A summoner only player's perspective

TLDR: This is not the thread for you.

The point of this thread is to highlight good and bad things about PoE2's game-feel when playing as a summoner. I'm not discussing balancing here just general feels good/bad regarding skills/mechanics here (ofc some might feel bad due to very poor balancing, but those are easy numbers fixes).

So I'm a summoner only kind of player. Have loved the play-style since way back when in the D2 (Diablo 2) days. Have played quite a few ARPGs in my days (provided they had a summoner archetype). Have over 3k hours in PoE1 (95%+ time spent on some kind of summoner or other).

First of let's define what I mean when I say a summoner. A summoner is a play-style archetype where your minions/summons/constructs or what have you, are doing the majority of the killing and you as the summoner are there to guide/help/support them in their task. So for example running around with a bunch of skeleton cursing enemies is a summoner and a character running around corpse exploding their minions to killing stuff is not. The latter is a sorcerer with extra steps.

So what are some of the general things that PoE2 is doing right atm for the summoner play-style:

1. Out of combat auto regen (which is quite strong). Love this, no more need to rush to any minion regen nodes to keep your army fresh between encounters. Also solved the issue of constantly feeling the need to resummon half health minions in your army.

2. Revive system. Awesome system (especially now that it's per minion, which is ofc should have been from the start). This removes the tedium of having to constantly re-summon your dudes.

3. Spirit. This is a mechanic I've felt has been missing from a lot of ARPGs, it just make a lot of sense from a balancing point of view. It gives you a single number you could balance every minion's power level around. The only bad thing about it atm is that it is the same resource used for other stuff like Auras/Triggers which muddies the water imo.

4. AI (talking non-spectres here). Overall it's pretty good. Not great (examples below). But good. It feels like most of the minions are behaving like you want them to without the need to select any toggles.

5. Good roster. The have a very good mix of easy to access minions which covers almost the entire spectrum. Melee physical, physical range, fire/cold/lightning. The only thing missing is a basic chaos minion of some type. Heck we even got healers, can't remember any ARPGs giving us that of the top of my head.

6. They look sick! Kudos to the art and animation guys. Can't wait to see the micro-transactions for them.

Some general feels bad mechanics targeting specifically summoners.

1. Assassin type enemies. The ones that just ignore all you minions are lock in on you no matter what (sometime so hard it's even comical, for example being stuck behind a wall of minion and just running in place trying to reach you). Now don't get me wrong, these should exist. Bosses should spend at least 50% of their attacks trying to target the player and I don't mind some specific enemies being "smarter" focusing on the player is able. But it's more the sheer amount of enemies that are doing it atm that is alarmingly high (compared to last patch). Also the lock-on shouldn't be as hard as it is now, they should at least occasionally change their mind and take a swing at a minion.

2. Ground effects. Ground effect themselves are fine. You minions just hanging out in them, out of combat, is not. At least give your minions some sliver of self-preservation by trying to get out of them/walking around them while not in combat. Just feels very silly when you army is just chilling in 5 layers of poisonous fog while you are looting. This would also slightly help players actually see the ground effects themselves as visual clarity is always a major hurdle for summoners, any bit that helps would be appreciated.

Discussing specific summoner skills:

Skeletal Warrior:
Why did you remove the skill gem ;_;? I loved my skelly boys, and now I can't go double setup or keep them leveled with sockets while I'm going through the campaign? Just why? They are awesome. They are cheap Reavers without the command choice for us that like to have their minions stay alive. This design choice is just baffling me. If you can't see the problem, try putting Perfect Strike on Slim Mace only and see what kind of feedback you'll get. Imo, all skills that atm are only weapons only should have the corresponding skill gem available as well. More choices always better then less, at least in this regard. Secondly, the old block % was very much needed making sure not ALL your minions melt to EVERY boss AoE (area of effect), please chance that back. P.S. My loot filter will no longer even show non-Rattling Scepters as they are a complete waste of time and effort now. P.S.S. Why are Scepters a strength/intelligence weapon when all minions are pure intelligence skill gems?

Skeletal Sniper:
Overall I like them, kudos for giving us a physical range option early. Their command skill is my main gripe atm. First of, it's strong (the explosion part)... probably too strong by a factor of 2-3 compared to other commands. Secondly you barely feel like a summoner using it. You have to use it a LOT and aim VERY precisely. It's one of the few times as a summoner I've felt the need for more cast speed playing the archetype. Imo it should be chanced in a way that requires less spamming of it and less aiming. For example have it use ALL of the charges available atm spreed out around pseudo randomly around your target point. This should fix it's current feel bad mechanics and balance issues. Last but certainly not least, when using the skill please don't make me have to go through the animation of it when it's not being used due to no archer being able to hit the spot you selected. Generally speaking just make the archer better at running to a spot where they can use the command, when so commanded ^^; This would feel quite cool having your archer behave more like commandos running around the battlefield trying to artillery strike your enemies.

Unearth (Bone Construct):
First off since we have no option (like in PoE1) to scale both our and our minions damage at the same time, the damage part of this skill becomes completely irrelevant at higher levels for a summoner. So I'm focusing on the minion component. Secondly, for a skill that is supposed to target corpses and create minions it is TERRIBLE at actually hitting the corpses. Unless you are standing perfectly still and aiming at a specific corpse you will miss 50% of the time. Thirdly, since a summoner will effectively do 0 damage with this skill could be have a similar effect to DB (Dominating Blow from PoE1) where something you hit with the skill recently (1-4 sec is probably a good range) will automatically make a minion. Now for the actual minion, it's not bad per say, I just can't find myself using it, due to the lack of corpses (and time) in boss fights. Maybe again take a mechanic from skills like DB giving us the option of spawning them by hitting rares/uniques with the skill (1 at a 100% chance or 3 at 25% or something similar). The combo with the construct and the skill Contagion is quite cool, unfortunately VERY lack luster. If you are not a summoner they will just instantly die, if you are a summoner your Contagion will be very weak and your only good damage over time will be from Skeletal Archer's command skill. The problem with this combo (tried leveling with it this league until act 2 where I had to give it up), is that it's a LOT of step with high failure rate for very little reward. I like the idea of making a dot (damage over time) summoner with this combo, but it's way to inconsistent. Even when you pull it off you now only have a couple of seconds fun to maybe see it in action. My suggestion is just to make any Contagion construct have infinite duration as well as not getting replaced/overwritten by any newly summoned normal constructs. Might have to lower the cap a bit though.

Raging Spirits:
It's what makes Skeletal Archers work. It just feels a bit misplaced from a summoner's perspective. First off, it's not one of the gem cutting option under Witch instead belonging to Sorceress which is ok I guess, but I'm pretty sure most users of Raging Spirits are actual summoners a.k.a. Witch players. The other thing which makes me a bid sad is that they are tide exclusively to fire spells. I'd like if there existed more version of these guys (or similar concept minions) you'd use as a support for the other elements and/or chaos and physical.

Skeleton Arsonist (our fire guy):
To me they feel like a weak version of Skeleton Archer which doesn't have to be commanded (haven't played with them much). I might consider testing them out more if their command was different. Generally as a summoner I want more minions not less, so why am I blowing them up with this command skill? Which btw is super tricky to time/use due to it's restriction. I think if this command was quintupled in damage I still wouldn't want to use it.

Raise Zombie:
Ohhh boy... It feels bad, very bad to use. First you need a corpse (or a unique which makes you other minions count as corpses). Second it's a duration minion so you will have to keep resummoning them. Thirdly it wants power charges (no clue how to get dozens of charges / map as a summoner smoothly). That is a very needy minion and what is your reward for going through all the above hoops? A VERY slow melee minion which will de-spawn every 2 screens you run... I can't think of an easy fix for this one. Back to the drawing board.

Skeletal Frost Mage (our cold guy):
I like it. Not really played around with them to much. But overall nice. Good AI that I saw. Fitting command (maybe a similar problem with spam, as the archers have). I'll let other comment more on this one.

Pain Offering:
Good concept, poor design. Give us a way to support our minions by buffing them... so why do we have to kill them to do so? Just feels very counter intuitive to kill your minions to help their damage. I feel the need to use this one cause it's so strong from mid/late game, but I still don't like it. Also it's general targeting is super weird, sometime missing a minion your hovering your pointer 3 pixels away from to select a minion in your back-line stuck behind a wall or something almost off-screen.

Bone Offering:
Now this one I'm more ok with it killing a minion to do its thing. You are choosing to sacrifice 1 minion to save the others from a Bosses AoE. The problem is time. I don't have time to micromanage my minions's survivability while I'm trying to not get stomped by the bosses myself or commanding my minions to deal damage. To be fair, I'm not sure I've even tried this skill outside of testing it in low levels, so not sure of how good it is at it's job.

Skeletal Reaver:
A.k.a. the expensive Skeleton Warrior. If you are not using it's command you should be using Skeleton warriors instead (if we could). Same damage / sec (at least last patch, not checked this patch) less spirit cost. If it had some other command skill I'd like them a lot more. I'm not a fan of killing my minions. I do like that the command affects your entire minion group of its type. Just not a fan of the actual effect myself.

Skeletal Storm Mage (our lightning guy):
Probably the best minions if you want to go with a full on, hands off, play-style (just tossing out your curse). My only real gripe with it is its command being horrible. Dropping shocked ground is a good idea, when you can pull it off. Which seems to be never whenever you are clicking the command skill...

Skeletal Brute:
They are almost a replacement for the Skeletal Warrior's job, almost. So their main job is to tank for the player. Which skeletal warriors does better atm just due to the sheer numbers of them. Their second job is to stun enemies/bosses better then other minions, which atm skeletal warriors does better atm just due to the sheer numbers of them. They are a cool idea which need some love. Just lowering their cost is the easy fix, a more interesting one would maybe be to add a command which taunts all monsters around each Brute for X seconds. P.S. they look wicked ^^

Skeletal Cleric:
Love 'em. A command skill/or passive related to maybe a socketed offering could be interesting. Instead of having to use your offerings yourself they do an alternative version of them by having them equipped?

Bind Spectre:
Ohhh boy... you gave yourself a lot of work with this one. Now a good and a bad thing from the spectre design point of view is our good overall roster as a summoner. The only basic minion type we are missing is a chaos based one. Which means the good part is that you could always level with for example your Cold mages unlit your build is fit for any cold spectres you would want. The bad part is that every spectre has to be at least as good or offering something unique to replace the cold mages in this example. That sounds like a balancing nightmare to me. Personally I'd prefer it if the Bind Spectre skill had a baseline limit of 1 spectre per gem. This way it could open up a lot of interesting balancing/design options. Having their baseline be very strong, but limiting them in ways of gem sockets and support gems available. Also opening up alternative ascendancies as alluring options (thinking Gemling here). I loved having 1-2 support spectres in PoE1 and I'm looking forward to finding some good ones in PoE2.

End note:

My main problem as a summoner only player playing PoE2 is that is feels like we are always the last archetype to be considered when new stuff comes around or is added/changed. I know we are a quite small group or your player-base (hovering around 2-5%), but it just feels like we are getting less then 1% of your design efforts. A recent example being the changes to Scepters in regards to quality and sockets. I feels to me as a PoE enjoyer that you lack a minion-guy in your staff. Whom would see the obvious issues before they hit the realm. For example the de-spawning of minions on release.

On that note, I'm currently available for hire *wink wink*, and happy summoning to everyone!

Well said, I agree with pretty much everything

Pretty detailed, I believe that it would require an entire dedicated update to improve minions rn.

Pretty good list. Unearth is very janky right now. If you're playing with a controller you can't even target corpses unless you position yourself between a living enemy and the corpse you want to hit.

Raise Zombie is very situational. I found them useful when I socketed them with Infernal Legion and just spammed them in tight spots, like the ritual. That's when they feel great, because you're creating this unstoppable wave like a summoner. At first the enemy group is pushing you back, especially when you're at the last ritual altar, but you can feel the tipping point and it feels amazing. Other than that the skill has huge issues because the zombies are weak without Infernal Legion and/or power charges, but generating power charges doesn't feel fun to me. And they are very slow too, even if you upgrade their quality and pick up 20% minion movement speed on the passive tree.

Right now, minions feel like complete crap on acts. Five of them can't even kill a white mob at once. If 3 white mobs come, my 9 mobs just die. The only one who's playable is the skeleton archer, and not as a minion, but because he can throw a gas arrow. That's not a summoner playstyle at all. And regarding that arrow - why can't I cast all the arrows at once, but have to shoot one at a time?
By the time it gets to 4-5+ arrows, the minion who was supposed to shoot it has already died in most cases and the arrow just disappeared - some kind of nonsense, not a damage boost.
All these mobs are incredibly stupid - they just stand in a group under the boss's attack, don't try to somehow run away or even run somewhere behind. They have no survivability and die from ANY AOE attack of the boss. Why did minions run faster than the summoner in POE1, but in POE2 they forgot how to do it. They are dead, what prevents them from running tirelessly? Here ALL minions run slower than the summoner, but most of the mobs run faster than the summoner, even if he is wearing +30 boots. And for a minion to run into the attack is generally nonsense.

SRS - after the latest changes - is complete crap. Try to keep a full pack of 10 minions, The only skill when you can still try to summon all 10 SRS for at least a couple of seconds - flameblast - opens at level 13 of stones. In acts, SRS has become useless. The casting time of the fire wall is 1 second. We need to cast and at the same time dodge the boss 5 times, that is, the minimum time to summon all 10 skeletons is 5 seconds, that is, 10 skeletons will exist for a maximum of 1 second, or even zero (depending on the moment when the skulls appear.) This is not the style of play of the summoner. If in the first part they can still be used as support and cast specifically shards, then here it turns into some kind of dancing with a tambourine.


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Прямо сейчас на актах приспешники чувствуются полным калом. Они впятером не могут сразу убить даже белого моба. Если же приходит 3 белых моба, то мои 9 мобов просто умирают. Единственный кто хоть как-то играется - скелет-лучник и то не как приспешник, а из-за наличия возможности кинуть газовую стрелу. Это вообще не стиль игры за призывателя. И по поводу этой стрелы - почему я не могу скастовать сразу все стрелы, а должен стрелять по одной?
Пока дело доходит до 4-5+ стрелы, то миньон который должен был её стрельнуть уже в большинстве случаев умер и стрела просто исчезла - какая-то ерунда, а не буст урона.
Все эти мобы ужасно тупые - просто стоят кучкой под ударом босса, не пытаются как-то отбежать или вообще бегут где-то сзади. Они не имеют выживаемости и погибают от ЛЮБОЙ АОЕ атаки босса. Почему в POE1 приспешники бегали быстрее призывателя, а в poe2 разучились это делать. Они же мертвые, что им мешает бежать без устали? Тут ВСЕ приспешники бегают медленнее призывателя, зато большая часть мобов бегает быстрее призывателя даже если он обут в сапоги на +30. А чтобы приспешник побежал в атаку это вообще нонсенс.

SRS - после последних изменений - полное говно. ПОпробуйте держать полный пак в 10 миньонов, Единственный скил когда удается еще попытаться вызвать все 10 SRS хотя бы пару секунд - flameblast - открывается на 13 уровне камней. На актах SRS бесполезен стал. Время каста огненной стены - 1 секунда. Нам нужно скастовать и при этом уворачиваться от босса 5 раз, то есть мимимальное время призыва всех 10 скелетов - 5 секунд, то есть 10 скелетов будут существовать максимум 1 секунду, а то и ноль (в зависимости от момента в который появляются черепки.) Это не стиль игры призывателя. Если в первой части их еще можно использовать как поддержку и кастовать именно черепки, то тут это какие-то танцы с бубном получаются.

Good rewiew.
Just wanna say about specters...
Their AI just terrible right now, constant stuck at every corner (and without it, in "wisp" form), not agressive.
Like really, enemy archer can shoot me like at half screen and specter just stay near and watch show. :D
We need support gem from poe1 which do summons more damage and make them AGRESSIVE (maybe ravenous minions support gem need this upgrade).
Or devs can just fix specters AI and balance spirit cost.
Imho, today frost\lighning mages group feels sqishy but more viable then group of vaal guards. And i can see the screen with them. :D