How to make summoners deeper, more creative, fun and strategic.

Critique: Summoning in POE is too boring, bland and has little strategic options available. Summoning also drastically lacks customizations in pet choices.


Summon stance bar

Passive: Stops your minions from doing anything but follow.
Defensive: Minions will follow you closely and attack foes, but try to close in on you if you walk too far away. Defensive makes your summons priorotize targets attacking you.
Agressive: Minions will mindlessly charge and attack anything they see within one screen range.

Most important change here is agressive stance. Currently you have to get too close to mobs for minions to attack. There really needs to be an option for minions to stop hugging you and start going on a rampage!

Different summons with various roles

We have raise spectre. Good skill, but we need more summons that has strategic value and specific purposes. Look at the druid skill tree from D2:

You could go Oak for health aura or another option for damage aura. The balance lies in tradeoff, you cant have two at the same time. Now - watch me show you how its done:

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Raise Skeleton (Skill gem).



So, what do we have here? With several raise skeletons in different gemslots. We can summon a variety of specialized summons based on preference and need. This was just an example, but there is no limit to the potential Zombies and Skeletons has - as to being morphed into more specialized units. For example, 3 zombies could become an abomination. There really is alot of room for creativity here! And making these new morphs/units cost more than a regular summon - it is actually EASY to balance.

Doesent have to stop there. What about:

Mutually exclusive summoner nodes in the passive skill tree:

Gravelord: grants summoned creature a permanent armor bonus.
Gravedancers: grants summoned creatures a permanent evasion bonus.

Picking one blocks out the other node. Again, more potential for customization.

Also, here are some random ideas:

Zombielord(Tank/3 Zombie slot cost): Gains endurance charges when hit.
Frenzied Zombie (DPS/2 Zombie slot costs: Gains Frenzy charges on attacks.

Node options:

Empower: Gives minions +2 total power charges each.
Slime: Dead zombies releases slime that slows enemies.
Bone spikes: Skeletons can stun enemies when hit.

More random stuff:

Mummy Lord: 3 skeleton slots and 3 zombie slots. Creates a mummy that can steal an ability from an enemy and permanently (Until dead) use it against them.

Floating boneskull artifact: Costs 4 skeleton slots. Has a big AOE radius which will block out one effect on enemy bosses (Max 1).

!!!THE POTENTIAL OF SUMMONING WITH THE POE GEM/SKILLTREE SYSTEM IS VAST - PLEASE DONT LET IT GO TO WASTE!!!

As I played a summoner as my first highlevel character(RIP) I love the ideas
+1

It IS true - summoners, unlike more traditional builds (even totem users) have almost endless potentail for experements and trying things out :)

Signing Up Under Every Word!

P.S. But what are whine spork/summon haters gonna rise! :3

Atm summons attack what you attack btw, they changed this behavior for the better i think.

I must admit i like the idea's a lot, but summoners are already quite OP, i don't see a reason to implement this instead of making something like Arc functional.

This would be on GGG's to-do list after act 5 ore so is done?...

I like the idea's but i fear there is no motivation atm to implement them. The only thing i would desire for summoners is lightning warp to transport all your summons to the location, to give a tactical advantage.

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Boem wrote:

Atm summons attack what you attack btw, they changed this behavior for the better i think.

I must admit i like the idea's a lot, but summoners are already quite OP, i don't see a reason to implement this instead of making something like Arc functional.

This would be on GGG's to-do list after act 5 ore so is done?...

I like the idea's but i fear there is no motivation atm to implement them. The only thing i would desire for summoners is lightning warp to transport all your summons to the location, to give a tactical advantage.

Bolded: THat is horrible actually. Switch targets and the summons waste time running around. Optimal dps would be minions running around attacking anything they see without you having to be afraid of them running back to you because you stop attacking or run too far off.

FYI, If you shift left click a monster your minion will go attack it. Depending what you have on left click you will attack also, but it's an option if you don't want to walk in.

Why have Support Gems that can only be used to augment Raise Skeleton?

Just make them their own Skill Gem instead of a Support...

Looks like you put in a lot of thought. Cool ideas.