Like a necromancer

Right now there are some things about summoners that really suck, like:

*Summons almost never cross bridges or walk through doors, especially when there are mobs waiting behind it. They will run away and hide in a corner.

*When you get into a boss fight like Merveil or Brutus, there are no corpses around and fighting them with summoning 10000 Skeletons is really tiring, I just keep hammering the button in front of them while drinking manapotions.

*And again, the minion AI, if you summon 15 skeletons around a monster, at least 10 will wander off and stand around stupidly.

*Minion AI! Seriously, this just can't be said often enough. You know this scenario? You summon 6 zombies, walk over to the next mob-pack - 3 of them run off. Okay, cool, I'll just resummon them. So you wait till the first 3 mobs are down, click the button and guess what? You first have to kill off and replace the 3 zombies that are there with you fighting and THEN are able to resummon. By that moment, you move on to the next pack just so it can happen again.

Well, this is not a rant, just a summary of the biggest problems right now, and there is a minion patch on the way!!! I'll just somehow leave it here, so as soon as we see that patch I can come back and hopefully praise how they fixed all of those. :)

I was thinking of maybe making a necromancer witch, how do the minions do in this game, are they pretty viable ? How about against bosses? Thanks !

Bro:

Zombies aint perfect

but they do a role

and that role could be defined as

get in the way of shit

Bumping this thread for great justice. I just started playing this game today, and am having great fun with a necro-like build. I've got 2 zombie gems, one skelly gem, and a passive that lets me have extra summons out. So at any given time, I can have 4 zombies and 6 skeletons. I've noticed a lot of the problems stated in this thread.

To reiterate, we need:

1) indicators/counters (frames) of summons active
2) summons not to run off/run away from mobs (as is, they don't seem to "get in the way of shit" very often)

So far, enjoying this game a ton. Gameplay is as fun as Diablo 3 was from 1-59 (which is saying a lot).

Although I agree that the zombie AI is kind of stupid...they are after all, zombies.

Porting into an area and losing my zombies is a downer, especially if the first thing I run into is a boss type monster with no other mobs around to kill for zombies.

To me, that above all else would be nice to see fixed.

I only have my witch to 30 (or so). I primarily use fire trap, skellies, and zombies while cursing stuff with Wrath. Most of the other skill/support gems are just socketed to level them.

The main thing I use the skellies for is to block creatures and projectiles from killing my squishy butt. They work great for that. I spam them like a shield around me and toss traps.

Having a blast, even though I am still pretty clueless when it comes to much of the game (my passive tree is getting to be a mess lol).

I am sure when they improve the minion pathing/AI, and above all losing our zombies when we go in a door, a Necro Witch is going to be even more fun.

I think GGG is aware of and acting on these issues.