Dr. Strangebuff - Summoner Nec

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HechtHeftig
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-Updated ubers (until Terul)
-I don't have a specific skillplan yet. Further testing is needed. Until now I went with:
MAX: Embalming, Veil King, DFT, Howling Totem, Frostclaw Totem, Rhatma's Chosen
1 point: VA, Bend the shadows

I can't say Veil King has been of much use yet, even though he's maxed. I'll probably respec to max Lamia's once I find a belladonna.
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HechtHeftig
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-Updated ubers until King Koth
-Skilling for RC: If you use the free points to skill VK, VK is mainly useless. That's because he's blocked by other summons. He will most of the time not even reach the enemy to be useful. If you put the points into Lamias, you'll end up waiting ages to summon all your minions because the mana cost are so ridiculous high and the mana regeneration from Embalming was nerfed so hard, that it's painful to summon everything. I couldn't even summon 7 Lamias despite the fact that I had 450 energy.
-I decided to not use Rhatma's Chosen anymore. The skill itself is awesome. You get lots of damage and even your summons turn out to be useful and the AoE damage it deals is great as well. Especially the Carnage it casts. I used RC for example in order to finish Creature of the Flame. It is untargetable after all and can't die. The boss just kept moving as RC attacked him. This is very VERY cheesy and slow method but it works.
However, once you encounter certain ubers (Azmodan: So many Heretics run around that you'll easily die without Death Ward. Khalimgrad: Imperius/Malthael sometimes cast the barb skill Death Gaze, which pwns you instantly. Island of the Sunless Sea: avoid is nice in order to receive less magic damage from the casters) You rather want to use Death Ward for more Defense and avoid.

Don't get me wrong, RC is great to get your damage values back to where they were before the patch, but it's not worth sacrificing survivability for that sole reason alone. So imo: Death Ward is still better than Rhatma's Chosen. And my merc still has 11 k damage right now, so the nerf to the damage wasn't that great. This build is still viable without RC (and imo it's better with Death Ward)

So all in all: so far the new patch only reduced our kill speed a bit. But it shouldn't be too much of a hassle. Skillplan in this patch doesn't change. Neither do the items. The only thing that changed is the order of ubers. (Still need to figure out a good strategy for Judgement Day)
Quash
Stone Warrior
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I 100% agree on RC. It's an 'OK' skill, but it just doesn't perform well as a real Uber Skill for summoners IMO... I am currently unable to farm TA at all with RC. It makes you waay too much of a glass cannon, but without enough of a cannon to make up for it sadly. Death Ward is a must, at least for me. Specially if you expect to farm TA / Fauzt early on. Just my 2 cents... Thanks for keeping the guide updated btw.
bradr
Core Lord
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ive got one 1.2 and one 1113 going the 1.2 nerfed us hard it seems i agree rc didnt really help glass coannon is a good word for it.. and the summons i went from 14k mana and could summon back my 30 flayers 27 ramps and 30 lamia and VA as fast as i could click anytime.. and now i cant even summon my full copmplement of starter gear stuff*9/6/9 ?? i have to pause after a coupole summons or start totoing around rejuvination and super mana potions too instead of just super heals death ward definintly a life saver... would puting more than 1 point into each summons help maybe cut the cost? or balance out for the huge mana drain and super nerfed embal;m ???
i cant get thru fauts or TA under new patch under old could at least replace my minions meat shield... under the new one like i said have to pause for noticeable vital time or fill back pack with lotsa potions i did notice that meat sheild seems to hit things harder... under new patch is that my imagine nation?? but my merc seems weaker*priestess*slower killspeed for a couple ubers/bosses
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aerial
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As for new RC, when it comes to xbow nec it is also bit problematic, because you don't get that invicible minion to spam widowmarker off it.
When you channel your attack, you can't resummon minions at same time (and even if you did it is 9 frames cast animation with xbow, which isn't great).
I'm not saying xbow nec is dead because of this change, but at least vs bosses it got lot worse without old rc.
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HechtHeftig
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@bradr. Priestress merc is dead. Use Ranger instead. She can still hit enemies off-screen and her killspeed didn't drop that much.

As for fauzt: Haven't tried yet. I'm not that far yet :D atm I'm farming TA for Goetia.
bradr
Core Lord
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HechtHeftig wrote:@bradr. Priestress merc is dead. Use Ranger instead. She can still hit enemies off-screen and her killspeed didn't drop that much.

As for fauzt: Haven't tried yet. I'm not that far yet :D atm I'm farming TA for Goetia.



thanks yeah got all my mid stuff and some end but not goetia .. using the other one now
so what do we do about our minions??? and ill switch to ranger asap thanks

btw on 1.1.3 with gearing on self and merc following your guide and priestess only has 4-8k damage and 39k def with the crafted bow and merc fully orbed TU begining stuff and all MF socketed except bow of course *jah*havent found merc mid/end game SU stuff yet except for the arakat boots all else is fully orbd socketed tu stuff..
so am i doing something wrong? or will my def go back up to 41ish k and my damage to around 12-13k again once i get the recomended mid/end game merc gear?
Quash
Stone Warrior
30 | 1
aerial wrote:As for new RC, when it comes to xbow nec it is also bit problematic, because you don't get that invicible minion to spam widowmarker off it.
When you channel your attack, you can't resummon minions at same time (and even if you did it is 9 frames cast animation with xbow, which isn't great).
I'm not saying xbow nec is dead because of this change, but at least vs bosses it got lot worse without old rc.


Yeah... Back when I played X-Bow Nec I always ran with the old RC too. But yeah... Widowmaker getting nerfed last time, and the RC change doesn't leave X-Bow Nec in a good spot.

And yeah getting into early'ish lategame now... The mana regen nerf on Embalming is SO Frustrating. Re-summoning minions every game is already a downside to summoners, but now we ALSO have to sit there with our dongs in hand and wait for mana to regen back constantly. It's pretty frustrating tbh.
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HechtHeftig
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bradr wrote:
HechtHeftig wrote:@bradr. Priestress merc is dead. Use Ranger instead. She can still hit enemies off-screen and her killspeed didn't drop that much.

As for fauzt: Haven't tried yet. I'm not that far yet :D atm I'm farming TA for Goetia.



thanks yeah got all my mid stuff and some end but not goetia .. using the other one now
so what do we do about our minions??? and ill switch to ranger asap thanks

btw on 1.1.3 with gearing on self and merc following your guide and priestess only has 4-8k damage and 39k def with the crafted bow and merc fully orbed TU begining stuff and all MF socketed except bow of course *jah*havent found merc mid/end game SU stuff yet except for the arakat boots all else is fully orbd socketed tu stuff..
so am i doing something wrong? or will my def go back up to 41ish k and my damage to around 12-13k again once i get the recomended mid/end game merc gear?


Concerning minions: I haven't tried it out yet since I didn't find any good rings/amulets, but you could try orbing them with mana regeneration. I just noticed, that they removed Mana tide totem from the RW in boots. So that leaves orbs as the only option. One orb grants 8% mana reg. That leaves us with 120% mana reg (40 per ring/amulet), which basically doubles the mana regeneration bonus from Embalming. I think it should work out fine once you mo your rings with those.

Concerning Merc: I noticed that EWD is much more important now. I only realized that after orbing the rest of the free orbs on my merc's bow with EWD. Akarat's Trek for example (+150% EWD) grants my merc 1000 damage more (formular: 150% EWD x 10 x 2 /3=1000). bringing her from 10, k damage to 11,5 k damage with totem buffs. (My merc's bow has 120% EWD (same forumlar. 120% EWD x 10 x 2 / 3 = 800 damage more. So yeah I was around 9,7 k damage before moing the bow with the EWD)
Without Totem buffs, my merc has 6 k max damage. So yeah, EWD has become much more important.

Just some math: You can get 10% Deadly strike on the weapon from mo's --> That's a 10% damage buff. However you can get 200% EWD, which totals in 1333 damage in this specific example with the values from my merc. 1333 of 9700 is a percentage of 13%. So you basically gain 13% more damage from EWD while only 10% from DS.

EWD > DS

As I said, this patch definitely was a nerf to this build. But you can still reach some good values with the TU gear and a crafted bow. TA killspeed is noticably slower, but it's not too dramatic. You can still do it fairly quickly for a build that requires basically only TU's and honorifics with over 500 or 600 MF.

@Arieal & Quash:
I doubt that this topic is read a lot by the devs. I think it'd be better to put this into the 1.2 bugs & Feedback thread. I'm gathering my experiences as well and I'll put a "complaint" about the changes in there soon. But I first have to know every single thing about this build, before I can make a reasonable statement.

What bothers me most about the mana regen nerf is the fact that any skill with 9k+ mana costs now becomes completely useless. Kinda sad.
bradr
Core Lord
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HechtHeftig wrote:
bradr wrote:
HechtHeftig wrote:@bradr. Priestress merc is dead. Use Ranger instead. She can still hit enemies off-screen and her killspeed didn't drop that much.

As for fauzt: Haven't tried yet. I'm not that far yet :D atm I'm farming TA for Goetia.


****** removed to save space...


*******


thanks yeah got all my mid stuff and some end but not goetia .. using the other one now
so what do we do about our minions??? and ill switch to ranger asap thanks

.



mana regen orbing good idea ..
and oh right i was looking at dam without totem buffs im at 6ish k how do i figure tyotem buffs im assuming if you just start a game and click on merc the damage range it shows 4kk-7.5k is pre totem buff dmg
??

anyways thanks for the recs will make those tweeks and test play 1.2


EDit duihs just figured out how to see totem buffed merc damage went out of town and summoned totems and looked at merc lol
so merc with totem buffs
49k def and 8.5k-14.5k damage that doesnt suck so guess iv e got the right combo of orbs and mana regen on rings seems to have done the trick didnt even have to do it on amu was able to leave that dr and MF and cold dmg