Idea for a Summoner Witch Skill gem

Hello everyone, I said this a few times in the beta while playing a summoner witch and alot of people seemed to like the idea. So here it is.

I believe as a summoner witch it lacks the ability to control your minions. Many times you just raise your zombies/skeletons and Spectres and sit around and HOPE they attack generally the right target. It gets kinds of boring when you literally summon everything you can and just walk around and keep your summons capped while everything dies... With a command skill you will feel more in control and feel like your actually doing something with your minions, instead of your minions doing all the work. Also your minions WILL go on and fight whatever they see or worse they will split up to fight things out of your screen to the East and West...and your stuck to either follow them, summon new minions, or sit there defenseless until they come back to you OR run in a direction and have them "teleport" 1 by 1 back to you.

Now What if there was a skill gem that for example will be called "Command" that commanded all your minions to go to where ever you casted? It could have the same animation as how Curses in game work. It doesnt have to leave a curse on anything within the area, but where ever it is casted your minions will go there. A Skill ability such as this not only will it make you feel like you fit the roll of a summoner but add more character depth as to when you play one.
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(added thoughts that would work great with this skill gem. Thanks to BlastMonkey)
- Ranged units run to within range of and attack whatever is in the targeted area, rather than run all the way there.

- Support gems added to this skill grant their bonuses as a short duration buff either to all living minions or all minions within an aura radius of the caster (affected by area of effect and aura passives) at the time the skill is used.
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(here is another idea for how the gem would work/act thanks to MightyForest)

"I suggest we make this an active skill. The animation could be the character throwing a flask at where the mouse is which explodes. Minions run towards that area.

The explanation behind this is inside the flask is some sort of explosive liquid which creates an odor (stench?) that attracts the minions. Also ties in with the general stereotype of medieval necromancers brewing bizarre alchemical potions with weird ingredients like newt's eyes and lizard tails. In this case it has the effect of the primitive grenade + undead attraction.

To allow the skill to be viable independently by classes who don't use minions the skill can deal a small AoE physical damage and possibly some fire and/or chaos DoT."
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Here's a scenario ex.
You have just entered an area and farmed all of your minions. You want to proceed north towards a waypoint. Along the way there are a group of mobs out of your screen to the South East. ALL of your minions agro to them while you continue to travel North. You think to yourself "Ill just keep running, they'll spawn on me soon". They never do and then Another group of mobs come running into your screen from the North.. you are now forced to run back or summon a whole new army.

What Could have prevented this? I could of stayed with my minions until they killed the group... but that could of just ended up with them running into ANOTHER group of mobs.. OR there could be a new Skill gem made that can Command your minions to "move to" or "attack" the area i have casted it on. If there were a Skill like this in the game Summoner witches would never be caught in a scenario in witch we had no minions to protect us.

For anyone who has played a summoner witch it can get very annoying at times for you to want a specific mob to die. Most of the time im forced to Spam Summon Skeletons all around the target, and once it has been killed the skeletons wonder aimlessly until they expire. To me that is a waste and i think that creating a skill gem like this can really increase the potential a summoner witch has. Also seeing how there is going to be PvP in this game i dont know how a Summoner witch will be able to compete. The minions we have now just wonder around/stay by you until they see a target..

I really would like to hear some feedback on this. Do you guys like the idea? Why wouldnt you want to see it in the game? The ONLY possible Con that i can see to this ability is that it will take up a keybind slot just to command your minions.. As of right now all i use is the 3 summons and fireball, the ice nova occasionally, and the Glacial wall. That still leaves me with 2 free slots to use. Thank you reading and for your time.

Having played predominantly as a summoner since joining the beta (lvl 68 now) I want to say that I think this is a great idea that would work really well. My further suggestions would be:

- Ranged units run to within range of and attack whatever is in the targeted area, rather than run all the way there.

- Support gems added to this skill grant their bonuses as a short duration buff either to all living minions or all minions within an aura radius of the caster (affected by area of effect and aura passives) at the time the skill is used.

I'd love to be able to focus and enrage my minions with this. It would make minions much more tactical than they are now. Please consider adding this.

BlastMonkey that is actually not a bad idea at all, I completely forgot about the ranged minions that you could raise and im glad you kept that in mind. Was in game chatting again and alot of higher lvl Summoner witches were stating that they kind of regret going summoner just because its boring and the damage output is not as great as say an Ice witch. I remember back in the D2 days Summoner warlocks were pretty strong in the pvp bracket... but i know this isnt D2, But hey its a Beta and i just want to see if they could balance everything out so no one build is weaker then the next. The game should be based around playstyle and skill, not what build does the most dps. Ill make sure to add what you said to my post. Thanks.

Thank you, I'm thrilled you approve. Let's hope they implement a skill like this. It would certainly make summoner a more active build than it currently is.

If there are any other summoners out there who think this would work how about adding your support so the idea get's noticed?

+1
please make something like this happen!

What about a slight twist on the idea...

Make the Command Gem a support gem. Any minion (set) you link to it will have a special interface dialog to direct summoned minions attached to that summon skill.

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Andir wrote:

What about a slight twist on the idea...

Make the Command Gem a support gem. Any minion (set) you link to it will have a special interface dialog to direct summoned minions attached to that summon skill.

Although not a bad idea, ive heard many summoners say they dont need any more support gems added to the roster. We already have 3 specific support gems that ONLY summoners would use (inc. damage, inc. movement speed, and inc. health)

Your idea would help with the boring factor of summoners though and add a more complex feel to it, however maybe it would be too complex near end game when you have 20 zombies to control.

But hey, its still a great idea, im just hoping that one of the admins will see this thread and consider any of these ideas.

it would even be a great idea just to have your support gem literally a whole separate gem in itself. For people who would want to control their whole army and then have a specific group (skeletons, zombies, or raised minions) that you can control for flanking, not that great in PvE, but maybe in PvP it would be great.

Bumping the thread.

I would absolutely not implement such a skill. It's true that it will be more fun for a player being more in control, but a summoner has always been one of the most safe and powerful players around dumb(er) enemies. Whether you can or cannot control them.

Besides, the summons are zombies, they have no brain so they act stupid which they absolutely do ingame, and actually I really like that fact. A summoner has to have a downside, and stupid minions could be one of them.
My witch can now summon 6 zombies, 12 skeletons and 3 spectres. The only thing I should be afraid of are piercing attacks, for every single other attack I am invincible.
Thus making me able to control my minions would make me even more invincible and that would be slightly unbalanced.

Look at D2, the only character that could blindly defeat Baal in Hell (and the path to Baal) was the Necro. He didn't even need decent gear..

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didii wrote:

I would absolutely not implement such a skill. It's true that it will be more fun for a player being more in control, but a summoner has always been one of the most safe and powerful players around dumb(er) enemies. Whether you can or cannot control them.

Besides, the summons are zombies, they have no brain so they act stupid which they absolutely do ingame, and actually I really like that fact. A summoner has to have a downside, and stupid minions could be one of them.
My witch can now summon 6 zombies, 12 skeletons and 3 spectres. The only thing I should be afraid of are piercing attacks, for every single other attack I am invincible.
Thus making me able to control my minions would make me even more invincible and that would be slightly unbalanced.

Look at D2, the only character that could blindly defeat Baal in Hell (and the path to Baal) was the Necro. He didn't even need decent gear..

I do see your point, and yes summoners are safe pretty much 100% of the time if the player actually has a brain. Only thing im worried about it the pvp aspect, There are players that can dish out 3k+ dps and would rip through your minions like butter and as a summoner where are you going to get more bodies for zombies and specters? all you would be left with is your skeles, and those get melted already just from mobs.

Haha, and yea the D2 necro was quite fun seeing how you werent gear dependent at all, and once you found + skill lvl gear your minions would hit pretty hard. But never as close to an ice sorc or hammerdin or bone necro. im glad i got to see someone else's opinion on this who did not agree with it. I can see how if a skill gem like this were to be implemented it could potentially make the summoner class too powerful, but hell thats what betas are for, testing things out. If it is too powerful and there is no way to balance it then they can just drop it.
Thanks for your input and i look forward to more opinions from you or anyone else on this topic.