Idea for a Summoner Witch Skill gem

Awesome idea in here.

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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Welchman666 wrote:

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.

Minion Instability makes them explode with dmg equal to their life. So if others were to kill your minions they would kill themselves ;)
But yeah, a summoner in pvp has never a chance. Other players should be smart enough not to kill the minions and to kill you first (luckily the AI is not that smart). And the only thing a summoner can do is postpone his imminent death. Being able to control your minions would only make it irritating for the other player, postpone it even more, and if the player is incredibly stupid that might help.

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Welchman666 wrote:

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.

Of course, you can test it. Nothing wrong with that :)
To balance it I'd suggest:
- With the flask throwing: only works within a certain range
- Make skills only gain experience when you use them, not by equipping them. This would slow the leveling of the summon skills a whole lot since you're not summoning all the time.

At the end of the day this skill would act as focused damage on targets within an area of the battlefield. That's exactly how firestorm currently works if you think about it.

Since taking this skill means not taking something like firestorm or detonate dead it wouldn't really serve to add to a summoner's overall dps. In fact if the command skill did not add a short buff providing the benefits of support gems linked to it, it would actually reduce your overall dps even if it did focus your army's attacks.

Personally I don't think this skill would be op in any way, simply because it would require you to forgo something else if you wanted to take it.

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MightyForest wrote:

Awesome idea in here.

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.

I like this very much

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kurlie wrote:

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MightyForest wrote:

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.

I like this very much

Sounds like fun to me. Call it Zombait.

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MightyForest wrote:

Awesome idea in here.

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.

I also very much like this idea and will edit it in to the main post with your name next to it. Im actually surprised to see all these new posts! Thanks a ton for your input, great idea!

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BlastMonkey wrote:

At the end of the day this skill would act as focused damage on targets within an area of the battlefield. That's exactly how firestorm currently works if you think about it.

Since taking this skill means not taking something like firestorm or detonate dead it wouldn't really serve to add to a summoner's overall dps. In fact if the command skill did not add a short buff providing the benefits of support gems linked to it, it would actually reduce your overall dps even if it did focus your army's attacks.

Personally I don't think this skill would be op in any way, simply because it would require you to forgo something else if you wanted to take it.

The whole purpose of this gem would be for survivability and i agree that this is a lesser form of firestorm, seeing how the gem would "focus" a target within the area specified. Im honestly not concerned with how much dps this gem will do but more of how much control the gem would give you over your minions. If people feel they dont want this gem because they would lose dps, then thats fine, they dont have to use it. This game is all about personal preference anyways :D

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Welchman666 wrote:

:D

My point is more about putting to rest fears that it would be over powered when the truth is that if it only served to move and focus minions it would actually lower overall damage output.

I also hope to gain support for having it apply supports linked to it as a short duration buff to all minions affected by it. The extra damage from such a buff would be equivalent to dropping a firestorm on the targeted area.

/signed

Hey everyone, just checking in. Need more people to post on this thread so it can get noticed, I think we actually got something good going here! This thread has more then half a thousand views! Only takes 2 seconds to post :D
Dont let the thread die here :]