Every class I’ve tried has good pets. I got a primalist shaman with 9 thorn totems, lightning totem and two spriggan pets. I just run around and pets do 95% of damage. Necros gotta be crazy.
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RIP servers though.
I was unable to play on the launch as at 10pm i had to call it and go to bed, today i have tried to play 4 times 2 of which I called it and went back to work due to server and latency issues.
Hopefully its better once the hype dies down.
Looking forward to D4 mid season patch to see what they bring to the table. One thing I have experienced consistently is being let down, so maybe I should expect no changes other then maybe a nerf or a sideways buff to minions.
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I got acolyte to level 20 and specced into necromancer, its a lot of fun. The skill levelling and specialisation is very deep, allowing you to change how a skill function by picking correct skill specializations.
Having a lot of fun so far.
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I’ve been playing LE since the beginning of the beta and I must say that the necromancer there is realy a necromancer. Minions are simply viable. U can actually specialize in them without feeling punished, and they will do a lot of damage. Just as u can leave them aside and specialize in death magic with ease…
Once again, an indie company showing a multinational with infinite money how to be a necromancer.
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im only level 30 now, but can do those “Monolith of fate” level 58 maps without any of my minions dying on my summoner. I invested in them, they tank for me, they soak loads of damage, they do 100% of my damage and its fun.
graphics and combat are actually ok, though I still rate diablo 4’s as better. But I am pretty hooked on LE now.
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You can invest in your character and skill waaaaay more than in D4. Not just a few points here and there. Untill they “fix” minions in D4, I’m sticking with LE.
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Same for me.
i love d4, but d4 only hurts my heart. 
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Do your thorn totems randomly turn into a target dummy? I’m playing thorn totem until I get frenzy but right now if I leap onto the thorn totem sometimes it’ll turn into a target dummy and taunt the mobs. I don’t have any taunt abilities but maybe I overlooked something.
nope. you must have some wacky affiliated power or item that does it. leap maybe. In spriggin form my healing totems become thorns, and I can proc more totems by getting hit. i basically rune mcfluffins thorn totem shaman but i run the bear pet instead of eterra blessings. you wanna put most your points into primalist base, druid, beastmaster, then shaman until 100.
It’s a $30 game, developed by ~90 people in a startup indie studio… the graphics are actually quite good, with that in mind.
And quite frankly I’d play stick figures if the minion system was good… and LE’s is!
It is shamefull that a multimillion dollar game, produced by a AAA studio, has such piss-poor minion mechanics in comparison. But hey! The graphics are better!
That’s your opinion. And my opinion with LE’s minion mechanics is it is easy faceroll. I prefer harder minion mechanics. I like it here in D4. I can manage to destroy NM100 with current minion mechanics. It’s not doable by average players. Harder to me is fun even if i am casual. I can understand as most Summoners in D4 has no clue on D4’s mechanics.
LE made me rediscover the joy of being a summoner. I no longer count on Diablo 4 to bring new vitality to the summoner.
I also prefer a challenge, and there are challenges later on in LE with minions.
However regarding d4’s minions, the mechanics are as follows,
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no threat… this is a miss imho as them having threat is part and parcil of playing a summoner. Minion threat allows less tanky summoners and assumes you can build your minions to survive.
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Poor AI this is also just a miss, there is nothing fun about my golem or minions just standing doing nothing while the rest of them are in combat. So far I have not experienced this in LE, though who knows. This problem in D4 is probably related to minions not having threat, if they had threat monsters would come to them which would hide the poor AI they have.
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Low damage… this I would accept if it was across the board, but barb’s exist as do Seneschal pets doing billions of damage. The dev team’s design is as follows, “we want barbs to do billions of damage and we want minions to do thousands of damage, we want barbs to have 100k life, we want necromancers to have 15-20k life with minions with 1/4 the survival of their squishy summoners”. as well as “if you want to survive you have to use one specific ultimate and build 2-3 aspects around it and use only one specific key passive, if not get 925 in every slot and play very very carefully!!!”
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Minion tankiness is a miss and a hit. I like a harder game experience, but if you compare this to other classes they are just crap. Right now minion survival is to punishing for players with less gear knowledge on how to build avoidance , they lose personal avoidance for minion and therefore die constantly.
Ultimately my issue with D4 is the disparity between minion builds on the necromancer with the most glaring being pure summoner (I believe this should be an acceptable build, but we can disagree here) and other classes, and builds.
The experience between a meta barb, sorc, druid and a summoner are worlds apart.
Finally, if we look at summoner options other then pure summoner we have "shadow summoner, mendeln and the blood neckless (forgot its name).
- Shadow summoner is what exactly? corpse explosion and xfals + minions? well this build is better if you sac the minions and just cast corpse explosion with xfals.
- Mendeln with bonespear is good as you just build bone spear damage and equip mendeln which benefits from that, while having some minions active. Is bone spear better without mendeln? probably.
- The blood minion amulet build… no idea not seen anyone playing it.
I am no expert on these builds, but thats the impression i get. LE summoner so far is really diverse. I have not watched a single video, stream, guide on LE and im starting endgame. I had minion survival issues, that i solved creating summoner survival issues, which i solved causing low damage issues, which i solved. But now I have high survival, minion survival and damage… not just swapping one for the other like with D4.
Bit of a ramble, but thats my feelings on the whole situation, im sure some will agree and disagree 
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Deathspeaker’s Pendant. It was good untill Blood Surge was good. This is again an item that do not buff minions or their damage or surviveability, they are just a conduit to spread your Blood Surge all over the field, like Mendeln channels your damage through the minions when you can proc it.
I would add, to increase number of minions summoned we rely on 2 legendary aspects. Summoner allready needs too much aspects, and have no room for many uniques, or other aspects that help the character itself, for ex.: buffing both the minion and character survivability further in meaningfull ways, sometnig that is constatly active once equped. Which might seem good for build diversity, but once you decide you want to rely soley on minion damage, and the character for support there are not many options, and not enough item slots.
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It’s easy for Summoner to be overpowered if Minions have threat. Becoz if they have threat, if it dies, the next minion with next high threat would get aggro… mobs would go to them. Then that minion dies and the next minion with next high threat gets aggro… And so on… Then the Summoner just revive the dead one. If the Summoner doesnt do damage and let the minions get aggro, minions would just cycle aggro while the Summoner sits back revive any minion that dies. This threat mechanics can easily destroy dumb monsters. But Blizz made the mechanics smart, all the mobs focus on the Necro.
I played a NighetElf against Undead several times in WarCraft3. I was destroyed few times becoz I let Necro minions fooled me. The gameplay was easy… Kill the necros… ignore the minions.
D4 mobs are smart to have each minions attack different targets. It’s a problem that players need to resolve. Just tendril them all and the minions focus on one mass of targets. That’s why Ring of Sacrilegious Soul is so important to Summoners as it allows Necro to have a second tendril. Of course, noobs never figure it out so they instead conclude that Minions are broken becoz of its dumbness. They never knew that it is the game feature that Minions are dumb.
Barbs are overpowered. Blizz acknowledge it. Everyone knows nerf bat is coming. Barbs better enjoy their class right now becoz it might not ever happen again.
Have you seen Barb’s Seneschal Pet so OP like the Barb themselves? The Seneschal Pet single-handedly killed Uber Lilith. Is that the minion you want to play? Do you want Summoner to be a joke like the Barb or the Seneschal Pet? Good thing Summoner is not a joke like them.
BTW, I abuse the use of Seneschal Pet by applying what I learned from the Barbs. Seneschal Pet can have very high DPS and get aggro… and never die. If Minions has the same mechanics, I would abuse the whole content, making the content a joke.
Barb is just the flavor of the month. Were they OP when Summoner was OP on Season 1? They were laughing-stock back then.
Druids are the only ones with Pet other than the Necro.
In current mechanics, you dont really need to focus on Minion’s Super Survivability. You just need enough… just enough for the Mobs to die first before the Summoner. But you Pure Summoners are making the Summoner game harder… Pure Summoners have a joke DPS… You made your Minions super tanky becoz your Summoner is incompetent to kill the mobs fast.
On this Season, I can see Mendeln + Black River Corpse Explosions. Havent played it yet. I just have it in theory becoz my Blood Lance + Black River Corpse Explosions is godly like Bone Spear +Black River Corpse Explosions.
It’s good if there is an ARPG that gives different Minion experience. But dont ever convince me D4’s minions mechanics sucks. It sucks to you becoz you keep on dreaming to have D2 Summoner on D4 which is non-existent. Imagine, Pure Summoner on D4 where you gimp your Necro 1000x. Playing a Class that uses no Uniques in D4 is stupid.
Mendeln Summoner was very fine until the Pure Summoner ruined it… making the minions more and powerful than the Summoner… nerfing the Mendeln Summoner damage. Now you got a joke Summoner.
But despite of this, Mendeln Summoner is still viable to destroy NM100. It’s just not the flavor of the month.
its not ruined, you are right also its not the flavour of the month either because of season 2. the real thing that ruined mendeln was how bad minions were at staying alive in season 1/2. I wish I could claim credit for a change blizzard made, but that is highly unlikely.
Sadly what ruined mendeln was bad minion survival in season 1/2, then they nerfed LH with BCE and everyone thought the build was dead. However, I knew it couold come back with bonespear because bone spears lucky hit is very good (i played bone spear mendeln in pre season, though kept trying to make my minions do damage too :D).
However with the changes to maximum life in season 3, minions can survive again, and you are correct more damage = easier minion survival, so yes mendeln can be viable again as it has solid A tier AOE damage, i heard its single target is meh though.
Anyway some streamer made a nice bone spear mendeln build, but again… probably bone spear without mendeln is better, or the new meta bone spear + BCE xfals or whatever it is.
so basically if you invest in some CDR, decrepify, thorns or use bone prison’s new passives you can sit back and ignore most attacks with just the golem gaining all the threat. Is taunt lasts 6 seconds and you have it off CD usually faster then that. Its more an issue with stray monsters wondering to the player while your minions can sometimes literally AFK and do nothing, because they are not engaged in combat by the monsters.
But I want that feeling of entering a room and my horde of minions rush into combat to smash the enemies, right now I run into the room first they all wonder in behind me i get battered and they then sttack after. It creates annoying game play, where I have to precurse in a room, or build huge levels of tankiness so i dont die, or send my golem in to taunt, which can sometimes be on CD.
Is it really so bad to have agro on my minions instead of me at the start of combat until my golem taunts them all or they are perma CC’ed in tendrils and bone prison? I mean every other class CC’s and 1 shot monsters, im just asking for them to attack my minions first before I golem taun, is that so game breaking? I mean LE managed, so did D3 and d2. I just don’t get it tbh. (to be clear this is me moaning at bliz not you :P)
I think we are missing each other on this, so yes 100% agree the player needs to group the monsters up etc to make minions more effective.
My point was not that, it was that sometimes your 1-5 minions (5 was the most i ever had) will stand next to you and not attack the monsters you have tendril’ed together, they will just stand and wait. The most obvious minion to do this was the golem, but he is a bit better in season 3.
Also monsters will get tauned into walls and your minions will just look at them… i mean your entire army will just stand and look and not attack. these you just have to skip.
The Blizzard Necromancer’s the only necromancer who is stronger without minions than with minions. This is ridiculous! He should be as strong with one as with the other, just as a druid should be as strong with invocations as with elements of nature.
Man, this isn’t going to take away the fun of the other builds, if that’s what u think. On the contrary: The idea is to add another fun option (and one that should always have existed, as it is the signature of the class.
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You are talking about Season 3 and Season 2. All becoz Summoner is not flavor of the month. Guess what. You missed Season 1. It was on the first Season when Necromancer with Minions have outdps’d Minionless Nexromancer thru Ring of Mendeln and Malignant Barber on Ring. It even outdps’d the Necromancer’s main flagship DPS’er, the Bone Spear.
What I think you want is an AFK Summoner which would be non-existent in D4. It’s stupid on this game to have Andy-the-Noob to slay Uber Lilith while Minions devour her while AFK.
And besides, someone who played D2 Summoner back then told us here on this forums that Minion DPS back then on D2 was inferior. It’s main damage were from Corpse Explosions. And we have that explosions here in D4… thru Ring of Mendeln, thru Xfal’s Corroded signet and even Black River Corpse Explosions. What I can see is that Ring of Mendeln and Xfal gameplay is Lucky Hits gameplay which noobs cant grasp. Even Black River is hard to get. These items are a must for Summoners’ Endgame. I am sorry D4 is hard for you.
Watch this video to see how advance Summoner works… Look where the Ring of Mendeln part comes in. Summoner is viable. Not flavor of the month but viable to destroy Season 3 content.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YLHm6sRTYco
In over 20 years of playing arpgs, I have never encountered an AFK summoner. I’m sorry, but u’re just talking nonsense. Those who play with summons know that a lot of micromanagement is required, always repositioning themselves, using buffs and debuffs, repositioning minions, among other things.
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Any build is “viable.” D4 really isn’t that hard of a game and since the end game is limited, then you can slap a terrible build together and still beat all the content. As an example, you can watch MacroBioBoi’s video where he took every minion glyph and paragon node, then sacrificed all of his minions, and still beat a tier 100. Regarding the specific build you linked… P4wnyhof specifically said in the video that he doesn’t run that build in tier 100 NMDs because it’s way too slow. Also you can watch the video and see his minions are only hitting for 3-5k per hit while his blight/corpse explosion/shadowblight are doing procs of 250k repeatedly. He’s literally using cold mages for AP/crowd control which is the definition of utility minions. He also discusses how he’s using army of the dead because of it’s 100% lucky hit bonus to proc mendeln as often as possible for his big boosts of damage. And as I’m sure we’re all aware, Mendeln damage is the necro’s damage and not minion damage. So P4wnyhof put together a build where the minions do 1% of the damage and he called it a pure summoner build. That is not at all what the community means when we say pure summoner.
We have all known since pre-season 1 that minion builds can be viable when they are used as utility. There are plenty of viable builds for this purpose. The one that is least viable is the one where your minions actually do the bulk of your damage. And even though they exist, they are weaker than their counterpart builds that sacrifice the minions instead.
And two points:
- We are not asking for an AFK build. We want to be casting buffs/debuffs, managing healing to keep our bone mages alive to keep their damage up, spamming crowd control to group mobs in one spot so our warriors can maximize their cleave damage. We want to be the utility while our minions are the damage. Not the other way around.
- An overpowered AFK build already exists with a thorns barb one shotting bosses before they even hit the ground. If you really believe its stupid to have “Andy-the-Noob to slay Uber Lilith while Minions devour her while AFK,” you ought to spend more time telling Blizzard to nerf Barbarians rather than pushing back on players wanting to buff minions. Barbarians are hurting the game far more than players wanting minion buffs.
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