Summoners in the CB:

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Shadoman55 wrote:

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k1rage wrote:

what is whinging lol

It's the thing that makes you respond to his post and bump the thread.

im confused

convocation work with golems?

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Waves_blade wrote:

Might be a bit early to ask, but, all ye summoners in the closed beta, how goes it?

-The minion change that makes them targeted less and you targeted more, how noticeable is it?

Extremely noticeable, and a very poor idea. Completely flabbergasted as to who thought this would be a good change.

I am surprised that no one brought up the fact that the minion damage gem has been buffed tremendously. lol Minion dmg scales everything including hatred etc by a huge 48% MORE multiplier now. Now off to do some spreadsheet calculations...but if your minions do enough damage you can essentially socket unique gems to give them vaal pact and 6% max hp healed per block to render them totally unkillable and perhaps finally uber viable(my lv 26 montregul zombies have 23k hp and they are socketed in a + 1 bones of ullr with empower).



The changes that made minions targeted and damaaged less were probably not summoner balance related ones.They were probably introduced to increase the survivability of golems for builds that don't have minion nodes/gems.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

Been called worse... with better reason... Don't mind me.

There are few things that I hate more than grammar and punctuation Nazi's. I despise them almost as much as pedophiles vegetables and to stay on topic.. Summoners.

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AusterlitZ wrote:

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RootCookie wrote:

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k1rage wrote:

I hope summoners get some love in 2.0

right now they are just kinda slowpokes

When every one except summoners are going to use Golems, then there's a problem.
Summoner is a mess.

Summoners are fine,the amount of cluelessness and misinformation in this thread is amazing,people saying that summoners are weak,or zombies deal low dmg...i have no words.A properly build summoner trashes maps,does most map mods,and destroys 90% of map bosses.

And Vis Mortis/Midnight Bargain/Montregul's are all ways of pushing summoners into clear speed machines,especially with 20/20 gems.

Sure,it's not Flameblast,but it's certainly not a "mess"

Here I mean no srs summoners.

Summoners need to trade for some gems and items, and still its progression is slow , unlike other builds which can eaily walk through the acts and difficulties, and find gears while progressing.

Speaking of the maps, just a few alts and arguments can give a decent look for other builds, it really doesn't matter that much. Here the thing is that zombies are hard to be a meat shield without a decent level.
So extra farming on low level areas is needed for summoners. (this changes with the new fortify support gems, and the less targeted helps too)

Zombies are slow, which is true, it's not that they can't move or attack fast, in other words, hard to control. The zombies sometimes are confused by their master's action moving back and forth. I think most other builds which are properly built have way higher clear speed than summoners.

I think the main reason of the slow clear speed of summoners is the cooldown of Convocation(the core of controlling minions atm). My point is that Vis Mortis/Midnight Bargain/Montregul's/20/20gems don't boost the clear speed a lot, eventually they are all limited by the cooldown of Convocation (my suggestion is that " reduce its cooldown and increase the mana cost by gem lvl"), in order to provide a better control of the minions.

I won't call it a "mess", but summoners are definitely not the choice for racers and top players right now. (speaking by my own experience: at the beginning of the one month/hc, I joined a group of 4 in a 67 map with my lv68 summoner, I had 4 spectres at the moment, unique sword+boots. we were a bit seperated in the map and my 4-l spectres just can't do enough damage to kill stuff without enough minion damage nodes from the tree,and even though I took most of the minion defence nodes, the spetres are still squishy , even the zombies without a +2minion helm and with minion life support gem + Purity of Elements aura. so end of the story is that they all left the party after the map, including the map owner )

So, after watching some streamers, I would say even with the powerful act4 project caster mob, summoner itself is somewhat squishy(meat shield is not a good idea for high clear speed builds and HC gamers--they know the best thing to do is a balance between offence and defence____some mobs can ignore meat shield).


And something about the skeletons(slow movespeed, slow attackspeed, the ability to miss, number increased by gem lvl), they seem to be meat shields for all low/average clear speed players in a spell totem. I see that skeletons do 50% less ele dmg, is that because they have weapons in their hands?


After all, I think it's just too hard to balance summoners. The reason maybe is that summoner has a complicated position in the game.

So,maybe the new tree design and uniques can make it up, we will see.

I don't normally post, but really felt I had to weight in on this topic. I'm mostly a summoner and prefer playing them!
I saw the change that minions will get attacked less? Personally as a summoner I do NOT like that change, and I will explain why. Because I always make a full summoner character, which NEVER uses any skills myself. Changing it so minions will get attacked less, will remove them from being my meatshields.

What I would like to see for summoners is a special tab added to options->gameplay. A tab called "Summoner settings". In this tab I would like to see the following adjustable options for summoners:
1: A checkbox for the option if you(player) want to be mainly attacked or your minions.
2: A setting for minion priority, which allows you to put the following orders in the order in which you want your minions to behave. My preferable priority would be to have minions defend me at all costs when I'm under attack.
My order of priority would be:
-Defend me(If I'm under attack, they should focus on the monster which is directly attacking me).
-Attack unique monsters first.
-Attack rare monsters second.
-Attack magic monsters third.
-Attack normal monsters fourth.
-Destroy urns/barrels(if toggled on).
-Follow me.
3: Maximum range for wandering off. Sometimes minions follow monsters 1 or 2 screens, causing them to pull alot of monsters. Setting a maximum range which minions can move away from you should stop that. So let's say I'd set the maximum range to 3 tiles, when a monster runs away and goes 5 tiles, my minion(s) chasing him will follow him till 3 tiles and then disengage to attack another in range target. This was an example, we should be able to set a maximum range between 1-"Whatever it is now".
4: Yes/no toggle if minions should destroy urns/barrels etc.
5: Toggle to let minions aggro monsters yes/no.

All these settings would be adjustable by any summoner and any type of summoner! I would LOVE to see something like this come out with act 4.

Other summoner changes I'd love to see:
-Please make minions ALOT stronger, 1 aoe from a boss or rogue exile, even magic monsters most often kill them all in 1 or 2 blows!
-Let us keep our zombies and spectres when logging out/in.
-Don't let monsters run away from minions! Some monsters like archers run away when you get close, same happens when minions get close. Sometimes you have to follow 1 monster for 5-6 screens before you finally catch up to him/kill him.
-Make minions alot faster, now with the ghosts, the minions can't even come close to them before they run away again!
-Convocation should be a base function, not cost a skillslot.
-Make skeletons permanent like zombies, because of summon raging spirits.

Thanks for reading!

Edit: Just to note, I feel minion damage output is fine!

I don't really use much the Summon type gems, but, the list above is not that bad (the idea).

back on topic:

https://youtu.be/oYrRY5pOMa0