This is the prime example of how not to design a tree. What you end up with is 80 to 100 points dumped in this tree only to have one useable skill and a new spamming spell for single target damage. The developers pitched the changes in December as: “Regarding Summon skills, we believe Summons are weak in high difficulty. On this front, we’re evaluating health gains per level, quality-of-life improvements, damage output, and new synergies for Ravens, Wolves, and Vines.”
Let’s start by evaluating skills and synergies and see if the changes lived up to the hype:
- Oak Sage at Level 20 provides +125% max life
- For comparison, Level 20 Battle Orders provide +92% Max Life, Mana, and Stamina and persists for a set time without the worry losing half of your HP randomly when an AOE skill kills your Oak Sage in Hardcore mode.
- Heart of the Wild at Level 20 provides 158% Attack Rating and 153% Damage
- For comparison, Level 20 Fanaticism provides +135% Attack Rating, +35% Attack Speed, and +186% Party Damage/+373% Personal Damage. Overall inferior spell compared to Fanaticism with the added bonus of being venerable to attacks and having to recast on a fairly consistent basis on Hell difficulty.
- Spirit of Barbs used to be a far inferior Thorns aura that was able to be 1 shot in hell to now being equivalent to the changed Thorns aura only it’s still able to die quickly in hell to ranged and casters.
- Raven, with 80 points total with 20 in each of the summons, allows you to be a caster that does equivalent damage to Summon Grizzly + wolves at the same level. Who wouldn’t want to spam Raven instead of Tornado for a fraction of the damage and no AOE? This is the tree that has ZERO AOE and you are only allowed one to five pets at a time depending on which you cast and the wonderful addition was to continuously cast 5 ravens over and over overhead as your total damage output is equivalent to that of a single bear + 5 spirit wolves out at the same time. Which, ironically, is still substantially worse than what a Necro can manage with 43 points in summoning especially considering current versions of spirit wolves and ravens don't benefit from physical damage modifiers.
- Summon Spirit Wolf cold damage is an interesting change from the original option but Cold is the most common immune type in Hell. Having cold + physical immune is a pretty common occurrence in Hell. Furthermore, Spirit wolves damage doesn't scale well at all thanks to it being all elemental damage (cold) and none of the physical damage auras or effects such as HOTW, Zeal, Might, or amp damage actually apply to the sprit wolves. As a result, you end up with a cold skill that doesn't scale with the rest of your physical build.
- Spirit wolves could make for an interesting synergy with elemental druids as an alternative to the typical 1 point grizzly builds. This would require some HP buffs and relevant synergies.
As it stands, you spend 60 points into both wolves + bear only to be able to cast one type of the 3 summons. It becomes 60 points for 1 very underwhelming skill. It’s time to reevaluate the synergies and break them away from the other two summons.
One proposition would be to tie the Wolves and Grizzly HP to a synergy in Lycanthropy and then increase the Wolves damage through synergies with Werewolf. Grizzly damage can be increased with Wearbear.
Alternative might be to add synergies for bear and wolves with the vines and creepers.
For example:
Solar Creeper could add +% fire damage to all summonsMaybe have these creepers that consume corpses also do a small splash damage to make investing points into these skills actually worthwhile for later game.
Oak Sage, HOTW, and Spirit of Barbs are largely inferior group buffs compared to their counterparts from other classes. The only difference is they can also die pretty easily and have to be recast in the middle of a fight. These spirits have poor AI, they always end up in the way of ranged damage and get 1 or 2 shot. They are largely useless in boss fights as any AOE effect will trigger them dead. Since changing the core AI is probably out of the question, these sprits need a massive buff to ensure they stay alive when they are needed the most. Losing your oaksage to an extra fast, fant aura, and cursed Minions of Destruction just about ensures the end of your HC journey. What good is a life buff when its not actually available when needed? What good is a damage buff when it ends up dead when in long fights?
Another thing to consider with the spirits are synergies from these skills. Much like how Berserk now has synergies from Battle Orders, adding synergies with other builds would help with build diversity.
Casting ravens continously even at 12 hits per cast is still not a viable build option for summoning. Furthermore, this level 1 skill shouldn’t require 60 additional points to be viable.
