Grouping with summoners is absolutely ridiculous

I've primarily played the game solo up to this point, occassionally playing with friends when they're online. Earlier this evening I was running through merciless Vaal Pyramid and I said "what the hell, I'll make my party public". Within one minute, my party was full. Within two minutes, there were about 80 minions on my computer screen.

First of all, I don't even understand how it's possible for a player to summon nearly 20 minions. What I do know is that it was literally impossible to see what was going on behind the swarm of undead creatures, and that this caused my framerate to hit the single digits when fighting a room full of mobs.

I knew beforehand that summoners pose a huge problem in groups, so to avoid the hassle I named my party description "Vaal Oversoul. No summoners please. Summoners will be kicked". What I didn't realize is that kicking someone from your party does absolutely nothing. I kicked the four players who controlled this massive army of undead, but it was for naught. By this time the other non-summoner player in my party had left the group. The four summoners went on ahead and finished the last two levels of the pyramind and went on to kill Vaal while I stayed behind wondering why they were still in my instance after they had been kicked.

I'm not really sure what can be done about this. And I'm not trying to complain, but playing with people who can summon such a huge number of minions is not enjoyable at all. And from the few times I've played in public parties, it seems like half the people who play PoE are summoners. I'm not calling for minions to be nerfed, but I want to be able to play in groups without having my screen filled with minions. A minion transparency option would be pretty cool. I have put almost no thought into how GGG can remedy this, but as it stands, public parties are plagued by a serious problem.

The other thing that rubs me the wron way about parties is player auras. I don't need to see the swirling multi-colored neon disco lights around 5 other people. It's too much on the eyes. It would be nice to be able to disable group member spell effects all together. Shit gets pretty crazy.

Feel better?

I am a summoner myself and a minion nerf is a bad idea.

Yeah...we know...but thats half the fun for us. Remember lagomancers? Yeah...were back.

But more to the point, yes we can summon alot of undead. I myslef get up to 9 zombies and 3 spectre, and have the capability to get to 10 and 4, not to mention 12 skeletons, though those bony bastards are temp jobs.

But ruining our build just because you dont like it isnt going to solve the porblem...it will simply piss off a majority of the players in the game, if they are mostly summoners as you say. Given, I rarely party with anybody, but when I do, I'm considerate and dont summon my full army. Usually just about half when grouped.

But as to auras...sorry, I use three of them and I will not turn them off for anybody. I actually gamed with a guy that ran 6 auras rolling with 5 curses...best partner for me ever.

So you want summoners to have a hard time because you can't focus? Just no. There has to be some other way.. and as I mentioned before in the closed beta, it would be as simple as putting an optional feature into the game like "health bars" for summons... also more graphic options, like a low resolution option for summons and effects could help.

The amount of summoners leads me to believe it's at least a slightly overpowered playstyle. I don't want any type of build to be underpowered, I prefer balance. But you know damned well 80 minions on screen is not healthy for promoting continued grouping incentive. I'd be fine with having an option to completely disable viewing of party member minions. Low resolution models for minions is not enough. Then my screen would just be filled with low resolution minions, and I still wouldn't be able to see what's going on.

I thought of a suggestion. Make minions much stronger, but make a hard cap of something like 3 or 4 minions per player. I'd prefer that number be one or two, but I can understand the limitations behind that. I think four strong minions is preferable to 20 weak ones, for everyone involved.

And Zalm, chill out. I never asked you to turn your auras off (not for anyone). I said that an option to disable the graphic for auras would be nice. The level of defensiveness in these replies so far is amusing.

I prefer summoners over totem spell spammage or lighting/poison arrow spam anyday.



Running with a pack of zombies is always relaxing... Nice meaty shields.

Although all the auras are annoying.

You can...

#1 Don't party public.
#2 Roll your own summoner. (This was my solution, now i don't need a party, i have my own)
#3 Enter the instance and let the minions do the work while you eat a sammich.
#4 Get a better pc and deal with it.

We will not hear of being nerfed because you dont like us.

"

DavosTheOnionKnight wrote:

I thought of a suggestion. Make minions much stronger, but make a hard cap of something like 3 or 4 minions per player. I'd prefer that number be one or two, but I can understand the limitations behind that. I think four strong minions is preferable to 20 weak ones, for everyone involved.

This sounds alot like the D3 WD....their garbage ass attempt to make a necro in D3. The whole reason I am here is because I can do just that. I can summon up to 20 minions at once if I have the mana for it, and I like it that way. I understand you may not like it, but its the way I play. In ARPGs I prefer quantity over quality for summons. With just 4 of them, mobs slip past easily and quickly to attack me, and thus minions fail at their job when they cant protect their master.

If they nerf the minion cap, they need to nerf the monster cap as well. If I can only have 4-5 minions at once, there shouldn't be packs of more than 8 mobs on screen at once.

Um no, first off just because you have a hate for summoners, just no. I have 3 Witches and most Witches Ive met are Ice-crit builds so thanks. Calling for nerfs because your computer can't handle summoners is not the summoners fault.

What we need it better optimization. I play Summoner because I can summon a massive horde. I for one would not be happy if they cut down the size of my army. When in groups I relax on casting my 14 skele's because I know it lags people.

I as well have my massive army of 20'ish minions, 3 spectres and 2 totems.

"

Eddiee wrote:

You can...

#1 Don't party public.
#2 Roll your own summoner. (This was my solution, now i don't need a party, i have my own)
#3 Enter the instance and let the minions do the work while you eat a sammich.
#4 Get a better pc and deal with it.

We will not hear of being nerfed because you dont like us.

I'm sorry, but did you say you won't hear of it? Are you a GGG dev?

As for your suggestions, none of them are solutions.

1. What if I want to party?
2. I don't party because I need other people to kill stuff for me. I'm perfectly capable of soloing anything in this game. The reasons I party are for increased loot/experience and because I enjoy playing with other people. Minions are not people.
3. I don't understand where you're going with that. Seems like it might be an extension of #2.
4. A better PC will do nothing to lower the density of minions on my screen.