0.9.12 Information and Incomplete Patch Notes (Updated)

I don't like several of the minion changes.
This only makes summoners even weaker.
Especially the start of a summoner becomes unplayable.

Playing a summoner Witch/Templar now is already a slow progression compared to casters, ranged or melee characters why slow it down even more? :(

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Their life has been reduced by 30% and they now have armour. The damage bonus for zombies now only applies for skill level 15 and up (level 54 zombies).

So playing a summoner is useless till 54?

Playing a summoner is already a pain the first ~30 levels because the zombies die all the time reducing their life aka making them weaker against elemental and chaos damage makes it completly useless to play a summoner.
Summoners will be created by refunding skills.

Adding 2 punching bags won't help at all. The literally die the first 1-2 hits.

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The passive tree now only has one additional spectre passive. The penalty to spectre life and damage has been substantially reduced at all levels of the gem.

Making this skill even more useless. Spectres could be used a weak ranged supporters but now?

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Life increased by 50%. Skeletons are now summoned in pairs, regardless of the level of the gem.

So every summoner has to stat additional mana/manarag because the character has to cast fast dying skeletons all the time?
At last 4 should be max or the manacost has to be reduced/the 20 seconds removed.

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Mana cost reduced from 150% to 140%. Increased life now starts at 30% (rather than 40%). Quality on this gem now provides half the bonus it did before

That only makes zombies cannonfodder.
I don't see any cricitcals on minion explosion yet.

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Additional minion passives now either provide +1 spectre, or a benefit to both zombies and skeletons.

Additional minion life and damage passives have been grouped together so that each cluster provides a specific advantage, rather than all groups providing a similar set of mixed passives.

Spectres were almost useless before and now become really useless. In fact they died almost fast as skeletons.

The second change will only make summoners useless till higher levels unless 60% of paths have been reduced.

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Chris wrote:

I've updated the third post in the thread with a list of more changes.

With the minion improvements, they can be brutally devastating in 0.9.12. I've seen a minion character take down the Merciless Oversoul without getting hit, very quickly. Please do not complain about specific nerfs until you've had a chance to test them for yourself.

This. Very much this! =0[.]o=

One change i don't like about summons is limiting skeletons summoned at 1 cast.
Not becouse its making it weaker, but becouse of how it affects gameplay.

Im choosing to play summoner specifically to have army of minions do things for me.Im supposed to stay behind and wastch things die in pve(pvp is different subject).I dont want to be forced to manualy cast new spells all the time, and limiting number of skeles/ cast will have such effect.

As for the upper guy whi complains so much about nerfs...Summons have been pretty strong , they just havent been fighting for most of the time, and they did test it, and it turned out summons devastate pve after fixing AI

-Sockets now only appear on items if you press alt - they don't show permanently if you have Z (or equivalent) toggled.


I hope we can Decide to have it always show. Because this would seriously annoy me otherwise

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Sockets now only appear on items if you press alt - they don't show permanently if you have Z (or equivalent) toggled.

This will be a pain in the ass. :/ I often just look at the sockets of white items, so now I have to press ALT everytime? Please don't apply this change!

Still looking forward to the patch nonetheless. :)

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I've seen a minion character take down the Merciless Oversoul without getting hit,

I marked the big mistake here.
Yes without getting hit, that's the problem.
Common summon builds die when they get hit by the lighting or the mace.
I play HC I want to survive heavy hits!
Also I still bet that the summoner is still far slower than a 2h Groundslammer or a ele/phys ranger.



FYI I am playing a summon Templar.

But unlike most Templars I don't go on mana and ES(Vaal Oneshots those) I go on Life and ES and other points go on Defense I just went on mana on the 1 week HC Race to keep up with riskier gameplay to keep the distance to other players.

Stats are 2986HP/ 1504 ES 653 Mana available(Without the mana points it was 478 mana from 5xx.

Considering the Manavalue you should understand I can't link minion life and minion damage, and added fire damage/item quantity/quality to all summon gems.
Skeletons will result in zero mana instantly.


Now to the gameplay.
The entire normal difficulty I keep using Glacial Hammer or other melee skills because Skeletons or Zombies just keep dying.
There won't be any difference with the next patch, depending how the new triplets are set playing a summoner may even take the entire cruel difficulty in the worst case to become viable in combat.
1 weak punching bag or 3 weaker punching bags don't make a difference. I talk about low difficulties not merciless. That's where a summoner got real problems.
What's the point testing merciless normal is still the same problem.

I am not a witch who got passive skills on the way as casting support to keep them alive, increase ES and mana on its way.

Another thing I experienced is that spectre is almost useless. I only use it on ranged fighters because on melee I see them dying almost the same speed as skeletons.
Having even less spectres only 1 passive triplet really makes me think to abandon that skill and use another support skill(I really hope that the spectre passives are on the right side of the witch tree)


Considering the Skeleton changes this will be a manaoverkill I have to sacrifice many Lifenodes into mananodes because I can only summon 2 Skeletons at one time or what I will certainly do is to use skeletons only with a totem link! So I have have high mana costs only once.
I don't want to play a 900 HP 1500 ES Templar that still gets one shot by Vaal on full resists on a critical strike.
The point in HC is to create builds that don't get one shot.
Another bad point in limiting skeletons are bad starts in dunes for example where it's common to be greeting by some blood apes right after entering the Portal. I won't will get 2-3 casts at best before running away instead of 2 good 4-5 Skell casts that block for me.

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Summons have been pretty strong , they just havent been fighting for most of the time, and they did test it, and it turned out summons devastate pve after fixing AI

I don't know how you are playing a summoner but my minions are attacking I didn't see any problem with the AI because I let the permanent minions get close to me before running into the next enemy mob.


Points that really should be fixed like overpowered Groundslammers/Rangers aren't fixed yet.

Also why must everything be weakened? Isn't it easier to make other things stronger and increase the difficulty to balance things?

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thrlnd wrote:

This will be a pain in the ass. :/ I often just look at the sockets of white items, so now I have to press ALT everytime? Please don't apply this change!

You misunderstand.

Sockets and links will still always be shown whenever handles for items on the ground are showing.

The change applies to items in your inventory and whether or not sockets show on them.

Besides,

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Unidentified and white items are now prefixed with "Superior" if they have increased quality. This makes them easier to notice on the ground.

This is gonna make it easier.

Nice changes as usual, with one exception that really matters to me as a summoner - two skeletons at a time go directly against the main thing that I've chosen a summoner for. I hate pressing the same button again and again, be that clicking a monster to death as a melee attacker or spamming some spell again and again.

So I've made a skeleton summoner with ice spear totems (level 71 right now): I cast stuff and then hover in background watching the events as they unfold, adding some curses and repositioning my minions.

With the change I'll have to spam-click skeletons before each battle, and repositioning them would also take a lot of clicks. That's a completely different type of gameplay, basically, the same as any other class.

Please, please, add some extra nerfs if needed, but do not destroy the "pure summoner" style - being able to click slowly is one of the key factors here!

any way to see new skill tree ? would like to start planing out new builds and routs.