I want to make summoner work

necromancer
1

Paragon 980, cr is 38.6k, on inf3 hell level

Problem I’m having is two fold
1: I’m having a terrible time with essence dropping. I keep getting the same drops I already have. In the past two days I’d say I’ve gotten around 50ish lego drops and not a single one has been new, they are the same essence drops I already have.

2: the minions don’t take agro, the mobs just bypass the minions and come straight to me, in which I get overwhelmed and die since I don’t have the essence gear,

So that’s my dilemma and I’m really not sure what to do, or how to solve this other than have the essence gear drop, which its not sadly.

I did like 4-5 challenge runs and got a total of 15 legos, and not a single one was a new essence.

I want to make necro work, specifically summons but it’s frustrating because essence gear just is not dropping and the minions don’t grab agro so I die a lot :disappointed_face:.

As a side note, I can drop to inf2 hell level and breeze right thru stuff without issues, but that given all the gear I’m after is on inf3 hell level and above, three in particular are archers and golem shouts every 2s adding to the mage timer, and lightning skeletons, none of which has dropped in 2-3 days.

I’m going to guess that the essence gear drop will make things a bit easier.

Also on another note, builds I’ve tried are like bone armor and corpse Lance different variants, and just cannot keep from dying. Anything on inf3 right now just slaps me around but on inf2 I breeze thru things no issues. So am I stuck being in inf2 which basically doesn’t give the gear I’m after, or is there another solution.

So any necro very players out there, I could use some advice, I’m seriously at a loss as to what to do.

2

Check what golem you are using some of them will pull aground mages and skeletons are not meant for agro (that being said if you have gotten the zombies they will slow mobs). I reall7 wanted summoner necro to be endgame but the mages are really dumb so you need to drag mobs past them. Try to get your movement speed up so you can kite. Engage mobs first with your golem and good luck (remember you need to unlock higher difficulties to get essences to drop. Hell 1 2 3 inferno 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11. You will see little notes as to what difficulty essences start dropping at. Good luck and I hope this helps a bit

3

Ty, appreciate the advice. Yeah my downfall right now is essence gear and lack of it, 100%
Anything, and I mean ANYthing I use on inf3 just does not work as far as summon. I also cannot create anything much else because all the guides/builds have at least 4 peices I do not have, and those drop at inf3 and above, so I can’t even build a decent build.

I have tried literally every combo of both summon (my preferred) and non summon ie: bone scy, bone armor, etc….without summons. Everything I’ve thrown at it I’m either stuck doing inf2, or I die on inf3, which is where the gear drops.
I had hopes for this as end game but without the essence gear, I don’t have a hope at all, it’s like there is no in between, inf2 is a bit to easy, and inf3 is a bit to hard.

Tbh blizzard needs to fix the necro class, it’s a bit broken. Either

1: drop the hell levels down where I can get the gear drops

2: make the drop percent for said drops better, not have such a high percent to drop

3: don’t keep dropping over and over and over and over again, stuff I already have, make it notice after say 3 drops of the same item, go to a different item maybe

4: fix the “stupidity” of the summons. As I have read, the summons has always been a thorn in people’s side, they sometimes don’t attack and just stand around, they don’t attack the right mob (the one you’re attacking), make the skeletons have agro taunt maybe, that makes sense, more so than making the mages have taunt.

The issue with mobs I am having currently is there are say 15 mobs, and they all rush at once, the golems taunt can’t cover all that, so they end up getting past the golem and head straight for me, and necros are squishy enough as it is, so yeah the end result is, die, die and die again :frowning:
What good are summons if you can’t utliize them and you die anyways, at that point you may as well be solo with another class and not have to worry about janky wonky summons.

I’m taking a much needed break from necro, and work on my dh.

A little backstory, I had an acct that got deleted for some reason that escapes me right now, but I had a 1200 para dh, and most all my essence gear list I could pick from. I never ONCE remember dying this much or having this much problems staying alive. They say both classes necro and dh are glass cannons but I sure don’t see it with the dh personlly.

Anyways I’m off my perverbial soap box, sorry for ranting, I’m just utterly furstrated that I can’t make this class work for me,

Again I apprecaite the input

4

Only thought I have is throwing summons at mobs That is get to the edge of agro range and throw sour golem at the mobs before they agro have mage summon refreshed so you can pop a new mage and take a step back. I came to this game with fond memories of EverQuest with summons that cold tank and dps that you could buff heal command to stay back up or atk needless to say this is not that lol. Even so summons can be fun and do solid dps end game just more like having a herd of toddlers rather than loyal well trained minions. And yes getting good green armor drops truly sucks in this game I wish it worked more the way armor essences work once unlocked you can apply them to new gear drops

5

I only have skeletal, normal and fire golems sadly. I assume you mean the golem that does the aoe rot in think it is? Yeah another essence I don’t have sadly

I may run some spectral on inf2 in hopes I can level up some maybe.

I played my druid today, went from 90p to be 180p lol. That class is so much fun to play.

Sad things of it all, the bear+wolves and me whacking on the mobs is better right now than my necro is facepalm :rofl::rofl::rofl:

Did a STOOPID thing today. Blizzard rates gear on cr, well goofy me swapped a purple gear out for a legendary not even thinking about the legendary, so yeah, I did that with 2 pieces DOH! good thing I’m still low Paragon and hell level still, I should be able to get some legos to drop. Anything will do, missing both off hands and one main ugh.

Age is a real struggle lol

6

Ummm so you have just started ripping though the first 60levels with the 1400% exp boost and are rapidly leveling now that you are in paragon you my dude are out growing your gear so your summons are not that strong and you are extra squishy I had the same problem with a barb alt way out leveled most of my gear so could not take hits well and my dps was low until I could work on getting all my gear leveled up to match the 1300 paragon it will take time to stabilize I would not stress about it just realize besides from unlocking new essences you can make new armor drops obsolete in a hour or so of play as you level

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7

Yeah, it’s super frustrating, almost to the point of rage quitting, because right now I can’t find a good build, and I spend more time running from the mobs than I do actually fighting them.

I dunno what to do aside from that I’m doing already which is grinding, leveling gear, turning in Legos to add to the points to buy an essence I want, and continue experimenting with builds. I’m at 380 now so really really really close to buying that essence helm.

Quick question on heliquery, does the essence gear drop from the last boss only, out will it also drop from the other bosses on that left side?

Right now I’m using dark curse for summon frenzy, while it works ok maybe bone armor would work better maybe I really don’t know

Any advice on that? Would bone armor work better at all?

8

Bone armor will up your survivability getting the helm to have golem roar and keep mages up is a great help once you get that you can drop skeletons early levels with necro are hard until you unlock mobile mages I apologies as I have all ess unlocked so I am having trouble remembering earlier builds (when it comes to helliquary once you unlock a new difficulty that armor ess can drop as long as you are playing at or above that difficulty globally). The other big thing is run Vanguard some of the best armor drops will come from there as you level up

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9

Awesome. I’ll give none armor a shot. I have mobile mages, only thing I have left to get is the golem roar helm, and I’m literally on my 4th week and no drop yet.

I tried heliquery doing spectral but I keep dying :pensive_face:

10

i been playing summon build since day one. sorry i cant tell you the correct name of the essence tho.
i always use skeleton champions, mages, golem, bone armor and for the primary spirit.

  • for the mage that dealt more damage: the electric mage (attack up to 5 enemies, good for earlier pvp) or the one that shot a single ray, later you can get a mage that shots 3 ray (this is the one that came for the helm for golem that increase the duration of mages). the essence twin something (that cast mages with random skills was a good option for earlier support buld pvp not so much for pve. but just my opinion :v).

  • for skeleton champios: the electric (this one teleport to enemies location good for earlier pvp), archer (this one you try to keep them alive send them far from enemies), zombies (this ones slow enemies).

  • golem: the golem of fire is a pretty solid golem (it dealt continual damage), poison golem (this one break armor of enemies/bosses i think. not sure). golem that trown stones (this one dealts ground damage, its damage more than one enemie. good for earlier pvp) i always use the fire golem untl i get the unlimited golem later.

  • bone armor: i always use parting gift essence (the one that give you protect against 5 charges and supposedly dealt damage when it breaks) when you get the essence for the pants (you can use the one that increase movement speed and attack speed or the increase critical damage with the shoulder essence that increase critical damage) i never use the electric bone armor because the bone armor that protect me was more important, and always use the bone armor to protect/buff your summon.

and if you are playing summon build the increase accuracy is the way to go, you can increase the accuracy in the blacksmith in westmarch. those are the essence that i use until inferno XI (this are just advice, not sure if works for you, i always use the new essence when they came out).
the earlier essence that works good was mages that shoot one ray, archer skeleton champions, and fire golem. the bone armor help you protect/buff your party members.
sorry for my typos, english is not my native language :v.

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11

Update:

Finally got my last essence so I can experiment with summoner builds now.

So that given I need some advice.
On roaming around (not standing still) I’m trying to decide between 2 roaming mages to use in PVE only

1: black wall - roaming mages that cast a continuous beam
and

2: Scattered light - mages that are passively summoned ie: no summon cast involved, as well as are un-targetable

Between these two, which one would warrent more dps and damage and faster killing of mobs?

Update again:
On a quick test, I did 4 bounties with each set of mages. Four bounties with black wall and four with scattered light.

My findings at least for me are, the scattered light mages while they have the like homing skulls, and auto respawn which is really nice, the black wall mages just do so much more damage overall. Mobs die pretty fast with black wall mages.