Sloppy NMD 100 complete on Pure summoner

Necromancer
1

Just thought I would try out a NMD100 now that my Summoner is level 89. I have over 15k armour and with potion over 14k life. I rolled 2 sigils and thankfully one rolled 100, I had to run it even though poison and flys just destroy my minions, and blood blisters are never a priority to minions and one shot me. I always salvage blood blister maps due to how irritating it is watching minions ignore them.
However after 3 panic induced deaths I was successful.

89 Pure summoner - NMD 100

The build, though obviously this is my planner and I am missing a board and a glyph still on my actual char: maxroll.gg/d4/planner/8yur014s

So my take away from this is, i can see pure summoner builds being maybe twice as strong as last season, maybe stronger maybe weaker. I am still unsure, but my gear is far from BIS, all my aspects are mid to high rolls, missing one glyph and a legendary paragon node as well as all glyphs being 15-16, so they can still get a fair amount stronger. I should also get a few K more life just going from 89-100.
I am very happy with the direction Pure summoner is going.

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Hey Ralph, I think the main question here is not ‘Can we clear NMD100 with minions?’ but ‘What is the point of having minions in their current state?’

There are builds that allow us to clear NMD100 faster, more comfortably, have more fun, and experience less stress.

We are talking about minions, which are the core aspect of the necromancer class in any game, and we are in a situation where it is better to sacrifice minions rather than have them.

To be honest, I do not understand why people who play the necromancer have to hear ‘It is tricky to balance minions,’ and at the same time, developers increase the damage to barb charge, making it overpowered so that it one-shots everything.

If developers do not want minions to run around and one-shot everything and they want us to play differently, that’s cool; no problem. Give us more aspects/unique items that are viable or skills to play with the minions.

Here is an example: give us something similar to ‘Deathspeaker’s Pendant’ but as an aspect or skill so we can obtain it faster… and make it more powerful.

To summarize the text above, minion builds should not be a bad option to play as a necromancer. Minion builds should be the exact opposite.

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100% agree. Minion is the essence of necros, sacrificing them should not always be the best way to play necro.

4

Nice to see how you’ve done it. The run is little bit slow though. I firmly believe I could do it faster with Mendeln Ring Summoner even if lucky hits was nerfed from BCE and CE as I believe lucky hits is still the same with pure Blight. But it’s gonna take awhile for me to get to that stage as I have less play time.

I would reach level 100 either with Blood Surge or Bone Spear. I believe both of these builds would be dominant on Vault NM dungeons where they could stay on one place without moving while decimating everything that comes near.

What you’ve seen with Ralph is Pure Summoner. You havent seen the Mendeln Ring Summoner which I believe would be faster in clearing NM100 but not comfortably or less stress though but would be fun.

If Summoner’s minion damage are massively increased, add the Ring of Mendeln and/or Xfal ring damage, and Summoner total damage would get out of hand. It has to be balanced so the total damage is not that crazy high. If you want pure minion damage, they have to delete Ring of Mendeln and Xfal’s first. And I dont think that would happen.

On me, I prefer the Ring of Mendeln Summoner gameplay than the Pure Summoner.

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guys just remember, this is my summoner with 3x 15 glyphs, should be 4x 21 glyphs, missing 12%x minion dmg and more stat points on the paragon tree.
Gear is also massively lacking both in aspect rolls and gear in general. my defensive stats are awful, i have no hellbent commander roll on amulet, no lucky hit on gear etc etc.
I am also missing a unique as temerity currently seems kinda bad for me… but either way I may still go with temerity if im armour hard capped with it.

Yes minions are a weaker build, and i think golem is doing most of the heavy lifting btw, but this will become a lot easier once im level 100, and not fighting monsters that are +65 levels on me.

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I think, for pure summoner we need to get 2 more para boards. Since Golems have their own, why can’t Skele Warriors and Skele Mages have their own? Where it would make sense to plug the Warrior and Mage Gliphs. So investment in minions increas, but the benefit and potential to reach better damage wirlth minions also increas.

Hybrids will not bother to invest this much since their main damage doesn’t come from minions. Hybrids focus more on keeping minions alive for other porpuses.

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Hey Ralph, since you are a veteran with this Summoner build. I have some questions particularly with the low DPS.

  1. How do you manage treasure goblins? Having them escape is not an option for me. Can minions kill the goblin before your Bone Prison wear off?
  2. On Vault, particularly the last room with all the Bosses with the traps, how do you manage without getting hit much by the traps? On my Blood build, if I have to move, I have to make a burst DPS to clear the area where I want to move. Then burst again to clear the next area when I need to move again. Do you just move without killing much of the mobs?
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Goblins it depends on how many other mobs are around distracting your minions, if you can not engage the goblin before you have cleared some mobs then usually it dies inside bone prison. If not, its a case of running it into a pack of mobs and then bone prison/tendrils etc. it just dies in the AoE. Also body blocking works if its in a corner.

Well basically I do the dance or I stand on the edge and keep tendrils/prisoning them in the middle, making sure I am hyper aware of new spawning mobs to tendrils.
However with the changes I have 80+ pearls of warding which means I usually click the statue 3 times = 30 stacks of warding, then ignore every trap. and still finish with 20+ stacks and you only need 15. Tbh you could click it 5 times each run and never run out of pearls. You do not need to save them anymore for the Echo of Marphas, for him I go with 80 stacks, though that is really not needed, but I solo everything and my pearls are just going up and up not down.

With all that said, my minion power is not improving as fast as it was, so I will probably stagnate at some point meaning most players will not enjoy the even slower pace when it comes to NMD100’s. I need lucky hit and possibly changing around some of my aspects, maybe putting unyielding on my weapon or amulet with an aspect to reduce its CD like consuming blood orbs reduces ult CD.

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MrCute512,

I don’t have any issues with the developers’ philosophy that minion builds should not be AFK builds. I’m perfectly fine with Ring of Mendeln, Xfal, and Deathspeaker’s Pendant.

The problem is that, firstly, it’s not easy to obtain these items. Without them, minions are lackluster, and even with these items, they’re still somewhat lackluster. It would be nice to see them buffed.

Secondly, how about introducing more synergies within skills? This would make it easier to play without these specific items, and when obtained, the builds would become very effective.

At the moment, however, any builds utilizing minions are slow and stressful, causing a lot of frustration.

Since the game was released, the entire community agrees that minions are better be sacrificed, and the developers’ explanation to this “Oh, it is tricky to balanceminions.”

Just make it work already; even if they become overpowered for one season, they can be adjusted in the next season.

Ball Lightning Build and HOTA Barb (which is still OP) are examples of how developers can do it.

However, they do not want touch minions because "Well, it is tricky.

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You missed Season 1. The era of Barber+Mendeln Ring. Summoner was the first one to be catered. I one-shot killed the Helltide Assassin with it. Sorry, you’ve missed it. Mendeln has massive explosions on its own then the Barber malignant heart multiplied it further causing Million damages.

Then Blizz focused on other Class builds causing the meta to shift. Wait, til it cycles back to Summoner.

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I asked those questions above becoz I just got a Ring of Mendeln drop and I am not even level 70 yet but I am at WT4 NM dungeons when I got it… It means it’s Ancestral.

At my level, I have zero Lucky hits. I dont even use a wand. I wont be able to use it becoz I wont be able to proc it. I want to switch to Summoner without the Mendeln ring but I may not be able to handle the Vault traps well. I would just keep the ring, get more gear and when I have at least 30 to 40% chance lucky hits from gear, I could switch.

On Season 1 and Season 2, I got the Ring of Mendeln on level 85. Now, I got it before level 70. At least, I have something for the future. :slight_smile:

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I have played since the open beta, so yeah, I remember Barber. At that time, this thing would make any build work.

Additionally, during that period, there was a bug with Bone Prison, resulting in a 100% lucky hit chance, which contributed significantly.

Minions, skills for minions, or synergies with minions had nothing to do with it. It was purely Barber getting an enormous amount of damage through Mendeln via the bugged Bone Prison.

So, I don’t think the minions were balanced at that time. They were actually even worse during Season 1.

13

Summoner on D4 is about Summoner’s Damage plus Minion damage. The bulk of the damage is with Summoner’s damage with the default Ring of Mendeln (the only Unique for Summoner) with Minions as support damage. Everytime you guys ask for Minion buff, the Summoner’s damage goes down and the minions gets more damage but still as support damage not the main damage dealer. You keep asking for more minion buffs and the Summoner’s damage goes down every request while the minions damage gets better and better but still as support damage not the main damage dealer.

I dont think it would happen that Minions would outdamage his Summoner. It would always be like this. A D2 Summoner player on the forums has said D2’s Summoner damage back then was the main damage dealer in D2 through Corpse Explosions… not on Minions. I dont know where you guys get the idea that Minion damage should surpass the Summoner’s damage.

I dont think you guys are aligned with the Devs as the Devs seems has no clue that you want Minions to outdamage its Summoner.

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MrCute,

We need to lose 2 skills, 1 for skeletons and 1 for golem.
We need to invest 51 paragon points into skeletons just to keep them alive.
Golem seem does not to die without irs paragon board, so let’s skip it.
We need to have at least 2x minion aspects to have +2 warriors and mages.
If we want to make skeletons more survivable, then we have to invest in more aspects, and we can get minion health on items.

If we do everything above, then the main character is less survivable and does less damage, which is what developers want us to do.

In order to boost their damage, we need unique items. Which is complete luck to find. You can get Mendeln/XFal/Amulet at the end of the season. The chance is small, but it can happen.

Do not you think this is bit rich for a support minions?

So the question is what all of this for?

To have a bunch of skeletons that are running around and can only kill normal trash mobs and are useless against anything above that?

So if we sacrifice minions:

We get more skills.
We get more paragon points for the main character.
We apply more aspects that will increase the main character’s power.

So it is purely logical to throw the minions into the rubbish can.

And let’s say it this way:

Minions are okay in a vacuum.

Without Bone-spear build.
Without one-shotting barbs.
Without rogues that are zooming through dungeons like they have a jet engines behind them.
Without tanky druids that do a lot more damage than the necromancer with minions and on top of that druids just cannot die.

Yeah, wirhout all of that minions are ok.

But we have all of that! So if developers are concerned about overpowered characters, then they are looking in the wrong place.

And let’s be honest. Useless minions for a necromancer are like a build for a sorcerer that is using a melee build similar to a barbarian and a barbarian’s best build would be a fireball build.

Which is nonsense and no one would argue about it.

15

Have you seen a Mendeln Ring Summoner build that has beaten NM100, decent AoZ and/or Uber Lilith?

On leveling, you wont need the ring and you would be tanky compared to other Classes.

At low levels, you could get Bloodless Scream 2H, Howl from Below to improve CC and improve Corpse Explosions.

At high level, you would need bigger guns. That’s where Ring of Mendeln comes in. For awesome CC, you are required to have Sacrilegious Ring of Soul. For improve DPS on Bosses like Uber Bosses or level 154 Butcher, you would need Xfal’s Corroded Signet to help the Ring of Mendeln.

For Summoner Paragons, it has 4 to 5 Paragon boards for the Necro’s Shadow, Shadow DoTs, and Corpse Explosions with the damage multipliers. And has 1 or 2 Paragon Boards for the Minions. It’s up to the players how they balance them.

The gameplay is the Summoner has to spam Blighted Corpse Explosions, Blights, DoTs while continuously healing the minions. While spamming those, Lucky hits are triggered to have the RIng of Mendeln and/or Xfal’s to explode deleting all the mobs. And the gameplay also includes a lot of CC, buying time for your ring/s to explode. You dont let mobs to hit you for long or some minions would die. The more CC you deliver, the better. You just keep on spamming your Summoner’s damaging abilities to proc Lucky hits to have the rings explode. You have to make sure your Paragons support such gameplay having minions to survive the battle.

The Ring of Mendeln requires Minions to explode. It wont explode without them. Xfal’s requires DoTs to explode. There are 5 DoTs that Necro could use but Summoner could only use 3 becoz it lacks slots space for Aspects that gives DoTs.

The Mendeln Summoner is still a Summoner… not a Sorcerer or Barbarian. He has minions and uses his minions to explode his enemies. Without his minions, the Summoner wont be able to explode stuffs. Regarding DoTs, Necro’s are natural shadow damage dealer. Necro’s are capable to explode enemies stricken by their shadow damage.

D4’s Summoner fantasy is fine with me. It’s gameplay is fun. Dont tell me it’s not doable. I know it would be hard for inexperienced players, but it is doable and viable to reach high level content of the game. It’s just it might not be the flavor of the month.

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First of all, if the only good build around minions for the necromancer class, for whom minions are the core aspect, is the shadow build, then the developers have failed to balance the class.

Second, Xfal does not have to do anything with the minions. This ring is for DOT skills; probably even the barbarian can use this ring with Rend. So do not put it in the same basket.

Third, I do not have any problems with the devs’ philosophy that minions should be in a support role and the damage should go through synergy skills/passives/paragons/uniques.

The problem lies with the price. We need to invest a lot of paragon points into the Cult Leader board because without it, minions will not survive even 3 seconds. So saying “It’s up to the players how they balance them” is not really true. Any builds that are utilizing minions have to include Cult Leader.

Then we need to pick passives, which are ridiculous in their implementation. For example:

Kalan’s Edict + 15 SPD for minions if we do not take damage within 2 seconds… on WT4, the screen explodes as soon as you see enemies. So try not to get hit.

Okay, let’s say the devs want us to play a range build with this passive and stay away from enemies to minimize the chance to get hit.

Cool, let’s go further, and now we find Hellbent Commander +10% x Damage for minions if we stand close to them… well, now in order to buff minions, we have to jump close to enemies, which is increasing our chance to get hit.

Okay, it looks like the devs want us to play safe and provide buffs for the minions. I do not have any problems with that. Apparently, if we do it, the minions will kill everything for us.

Well, guess what - it does not work. We have to do everything above and at the same time kill enemies.

It sounds stupid to me.

On top of that, the community does not buy it. The majority of necromancer players do not use minions; the majority of streamers do not use minions; the majority of builds do not use minions.

Since the release of the game, people have been saying, “Fix the minions; they do not work.”

I have played the necromancer build since the open beta, and minions were an absolute disaster when the game was released, and they are slightly better now. It has been 7 months already since the release, and developers still cannot fix the core mechanic for the class.

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Why would they make summoning viable when they can buff barb some more and have it one shot the game month after months?

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Hahaha yeah I agree. I think because it was not “tricky” to buff barb’s charge. Just add one digit to 1000 damage to make 10000 and it is done :smiley:

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Not anymore with the Cult Leader change. Guess you can still take board and ignore the legendary node. Shadow damage has good synergies with minions, probably that is why it rose above other summoner builds.

Devs got scared of the idiots crying AFK on minions in a lvl 25, WT2 difficulty. :rofl: If they revert that one change they did before launch summoner would be in a better place, but still not AFK. I could go AFK with any build on WT2 lvl 25 decked in aspects, fully upgraded legos, like in the open beta. A lot of skills shared the same fate because of this, interestingly they were buffed back and even buffed further, but minions did not get the same treatment for some reason.

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Hey Indian,

I am 100% agree that minion based builds should not be AFK builds. I am quite happy with some sort of synargies between main character and the minions.

Just at this stage it does not work very well.