Is 3.0 gonna be all-summoners-all-the-time?

Power creep. But we really have no idea at all what "end game" is going to be in 3.0. Power creep is always compensated for by beefing up the mobs. They're doing a whole re-work of the game, so it's a pretty good bet that mobs are going to be stronger too.

I don't care about how strong or weak the summoners will be. Love playing them, have not played one in a loooong time + ton of new mob and stuff.

3.0.0 will go summoner 100%

Ill test some stuff out then ill get back to ya in 3.0

By reducing the number of summons the following issues come up.

1. Minions are the summoners primary defense: this is being nerfed.
2. Auras that proc a static amount of damage per hit are nerfed.
3. Proposed changes do not mention increase in minion HP, i.e. the smaller number of minions will die even faster as more damage is taken per minion.
4. When things start to go south, and they always do, there is a smaller buffer available for the summoner.

Aggressive golems aren't all that great necessarily. They attack anything in range but tend to spread themselves out and you have no way to control them at all. It may be worthwhile when you have other summons/skills to focus fire and act as meatshields, but aggressive golems alone won't do.

I found I prefer to control my golems manually with Wither, adding curses with CwC. Working well so far.

Not sure if it's going to be all the craze, but assuming they do something about friendly summon (including totem) and mob AI interaction, i am sure quite few more people would at least give some sort of summoner build a try.

But tbh it's as good a guess as anyone's. The game will be so heavily reworked that most, if not all racing strategies which in turn to an extent dictate what's going to remain in meta for the rest of the league, will go the way of the dodo, so who knows.

Don't forget, 3.0 means new zones means new monsters.

There might be some awesome new spectres (like, 95% chance), so spectre summoner will likely get stronger that way too.

At any rate, I'm certainly doing one. Summoners are awesome.

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Atech2 wrote:

I think people trying to claim summoners are bad are summoner players playing themselves fishing for buffs. Summoners are very powerful now imo. Zombies are really strong.

No, actually. Some of us have actually been playing Summoners for a long time. Personally, I've been playing Summoners for years. It's usually my go-to league starter because it's so cheap.

However, it's usually not what I end the league with because while a Summoner's "floor" is so low, the ceiling is equally as low. Minions don't scale off anything but a few uniques, passives, and links. As I understand, most summoners pick up all the passives anyway. That leaves a few uniques. My personal favorites are Queen's Escape and Bones of Ullr. That leaves us with 5 linked sockets.

You can only do so much with 5 sockets. Invest in offense, defense, or a mix of the two. Zombie defenses are the second biggest problem. I've seen Zombies getting chunked by elemental damage, cleaved by bosses, rip to Caustic Clouds, etc. It's not uncommon to see your Zombies die in one fell swoop. You might be thinking: Use Minion Life and Monty's Grasp, noob! Well, there's a few problems with this:

1) Zombie clear speed doesn't scale well with map tiers and mods
2) Zombie defenses are still shit unless you really invest in them, then clear speed suffers
3) Zombie AI is still dumber than dog shit

Summoner is full of trade-offs, and not the good kind of trade-offs either. I can get pretty tanky Flickering around. I can also mitigate a lot of damage by spamming Ice Shot. While Summoner does sport a bit of tankiness, the core of your efficiency is your minions. They're squishy idiots. Definitely not what I want in a war-zone (All of Wraeclast).



As I said earlier, Summoner is easier and cheaper to get going. It's my league starter for that reason. However, Summoner doesn't scale well with investment either. If you had 999 Exalts and a fresh economy, you wouldn't reach the heights any other build could.

Why? Because of the nature of Minions. They don't care about your gear. They're independent, influences by passives, uniques, and links. Ice Shot and Flicker Strike, on the other hand, do care. Upgrading a Summoner's gear only affects the Summoner. That GG bow doesn't mean much. But it matters to Ice Shot. Those GG gloves don't matter to Zombies, but they matter to Flicker Strike.
Like I said, it's easier to get going (lower floor) but investments don't get it very far (lower ceiling).



Summoner is plagued with problems. Some of them by design and some of them by GGG's own doing (thanks for the AI nerf, assholes). The most hilariously ironic part of this is that we've been posting the same feedback for a long time. When GGG decides they're going to finally do something about it, they bypass the most common suggestions (except the Spectre addition but that's a long time coming) and buff something that wasn't exactly a problem to begin with.
It's somewhat offensive, really, and not only does it not attract more people towards summoner but also pushes more of us away from it.

I've been playing Summoners full time since not long before the first temp leagues started and I don't exactly see myself starting the next temp league as a Summoner because of all the problems.

so, no, we're not all bitter noobs.

Might be worth checking out in 3.0, I'm tempted myself to try it (havent played summoner in ages), but I fear that it's gonna end up as a "novelty" build. AI still dogshit. Micromanagement still dogshit. Still slow as an injured snail.

Summoners suck. You're squishy and clear speed is terribad.