Hi, sorry about the long title.
I want to start saying that I love d4 and im only sharing this because I want the best for the game.
As it’s right now, playing minion builds will never be fun regardless if they are stronger or not. While the book of the dead is a cool system, the fact that we have no control over them is not good at all, it’s boring.
These are my suggestion:
- Summoner necromancer should have a basic and core ability just like shadow, bone and blood. Let us have a spamable where minions do some sort of dmg, maybe one for warriors and another for mages.
- Summoner necromancer does not have any active skill on the tree to actually buff or support the minions. It only have passives for life and dmg. The active healing and buff on the summoning skill is boring AF unlike golem interactions which are more fun and engaging. Many of the necro skills are reactive and not proactive due to the corpse mechanics, this rly hurts the fun of the class.
- Minions key passive sucks, sorry but it really do, it can look good on paper but it’s not reliable on a game that gradually scale to try to kill you . The key passive should give a flat increase in movement and attack speed and double that amount after 3 seconds without taking damage.
- Minion legendary aspects are very lackluster. They could bring some uniqueness to specific type of minion, just like werewolf aspect do on druid.
- Besides the legendary aspect, minion ultimate feels off, I used to have it just because it summons back the minions. It should summon some sort of elite minion or something, idk, or let you have double amount of minions for a period of time. Maybe the necro could summon some sort of tombstone, something more representative than small spirits running around.
- Minion scaling is way off the chart. The strength of the summon must be tied to the summoner. The scaling should be directly related. Make it so minions could be played at high level NM dun as long as the necro is well geared.
- Summoner necromancer could have temporary summons. Maybe a priest, maybe some sort of skeleton elite.
- Minion behavior options. Consider adding a behavior option to make minions attack your target, free attack anything or do nothing.
So far, my favorite minion skill is the stun of the iron golem, it’s very fun to see my minion do something I actually want. I’d love to see more of that in the game.
If you like the concept, like like and comment. Id really love to see some of these suggestion into the game
10 Likes
I dont know but I am having fun right now.
When I was 63, I really cant stand a chance on Torment PvE World becoz I am ungeared for Torment, low level against Torment mobs.
Now, I can stand on my own. I can now handle Solo Helltide. I feel good when lowbie 70s from other Class take cover behind me. They know who’s the Tank. And I could clear everything without them. I just reached level 70 and I am quite Casual. But I am having a Blast. All I can say is Minion Summoner is not easy to play. If your APM is low and inexperienced with past Diablo games, it would be hard for you. Playing a Summoner is not summon and forget.
1 Like
You aren’t supposed to play minions and have them do everything for you. You are supposed to work with them.
You are never getting minions that do everything. That would be boring. And that is why there are no skills for minions to do more things.
Right now necro is probably one of the most interesting classes in the game and there are TONS of builds for it that work all the way to level 100.
Not every build needs to be able to achieve T100. Most people are never getting there and don’t care.
Minion necro is good right now. There are many different builds.
Stop thinking you will have unkillable minions that are OP and do everything for you while you follow them around. You aren’t getting this.
This isn’t D3. The entire game is not running high level rifts over and over. This is a casual ARPG and most of the game is leveling.
If you don’t like this, go back to D3.
1 Like
I agree with you to a certain point.
There absolutely shouldn’t be a build where it’s just AFKmancer and minions clear T100. That’s dumb.
However, there absolutely should be a S-tier necro build that utilizes at least SOME minions. Whether that be just golem or just mages, but with the current sacrifice incentives, weak mid-investment minions, and taking up skill bar, necro builds with any meaningful support from minions are B tier at best.
2 Likes
You aren’t supposed to play minions and have them do everything for you. You are supposed to work with them.
You are never getting minions that do everything. That would be boring. And that is why there are no skills for minions to do more things.
That’s an incredibly bizarre mindset considering you described Fishymancer, which has been the go-to minion playstyle for over 20 years. The problem isn’t so much that minions can’t carry the game right now, and more so that minions are almost completely useless as it stands, and basically anything outside of crit Bone Spear is a meme spec at best.
5 Likes
you are missing the point. you are a bone necromancer with summons that work as damage sponges. Dont take me wrong, i killed elias as lvl58 shadow necro with minions.
Minions should not be carries by themselves, but right now the AI sucks, the dmg sucks, there is no interactions between your skills and theirs but the golem. the desing of golem skills are quite good.
i did not suggest afk minions, i asked for a core skill based on summons and better active skills to support the summons, i asked to improvement on AI, not any sort of OP minions but a true summoner build. you cant even make the summons attack the target you want, they are just there doing their thing. thats not working together.
4 Likes
I wish there was a way to at least command your minions to attack a specific target. Also skellies & golem taking up 2 skill slots is cumbersome. The sacrifice bonuses kind of adds additional salt to the wound.
Giving the minions better AI and consolidating the 2 skills would be a strong buff without modifying the actual on paper strength of the minions themselves. Ultimately I personally wish the minion mechanic was more baked into the class and non-minion builds were considered the niche.
In regards to buffing minions with spells I’d argue Super Natural Sever and Blighted Corpse Explosion along with Gloom & Terror passives plus Shadowblight kind of fill that roll and do offer synergy with minions. I wish the Blighted CE graphic wasn’t so ugly and obscuring though.
3 Likes
There’s much things to do already in the battlefield to support tour army; Debuff enemies with curses, spam healing mages (that can be a main functionality of your gameplay, depending on your build, as it can help you regain essence, stack damage for core skills, spam blood orbs for your survaivability. Skeletons are dumb indeed, but they usualy attack what you attack. The main function of a necro minion master should be coordinate the battlefield to your advantages, be the general of the damned. I don’t play skeletons anymore because they’re ugly and i found a better build in bone golen and shadow aoe. Can play solo anything with that. I only miss in this class the REVIVE skill. That was such a gorgeous feat of a true necromancer, PoE brought it along with much better looking zombies for necro build. I think those skeletons are dated, or should at least look a little more scary, blood soaked, or diverse. Making a human skeleton out a spider, a maggot or a big walking tree is still very unimmersive experience.
1 Like
You think playing the current Summoner has low APM becoz your minions are AFK? You would never get to high Tiers on this Diablo 4 if you are low APM. And BTW, this is D4 not D3. D4 has its own mechanics/rules. You are wanting D4 to be D3. But D4 is D4. It doesnt want to become D3. What do I suggest? Adjust.
I won’t bother answering you, you are a lost cause.
3 Likes
Your minions are hitting for 450 - 689 damage… They are not clearing. Bro post a video without casting bone spear.
9 Likes
The damage in these videos is really unremarkable. You’ve been linking your videos in t2 story and t3 and saying summon necro is fine since pre-launch but it really isn’t. You can clear with it eventually sure but you can rip those same encounters apart with an actual bone spear or bone spirit build in a fraction of the time/effort.
To give you perspective my bone spears did 60-90k hits and my free bone spirit was hitting for something like 250k when I did elias at like 58 in sacred gear. Yeah I had to dodge more but only because of level difference. I could immediately do all world content after that. You are sacrificing a tonne of clear speed to buff minions that would be inconsequential if you buffed your bone abilities. Shadow builds can also pump out significantly more damage than what you’re doing. Is it possible to play your minion bone spear build in lower content? yes. Is it up to par with other builds/classes? no.
When people say it needs buffs its because they are experiencing the high end content which you are not doing. I really don’t understand why you are in every thread talking about end game if you haven’t done any of it. T4 open world is the easy for everyone content so you can start getting some decent gear for glyph xp in NM. After you get enough of the helltide mats there is little reason to do world content. To be clear glyph level is a critical part of your power in end game so being able to do high NM dungeons is important.
Endgame viable specs would blow up those packs before you even got there at that content level even with just codex legos and sacred gear. There is a clear objective power difference between minion specs and what most consider end game viable specs. People are asking for that gap to be closed and I don’t understand why people argue against them and don’t want to be a little more capable in a minion spec.
5 Likes
That would force decompose on all minions builds which is bad for any sort of build variety. The game needs less of that type of thing imo. Would be better to just give a button for attack target.
I don’t think it would force anything. If you don’t have decompose, you’re basically where we all are right now. Which isn’t THAT bad. Choices are good and sacrifices make interesting design. Plus, decompose being single target, shadow AND already increasing minion damage on target just makes the most sense.
I’m not against its own button but I’d much rather have raise/priest off my bar.
I play minion builds every single league in poe. I’m up at 4100h at this point.
Reason for that is that I think minions and totems are fun.
There are some things that’s required for it to work and I don’t really see it here yet.
Minions have to be fast and aggressive and have an attack priority.
Here they are slow, none aggressive and without priority.
They should aim for closest target and attack in unison moving forward like a progressing army of death. In D4 they can go for 5 different targets and just switch to another target half a screen away and you cant control it.
A single minion is very weak. Many minions are dangerous and it’s a very fun and satisfying play style. They had auto-raise skeleton (like golem in D4) and command skeleton in D3, I don’t see why it wasn’t in D4. It’s as they deliberately designed necromancer not to be a summoner. I’m starting to think that yes, that was their philosophy.
If they get AI tweaked and got a focus attack built into summon skeletons I think the class is fine but I’m not really sure where they’re going with this class. Right not it’s a slow moving sorceress.
3 Likes
Also POE has auras which really help boost the minions. here we only have the skel button.
Even if minions were working as intended which they are not, they won’t compete. Their top end damage is too low even in perfect gear with perfect rolls.
Tons of necro builds? What game are you playing?
2 Likes
If the buttons are made into attack buttons, then it’s really not AFK.
For example, if Golem vaccuum’d prepped enemies to be killed, and the summon button was an attack here/boost command. That’d be prep an area and kill it, like a lot of other builds. Just using minions instead of other spells.
But really here, this is an ARPG, execution on most builds is nearly mindless.
1 Like
