A Summoner question. Please GGG answer this!

Hi GGG!

Side note, I'd like to thank you for the new league Synthesis it adds up new places to farm and it diversify the GRIND past lvl 70.

My question is...
I'm building a summoner mainly using Skeletons and Zombies as secondaries, will the skill "Dread Banner" affect them as they (my minions)
are usually considered as "Allies". Example is, the mechanic on the unique item "Victario's Charity" With or W/O Necromantic Aegis.

I'd like to know if my minions will be able to impale enemies if I use "Dread Banner" near them, as it would be a major boost in damage.

Thank you.

Yes, Dread Banner will grant the impale chance to minions. That said War Banner will prove superior in most if not all cases, unless maybe you run brutality support but then you're gimping your DPS.

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borefficz wrote:

Yes, Dread Banner will grant the impale chance to minions. That said War Banner will prove superior in most if not all cases, unless maybe you run brutality support but then you're gimping your DPS.

I am running brutality as I am using pure physical dmg for my minions with no elemental or chaos dmg source.
Why would this gimp my dps?

I forgot about the 3.6 changes to Hatred.

Also I definitely made some mistake back when I was comparing these two banners for my summoner build.

Dread Banner chance to impale on your minions = 20% - I'm not 100% sure if it's affected by Generosity though, if it is the base value is multiplied by ~1.4 from Generosity = 28% chance to impale

Dread Banner impale bonus damage = 10% of the phys damage dealt, multiplied by ~1.2 from the Dread Banner increased impale effect = 12% which stacks up to 5 times = 60% more damage on Impale procs (assuming you use up all 5 impale stacks)

Final bonus physical damage from Dread Banner (assuming you use all impale stacks) = 0.2 or 0.28 * 1.6 = 32% or 44,8% more phys damage. Either way Dread Banner is a massive damage boost for pure phys builds so you were right you should use it.

TLDR: never mind what I said before :)

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borefficz wrote:

I forgot about the 3.6 changes to Hatred.

Also I definitely made some mistake back when I was comparing these two banners for my summoner build.

Dread Banner chance to impale on your minions = 20% - I'm not 100% sure if it's affected by Generosity though, if it is the base value is multiplied by ~1.4 from Generosity = 28% chance to impale

Dread Banner impale bonus damage = 10% of the phys damage dealt, multiplied by ~1.2 from the Dread Banner increased impale effect = 12% which stacks up to 5 times = 60% more damage on Impale procs (assuming you use up all 5 impale stacks)

Final bonus physical damage from Dread Banner (assuming you use all impale stacks) = 0.2 or 0.28 * 1.6 = 32% or 44,8% more phys damage. Either way Dread Banner is a massive damage boost for pure phys builds so you were right you should use it.

TLDR: never mind what I said before :)

Thanks a lot for your hard work and maths. I really appreciate it, I'll start running Dread Banner and will probably test out damage output with and without Dread Banner on actual map bosses.

Don't forget aura effectiveness increases both the chance to impale and the damage of the impale.

If you have gem slots available** consider generosity, enhance and empower (in that order). Maybe even Victario's influence if it fits.

**(who am i kidding your a summoner, you dont).

On a more practical note, can anyone say what the radius of the banner aura is when your carrying it? It's not mentioned on the wiki anywhere, and it doesnt gain any radius with skill ups so thinking its probably quite small.

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Asmosis wrote:

Don't forget aura effectiveness increases both the chance to impale and the damage of the impale.

I'm pretty sure it only scales the impale effect, not the chance to impale (or the enemy accuracy reduction). (I can check later tonight when I can fire up my Impale focused Champion as he has a good chunk of aura effect)

Which means that the effective damage bonus from Impale if you have only Dread Banner is actually 12% or so, because an impale lasts 5 hits and on average every fifth hit will produce a new one. So an enemy being attacked by affected attacks will persistently have one live impale.

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On a more practical note, can anyone say what the radius of the banner aura is when your carrying it? It's not mentioned on the wiki anywhere, and it doesnt gain any radius with skill ups so thinking its probably quite small.

I'm pretty sure it's the same as you get if you plant it with no stages. So not huge. Half a screen or so.


That means whether Dread or War banner is better for a summoner depends on whether you focus skels or zombs. Because Bone Sculptor gives skeletons the can't be evaded property the extra accuracy of War Banner doesn't help. But if you rely more on Zombies they'll get benefit from that and the extra damage taken.

Caster skeletons don't benefit strongly from either though.

hmm, well the wiki says both and goes into some complicated (well not really but it has graphs) math about the scaling of both bonuses. Then again it IS a wiki, grain of salt required.

As for accuracy, pre-3.6 minions were already sitting around 80% accuracy with the minion nodes, and from what i read on reddit their base accuracy was doubled in 3.6. So, accuracy isnt that big a thing unless your skipping the left side of the tree (why?).

I suppose radius doesnt really matter that much, since by the time you come to a stop your usually in the middle of enemy packs anyway.

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Asmosis wrote:

As for accuracy, pre-3.6 minions were already sitting around 80% accuracy with the minion nodes, and from what i read on reddit their base accuracy was doubled in 3.6. So, accuracy isnt that big a thing unless your skipping the left side of the tree (why?).

Remember accuracy scales with enemy level, so that 80% accuracy isn't a flat value forever. As you fight higher level mobs you need to run faster to stay in the same place.

Even with a good chunk of minion accuracy there's still enough slack for War Banner to make a good contribution for Zombies that don't get the can't be evaded.

If aura effect does affect the chance to impale, a 20/20 Dread Banner with a 20 Generosity would be worth about an 18.5% damage increase to affected minions.