Summoner builds need to be rethought

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Mark_GGG wrote:

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sethmklein wrote:

I'm curious, how would this be tricky to implement, just replicate (if not a copy/paste with some modifications as needed) what was done for those water elemental mobs that don't leave corpses when killed?

Water Elementals do leave corpses (although said corpses are marked unusable).

I always thought that the body parts left behind were more of an exploded/fell apart remains, like what you get after killing a mob with Infernal Blow, than a true corpse since there was nothing that could be used for raising a zombie or spectre. Guess that was due to it being marked unusable. I guess I should have worded it slightly differently, by saying not leaving a usable corpses behind.

So is there a reason why ghosts don't have their 'corpse' marked unusable like water elementals?

That is understandable, although I do think that having ghosts dissipate at least in a manner similar to water elementals would be cool, and probably easier than completely dissipating, but such a change is of low importance for the time being. I'd rather the time be spent on getting Act 3 ready and any polishing for Acts 1 and 2 to make all the acts in all the difficulties flow smoothly since it is obvious that with the addition of act 3, the level ranges for Acts 1 and 2 in higher difficulties need to be adjusted.

I do wonder if there will be any monsters in Act 3 that will be especially fun to use as Spectres.

Hmm I wonder if summoners will be able to get a sort of archer or mage skeleton or zombie skill (either via a new skill gem or a keystone) to have ranged pets without relying on using Spectre on a ranged mob.

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anubite wrote:

They're kind of dominating the ladder right? I think the way summon clusters are set up are part of the problem

Every summoner build probably goes like this, right? I mean, why wouldn't you go this route?

How can you tell they're 'dominating' the ladder? Did they add an Armory feature when I wasn't looking? (serious question).

Also, a reason not to do that build? It looks suboptimal. Relying on summons to kill things will always be suboptimal, because their AI. They are slow to get to monsters and actually hit them, and thus they suck. Time to kill (the time from a monster entering your screen to the time it dies) is quite inferior for summoner builds. And when you rely on minions to meatshield you, their AI hampers your aggressiveness as you tend to outrun them and have to be careful about moving into new areas too quickly.

Optimal is a hybrid build that gets enough summons to ensure safety while maximizing other sources of DPS. Also, after a certain point buffing your summons lowers your DPS since they don't die and explode hardly ever anymore, so even increasing minion life past a certain point is counterproductive.

If pure summon builds are actually 'dominating' the ladder, I cannot imagine why. Maybe the ease allows those players to stand grinding for longer hours? Because from a "how many enemies can you kill per hour" standpoint they shouldn't be able to keep up.

In any case, I defnitely agree that summons are a bit boring right now and playing a 'summoner' is rather shallow and inherently suboptimal. The idea about linking summons to attacks/spells was actually quite brilliant, but does seem a bit too close to totems (and all the attendant balance issues).

Perhaps I was too vague. I should have specified. Summoners tend to dominate medium-length races, because they require very, very little gear to be 100% effective. Which means they're extremely popular. By dominating, I'm only implying the number of players picking up this build, which perhaps isn't a useful metric, but considering the number of possible builds in this game, the fact most summoners have very similar builds is concerning. As I link in the first post, the most optimal build for the summoner is that highway. There shouldn't even be an optimal summoner build (yet at least), but I'd argue there is one and it's very easy to see.

I play a summoner build and always play a summoner build first in any arpg game not because it's easy or efficient or anything but because I like it.

Anyway, I agree too that the whole minion system and nodes placement should be rethought. At least, their AI should be improved because they hesitate too much about which mob to attack and once they decide which it takes too much time before they actually attack. I'm running a minion insta/lightning totem witch and my totem almost all time outrun my zombies/skeletons.
The only thing I need my minions are to swarm the enemy and die.

About minion LP support being counter-productive at some point, I'd say yes and no. Speedwise, yes more LP means longer time before dieing so minion instability takes longer to apply than any other source of damage; damagewise,no, more LP means more damage and I have found it quite efficient against not ranged champions or bosses and sometimes even ranged ones.(I just swarm them with zombies and skeleton and let them kill themselves)

Right now, the most balanced minions are the specters in my opinion. Reasonable distance node.

One idea that comes to my mind is to separate the Increase number of zombie from the increase numbers of skeleton.

I don't like fracturing minion nodes further. What if GGG introduces more minion summons down the road? Are we going to need skill-specific node clusters for ranger pets, additional witch pets, additional templar/marauder toys? That's creating too much specification in the passive tree, I'd rather see minion clusters broken up, maximum minions reduced in some cases (but increased in others, so players can still make hoards, but they have to specialize in it), but minions gaining more unique passive skills in exchange.