After trying a Warlock Summoner , it’s painfully obvious just how underwhelming the D2R Necro Summoner is by comparison.
Without Corpse Explosion (CE), the Necro Summoner is straight-up terrible. I’m not arguing that CE shouldn’t be included—it’s essential—but even if you doubled skeleton and skeleton mage damage, boosted their attack speed by 50%, and increased their movement speed by 50%, they’d still underperform in Hell difficulty.
The only reason Necro Summoners can clear endgame content as an “S-teir build” is Teleport (via Enigma), CE, and a strong merc. None of these are summoner skills. if you make a pure Summoner, what teir would the build fall to?
So I have to ask: Is the “Necro Summoner” actually a summoner build… or just a CE nuker with some pets as window dressing?
List of issues by order of magnitude(in my opinion).
- Bodyblocking - Skeletons clump up, block doors/paths, and get in your way constantly.
- Attack Speed - very slow….
- Movment Speed - Crawl behind you
- Damage (this is number 1 on Skeleton mages)
- Leash range
- not beeing able to direct skeletons - Can’t command or position them.
- AI - (due to the amount of summons this is less dire)
- Minions beeing unsummoned when leavin game(QoL and efficiency issue)
- Minion survivorbility agains bosses, before you get decrepify+ another source of slow.
It is important to note that minions have:
Debuff Vulnerability - They get cursed/stunned/slowed/chilled/blinded by enemies; can miss on hit.
A lvl 27 skeleton (w/ lvl 27 mastery) hitting 240 damage vs average Act 1 Hell mob 2,500 HP (ish) , and Act 5’s ~10,000 HP (ish).
you can add, might aura and amp damage to this, but still the damage it self is not the biggest challange with this build, it is just part of the problem.
(note! Golems also suffer mostly the same issues)