Build of the Week Season 2 Episode 10: Snapshotting

Just a side note on this one...I tested the dammage of a zombie against another player using the technique of replacing the trap and mine gems with other gems, and then subsequently without replacing the trap and mine gems, and despite that the gems I added were melee physical and added fire, the zombies where I left the trap and mine gems hit literally twice as hard. I had assumed at the time that replacing the trap and mine gems had been changed intentionally to remove the dammage bonus since using 6 links for 8 gems was broken and borderline exploitive. Was this not the case, or has it just been reverted?

Also as a long time summoner I'm actually glad that snapshooting is being removed. It is time consuming, as Chris pointed out, it provides far too much reward in the short term compared to other builds, it occupies a heck of a lot of space in my stash, and it gets exceedingly expensive to perfect (I morally refuse to go to the extent of blasting through 80 regrets every session change, thats just tacky and wastefull if you ask me...I use a prism guardian and my comparatively high level to access 7 auras for myself and my minions, and thats more than enough to do the job...the added effects of anger, wrath, determination, grace, vitality, and clarity are minimal compared to my present selection, and 3.6k es on iir and 6k es in combat gear is pleanty for having minions up front).

I'm particularly looking forward to how they change summoners comming up to make them more rewarding. I'm hoping for a combination of more active playstyles and more impact from your equipped gear (beyond equipping things that benefit minions like Sidhbreath or Vis Mortis). Here's an example of a list for minion changes aside from removing snapshooting that I think would be interesting:

-The action of summoning minions no longer interacts with trigger based or cast modifying gems (trap, mine, totem, cast on stun etc).
-Minions summoned linked to trigger gems now instead cause the triggered effect. IE a zombie linked to cast when stunned-molten shell would cast a molten shell on itself when stunned. (for cast when dammage taken, the minion gem should meet the level requirement of the codt gem. Cast on Death should remain disabled entirely)
-Minions now benefit from global critical strike chance (but NOT spell crit)
-Continue to add more minion support skills and gems (perhaps a gem that curses a single target and makes it particularly more favourable for minion AI, or perhaps a minion attack gem that causes linked minion gems to periodically use a linked attack, given it meets the weaponry requirements)
-Expand the necromantic aegis talent path to also grant your zombies a melee weapon based on your main hand weapon

Either way, no matter what GGG adds or changes it will be nice to see a fresh take on summoners other than "equip this set of gear, make zombies, equip this other set of gear, make spectres, equip another set and go actually do stuff"...I do enjoy playing around with snapshot mechanics for the time being, but I'm glad its going to go.

P.S. you didnt make your summoning ritual as complicated or expensive as possible Chris. Ideally you should have started with a skullhead, a 6 link vis mortis corrupted for +1 gems, your sunblast, a bones of ullr, and your mon'tregul's grasp, made your first 4 zombies, then switched to twin midnight bargains and made 6 more zombies, then switched the midnight bargains to a 6 link wideswing (for 9 link spectres) and made 4 spectres, then popped in to town and swapped your spectre gem into a midnight bargain (because that works as long as the spectre gem is in socket 1, 2 or 3), swapped your zombie gem into your shavs wrappings, equiped your desired shield, and then carried on to set up your auras.

I really hope, that there will be some sort of reworking of certain uniques available to summoners, that otherwise would/will never be used again, aside from snapshotting.

finally they are removing this CHEATING

Valid points have been made about balancing content and builds to still be viable following this change, but the fact of the matter remains: snapshotting was a hack and needed to be fixed. In my opinion a hack like that doesn't have a place in a game where the developers and the players deserve respect.

I think we should all remember that we (need to) have faith in GGG. Underused or newly "nerfed" skills will not be dormant forever. We have a new expansion to look forward to and other regular updates constantly creating new build potential. I personally believe there will be plenty of build alternatives in the meantime if something gets nerfed to the trash bin, but I'm sure GGG will get to anything made irrelevant by this change soon enough. Assuming in their spare time GGG isn't working on time travel, we'll have to be patient and give them a little credit that they know what they're doing.

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Charan wrote:

Well done, Chris.

I know this wasn't an easy decision for you guys, but I sincerely believe it was the right one. In the end, it'll just be one more means of filtering those who are here for the game itself, and those who are just here to faceroll everything using someone else's flavour of the week.

Well aren't you the shining light of morality.

The very essence of gaming is to beat a system; I'm surprised you would chastise those who take advantage of any mechanic, let alone one that has existed forever be it a bug, design, or implementation fault.

For the record, I used Thief's Torment and an unset ring from Day ~5 of Invasion, and I loved facerolling everything with it.

All is fair in love and hardcore.

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muir wrote:

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Charan wrote:

Well done, Chris.

I know this wasn't an easy decision for you guys, but I sincerely believe it was the right one. In the end, it'll just be one more means of filtering those who are here for the game itself, and those who are just here to faceroll everything using someone else's flavour of the week.

Well aren't you the shining light of morality.

The very essence of gaming is to beat a system; I'm surprised you would chastise those who take advantage of any mechanic, let alone one that has existed forever be it a bug, design, or implementation fault.

For the record, I used Thief's Torment and an unset ring from Day ~5 of Invasion, and I loved facerolling everything with it.

All is fair in love and hardcore.

I agree. People exploited mechanics to hell and back in D2, but I didn't see Blizzard North crying.

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Catchafire2000 wrote:

I experienced the brokenness!!!

Lots of hate heaped on to Summoner Snap Shotting, but more should be heaped on the RF'er. That process/build was just simply broken and more hardcore players beat Atziri doing that bull shit. I've YET to see a summoner kill Atziri in HC.

Simply put, no minion build will EVER beat hardcore/invasion Atziri.

Not everything has to be uber-awesome kill atziri in HC solo to be interesting to play as, you know.

Never snapshotted. Never will. =^[.]^=

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muir wrote:

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Charan wrote:

Well done, Chris.

I know this wasn't an easy decision for you guys, but I sincerely believe it was the right one. In the end, it'll just be one more means of filtering those who are here for the game itself, and those who are just here to faceroll everything using someone else's flavour of the week.

Well aren't you the shining light of morality.

The very essence of gaming is to beat a system; I'm surprised you would chastise those who take advantage of any mechanic, let alone one that has existed forever be it a bug, design, or implementation fault.

For the record, I used Thief's Torment and an unset ring from Day ~5 of Invasion, and I loved facerolling everything with it.

All is fair in love and hardcore.

Yes, yes I am.

You completely missed my point, which is interesting since your sentiment agrees with it.

My point was that those who QUIT over this change are the latter group; those who stick around trying to beat/break the game in other ways, are the former.

The key words are 'someone else's'. In other words, I am disparaging and have very little faith in the people who are just copying someone else's game-breaking discovery. The word 'parasite' comes to mind, but that might be an insult to nature's awe-inspiring potential for non-consensual resource sharing.

I'm deeply sorry you didn't catch that. We could have been friends. I would have listened...

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xSyK0TiC wrote:

I agree. People exploited mechanics to hell and back in D2, but I didn't see Blizzard North crying.

I think you meant to type 'trying'.

This is the larger game, and it's not something GGG has made any bones about: they want the players to break the game, but players must understand that once that is done, GGG will change the game to keep the cycle going.

D2? Meh, people basically had to invent their own larger games, and they did, but give me an involved, challenging dev team any day over BNorth's hands-off approach. It's not even worth comparing the two anymore -- D2 existed in an era where it was okay for a game to be broken for years because ARPG players had not yet gained a taste for dev-enforced balance. PoE entered a gaming environment where devs are totally expected to monitor the meta-game and keep it fresh, keep it challenging.

It's a cool power struggle, and it's to the credit of this playerbase that their dedicated attempts to break the game are keeping GGG on their toes. PoE has attracted some VERY intelligent people, and it's entirely in GGG's best interests to keep those people interested.

Frequently changing up the metagame is probably the best way to do that.

As long as this doesn't impede on the game's development for 'everyone else', I've no qualms with that.