Summon Skeletons

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Ragnar119 wrote:

At the moment I am lvl 30, and this skill helps me a lot. I can spam a lot of skeletons so monsters dont atack my zombies or me, and from distance I spam fireballs. I don't know what better skill i can use for this purpose. The skill is a must for a summoner build.

This, my new summoner witch is lvl 40+, real useful casting several times in the middle of a room full of stuff before entering.

This skill is great for crowd control in HC.

I hadn't even planned to make a summoner at first, but I liked the skill so much so that I scrapped my initial build just to pick up Minion Instability. I'm finding it especially pleasing to toss a massive pile of skeletons on all those annoying and ridiculously hard-hitting rare mobs that would otherwise probably destroy me. Not so tough when you can't move, huh?!

--an enemy at the edge of the screen will "lock" me as a target

--it moves towards me

--i cast a pack of skeletons between us

--enemy runs right through the middle of skeletons to get me


i just spent 15 minutes in chaos letting a unique enemy chase me while i kept casting skeleton between us

no matter how much i ran around or how far(screens away) the enemy did not change it's targeting to the skeletons.
well actually i did see it change, but only once because the skeleton got lucky and hit the enemy as it was running past.


it would make sense to me that if i am the target then AI should change priority if the enemy runs past a skeleton

I completely agree with vapor.

Trying to use skeletons in place of Frost Wall is not working.

It is exactly as vapor describes it, the most annoying part about using minions in PoE is the aggro management.

The skeletons will not follow you, so you must run ahead. Once you encounter a group of monsters casting skeletons at them will not peel the mob off you and onto the minions (as I would expect it to). I have been writing a 'game journal' of notes as I leveled up a witch in 9.7, and the majority of my negative entries are in regards to minions not capturing 'snap' aggro.

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If it were up to me to fix this skill, I would:

Remove the increasing "Can raise up to X Skeletons at a time" - this amount should ONLY be increased through focusing on minion passives.

Keep the slowly increasing "Raises X Skeletons" - this amount should scale up to half (5) the highest number possible through passives (10).

The Duration is fine.

The skeletons should snare nearby monsters as they crawl up out of the ground (the loose soil, skeletons grabbing at their feet). This should gain the attention of affected monsters.

The skeletons should be lined up in a straight line oriented the same way frost wall is (perpendicular to the line between your mouse cursor and your character).


---------------- *edit* update at level 47 ----------------

Build link (plans till 60)

With the additional full-respec given in 9.7d I decided to go full summoner using no attacks of my own (five auras, raise zombie, summon skeletons, curse). Its working suprisingly well and I noticed a huge boost in skeletons utility when the skill hit level 11 (character level 44).

The turning point for me was raising four skeletons at once. Clicking directly on a monster would surround it and clicking to summon them as a blockade was successful more often since they typically formed an "L" shape.

Also, I highly recommend supporting with Minion Speed! This enables them to grab aggro almost immediately as I was hoping they would.

Running around with seven zombies and 12 skeletons using haste, anger, hatred, wrath, and discipline auras. Leaves me with 282 mana and 38 mana regen per second. Zombies are costing 171 and skeletons 116 per cast. Tried Necromantic Aegis for the first time and confirmed my suspicions- its not worth one skill point. Ditched it for a 5-link greatsword. Necromantic Aegis would be nice if tempest shield transferred to minions as Qarl mentioned last month.

Skeletons are tearing up Ruthless!

*edit 2*

I need to know more information about the skeletons' base health and damage to make decisions about supporting them. I assume these stats will be visible once the "minion patch" arrives, but sucks knowing so little until then.

---------------- *edit 3* update at 57 ----------------

Skeletons supported with minion damage, minion speed, and weapon elemental damage running the five auras stated above worked great through the end of merciless act II.

And then I tried Chaos...I don't think I have repeated the phrase "WHAT THE FUCK" while trying to 'enjoy' a computer game quite so often. My minions were getting insta-gibbed by leap slamming goats, molten shell goats, and 2-screen-away-fireball-shooting goats. Those bastard goats kept blowing up all four freshly summoned skeletons before they made it outta the ground. Swapped out a damage support for minion life on zombie and skeleton which seems to be working better. Speed aura rares are still bypassing my minions and no matter how many skeletons I spam in their way while running for my life they keep after me instead.

Large source of frustration with the PoE minion system- I am fragile summoner stop making me tank when I have 25 minions summoned. Also very annoying over half my minions travel on a "path of exile" walking in the complete opposite direction of the enemies I want them to engage. The minions being hung up on collision is exacerbated now with 16 skeletons. Best work-around I have developed is to summon the skeletons on the backside of mobs so that the zombies have access to the frontlines. Only problem is all 9 zombies ran the opposite way across the map because my skeletons were in the way, and now I am tanking when I make room for the zombies by summoning skeletons on the mob's backside.

Forget using movespeed boots because your zombies will be far behind (just close enough to avoid teleporting to you unfortunately) and you will surely engage the enemies first. So begins the cumbersome leap frog task of summoning skeletons, seeing if they walk towards monsters (summon more if they do, walk up to them if not) and summon skeletons another screen away to see what they might aggro. Catch initial aggro on some tiny hitbox, quick moving mobs and you are toast- they will run right past your skeletons with ease.

De-sync caused me one molten shell death so far, since I have to stand somewhat nearby my minion horde to provide them aura coverage. The goat avatar appeared to be 40ish units away from the point of detonation. If I had one more hotkey I would probably add purity aura.

Adding any sort of automatic snare or taunt would make them much too powerful.

If you get aggroed first (shame on you), then to get the skeletons to tank for you you need to either:

1. break the attacking mob's pathing by creating obstacles, causing them to stop chasing you (easy inside, often not so easy outside); or
2. use skills like Frost Wall to allow the skeletons to catch up and do some damage

Neither of which is a fail-safe strategy.

But from this I don't think we should infer that they're broken, but rather that the right way to use them as tanks is to let the skeletons get aggroed first (I have personally never seen the skeletons actually lose aggro once they have it).

What does need to be fixed, though, is their tendency to just walk around aimlessly when there are too many obstacles in the way to their target (and since other friendly summons counts as obstacles, this happens A LOT if you play a summoner). Of course, fixing this would probably also "fix" point 1 above.

[deleted]

Few tips if you want to use it right.
If your running first in front, cast first ice wall (or how its called), then skeletons.
But best if you want to be sure that monsters dont target you, is to cast them in front of you, then move to them, then cast again in front of you, and continue like that. I'm not having any problems with them. And they are great help outdoor and indoor. Pathfinding could be better, but it's not a big problem because you can cast a lot of skeletons on the enemy.

Problem:

you can use unlimited of those for a single fight (same mechanic works for zombies - but not limited on skeletons as they don´t need a corpse)
You can summon your max number - port out port in summon again and again .. get the mob you want to kill into range and let them swarm him. They lose their timer and stay forever until something kills them.
No big deal atm but could lead to exploits later on for pvp or pve.

From what I've seen so far they die too fast, and summoning them 4x to get them all is a bit annoying.

What I would recommend is lower their duration from 20 seconds to 10 seconds, summon 50% of your max at a time (so two casts would bring them all out), increase their health/damage due to the lower duration, and when you summon them half would be melee and the other half skeleton archers. I would lower the max as well. I'd rather have 4 decent summons than 8 bad summons.