Snapshotting

i'm wondering if there will be soem rebalance on summoner unique items:

motegruls, reading it's stats one may assume that it gives super minions,wich is true, but we don't hang with 1 single zombie and as such we must also consider pack dmg aswell, with my curent gear and gems, 4 motegruls zombies are better than 5 normal ones, 6 normal minions would be better, i can have a total of 8, so it's a no brainer, aditional life,resist (rlly?) and infernal blow on kill, are not worth compared to dps lost, my opinion is that the reduce nr should be lower (not saying that the dps should be higher or the same as not using it, but somewhere where the dps loss would be worth it

midnight's bargain, well for a game where uniques are not meant to be BiS, but somewhat "build ennhacers" i find it odd that this item actually requires another unique (1 super rare the other not suitble to end game content), using the item without those makes the item not suitble for end game, the life reserve should be lower imo.

sidbreath/bones of ull'r, they'r fine for levlling imo, and should stay like that.

summoner 2 handed weapons, i dont rlly know how chober works with dominating blow, but for zombie usage, well if im not geting a shield anyway i rather go necro aegis.

vis mortis/skullhead, i guess these items are just fine (howveer i dont have vis mortis nor did i ever used one)


i know it's up to you GGG to take a look on them, but i think that if not for snapshot some of them lose some of it's value (and some are map only drop).another thing that shouldn't be overlooked is that for summoners there is no "better weapon" we are now bound to the max lvl of our gems

Mark,I hope you can fix the pet problem.

A marauder enter town with a Infernal Scorpion ,it's cool.But call the pet manually, it's boring.

BTW, I bought infernal weapon,infernal footprint,infernal skull,infernal scorpion,tentacle wings, phoenix mark for my RF marauder. He's really powerful and worth all of the microtransactions,now it's gone,sad.

__

Mark, Nick, Brian: You go above and beyond. Know that it is appreciated. Always.

I <3 RF, and have been using it for years, but it definitely needed a nerf [for being too efficient a build dps/gear wise].

Now you'll be at around ~60% the dps you were before, so it is more balanced and in-line with other Skills/Builds. (Just use 1x Doryani's Catalyst in Main Hand.)


I wonder if Minions, or Summoner Uniques, will be buffed to compensate the loss of snapshotting. Some people think Summoners will suck without snapshotting, we'll just have to wait and see.. (I didn't even know you could do that Sun Blast trick; blew my mind.)

Good changes, should probably happen alongside an increase in durability of summons.

So the discussion of fixing snapshotting has finally arrived and it's a big one so rather than just having a solution arrive can we take the time to clarify all aspects of the issue up front.
First off, I have played summoner since I joined July 3, 2012 and still enjoy them as a class, I snapshot and have always recognized it is an unintended feature and knew it would be fixed one day. This is no other class or build that I know of in this game that can run 500+ MF with 7+ auras and solo anything in the game without the traditional trade off between difficulty and reward. I agree entirely it has to go BUT I also want to discuss why in the current game it is needed so hopefully the end result will improve the game.

Most end game builds are based around a single skill with some others to support it. They can then be customized on a risk vs reward basis, buffed auras/MF vs an awesome rare. Summoners have 2 core skill, both require 6L support to be end game viable and neither of them alone compares to any of the single skills like cyclone in terms of DPS or survival.
TLDR: needs too many slots and not strong enough without support

Bone/Flesh offering are great skills and I wouldn't run without them but now i need another 3 slots(ext duration) to make my main skills work. they offer no party buff so really they are a temporary buff to my main skill and nothing else.
TLDR: main skill now needs 9 slots to be good in end game maps.

Desecrate: again I love this skill but now we have another slot that isn't variable to make the build work. Also by nature of the way raise spectre works you are almost NEVER going to be doing maps that have your spectre of choice unless you are going to carry all the support gems all the time changing inst an option mid map. But again this is another gems slot I have to fill to make my main skills work.
TLDR: good skill needs work.
Suggestion: let desecrate "snapshot" the type of spectre you want and summon the appropriate level of that creature until you change it or simply remove the corpse component of summoning.

Support gems for summoning: how does it make any kind of sense that generic supports like trap that can combine with a lot of skills offer more boost to minions than the minions specific supports? The current system tends to combine X support with Y spectre to make the other choices not even close to competitive and then we just rotate between spectre as the strongest combination gets nerfed.
TLDR: support gems are screwed up.

Boss AOE damage and minion AI: the combinations of minion AI and boss AOE damage makes a lot of end game stuff hurt more than it does for class/builds that can plan for and mitigate the damage. Particularly painful if you ever tried to use Animate Guardian, seriously that thing draws agro from 3 screens away. Also rejuv totem helps but again it's another slot that is an option with other builds rather than needed.
TLDR: AI + Boss aoe kills all your toys then you.

Convocation: great skill but again its yet another slot that is not an option to make my main skills work. Also the heal...wtf?

One other suggestion making the +1/2 minions stat available in other slots either as an available stat or a vaal option would open up a lot of gear choices.

Can't wait to see how this goes live, the impact will be entertaining :)

My biggest concern for summoner players is that getting rid of snapshotting removes a lot of ability options for summoners. My summoner isn't even my best character (for MF or clearing speed), but it is far and away the most fun, because you can do this:

Have your minions
Run 5+ auras without snapshotting them
Run flesh offering, bone offering, rejuv totem, lightning warp, convocation, arc, arctic armor, and a curse. Most of those have some amount of supports on them, i.e. increased duration/AoE.

With a 6s as your "real" non-snapshotted gear, you can even run a Vaal aura and have 1 socket remaining in that gear for whatever.

After the snapshot change, at least for me, I will lose rejuv totem, lightning warp, and one of the offerings or a curse. This is to say nothing of people who play low-life summoner and need even more sockets devoted to auras, or who like to use summon skeletons, things like incinerate blind totem, desecrate, etc. A small fix, I think, would be to let any offerings cast by any player affect all minions, and stack, but maybe that's just too much.

Most builds in PoE seem to just spam 1 button, i.e. cyclone, which is really, really, REALLY boring. I liked having lots of buttons to press as a summoner, but maybe they don't want that or consider it OP. Who knows.

Also, if the minion model is to constantly resummon your minions instead of snapshotting them so they don't die, fine. But then that makes minion hp flasks not that interesting, makes the game repetitive, makes mistakes mean less, makes certain boss fights basically impossible at least as a solo summoner, and makes it impossible to maintain whatever spectre you prefer. (Some nice QoL for these snapshot changes would be to make minions persist on logout and to make it so you can "save" a spectre template in your spectre gem or something like that, so you could always just, say, resurrect titty bitches). On the plus side, it makes MI more attractive, but that's a minor thing, imo.

Anyways, I probably won't be playing PoE too much anymore because spamming 1-3 abilities just isn't fun to me, which most builds are all about, due to limited gem sockets and skill slots on the bar. Summoner was a breath of fresh air, and honestly I would be content to just play nothing but 66 maps or Piety farm (aka, a significant power drop) if it meant I could still cast a number of different, useful abilities. But I doubt that will be the case.

"

CaptinSupreem wrote:

Actually, I believe it is:

"This article was written by myself, Brian and Nick."

Or:

"This article was written by Brian, Nick and myself."

The convention of the placement of the pronoun stems from the word ordering of classical Latin where word order relates emphasis rather than meaning. Thus:

"This article was written by Brian, Nick and I"

...is still correct and preferable IMO.

EDIT: It is quite interesting that "Nick, Brian and I wrote the article" does not change the subject nor the predicate. Ask yourself what is being predicated of what subject? Furthermore, if the linked article that you are going by is correct, then 'I' is a pronoun that performs the action of the verb 'write'. 'Me', on the other hand 'is an object pronoun, which means that it refers to the person that the action of a verb is being done to'. The verb here being 'write'...

That's......not how it works. Myself vs me is a choice that affects tone, but they're equivalent grammatically. Furthermore, given the usual meaning of "by myself" it's inappropriate in your first example. And anything involving I is just wrong, because the subject is "This article." Mark's grammar is just fine.

"

Mark_GGG wrote:

"This article was written by (...) I" is not correct. Using the passive voice for this sentence ("article was written by ..." rather than "... wrote the article") causes the pronoun to use the object form ("me" rather than "I").
Some examples here: http://www.english-for-students.com/Passive-Voice.html

I love that you guys are not only awesome game designers, but better at my own native language than I am. Thank you for fixing snapshotting. As you stated, in the long run everyone benefits from this fix, even the people who were using (abusing) snapshotting.