New golem skills

I really like all the new gems in today's announcement, but I was wondering one thing about golems.

They seem to have a certain purpose, which I like, but somehow i'm disappointed they do not affect other minions you may summon. It's obvious they don't want them to affect 'regular' allies, such as auras, but why not wording it like "you and any other minion controlled by you" or something like that?

From a gameplay point of you, I would like to discuss this "issue" . I can certainly see the golems to be better in a summoner build (more life, more damage , leech , resistances etc) but I presumed them to affect other minions which is not the case.

Do you agree? do you think is a balance issue? or a technical one? (such as they can't buff minions without buffin also an ally?) Or maybe they want to test it in one way and then decide? Or instead they have it like this for flavour ?

I see the golems more as the 'followers' you had in D2, with various specialisations to complement your build, rather than being a summoner addition

From my point of understanding, they are made to be your bros. So you wouldn't play alone. If you look at the gems, you can see that each of the golems fills specific niche.

Melee get ranged bro (high STR gem req)
Casters get tanky bro (high INT gem req)

And the dex one... feels like "I'll run from this devo away, while you my bro, will kill him!".

Tho fire golem seems superb with Dual Flame Totem marauder.



As for summoners... man they have so much crap already to go along with. But i would wait for upcoming tree and new items. There might be an option to summon two of the golems (which i hope for), because tooltip says "Golems increase..." not "Golem increases...".

On the other hand. Golems should be good enough by themselves and summoners have high amount of "Minions have x% increased life and damage" type of nodes. So they might be op at some point.

from what i can tell, these golemns are designed to not be as useful to minion builds , but rather non minion builds seeing as none of their secondary effects are of any use (except maaaybe the chaos golem)


When you examine things like gem constraints many summoners would have already told you that there is simply no room to dedicate to a single entity summon.


srs builds tend to use up their primary 6l on their srs, their 4l +2 helm on their tanky zombies and the rest on utility skills like increased duration flesh offerings multiple vaal hastes auras and movement skills.


specter zombie summoners use their chest for specters and helm for zombies with the rest of the slots taken by a curse on hit set up , auras or the many many many MANY MANY >>>>>MANYYYY<<<<<<<<<< (too many) necessary utility skills like convocation , both offerings, utility skills and desecrate

and skeleton summoners suck.
So really the only way i would see a golumn on an actual summoner is if said summoner ommits 1 of the the frankly best minion options out there. Or as a 0 link novelty minion similar to aura bro guardians

OR on an animate weapon build


not to mention the golemns themselves seem to be deigned to be horrible to support. each golem has a mix of attack types that would use different supports. really the only damage gems one could use with 100% efficiency for said golems is minion damage and empower. unless their attacks are labled as all casts or all attacks in which case attack/cast speed supports work.



I would not at all be shocked if these golems are gem rewards for marauders rangers and duelists

Yep as others said Golems are not for summoners but for non-summoners. Sucks for summoners but they already have tons of bros.

generally speaking what summoners want , or have been wanting, are changes to the current minions rather than new minions. i mean we already have the fast moving tnky minion, the slow disposable minion, the fast , damaging and short lived minion and the specter. that is a pretty healthy amount of minion types if people want different , ask for new skins and models as mtx.

No i think what summoners want was a way to make the current summons competitively tanky with out sacrificing the rather nutty amount of personal durability that the current set ups have in an attempt to make them the equal in some way to the current over used SRS build.

Ever since 1.2 hit minions have been in dire need of a buff to catch up to the power creep that is super bosses and super exiles that do damage levels that were designed to be avoided rather than tanked (something minions currently cant do).


But i have been hearing every now and then since probably animate guardian was introduced, request from people to have companion minions for the less summon inclined.

im bit torn as the golems are nice but..

a) their uses are TOO obvious (one is for THIS, one is for THAT). not that much creative space to fill.
b) these are pretty much 'free' to use (one socket..) for most builds so expect appx 95% of all players using these. is that bad? well.. maybe but surely dull
c) no cost of switching: for a map clear use ice golem for extra crits and for a boss fight equip chaos one for extra defense. one click. something like a free aura of a new type

not thrilled

their basic attacks might be weak/balanced/OPasF.. - and it does not change above issues

if the damage is damn good - expect + ele prolif + minion damage + faster casting/attacks on elementals and +conc on chaos one. even if golem 1shots it is still a minion with bad AI and as such wont change much

if the damage is bad i see no reason NOT to put a golem into my now-empty cwdt sockets for exactly 100% of my builds

im not entirely sure that this is a good thing

sure - but the cooldown is just 6seconds and from experience i can assume that life pool should be 'enough' to last few seconds

im talking just about the 'utility part' - disregarding the 'golem does damage' bit. i do not want to rely on single minion with 'typical' AI (hopefully NOT confused with 'attack what i do attack' logic zombies have..). for said utility im pretty sure the HP should be enough and if it dies.. well, it is just like decoy totem. cast another one.

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sidtherat wrote:

if it dies.. well, it is just like decoy totem. cast another one.

CwDT + golem? I plan to use the chaos golem as a replacement for Enduring Cry, so I'm thankful for that, but it will be dull to see every build using a golem.