Druid summoner in 2.4 - My feedback

General Discussion
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You know, there are ways to “standardize” a summoner druid run up until the point where you’re just redoing content over and over for drops. A couple of people have posted this over the years but I suppose it helps to post it again.

Generally you want to rush the Edge runeword bow and sell any expensive items/equip any +% gold find items you find, then once you actually assemble Edge (around late normal/early nightmare) you start gambling like crazy until you find a rare weapon with CtC Amplify Damage (preferably a bow for you and your act 1 mercenary). Then you’re all set for Hell. If the blind annoys you, swap Ravens for Dire Wolves.
Obviously if you run Fissure you have other priorities.

The act 2 Might merc was way more useful back when you could only summon the bear, nowadays he tends to gets in the way and the bear/ravens are usually all the damage you need anyway. Feel free to switch to him once you reach your favorite hunting spot or beat the game or find yourself a Reaper’s Toll or whatever, until then the other mercenaries are just more efficient. The act 3 Lightning merc, in particular, is a rising favorite though personally I’d rather have Static Field on something else.

As for snapshot summoning, scaling should have improved the viablity of this for druids somewhat but the bottomline is that a large chunk of druid summon damage is from the CURRENT number of points you have in your Summon Grizzly (softpoints and hardpoints). Druid summoning has always been unique this way, and the upside is that you gain synergy even from just softpoints in Grizzly. Obviously you guys found the downside.

EDIT:
CtC AD

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what ar eyou even talking about the act 2 merc fully geared does more dps then even a lvl 45 bear. The might aura helps alot with damage.

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Keyword “fully geared” aka “if you’re that rich, play however the hell you want”.

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believe it or not you don’t need to be rich to have a well geared act 2 merc. If you can’t get a reapers-toll, you can make a cresent moon rune word into a pole arm, and use naj plate, then use a crown of thieves as a helmet for life steal or tal rasha mask. And this merc would still do more dps then a lvl 45 bear. So mid-tier gear still beats out a bear.

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judging by that video, that’s not the case. He’s doing 822-4,242 damage, so the average is 2.5k, which is the damage of…a level 25 bear? Remember, a fully kitted out bear is doing close to 30k damage a swing, something that’s capable of killing an Uber in 23-24 hits. In the video, this is a 44 grizzly, with Might, and 39 HoW, so his damage comes out as an average of 5k per hit, and that’s without decrep proccing. With it, it’s 10k.

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As much as I enjoy Crescent Moon, why go through all that trouble when the act 3 lightning merc does the same job? Slap Insight/Lore/Stealth on him and you’re good.
That way you can focus your attention on actually getting to a point where you can farm end-game gear.

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btw thats my youtube vid, and your wrong btw, decrep increases the damage by 50 percent, and removed immunites. The act2 merc attacks much faster with jab attacks at 4 attacks per second. So technically the bear does more dmg but attacks much slower.

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Off the top of my head I’m not sure… but did you figure in Jab and IAS? Cause that bear hits damn slow. You can also grab CB on a merc if you want. Depending on what it’s hitting CB slaps.

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No, I’m not wrong. I literally just wrote the explanation right at the bottom of my message of Decrep being a 50% damage buff, and with it, that’s exactly the bear’s output, which is 10k, as it’s a -50% phys resistance, and most enemies have 50% phys resistance, it’s easy enough to come to the conclusion that most decrep’d enemy basically unlocks your full damage potential.

Which is why without it, the Merc is actually doing roughly 1.25k average damage, so even with 4x the attack, without decrep, he’s exactly on the nose of 5k average DPS (if it hits, at his level, he has, without calculating bonus from armor, 1,292 attack rating, and with Jab added, it’s 3,268 attack rating, which is okay, it’s not amazing, but it’s good enough).

As for the Bear attack speed, yes, it’s a 12 frame per attack, so it’s pretty slow, but those who buff the bear fully can hit the 9 frame breakpoint in attacks, making it swing much faster.

EDIT: Forgot about HOW buffing him, so his attack rating is 7,028, which is much better than before.

EDIT2: In the end, I don’t think it really matters. Both units are a solid source of damage, though against bosses, the Merc falls flat, what with the 75% damage reduction (Summons get no penalty to damage, just damage taken), so you need to compensate for that huge dropoff for something like CB. So if you want a % Chance of doing high burst damage, go for the merc! If you want solid, reliable damage, invest into the Bear!

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Act 1 with egde is fine for nomal mode.
Act 5 with lawbringer is fine for hell but i prefer to trade the lem ko for non eth reaper and go with act 2 might merc. I hit the level 75 in act 1 pit runz.

Act 2 merc > all. My non eth reaper duress merc have 400-1,8k unbufed. The bear 3k.
Act 2 buffed is 800-3,8k without forti (with beast and forti i think your goes to 10k)…
Act 2 merc hits faster and move! faster then my bear. DPS != dmg done.

With Guli , Duress and Reaper i have ~50 ds, thats 1.5 more dps and 50% CB and 33 ow…

Very cheap gear and your merc act2 is the best dmg dealer (besides he buffes your dps from decrp by 100% and 200% ed from the aura).

Btw @zax… any results :D?

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Sorry no, the day i wanted to test it was diablo clone event so i was in game whole time waiting. After that i was quite busy. Hopefully tonight.

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I have! But unfortunately my recording program pooped it self, so I have no evidence. But I timed clearing the Countess room. And there’s a 1.5 seconds difference, but for the no +skills run Countess was rolled whit stone skin.
I had 5 base points in wolves and bear. I only used wolves and bear. I had +4 to all skill alltogeather, which I droped after summoning the minions, on run number two. I’ll figure out what’s up the recording program, and upload my runs.

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@Zax np, i have no time too… with the good weather I have to dry out the pool :smiley:

@Indian
Only +4 skills differnece for that run? And only the Countess room :)?
Make it +20 level differnece at cs plz :slight_smile:

1 Like
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+4 is pretty decent in low skill levels. But ok. As soon as I can record.

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Most problem with my tests is that you have to resummon with +skills and switch the gear again.
Thats why i only record diablo and not a full cs run.

+4 is pretty decent but with different “luck” the dmg from the minions is very different (not all summons atttacks or not fast enough) that +4 is noticeable

+20 difference must be noticeable every try :slight_smile:

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Well, there is always an easy way to make them more powerful, scalable and interesting

But they don’t want to make the game better

They prefer boring staleness and minimal changes

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Act 3 merc is utter trash for hell.

First, fire is the most abundant immunity in the game (becomes cold when Infinity is equipped)
Second, enchant doesn’t scale at all as it he has no synergies or fire mastery
Third, might from a2 merc scales better even though it only benefits just dire wolves and Bear.
Lastly, spell casts proc no effects…

Also for the test, the easiest way to test would be to use level 1 spirit/dire wolves in NM difficulty. Use + skills to precast, run around in blood more naked and see if they can’t…

Ravens do more damage than all other pets combined and scale better as well. If that doesn’t tell you how laughably pathetic the pets are…

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I finished my solo playrun with him, he did fine, actualy much better than ACT 2 merc would as he would die often.

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Well Here we go guys, I finaly had moment to make a test and result is quite interesting.

I used char made in hero editor with 1 point in grizzly and nowhere else. Then I had 9x small charms with +7 skills increasing level of grizzly to lvl 64. My first test was with lvl 1 grizzly without charms and grizzly was dying pretty much instantly and doing no damage.

Second test was made with skill on level 64 grizzly summoned together with charms and then i put charms back to stash so actualy level of grizzly was 1 on skill tree but it was summoned on level 64. Damage was still trash so I knew I was wrong and precasting is not increasing damage.

But then I noticed something. Grizzly wasnt dying instantly like he was before and it looked like he has increased life, puting charm in and out of inventory had direct effect on damage 100%. When I stopped recording I watched it again and I believe I know how it works exactly now.

Every summon has certain stats on every level. These stats are kept on level summon was casted, so when I summoned grizzly with +63 all skills, he infact kept his lvl 64. That means significantly increased life. But in case of damage, there are two stats increasing it for the grizzly.

There is grizzly direct dmg for every level of him. And then there is +% bonus. I am 99% sure than you lose that +%ED bonus when you lose +skills, but you will not loose stats of grizzly at 64 as when I was rewatching clip, it really looked like his damage was slitly better than on lvl 1 when he was doing basicly zero damage. He was doing some damage with precasted lvl 64. But main dmg goes from that %ED.

When I checked d2 files Grizzly as summon is doing 30-60 damage at level 1. His damage you can see at level on skill tree is already increased by 25% which is passive bonus. That passive bonus is increased only by actively used +skills.

So if you precasted bear at lvl 64 and put all skills charms to stash, Grizzly will have his lvl 64 damage but only basic +25% ED instead of +665% ED.

What does this all mean? Precasting is still worth it for various things like +resistances, HP and damage because precasted lvl 40 Bear will still be better than Bear at lvl 38 for example.

Summon Grizzly skill has two functions: works as direct summoning skills but on other hand it also works as passive dmg mastery. Basicly works as for example Fire mastery works for fire dmg.

Here is the video btw

4 Likes
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So in conclusion, snapshoting works, but not like Necro summons, where all stats are snapshoted.