Hi guys, I'm a new player, I play a summon barb SSF.
I'm at the end of hell mode, and after I got rekt by baal, I started farming rift and making dungeon to get better gears and level up.
In maps that are level 110-115, my summons dies A LOT.
and I mean A LOT.
I'm at 600 base STR, having like 270% minion life and damage, my dps spirit is at 80K HP.
my summons have 75% all res.
And if i summon them in wolf stance, then go in map, they die after like 2-3 min in and i have to constantly switch to wolf summon, switch to bear, again and again, I barely have the mana to sustain it and I find this kind of gameplay VERY annoying.
What can I do ? I already have upgraded as much as i can for now my minions life/res, I feel if I sacrifice damage again by maxxing bear stance instead of wolf and summon my minion in bear stance, the clear speed will be slow AF, it's not that fast though atm, but it's decent.
Is this the end game gameplay of summon barb ? I play summon because I like chill builds for chill farming, but if I have to spam summons h24, fuck it I will play something else.
Will they be more tanky in end game ? Or summons just suck in this game ?
viewtopic.php?f=40&t=79260
I'm following this build and it doesn't talk about this problem, any advices ? thanks
my summons die a lot, help !
Have you made crafts on gear and jewels to maximize their health?
I did craft on gear.
For jewels, I have only few of them as I am playing runemaster so i have mostly hel runes.
It seems also my summons survavibility varies a lot between runs on the same map.
Sometimes its okay/good, and sometimes its just horrible.
It depends a lot of mobs that spawn and i dont understand why because my char survavibility seems consistent (i know why i die and my tanking capabilities depending on the map)
In the jungle, if there are the khazra archer, my summons will die a lot and i will need to spam them like crazy and when its the big tree men they dont die à lot if at all for the whole map.
But the archer dont do that much damage on my char, about the same as every other mobs on the map.
It really bother me as i cant figure out why and it makes me doubt a lot about the end game capability of the build
For jewels, I have only few of them as I am playing runemaster so i have mostly hel runes.
It seems also my summons survavibility varies a lot between runs on the same map.
Sometimes its okay/good, and sometimes its just horrible.
It depends a lot of mobs that spawn and i dont understand why because my char survavibility seems consistent (i know why i die and my tanking capabilities depending on the map)
In the jungle, if there are the khazra archer, my summons will die a lot and i will need to spam them like crazy and when its the big tree men they dont die à lot if at all for the whole map.
But the archer dont do that much damage on my char, about the same as every other mobs on the map.
It really bother me as i cant figure out why and it makes me doubt a lot about the end game capability of the build
Tbh, I'm surprised. I played summon Barb recently with Wolf Stance/Runemaster and it melted while minions almost never died. Did you put hard points into the minions themselves?
It also blew my mind that summons on this game are not immune/almost immune to area damage, in most ARPG it is the case because summons are dumb as fuck and always die in huge aoe like dumbass because they don't move.
I though median xl devs were ARPG lovers and had a huge ARPG experience ?
Even in diablo 4 it's the case lmao
I though median xl devs were ARPG lovers and had a huge ARPG experience ?
Even in diablo 4 it's the case lmao
They die because this season is pretty heavy on elemental damage in all ubers and summons don't have any options besides capping at 50% res and getting more life with diminishing returns.
I changed my spec to throw barb.
Much much better. Its day and night.
Summons are just bad, the leveling was good but after that its horrible, the clearing speed is okay but the bossing is really bad and in farm maps, summons are dumb and just walk around and hit things at random, so when you have an army of archer or caster spamming at you, its really annoying, and the spirit walk is just a suicide skill in this situation.
Much much better. Its day and night.
Summons are just bad, the leveling was good but after that its horrible, the clearing speed is okay but the bossing is really bad and in farm maps, summons are dumb and just walk around and hit things at random, so when you have an army of archer or caster spamming at you, its really annoying, and the spirit walk is just a suicide skill in this situation.
domah wrote:It also blew my mind that summons on this game are not immune/almost immune to area damage, in most ARPG it is the case because summons are dumb as fuck and always die in huge aoe like dumbass because they don't move.
I though median xl devs were ARPG lovers and had a huge ARPG experience ?
Even in diablo 4 it's the case lmao
Among other things you have put your finger on what is by far the biggest issue with Median (and D2 LoD / Remastered) summons, including but not limited to "real" summons but also Mercenaries -- their AI is not only brain-dead but (importantly) cannot be modified in any way, by the player character. So for example if you have summons whose AI is hard-coded by the game engine to suicidally charge forward into certain death at the hands of a boss monster, that's what they'll do no matter what the owning player wants, and then it becomes a race to see if the player can resummon them faster than the boss monster can 1-shot them.
Note that this situation, combined with the ridiculously high amount of damage that most Median bosses (and other super-powered mobs) do, in effect means that "pre-buffing" your summonable minions, is (unlike with vanilla D2 where doing this with minions like the Grizzly and the Valkyrie is an important playing skill), basically pointless. Your Median minions get 1-shotted no matter how much you pre-buff them so there is no point in trying.
Yes, there are some Median minions (e.g. Jinn, Sorceress Familiar etc.) that are untargetable, but these do very little real damage even if a lot of skill points are pumped into them. And we get quests like Hell Baal where if you enter the battle zone with a lot of minions, the boss monster gets hugely amped itself, meaning that summoner-type characters (e.g. Necro) either have to respec to do the fight or are next to helpless as their only real advantage is completely nullified and overwhelmed.
I am honestly not sure how this situation could be fixed, given Median's dependence on the antiquated D2 LoD minion AI routines, which were amazingly sophisticated for a game in the early "aughts" but which are now really showing their age.
One idea that I had (hope the developers are listening...) was, you should be able to set the "aggression level" of Median summons (and the Merc) on a scale of 1 to 10, where 1 is "stick right by the summoner and never attack unless a monster is physically adjacent to the summoner" and 10 is "charge out to attack enemies no matter where they are on the screen (even, go attack things that are off the screen".
You should also be able to set the "breakoff level" (concept borrowed from certain board wargames) where the minion would decide to run away and heal after taking some per centage of its total original health was lost, so (for example) if the summon lost 50% of its life and you had set the breakoff level to "50", the summon would turn and run at that point. And / or, it should be possible to manually determine if minions teleport with you, or if they can be left in a forward location to slow down a mob after you sneakily teleport away. It should be possible to give minions (particularly Mercs) some general targeting directions, e.g. "attack everything according to standard LoD target priorities", "preferentially target trash mobs", "preferentially target bosses", etc., and finally, in the case of the Mercenary, perhaps there should be some way to induce the Merc to use one of its available skills more than others (e.g. tell an A1 Priestess to use her healing skill more than firing Barrage).
I feel that these kinds of very modest adjustments wouldn't be too difficult for the developers to implement and they would at least partly mitigate the issues noted above... what do the rest of you think?