Summon Skeletons

I know this probably won't happen (though an alternate version of the skill that does this would be great)


Have it so that it reserves a portion of your mana and auto-summons every 2 seconds or so as long as you are below your maximum number. If enemies are nearby, it auto-targets. Otherwise, they're summoned on top of you.



Just as a note, I tried a Skelly Totem just before closed Beta ended and it was wild. The totem spammed skellies like it was an attack spell. The skellies usually got 1 attack in or so before they were summoned again. They never had time to wander off... it was epic and funny at the same time :P

I have not read every post, but I think the skeletons should last until they die. it can be annoying spamming the cast button cus they expire so soon.

"

Manofdusk wrote:

Just as a note, I tried a Skelly Totem just before closed Beta ended and it was wild. The totem spammed skellies like it was an attack spell. The skellies usually got 1 attack in or so before they were summoned again. They never had time to wander off... it was epic and funny at the same time :P

I thought about using a skele totem, but I've read that the spell damage decrease that totems get also applies to the skeleton damage output. If you use them as a bone shield to keep the heat off you, that's fine, but I'd rather them do some damage as well so I dunno how i feel about that.

I'm having a small issue regarding allowed skeleton quantity that I'm unable to track down. My actual skeleton limit seems to have somehow become one higher than what it should be based on the level of my gem and the talents I've purchased.

At the moment, my gem level of 10 allows me 5 skeletons. Additionally, the following talents add skeletons to this limit:

Lord of the Dead: +2
Additional Minions x4: +4

This should yield an allowed total of 11 skeletons. Yet I'm able to produce 12, even though both the tooltip and my calculations indicate 11. I first noticed this phenomenon earlier on with the character, when I'd reached what I thought was my limit of 9 skeletons, but was surprised to discover that I could produce a 10th.

Also note that this occurs whether I have the spell attached to a spell totem gem or whether I'm casting it myself.

wrong forum, sry

I HATED using skeletons when I didn't have my spell totem, but I needed them to die instead of me. I am a freezing pulse witch mainly, but untill I got that totem I didn't really cast (m)any freezing pulse, was very busy summoning skeletons.

But now that I have my spell totem I can love the skellies again, and I do. Having the totem spam them for me so I can actually cast the spell I want to cast is wonderful. Also using a skeleton totem is a great way of forcing enemies into a corner or to gain grounds or if you just need a meat shield.

I am seriously impressed by how you guys managed to come up with the ideas for combining skills and spells.

And thank you for the statue skin :) I enjoy it a lot.

As a followup: I believe it's simply the displayed quantity that's becoming out of sync. The screen will say 12 skeletons (it even said 13 once!) but I believe I only will have had 11 summoned. Once they all die, the skeleton icon will remain, as if the game thinks I have a skeleton alive but I don't.

To support this theory, I'll note that at one point my screen displayed that I had three specters, even though I very clearly only had two (which is my current limit).

Can we please fix the derpy AI? Summoner is getting quite annoying to play because the AI is just stupid.

In MANY occasions, I summon skeletons right in front of a monster's face, and they will literally just walk away slowly in the opposite direction of the monster, and make no attempt to kill it. No, they're not walking to another mob; there are no other mobs around. The majority of the time they just don't do anything, even IF they walk toward the mob. In many situations they WILL work toward the mob, but then they stand there and stare at it, doing nothing.

I don't know if this is supposed to be some sort of anti-afk/bot measure, but it's a problem when it's negatively affecting the gameplay of actual players. Zombies have the exact same issue, too. It's becoming a chore just to try to get them to kill anything because even though there are monsters nearby, they just don't attack. Playing solo is a big waiting game hoping that your pets will attack the mobs. Yeah I can and should and do use other spells to attack too, but then what's the point of the pets? By the time the pet AI fixes itself and (a few) of the pets decide to attack a mob, I've already killed it or done a lot of damage to it. I'm aware of the functionality that seems to exist that attacking a mob with something causes your pets to attempt to focus it, but it just doesn't happen. I've blasted my wand at things and they just don't do anything. Sometimes it seems to work, but for some skills (firestorm?) it seems like they just don't care, ever.

There are some things I can live with. The fact that mob AoE sometimes decimates pets is fine, I can live with that (and perform countermeasures to fix it). The fact that the skeletons move slow can even be fixed with the (albeit, poor) minion speed gem. Plus, the fact that you can summon them on the monster is great, so they don't have to travel much. However, there is NOTHING I can do to even make them decide to attack the monster and fix their derpy AI. The pets hit fairly hard and have a pretty good amount of survivability so far, it's just too bad they're just so stupid.

If you don't want to change the AI, at least give us an "attack move" button so that we can tell the pets to move toward a specific location and attack everything along the way to that location. Something, anything, would be very helpful.

"

Xaxyx wrote:

As a followup: I believe it's simply the displayed quantity that's becoming out of sync. The screen will say 12 skeletons (it even said 13 once!) but I believe I only will have had 11 summoned. Once they all die, the skeleton icon will remain, as if the game thinks I have a skeleton alive but I don't.

To support this theory, I'll note that at one point my screen displayed that I had three specters, even though I very clearly only had two (which is my current limit).

This is new to me - Initially I just wanted to reply to your first post about having 1 more skellie than you should have: I'm pretty sure that it counts the totem itself as a minion of the same type, hence, while your totem is up, you will have 1 more skellie count than you actually have skellies. That would also explain why the icon remains: As long as the totem is alive but no enemies are close by, it doesn't cast skellingtons, so you only have one minion: the totem itself.
My theory however does not explain why you had 13 skellies at one point, so I'm not so sure anymore :/

My summoner is level 45 and I use my skellington totem with minion speed (for the lack of moar support gems). I use them mostly defensively, as the totem decreases their damage and elemental damage is reduced by default and I'm pretty satisfied with them. Does the Minion Instability damage get reduced, by the way? Or increased by minion damage passives etc?

Can we get a developer to confirm whether or not the spell totem and summon skeleton interaction reduces skeleton melee/elemental/minion instability damage?

I've been getting mixed answers while searching for this answer.