Guide to the Summoner - Discussion Thread

[moltovir]

original discussion: see here

[QUOTE=Noober]Have you ever heard of summon stacking? Consider that absorbing about 5000 attacks, while dealing the damage of all your summons at once. Obviously a Staff of Teleport is nowhere near as practical, and certainly unsuitable for PvP, not to mention that you sacritice an item slot (at the very least the equivalent of Enigma). And if you aren't summon stacking, you will be hit, be it from Gloams or pk'ers. If you consider Life useless, you could not be more incorrect. Strength is good because it allows you to keep base strength, which means more life, or half price block (assuming you don't use that silly Splendor sheild). Summoners are good, though arguably bad mannered duellers. You stated the best possible items, cost is irrelevant. If I had a Barb & Summoner with a single Enigma, I would mule, though Enigma is FAR more effective with a summoner then a Barb. Not to mention that Teleport speeds up MFing ALOT. And you also need it to micro your Merc. Enigma is the single most common armour among top level summonmancers. Period.[/quote]

Perhaps I should add a small abbreviation to my guide: Summoner's Guide (PvM). 99,5% of the Necro PvP'ers are Bonemancers, and the other 0,5% will not know what Gamebanshee is nor will they show any interest in this guide, because they're probably very experienced players (because they know how to win duels with Summoners). Maximum Life is increased by 5%: with a 900 lifepool (I doubt many summoners have life above 1k), that's 45 life added will 45 life save you from a Gloam hit? I don't think so. You get a wonderful +15
life per kill, but when will you make any kills? Unless you make a hybrid Summoner/Bonemancer (being both a weak summoner and weak bonemancer due to the lack of synergies) or a Summoner/Venomancer, your summoner won't kill anything himself and won't receive the bonus when his minions kill things. Strength is very nice too, but even good summoners gear has suck low Str requirements that any Summoner can get away with a low investment in Strength. You said I "will" be hit, but to be honest: I'm not. Why? Because all the skill points I invested in Dim Vision (I recall you called them "useless") prevent me from getting hit at all, even by Gloams. The only thing I truly fear is Champion Gloam packs, but in areas infected with Gloams I make sure to scout ahead with a clay golem, and have maximum lightning resistance (mostly I can take up to 6-7 lightnings before having to drink a Rejuv). I even keep a T-Gods Vigor in my stash specially for areas where Champion Gloam packs might spawn.

[quote="Noober]
Obviously you have absolutely no experience in these matters. There are entire characters based on Thorns + summons. Certianly also opens the secondary summon tree. Of course you ignore important things such as Resists (inc. Max resists)"]
Don't understand me wrong; Bramble is a great armor. But why waste it on your summoner when your Merc can get so much more use out of it? 1010% damage returned is a nice amount of damage done to your opponents, but it doesn't make up for the other things your summoner could get by equiping other armors. You mentioned resists: Bramble gives 30% FR which isn't that good, and 100PR which is the least useful of all resists.


[quote="Noober]
If you honestly think that skills are the single most important features on items"]
Again the difference in mentality between us both comes up: I built this character specially for PvM, and SU and area MF running. Sorry, but I don't rush, nor do I duel. If you say a Skin is far superior to TO's in PvP, I simply can't disagree with you. Because I don't PvP. The resists are great, you're right, but I just put an Um in my TO pieces.

[quote="Noober]
If by 100 you mean 500 and by 10-20 you mean 4"]

High level BA is great in Hardcore, and using the Marrowbug is invaluable for getting that. That's why I would always prefer these above any other boots in HC. The +2 mastery boost is nice too however, and the only reason I said that is because my SC summoner rarely uses his BA (he's used to not getting hit anyway). Actually my SC summoner uses War Travs, but if you let him choose one reason for equipping Marrows he'd say the SM boost. The HC one would probably think he's crazy

[quote="Noober]
If you would permit"]
I won't discuss this further, but just one thing: AB is not an RP group. In fact, it's the third largest D2 community on earth. The only thing that makes it different from pubbie games is that it doesn't allow duping, botting, hacking or PK'ing. And the members don't use l33t speech, which I find extremely irritating. It's the reason why I don't focus on personal defense: what to defend against if the chance to meat a PK'er is reduced to 0,00%?

[quote="Noober]
If you honestly think that Summonmancers don't do anything"]

Rapid castings of Teleport are nice for Meph and Baal runs, but the Summoner is a SU/Area runner. If you kill anything you see, there's not much use for Teleport. Ofcourse it's nice if you want to rush yourself through the game or run Meph, two things I don't do. If you want to make a Summoner's Guide to rushing, anti PK tactics and large scale MF Boss runs, by all means go ahead.
Curse Spamming: even my curses with only 1 hard point investment have a 5 yards radius and 10 second duration. Decrip spamming on WW'ers is a great tactic in PvP. Sadly, this isn't a PvP guide. Decrip spamming on bosses is a great tactic in PvM, but for me it doesn't matter whether I get those 5 decrips off in 5 seconds or 3,98585 seconds, because bosses get slowed down after 1 or 2 castings anyway.
Chain Corpse Explosions: most monsters die after 2 or 3 CE's, and my Skeletons ensure that I have more than enough time to get those off. I don't understand why this is so important.
Clay Golem recasting: even if your Clay Golem dies in one or two hits, you'll have plenty of frames to cast a new one before the old one goes down. Spamming Clay Golem seems a weird thing to do, unless you want to get rid of mana ofcourse.
Defense against PK'ers: Whenever I saw PK's, I just quit the game and never tried to compete against them. Nowadays I never see them and never bother with them. Might be useful in public games though, I have no idea.

[quote="Noober]
If should probably also be noted that most of my sug
gestion carry much bias towards high level PvM (e.g. Players 8 Hell) or PvP (which requires far more skill...generally at least =p)[/QUOTE"]

Again, this is not a PvP build. And if you want to play Players 8 Hell, even your suggested equipment is not the best: just prebuff your skeletons at the highest level possible, switch to a Faith bow and give your Merc Pride and Bramble. Even Frenzytaurs will be a pushover probably. The best items are those who give a bonus to your whole army: generally these are Merc runewords or paladins. And if I had the choice I'd pick the paladin: he might say something interesting after all

[Noober]

My main point on Enigma is SUMMON STACKING! Try it once, and you will understand why this is the single best armour for Summon necros as regarded by most top players. Teleport is godly (and it makes run soooo much faster, and gives you CONTROL).

[QUOTE=moltovir]Perhaps I should add a small abbreviation to my guide: Summoner's Guide (PvM). 99,5% of the Necro PvP'ers are Bonemancers, and the other 0,5% will not know what Gamebanshee is nor will they show any interest in this guide, because they're probably very experienced players (because they know how to win duels with Summoners).[/QUOTE]
If you fight a Summonmancer in PvP, a huge majority of them are 'noobs', or more precisely, rich 'noobs'. It is not particularly difficult to teleport next to someone...

[QUOTE=moltovir]with a 900 lifepool (I doubt many summoners have life above 1k), that's 45 life added will 45 life save you from a Gloam hit?[/QUOTE]
If you are talking top level (aka, characters suitable for this equipment), don't expect less than 2500 HP. My friends summonmancer has 3500 HP (can't remember if post- or pre-Call to Arms).

[QUOTE=moltovir]You said I "will" be hit, but to be honest: I'm not. Why? Because all the skill points I invested in Dim Vision (I recall you called them "useless") prevent me from getting hit at all, even by Gloams. The only thing I truly fear is Champion Gloam packs, but in areas infected with Gloams I make sure to scout ahead with a clay golem, and have maximum lightning resistance (mostly I can take up to 6-7 lightnings before having to drink a Rejuv). I even keep a T-Gods Vigor in my stash specially for areas where Champion Gloam packs might spawn.[/QUOTE]
Lol, if you want to spend and eternity on a MF run, certainly you can avoid being hit. But you might as well use maphack and spam DV. DV is completely and utterly useless if you use Enigma. And I would hardly think that retreating to your stash constantly is exactly efficient.

[QUOTE=moltovir]Don't understand me wrong; Bramble is a great armor. But why waste it on your summoner when your Merc can get so much more use out of it?[/QUOTE]
Bramble stacks the same way Dream stacks IIRC. 100PR may not be the most useful in PvM, but it will be helpful against certain amazons :s (be it avioding PK'ers or duelling.

[QUOTE=moltovir]Um in my TO pieces.[/QUOTE]
If you can afford to throw away an Um, get yourself an Enigma!

[QUOTE=moltovir]AB is not an RP group. In fact, it's the third largest D2 community on earth.[/QUOTE]
Really? I would be interested in where you got your numbers. The forums seem quite small (for D2 that is). The forums seem to have a distinctive PvM atmosphere, therefore many duellers would call the advice 'noobish'. Though the Amazon section is far more comprehensive then my knowledge.

You stated that this is an MF character, runs are the most efficient methods of MF (the exception being perhaps the Pit). But even if area massacres, Teleport has it's uses, be it to evade an attack or save your mercenary.

[QUOTE=moltovir]Curse Spamming: even my curses with only 1 hard point investment have a 5 yards radius and 10 second duration. Decrip spamming on WW'ers is a great tactic in PvP.[/QUOTE]
Firstly, decrep on a WW'er is a VERY bad idea (not that any WW should be a challenge for an Enigma summonmancer) because generally you don't want to be hit more and kept in block/stunlock do you?. Secondly a 5 yard radius if VERY smallin a big pack, and things like Attract would need to be spammed.

[QUOTE=moltovir]Chain Corpse Explosions: most monsters die after 2 or 3 CE's, and my Skeletons ensure that I have more than enough time to get those off. I don't understand why this is so important.[/QUOTE]
That exact reason. You want to kill as many enemies with your CE (especially if they are immunes) before they run out of range. This is most important usually after an Attract.

[QUOTE=moltovir]Clay Golem recasting: even if your Clay Golem dies in one or two hits, you'll have plenty of frames to cast a new one before the old one goes down. Spamming Clay Golem seems a weird thing to do, unless you want to get rid of mana ofcourse. [/QUOTE]
Generally you won't have enough time because once Diablo, for example, targets you, most of the time he will no longer go after the golem. Of course, if you summon stack, this is an irrelevancy.

[QUOTE=moltovir]Defense against PK'ers: Whenever I saw PK's, I just quit the game and never tried to compete against them. Nowadays I never see them and never bother with them. Might be useful in public games though, I have no idea.[/QUOTE]
Well, if you are two hit killed in HC, there's not much you can do without summon stacking or teleport. If you have time to defend, they are generally not good PK'ers.

[QUOTE=moltovir]Again, this is not a PvP build. And if you want to play Players 8 Hell, even your suggested equipment is not the best: just prebuff your skeletons at the highest level possible, switch to a Faith bow and give your Merc Pride and Bramble. Even Frenzytaurs will be a pushover probably.[/QUOTE]
God, ladder runewords *vomits*. I didn't take into account those, but regardless, FCR and teleport are all that's important, nothing will survive a summon stack.