unique

Greetings!

I have played a zombie/spectre/skeleton summoner rather extensively as of late. The thing is, it requires a large point investment for your minions to not suck - 24 points in purely minions, not counting Necromantic Aegis and associated nodes, or Minion Instability, should you choose to take it. Traveling to all those nodes will take like 40 points or so. Add in the need for several auras (at the bare minimum, a purity of elements with plenty of increased radius, preferably hatred or some other dps aura and/or a defensive one on top of that), and you barely have some points left to grab hp/defenses/mana/mana regeneration and other stats.

Add in the need for every gem slot being taken, leaving no room for defensive spells, like auto-cast enduring cry + immortal call, or spells like that, and your survivability is near 0. Convocation not being an inherent minion recall skill does not help.

On top of that, you only still have 2 spectres. You need to wear junk gear to have more, and you will have to re-summon a lot without Skullhead's hp regeneration. So, your defensive options in gear get somewhat limited as well. Bonus points for 1 less affix on your helmet/chest, to get +1 to minion gems and +1 zombie respectively.

My proposal to help dedicated summoners? A passive keystone (preferably behind Necromantic Aegis and associated nodes, or behind the minion wheel at the top part of Witch area), or a unique item, that makes bonuses that affect minions affect you, at the cost of making you unable to benefit from non-minion hp/damage, or at the cost of making you unable to cause damage yourself, same as Ancestral Totem keystone.

The lengths of this may vary - do you get your shield benefits back if you took Necromantic Aegis? Does it only include Yggdrassil nodes, or do bonuses from Skullhead/Vis Mortis/etc also apply to you? But so long as it gave some hp, and maybe even regen and chaos/elemental resistances, it would be a great help to dedicated summoners. If you are afraid of raging spirit summoners becoming too powerful with this, the Keystone could include a hefty penalty to casting speed, or some other stat that is very valuable to SRS summoners, while not so valuable to zombie/spectre/skeleton summoners.

That is all, thank you for reading.

tldr: "Summoners are skillpoint whores, slot/link whores, stat whores, their unique-item-enablers suck ass, so let me ship my redonculously OP idea."

in short: there's nothing you mentioned here that isn't par-for-the-course of playing a summoner. They're the only class in the game that will routinely use an Unset Ring because they need the stats so badly. They've been nerfed continuously and repeately because of snapshotting, and now that it's gone (which I do not miss one bit), they're surprisingly underpowered.

"Give them the ability to have minion bonuses apply to you"? HELL FUCKING NO! Have you SEEN the bonuses that summoner minions get? On top of this, don't forget that summon raging spirits is a thing still...
I know it's not a real summoner rather than a heat-seeking fireball build, but you seriously need to think about the potenial for abuse there. This suggestion is crazy balls. A summoner with a free 100% HP, 100% damage, 4%LL, 2.5% regen - amongst others...LOL

I'd be happy with GGG just rolling back on all of the summoner nerfs they made trying to balance snapshotting. (except the Burning Miscreation nerf - those guys were pretty silly. They could really do with some buffs now though...)

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Shieldbreaker wrote:

I have played a zombie/spectre/skeleton summoner rather extensively as of late. The thing is, it requires a large point investment for your minions to not suck - 24 points in purely minions, not counting Necromantic Aegis and associated nodes, or Minion Instability, should you choose to take it. Traveling to all those nodes will take like 40 points or so. Add in the need for several auras (at the bare minimum, a purity of elements with plenty of increased radius, preferably hatred or some other dps aura and/or a defensive one on top of that), and you barely have some points left to grab hp/defenses/mana/mana regeneration and other stats.

To correct you, it takes no less than 48 points if you go only for minion nodes and don't care about the path. But it takes no less than about 60 to take a path that you'll end up using optimally.

"

Shieldbreaker wrote:

On top of that, you only still have 2 spectres. You need to wear junk gear to have more, and you will have to re-summon a lot without Skullhead's hp regeneration. So, your defensive options in gear get somewhat limited as well. Bonus points for 1 less affix on your helmet/chest, to get +1 to minion gems and +1 zombie respectively.

Skullhead is inferior to a +2 minion helm.

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Shieldbreaker wrote:

My proposal to help dedicated summoners? A passive keystone (preferably behind Necromantic Aegis and associated nodes, or behind the minion wheel at the top part of Witch area), or a unique item, that makes bonuses that affect minions affect you, at the cost of making you unable to benefit from non-minion hp/damage, or at the cost of making you unable to cause damage yourself, same as Ancestral Totem keystone.

So you'd be okay with only 110% increased max life, 105% increased damage, 16% to elemental res, 20% to chaos res, 20% attack/cast speed, 2.5% life regen, and 4% global life leech, and give up all chances of getting more than that?

No fucking thank fucking you. I'll never allocate a keystone like that.

It'd be fine without any penalty.

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TikoXi wrote:

They're the only class in the game that will routinely use an Unset Ring because they need the stats so badly.

Sockets don't give stats, they give gem sockets.

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TikoXi wrote:

"Give them the ability to have minion bonuses apply to you"? HELL FUCKING NO! Have you SEEN the bonuses that summoner minions get? On top of this, don't forget that summon raging spirits is a thing still...

The only broken thing would be the global 4% life leech. Nothing else would be broken.

"

TikoXi wrote:

I know it's not a real summoner rather than a heat-seeking fireball build, but you seriously need to think about the potenial for abuse there. This suggestion is crazy balls. A summoner with a free 100% HP, 100% damage, 4%LL, 2.5% regen - amongst others...LOL

But yes, SRS needs to be nerfed. Those aren't true summoners, but are summoners nonetheless.

"

TikoXi wrote:

I'd be happy with GGG just rolling back on all of the summoner nerfs they made trying to balance snapshotting. (except the Burning Miscreation nerf - those guys were pretty silly. They could really do with some buffs now though...)

Snapshotting wouldn't fix it. We need a different answer, something that makes summoners survivable and their minions capable of at least withstanding enemy attacks for a long enough period that zombies and skeletons can be reconstituted.

Right now you can only do low level maps before minions melt.

Well, the 4% life leech would be rather useless if you are unable to deal damage, which was one of my suggested downsides for this keystone. Alternatively, you might only benefit from minion damage and hitpoint modifiers, which would still help boost survivability somewhat.

Also, I find it quite baffling how Necromantic Aegis has this supposedly huge downside of taking away your shield slot...When Bones of Ulr/Vis Mortis/Skullhead and other necessary items (some of them, not all at once) are already annihilating your item slots. Dedicated summoners really feel like they could do with a buff or 3.

"

Shieldbreaker wrote:

Well, the 4% life leech would be rather useless if you are unable to deal damage, which was one of my suggested downsides for this keystone. Alternatively, you might only benefit from minion damage and hitpoint modifiers, which would still help boost survivability somewhat.

Also, I find it quite baffling how Necromantic Aegis has this supposedly huge downside of taking away your shield slot...When Bones of Ulr/Vis Mortis/Skullhead and other necessary items (some of them, not all at once) are already annihilating your item slots. Dedicated summoners really feel like they could do with a buff or 3.

Hence why I said such a keystone needs no downside. Running a bunch of minions is a huge downside in and of itself.

One item per minion, with at least one six-link guaranteed to be a minion. That's a huge penalty.

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Natharias wrote:

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Shieldbreaker wrote:

Well, the 4% life leech would be rather useless if you are unable to deal damage, which was one of my suggested downsides for this keystone. Alternatively, you might only benefit from minion damage and hitpoint modifiers, which would still help boost survivability somewhat.

Also, I find it quite baffling how Necromantic Aegis has this supposedly huge downside of taking away your shield slot...When Bones of Ulr/Vis Mortis/Skullhead and other necessary items (some of them, not all at once) are already annihilating your item slots. Dedicated summoners really feel like they could do with a buff or 3.

Hence why I said such a keystone needs no downside. Running a bunch of minions is a huge downside in and of itself.

One item per minion, with at least one six-link guaranteed to be a minion. That's a huge penalty.

Well, generally all keystones have a downside, besides Ondar's Guile And Conduit. But the downside should be something to limit cookie cutter builds grabbing it and, say, 5-6 minion nodes that are in their way and very point efficient, not something that would hurt summoners themselves.

A decent idea I came up with for a penalty was minion charges when not summoning from a totem. Say, you take the keystone, and can now only cast 3 summons per 5 seconds or something like that. Skeleton totems remain unaffected, since totems would not have this limitation, vaal skeletons are still only one cast, and viola - raging spirit builds would not benefit overly much from this keystone, unless they are some sort of 3 totem build, which needs love anyway.

Threads that go bump in the night.

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Shieldbreaker wrote:

Threads that go bump in the night...

...usually are the ones not worth bumping.
/Graveyard

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TikoXi wrote:

...usually are the ones not worth bumping.
/Graveyard

Since you were unable to read the first post properly, I will not value your input on this matter too highly.

But it does appear that people do not care much for summoners :(

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Shieldbreaker wrote:

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TikoXi wrote:

...usually are the ones not worth bumping.
/Graveyard

Since you were unable to read the first post properly, I will not value your input on this matter too highly.

But it does appear that people do not care much for summoners :(

To the contrary. I commented earlier in the thread. But that still doesn't excuse this graveyarding attempt.