Is Revive as bad as they say?

General Discussion
1

I heard that the A.I. for Revive is bad and that the summons just get lost? Also that the summons are not very strong in hell? Is that true

I’ve never reached the end game with a summoner necro and never got any points into Revive.

2

unless you have a way to reposition them, with enigma, or a teleport staff, they kinda blow moose wee wee. Good luck!

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3

have you played d2 at all? follower AI is like a blind cat.

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4

they were designed for normal mode and work well in normal, but we havent had a dev in 20 years understand how to properly balance them for nightmare and hell. their only use is to act as meat shields and then the river of flame Udars kill bosses real fast.

5

Revive’s AI isn’t any worse than any other follower AI. It’s just that follower AIs aren’t good to begin with (AIs in general aren’t good).
There was a time when getting too far from your summons would get them destroyed, though that isn’t the case anymore, or at least it’s a rare occurrence now. Though they only last 3 minutes, so you have to resummon them regularly.

If you are going to max Skeleton Mastery, then I’d suggest taking at least one point in Revive, since +X to all skills should get you a decent amount of them, improving their ability to attract aggro and to deal damage. If you max out the skill, you’ll be constantly needing to resummon them, so I’d suggest against it.

If you aren’t looking for the most efficient build, summoning necromancer can complete hell difficulty. Not sure up to how many players it’s still efficient as, and it’s going to have a very hard time on Uber bosses (or at least I personally got crushed when I attempted Lillith).

6

one time I wanted to max revives and skellies when it was all said and done i could have 75 minions up at once, it was cool to look at but most of the time the revives would be stuck somewhere way far away. It’s a bit better now that they will teleport to you if they get to far away. Used to be they would just die off. I do not recommend going this route.

7

Their ai is bad enough that there’s never a reason to put more than one point directly in revive, and even that is optional - CE is just better in 99.99% of situations.

Certain revived enemies will certainly do fast damage to bosses, but so will a merc with CB, which…

8

Revives are a 1 pt wonder. They are the sole reason a Necromancer can kill Diablo Clone and the Ubers, but don’t expect them to be a reliable summon that will always do what you want. If you think any summon is going to do what you want then don’t run a summoner. The AI is poor and you need to learn to play it right.

First off summons don’t get moving if you stay still. Getting them in position is easy if you have enigma or will drop 2K on a telly from a telly staff. If you don’t have those you need to run around in circles so they get moving. It may look a little silly but when I come up to a group and only a few of my crew are engaging, I run back and forth and eventually everyone is in the fight. Most people will just start tellystomping things once they get enigma to get past these issues.

No summon on their own is a good source of damage, only your merc is. Each fill a roll: Skellys are the front line holders, the merc kills things, you CE, mages give some ranged damage and revives allow you to fill in the gaps in your crew. If you want more ranged pick up ranged summons, if you need CB pick up an Urder.

Pick the summons that works with your build. I just ran a Pnova necy and I dropped 1 pt into revives and used a thorns merc. Mid geared I had 6 revives that held the line and let thorns do the work. That combined with PNova without D-Web did a decent kill speed. When DClone walked I was able to pick up some Urders and take him out without issue.

So are they good, well they are as good as you need them to be, well worth the point you put in them but not worth more than 1 pt.

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9

You need enigma to manipulate their AI. In general revives are 1 point wonders to help you diversify your army. For example those big blunderbore enemies have crushing blow so reviving a few for bosses is a smart idea.

Burning archers also arent a bad idea if you’re running infinity and enchant merc.