Analysis of current summons and speculation on 1.0.6 (the summoner's patch)

Hi,

My first character ever in PoE was a Summoner Witch because I loved my skelliemancer in Diablo 2 and my wolves in Titan Quest. Diablo 3 was a big disappointment seeing how lame zombie dogs were.

While I liked my Summoner Witch, it wasn't exacly what I wanted so I started experimenting with other builds. I have the bad habit of deleting characters I don't play with anymore so I'll have to start a new Summoner when 1.0.6 hits.

Hereunder I analyse current summons and give my ideas about their state and what could be added to make Summoners more interesting and especially more divers. My apologies for my English as I'm not a native speaker.

CURRENT PURE SUMMONING SKILLS:

Summon skeletons:

Skeletons are not bad at all, but somehow they can never be the core of a summoning build. The core will always be zombies. I think it could be cool if Summoners would be given the choice of being a Zombie Summoner (the current Summoners) with skeletons as support, or being a Skeleton Summoner, trying to get the maximum out of these slow funny buddies.

An easy way to do so is to add a keystone to the passive tree that nullifies the greatest drawback of skeletons while cancelling out the ability to summon zombies to compensate:

"Bones over Flesh:

Your skeletons don't have a duration anymore but stay with you permanently as long as they are not killed.

You can't summon zombies anymore."

To truly support the Skeleton Summoner subclass, a new unique item that boosts skeletons in one way or another (like Mon'tregul's Grasp for zombies) would be very nice!

Raise Zombie:

Zombies are good. They are the reason Summoners can exist in PoE. Diablo 3 doesn't have a Summoner class because their zombie dogs suck. So GGG did a nice job here.

When the new unique Mon'tregul's Grasp was added to the game, I was very happy. Finally we would have different types of Summoners: those who want to go for a large army of normal zombies and those who run around with smaller armies but more badass zombies. The idea of the item was very good because it intended to create build diversity within the Summoner class, which was needed.

But it failed to do that: people snapshot their big zombies with Mon'tregul and then add normal zombies by weapon switching. The best of two worlds, but bye bye diversity and welcome mandatory item for the class. In the perspective of balanced and varied gaming this is a huge pity. But easily solved:

=> 1.0.6 should make snapshotting impossible

Parties who don't like huge armies might accept Mon'tregullers because they know their zombies are limited in number.
To want to walk around with a huge army, you'll not play with a Mon'tregul, as intended.

Raise Spectre:

Spectres are cool! I think they are exacly in the place where they should be.

Still I'd like to add an idea that is just optional but can be fun: right now everyone knows what Spectre he wants and where to get it. Nothing wrong with that. But still it would be fun if you have different kind of Spectres around every new gaming session.

This could achieved with a unique item or a keystone that allows you to spectre rare monsters at a very serious drawback. Like this you'll look more for the good rare affixes then for a certain type of monster.

Animate Guardian:

Supercool skill! But it doesn't reach its potential at all. If you summon him with white items, he's crap. If you use awesome items to summon him, you'll lose those items eventually. On the forum I read an excellent idea to solve this dilemma: when he dies, all the items fall back on the ground but lose a certain amount of their quality. Items without or with insufficient quality are destroyed nevertheless.

This way you'll dare to invest good items into your guardian, making him really cool and giving him some power, while it will cost you armourer's scraps and blacksmith whetstones to use him ingame because no matter how, he will die sometimes.

He'll still be a somewhat unconventional summon, but at least people would not fear anymore to experiment with him. And scraps and whetstones will increase in value. Always good to have a new orb sink!

Animate Weapon:

This skill has to be reworked completely because it's way too unconvenient:

1) Annoying to cast: look for melee weapons, throw them on the ground, then cast, then wait till they "switch on".

2) Very limited duration: Tedious casting is ok if they last long, but they have the lifspan of a fruitfly. On top of it they are destroyable before their duration expires.

3) Item sink: the skill destroys the item. So you don't use good items for it, resulting in weak Animated Weapons.

Now, those 3 points combined together make it just too horrible. I would like to see a serious buff by doing something about some of those points. I think we can pay the price for that change by limiting the maximum amount of weapons that can follow you.

Animate Skills:

If the two above skills are made usable, they certainly would deserve some of their own passive nodes in the tree. I think both the shadow side as the templar side can have a cluster involving boosts in animated skills. The shadow side more aimed towards Weapons, the Templar towards Guardians, but most just general Animated nodes.

A nice notable would be to grant you 50% chance of not losing quality on the items when your guardian dies (see Animate Guardian). Another one could be that Animated Summons get increased benefits from Aura's, allowing you to skip some aura nodes or combine both for superbuffed Animated Summons.

CURRENT SEMI-SUMMONING SKILLS:

Dominating Blow:

Good skill, somewhat unconvenient maybe: well-balanced!

Totems:

Totems are great, but can be very annoying when facing hordes of hard-hitting enemies because then they die in an eye-blink. A unique item that grants 2 seconds immunity to all damage to your totems when they are cast could be welcome, at the cost of a drawback ofcourse, like slower casting speed for summoning those totems.

FUTURE SUMMONING SKILLS:

Melee Totem:

There is a Spell Totem and a Ranged Attack Totem, so why not having a Melee Totem? Because Totems cannot move ofcourse!

But this problem is easily solved: If a Melee Totem would just go together with a ghostly copy of yourself that uses the linked melee skill on the enemy. This "ghost" is not targetable, but dies as soon as the totem dies. In a way your melee skill becomes a very strange ranged version attached to a totem.

Because you'll have "ghosts" walking around fighting melee, it'll feel like you're a Summoner even if those Summons are attached to Totems. Ranged Attack Totem is ok but certainly not OP, so a melee totem with the same downgrades (30% reduced attack speed, 50% less damage) will equal the Ranged Attack Totem in power.

Actually, I always felt that Spell Totems are superior because of various reasons (physical damage in small portions has trouble with armour, attack speed doesn't help with casting the totems, you need accuracy), so Ranged Attack Totems and Melee Totems should only have 35%-40% less damage compared to the 50% on Spell Totems.

Summon Clone:

No specifics on this one, but the basic idea is that the Clone is an exact copy of yourself that also uses your skills and gear (no snapshot!).

For those who played Diablo 2: who didn't like the Assassin Shadow Master skill? I found it incredibly fun, and GGG is well capable of implementing a similar skill in PoE.

Because having yourself twice will be very powerfull, a feature of the Clone would be that you take more damage as long as the Clone is alive, making you very flimsy.

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That's it for now! Updates will follow when other Exiles post their ideas here.

I love most of these ideas and I agree about the item switching.
However, I don't feel there is a need to make summoners choose whether to play skellies or zombies. I like the fact that they can do both, unless you are thinking it will lower minion count and therefore let summoners party more :-/

"

I love most of these ideas and I agree about the item switching.
However, I don't feel there is a need to make summoners choose whether to play skellies or zombies. I like the fact that they can do both, unless you are thinking it will lower minion count and therefore let summoners party more :-/

It's an extra option, not a change. If you want both, don't take the keystone and you'll summon zombies and skellies the way you have always summoned them.
If you want to specialize in skellies at the cost of losing zombies, take the keystone and indeed some party members might be happy because of the smaller army.

I am sure they will take this opportunity to...

1. Nerf snapshots, it has been talked about too much.
2. Tweak Animates
3. Add a few new skills of which only 1 will be useful.

A simple curse to attract your hoard would be nice. Sure any curse aims them but they wander off quickly if more mobs are around.

"

Soepkieken wrote:

"

I love most of these ideas and I agree about the item switching.
However, I don't feel there is a need to make summoners choose whether to play skellies or zombies. I like the fact that they can do both, unless you are thinking it will lower minion count and therefore let summoners party more :-/

It's an extra option, not a change. If you want both, don't take the keystone and you'll summon zombies and skellies the way you have always summoned them.
If you want to specialize in skellies at the cost of losing zombies, take the keystone and indeed some party members might be happy because of the smaller army.

Oh sorry, I was skimming and must have mis-read. Yeah a choice wouldn't really hurt anything. I now like everything you suggested!

"

Mr_Bill wrote:

1. Nerf snapshots, it has been talked about too much.

That's exactly what I am hoping for :). But it isn't a nerf, it is a bug fix, just like they fixed auras.

The only issue I'd see with being a skelly summoner is the possibility of pulling ones hair out waiting for them to catch up to you lol.

GGG had ONE thing... only ONE to increase Summoning potential and they missed it

Transform searing Bond in a Support gem

"

Searing Bond: Creates a burning link between you and your minions or/and your totems which are supported by this gem.

Tadam Solved

If they remove snapshotting I'd love to see some slight tweaks with minions. I wonder on their stance with Cast on Death. I'd hate to see it go but it'd be a very valid nerf if they decided to nerf it. :P