{3.2.0} Spectral Gods: [Life Based Spectre/Golem Hybrid Summoner | Clear Speed | End Game Bossing]

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(I haven't been hitting high enough content yet for Smoke Mine to have been a necessity - I find that the zombies will prioritize whatever I hit, so if I need a totem or a rare to go down, I just zap it with Arc a few times and they get there after a few seconds.)

When you start fighting bosses with spell aoe's that your suppose to dodge you will understand that throwing minions face first into the boss regardless of snapshot or no snapshot is suicide. They simply kill your minions faster than you can replace.

Examples being torture chamber, maligra, book boss, dominus palace/residence, ect any other high dmg types that can't be blinded. I was very happy with the ability to leap slam away teleport to avoid the dmg than reposition my army for another attack it felt much more engaging and for the first time I was able to beat bosses not because of raw stats from snapshotting but because I could control my minions better.

Its also the little things of getting minion unstuck and being able to deal with invulnerability totems without screaming at your screen to get your minions to attack the damn totem =P.

I guess we are all upset because they dangled a nice mechanic for summoners for a month or so and now every summoner realizes how bad the AI is without something to control them better.

Am a bit butthurt but i'll carry on with the build/guide regardless if they give us control back or not =/. Back to throwing my minions into the mobs face first again.

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Trap is just a 20-something % more modifier, the increased trap damage from sunblast doesnt work. Youd be better of replacing that instead of conc effect (keeping inc aoe without conc effect is especially funny, since if your incaoe is 20/20, the bubble is useless because everything is inside of it anyway lol)

Irregardless if we want to get in to the debate about sun blast working or not..

The fact that it allows the functionality of traps to trigger at end of their duration.. then using a level 20 trap gem (which actually is not a 20-something, but a "34% more multiplier"), is going to give more damage then any other option, especially with auras running ie (wrath, hatred).

PS: Lastly, your other comment about "bubbles being big, therefore everything ends up being inside of it" .. Well I would also have to politely disagree because prior to the smoke mine "fix" I would say that Evangelists still had a tendency to hang back, while zombies rush in and sort of clog up mob movement pathing, but now with the removal of smoke mine minion round up, they are really always lagging behind. Therefore, in my opinion, there is a healthy separation between packs and my evangelists.

Cheers

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harmonictempest wrote:

On a lighter note, I had a lot of fun with Arc last night. Chain + Curse on Hit + pick your favorite curse (Vulnerability, for now) is really cool with the new Arc.

I'm in 67-68 maps right now, and have EE, so spamming Arc a few times is enough to give everything -50% cold res and +25% phys damage taken (and possibly Shocked) right as my zombies show up with Hatred et al. Good times. :-)

Anyone else use a combo like this to pass the time while zombies kill things?

(I haven't been hitting high enough content yet for Smoke Mine to have been a necessity - I find that the zombies will prioritize whatever I hit, so if I need a totem or a rare to go down, I just zap it with Arc a few times and they get there after a few seconds.)

when i was leveling i was using blind.

the chain is really hurting your damage, try lightning pen instead and quality added lightning.

Your zombies will really like shock stacking on the enemy :-)

Though I respect my Summoner into another build for a while, I must say that if I play Summoner again, I would play a tanky version and use Minion Instability Zombie cuz I sense that GGG would nerf the snapshot one way or another... (or at least nerf Summoner in general so that Snapshot Build is not that viable anymore).

has anyone considered yet ditching spectres completely and instead just sticking with zombies/skele summons ? I am considering dumping my way out of the +1 spectres area completely and spending the points elsewhere....

It seems there is no way now to not just be throwing your minions against hard bosses, so the idea of being strategic is out the window and maybe it is time to embrace the whole "undying horde" a bit more. zombies, skeletons, a single tentacle miscreation, might enable us to make enough of a "wall" to deal with our terrible positioning abilities.

i dunno.. QQ... im pretty butthurt about the whole thing. I was JUST about to buy my CoD, sure glad that didn't happen at this point.

maybe it is a forced return to saffel's frame / NA / high block chance in order to keep shit alive? That with bone offering on tentacle miscreations or still Evangelists might be doable.

Why would you ditch spectres? adn just use zombies/skeletons when you can use all three?

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Divinitii wrote:

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Trap is just a 20-something % more modifier, the increased trap damage from sunblast doesnt work. Youd be better of replacing that instead of conc effect (keeping inc aoe without conc effect is especially funny, since if your incaoe is 20/20, the bubble is useless because everything is inside of it anyway lol)

Irregardless if we want to get in to the debate about sun blast working or not..

The fact that it allows the functionality of traps to trigger at end of their duration.. then using a level 20 trap gem (which actually is not a 20-something, but a "34% more multiplier"), is going to give more damage then any other option, especially with auras running ie (wrath, hatred).

PS: Lastly, your other comment about "bubbles being big, therefore everything ends up being inside of it" .. Well I would also have to politely disagree because prior to the smoke mine "fix" I would say that Evangelists still had a tendency to hang back, while zombies rush in and sort of clog up mob movement pathing, but now with the removal of smoke mine minion round up, they are really always lagging behind. Therefore, in my opinion, there is a healthy separation between packs and my evangelists.

Cheers

thanks for the noise, ofc thats why you use sunblast. Still you dont get that "just a 34% modifier has been stated in the context of you dropping a SIXTY-FIVE PERCENT MODIFIER.


to the second point: it was just a sidenote to you halfing the more modifier for no apparent reason, but oh well. Its not as if there were (pseudo-) melee mobs that are extremely dangerous to you (devourers?) and also your minions (flamedogs, whatever theyre called)



for comedic effect:

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is going to give more damage then any other option

34<65 last time i checked

Cheers

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mattc3303 wrote:

When you start fighting bosses with spell aoe's that your suppose to dodge you will understand that throwing minions face first into the boss regardless of snapshot or no snapshot is suicide. They simply kill your minions faster than you can replace.

That...makes more sense out of the reactions to the patch than any other explanation I've heard so far. Thanks - I can see why everyone's so pissed now. Hopefully there are better options again by the time I get to content like that. :-/

We need more micro-control over the minions, like attack and hold commands or a skill to really heal them to mitigate the aoe damage, the flask are useless, ~250hp instant heal are ridiculous for a minion with high HP and low defences and in a boss fight cant replenish them.
Maybe the flask need to heal 100% to the minions.

Attack, Hold and similar commands would be great, but minion pathfinding is the problem. I realize that GGG doesn't have the muscle to create a good engine in that respect, but there are other workarounds like the Smoke Mine. To take that ESSENTIAL part away literally cuts off the legs from any summoner.

For anyone that respecced to whatever build in order to combat GGG's retarded 'fixing' policy, good on you. But for me, playing a summoner is minion-based necro-way or no way :( I got so attached to playing the summoner, as it seemed so brilliant how GGG tried to find ways to make the class functional and diverse, but that apparently was only a fluke judging from this patch.

I wanted to eventually start other classes as well, but that required a massive expansion of Stash tabs that I was planning, which I now certainly won't throw my money at as I'm very pessimistic about GGG's patching methods. I mean, they themselves are aware that their engine is ancient, I'd rate minion AI 2/10 at best, and instead of being glad that they found a workaround (in the form of Smoke mine) which pretty much solves all of the clunkiness, they take it away...

All in all, PoE uninstalled and hopefully I can get over my lovely summoner sometime soon :(