Character Balance Changes - Summoners

Zombies are a joke.
SRS is a joke.
Phantasms are a joke.
Absolution and Dominating blow haven't been in a good spot in a long time.
Warrior and archer skeletons have been non-viable since EE got gutted and several aura-based cluster jewels got removed.
Spectres haven't been useful for anything outside of support minions since they fixed the Syndicate Operative attacks.
Nobody uses AG for anything outside of support due to risk of losing their gear on death.
Reaper is a meme that's supposed to be used exclusively, but can't compete with the minions you're not allowed to use.
Animate Weapon depends on too many things to actually be good.

Then there's the shoehorning of archnemesis to the game making not only those minions less useful, but also every other non-meta build in the game has become that much harder to play.

And what is GGG's solution? Blanket nerfs to summoners across the board. One ascendancy got gutted and moved its old bonus to helmets. Charges on minions have the same effects as it does on players. The crit chance mastery was removed, split up, and put into a large cluster which means more passive investment for what will likely amount to less crit than before.

Look, I get that mage skeletons have been OP for a while. I don't think the solution to that problem was to hit the entire archetype while also making it even more gear dependent.

You're deluding yourself if you don't think +2 all minion gem mods on helmets isn't going to be ridiculously overpriced. What summoner builds even use physical damage minions these days to make Unholy Might even worth considering, especially when most minions are in a bad spot right now? Just remove the ascendancy.

The charge changes have made it so carnage and host chieftains are probably not going to be used anymore. Going from 600% crit chance to 120%, 45% increased attack and cast speed to 12% plus no movement speed is a colossal hit for all minions. Do you really think that new minion critical cluster is going to compensate for that when it also has to deal with the removal of the minion crit mastery being removed?

They're making bone shields plus rings which can get minion modifiers. That sounds nice and all until you consider that unless you're immensely rich, you're stuck with either running a glass cannon or a tank that absolutely has no chance in ever engaging in timed league encounters or farming maps in a reasonable timeframe.

The small buffs made to a couple of the bad minions I mentioned at the start of the thread amount to nothing in the wake of the blanket nerfs also hitting them.

Summoners are no longer going to be league starter-friendly because of these changes, and I expect the only minions that might be viable are ones that could make use of the poison, ignite, and bleed buffs. Don't bring up Holy Relic with me. They only attack when you do, making them more of an extension of your offensive capabilities than an actual minion.

I'm just gonna wait for the patch notes. If archnemesis doesn't get touched at all this upcoming league, I'm skipping PoE for the first time since I started playing. I don't play this game to not play a summoner. And remembering that Chris has said they're experimenting with doing balance changes every other league, that means I'm skipping the next 2 coming up.

Summoners are likely shaping up to be a dead archetype, given what we've seen so far.

LATE EDIT:
Patch notes are out. RIP summoners. There's no chance in hell the new bone rings and shield will be able to compensate for the 580% crit chance and 33% attack/cast speed loss. At least Archnemesis got nerfed a little.

so is the reaper getting 7x bleed damage going to make it do normal ailment damage from before or is it going to do some actual ailment damage? but who would play minions this league. so much is gutted.

people that are going to play it will need to get their +4 staff and the +2 ammie and the +2 helment for like 10-50 ex each for good rolls. Imagine how annoying it is going to be to craft these things. at least they are hinting a vendor recipe exists, maybe it would be bad, Cope.

+1, basically all minions except skeleton mages and carrion golems have been trash for ages, and they plan to nerf them further? Necromancer ascendancy loses their strongest node, and spectres, which have been nigh useless for years, get further nerfed?

Makes no sense to me. More items and mods for minions is nice, but if we will need rolls on helmet/shield/weapon/amulet/rings for minions, where will we get rolls for our own life/defences/movespeed/etc? Seems like every gear slot will need to go for minions+resistances...

Charges no longer being insane on minions might be ok, if the lost power was given back to minions in some form, instead of a blanket nerf on an archetype where 90% of skills have been subpar for years.

Looks like yet another league I am skipping. Thank god for Grim Dawn!

I hope at least Diablo 4 lets summoners actually do stuff in-game.

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Shieldbreaker wrote:

Looks like yet another league I am skipping. Thank god for Grim Dawn!

I hope at least Diablo 4 lets summoners actually do stuff in-game.

I haven't played Grim Dawn since shortly after Ashes of Malmouth released. I think a good part of why that is was because as much as I like Grim Dawn, its summoning simply couldn't compete with PoE. Now that GGG is killing summoners, especially for players who can't make exalts hand over fist, I might pick it back up and grab the Forgotten Gods expansion while I'm at it.

I'm also waiting on Last Epoch to release its multiplayer update, whenever that actually happens. My boyfriend and I have been eager to play it together.

I wouldn't hold much hope for Diablo 4. After that mess with Diablo Immoral, I have very little faith Blizzard won't make another cash grab that's as shallow as Diablo 3.

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Pizzarugi wrote:

I haven't played Grim Dawn since shortly after Ashes of Malmouth released. I think a good part of why that is was because as much as I like Grim Dawn, its summoning simply couldn't compete with PoE. Now that GGG is killing summoners, especially for players who can't make exalts hand over fist, I might pick it back up and grab the Forgotten Gods expansion while I'm at it.

Eh, the summoning is solid in Grim Dawn. Sure, you can't change so many parameters on your minions as you can in poe, but there is a very wide variety. My necromancer+shaman has ~~15 active minions of 5 different types. And you can set behaviour for each minion individually + bind a constellation skill for each minion type as well. The only real downside is that Grim Dawn has significantly less endgame content. However, the gameplay I find to be 100x more fun and fair than poe.

I haven't modded, but theres 9001 mods from Grim Dawn too. Also, Forgotten Gods is a very solid act and adds a ton of small, nice changes through the game. Definitely worth playing through at least once, if you haven't yet!

And if you do reinstall, I challenge you to kill avatar of Modroggen or however that god is called, with a minion build! xD

By the way, be sure to do a lot of altars/try the survival game mode/etc for recipes, a ton of minions or strong minion buffs come from skills granted by unique items or sets!

ture dude.I have been tired of this nerd fixes for several seasons.And I am wondering if I should play this game for another season.

Necro lost her identity now.
(without +2)

Also spectres were quite deleted with low monster lvl on gem alrdy, and they are now even lower, so this is true insult to injury move.

I made an heroic choice to play spectre build this league. Aint rly go further t10. This was shortest league for me from all of them.

ANIMATE GUARDIAN/WEAPON
Make animate guardian reserve mana, allow multiple animated guardians with special equipment and or a Guardian Ascendancy, Allow animate guardian to equip bows and other equipment not available before.

Make animate weapon reserve mana, allow summoning your main hand weapon up to a ceartain count modifiable with passive nodes and special equipment, also allow this weapon to summon shields with basic bash attacks.

both of these modifiable with reservation nodes and with the idea that people will also be slotting support gems into these items increasing their cost a decent amount.

BONUS people stop treating it like as much of a last second zero cost support, they have to take the cost seriously.

RAISE SPECTRE
Spectre's just need a dps pass on the monster table mostly AND the biggest one is that the auto-attacks included in many monsters kits make them entirely un-useable as spectres, the entire monster list needs a pass disabling auto-attacks from ceartain monsters otherwise they are a complete waste of space once they enter melee range (unless they are made for melee range)

RAISE ZOMBIE
Why are these so lame, I've never wanted to use these gigantic meat sticks not once, change these to use the corpse models you're casting on but disabling their unique spells and melee abilitys(maybe not all of their special attributes though: poison/etc) and give them the normal zombie skills based off their stats bringing this skill a bit more in line with raise spectre but still leaving it in its own unique area of necromancy.


@ the necro lost her groove comment, pfft, I played her for thousand upon thousands of hours she's gonna be just fine without those +2 in fact i dare say she's going to be stronger than ever before now :)

I felt that Unnatural Strength nerf like I'd been kicked in my nutz.

Really hope the content is fun next league... because from what I can see I'm not going to enjoy summoner as much as usual.

Dear Necro enjoyers.

Former Gladiator player here asking: