So far I am level 40 in Act 3. I am using reavers, cold mages, and iron golem. I have all of the minion buffs except for the golem, working on that. I am using bone splinters to generate essence, bone spear for damage, and using skeleton priests every 5 seconds or so.
I have a few legendary’s that boost minion attack speed and damage, and I am plowing through the campaign with no difficulty. Looking at builds for a summoner class I don’t see a single one that uses bone spear for damage. Is this not viable in the late game? I would like to know sooner rather than later so I dont have to spend tons of gold on a respec. Its kind of a bummer that I would have to sacrifice army of the dead or my golem for corpse explosion, but so far I am not having any trouble at all in the campaign as is.
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I’m still running a minion build with Bone Spear at level 58, but that’s as far as I’ve gotten. Still plowing through the game. Just make sure to upgrade your weapon every few levels.
From my experience, and im useing the maxroll summoner build, is that its a very effective trash clearing build, and SOME bosses it excels in. But theres a lot of boss instances where it turns into a clown show of me running around kiting trying to pile up corpses so i can resummon all my dead minions (aside from golem hes fine) instead of DPSing or dealing with mechanics really.
Clearing citadel of light with a summoner to unlock nightmare was my breaking point. The down time between pulls to allow warriors to heal sucks. Running out of corpses sucks. having to choose my multiple active skills that consume corpses, or having minions isnt fun.
Overall it doesnt feel very powerful or fun in these boss encounters. Im convinced a lot of endgame will be instanced boss fights with the same issues, and id have way more fun with a sorc or ranger for that. I want to deal with DPS and mechanics not baby sitting minions that stack on obvious telegraphed attacks all day…
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at level 60 things are melting. im saccing the iron golem. also got the unique chest and the lego that spawns blood orbs. skellies gets great on paragon. edit : reapers 2 and cold 1
I leveled through campaign as a pure summoner and slowly evolved into a hybrid summoner/caster. I’m actually shocked that you say summoner builds aren’t bone spear because I can’t see anyone playing a necro w/o bone spear because how consistent the vulnerability is. Anyways, I’m currently level 74 in hardcore and I use the following abilities:
Summon skeletons
Corpse tendrils
Decrepitly
Blood mist
Bone spear
Corpse explosion
If I was not in hardcore, I’d drop blood mist for army of the dead or golem. But, as you can see I don’t run any resource generators because I use reapers and cold mages which give me TONS of corpses and decent essence gain (corpse explosion is my generator at this point). I felt a massive power spike once I rolled into a hybrid summoner. My general engagement goes as follows: Bone spear until I have a corpse, then corpse tendrils into decrepify (the lucky hit reduces cooldown is HUGE to auto refresh your corpse tendrils) and I use the legendary aspect that gives me 40% crit chance and 120% crit damage for 6 seconds after casting corpse tendrils, which is up almost constantly. In terms of minion stats, I focus only on their defenses and use them as meat shields and corpse generators while dealing tons of self damage. Also of note, I have the unique gloves that makes my corpse explosion home in on monsters called “howl from below”.
Edit: I also tried pure bone caster and found the summoner hybrid to be better in terms of dps output and survivability because of the meat shields but I really wish minions survivability were upgraded.
How is army of the dead. I was told I should be using it, but I am not really running out of corpses. Seems it would be better to take a skill I can use more often?
If you are using decreptify and a skill that has a decent lucky strike chance, army of the dead’s cooldown will drop quite rapidly. Also, if you are using army of the dead, you need the aspect that gives your minions mass attack speed while its up.
All the ultimate skills are horrible.
Bone spear and corpse explosion are my 2 main damagers.
I have 2+ skill for bone spear and the legendary affix that makes enemies vulnerable on 1st go through and extra 60% while vulnerable.
Corpse explosion is good for crowd control with hordes of enemies.
I have 5 cold mages and 4 skirmishers and golem sacrificed.
Rolling through nicely.
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Bro season 6 after this update, bone spear/splinter/bone everything minions 100% DtE it’s Op Af… I’m loving it!!!
No thorns