Raise Zombie

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Mark_GGG wrote:

This is not true - cast speed makes the spell faster to cast. However, all things which increase damage of spells (including critical strikes) will not apply because this is a spell that doesn't deal damage.

Thx for your response. So how are minions like zombies supposed to be endgame viable, combared to other builds, if they only scale with castspeed on gear?
Their real power is hidden to the player. I dont know if any supportgem like +ligthningdmg is a small, huge or nothing increase.
A witch with blue gear has the same zombies like a witch with supperior rare gear(if sockets and supportgems same).

Please take a look at my current lvl 44 witch summoner.
My Build: My Witch

As you can see i build around as much minion nodes possible. Also i took some support for teamplay, because my own dmg is low and support is always needed. I dont have any defense nodes or offense nodes, because there are no points available. My next steps go for curses, better auras and defense rest.

My current porblems:
-The last 15 level my speed slowed down a lot.
-I died some times due aggroproblems of my minions.
-Most time i run around like a rabbit afraid by the fox.
-I dont get mana on kill if a minion kills something.
-I cant compare my dps to other builds to know what i need next defense/offense
-manaproblems due high minion cost

Right now i feel stuck with this build.

Besides that, raise zombie works well with the new auras of 0.9.7. i have checked(wrath and vitality).

I got the passive that regenerates me some mana upon killing something earlier today. Aside from my high mana regen rate; I noticed that if I summon zombies, my older ones will die and I would regenerate a large chunk of mana from that.

Should this be considered a bug? or might there be something else causing this?

When I transition to a new area my zombies are left behind. When I re-enter the instance my zombies are still there but do not count towards my total zombie count. The zombies that stayed behind don't follow me either, but they do attack. So if you get a long stretch of enemies you could potentially have x2 more the zombies you shouldn't have. Maybe even more if done more than once, but I've not tried it.

Summoning skills, raise zombie included seem to be a bit odd batch for me - somehow detached from the game, garble you should have on just for the added benefit and no real negative side but then again they crowd the screen and make multiplayer sessions quite unbearable.

Suggestion is to offer option to have quality over quantity and introduce reserve for either mana/hp per minion summoned.

E.g. Zombies would belong to "blood summons" which would reserve preset % of your hitpoints which would then become base HP for summoned zombie (with multipliers & bonuses from skill levels & passives).

This way there would not need to be so strict control over maximum number of summons as that would be limited naturally by the reserve, also this would mean you would have to decide which way to go as a summoner - bumping up health for blood summons or mana pool for astral summons (e.g. spectres, maybe skeletons as well as they appear from nothing and are temporary).

Support skill gems for making the reserve smaller (multi) and thus having larger number of lower health summons as well as larger (less summons with more base HP) could be introduced or adjusted to current ones as new/modified effects with the skill gems.

This would allow better scaling summons in general (not just for Zombies).

---Edit---

Played hardcore witch with firestorm+summons up to point where I got minion instability and fire/elemental damage boost. At this point I could summon 9 skeletons and 5 zombies with 40% extra life and wham away with elemental damage and area boosted firestorm, all skill gems from same play quest rewards:

Kind of fun for a while, but totally loses the idea of challenge as it currently stands. Something needs to be done with the summons, there is absolutely no point to have option in the game where you can just sit back run away if things get too hectic (not that you will have to once you get minion instability).

I've seen some cookie cutter builds in diablolike games but this is simply way off balance, overpowered to point where it begins to be boring as achieving this did not take too much skill nor time consuming collection of gear let alone rares or uniques.

---edit---

What could be done to make this zookeeping more interesting and balanced:
-mana and/or hp reservations (as described earlier)
-considerable penalty to cast/attack speed per active summon(like in sacred2), remove the "have zombies always on because there is no cost and it adds at least some benefit" -problem. (this could be countered with Summon specific passive skills, non-summoners would need to consider whether keeping pets was beneficial enough).
-Nerf the base skill considerably and allow power charges to affect your minions (making them über as long as you can come up with charges somehow keeping the zookeeper busy in order to keep the zoo killing the mobs efficiently).
-(off topic but belongs to same context) Reduce amount of summons, e.g. make skeleton hordes "channeled" spell which requires the caster to feed the spell from mana pool with per second cost, after being interrupted the skellies would stay alive few seconds before perishing (could be buffed with summoner specific passives). This would make summoners in multiplayer games more bearable companions in PvE as it would partially solve the issue with minion instability skill being ridiculously overpowered with the current amount of cheap summons.
-Make summons visible in the map (so that you could at least see where they wandered off).
-Introduce radius where summons will engage in new combat, outside radius they'd draw closer to the summoner if possible. If they stood too long away from the proximity (15-30s?) of the summoner they would perish automatically. (No more stray summons killing stuff on the other end of the map or orphan summons hanging out near waypoints or area exits).
-Put all summons on timer unless specific passive skill is aquired.

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Jabla wrote:

...(lots of stuff I completely disagree with)...

Summoning is not overpowered or boring. The current set of skills are very enjoyable and to get a nice army together comes at the cost of losing access to other far more powerful abilities.

Please do not take the fun out of summoning. It's not broken and doesn't need fixing.

I have noticed a few bugs with the zombies.

When I zone to town, by portal or waypoint, I dont always have zombies when I get back.

The characters I have with zombies either have one or two which made it stand out when I suddenly have three or four on screen.

When I zone to town and back sometimes my zombies will get 'stuck' to the area around where the portal or waypoint is located. They also seem to go semi-feral at that point. They will still defend me attack mobs but dont count twords my limit so I can then summon more zombies that do follow me around.

This is happening with all my characters who have the zombie skill set up.

I see from above posts that I am not the only one who has wandering undead syndrome, where your life impaired agents and helpers start to wander around picking fights with everyone and everything. IMO this is part and parcel part of the skill. One of the costs of using this powerful ability.

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BlastMonkey wrote:

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Jabla wrote:

...(lots of stuff I completely disagree with)...

Summoning is not overpowered or boring. The current set of skills are very enjoyable and to get a nice army together comes at the cost of losing access to other far more powerful abilities.

Please do not take the fun out of summoning. It's not broken and doesn't need fixing.

I assume you either play as summoner (and/)or play solo?

I can hardly see point in just standing there waiting for your zoo to go boom or at best spam firestorm over the mob to look like you're doing something. Of course this is just my opinion but that actually is boring. Point really is to allow summoners to be powerful through meaningful play (e.g. specialized items, skill investment and power charges) and variable builds while doing something about the fact that every single character who finds few summoning gems should be using them just because they practically cost nothing and add benefit.

There's nothing really wrong about the option to have masses of summons and wreck hell to mobs with your undead army but its painful when you team up with friends who can't target the mobs (can't even see if there's still some enemy alive) in the swarm. Currently however this is where the optimization path leads with no real alternatives.

There could be some hint of challenge if the mobs realized the real threat was the player and not the minions all the time which just makes them suicidial sitting ducks 99.9% of the time but no, you have to be pretty careless to put yourself in trouble as the situation currently stands.