Captcha wrote:I'm following Jay's early levelling summoner guide at the moment, I'm not following the old 1.0 summoner guide at all - it seems outdated. In fact until you posted in this thread I was unaware that it existed at all!
Fair enough, I forgot about the summon guides since I wrote my post just the other day, ~1-2 weeks after being done with MXL last ladder
, and my last ~week was spent as warcry.
Jay is a good guy; he confirmed I wasn't crazy about
Qarak's Will
Qarak's Will
Giant Sword (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: (150 - 163) to (233 - 246)
Two-Hand Damage: (206 - 225) to (285 - 305)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 480
Item Level: 105
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.16 per Strength)%
15% Chance to cast level 34 Spike Nova on Melee Attack
6% Chance to cast level 40 Pentagram on Melee Attack
10% Chance to cast level 36 Bloodlust on Kill
+(30 to 60)% Bonus Damage to Bloodlust
Adds 50-125 Damage
Adds 84-167 Fire Damage
+(26 to 38)% to Fire Spell Damage
+(140 to 170)% Enhanced Damage
+(100 to 250) Life after each Kill
5% Reanimate as: Random Monster
Socketed (4)
not procing off Warcry
.
Captcha wrote:If there are some tweaks worth making to the levelling part of this guide re reward skills, I hope Jay would want to hear them and be able to make adjustments to his excellent guide.
I think between Jay's description, the 1.0 guide, and my comments there's a ton of information for you to consider options and experiment.
Of the 3, I think I tried pushing Summoner capabilities "further" than the other 2 guides... I thoroughly enjoy a challenge, and as long as you're not damage limited with Summoner you can always progress by trading off survivability with damage. Like my guide, Jay highlights the importance of maxing Summon Minion Damage which I think is so critical because if you're minions cant out-damage the content, no amount of good play will help you progress. Perhaps mine is a bit more up to date since it is from last ladder, but I certainly don't consider myself more knowledgeably than Jay and others; I do mention that was only my 3rd MXL ladder.
I don't necessarily recommend pushing too far as summoner. Warcry was def. much more effective in the end-game, but it is kind of a more expensive build (when considering the boots, all the barb sword crafting, etc.), and doesn't really work until you have a few key items like the helm. Jay does highlight that Warcry is not a ladder-starter build. I think summoner really starts to roll off around the ~120-125 Ubers, and truly min-maxing it can push to some 130 Uber content... But Warcry is much more effective >125 ubers if you get the gear prepared.
I think a good MXL strategy overall is study/prepare >2 builds gear-wise and collect everything you might need. I'm sure that's obvious.
