Rework Summons please

[Prophet419]

Imma just say it. HoT did summon builds better. I cant get behind them in this game when 90% of the time theyre active, theyre just stuck chasing something they cant hit. Especially with all the new enemies in act 2 that jump, dash, teleport, etc.

Summon blessings need some kind of innate ability to make them viable, wolves should have dash attacks, dragons/crows should fly as fast as the bombers do in A2, skeles should probably stay as they are though since theyre literally designed to be a hoard themselves. With how they are now, every summon may as well be considered element based skeletons

[Prophet419]

Forgot to mention this too, granted its probably already coming. Why doesnt the earth goddess have a summon blessing? The golems or even the rock monsters that have the spinning rocks around them would've been a perfect fit imo

[<color=#CD3210>Lunatic]

Your either new, or youve had awful rng playing before this update.

That being said, you can have god powers ravens, wolves, snakes, and skeletons.

But you can also find unique gear that summons 2 hordes of skeletons, 3 dragons and other things.

Not to mention buffing their speed and dmg from legendary powers.

Also it should be obvious that the mage character buffs summons.

Summon builds can get crazy OP and all you have to do is move and dash, + morts life steal dash makes this game way too easy.

[Prophet419]

You're completely misunderstanding the point brother. I have plenty of summon play time as well. That does not excuse ♥♥♥♥♥♥ ai pathing/targetting/etc. Either way dude do you not agree that summons as they are, are just bland. I love the playstyle but its pretty damn boring just watching my summons scroll from left to right. I'd be waay cooler if they all actually did something

[Carenard]

Originally posted by Lunatic Heretic:

Your either new, or youve had awful rng playing before this update.

That being said, you can have god powers ravens, wolves, snakes, and skeletons.

But you can also find unique gear that summons 2 hordes of skeletons, 3 dragons and other things.

Not to mention buffing their speed and dmg from legendary powers.

Also it should be obvious that the mage character buffs summons.

Summon builds can get crazy OP and all you have to do is move and dash, + morts life steal dash makes this game way too easy.

eh, summon builds can be good... but they are far far weaker than strike or cast builds...
a caster merris the entire screen is basically instagibd on spawn... you usually just see the xp crystal spawn in flying to you, big enemies might live long enough to do 1 attack... might... on difficulty 100(where the hard part is the first 3 minutes, and minute 11... if you survive those your likely done).

summons start to fall off closer to difficulty 60 where enemies can take a couple hits getting to the character, I tried a bunch of variations, lots of items with summons, etc...

skeletons I feel are... only good if your going with summer minions to, since you basically are required to take time as well for the summon duration at that point. I still need to test summers minions out more, but I feel like I would rather just stick to the caster build.

Minion focused build definitely feels great early... when you have 16 skeletons, a bunch of birds, dragons, elementals and such running around with you.

[Prophet419]

Facts carenard. Glad theres someone else out there that understands what I mean and not just say "you must be new" when its the opposite, im basically a veteran of this genre at this point. Not as dedicated to it as some people are but I have hundreds of hours between VS, HoT, DRGS, DMD, etc. Im not just spouting nonsense as if its my first bullet hell game

[Red]

Originally posted by Prophet419:

You're completely misunderstanding the point brother. I have plenty of summon play time as well. That does not excuse ♥♥♥♥♥♥ ai pathing/targetting/etc. Either way dude do you not agree that summons as they are, are just bland. I love the playstyle but its pretty damn boring just watching my summons scroll from left to right. I'd be waay cooler if they all actually did something

There are so many summons on the screen and they are often so darn fast, that them "doing something", whatever that may be, would make the game even more chaotic than it already is.

The dragons breath fire, the crows fly, the wolves jump.
What exactly do you want them to do... A dance?

[Prophet419]

Varying movespeed would be a good start. The wolves do not jump, they walk and then bite when close just like any other summon minion. Thats just an attacking animation brother. Ooooh nooooo more chaos in a game that is literally supposed to be chaotic. youre beyond explanation red

[Red]

Originally posted by Prophet419:

Varying movespeed would be a good start. The wolves do not jump, they walk and then bite when close just like any other summon minion. Thats just an attacking animation brother. Ooooh nooooo more chaos in a game that is literally supposed to be chaotic. youre beyond explanation red

They already have varying move speed. Dragons are slower than wolves, and parrots are way faster than wolves, for example.
(And by the way this is a contradiction to what you said earlier by the way, because you wanted the dragons to be able to keep up with the flying mobs, which would make them just as fast as the other summons.)

So what else should they be doing? Because you didn't say anything about what they actually should be doing other than the move speed. And also, what would be the point if you can’t even see what they are doing because of the chaos?

[Prophet419]

Play a halls of torment summon build and try to tell me im wrong after. Other than the dragons, summon blessings are pretty damn plain and repasted other than the actual entity model itself. Theyre all just "track monster, get close, attack, apply related status"

[Red]

Originally posted by Red:

Because you didn't say anything about what they actually should be doing other than the move speed.

You are like those "D4=Bad" memes, just constantly saying: This is bad and that is bad, but not actually saying how things should improve.
And the one thing you did mention, varying movement speeds, is already in the game.

[Zoid13]

1st every summon has a different move speed already.
2nd theres also the summon speed stat if you want them to be globally faster.

i havent had issues with summon builds personally. i find them super strong. even used them on Dark 80+ and they delete bosses lol
my go to for summons is Winter, War, + other

winter has great amplifiers and slows to help the 'slowness' youre complainign about since your using wolves anyway get the frost patches on the floor with area and cooldown reduction (you want CDR anyway for the summon % skill)

war is a boss with god of war legendary and the swords to great damage. as are the blades.

and yes blades anf frost patches are casts. Merris summon build uses the talent that buffs both casts and summons so use it (the dont attack with merris directly skill) :P

justice is great with summons with her new aura you get that aura on master and it amplifies the damage taken by anything standing in it by 2000% with some area boosts and that's full screen and the summons obliterate everything. in particular bosses. they last all of 3-5 seconds on Darkness 30+

also justice is kind of needed at Darkness 80+ for the hp re-gen legendary or you just won't survive most of the time in the later parts of the act as with the darkness buffs things become too fast to avoid lol

[Karander]

I have to agree that summons are in general not great, for various reasons. Don't take me wrong, with the right setup they will do great and kill the Act 2 Boss no problem on normal difficulty. But they really struggle starting from 20 skulls (unless you only buff the boss). i could not get to 50 with summons, was just too much of a pain, even though for many other builds (like a caster build) 50 is still a joke. And yes, I do have all the uniques and stuff. And also, the Boss at the end is not the problem, pretty much any build will delete him at the end, the problem is the early game. They have simply veeeeery low clearspeed early game. But yeah, if you manage to survive that part, then the lategame is no problem. But that is true for pretty much every build.

[Zoid13]

all that being said what i woud like to see with summons is giving them HP values and having individual monsters actually target them directly 1v1 instead of you + a cooldown to re-summon when / if they get killed. so if you aren't built right you get overrun and cant re-summon quick enough.

being able to use them as a distraction would be another alternative to "hp regen" being pretty much mandatory on high darkness.

[Zoid13]

Originally posted by Karander:

I have to agree that summons are in general not great, for various reasons. Don't take me wrong, with the right setup they will do great and kill the Act 2 Boss no problem on normal difficulty. But they really struggle starting from 20 skulls (unless you only buff the boss). i could not get to 50 with summons, was just too much of a pain, even though for many other builds (like a caster build) 50 is still a joke. And yes, I do have all the uniques and stuff. And also, the Boss at the end is not the problem, pretty much any build will delete him at the end, the problem is the early game. They have simply veeeeery low clearspeed early game. But yeah, if you manage to survive that part, then the lategame is no problem. But that is true for pretty much every build.

how are you built?
merris' summon build for high darkness is a combined summon cast setup where you don't attack with merris herself you just dash around without attacking directly.
you basically build down the left side fo the tree for the cast setup but toward the end you go to the left side fo the tree to pick up 'Channel' (80% summon and cast damage when you arent attacking)

this hybrid summon cast build. you can focus your gear on summons. the casts part while its fantastic damage if you go that route you can just pickup things like the frost patches ect to help out your summons and cast loads of them all over the place with esoteric flow and twin cast.

also a big issue is that + summon count on gear currently doesnt do anything.