Community Pokedex - Guide to All Summons

[abwhorent]

Summoner Classes • Mechanics • Summons • Resurrects • Ubers and Videos • Submission Guidelines • Appendix

Changelog

► 2.1

Read the patchnotes here. Will not be commenting on them for the time being, this is just for posterity. However, some of the summon entries below have been corrected with the changes below to make their descriptions more accurate:
https://www.median-xl.com/changelog.php

Archangel Dark Angel: now a Yew Wand base, necro skills now +(3 to 5)
Satanic Mantra: removed minion resist bonus from full set
Archbishop Lazarus:
Set item level increased from 110 to 120
Rebalanced full set bonus stats

Lazarus' Votive Lamp: necromancer skills now +(2 to 4)

Spirit Reave:
Damage increased by 20%
Duration is now 6 seconds, down from 8
Spirit Bond:
New passive skill, requires level 70
Increases spirit reave duration based on the maximum size of your spirit army
Bonus is 8% per Base Level for each additional spirit you can summon
Maximum Base Level is 4

Blood Skeleton:
No longer requires corpse to summon
Reduced mana cost
Increased chance to hit
Increased health
Grim Vision:
Increased crushing blow by 5%
Fixed stat and Skill description mismatch
Night Hawks:
Increased early level and late game damage
Reduced mana cost
Increased chance to hit
Now trigger their proc on death rather than on attack, allowing them to be effective when oversummoned
Violent Immolation:
Now adds 5% + 2% deadly strike per Base Level to Hawks (and Veil King)
No longer adds minion damage to Hawks
Max level is now 10
Abyss Knight:
Reworked their main skill to be more effective
New abyss spell deals 50% physical and 50% magic damage
Increased base health, damage and chance to hit
No longer receives damage synergy from Jinn
Reduced mana cost
Chaos Nova:
New level 50 skill, replaces Abyssal Guard
Passive upgrade that adds a Chaos Nova proc to your Abyss Knights (and Veil King)
Nova deals 100% weapon damage AoE converted to magic
10% chance to cast on Death (works on un/re-summon) per Base Level
0.5% chance to cast on Kill per Base Level
Max Level: 10
Iron Golem: fixed an issue that caused it to have very little attack rating
Metal Solace:
Now adds 50 + 10 life after each kill, which also heals the owner
Now heals 100% of health 5 seconds faster
Max level is now 10
Resurgence:
No longer adds minion avoid, but the health of all summons has been doubled (except Jinn)
Now gains 2% minion damage per soft point, up from 1%
Minion damage per base point increased from 3% to 10%
Doubled minion attack rating bonus
Max level now 5, down from 25

► 1.7

Regular text indicates direct patch notes quotations, white text indicates my comments on them.

Summon relevant parts:
- Q: What changes will I see to skills and items?
A: The following were reduced: Enhanced Weapon Damage modifiers, bonus elemental damage to weapons and skills, Energy damage bonuses, Minion Damage modifiers, damage numbers on skills not affected by the previous stats (for example: Purify, Psi Crown, Immersion).

- Q: Do these changes mean my character got nerfed?
A: No, the killspeed of most builds will not be affected as monsters have had their HP values halved as well. Pure physical weapon damage builds (including damage conversion) will see a very small reduction in damage in the late endgame, to compensate for the fact that competing damage sources were never balanced around the bugged numbers. Life leech penalty was reduced accordingly.

- Monsters using Shower of Rocks have had the skill replaced as it will be too lethal after current patch changes.
+ This means that Shower of Rocks is unavailable on reanimates, making mercenaries with procs more crucial to Summoners.

- Shower of Rocks: Replaced attack speed debuff with -5% to physical resistance
Increased movement speed debuff to -25%, up from -15%
Changed attack rating debuff formula to -(10 + 1% per skill level)
+ This is generally a buff to Shower of Rocks, particularly with the physical resistance debuff.

+ Most Uber balance changes did not affect summoners in any significant way. The Kabraxis change simply makes the application of damage more consistent by replacing avoid with damage reduction. Primus deals less damage, but has more life. Jitan is still easy. The other changes are negligible. Dimensional Labyrinths are somewhat more lethal to most builds now, including summoners.

- Reduced the effectiveness of physical and magic resistance debuffing skills. Reduced the physical and magic resistances of endgame bosses to compensate. These debuffs were creating a very large damage output difference between builds with and without them. Now the debuffs are less effective and the base monster resistance is lower, evening out the playing field a bit better.
+ The above change is most noticeable for the Bane skill, native to the Necromancer. This is thus an indirect buff to Barbarian and other physical attack summoners in the context of endgame bosses.

- All stances have been changed from auras to buffs, thus freeing up the right mouse button for skill use
These buffs last 20 minutes, overwrite each other and can be turned off upon a recast
oSkill version of these skills have been replaced with auras (i.e. Auriel's Robe) where possible and removed/replaced otherwise, to prevent prebuff abuse
oSkill stances will overwrite Barbarian stances (if present)
+ Stance changes are now long-duration buffs rather than auras. This means that Stance Radius is no longer a relevant passive stat, meaning that any source of a Stance will globally apply the buff to your minions. This is immensely useful for non-Barbarians. Even for Barbarians, this is hugely useful because you get use of both mouse buttons for skill usage or the walk-only command. Finally, the technology for stance not being on right click is here.

- Acid Fiends:
Renamed to Harvesters
Modified sprite, now cast Harvest
Chance to cast spell on attack increased by 33%
Acid aura now works in town
Mana cost increased by 20%
+ Basically, Acid Fiends seem the same numerically. There was no mention of a change to their aura, meaning that it likely still provides Poison Spell Damage, Attack Speed, and Movement Speed at the same values. The Druid Summoner may or may not have been buffed by the changes to Poison Flash (now called Harvest), but we'll have to wait and see on that one.

- Bear Companion:
New Hunter skill, replacing Nova Shot
Summons a sturdy bear which draws enemy aggro and attacks in melee
Not affected by minion damage stats. Inherits your weapon physical and elemental stats such as damage, Attack Rating, ele pierce, Deadly Strike etc.
Inherits your physical resistance
Does not gain elemental resistances per skill level, but has 15/0/-15 elemental resistances on Normal/Nightmare/Hell
Casts Rend and Heart of the Pack
Heart of the Pack makes your Hunter skills not consume steady aim and regenerates your life
+ Bear Companion is not intended to be a summoner's summon. It is intended as a complementary skill to the Bow Druid build. It doesn't scale off of the usual Minion Damage stats and scales instead with Bow Druid attacker stats. As such, it will not be discussed as a summoner skill.

- Rathma's Chosen: clarified skill description to indicate necromancer minions only
- Nephalem Spirit: clarified on tooltip that it also affects your ancient spirits
+ Nice QoL changes; keep in mind that these skills always worked in this way. The tooltips were merely unclear about the way in which they worked.

- Familiar: is now a passive instead of a minion with an aura
+ This means that Familiar is a Sorceress-specific passive rather than a Relic with an Aura that can apply to one's other summons and party members. As such, Familiar will be relegated to the "Legacy Summons" section of the guide. Summoner Sorceresses can no longer act as supports to their party members.

- Summon Edyrem:
Halved avoid, replaced with 50% damage reduction
Can no longer be summoned outside of Toraja
Increased health by 50%
+ Edyrems are no longer a "free" summon for every class. This change means that obtaining a Summon relic or having an innate Summon skill is more useful to classes who have them, for the usual purposes of creating meatshields or distractions to lure enemies away from a large pack in dangerous places like the Dimensional Labyrinth. The changes to Edyrem life make Toraja more bearable if you're hunting for the charm specifically, but you still won't farm it without the set.

- Relics: Increased drop chance by 20%
Removed certain relics which were misleading, useless or else:
Dead Wall Totem
Elvensong
Exploding Totem
Fear Bomb Totem
Summon Bane Monster
Summon Darklings
Summon Daystar
Summon Shock Beast
Summon Siren
Summon Shredder
The removal leaves a total of 300 relics, making each one slightly easier to find than before
+ This change is quite massive. As this guide documents, all of the removed Relics were basically D-tier useless, hardly even good as meatshields. With this change, the better Relics are more obtainable, which is a good thing for everyone. All of the removed Summons will be documented in the "Legacy Summons" section of this guide.

- Relics: Rathma's Chosen: Evocation Aura now works
Summon Overlord: now adds minion damage
+ These changes are buffs to some of the strongest Summoner Relics in the game. The Evocation Aura is mostly just a nice touch since 4% Deadly Strike is effectively a 2% increase in damage and the increased Attack Speed may not be useful enough to change a monster's Frames per Animation as per this comment from Marco:

The Overlord change is uncertain. It either replaced the scaling Maximum Life that was on the Relic (which means the change isn't that great, since that life was quite useful and we don't know the magnitude of the Minion Damage being added) or the effect was added to the Dark Legion Aura effect on Overlord, which is great. Either way, we'll have to wait and see.

- Silks of the Victor: fixed a bug where the Nephalem Spirit aura was adding less damage than intended and not adding Innate Elemental Damage
+ It's probably still quite bad. Additional flat elemental damage is a side-benefit, not a major cornerstone of a physical attack summoner build. It also does nothing for casters. Lack of pierce makes this bonus especially mediocre for summons.

- Buried Hawk: will no longer drop. It varied too much between useless and incredibly strong, with no interesting way to balance it in between. Also confused players with skills which depended on Base Levels.
+ This change is a bit of a shame since it provided cool potential for min-max, but getting a good one was virtually impossible in Ladder. As such, certain summons are available only to their Innate class.

- Undead Crown: Deadly Strike conversion doubled, due to halving of minion damage stat
+ As it says, this helm does the same thing as before. Still a neat damage bonus for Barbarian Summoners.

- Gravetalon:
Fixed summon proc triggering a short cooldown
Reduced proc chance to 20% to prevent excessive resummoning with new lower minion cap
+ The minion cap is still 5 Ice Elementals. This weapon is niche anyways.

- Alnair:
Fixed summon proc triggering a short cooldown
Replaced minion damage with 150% Enhanced Weapon Damage, Enhanced Damage is now always 200%
+ Alnair is now a more consistent attacking weapon, but now almost entirely useless to Summoners as a stat-stick. This is an indirect nerf to non-Barbarian and Necromancer summoners, who naturally had less weapon options in the first place. The Blade Spirits are more of a thematic addition rather than an actual Summoner tool. As such, the relevant Summon will be lowered in tier due to the associated weapon being less useful to Summoners.

- Removed Colliding Fury, replaced with new item: Giyua's Grace
+ Colliding Fury's stats were as follows:

As such, Barbarians should use other options for Summoner weapons. This was mostly a niche choice anyways, so the change is not hugely impactful. The new item that replaced it has nothing to do with Summoners.

- Sanctuary: now allows you to summon Edyrem everywhere
+ Most people don't wear this set outside of Toraja. Edyrems are not bad attackers when you have a full complement of Edyrem-boosting charms (although they're still inferior to most innate summons with full Summoner gear and skill trees), but keep in mind that the Sanctuary set takes the place of three pieces of gear that could buff your other summons. In essence, this set's new effect is pointless.

- Satanic Mantra: replaced 3 piece bonus with 50% minion damage and +2 to Necromancer Skills
+ The previous set effect of Satanic Mantra was as follows:

This is a straight buff to this Necromancer set, as the previous effect was negligible (Snake Stance was a joke, Stance Radius was useful but new Stances have made Stance Radius an irrelevant stat).

Here is a comparison of the two set effects after the 1.7 patch (excluding less notably defensive/auxiliary stats like %Energy, %FHR, etc).


Ultimately, I would say that the full Satanic Mantra set is a step below the Lazarus set because of the resistance loss. However, maximum resistances are less important in a non-boss farming context, which happen to be where summoners excel. As such, the full Satanic Mantra set is an easy substitute for middling crafted gear.

► 1.6.2

- Guide was created.

Introduction
This is not an all-inclusive and comprehensive guide to summoners. This is a guide to summons that I decided to create because many summons have become available across different classes and summoner types with the implementation of Relics (Cornerstones of the World) in Sigma patch 1.6.

Naturally, the different summoner archetypes will handle summons and endgame content in various ways, so there will be some cursory information about each summoner archetype and their capabilities.

If you want more detailed guides to summoners, including leveling processes and leveling items, please consult the following guides.

► Summoner Guides

Summon Barbarian

Summoner Paladin

Summon Necromancer

Summon Sorceress

Summon Druid

Unsummonzon

Summoner Classes
Here, I will briefly touch on what each type of summoner gets as part of their innate skill tree, as well as any notable Sacred Uniques, exclusive Set Items, or Runewords that they can access.
 
Barbarian:

► Summon Baba Summary

- Has no issues wearing gear because he only levels Strength
- Innate 3 second cooldown warpstrike
- Innate Wolf Stance for comfy movement speed and good clear speed (Ideal for Toraja farm) with screen-wide stance radius
- Innate Bear Stance for huge defense and Physical Resistance cap with screen-wide stance radius
- Can scale up to have a large amount of summons that protect from projectiles, clear swathes of the screen (especially in Teganze), and can be easily resummoned. Gets anywhere from 2 of each to 12+ of each summon (6 to 36 in total).
- ~600% Minion Life from Shamanic Trance alone, applies to all Minions
- Innate Avoid (10-35%) While Standing Still, faster hit recovery (4 FPA, 2nd best breakpoint), cast speed (9 FPA, best breakpoint, 7 FPA if dualwielding swords)
- High potential for Defense (400k - 1mil+) depending on active stance, Reward skill choice and gear crafts.
- Has highly reliable Sacred Uniques (

Gladiator's Rage

Gladiator's Rage
Spatha (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: 46 to 48
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 500
Item Level: 120
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.14 per Strength)%
4% Chance to cast level 16 Bloodlust when Struck
+(2 to 4) to Barbarian Skill Levels
+(1 to 2) to Maximum Barbarian Minions
40% Cast Speed
+(50 to 75)% to Summoned Minion Life
+50% to Summoned Minion Damage
+50% to Summoned Minion Resistances
(10 to 30)% Gold Find
(10 to 30)% Magic Find
+(3 to 5) to Light Radius
Socketed (3)

,

Toraja's Champion

Toraja's Champion
Gilded Shield (Sacred)
Defense: (7944 - 8978) to (9847 - 11129)
Chance to Block: 1%
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 700
Item Level: 105
+(2 to 3) to Barbarian Skill Levels
+2 to Maximum Barbarian Minions
+(30 to 38)% Damage to Protector Spirit Bloodlust
40% Cast Speed
+(21 to 25)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(115 to 143)% Enhanced Defense
+500 to Life
+250 to Mana
Elemental Resists +10%
+10 Life on Striking
+(6 to 7) Mana on Striking
Socketed (4)

,

Shadowtwin

Shadowtwin
Fanged Helm (Sacred)
Defense: (2978 - 3285) to (3149 - 3474)
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 500
Item Level: 105
Summon Two Ancient Spirits per Cast
+2 to Barbarian Skill Levels
+(41 to 50)% to Summoned Minion Life
+(31 to 40)% to Summoned Minion Resistances
+(172 to 200)% Enhanced Defense
Cold Resist +40%
Socketed (4)

) that become cheaper midway through season.
- Has accessible craftable Runewords and Tiered Uniques that can carry before then (

Uldyssian's Legion

Uldyssian's Legion
Bronze Sword (4)
One-Hand Damage: (8 - 9) to (9 - 11)
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 9
Required Strength: 82
Item Level: 13
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.14 per Strength)%
+1 to Barbarian Skill Levels
15% Attack Speed
15% Cast Speed
+(24 to 40)% Enhanced Damage
+(3 to 5)% to Summoned Minion Life
+(6 to 8)% to Summoned Minion Damage
Maximum Mana +(21 to 25)%
Elemental Resists +(5 to 7)%
Socketed (2)
One-Hand Damage: (23 - 26) to (28 - 31)
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 27
Required Strength: 124
Item Level: 29
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.14 per Strength)%
+2 to Barbarian Skill Levels
25% Attack Speed
25% Cast Speed
+(58 to 75)% Enhanced Damage
+(9 to 11)% to Summoned Minion Life
+(11 to 13)% to Summoned Minion Damage
Maximum Mana +(31 to 35)%
Elemental Resists +(8 to 10)%
Socketed (4)
One-Hand Damage: (59 - 64) to (71 - 77)
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 46
Required Strength: 244
Item Level: 50
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.14 per Strength)%
+3 to Barbarian Skill Levels
35% Attack Speed
35% Cast Speed
+(92 to 109)% Enhanced Damage
+(15 to 17)% to Summoned Minion Life
+(16 to 18)% to Summoned Minion Damage
Maximum Mana +(41 to 45)%
Elemental Resists +(11 to 12)%
Socketed (5)
One-Hand Damage: (77 - 83) to (94 - 101)
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 55
Required Strength: 482
Item Level: 86
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.14 per Strength)%
+(3 to 4) to Barbarian Skill Levels
40% Attack Speed
40% Cast Speed
+(109 to 126)% Enhanced Damage
+(18 to 20)% to Summoned Minion Life
+(19 to 20)% to Summoned Minion Damage
Maximum Mana +(46 to 50)%
Elemental Resists +(13 to 15)%
Socketed (6)

x2,

Spirit Teacher's Headdress

Spirit Teacher's Headdress
Avenger Guard (4)
Defense: (126 - 145) to (188 - 217)
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 10
Required Strength: 27 to 28
Item Level: 17
+(16 to 20)% to Summoned Minion Life
+(9 to 10)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(24 to 43)% Enhanced Defense
Regenerate Mana +(21 to 25)%
Elemental Resists +(11 to 15)%
Requirements -(11 to 15)%
Socketed (2)
Defense: (441 - 492) to (618 - 689)
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 28
Required Strength: 47 to 49
Item Level: 32
+(26 to 30)% to Summoned Minion Life
+(14 to 15)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(64 to 83)% Enhanced Defense
Regenerate Mana +(31 to 35)%
Elemental Resists +(21 to 25)%
Requirements -(21 to 25)%
Socketed (2)
Defense: (1122 - 1226) to (1548 - 1692)
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 46
Required Strength: 142 to 151
Item Level: 53
+(36 to 40)% to Summoned Minion Life
+(19 to 20)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(104 to 123)% Enhanced Defense
Regenerate Mana +(41 to 45)%
Elemental Resists +(31 to 35)%
Requirements -(31 to 35)%
Socketed (3)
Defense: (1684 - 1827) to (2302 - 2498)
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 54
Required Strength: 262 to 280
Item Level: 90
+(41 to 45)% to Summoned Minion Life
+(21 to 23)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(124 to 143)% Enhanced Defense
Regenerate Mana +(46 to 50)%
Elemental Resists +(36 to 40)%
Requirements -(36 to 40)%
Socketed (4)

,

Morthwyrtha

Morthwyrtha
Barbarian Helms
'IoSur'
Runeword Level: 75
+(3 to 4) to Barbarian Skill Levels
+1 to Maximum Barbarian Minions
+3 to Banish
+(16 to 20)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(50 to 75)% to Summoned Minion Attack Rating
Regenerate Mana +(6 to 10)%

,

Khan

)
- Has endgame DPS upgrade that can help with 125+ Ubers (

Undead Crown

Undead Crown
Crown (Sacred)
Defense: 4437 to 4914
Required Level: 110
Required Strength: 675
Item Level: 120
12% of Minion Damage Increases Added as Deadly Strike
40% of Minion Life Increases Added as Bonus to Defense
Deal No Crushing Blows
Orb Effects Applied to this Item are Doubled
50% Attack Speed
+200% Enhanced Defense
Socketed (4)

+

Skeld's Battlesong

Skeld's Battlesong
Kriegsmesser (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: 53 to 57
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 642
Item Level: 105
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.14 per Strength)%
Guardian Spirits Inherit 100% of Your Deadly Strike
+(3 to 5) to Barbarian Skill Levels
1% Base Block Chance
+(13 to 25)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(25 to 75) to Vitality
Regenerate Mana +(10 to 30)%
Maximum Lightning Resist +(1 to 2)%
Socketed (6)

) and better Fauztinville farm.

Summary: The tankier/easy AOE clear of Summoners due to all the free stats/class mechanics, but can suffer from low damage if not optimized at earlier stages. Cannot reach the damage potential of Necromancers, and his summons offer support through Bloodlust and being distractions.

Content cap: Everything short of anti-summon Ubers and solo high-tier Dimensional Labyrinths, where summons melt like paper. Also, lab bosses can be scary.

Tips: Get crafted double minion damage jewels (15-21%) as you can, alongside the usual SUs. Don't skimp on charms: These will increase survivability drastically. Teleport (

Books of Kalan

Books of Kalan
Required Level: 130
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+1 to All Skills
+(3 to 15) to Teleport
+25 to Life
+50 to Mana

) + Spirit Walk + Wolf Stance = Very fast, alongside minions with enough damage to keep up.

► Detailed Skills

For more information on Barbarian's innate summons, refer to the Summons section.

+ Guardian Spirits
+ Defender Spirits
+ Protector Spirits

Nephalem Spirit: % of Base Strength, Vitality, and Dexterity added as Fire/Lightning Damage to Attacks. Also grants innate Elemental Damage (irrelevant to Summoners). Counts as a "Spirit" skill, so You must choose between this and Runemaster. Max this skill if you pick it, or just dump points (based on preference). Realistically caps at 2961 – 4410 per element before enemy resistance applies. Not hugely notable, but it exists. (Level 90 Reward skill)

Runemaster: 3-23% Total Character Defense bonus per socketed Rune. Sockets can range from 24 to 32 total on gear, assuming max sockets on all pieces and based on what’s used in the weapon/offhand slots. You must choose between this and Nephalem Spirit. Jewels have more bonuses than Runes; Runemaster is ideal for early season when you have no ACs, no Jewels, but plenty of Runes. This equates to a 72 – 736% Total Character Defense bonus with the capped effect of Runemaster (~base level 22). (Level 90 Reward skill)

Thundergod: Active buff, long duration. Stun length to attacks (irrelevant to summoners) and periodic (15s cooldown) stun nova with approximate range of ~16 yards, inflicting a 1 second stun. Marginally useful, 1 point only. (Level 115 Black Road skill)

Immortal: Passive. Grants 10% chance to Avoid Damage when standing still at base level, +1% per base level, capped at 35%. Grants 20% faster Hit Recovery, scales with soft levels. Both are useful stats, this is a dump skill when you have no other uses for points or max (preference). (Level 80 Ennead skill)

Ancient Blood: Passive. Grants % Attack Speed base, +2% per base level. Grants % maximum Life, increased by 0.5% per slvl. Grants +1 to Maximum Skill Levels, +1 per 4 base levels. Mostly a 1 point wonder, but sometimes worthwhile for extra levels into Shamanic Trance if you’re close enough to a breakpoint with minimal investment into Ancient Blood. (Level 6 Support Skill)

Spirit Guide: Passive. Grants 20% Bonus Defense base, +15% per Base Level. Grants 20% Weapon Physical Damage (irrelevant to summoners) and 20% Cast Speed base, scales with slvl. Bonuses only apply when near a Wolf Companion. Functionally, this skill caps your casting frames as a Barbarian just with 1 point allocated. (Level 18 Support skill)

Mountain King: Passive. Grants 1% to All Attributes base. Increased by 1.5% per base level and by 0.75% per slvl. Another 1 point wonder. (Level 24 Support skill)

Bear Stance: Stance skill. Stance effects are only active when selected as the right-mouse button skill. Ignore defense of Undead targets (sometimes useful for summons). Grants 12% Bonus Defense and 20% Physical Resistance to the summoner and his summons, increased by 12% Bonus Defense per slvl and 1% Physical Resistance per base level. Level this until you have 50% Physical Resistance with it active, which will depend on your gear, charms, and trophies. Stances have a base radius of X yards. Very useful for its defensive bonuses. (Level 12 Stance skill).

Wolf Stance: Stance skill. Stance effects are only active when selected as the right-mouse button skill. Grants 10% Crushing Blow, 40% Movement Speed, 29% increased Attack Speed, 20% Physical Damage, and 29% increased Hit Recovery at base. Gains 1.5% Crushing Blow per base level and 2% movement speed per base level. Gains 4% Attack Speed, 4% Hit Recovery, and 15% Physical Damage per slvl. Very popular offensive stance used by Bowzons and any other attacker who can get the 2pc set effect of Curse of the Zakarum. Or any Barbarian, for free. This has better returns per level than Protector Spirit, so I would advocate getting levels in this as a dump skill as well, depending on how you feel about defense vs. offense (better offense = better farming when your summons tank for you). Stances have a base radius of X yards. (Level 24 Stance skill).

Shamanic Trance: Active buff. Grants Weapon Damage and Strength Factor to the summoner (mostly irrelevant). Grants 1% bonus Spirits Minion Damage per point of base Strength. Grants 1% bonus Minion Life per 2 points of base Strength. Grants +1 Maximum Barbarian Summon, increased by +1 per 7 base levels. Grants 1% Weapon Damage to Spirits skills per base level, up to 15%. Functionally, this works out to 4-5 Maximum Barbarian summons, 580% Minion Life, and 1160% Spirits Minion Damage (with full investment of base points into Strength). Get this skill in multiples of 7 after it hits level 15. (Level 18 Summon skill).

Spirit Walk: Warp, functions similarly to Warp Strike (requires an enemy target). Base cooldown of 8.6 seconds. Does not share cooldown with Teleport or Jitan’s Gate despite being a Warp. Passive increase of Stance radius by 1.6 yards base, increased by 0.7 yards per slvl. Base levels in any Spirits skill reduces cooldown by 0.2 seconds (minimum 3 second cooldown, requires 28 base levels into Spirits skills). (Level 24 Summon skill)

Necromancer:

► Necromancer Summoner

- Has multiple builds and content possibilities, including: Night Hawks (Uber Bossing focused), Abyss Knights (Farming focused), Veil King (Being chill). Possibly the highest burst damage potential of all Summoners due to Hawks.
- +6 mana per skill point invested in Energy and ~170% increased Mana Regeneration from Embalming, ideal for casting of Hawks.
- ~160% increased Maximum Life from Embalming to back up the rubbish Life from Vitality scaling
- 25-30% chance to Avoid Damage (Unconditional) and ~600% bonus Defense (not as defensive as Barbarian but still fairly good)
- Innate Necromancer Minions have 50% Chance to Avoid Damage, making them even tankier against Attacks.
- ~330% Minion Damage from Resurgence, for free.
- Strong innate summons and potential for all content only from the skill tree, with even more potential from Relics.
- Very good gear options, benefits strongly from

Archbishop Lazarus

Archbishop Lazarus
(Tribute Set)

Lazarus' Chasuble
Lazarus' Surplice Cap
Lazarus' Votive Lamp
Lazarus' Lamen

Set Bonus with 2 or more set items:
+25% to Summoned Minion Damage
+25% to Summoned Minion Resistances

Set Bonus with 3 or more set items:
+100% to Summoned Minion Life
+50% to Summoned Minion Attack Rating

Set Bonus with complete set:
+1 Extra Veil King
+2 to Necromancer Skill Levels
+100% to Summoned Minion Life
+50% to Summoned Minion Damage
+50% to Summoned Minion Attack Rating

(Although many Summoners do), craftable items, Hounfor skill, and other Sacred Uniques. Can craft +1 Maximum Necromancer Minions (Goetia mod) on Necromancer Wands and Staves.
- Suffers from having no innate Physical Resistance and mediocre Life earlier on while having less meatshields than other Summoners (but each one is high value).
-

Shadowfiend

Shadowfiend
Marrow Staff (Sacred)
Two-Hand Damage: 45 to 49
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 275
Item Level: 120
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.06 per Strength)%
+8 to Necromancer Skill Levels
(50 to 70)% Cast Speed
+50% Damage to Undead
+100% to Summoned Minion Life
+(125 to 200)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(25 to 50)% to Summoned Minion Resistances
+(100 to 130) Life after each Kill
10% Reanimate as: Random Monster
Socketed (6)

Summary: Necromancer Summoner has diverse build options, scales very well from skill tree alone, and has excellent gear options. His summons (Jinn, Rathma's Chosen, Iron Golem auras, Blood Skeleton aura) can benefit parties in more diverse ways than other summons. Due to Hawks, Necro Summoner can do bosses that other summoners cannot.

Content cap: Probably everything short of Deimoss, but I haven't really gotten to that level. Can anyone else give a testimonial?

Tips: Like others, get crafted double minion damage jewels (15-21%) as you can, alongside the usual SUs. Don't skimp on charms: These will increase survivability drastically. Also for Necromancer particularly, get some form of auxiliary Tank that clusters around you or otherwise make sure Abyss Knights and Blood Skeletons can cover for you.

The Necromancer has hidden potential unavailable to other Summoners for three reasons:

+ His innate summons work best when scaled and used by him
+ He can make the best use of Elemental damage summons
+ All three of his Ultimate skills can be obtained as Relics to unlock power that others can only dream of

Here's how it works: A Necromancer who specs into Jinn will maximize his benefits from Jinn and be able to use Abyss Knights well. Then he can get Veil King as a Relic or through the Buried Hawk and have an extra reliable strong tank without halving his innate minion counts (most crucially, of Abyss Knights or Hawks). He can then get Rathma's Chosen and give more damage synergies to every one of his innate minions (while giving up Evocation Aura, sadly), again without having to take points away from Jinn.

Then he can still choose between Hawks and Knights, and even the latter can still use Hawks to an extent due to Necromancer synergies. The extra min-max from other support-related Relics or Relics for his own innate summons (Jinn relic, Blood Skeletons relic, etc) is just icing on the cake. Necromancer is, without a doubt, the best user of Summon relics for this reason.

Keep in mind that not everyone can achieve this level of power. Only very few Relics of specific skills drop every season and min-maxing in this way is RNG-dependent. Necromancer is still strong, but what I've described just now will only be available to the few who can obtain those sorts of Relics (And likely for hundreds of TG each).

► Detailed Skills

For more information on Necromancer's innate summons, refer to the Summons section.

+ Blood Skeletons
+ Night Hawks
+ Abyss Knights
+ Iron Golem
+ Jinn
+ Veil King
+ Rathma's Chosen

Embalming: Passive. Grants 5% maximum Life to summoner and minions at base level, increased by 5% per base level. Grants 8% Mana Regeneration to the summoner at base level, increased by 2% per slvl. Max this skill. In conjunction with Necromancer’s +6 mana per point in Energy, this passive is responsible for most of Necromancer’s EHP and good mana sustain. Realistically, you can get up to 175% maximum Life from this. (Level 1 Support skill).

Bane: Curse. Requires a minion as a target. Duration of 10 seconds, cooldown of 1 second. Reduces the physical resistance of all affected enemies by a percentage (~25-35% or more dependent on level). This is useful for Hawks, Blood Skeletons, and Veil King when natively used by Necromancer. Enemies within the Dimensional Labyrinth at a certain tier are immune. (Level 18 Support skill).

Death Ward: Passive. Grants 1% chance to Avoid Damage at base level. Grants % Bonus Defense, gains 8% Bonus Defense per level per Base Level in Resurgence or Soulbound (Totem passive, irrelevant to Summoners). Gains 1% chance to Avoid Damage and 4% Bonus Defense per base level. Max this skill. This passive in conjunction with Embalming is what enables Necromancer to survive in Fauztinville and Viz-jun. (Level 24 Support skill).

Resurgence: Passive. Grants chance to Avoid Damage to Necromancer minions only, increased by 2% per base level and up to 50%. Grants Minion Damage at base level, increased by 6% per base level and 2% per slvl. Max this skill. This passive is why Necromancers have more Minion Damage than any other summoner class. (Level 24 Summon skill).

Talon’s Hold: Passive. Don’t level this as a Summoner, as it’ll never kick in or be useful to you. Reanimates only proc on kills made by you, not by your summons. Slow Target only procs on WDM hits (Level 80 Ennead skill).

Graveyard: Passive. Don’t level this as a Summoner. You don't scale the stats that make this relevant. Even 1 skill point would be a waste. Poison damage without Synergy stacking, Poison Spell Damage, or Poison Resistance reduction (barring Jinn) is worthless. (Level 115 Black Road skill).

Paladin:

► sumodin

- Innate 3 second cooldown warp that also freezes (Level 80 required)
- Innate 3 second cooldown (minimum) warpstrike that debuffs Defense and Physical Resistance (both relevant to Scourge summons)
- Up to 50% Physical Resistance and 100+ flat damage reduction (Level 115 passive, many levels required)
- Large amounts of % bonus defense (700%+)
- Large amounts of % bonus attributes (50-60%+) (Level 90 required)
- Relatively easy access to Wolf Stance via

Barghest's Howl

Barghest's Howl
Hundsgugel (Sacred)
Defense: 5327 to 5684
(Paladin Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 500
Item Level: 105
Level 1 Wolf Stance
5% Chance to cast level 23 Bloodlust on Melee Attack
(15 to 20)% Life stolen per Hit
Hit Causes Monster to Flee +1%
Slow Target 5%
+200% Enhanced Defense
+2000 Defense
+50 to Strength
+50 Life Regenerated per Second
3% Reanimate as: Random Monster
-2 to Light Radius
Socketed (4)

. Wolf Stance will have poor radius, but Scourges will be near you after warping

Summary: See the section; "Why Paladin Summoner Sucks". Read the first line and the last paragraph.

Content cap: Level 120 content and a bit beyond if you optimize your gear. Within striking distance of many other summoners, but has difficulties.

Tips: If your summons die sometimes, you may need investment in Energy and Mana Regeneration Mystic Orbs alongside Mana Potions. If your summons die really often, you may need Magical Shrine crafts instead of Tainted Shrines, as Scourges deal plenty of damage on their own. You need a good balance of damage and survivability to maintain clearspeed and not interrupt your runs constantly by resummoning.

► Detailed Skills

For more information on Paladin's innate summons[/color], refer to the Summons section.

+ Scourge
+ Hoplite
+ Resurrect

For the purposes of this guide, I will assume that Paladin Summoner will use Shadow and Honor branches of the Paladin skill tree (Scourges + Holy Melee skills), as these are the best way to scale your damage.

Blessed Life: Passive. Adds Physical Resistance per level, up to 50%. 100+ flat damage reduction when leveled, gains X per level. Max this; this is a huge defensive layer. (Level 115 Black Road skill)

Divine Apparition: Warp. 3 second cooldown with chance to freeze enemies within 1 yard of target location. 1 point only. (Level 80 Ennead skill)

Dragon’s Blessing: Holy passive. Grants % bonus to all Attributes for any level added, typically 50-60% at endgame. 1 point only. (Level 90 Reward skill)

Dragonheart: Honor (Holy Melee) active buff. Adds 25% of Base Strength to Vitality (only relevant when you need Base Strength to wear equipment), 50% Physical Damage (irrelevant to summoners), Adds Bonus Defense%, up to 900%+ when leveled. Long duration. Dump points here for defense and added offense for Scourges. (Level 18 Honor skill)

Plague: Honor (Holy Melee) passive. Adds flat poison damage to attacks of self and Hoplites/Scourges. Only relevant for leveling, is otherwise useless due to lack of poison pierce on summons. 1 point to get to other Honor skills. (Level 12 Honor skill)

Colosseum: Honor (Holy Melee) Warp Strike. 50% WDM. Debuffs enemy -100% Defense, -25% Movement Speed, -25% Enemy Damage (WDM) and Physical Resistance. Base cooldown of 6 seconds, reduced by 0.2 per base level (minimum 3 second cooldown at level 15). Can be used in a supportive capacity with its debuff, level to 15. (Level 24 Honor skill)

► Why Paladin Summoner Sucks

The Paladin Summoner is an okay starter who will get to mid-game content then plateau around level 120.
He struggles to go further even with the highest level of optimizations because he combines the weaknesses of Melee builds and Summon builds

Real Melee Builds:
- Inherently at a disadvantage in most ARPGs by design. Need to carefully position themselves in order to both deal damage and take less damage from enemy attack patterns, which means lowered damage uptime. Needs to waste time on running up to enemies and hitting them.
- Median XL has several Uber bosses that specifically favor ranged builds over melee ones.

+ Kabraxis (level 120) can be kited with practice by ranged builds but melee builds need to tank his Whirlpool, Balefire, and watch for Flamestrike indicator in the middle of the green Whirlpool spam. To tank in this way, you need the best hit recovery and/or block recovery FPA.
+ Xazax (level 125) is much easier with ranged builds than melee ones due to Penitent spawns and dangerous spells at melee range, both of which are easily dodged by ranged builds.
+ Astrogha (level 125) casts a deadly Frozen Orb at melee range that not even 90% cold resistance will save against.
+ Uldyssian (level 130) summons pairs of powerful Edyrems constantly that deal notable damage at melee range.
+ Soul of Gluttony in the Void Uber (level 130) outheals melee builds.
+ Samael (level 135) is only doable by a few builds, let alone melee ones. He has few damage opportunity windows due to how he can chain his skills together and it becomes a matter of RNG whether he can be safely attacked or not. Entire minutes can pass without him being safely attackable.

Ranged builds, by definition, have more of those damage-dealing opportunities in every fight, not just Samael's fight.
- However, real melee builds have some exclusive defensive layers in their class passives or specialized stats and equipment that improve survivability, unlike ranged and summoner builds. These include Life on Attack (procs if Defense/Block/Avoid checks are passed), Amazing Grace (Avoid proc), Block chance (also shared by Dex stacking ranged builds), Life Leech, lots of Total Character Defense.

Summoner Builds:
- Deliberately balanced downwards because summons automatically clear content. Within the meta balance of Median XL builds, they require enough damage to not feel bad at their main job of farming but can’t be strong enough to also steamroll Ubers automatically at a safe distance. Most “active” builds will have better sustained and burst damage, won’t have to micromanage summons, and don’t have to wrangle minion AI into doing what they want. Non-summoners can do Ubers that require precision targeting (Astrogha) and Ubers that punish having multiple targetable allies (Baal).
- Summons don’t get life regen unless they’re Iron Golem or Veil King. Without scaling from gear, jewels, and the passive tree, summons can and will melt in dangerous content. Especially in Dimensional Labyrinth. Summons that die will have a twofold adverse effect of reducing your tankiness and reducing your DPS uptime (because your summons act as both). You can also run out of mana while summoning if your summons die off too rapidly, which is extremely bad because the summoner is usually next to die in that sort of situation.
- However, summoners are inherently safer because their method of attack is indirect. They are constantly shielded by tanks who can increase a summoner’s effective HP and protect against spammed enemy projectiles. They can clear content automatically as stated above. Damage dealing summons either attack at a range, have lots of health and are shielded by fellow summons, or cannot be killed by enemy attacks.

That brings us to Paladin Summoners, who…
- Have melee summons, Scourges. They need to be in melee range to attack and have somewhat expensive mana upkeep when leveled (as is true of all leveled skills), so you need Energy and Mana Regeneration Mystic Orbs or gear. Paladins have +3/+3 base Life/Mana per point investment into Vitality or Energy, which is middling compared to the extremes of Barbarian and Necromancer. Paladin mana issues are unnoticeable with full investment into Energy, but definitely noticeable during mid-game when the summoner lacks a full set of charms.
- Scourge summons are squishy. They get Blessed Life damage reduction and physical resistance and a low chance to Avoid. But they have downright bad base Life and scaling. Since Minion Damage and Life tend to be a trade-off unless you’re willing to spends hundreds of Arcane Crystals on creating the very best jewels, your Scourges are unlikely to actually have the maximum Life to capitalize on these defensive layers.
- Paladin Summoners don’t get damage or life passives that are comparable to Necromancers or Barbarians. Their investment in the Holy tree + levels in Life and Death are meant to act as “increased Minion Life and Damage”. Numerically, this is equivalent to an extra 10-17 base levels available for Scourge, then 50 – 60 levels of scaling in Holy skills, which rounds out to a 250 – 300% damage increase and a 740-1258 base life increase / 113-192 base damage increase. The base scaling is really what damns it.
- These poor defensive layers make the summoner and their summons (Defense/flat reduction notwithstanding) extremely squishy, doubling down on the DPS uptime problem that was started by the fact that these are melee summons.
- Limited gear choices and scaling. Necromancer and Barbarian have far more end-game scaling options compared to Paladin, who has virtually nothing for summoning.
- This is really just insult to injury but going for Shadow and Honor branches locks you out of Resurrect and Rapture (and Sacred Armor). You could go for Neutraldin and get those skills, in addition to the relatively useless Hoplite, but then you lose out on the Holy minion damage increases on Scourge plus Colosseum.

Either way, your kit is limited and you either wind up lacking damage or utility.

Summoner Paladins are scuffed summoners due to their numerical issues, despite likely being the third strongest summoner candidate class. And every other Paladin build has an alright time with leveling up (barring Holy build upkeep of Dragon Oath at low levels) and can get by with day 1 farmed Tiered Uniques and unblessed Honorifics, meaning that Summoner Paladin isn’t even good at being a transitional build into a mid-game Unholy, Holy, or Neutraldin setup. But it'll certainly work for 120 content if you just want to play Paladin and Summoner.

Sorceress:

► Support Summoner

Sorceress gets Blade Spirits, which scale with her own passives and minion stats normally. This isn't really a ringing endorsement. Familiar was changed, so... Support Sorceress doesn't exist anymore and Summoner Sorceress is a bit less capable as a result.

It probably ain’t that great though when you could just play literally… any other Sorceress build. Reminds me of Paladin Summoner, really, except at least Paladin Summoner gets a warpstrike that also debuffs and an innate warp at level 90 plus some free stats. Sorc defensive passives are great, but Paladin’s kit is at least more enabling for the summoner playstyle.
Content cap: ???

Druid:

► doodoo dudu

When playing Poison Druid, you can be something of a summoner who uses Acid Fiends. However, this reputedly falls off rapidly past 120 due to how Acid Fiends’ Poison Flash works, so this archetype isn’t really worthwhile. Patch 1.7 has changed poison druids, but the summoner aspect is likely unchanged. Bear Companion doesn't scale from Minion Stats, as the patch notes stated.

Also, Druid’s passives aren’t really supportive for Minion Damage or Minion Life, as his summons are his supports rather than the other way around.
Content cap: 120 Ubers

Amazon:

► Unsummonzon

You can play Unsummonzon, which functions by stacking normal Fire Caster stats (instead of or in addition to minion stats) and using

Vision of the Furies

Vision of the Furies
Athulua's Hand (Sacred)
Defense: 2236 to 2331
Chance to Block: 4%
(Amazon Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Dexterity: 349
Item Level: 105
Fire Elementals Inherit Your Energy and Spell Focus
+25% Bonus Elemental Damage to Bloodlust
+75 Spell Focus
25% Cast Speed
0.375% to Fire Spell Damage (Based on Character Level)
+1000 Defense
(21 to 25)% to Vitality
10% to Energy
Physical Damage Reduced by 100
Socketed (4)

and

The Redeemer

The Redeemer
Grand Scepter (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: 36 to 40
Required Level: 100
Required Dexterity: 449
Item Level: 120
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Dexterity)%
Fire Elementals Inherit Your Fire Spell Damage
5% Chance to cast level 36 Lava Pit on Death Blow
+(3 to 4) to Amazon Skill Levels
25% Cast Speed
+50% Damage to Undead
+(20 to 30)% to Fire Spell Damage
-(20 to 25)% to Enemy Fire Resistance
+(51 to 60) to Energy
+(50 to 75) Life after each Kill
2% Reanimate as: Random Monster
Socketed (3)

and base levels (for Fire Pierce) to deal huge damage with Fire Cannonade procs upon unsummoning Fire Elementals (Elementals can die, be unsummoned manually, be unsummoned by going over the minion cap).

Reputedly quite nice in the Dimensional Labyrinth because you can basically hit around corners with Fire Cannonade and the elementals themselves can serve as tanks against Erinys projectiles and bait enemies into coming into attack range when it comes to doorways into crowded and dangerous rooms. Unsummonzon is the only real form of Amazon summoner.

If someone has more to say on Unsummonzon, please contribute. I'll give you my pair of Unsummonzon gloves.

Content cap: Your patience for Fire Cannonade procs

Assassin:

► RIP Clawblock

Doesn’t even have innate Summon skills currently, so the existence of summon-related items (outdated Runewords) for her is an artifact of past versions of Median. No part of her kit supports summoning aside from her nice defensive passives.

She does get Veil King as a mod on crafted shields... but this is more of a fun mod that opens up Assassin playstyle options where the Veil King acts as an effective tank and support without investment into Minion stats rather than one that truly enables a pure summoner Assassin.

There might be a niche case where Assassin's specific defensive passives conjoined with many Relics and proper gear/investment can create a unique usage for Assassin's vestigial summon-related aspects, but I'm not holding my breath.

Content cap: The character selection screen.

Mechanics

► D2 Engine Backbone of MXL

Minions (or Pets, as D2 resources will often call them) are fundamentally limited by how Diablo 2's engine works. This means that many mechanics are the same, but the scaling is adjusted for Median XL.

► Median XL Mechanics

This is a helpful link that will explain some terms that are used later, including pierce and next delay on projectiles.

► Summons Warp to You If You Get Far Away

Summons will automatically attempt to teleport to an area nearby you if you stray too far from several of them. Each summon picks a different random location to teleport to.

► Summons Randomly Die If Too Far From You

Summons will occasionally die on their own if they fail this teleportation attempt and are also too far from you. This can generally happen if the summon is more than 2 screens away from you. If their teleportation picks an invalid spot and their AI doesn't follow you, this can be problematic. This is especially common for some Resurrects.

► Summoners Cannot Move Too Fast For the Above Reasons

The above reason is how Faster Run/Walk can be good for minions and summoners, but is effectively capped. While moving fast is desirable, you'll end up outpacing your summons in an unproductive way and end up needing to resummon them. For more information on the diminishing returns on FRW, see this page.

► Reanimates are not Summons

Reanimates do not benefit from minion bonuses. They use their base stats and behave exactly like whatever monster they're a reanimate of, except they're on the player's side.

► Summons Follow the Summoner and Die if the Summoner Dies

Summons will tend to follow the summoner as their default AI when not engaged in combat and will all die if the summoner dies.

► Soft skill level effect on procs

+Skill levels do not apply to procs, including summon procs.

► Summons Warp With the Summoner

Summons will warp with the summoner when they warp. Immobile summons (only Golden Calf, as even Totems will warp properly with their summoner) will disappear upon being warped.

► Summon AI is Pepega

Most summons are melee summons and will target the nearest enemy. The AI of ranged summons is more esoteric, as they will sometimes only attempt to attack their targets at set distances and only if positioned relative to the summoner and their target. This can make using Guardian Spirits or other ranged summons frustrating, as many summons will stand back and simply do nothing while others will correctly attack the enemy. To rectify this, either teleport into an appropriate range or resummon them within the right range. In farming scenarios, there are already enemies everywhere. So any attack in any direction is likely fine.

► Summons Have Unknown Frames Per Animation Breakpoints

Summons, exactly like every other entity in Diablo, work from the game's frames per animation and speed breakpoint system. However, all minion speeds and breakpoints are unknown. In addition, most monsters will scale their casting animations from increased attack speed for simplicity's sake. See videos of caster minions below for proof of this phenomenon.

► Minion Resistances

Summons have an innate resistance bonus which increases at 15% per soft point in that summon (caps at 75% and is hidden). They suffer the resistance penalties of Nightmare and Hell, requiring around 50% minion resistance and a full 75% (total res caps at 50% in Hell) from different sources (usually from items) in both difficulties respectively. You cannot overcap summon resistances.

► Minions Have Linear Scaling

All minion scaling in Median XL is linear and dependent on skill level, including the maximum Life, damage, attack rating, and mana cost of most minions. The only exceptions are increasing or diminishing custom effects of certain parts of minion skills.

► Minions Have Unknown Attack Rating

Many minions actually have Attack Rating values, they are simply hidden (according to Marco) to reduce confusion. As such, we cannot know from the UI how likely a minion is to hit a target sometimes.

► Class Specific +Level Does Not Apply to Item-Granted Skills If You Are Not That Class

If your class does not innately have a skill, +lvl and Synergies will not apply to them. If your class innately has a skill but you are granted it by an item, +lvl from class and Synergies will apply to it.

► Some Observations About Aura Summons

Aura effects that only scale from base levels (Hellfire Aura, Grim Vision aura) have no effects at 0 base level and thus no effect from their Relic, unless the Relic specifically adds effects for that aura. However, aura effects that scale from soft levels (Champions of the Sun aura, because they're an oskill and can't scale from base levels) work just fine in Relic form. Therefore, the skills to be most wary of are innate skills with scaling aura effects from base level. An aura that works the same at all levels (Venomous Aura from Acid Fiends) will likely function just fine on the Relic version. There are some auras with unscaled and scaled components, so it is unknown how their Relic will function.

► Minion Damage Formula

Minion Damage and Enhanced Weapon Damage are actually the same thing. Every minion skill is an attack and checks AR unless it is specifically described as using "Spell" scaling or mechanics (Basically only the elemental caster trio). Thus, every minion's damage can be described with the attack formula, which I have here lifted from the Mechanics thread.

Modifiers for weapon damage are applied as follows:
1: Ethereal Bonus (25% base damage on weapon)
2: %Enhanced Damage (%ED)
3: +Flat Damage.
4: %Physical Damage, this includes %EWD from items, %damage from skills / passives and buffs and str/dex factor, which are all ADDED up into one big multiplier (%dmg = %EWD + %physdmg + %dex/strbonus)
5: Deadly Strike (if it rolls successfully, x2 all damage up until this point)
6: %Conversion is applied.
7: +Flat elemental damage from weapon/gear/skills.
8: %WDM of skill used.

You take the base damage of the minion, apply modifiers, and that's your pre-mitigation damage assuming that the attack actually hits.

All minion damage tooltips already have your character's minion damage applied, but do not apply Deadly Strike or other additions (such as flat elemental damage from Nephalem Spirit).

► Minion Life Formula

In Median XL, minion health scales as follows: slvl scaling * ulvl * mhp
Where the elements are respectively:
MHP = Minion life modifier, all sources are additive
Ulvl = 1 + (Character level / 100). Character level scales minion life multiplicatively with minion life
Slvl scaling = Flat amount of base life, derived from base + levels

Some minions have hidden avoid chance or flat damage reduction to improve their effective life pool. With Necromancer minions, this is innate to Resurgence. Sources of avoid are designed to not overlap (e.g: Edyrems are not Necromancer minions, so their innate avoid does not stack with Necromancer minion avoid).

► Minions Are Snapshotted When Summoned

Minion effects are snapshotted at the time of casting and are used to determine the stats of the minion.

However, the minion count of a minion is associated with the player and updates whenever the D2 engine has to check the player's gear for action-related player stats. Therefore, if the valid count of a minion decreases (either becomes 0 because the player no longer has the associated skill or decreases because a maximum minion count source was lost), the minion count will also decrease accordingly. This means you cannot have an infinite easy army of summons that last forever then swap to full maximum Life equipment to improve summoner survivability. If you really felt like it, you could use the Necromancer-exclusive Hounfor skill (crafted onto Necromancer Staves and Shields) to improve your summoning via snapshotting.

If you aren't a summoner but have access to a Tank summon through a Relic or a piece of gear that you keep equipped, you could create a crafted set of equipment using Magical Shrines and equip it to cast your minion, then swap back to your main gear. This would create a highly tanky summon for you, although it would die if you died and you would have to recast it (and swap your gear every time) whenever you wanted to change games. Regardless, this is an interesting idea for players who need meatshields and distractions (due to a lack of EHP, leech, sustain, regen, Life after each Kill, etc)

[abwhorent]

Summons
For ease of use, this section will also have its own table of contents.

As a general rule of thumb: Innate summons rely on synergies from passive or active skills in their originating class' skill tree. As such, using them outside of their class usually results in vastly reduced efficacy. The exceptions are any summon with an aura or debuffing effect that works well enough even with no base levels and synergies or any summon that's just strong enough to not need levels to do its job (Veil King).

How ratings work: Summons are judged based firstly on their efficacy within their own category and with respect to the archetypes to which they are available.
For example, Night Hawks don't really work outside of Necromancer, Guardian Spirits don't really work outside of Barbarian, which means they will be each be highly rated in the DPS role despite being objectively different in their power levels due to being the best choices for their archetypes. At the same time, there is room for objective DPS comparison between summons.
For tanks, this is fairly straightforward: Can the tank protect the summoner against strong Uber bosses or highly damaging content like Fauztinville? The former requires having a good ratio of very high life pool vs. ease of resummoning, while the latter requires moderate life pools and easy resummoning, but also high minion count. The more minions taking projectiles from different directions, the better.
For supports, the rating question is very fluid and subjective. There are some easily judged factors: For example, if a summon were to hypothetically have a maximum of 1 minion count and 1 maximum life and only a moderately useful effect, it would be a lowly rated summon due to the high upkeep. But if a summon has fair upkeep and a decent effect, then it's anyone's call. Each support tends to have its own unique sort of effect that has limited overlap with other summon effects, making it difficult to compare summons to each other.

Keep in mind that tier lists are just that: Subjective. If you have a differing interpretation, please post about it.

The list of summons is drawn from an internal list given to me by Marco. I've annotated every entry accordingly.

To navigate to any given entry, click on the summon name in the table of contents. To return to the table of contents, click on the arrow to the left of each entry.

► Non-summons

Non-summons:
Fear Bomb Totem – oskill. Scales from Minion Life. Exact effect is unknown. Currently available as a rare/crafted mod on Necromancer Wands/Staves/Daggers/Scythes/Shields.

Mana Tide Totem – oskill. Scales from Minion Life. Grants massive amounts of mana regeneration. Often used by Orb of Annihilation builds. Currently available as a rare/crafted mod on Druid Helms, Necromancer Staves/Crossbows/Shields/Wands.

Elemental Totem – oskill. Scales from Minion Life but damage is from Caster stats. Currently available as a rare/crafted mod on Sorceress Orbs.

Totembound Guardian – oskill. Granted by Towerlord set. Unknown if this summon scales from minion stats.

FLYING POLAR BUFFALO ERROR – Name for untargetable stationary enemies in Mephisto’s boss room.

Bone Prison – Spawned by Diablo, not by players.

Frostclaw Totem – Totem Necromancer skill. Scales from Minion Life but damage is from Caster stats.

Stormeye Totem – Totem Necromancer skill. Scales from Minion Life but damage is from Caster stats.

Fireheart Totem – Totem Necromancer skill. Scales from Minion Life but damage is from Caster stats.

Hydra – Holy Caster Paladin skill. Is technically a minion, but is untargetable. Damage scaled from Caster stats. Has a set duration.

Slayer – Unholy Caster Paladin skill. Is technically a minion, but is untargetable. Damage scaled from Caster stats. Has a set duration.

Devil's Fang Totem – oskill. Scales from Minion Life but damage is from Caster stats.

Exploding Totem – oskill. Scales from Minion Life but damage is from Caster stats. Has a cooldown.

Venomcloud Totem – oskill. Scales from Minion Life but damage is from Caster stats.

Dead Wall Totem – oskill. Unknown if the summons from this skill count as minions or as reanimates. Unknown if the summons scale with minion stats.

Summon Table of Contents
Entry Requires Input:
Thunder Bear - Rating: N/A
Elvensong - Rating: N/A
Harvester - Rating: A
Vine Companion - Rating: N/A
Blade Spirit - Rating: N/A
Fire Elemental - Rating: N/A

Special Role:
Blood Knight - Rating: N/A
Edyrem - Rating: N/A
Resurrect - Rating: A

DPS Role:
Night Hawk - Rating: S
Guardian Spirit - Rating: S
Scourge - Rating: A
Abyss Knight - Rating: A
Blood Skeleton - Rating: A
Glowing Fungus - Rating: B
Shredder - Rating: C
Sinner - Rating: C
Avalanche - Rating: D

Tank / Support Role:
Iron Golem - Rating: S
Overlord - Rating: A
Protector Spirit - Rating: A
Skeletal Flayer - Rating: A
Champions of the Sun - Rating: A
Lamia - Rating: B
Ice Elemental - Rating: B

Tank Role:
Veil King - Rating: S
Rampagor - Rating: B
Defender Spirit - Rating: B
Hoplite - Rating: C
Blade Spirit variant - Rating: C
Golden Calf - Rating: D
Shock Beast - Rating: D
Fallen One - Rating: D
Darkling - Rating: D

Support Role:
Rathmas Chosen - Rating: B
Jinn - Rating: N/A
Void Archon - Rating: A
Spirit of Vengeance - Rating: B
Wolf Companion - Rating: C
Siren - Rating: D

► Golden Calf

Golden Calf
Role: Tank

Damage: N/A
Life: High
Mana Cost: Low

Maximum minion count: 1
Sources:

Relic (Golden Calf)

Relic
Required Level: 75
+10 to Golden Calf
75% Gold Find
-5% to All Vendor Prices

| |

Cinadide's Craft

Cinadide's Craft
(Paladin Honor Set)

Cinadide's Anvil
Cinadide's Bellows
Cinadide's Bender
Cinadide's Malus

Set Bonus with 2 or more set items:
+80 to Strength
Cannot Be Frozen

Set Bonus with 3 or more set items:
+50 to Maximum Damage
Adds 100-200 Fire Damage

Set Bonus with complete set:
Adds 400-800 Fire Damage
25% Chance of Crushing Blow
Enhanced Weapon Damage +240%
Slow Target 25%
+200 to all Attributes
Elemental Resists +100%

Rating: D

Review: Simply put, the Golden Calf is a joke. It has a fairly good Life Pool, has a good chance to Blind Attackers, Taunts nearby foes, and has a low mana cost. Those are the only good things that can be said about it.

It always disappears completely if you warp, requiring it to be summoned again. The taunt is nearly ineffective; see attached video for demonstration. Targets will not switch their aggro away from you easily, so you can't just plop the Calf in front of a pursuing Kabraxis and hope it distracts him. The blind has a short duration (~3 seconds) and is not as consistently applied compared to Blind Attacks. It has a chance to warp to a random location when hit, causing enemies to switch aggro if you or another target is nearer. It cannot move to intercept enemies aside from warping. You can only summon 1 of it, so it doesn't screen against projectiles very well.

The best part of the summon is that the Relic can be used for meme

Stormpick

Stormpick
Flail (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: (108 - 122) to (129 - 145)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 486
Item Level: 120
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Strength)%
+1% Lightning Spell Damage per 2% Gold Find
25% Cast Speed
+50% Damage to Undead
Adds 375-625 Lightning Damage
+(131 to 160)% Enhanced Damage
Maximum Lightning Resist +(2 to 4)%
Physical Resist (6 to 15)%
+100 Life after each Kill
Socketed (6)

builds. The set it comes on isn't bad for Holy Melee Paladins, but otherwise has nothing to do with summoners.

► Blood Knight

Blood Knight
Role: N/A

Damage: Very Low
Life: Low
Mana Cost: Very Low

Maximum minion count: N/A
Sources:

Relic (Bloodspeaker's Mark)

| |

Myrmidon

Rating: N/A

Review: This was included in the list of summons that Marco gave me, but it's not really a summon. I'm discussing it here purely to dispel any notions that it might be useful to summoners.

Bloodspeaker's Mark is a Spear-only melee attack that creates Blood Knights, which function as reanimates rather than as actual minions. You create 1 Blood Knight at a time at base level, but you gain another one summoned per hit every 3 soft levels. They do not appear in your party bar at the top of the screen, nor do they warp with you when you move too far or use a warp skill. They are not scaled by minion stats, as the tooltip states.

These reanimates do nothing but clog the screen, as they have no supporting or damaging capabilities. They're not tanky enough to be tanks and you have to manually create them constantly, especially since they'll stop spawning if there's too many near the enemy you're hitting. Finally, Bloodspeaker's Mark itself is a pretty bad skill. It's pretty funny to see it in action... once.

Blood Knights appear to have a chance to proc Bloodlust, either on attack or kill. The level is unknown, but the source is already quite unreliable, so it cannot be recommended as a buff source.

► Champions of the Sun

Champions of the Sun
Role: Tank / Support

Damage: Low
Life: Medium - High
Mana Cost: Medium

Maximum minion count: Unknown
Sources:

Relic (Champions of the Sun)

Relic
Required Level: 75
+(15 to 26) to Champions of the Sun
+(11 to 15)% to Summoned Minion Damage
Elemental Resists +(10 to 15)%

| |

Herald of Zakarum

Herald of Zakarum
Aerin Shield (Sacred)
Defense: (4517 - 5421) to (5297 - 6357)
Chance to Block: 2%
(Paladin Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 1000
Item Level: 120
Gematria
(Bonus per Socketed Great/Elemental Runes)
+1 to All Skills
+0.75% Base Block Chance
+20% to Elemental Resists
+1 to Paladin Skill Levels
50% Block Speed
-15% to Enemy Elemental Resistances
+(1 to 10) to Champions of the Sun
+(150 to 200)% Enhanced Defense
+1.5 to Energy (Based on Character Level)
Requirements +100%
Socketed (4)

Rating: A

Review: A good supporting summon with decent life, life scaling, mana scaling (easy to summon repeatedly), a high number of minions, and a useful aura effect. The minion has extremely poor attack rating and damage, so it won't kill anything on its own. Currently, it is not known what the maximum minion count for this summon is and whether the aura applies to other summons, mercenaries, reanimates, or other players.

Champions of the Sun have an aura that grants the player Elemental and Physical Resistance.The hypothesized soft cap for the aura effect appears to be 50% Elemental Resistance and 20% Physical Resistance based on Marco's comments about diminishing formulas in Median XL, as the halfway drop-off appears around that point. While it would be foolish to rely on a minion to reach one's resistance caps, this minion can help with overcapping resistances which will protect against enemy curses and piercing effects. In the Dimensional Labyrinth, which is the highest level of endgame content, Erinys will constantly apply offscreen curses to players that reduce one’s resistances. In the Tier 14 Labyrinth, enemies have 100% elemental resistance piercing, which requires you to overcap your resistance by 100% in order to retain your displayed maximum resistance.

Summoners such as Necromancers and Barbarians can benefit from this aura as a general rule. Necromancers have no innate physical resistance sources; this summon can assist with reaching the 50% physical resistance cap. Barbarians have innate Bear Stance but would prefer to use Wolf Stance to bolster their summons’ offense. By using Champions of the Sun, Barbarians can expend fewer points in Bear Stance and devote their base skill points towards offensive uses (Guardian Spirit, Protector Spirit, Nephalem Spirit, Wolf Stance) or other defensive layers (Ancient Blood, Immortal).

This minion has the unique quirk of being the only known summon to have a maximum minion cap of 0, at least when it is level 1. This causes nothing to be summoned when the skill is level 1.

The current tooltip picture isn't great, since it was taken on a Paladin with different scaling from the character who usually provides the example screenshots. More realistically, this summon would have closer to 100k Life with the same specs used for the other picture.

► Overlord

Overlord
Role: Tank / Support

Damage: Low
Life: High
Mana Cost: High

Maximum minion count: 1
Sources:

Relic (Overlord)

Relic
Required Level: 75
+(5 to 13) to Overlord
+20% to Summoned Minion Damage
Maximum Life +(2 to 3)%

| |

Leviathan

Leviathan
Necromancer Scythes
'QorQorJah'
Runeword Level: 100
30% Attack Speed
+(101 to 125) to Maximum Damage
+(401 to 500) to Attack Rating
+(156 to 186)% Enhanced Damage
+(17 to 21) to Dark Power
(7 to 10)% Deadly Strike
Slow Target (21 to 25)%
(36 to 50)% to Strength
(36 to 50)% to Dexterity
+(75 to 125) to Life
Physical Resist (12 to 15)%

| | Rare/Crafted mod on Necromancer Staves
Rating: B

Review: This summon is a classic example of why I wanted to write this guide. As of patch 1.6.2, the Wiki page for “Summon Overlord” still says that Overlord’s “Dark Legion Aura” adds 4 maximum minions. The wiki page has no information on the summon’s stats and scaling, makes no mention of which summons are affected by this aura, and makes no mention of where to get the Summon Overlord skill. This information gives the impression that this summon is top-tier and among the best of the best.
This information is from a patch long ago and is no longer up to date. The Overlord’s Dark Legion Aura has been nerfed.

So, let’s talk about what Overlord really is.

As a tank, this summon is comparable to a Jinn due to its massive life pool. It has little in the way of attack capabilities aside from stunning its target when it attacks (much like the Familiar summon), but a good tank’s utility is not to be underestimated, as a super-tank is often required to handle certain Uber bosses such as Kabraxis and Xazax. Strong tanks can also be considered valuable for Dimensional Labyrinth, although there’s no hope for trying to tank against strong bosses like Unstable Anomaly, Corrupted Barbarian, and so forth.

But let’s talk about the real effect of Overlord, the real question: The Dark Legion aura. What does it actually do?

Unfortunately, it does not grant +4 maximum minions to every minion skill. After testing, it has been confirmed that Dark Legion aura grants +1 maximum minion to certain minion skills. The Pokedex spreadsheet above contains more condensed details and more testing is required with Relics that have yet to be dropped or volunteered for testing, but thus far, Dark Legion aura appears to increase the minion counts of the following summons by 1:

- Sirens
- Jinns
- Night Hawks
- Blood Skeletons
- Abyss Knights
- Defender Spirits
- Guardian Spirits
- Protector Spirits

Keep in mind that this is different from what Goetia Plate does, since Goetia Plate does not affect Barbarian’s Spirits count.

Depending on your main damage-dealing minions, an increase of 1 minion will have a varying magnitude of impact on your clearspeed and damage potential. Barbarian Summoners would see this as an okay min-max given that they can get 2 innate minions, 4 or 5 from their active buff, and then another 5 from their gear, only gaining 2 extra tanks and 1 extra DPSer. But Abyss Knight Necromancers would love this for an extra Abyss Knight and Jinn for AOE clearing potential.

The Dark Legion aura only applies when the player is outside of town, much like several other auras. It has an approximate range of 30 yards. Make sure to summon outside of town and not stay too long in town, or you’ll have to resummon. But it’s just 1 minion of certain types, so resummoning would take minimal effort. The aura effect does not stack with itself.

On the Leviathan RW scythe, this summon is questionable. The actual scythe itself is not bad for melee Necromancers, although Bartuc’s Eye RW is just better. But as a Summoner, you probably want MaMa wand and an offhand with stats or Lazarus’ Votive Wand to complete the 4 piece set effect of the Lazarus set. The hefty bonuses available in the weapon and offhand slot mean that the Leviathan scythe is simply not worthwhile and that the Relic is the only real source of Overlord in an optimized setup.

Overall, the Overlord is a very solid supporting minion and tank. If it gave +4 minions as it once did, this would unquestionably be the best support summon ever. As it stands, it’s a good min-max. Since patch 1.7, the Overlord aura effect grants bonus Minion Damage, meaning that it should be summoned first among your summons. This has also bumped it up a tier (although the exact values of the minion damage bonus are yet uninvestigated).

► Thunder Bear

Thunder Bear
Role: X
Maximum minion count: X
Sources: X
Rating: X

Review: This summon has yet to be tested as nobody has come forth with a Relic of it. However, it is known that the Thunder Bear procs Shower of Rocks on attack or may simply use that skill outright.

As of patch 1.7, Shower of Rocks is even more desirable than ever. This summon is likely to be rated very highly if a Relic of it should be found.

► Shock Beast

Shock Beast
Role: Tank

Damage: Very Low
Life: Very Low
Mana Cost: Medium

Maximum minion count: 15
Sources:

Monsterball

Monsterball
Mystic Orb

Right-Click to Apply
+5 to Summon Shock Beast
+10% to Summoned Minion Life
+3% to Summoned Minion Damage
+2% to Summoned Minion Resistances
+10 Required Level

Rating: D

Review: This summon is incredibly weak and virtually worthless. It casts a short-ranged Spark and stacks a long duration (20-30s?) Lightning Wall onto targeted enemies when near close range and casts Flash at melee range. Of course, this skill variety isn't helped by the fact that this summon is very weak. This weakness is not helped by the summon's lightning damage type, with which it has no resistance piercing. It is theoretically possible to stack several

Monsterball

Monsterball
Mystic Orb

Right-Click to Apply
+5 to Summon Shock Beast
+10% to Summoned Minion Life
+3% to Summoned Minion Damage
+2% to Summoned Minion Resistances
+10 Required Level

UMOs on two Rings of Regha to get a very high level Shock Beast summon, but the poor stat scaling returns per level ensures that this would still be virtually pointless aside from the memetic potential of having a skill with triple digit skill levels. With anywhere from 10-20 Monsterball UMOs, you could make Shock Beast into a semi-competent tank at the cost of having two memes for ring slots.

► Edyrem

Edyrem
Role: Special

Damage: Very Low
Life: Very Low
Mana Cost: Very Low

Maximum minion count: 10
Sources:

Crystalline Flame Medallion

Crystalline Flame Medallion
Required Level: 120
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+1 to Summon Edyrem
Fire Absorb 5%
Lightning Absorb 5%
Cold Absorb 5%
Cube after Killing Imperius and Malthael
(Max: 1 minute from each other)

Rating: N/A

Review: Edyrems are a special summon because they do not benefit from Minion stats at all (they are only affected by modifiers that specifically affect Edyrem stats) and are available to basically every player past level 120. As such, they do not really deal damage, take damage, or support the player in the majority of the game’s content.

However, Edyrems have a special utility that no other summon has and that is to make enemies in the Toraja “Rift” area vulnerable, including the Uber boss Lilith who drops the level 125 charm “

Lylia's Curse

Lylia's Curse
Required Level: 120
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+(11 to 25)% Bonus to Summoned Edyrem Life
+10 Life Regenerated per Second
Elemental Resists +10%

”. Toraja is the main source of Sha’ad, Krys, and Auhe Great Runes, which are very powerful and useful for endgame Runewords. As such, Edyrems are mandatory for a certain part of the endgame content but cannot ordinarily be summoned elsewhere. When an Edyrem hits an enemy in Toraja, the enemy becomes vulnerable after approximately 1 second. This puts an effective cap on clearspeed in Toraja and thus on drops from Toraja.

Edyrems have a tough time surviving in Toraja without the

Sanctuary

Sanctuary
(Edyrem Set)

Hand of Inarius
Worldstone
Lilith's Disguise

Set Bonus with 2 or more set items:
+2 to All Skills
Elemental Resists +25%

Set Bonus with complete set:
Summon Edyrem:
20% Reanimate as: Edyrem
+20% of Life Added as Damage
+50% Chance of Crushing Blow
Can Summon Edyrems Anywhere
Summon Two Edyrem Minions per Cast
5% Chance to cast level 40 Ward of Fate on Melee Attack
+500% Bonus to Summoned Edyrem Life
+15 to Divine Apparition

set. Without the set, you will constantly have to resummon Edyrems who die easily and thus cannot render as many enemies vulnerable, which will cause you to die once the Celebrants of the Triune turn their bows on you. Edyrem AI defaults to making them not move unless an enemy is within targeting range. This means that they require prodding and resummoning to get to where they need to be. The set is absolutely mandatory if you want to farm Toraja and do anything more than just secure a

Lylia's Curse

Lylia's Curse
Required Level: 120
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+(11 to 25)% Bonus to Summoned Edyrem Life
+10 Life Regenerated per Second
Elemental Resists +10%

from the rift.

With every maximum source of Edyrem stats, Edyrems will have 13982.5 maximum life and 2808.5 damage. For optimal Edyrem farming, I recommend the use of Wolf Stance to make Edyrems fast and strong. I also recommend a summoner build to automatically follow up on your Edyrems who make everything vulnerable, although the set makes it so the Edyrems can finish the job just fine.

► Fallen One

Fallen One
Role: Tank

Damage: Very Low
Life: Very Low
Mana Cost: Low

Maximum minion count: 10
Sources:

Relic (Summon Fallen)

| |

Fallentooth

Fallentooth
Heavy Crossbow (4)
Two-Hand Damage: (14 - 17) to (29 - 37)
Required Level: 8
Required Strength: 91
Item Level: 12
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Strength)%
15% Attack Speed
+(8 to 13) to Maximum Damage
(3 to 5)% Life stolen per Hit
+(24 to 43)% Enhanced Damage
+(2 to 6) to Summon Fallen
(7 to 10)% to Strength
Fire Resist +(21 to 25)%
Lightning Resist +(21 to 25)%
Socketed (2)
Two-Hand Damage: (47 - 53) to (86 - 99)
Required Level: 28
Required Strength: 134
Item Level: 31
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Strength)%
25% Attack Speed
+(18 to 23) to Maximum Damage
(9 to 11)% Life stolen per Hit
+(64 to 83)% Enhanced Damage
+(12 to 16) to Summon Fallen
(15 to 18)% to Strength
Fire Resist +(31 to 35)%
Lightning Resist +(31 to 35)%
Socketed (4)
Two-Hand Damage: (130 - 142) to (211 - 233)
Required Level: 47
Required Strength: 260
Item Level: 52
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Strength)%
35% Attack Speed
+(28 to 33) to Maximum Damage
(15 to 17)% Life stolen per Hit
+(104 to 123)% Enhanced Damage
+(22 to 26) to Summon Fallen
(23 to 26)% to Strength
Fire Resist +(41 to 45)%
Lightning Resist +(41 to 45)%
Socketed (5)
Two-Hand Damage: (179 - 194) to (268 - 293)
Required Level: 54
Required Strength: 514
Item Level: 85
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Strength)%
50% Attack Speed
+(33 to 38) to Maximum Damage
(18 to 20)% Life stolen per Hit
+(124 to 143)% Enhanced Damage
+(27 to 31) to Summon Fallen
(27 to 30)% to Strength
Fire Resist +(46 to 50)%
Lightning Resist +(46 to 50)%
Socketed (6)

Rating: D

Review: These guys are exactly as useless as their tooltip description would imply. They are classified as tanks because they have no supportive capabilities and they most certainly don’t deal any damage due to their abysmal Attack Rating and damage, which means that the most they can do is serve as meatshields. Having up to 10 of them is useful for that, but they’re not good as tanks either because they have terrible base HP and terrible scaling.

If you want this summon, perhaps for comedic reasons, then I would encourage you to get the Relic. There are good Tiered Uniques out there and Fallentooth is not one of them. The Relic overshadows the actual summon by far with its 15% Magic Find, although any item it is socketed in will have a base level requirement of 120 at the least before sources of additional levels such as Mystic Orbs.

► Siren

Siren
Role: Support

Damage: Very Low
Life: Very Low
Mana Cost: Very Low

Maximum minion count: Unknown
Sources:

Lorelei

| |

Krypteia

Rating: D

Review: Sirens have low health and damage and similarly low scaling. As such, they cannot serve as damage dealers or tanks. They also have a unique model which I encourage everyone to see at least once, much like how I'd recommend everyone to see Rampagors.

Sirens have the unique ability to charm enemies on hit, converting them to the player’s side for a short period of time. However, this ability is useless for the following reasons:

- Sirens have low Life pools, meaning that you must resummon them constantly if you want to consistently charm enemies.
- The charm duration is short (~10 seconds), meaning that enemies must become charmed again in short order.
- Charmed enemies do not warp with you when you warp or move too far from them.
- Charmed enemies do not drop their loot or give experience when they are charmed. They must actually be killed to drop loot and give experience, meaning that having Sirens with you while farming is either pointless or actively detrimental to your farming efforts.
- Bosses and certain powerful enemies, such as the Edyrems in “Edyrem’s Path”, cannot be charmed. This means that any boss that has strong additional enemies (adds) cannot have those adds turned against them, making this summon useless in a boss-farming scenario.

Maybe they could be used to charm Lucion in the Bastion of the Triune without the use of the Book of Possession, but even the charm effect from the Book of Possession will work better.

As such, Sirens have no real use in regular gameplay and are little more than a novelty gimmick. The Relic no longer exists, so you can't even use it for Minion Damage.

► Darkling

Darkling
Role: Tank

Damage: Very Low
Life: Very Low
Mana Cost: Very Low

Maximum minion count: 15
Sources:

Dar-Al-Harb

Dar-Al-Harb
Assassin Shields
'FalUm'
Runeword Level: 58
+(3 to 4) to Assassin Skill Levels
15% Cast Speed
0.25% to Fire Spell Damage (Based on Character Level)
0.25% to Lightning Spell Damage (Based on Character Level)
+(16 to 19) to Summon Darklings
+(19 to 22) to Skeletal Flayer
+25 to Dexterity
5% to Dexterity
+25 to Energy
Elemental Resists +10%

| |

Blackheart

Blackheart
Grim Wand (4)
One-Hand Damage: 4 to 6
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 11
Required Dexterity: 15
Item Level: 17
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.06 per Dexterity)%
+1 to Necromancer Skill Levels
15% Cast Speed
15% Hit Recovery
+50% Damage to Undead
+(6 to 9) to Summon Darklings
+1 to Dark Power
+(9 to 10)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+1 Life Regenerated per Second (Based on Character Level)
Socketed (1)
One-Hand Damage: 8 to 14
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 29
Required Dexterity: 23
Item Level: 32
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.06 per Dexterity)%
+2 to Necromancer Skill Levels
25% Cast Speed
25% Hit Recovery
+50% Damage to Undead
+(12 to 16) to Summon Darklings
+2 to Dark Power
+(16 to 20)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+1 Life Regenerated per Second (Based on Character Level)
Socketed (2)
One-Hand Damage: 17 to 26
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 47
Required Dexterity: 46
Item Level: 53
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.06 per Dexterity)%
+3 to Necromancer Skill Levels
35% Cast Speed
35% Hit Recovery
+50% Damage to Undead
+(20 to 26) to Summon Darklings
+3 to Dark Power
+(26 to 30)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+1 Life Regenerated per Second (Based on Character Level)
Socketed (2)
One-Hand Damage: 20 to 31
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 55
Required Dexterity: 92
Item Level: 87
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.06 per Dexterity)%
+4 to Necromancer Skill Levels
40% Cast Speed
40% Hit Recovery
+50% Damage to Undead
+(32 to 36) to Summon Darklings
+4 to Dark Power
+(36 to 40)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+1 Life Regenerated per Second (Based on Character Level)
Socketed (2)

| | Rare/Crafted affix on Necromancer Staves, Wands, Shields
Rating: D

Review: Darklings seem like they’re meant to be tanks due to their high flat damage reduction and their damage reflection mechanic. In practice, due to their extraordinarily low base stats, they are not strong enough to be tanks. Check the video demonstration for more details: their damage reduction and reflection have virtually no effect even on early-game Hell content.

At the very least, they have a low mana cost that enables them to be summoned repeatedly even by a summoner with no investment into flat Mana or Energy, but the same could be said for Edyrems that basically anyone could get.

The Relic no longer exists and the sources of the skill are simply not worth using on an endgame-scaled summoner. I cannot recommend this summon in any capacity whatsoever.

► Skeletal Flayer

Skeletal Flayer
Role: Tank / Support

Damage: Very Low
Life: Medium - High
Mana Cost: Very Low

Maximum minion count: 9
Sources:

Relic (Skeletal Flayer)

Relic
Required Level: 75
+15% Elemental Spell Damage to Demon Blood Aura
+(11 to 23) to Skeletal Flayer
Maximum Life +(2 to 3)%

| |

Dar-Al-Harb

Dar-Al-Harb
Assassin Shields
'FalUm'
Runeword Level: 58
+(3 to 4) to Assassin Skill Levels
15% Cast Speed
0.25% to Fire Spell Damage (Based on Character Level)
0.25% to Lightning Spell Damage (Based on Character Level)
+(16 to 19) to Summon Darklings
+(19 to 22) to Skeletal Flayer
+25 to Dexterity
5% to Dexterity
+25 to Energy
Elemental Resists +10%

| |

Wisdom's Wrap

Wisdom's Wrap
Banded Plate (4)
Defense: 243 to 490
(Sorceress Only)
Required Level: 12
Required Dexterity: 81 to 85
Item Level: 19
+1 to Sorceress Skill Levels
+(11 to 15)% to Fire Spell Damage
+3 to Skeletal Flayer
Slows Attacker by (3 to 5)%
Regenerate Mana +(11 to 15)%
Fire Resist +(21 to 30)%
-1 to Light Radius
Requirements -(6 to 10)%
Socketed (2)
Defense: 586 to 1119
(Sorceress Only)
Required Level: 29
Required Dexterity: 107 to 112
Item Level: 34
+2 to Sorceress Skill Levels
+(16 to 20)% to Fire Spell Damage
+6 to Skeletal Flayer
Slows Attacker by (9 to 11)%
Regenerate Mana +(21 to 25)%
Fire Resist +(41 to 50)%
-2 to Light Radius
Requirements -(16 to 20)%
Socketed (4)
Defense: 1176 to 2194
(Sorceress Only)
Required Level: 47
Required Dexterity: 196 to 207
Item Level: 54
+3 to Sorceress Skill Levels
+(21 to 25)% to Fire Spell Damage
+9 to Skeletal Flayer
Slows Attacker by (15 to 17)%
Regenerate Mana +(31 to 35)%
Fire Resist +(61 to 70)%
-3 to Light Radius
Requirements -(26 to 30)%
Socketed (5)
Defense: 1592 to 2969
(Sorceress Only)
Required Level: 55
Required Dexterity: 378 to 402
Item Level: 90
+4 to Sorceress Skill Levels
+(26 to 30)% to Fire Spell Damage
+12 to Skeletal Flayer
Slows Attacker by (18 to 20)%
Regenerate Mana +(36 to 40)%
Fire Resist +(71 to 80)%
-3 to Light Radius
Requirements -(31 to 35)%
Socketed (6)

Rating: A

Review: Skeletal Flayers have a fair amount of life due to their decent scaling, but not enough to qualify as a super-tank like Jinns, Iron Golem, or Veil King. Their base damage and damage scaling are relatively low, but their mana cost and auxiliary effects are top notch. When their life is coupled with their minion count and low mana cost, it would be fair to say that they have tank potential. However, their movement patterns (AI) and apparently small model might put that into question. This is something that would need to be tested, likely in Tran Athulua or Viz-Jun. They will need to resummoned periodically in high Dimensional Labyrinths.

Ultimately, the Skeletal Flayer excels in supporting allies. While the damaging component of the Demon Blood aura is only really useful for increasing the damage of Abyss Knights, Jinns, and any Resurrected enemies who had the “Undead” type, the 20% maximum Life bonus is extremely useful to the summoner and any party members that are in his range. Compared to a mercenary wearing

Khazra Plate

Khazra Plate
Ancient Armor (Sacred)
Defense: (8603 - 9489) to (10651 - 11748)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 2310
Item Level: 120
Level 1 Demon Blood Aura
+60% Damage to Demons
5% Chance of Crushing Blow
10% Deadly Strike
+(172 to 200)% Enhanced Defense
(20 to 25)% to Strength
(20 to 25)% to Vitality
Physical Resist 10%
Requirements +200%
Socketed (6)

, the Skeletal Flayer’s easy upkeep means that it has high availability. Mercenaries are unlikely to die in most circumstances, but some dangerous bosses in the Dimensional Labyrinth can make short work of them and certain Uber bosses utterly destroy mercenaries because they deal 800% increased damage to Mercenaries.

As for other sources of Demon Blood aura, using the Skeletal Flayer allows summoners who use Iron Golem with a for the Demon Blood Aura bonus to swap their Iron Golem to another useful item. I would recommend an item with a supporting proc, depending on what debuff sources you currently have. The same goes for Mercenary setups: Instead of using an Act 5 mercenary with Qarak’s Will (arguably useless for a Barbarian Summoner due to Protector Spirit Bloodlust casting) and a Khazra Plate for Demon Blood Aura, you can opt for an Act 1 mercenary who uses Dark Power or an Act 3 mercenary with strong caster capabilities or Gift of Inner Fire.

Examples of Iron Golem food with supporting procs:

Finis Terra

Finis Terra
Falchion (4)
One-Hand Damage: (4 - 5) to (6 - 7)
Required Level: 5
Required Strength: 49
Item Level: 8
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Strength)%
2% Chance to cast level 2 Shower of Rocks on Melee Attack
Adds 5-8 Fire Damage
Adds 5-8 Lightning Damage
Adds 5-8 Cold Damage
+(24 to 40)% Enhanced Damage
Fire Resist +(11 to 15)%
Poison Resist +(11 to 15)%
Socketed (1)
One-Hand Damage: (17 - 19) to (20 - 22)
Required Level: 24
Required Strength: 79
Item Level: 27
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Strength)%
4% Chance to cast level 6 Shower of Rocks on Melee Attack
Adds 15-25 Fire Damage
Adds 15-25 Lightning Damage
Adds 15-25 Cold Damage
+(58 to 75)% Enhanced Damage
Fire Resist +(21 to 25)%
Poison Resist +(21 to 25)%
Socketed (2)
One-Hand Damage: (42 - 45) to (49 - 54)
Required Level: 42
Required Strength: 160
Item Level: 47
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Strength)%
6% Chance to cast level 10 Shower of Rocks on Melee Attack
Adds 45-75 Fire Damage
Adds 45-75 Lightning Damage
Adds 45-75 Cold Damage
+(92 to 109)% Enhanced Damage
Fire Resist +(31 to 35)%
Poison Resist +(31 to 35)%
Socketed (3)
One-Hand Damage: (54 - 58) to (64 - 70)
Required Level: 52
Required Strength: 319
Item Level: 82
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Strength)%
8% Chance to cast level 12 Shower of Rocks on Melee Attack
Adds 140-220 Fire Damage
Adds 140-220 Lightning Damage
Adds 140-220 Cold Damage
+(109 to 126)% Enhanced Damage
Fire Resist +(36 to 40)%
Poison Resist +(36 to 40)%
Socketed (3)



Dreamswayer

Dreamswayer
War Scepter (4)
One-Hand Damage: (9 - 11) to (17 - 22)
Required Level: 7
Required Dexterity: 64
Item Level: 12
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Dexterity)%
+1 to Amazon Skill Levels
15% Attack Speed
Adds (2 to 3)-(4 to 8) Damage
+50% Damage to Undead
14% Life stolen per Hit
-(4 to 8)% to Enemy Lightning Resistance
+(31 to 40)% Enhanced Damage
Enhanced Weapon Damage +10%
Socketed (2)
One-Hand Damage: (31 - 36) to (45 - 55)
Required Level: 26
Required Dexterity: 98
Item Level: 29
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Dexterity)%
+(1 to 2) to Amazon Skill Levels
25% Attack Speed
Adds (7 to 9)-(13 to 19) Damage
+50% Damage to Undead
16% Life stolen per Hit
-(8 to 12)% to Enemy Lightning Resistance
+(61 to 80)% Enhanced Damage
Enhanced Weapon Damage +25%
Socketed (4)
One-Hand Damage: (62 - 69) to (97 - 110)
Required Level: 44
Required Dexterity: 195
Item Level: 49
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Dexterity)%
+2 to Amazon Skill Levels
35% Attack Speed
Adds (14 to 17)-(27 to 33) Damage
+50% Damage to Undead
18% Life stolen per Hit
-(12 to 18)% to Enemy Lightning Resistance
+(101 to 120)% Enhanced Damage
Enhanced Weapon Damage +50%
Socketed (5)
One-Hand Damage: (88 - 96) to (131 - 145)
Required Level: 54
Required Dexterity: 387
Item Level: 85
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Dexterity)%
+(2 to 3) to Amazon Skill Levels
40% Attack Speed
Adds (18 to 20)-(34 to 40) Damage
+50% Damage to Undead
20% Life stolen per Hit
-(18 to 25)% to Enemy Lightning Resistance
+(121 to 140)% Enhanced Damage
Enhanced Weapon Damage +80%
Socketed (6)



Fangspear

Fangspear
Spetum (4)
Two-Hand Damage: (13 - 15) to (35 - 46)
Required Level: 7
Required Strength: 42
Required Dexterity: 63
Item Level: 10
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.15 per Dexterity)%
200% Bonus to Miasma Haunt Duration
10% Chance to cast level 5 Miasma on Melee Attack
15% Attack Speed
Adds (8 to 10)-(21 to 30) Damage
+75 to Attack Rating
+(30 to 46)% Enhanced Damage
+(0 to 100) to Life
+(11 to 15) Life after each Kill
Socketed (2)
Two-Hand Damage: (29 - 34) to (73 - 86)
Required Level: 25
Required Strength: 70
Required Dexterity: 97
Item Level: 28
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.15 per Dexterity)%
200% Bonus to Miasma Haunt Duration
15% Chance to cast level 11 Miasma on Melee Attack
30% Attack Speed
Adds (11 to 15)-(31 to 40) Damage
+100 to Attack Rating
+(64 to 80)% Enhanced Damage
+(0 to 150) to Life
+(21 to 25) Life after each Kill
Socketed (4)
Two-Hand Damage: (63 - 71) to (143 - 161)
Required Level: 44
Required Strength: 144
Required Dexterity: 193
Item Level: 48
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.15 per Dexterity)%
200% Bonus to Miasma Haunt Duration
20% Chance to cast level 18 Miasma on Melee Attack
45% Attack Speed
Adds (16 to 20)-(41 to 50) Damage
+125 to Attack Rating
+(98 to 114)% Enhanced Damage
+(0 to 200) to Life
+(31 to 35) Life after each Kill
Socketed (5)
Two-Hand Damage: (83 - 97) to (184 - 203)
Required Level: 53
Required Strength: 288
Required Dexterity: 382
Item Level: 83
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.15 per Dexterity)%
200% Bonus to Miasma Haunt Duration
25% Chance to cast level 25 Miasma on Melee Attack
60% Attack Speed
Adds (21 to 30)-(51 to 60) Damage
+150 to Attack Rating
+(115 to 132)% Enhanced Damage
+(0 to 250) to Life
+(36 to 40) Life after each Kill
Socketed (6)



Na-Krul's Spine

Na-Krul's Spine
Naginata (4)
Two-Hand Damage: (22 - 25) to (29 - 36)
(Assassin Only)
Required Level: 6
Required Dexterity: 58
Item Level: 9
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.15 per Dexterity)%
Area Effect Attack
20% Chance to cast level 4 Flamefront on Melee Attack
5% Chance to cast level 2 Bloodlust on Melee Attack
+6% Bonus Damage to Bloodlust
15% Attack Speed
Adds (8 to 10)-(13 to 20) Damage
+(35 to 40)% Enhanced Damage
Elemental Resists +(21 to 25)%
Physical Resist (3 to 5)%
Socketed (2)
Two-Hand Damage: (74 - 84) to (91 - 106)
(Assassin Only)
Required Level: 26
Required Dexterity: 95
Item Level: 29
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.15 per Dexterity)%
Area Effect Attack
30% Chance to cast level 12 Flamefront on Melee Attack
7% Chance to cast level 8 Bloodlust on Melee Attack
+12% Bonus Damage to Bloodlust
25% Attack Speed
Adds (13 to 15)-(28 to 35) Damage
+(81 to 103)% Enhanced Damage
Elemental Resists +(31 to 35)%
Physical Resist (9 to 11)%
Socketed (4)
Two-Hand Damage: (194 - 214) to (221 - 246)
(Assassin Only)
Required Level: 47
Required Dexterity: 192
Item Level: 51
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.15 per Dexterity)%
Area Effect Attack
40% Chance to cast level 20 Flamefront on Melee Attack
9% Chance to cast level 14 Bloodlust on Melee Attack
+18% Bonus Damage to Bloodlust
35% Attack Speed
Adds (18 to 20)-(43 to 50) Damage
+(126 to 149)% Enhanced Damage
Elemental Resists +(41 to 45)%
Physical Resist (15 to 17)%
Socketed (5)
Two-Hand Damage: (255 - 277) to (290 - 320)
(Assassin Only)
Required Level: 57
Required Dexterity: 382
Item Level: 90
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.15 per Dexterity)%
Area Effect Attack
45% Chance to cast level 24 Flamefront on Melee Attack
10% Chance to cast level 17 Bloodlust on Melee Attack
+24% Bonus Damage to Bloodlust
40% Attack Speed
Adds (21 to 23)-(51 to 60) Damage
+(149 to 171)% Enhanced Damage
Elemental Resists +(46 to 50)%
Physical Resist (18 to 20)%
Socketed (6)



Gift of the Spiritbeast

Gift of the Spiritbeast
Hammerhead Axe (4)
One-Hand Damage: (8 - 9) to (16 - 25)
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 12
Required Strength: 93
Item Level: 18
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.14 per Strength)%
2% Chance to cast level 6 Mark of the Wild on Melee Attack
10% Attack Speed
+(6 to 13) to Maximum Damage
Adds (3 to 5)-(6 to 8) Fire Damage
Adds (3 to 5)-(6 to 8) Lightning Damage
+(18 to 35)% Enhanced Damage
Maximum Mana +(11 to 15)%
Socketed (2)
One-Hand Damage: (25 - 28) to (51 - 61)
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 31
Required Strength: 137
Item Level: 35
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.14 per Strength)%
3% Chance to cast level 18 Mark of the Wild on Melee Attack
20% Attack Speed
+(21 to 28) to Maximum Damage
Adds (16 to 20)-(26 to 30) Fire Damage
Adds (16 to 20)-(26 to 30) Lightning Damage
+(52 to 69)% Enhanced Damage
Maximum Mana +(21 to 25)%
Socketed (4)
One-Hand Damage: (63 - 69) to (112 - 126)
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 52
Required Strength: 268
Item Level: 57
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.14 per Strength)%
4% Chance to cast level 30 Mark of the Wild on Melee Attack
30% Attack Speed
+(36 to 43) to Maximum Damage
Adds (66 to 80)-(101 to 120) Fire Damage
Adds (66 to 80)-(101 to 120) Lightning Damage
+(87 to 103)% Enhanced Damage
Maximum Mana +(31 to 35)%
Socketed (5)
One-Hand Damage: (83 - 90) to (142 - 157)
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 60
Required Strength: 529
Item Level: 90
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.14 per Strength)%
4% Chance to cast level 36 Mark of the Wild on Melee Attack
35% Attack Speed
+(43 to 50) to Maximum Damage
Adds (131 to 160)-(201 to 240) Fire Damage
Adds (131 to 160)-(201 to 240) Lightning Damage
+(104 to 120)% Enhanced Damage
Maximum Mana +(36 to 40)%
Socketed (6)



Deathwind

Deathwind
Needle Crossbow (4)
Two-Hand Damage: 4 to 6
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 4
Required Strength: 19
Item Level: 6
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.16 per Strength)%
7% Chance to cast level 10 Vindicate on Striking
40% Attack Speed
40% Cast Speed
+(21 to 30)% to Summoned Minion Life
+(21 to 25)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(21 to 30)% to Summoned Minion Resistances
Requirements -30%
Socketed (2)
Two-Hand Damage: 16 to 20
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 23
Required Strength: 28
Item Level: 25
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.16 per Strength)%
8% Chance to cast level 10 Vindicate on Striking
50% Attack Speed
50% Cast Speed
+(31 to 45)% to Summoned Minion Life
+(29 to 33)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(31 to 45)% to Summoned Minion Resistances
Requirements -40%
Socketed (4)
Two-Hand Damage: 40 to 46
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 41
Required Strength: 50
Item Level: 46
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.16 per Strength)%
9% Chance to cast level 10 Vindicate on Striking
60% Attack Speed
60% Cast Speed
+(46 to 60)% to Summoned Minion Life
+(36 to 40)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(46 to 60)% to Summoned Minion Resistances
Requirements -50%
Socketed (5)
Two-Hand Damage: 49 to 56
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 51
Required Strength: 80
Item Level: 79
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.16 per Strength)%
10% Chance to cast level 10 Vindicate on Striking
70% Attack Speed
70% Cast Speed
+(61 to 75)% to Summoned Minion Life
+(44 to 50)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(61 to 75)% to Summoned Minion Resistances
Requirements -60%
Socketed (6)



Intifada


Intifada
Paladin Clubs, Paladin Maces, Paladin Hammers
'AmnKo'
Runeword Level: 48
8% Chance to cast level 8 Shower of Rocks on Melee Attack
Adds 80-120 Magic Damage
+(87 to 114)% Enhanced Damage
(6 to 10)% Chance of Crushing Blow
+(16 to 25)% to Summoned Minion Damage
5% to Strength
Poison Resist +30%

Finally, the elemental spell damage component of the Skeletal Flayer’s aura makes for a great cherry on top. No elemental caster would pass up a free 40 - 45% spell damage. The spell damage component from the secondary effect of the Relic does not appear on the tooltip, but it does make a difference in D2Stats. The combination of easy resummoning, high minion count, decent life, and two useful effects on the aura, and the ability to attain different supporting options on other summons and mercenaries make the Skeletal Flayer an easy top pick as a support.

For you non-summoners out there, the affix provided by the Relic will improve non-summon sources of Demon Blood Aura with its effect. For example, you could socket it in a piece of gear on your mercenary's Khazra Plate, since non-summoners won't have the stats necessary for convenient upkeep of non-scaled Skeletal Flayers.

The Relic is the best source of this summon. The Assassin shield is too niche to be used as Assassins have no native support for summoner builds and the Banded Plate is equally unlikely to be used by Sorceresses, even by Summoner Sorceresses.

► Void Archon

Void Archon
Role: Support

Damage: Very Low
Life: Medium - High
Mana Cost: High

Maximum MKinion count: 1
Sources:

Relic (Void Archon)

Relic
Required Level: 75
+(15 to 26) to Void Archon
+(11 to 15)% to Summoned Minion Resistances
(2 to 4)% to Vitality

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Satanic Mantra

Satanic Mantra
(Necromancer Summoner Set)

Till We Have Heaven In Sight
Through Death's Veil
Lend Me Thy Light
Archangel Dark Angel

Set Bonus with 2 or more set items:
+75% to Summoned Minion Life
+200% to Summoned Minion Attack Rating

Set Bonus with 3 or more set items:
+2 to Necromancer Skill Levels
+50% to Summoned Minion Damage

Set Bonus with complete set:
+3 to Necromancer Skill Levels
+1 to Maximum Necromancer Minions
+25 to Void Archon
+17 to Dark Power
+100% to Summoned Minion Life
+50% to Summoned Minion Damage

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Rusalka

Rusalka
Amazon Spears
'ElBerBerOhm'
Runeword Level: 78
10% Chance to cast level 32 Punisher Barrage on Melee Attack
30% Chance to cast level 60 Hunting Banshee on Kill
15% Hit Recovery
+(90 to 110) to Minimum Damage
+(141 to 171)% Enhanced Damage
+(71 to 100)% to Cold Spell Damage
-40% to Enemy Cold Resistance
+(71 to 100)% to Poison Spell Damage
-40% to Enemy Poison Resistance
+13 to Void Archon
Slow Target 10%
+(73 to 98) to all Attributes

Rating: A

Review: The Void Archon is a summon with balanced base stats and growths, aside from its mana cost. Its life pool and low minion count mean that it cannot stand up to direct attacks against more difficult Uber bosses for prolonged periods of time, but it won’t need to be constantly resummoned against lesser enemies.

Its real strength lies in its Warp Field aura. It starts with a base 25% reduction to Enemy Damage and 19% Reduced Enemy Attack Speed. With proper scaling, a summoner can inflict 45% or higher reduced enemy attack speed. Many enemies actually use attack speed modifiers for what would normally appear to be casting animations, which reduces the value of “reduced Cast Speed” from skills like Force Blast and increases the utility of reduced enemy attack speed. The Warp Field aura is slightly less than 1 screen large and anything affected by it will have an obvious yellow tint.

The enemy damage reduction only applies to attacks. As a general rule, damage reductions or increases affect Weapon Damage Modifier-related skills (WDM). This includes Damage against Enemy Types (% Damage increase against Demons or Undead) and reduced damage effects such as Warp Field aura. Warp Field aura is also available from the Celestial Sigil, a Unique Amulet dropped by Samael, the Herald of the End. Finally, Void Archons are a desirable reanimate on crafted gear or the Kabraxis charm + trophy effect.

The Relic is an ideal source of Void Archon as it requires the least gear commitment to be used. The Satanic Mantra set isn’t horrible for Necromancers, but Necromancers could definitely do better and tend to prefer the Lazarus set if they were to have a set of choice due to the latter’s sheer numerical superiority. Finally, the Rusalka runeword is not useful to most Amazon players and should not be considered for use.

In high end content like the Dimensional Labyrinth, the effect of Warp Field aura applies at half effectiveness. Regardless, the Void Archon is a solid support to bring along.

► Rampagor

Rampagor
Role: Tank

Damage: Low
Life: Medium - High
Mana Cost: Low

Maximum minion count: 6
Sources:

Relic (Rampagor)

Rating: B

Review: Large purple lads who some have affectionately termed “RAMRANCHAGORS”. Currently, you may only summon them through the Relic, so you’ll always have at least 7 of them despite the default maximum minion count being 6 due to the Relic’s affix effect. This is correctly reflected on the skill's tooltip, unlike Hoplites.

As tanks, they have a textbook level of performance. They have pretty good health but aren’t Jinns or Iron Golem. They can definitely bolster your meatshield count if you’re lacking in that department. You’ll still need levels and minion life as usual to make them reach their full potential. Offensively, they have virtually no capabilities due to their actual attacks hitting like wet noodles and their on-hit poison effect being similarly useless. Their large hitboxes seem to cause them to die and take more hits than their fellow summon, without triggering the stationary minion collision issue.

Sometimes, you just can’t have enough meatshields. I would say they are roughly comparable to Defender Spirits; they offer less offensive and clearing utility than Defender Spirits but are more defensive. They would be highly useful to a Necromancer who might only have a few Blood Skeletons, Veil King, and some Hawks who can’t even take hits for them.

► Lamia

Lamia
Role: Tank / Support

Damage: Low
Life: Medium - High
Mana Cost: Medium - High

Maximum Minion Count: 9
Sources:

Relic (Lamia)

Rating: B

Review: Lamia is surprising in many respects. Firstly, the stated effect of Doom on the tooltip appears to be incorrect, as the damage increase is definitely more than just Target Takes 1 Additional Damage. The Lamias themselves appear to deal incredibly low damage on their tooltip, but they actually went through the DPS tests (see videos below) far faster than one would expect. Of course, they don’t deal enough damage or attack more than 1 target at once to really deal any damage. Finally, Lamias have quite a bit of health, which makes them easy to use while farming. Similar to Rampagors, the only source of this minion is the Relic and the tooltip accurately reflects the minion count, so you’ll always have at least 10 of them.

Lamias apply Doom in a small area of effect on attack. They move quickly and apply a small amount of Slow Target that can manage to reach the Uber slow cap (25%) and help a little against regular enemies who would be better served by a 75% Slow. Their AI tends to cause them to favor a single target and not spread out when you warp, which means that it’s better to just walk along and have the Lamias warp on their own accord. After the initial target dies, the Lamias will spread out and apply Doom more evenly.

Lamia’s Slow Target and curse effect, while useful, compete directly with other sources of Slow Target and other curses. As such, they might be called the top of their tier: they aren’t unrivaled in utility and they’re not useful for every build, but what they can be quite good given the right scaling.

[abwhorent]

► Glowing Fungus

Glowing Fungus
Role: DPS

Damage: Medium - High
Life: Medium
Mana Cost: Medium

Maximum Minion Count: 5
Sources:

Relic (Summon Glowing Fungus)

Relic
Required Level: 75
+(9 to 16) to Summon Glowing Fungus
Maximum Lightning Resist +1%
Gain Exodia while Carrying All Summon Trio Relics
(Summon Frostwalker - Summon Glowing Fungus - Summon Sinner)
Exodia
Summon One Extra Minion With Each Cast
+100% to Summoned Minion Damage
+100% to Summoned Minion Attack Rating
+666 to Life

| |

Amanita

Amanita
Helms
'VenAmn'
Runeword Level: 100
3% Chance to cast level 1 Time Wave on Melee Attack
+(200 to 300) to Attack Rating
-(21 to 25)% to Enemy Poison Resistance
+(2 to 5) to Amatoxin
(3 to 5)% Chance of Crushing Blow
Attacker Flees after Striking 20%
+(115 to 143)% Enhanced Defense
+(30 to 50) to Vitality
Poison Resist +25%

Rating: B

Review: Glowing Fungus is part of an elemental trio of summons who share unique scaling behavior, the other two being

Relic (Summon Avalanche)

and

Relic (Summon Sinner)

Relic
Required Level: 75
+(9 to 16) to Summon Sinner
Maximum Fire Resist +1%
Gain Exodia while Carrying All Summon Trio Relics
(Summon Frostwalker - Summon Glowing Fungus - Summon Sinner)
Exodia
Summon One Extra Minion With Each Cast
+100% to Summoned Minion Damage
+100% to Summoned Minion Attack Rating
+666 to Life

. They are a trio of spellcasters who effectively receive halved scaling on Minion Damage bonuses, as their Minion Spell Damage tooltip is half of the summoner's Minion Damage (plus another unknown component). In exchange, they also receive 100% of the caster's calculated Synergy stat. For more details on synergy, check out Mort's guide on How Spell Damage is Calculated. Keep in mind that the summoner's Spell Damage has no effect on the summons: Only Minion Damage (at halved effectiveness) and Synergy (Energy, Energy Factor, or Strength and Strength Factor) will affect these minions. These minions all use attack speed to calculate the speed of their casting animations, similar to most enemies. See the Mechanics section above for more details on that. All of these minions grant 1-2% Maximum Resistance of their respective element on the Relic itself, making the Relic desirable for non-summoners. All of these minions have Life pools that are too low to take much damage, so you'll have to recast them constantly even with tanks helping them out. As elemental spellcasters, keep in mind that these minions' damage is reduced by enemy resistances; the summoner's resistance piercing has no effect on these minions' damage.

Glowing Fungi cast Lightning Barrage, which is a spreading nova of lightning projectiles similar to the impact component of Stormclash (an overlapping set of lightning projectiles with minimal next-delay, causing multiple powerful hits), centered on the caster. As such, it works best against stationary singular targets and isn't too effective against teleporting enemies. It can be a decent addition to clearing, but it's squishy and needs to be in melee range to cast its spell. It is unknown what scales the level of the minion's Lightning Barrage, nor if this changes the damage of the spell. As shown in the demonstrations below, the damage output of Glowing Fungus with only half of the scaling potential (Minion Damage only, no synergy) and no resistance piercing is enough to nearly instantly melt some enemies. With Mythal (possibly from

Doomguard

)and 100% Synergy cap, Glowing Fungi seem strong enough to have Uber farming potential. However, this would be an extremely gimmicky build to attempt and would likely require the summoner to be a Necromancer who also casts in tandem with his summons via the use of

The Sentinel's Sorrow

The Sentinel's Sorrow
Gargoyle Head (Sacred)
Defense: (3333 - 3750) to (3957 - 4452)
Chance to Block: 2%
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Dexterity: 443
Item Level: 120
-1 to Maximum Totems
Minion Damage Also Increases Your Spell Damage at 50% Efficiency
+(3 to 4) to Necromancer Skill Levels
-15% to Enemy Elemental Resistances
+(140 to 170)% Enhanced Defense
+(50 to 100) Life Regenerated per Second
Regenerate Mana +15%
Elemental Resists -30%
Socketed (4)

. This summoner could then use the other members of the elemental trio for clearing purposes.

As far as other sources of this minion are concerned, Amanita is a poison attacker helmet used for Amatoxin and has nothing to do with summoners, so I cannot recommend using the helmet unless you want to test the minion out. On a normal summoner build, these summons would likely be little more than a curiosity.

► Sinner

Sinner
Role: DPS

Damage: Low - Medium
Life: Medium
Mana Cost: Medium

Maximum Minion Count: 5
Sources:

Relic (Summon Sinner)

Relic
Required Level: 75
+(9 to 16) to Summon Sinner
Maximum Fire Resist +1%
Gain Exodia while Carrying All Summon Trio Relics
(Summon Frostwalker - Summon Glowing Fungus - Summon Sinner)
Exodia
Summon One Extra Minion With Each Cast
+100% to Summoned Minion Damage
+100% to Summoned Minion Attack Rating
+666 to Life

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Rathma's Blessing

Rathma's Blessing
Circlets
'OrtGlaThulGla'
Runeword Level: 100
+(2 to 3) to All Skills
+50% to Summoned Minion Life
+25% to Summoned Minion Damage
+50% to Summoned Minion Resistances
Lightning Resist +25%
Cold Resist +50%
+10 Cold Absorb
(15 to 20)% Magic Find

| |

Cambion

Cambion
Amazon Helms
'RalSur'
Runeword Level: 75
+2 to Amazon Skill Levels
+(32 to 37) to Orb of Annihilation
Maximum Mana +(4 to 7)%
Regenerate Mana +(15 to 20)%
Fire Resist +25%
Fire Absorb 2%
Lightning Absorb 2%
Cold Absorb 2%
Poison Length Reduced by 50%
Elemental/Magic Damage Reduced by (5 to 10)
+(21 to 30) Life after each Kill

Rating: C

Review: Sinner is part of an elemental trio of summons who share unique scaling behavior, the other two being

Relic (Summon Avalanche)

and

Relic (Summon Glowing Fungus)

Relic
Required Level: 75
+(9 to 16) to Summon Glowing Fungus
Maximum Lightning Resist +1%
Gain Exodia while Carrying All Summon Trio Relics
(Summon Frostwalker - Summon Glowing Fungus - Summon Sinner)
Exodia
Summon One Extra Minion With Each Cast
+100% to Summoned Minion Damage
+100% to Summoned Minion Attack Rating
+666 to Life

. They are a trio of spellcasters who effectively receive halved scaling on Minion Damage bonuses, as their Minion Spell Damage tooltip is half of the summoner's Minion Damage (plus another unknown component). In exchange, they also receive 100% of the caster's calculated Synergy stat. For more details on synergy, check out Mort's guide on How Spell Damage is Calculated. Keep in mind that the summoner's Spell Damage has no effect on the summons: Only Minion Damage (at halved effectiveness) and Synergy (Energy, Energy Factor, or Strength and Strength Factor) will affect these minions. These minions all use attack speed to calculate the speed of their casting animations, similar to most enemies. See the Mechanics section above for more details on that. All of these minions grant 1-2% Maximum Resistance of their respective element on the Relic itself, making the Relic desirable for non-summoners. All of these minions have Life pools that are too low to take much damage, so you'll have to recast them constantly even with tanks helping them out. As elemental spellcasters, keep in mind that these minions' damage is reduced by enemy resistances; the summoner's resistance piercing has no effect on these minions' damage.
Sinners cast Apocalypse, which hits every enemy within 16 yards of the caster (somewhat less than 1 screen). It has no enemy targeting limit, so it works best for clearing packs of monsters but fares poorly against Uber bosses. It is unknown what scales the level of the minion's Apocalypse, nor if this increases the damage of the spell. As shown in the demonstrations below, Sinners have slightly more damage than Avalanches, but both are still difficult to use as a normal summoner with no investment into Synergy stats and full investment into Minion Damage. They could have some potential if used in the build mentioned in the Glowing Fungus section, but are otherwise unusable.

As far as other sources of this minion are concerned, Rathma's Blessing is a solid Summoner helmet that can be used without regard for Summon Sinner, although you'll want to roll it for +3 to all Skills. Cambion is worthless, even for Unsummonzons, since Sinners don't inherit your Fire Pierce or Spell Damage. If you seriously intend to use Sinners for clearing purposes, I would recommend this helmet to increase their damage. On a normal summoner build, these summons would likely be little more than a curiosity.

► Avalanche

Avalanche
Role: DPS

Damage: Low
Life: Medium
Mana Cost: Medium

Maximum Minion Count: 5
Sources:

Relic (Summon Avalanche)

| |

Jokulmorder

Rating: D

Review: (Summon) Avalanche is part of an elemental trio of summons who share unique scaling behavior, the other two being

Relic (Summon Sinner)

Relic
Required Level: 75
+(9 to 16) to Summon Sinner
Maximum Fire Resist +1%
Gain Exodia while Carrying All Summon Trio Relics
(Summon Frostwalker - Summon Glowing Fungus - Summon Sinner)
Exodia
Summon One Extra Minion With Each Cast
+100% to Summoned Minion Damage
+100% to Summoned Minion Attack Rating
+666 to Life

and

Relic (Summon Glowing Fungus)

Relic
Required Level: 75
+(9 to 16) to Summon Glowing Fungus
Maximum Lightning Resist +1%
Gain Exodia while Carrying All Summon Trio Relics
(Summon Frostwalker - Summon Glowing Fungus - Summon Sinner)
Exodia
Summon One Extra Minion With Each Cast
+100% to Summoned Minion Damage
+100% to Summoned Minion Attack Rating
+666 to Life

. They are a trio of spellcasters who effectively receive halved scaling on Minion Damage bonuses, as their Minion Spell Damage tooltip is half of the summoner's Minion Damage (plus another unknown component). In exchange, they also receive 100% of the caster's calculated Synergy stat. For more details on synergy, check out Mort's guide on How Spell Damage is Calculated. Keep in mind that the summoner's Spell Damage has no effect on the summons: Only Minion Damage (at halved effectiveness) and Synergy (Energy, Energy Factor, or Strength and Strength Factor) will affect these minions. These minions all use attack speed to calculate the speed of their casting animations, similar to most enemies. See the Mechanics section above for more details on that. All of these minions grant 1-2% Maximum Resistance of their respective element on the Relic itself, making the Relic desirable for non-summoners. All of these minions have Life pools that are too low to take much damage, so you'll have to recast them constantly even with tanks helping them out. As elemental spellcasters, keep in mind that these minions' damage is reduced by enemy resistances; the summoner's resistance piercing has no effect on these minions' damage.

Avalanches cast Ice Bolt Nova, which shoots out a wave of piercing Ice Bolts. It is unknown if the minion variant scales damage from Cold Resistance as the player's Ice Bolt Nova does. it works best for clearing packs of monsters but fares poorly against Uber bosses. It is unknown what scales the level of the minion's Ice Bolt Nova, nor if this increases the damage of the spell. As shown in the demonstrations below, Avalanches have extremely low damage and cannot even clear normal enemies, let alone Cold Resistant enemies or Uber bosses. They could have some potential if used in the build mentioned in the Glowing Fungus section, but are otherwise unusable and are inferior to Sinners.

Avalanches have one final disadvantage that solidly lands them in the lowest rating tier. As discussed in the Mechanics section above, Avalanches have a collision model that is large enough to prevent your minions from moving after you warp. Minions like these prevent your melee-range minions from spreading out and attacking nearby enemies or screening you against projectiles. As such, their low damage and huge collision hitbox make this minion incredibly detrimental.

As far as other sources of this minion are concerned,

Jokulmorder

is one of a few weapon options for early-game Paladin Summoners. This weapon does not scale into the mid-game or end-game at all. On a normal summoner build, these summons would be an outright hindrance and I cannot recommend them, despite how awesome Ice Bolt Nova would conceptually be as a clearing spell available to summoners.

► Blade Spirit variant

Blade Spirits (2)
Role: Tank

Damage: Medium
Life: Medium
Mana Cost: Medium

Maximum Minion Count: 9
Sources:

Alnair

Alnair
Saber (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: 123 to 126
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 443
Item Level: 120
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Strength)%
You Cannot Summon Blade Spirits Directly
40% Chance to cast level 50 Blade Spirits on Melee Attack
+(2 to 3) to All Skills
Ignore Target's Defense
+200% Enhanced Damage
+1 to Blade Spirits
Enhanced Weapon Damage +150%
+(60 to 75)% to Summoned Minion Life
+(20 to 25)% to Summoned Minion Resistances
100% Bonus to Defense
Socketed (3)

Rating: D

Review:
Since patch 1.7, Alnair has almost no summoner-related stats. As such, the weapon is far worse for summoners and I cannot recommend it or the summon attached to it.

Strangely enough, the Blade Spirits summon has two variants: the innate Sorceress version and an oskill version granted exclusively through Alnair. It is unknown whether the Alnair variants benefit from Sorceress passives as the innate ones do. For simplicity's sake, I will refer to the Alnair variant as "Blade Spirits (2)" henceforth. Blade Spirits (2) has a 20 second cooldown when summoned manually, but no cooldown when summoned through the Alnair melee attack proc. The proc also summons Blade Spirits (2) at a higher level, so it is recommended to summon Blade Spirits (2) through the Alnair proc. Actually, it's unknown if Alnair actually summons Blade Spirits (2) through its proc or if it just summons regular Blade Spirits, but why add Blade Spirits (2) to the item itself if the proc doesn't even summon them? Regardless, level 50 Blade Spirits aren't bad.

Blade Spirits (2) shares its minion limit with Blade Spirits, so you cannot have twice as many Blade Spirits as normal. They also have somewhat different scaling as minions. Apart from that, they share the same AI, modifiers, and attack proc of Bladestorm on Hit.

The tier rating of Blade Spirits hinges heavily on the question of whether they receive Sorceress passive skill benefits or not. On Necromancer or Barbarian, who would prefer to stay well away from melee range and cannot afford to waste time on resummoning through proccing a 40% on-hit effect, I cannot recommend the use of Alnair or its access to Blade Spirits (2). The weapon is a solid choice for Paladin Summoners since Colosseum debuff reduces enemy Defense and Paladins don't have the Minion damage weapon options that Barbarians and Necromancers do. Thus, Blade Spirits (2) seem like they would potentially perform best on Sorceress but only if they received Sorceress passive buffs. But even then, Sorceress has innate access to Blade Spirits, so using Alnair would just be a level-saving measure to allow investment into passives or more Familiar levels for a Sorceress Summoner.

Outside of this unknown build possibility, Blade Spirits (2) are a mediocre tank with mediocre life and damage scaling, but a useful area of effect attack proc. Resummoning them is irritating and access to them is limited to the Alnair weapon. All of these factors make this summon difficult to use and probably inferior to regular Blade Spirits.

► Ice Elemental

Ice Elemental
Role: Tank / Support

Damage: Low
Life: Medium - High
Mana Cost: Low

Maximum Minion Count: 5
Sources: Innate (Sorceress) | |

Relic (Ice Elementals)

Relic
Required Level: 75
+1 Extra Ice Elemental
+(15 to 32) to Ice Elementals
+(31 to 40)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+1000 Defense

| |

Gravetalon

Gravetalon
Clasped Orb (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: 39 to 41
(Sorceress Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Dexterity: 188
Item Level: 105
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Dexterity)%
You Cannot Summon Ice Elementals Directly
20% Chance to cast level 35 Ice Elementals on Kill
+(5 to 6) to Sorceress Skill Levels
+25% Bonus to Poison Skill Duration
-(25 to 30)% to Enemy Cold Resistance
-(25 to 30)% to Enemy Poison Resistance
+1 to Ice Elementals
Poison Length Reduced by 50%
33% Curse Length Reduction
Cannot Be Frozen
Socketed (2)

| |

Frozen Heart

Frozen Heart
Lamellar Armor (Sacred)
Defense: 7746 to 8400
(Sorceress Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Dexterity: 499
Item Level: 120
+(3 to 4) to Sorceress Skill Levels
+(9 to 12) to Ice Elementals (Sorceress Only)
+(50 to 75)% to Summoned Minion Life
+(50 to 75)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(25 to 30)% to Summoned Minion Resistances
+200% Enhanced Defense
Physical Resist 10%
100% Bonus to Defense
Socketed (6)

Rating: B

Review: Ice Elementals are a useful Sorceress summon that grant the Frost Essence aura, which gives quite a smattering of useful stats. It grants 20% to Total Character Defense, 5% to Maximum Cold Resistance, and 50% of Minion Damage added as Cold Spell Damage (up to a cap of 100% added Cold Spell Damage). The aura is not scaled by soft or base levels in any way, so 1 point is quite alright. The aura appears to have a range of ~16 yards and it does apply to allied players, though it is unknown whether the aura applies to other summons or reanimates. The summon itself has melee attacks which deal physical damage, but it also casts Glacial Nova periodically (has an internal cooldown, expanding wave that freezes on-screen freeze-susceptible enemies) and Ice Lance at a distance.

Frost Essence Aura gives generally useful stats, but there are definitely caveats. Unlike Familiar, Ice Elementals can be killed (especially with no investment into Minion Stats). In endgame content like the Dimensional Labyrinth, a weak Ice Elemental dying could result in a loss of 5% maximum Cold Resistance and a sudden damage spike from a Colossal Tunneler's Hoarfrost or an Observer's Frozen Sphere. Things like that tend to result in death, which is why relying on an unscaled Ice Elemental isn't the best move in content where summons are liable to be killed. Character defense is not always something that one's allies would find useful (namely, users of Ecstatic Frenzy), but the Sorceress Cold passive tree grants flat Defense, which means that the aura's effect is usually useful on its native class. Finally, 200% Minion Damage isn't something that people tend to have off-hand on non-summoners. Users of Ice Bolt Nova through the

Zann Esu's Secrets

Zann Esu's Secrets
(Sorceress Cold Set)

Zann Esu's Binding Circle
Zann Esu's Charm
Zann Esu's Robes
Zann Esu's Rune Loop

Set Bonus with 2 or more set items:
1% Base Block Chance
40% Bonus to Defense

Set Bonus with 3 or more set items:
+1 to Raven Heart
+100% to Summoned Minion Life

Set Bonus with complete set:
-30% to Enemy Cold Resistance
+100% to Summoned Minion Life
Elemental Resists +75%
Physical Resist 35%
+100 Life after each Kill

set will have a little bit, but most people only have a smidgen of minion damage from their charms. The stat is mostly there to provide a bit of itemization on Jewels or crafted pieces of gear.

Ice Elementals are also quite tanky when invested into, but the above reasons make them a situationally useful summon with strong potential to be borderline next-tier that just get held back by the various conditions attached to their useful stats.

► Blade Spirit

Blade Spirit
Role: DPS / Tank
Maximum minion count: 9
Sources: Innate (Sorceress) | |

Relic (Blade Spirits)

Rating: N/A

Review: Unfortunately, I don't have a dedicated Summon Sorceress so I can't comment on these thoroughly. Since they benefit from Sorceress passives, which are heavily defensive, they're likely quite good as tanks even with 1 level of investment and a normal amount of Summoner investment.
As an oskill from the Relic, I can't really recommend them. They're too squishy and deal pretty mediocre damage.

► Fire Elemental

Fire Elemental
Role: DPS / Tank
Maximum minion count: 15
Sources: Innate (Amazon) | |

Inti

Rating: N/A

Review: Unfortunately, I don't have a dedicated Unsummonzon so I can't comment on these thoroughly.

As for summoners who aren't Unsummonzon? Since you can't ever scale up the chance of Fire Cannonade procs or summon more Fire Elementals per cast, it can feel quite clunky when the procs just refuse to happen. I wouldn't recommend using these on anyone but Unsummonzon since you need

Vision of the Furies

Vision of the Furies
Athulua's Hand (Sacred)
Defense: 2236 to 2331
Chance to Block: 4%
(Amazon Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Dexterity: 349
Item Level: 105
Fire Elementals Inherit Your Energy and Spell Focus
+25% Bonus Elemental Damage to Bloodlust
+75 Spell Focus
25% Cast Speed
0.375% to Fire Spell Damage (Based on Character Level)
+1000 Defense
(21 to 25)% to Vitality
10% to Energy
Physical Damage Reduced by 100
Socketed (4)

and

The Redeemer

The Redeemer
Grand Scepter (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: 36 to 40
Required Level: 100
Required Dexterity: 449
Item Level: 120
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Dexterity)%
Fire Elementals Inherit Your Fire Spell Damage
5% Chance to cast level 36 Lava Pit on Death Blow
+(3 to 4) to Amazon Skill Levels
25% Cast Speed
+50% Damage to Undead
+(20 to 30)% to Fire Spell Damage
-(20 to 25)% to Enemy Fire Resistance
+(51 to 60) to Energy
+(50 to 75) Life after each Kill
2% Reanimate as: Random Monster
Socketed (3)

to get damage. The actual melee attacks of Fire Elementals are less than useless. The Relic itself has an insanely useful effect for Unsummonzon.

But using the Relic or the other sources of Fire Elementals on other classes? They might serve as tanks. The Inti Runeword definitely isn't worthwhile. You get a lot of them and they have a less than stellar amount of life, and that's about it. You won't get any damage out of Fire Cannonade as anyone but Unsummonzon.

► Spirit of Vengeance

Spirit of Vengeance
Role: Support
Maximum Minion Count: 1
Sources: Innate (Amazon)
Rating: B

Review: Aura effect: Avenging Aura (+25% maximum Life), scales 3% Fire/Magic/Physical Spell Damage per slvl, creates reanimates constantly. Reanimate creation by Spirit of Vengeance (notably, does not require corpses even though it creates a corpse destruction visual effect) can be disabled via casting it with Ecstatic Frenzy enabled.

Pretty useful for most Amazons, though it has stiff competition from Paragon. If you're not using Perfect gems in your sockets, then you would definitely use this. As it is unavailable to most Summoners, not much to say here.

► Blood Skeleton

Blood Skeleton
Role: DPS / Tank / Support

Damage: High
Life: High
Mana Cost: Medium - High

Maximum Minion Count: Unknown
Sources: Innate (Necromancer) | |

Relic (Blood Skeleton)

Relic
Required Level: 75
Blood Skeleton: +5 to Grim Vision Aura
+(13 to 25) to Blood Skeleton
+(5 to 10)% to Summoned Minion Resistances

Rating: A

Review: The humble Blood Skeleton is an immensely useful summon that fills basically every role, depending on what class is using it and how it is built and invested into. At the very least, it can serve as a support due to its Grim Vision aura, which grants Physical Damage (EWD%) and Crushing Blow. I would not recommend this buff (from the Relic) on anyone but a Summoner due to the limited amount of skeletons (4 base) and the likely low amount of Life they would each have without Summoner stats, unless you really like upkeeping your buffs or can kill everything before the enemies get to kill your squishy skeletons (unlikely in the most desirable farming spots). As a support from the Relic, I would say that this rates more lowly than other supports and tanks without Necromancer scaling.

When a few levels are invested into Blood Skeleton, their minion count will grow and they can start serving as tanks for the Necromancer. They simultaneously buff and serve as distractions to a Necromancer who might sit back and cast Night Hawks. With Veil King's increased Life synergy, Blood Skeletons will become quite tanky and are basically a summoner's bread and butter.

In terms of damage dealing and farm potential, Blood Skeletons possess an Area Attack and enough damage and numbers when leveled on Necromancer to be a powerful damage source near the level of Abyss Knights, being brought down a tad by being melee. They will die in the highest levels of content (Dimensional Labyrinth) and won't have complete DPS uptime, but they will stomp Fauztinville and below. They are an essential tank for a Hawk Necromancer, as Veil King can't screen all of the projectiles in Fauztinville for you.

The Relic is a great min-max on any Necromancer (+4 Grim Vision levels = 8% CB and 50% Physical Damage) and a fine addition to any other physical attacker Summoner.

► Night Hawk

Night Hawk
Role: DPS

Damage: Very High
Life: N/A
Mana Cost: High

Maximum Minion Count: Unknown
Sources: Innate (Necromancer) | |

Relic (Night Hawks)

Relic
Required Level: 75
+3 Extra Night Hawks
+(15 to 30) to Night Hawks
+(11 to 20)% to Summoned Minion Damage

Rating: S

Review: Night Hawks are a game-changing Necromancer summon due to their mechanics. They have an Area Attack and die after attacking. They cannot be killed by anything but their own suicidal attacks, although they can be targeted by enemies such as Howling Spirits. They gain the benefits of both Grim Vision aura and Evocation aura as their attacks are physical and melee. Their tooltip states "Hits Multiple Times" but it is unclear just how many times they hit and thus by what amount the tooltip ought to be multiplied to find the true damage of each Hawk. The "pack size" modifier refers to how many Hawks are summoned upon one cast. Thus, I recommend against the

Soulsplitter

Soulsplitter
Coronet (Sacred)
Defense: 605 to 684
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Dexterity: 327
Item Level: 120
Summon One Extra Necromancer Minion With Each Cast
+3 to Necromancer Skill Levels
-20% to Enemy Lightning Resistance
-20% to Enemy Cold Resistance
+(40 to 50)% to Summoned Minion Life
+(25 to 30)% to Summoned Minion Resistances
Maximum Mana +20%
Socketed (4)

helmet, as the levels and damage will come with time and there are better Minion helmets out there like

Rathma's Blessing

Rathma's Blessing
Circlets
'OrtGlaThulGla'
Runeword Level: 100
+(2 to 3) to All Skills
+50% to Summoned Minion Life
+25% to Summoned Minion Damage
+50% to Summoned Minion Resistances
Lightning Resist +25%
Cold Resist +50%
+10 Cold Absorb
(15 to 20)% Magic Find

or

Lazarus’ Surplice Cap

.

Because they cannot be targeted and die after a single attack, Hawk Summoners could be likened to ranged spellcasters and are able to do much of the content that those builds can do. Since Hawks die after an attack and can be summoned directly onto their target, they can do Ubers that require fine control that summons typically lack or Ubers that punish having multiple available targets. It also helps that Hawks deal some of the best damage of any summon, making them very suitable for bossing. Their greatest downside, perhaps, would be in needing to be constantly resummoned and having a relatively short leash radius. Hawks can hardly hit anything beyond 12 meters from the summoner because their AI will cause them to return to the summoner should a Hawk stray that far. They can still hit around corners and such, but their effective range can be inconvenient.

As such, Hawks are great at killing small packs of strong monsters or Uber bosses, but you would hate to clear the entirety of Fauztinville or any other farmable zone with summoned Hawks alone. If you prefer a more active playstyle as a summoner, you can summon Hawks while your other summons provide damage in the background.

The Relic is an okay min-max for Necromancers but is abjectly worthless on other classes. The Relic mod increases the maximum number of Hawks rather than the amount summoned at once. The mod can be stacked, but you can only get one skill level bonus from all Hawk relics anyways, so there's no point beyond a single Relic for the +3 levels. See the video demo below.

► Abyss Knight

Abyss Knight
Role: DPS / Tank

Damage: High
Life: High
Mana Cost: High

Maximum minion count: Unknown
Sources: Innate (Necromancer) | |

Relic (Abyss Knight)

Relic
Required Level: 75
+1 Extra Abyss Knight
+(9 to 19) to Abyss Knight
+15% to Summoned Minion Resistances

Rating: A

Review: Placeholder for once I've finished all the Uber boss videos with Necromancer Night Hawk setup.

Much like many other innate summons, I recommend against the Abyss Knight relic on non-Necromancers. The Relic is intended to buff Necromancers who use Abyss Knights rather than to enable their usage on other summoners. You only get 2 Abyss Knights with mediocre damage and no synergies when you slap the Relic onto other summoners, so they're not exactly fantastic.

Since patch 2.1, Abyss Knight has been changed to deal 50% Physical/50% Magical damage rather than converting to elemental damage, meaning that it no longer benefits from Mythal or Jinn. There is an unsummon build variant using

Back to the Abyss

in conjunction with the Chaos Nova passive. I have heard mixed things about this build (given the rarity of the item and the popularity of summoners), but it is essentially a caster scaling from summoner stats, so don't play it if you're seeking a traditional summoner playstyle.

► Iron Golem

Iron Golem
Role: Tank / Support
Maximum minion count: 1
Sources: Innate (Necromancer) | |

Relic (Iron Golem)

Relic
Required Level: 75
+(11 to 21) to Iron Golem
+100% to Summoned Minion Attack Rating
(11 to 15)% Magic Find

Rating: S

Review: Iron Golem may only be summoned by targeting a metallic weapon-slot (weapon or shield) item on the ground. The consumed item cannot be recovered. See D2 docs for what constitutes a metallic item, but it's almost everything past the first few tiers of gear and is usually fairly self-evident. Run a test on a cheap item of the same base if you're not sure if it can become an Iron Golem. Iron Golem persists between sessions but it will disappear if it or its summoner dies, requiring another item to be summoned again. The Iron Golem inherits the stats of the item; It cannot use active skills from the item but will retain procs and any passive effects, such as auras. Reportedly, the weapon's damage has a minimal impact on the Iron Golem's damage. Level requirement has no effect on summoning an Iron Golem, so feel free to slap on as many useful Mystic Orbs as you can on the item. However, I recommend strongly against Unique Mystic Orbs unless you're a madman who plays on Hardcore because it's highly likely you'll lose the Iron Golem and your UMO investment. Because it inherits the stats of the item, Iron Golem (much like a Resurrect) is not affected by the summoner's Minion Resistance stat (as stated on the tooltip).

With its usual Life pool and innate life regeneration, the Iron Golem will always be a peerless tank that will only be done in by the most dangerous content and it's far more likely that a careless summoner will die before it does. Itemization can help to mitigate the resistance issue (To reach resistance cap, you would require 150% Resistance on the item itself, which is unrealistic), which is only really noticeable in the highest tiers of the Dimensional Labyrinth. The Iron Golem can become a support with the right itemization; see the list below for some options. It can even deal respectable damage, although its mechanics give it unimpressive clearspeed relative to Abyss Knights or other dedicated DPS summons. To clarify, Iron Golem will proc "Spike Rush" with every other attack, which creates a piercing nova of physical damage projectile attacks around it. The issue is that Iron Golem is somewhat slow and there's only one of it.

Iron Shard

Iron Shard
Raptor Scythe (Sacred)
Two-Hand Damage: (223 - 280) to (401 - 470)
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 1439
Item Level: 105
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.16 per Strength)%
Ethereal
Mega Impact
When Iron Golem Consumes This Item:
+20% Deadly Strike
+20% Crushing Blow
+160% to Iron Golem Damage
10% Chance to cast level 10 Spike Rush on Melee Attack
Adds (31 to 50)-(201 to 230) Damage
(101 to 150)% Bonus to Attack Rating
+(100 to 140)% Enhanced Damage
+(1001 to 5000) Defense
Decrease Maximum Life -20%
5% Reanimate as: Random Monster
Requirements +250%
Socketed (6)

deserves its own paragraph due to its prominence as dedicated Iron Golem food. See the Iron Shard test video below; keep in mind this video was done without Rathma's Chosen, with 1 base level, and no supporting auras. Basically, you do not need Iron Shard to deal damage or be tanky with Iron Golem, but Iron Shard is cheaper and more accessible than other Sacred Uniques; it'll still boast high tankiness, but if you wanted a pure tank / support, you should've picked a shield instead of a weapon. Iron Shard Golem with no support or modifiers apart from fairly normal Necromancer levels and minion damage can solo some 120 Ubers. With defensive Mystic Orbs on a Shield, Iron Golem's tankiness would be unrivaled.

Here is a list of Iron Golem picks and a description of what they do:

Sangreal

Sangreal
Paladin Shields
'OhmSol'
Runeword Level: 70
Level 1 Demon Blood Aura
-10% Base Block Chance
25% Attack Speed
40% Hit Recovery
+(10 to 15)% to Summoned Minion Life
+33 Defense

- Demon Blood Aura: 20% increased Maximum Life

Mendeln's Companion

Mendeln's Companion
Hexblade (4)
One-Hand Damage: (2 - 3) to (5 - 6)
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 4
Required Dexterity: 27
Item Level: 6
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.13 per Dexterity)%
Level 1 Demon Blood Aura
15% Attack Speed
Stun Attack
+(31 to 50)% Enhanced Damage
(3 to 5)% Chance of Crushing Blow
+(21 to 50) to Life
Socketed (1)
One-Hand Damage: (8 - 9) to (14 - 16)
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 24
Required Dexterity: 53
Item Level: 27
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.13 per Dexterity)%
Level 1 Demon Blood Aura
25% Attack Speed
Stun Attack
+(61 to 80)% Enhanced Damage
(6 to 8)% Chance of Crushing Blow
+(81 to 110) to Life
Socketed (2)
One-Hand Damage: (21 - 23) to (38 - 42)
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 45
Required Dexterity: 114
Item Level: 49
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.13 per Dexterity)%
Level 1 Demon Blood Aura
35% Attack Speed
Stun Attack
+(91 to 110)% Enhanced Damage
(9 to 10)% Chance of Crushing Blow
+(141 to 170) to Life
Socketed (2)
One-Hand Damage: (28 - 31) to (53 - 57)
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 55
Required Dexterity: 233
Item Level: 86
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.13 per Dexterity)%
Level 1 Demon Blood Aura
45% Attack Speed
Stun Attack
+(121 to 140)% Enhanced Damage
(11 to 12)% Chance of Crushing Blow
+(171 to 200) to Life
Socketed (3)

- Demon Blood Aura: 20% increased Maximum Life

Na-Krul's Spine

Na-Krul's Spine
Naginata (4)
Two-Hand Damage: (22 - 25) to (29 - 36)
(Assassin Only)
Required Level: 6
Required Dexterity: 58
Item Level: 9
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.15 per Dexterity)%
Area Effect Attack
20% Chance to cast level 4 Flamefront on Melee Attack
5% Chance to cast level 2 Bloodlust on Melee Attack
+6% Bonus Damage to Bloodlust
15% Attack Speed
Adds (8 to 10)-(13 to 20) Damage
+(35 to 40)% Enhanced Damage
Elemental Resists +(21 to 25)%
Physical Resist (3 to 5)%
Socketed (2)
Two-Hand Damage: (74 - 84) to (91 - 106)
(Assassin Only)
Required Level: 26
Required Dexterity: 95
Item Level: 29
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.15 per Dexterity)%
Area Effect Attack
30% Chance to cast level 12 Flamefront on Melee Attack
7% Chance to cast level 8 Bloodlust on Melee Attack
+12% Bonus Damage to Bloodlust
25% Attack Speed
Adds (13 to 15)-(28 to 35) Damage
+(81 to 103)% Enhanced Damage
Elemental Resists +(31 to 35)%
Physical Resist (9 to 11)%
Socketed (4)
Two-Hand Damage: (194 - 214) to (221 - 246)
(Assassin Only)
Required Level: 47
Required Dexterity: 192
Item Level: 51
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.15 per Dexterity)%
Area Effect Attack
40% Chance to cast level 20 Flamefront on Melee Attack
9% Chance to cast level 14 Bloodlust on Melee Attack
+18% Bonus Damage to Bloodlust
35% Attack Speed
Adds (18 to 20)-(43 to 50) Damage
+(126 to 149)% Enhanced Damage
Elemental Resists +(41 to 45)%
Physical Resist (15 to 17)%
Socketed (5)
Two-Hand Damage: (255 - 277) to (290 - 320)
(Assassin Only)
Required Level: 57
Required Dexterity: 382
Item Level: 90
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.15 per Dexterity)%
Area Effect Attack
45% Chance to cast level 24 Flamefront on Melee Attack
10% Chance to cast level 17 Bloodlust on Melee Attack
+24% Bonus Damage to Bloodlust
40% Attack Speed
Adds (21 to 23)-(51 to 60) Damage
+(149 to 171)% Enhanced Damage
Elemental Resists +(46 to 50)%
Physical Resist (18 to 20)%
Socketed (6)

- Bloodlust: +EWD% and Elemental Spell Damage buff

Dreamswayer

Dreamswayer
War Scepter (4)
One-Hand Damage: (9 - 11) to (17 - 22)
Required Level: 7
Required Dexterity: 64
Item Level: 12
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Dexterity)%
+1 to Amazon Skill Levels
15% Attack Speed
Adds (2 to 3)-(4 to 8) Damage
+50% Damage to Undead
14% Life stolen per Hit
-(4 to 8)% to Enemy Lightning Resistance
+(31 to 40)% Enhanced Damage
Enhanced Weapon Damage +10%
Socketed (2)
One-Hand Damage: (31 - 36) to (45 - 55)
Required Level: 26
Required Dexterity: 98
Item Level: 29
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Dexterity)%
+(1 to 2) to Amazon Skill Levels
25% Attack Speed
Adds (7 to 9)-(13 to 19) Damage
+50% Damage to Undead
16% Life stolen per Hit
-(8 to 12)% to Enemy Lightning Resistance
+(61 to 80)% Enhanced Damage
Enhanced Weapon Damage +25%
Socketed (4)
One-Hand Damage: (62 - 69) to (97 - 110)
Required Level: 44
Required Dexterity: 195
Item Level: 49
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Dexterity)%
+2 to Amazon Skill Levels
35% Attack Speed
Adds (14 to 17)-(27 to 33) Damage
+50% Damage to Undead
18% Life stolen per Hit
-(12 to 18)% to Enemy Lightning Resistance
+(101 to 120)% Enhanced Damage
Enhanced Weapon Damage +50%
Socketed (5)
One-Hand Damage: (88 - 96) to (131 - 145)
Required Level: 54
Required Dexterity: 387
Item Level: 85
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Dexterity)%
+(2 to 3) to Amazon Skill Levels
40% Attack Speed
Adds (18 to 20)-(34 to 40) Damage
+50% Damage to Undead
20% Life stolen per Hit
-(18 to 25)% to Enemy Lightning Resistance
+(121 to 140)% Enhanced Damage
Enhanced Weapon Damage +80%
Socketed (6)

- Nightmare: Reduced enemy velocity and healing (rate? amount?)

Fangspear

Fangspear
Spetum (4)
Two-Hand Damage: (13 - 15) to (35 - 46)
Required Level: 7
Required Strength: 42
Required Dexterity: 63
Item Level: 10
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.15 per Dexterity)%
200% Bonus to Miasma Haunt Duration
10% Chance to cast level 5 Miasma on Melee Attack
15% Attack Speed
Adds (8 to 10)-(21 to 30) Damage
+75 to Attack Rating
+(30 to 46)% Enhanced Damage
+(0 to 100) to Life
+(11 to 15) Life after each Kill
Socketed (2)
Two-Hand Damage: (29 - 34) to (73 - 86)
Required Level: 25
Required Strength: 70
Required Dexterity: 97
Item Level: 28
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.15 per Dexterity)%
200% Bonus to Miasma Haunt Duration
15% Chance to cast level 11 Miasma on Melee Attack
30% Attack Speed
Adds (11 to 15)-(31 to 40) Damage
+100 to Attack Rating
+(64 to 80)% Enhanced Damage
+(0 to 150) to Life
+(21 to 25) Life after each Kill
Socketed (4)
Two-Hand Damage: (63 - 71) to (143 - 161)
Required Level: 44
Required Strength: 144
Required Dexterity: 193
Item Level: 48
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.15 per Dexterity)%
200% Bonus to Miasma Haunt Duration
20% Chance to cast level 18 Miasma on Melee Attack
45% Attack Speed
Adds (16 to 20)-(41 to 50) Damage
+125 to Attack Rating
+(98 to 114)% Enhanced Damage
+(0 to 200) to Life
+(31 to 35) Life after each Kill
Socketed (5)
Two-Hand Damage: (83 - 97) to (184 - 203)
Required Level: 53
Required Strength: 288
Required Dexterity: 382
Item Level: 83
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.15 per Dexterity)%
200% Bonus to Miasma Haunt Duration
25% Chance to cast level 25 Miasma on Melee Attack
60% Attack Speed
Adds (21 to 30)-(51 to 60) Damage
+150 to Attack Rating
+(115 to 132)% Enhanced Damage
+(0 to 250) to Life
+(36 to 40) Life after each Kill
Socketed (6)

- Miasma: Reduced enemy velocity, attack speed

Finis Terra

Finis Terra
Falchion (4)
One-Hand Damage: (4 - 5) to (6 - 7)
Required Level: 5
Required Strength: 49
Item Level: 8
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Strength)%
2% Chance to cast level 2 Shower of Rocks on Melee Attack
Adds 5-8 Fire Damage
Adds 5-8 Lightning Damage
Adds 5-8 Cold Damage
+(24 to 40)% Enhanced Damage
Fire Resist +(11 to 15)%
Poison Resist +(11 to 15)%
Socketed (1)
One-Hand Damage: (17 - 19) to (20 - 22)
Required Level: 24
Required Strength: 79
Item Level: 27
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Strength)%
4% Chance to cast level 6 Shower of Rocks on Melee Attack
Adds 15-25 Fire Damage
Adds 15-25 Lightning Damage
Adds 15-25 Cold Damage
+(58 to 75)% Enhanced Damage
Fire Resist +(21 to 25)%
Poison Resist +(21 to 25)%
Socketed (2)
One-Hand Damage: (42 - 45) to (49 - 54)
Required Level: 42
Required Strength: 160
Item Level: 47
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Strength)%
6% Chance to cast level 10 Shower of Rocks on Melee Attack
Adds 45-75 Fire Damage
Adds 45-75 Lightning Damage
Adds 45-75 Cold Damage
+(92 to 109)% Enhanced Damage
Fire Resist +(31 to 35)%
Poison Resist +(31 to 35)%
Socketed (3)
One-Hand Damage: (54 - 58) to (64 - 70)
Required Level: 52
Required Strength: 319
Item Level: 82
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Strength)%
8% Chance to cast level 12 Shower of Rocks on Melee Attack
Adds 140-220 Fire Damage
Adds 140-220 Lightning Damage
Adds 140-220 Cold Damage
+(109 to 126)% Enhanced Damage
Fire Resist +(36 to 40)%
Poison Resist +(36 to 40)%
Socketed (3)

- Shower of Rocks: Reduced enemy attack speed and velocity

Iron Shard

Iron Shard
Raptor Scythe (Sacred)
Two-Hand Damage: (223 - 280) to (401 - 470)
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 1439
Item Level: 105
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.16 per Strength)%
Ethereal
Mega Impact
When Iron Golem Consumes This Item:
+20% Deadly Strike
+20% Crushing Blow
+160% to Iron Golem Damage
10% Chance to cast level 10 Spike Rush on Melee Attack
Adds (31 to 50)-(201 to 230) Damage
(101 to 150)% Bonus to Attack Rating
+(100 to 140)% Enhanced Damage
+(1001 to 5000) Defense
Decrease Maximum Life -20%
5% Reanimate as: Random Monster
Requirements +250%
Socketed (6)

- Damage on a budget. The 200% Iron Golem damage is additive to minion damage.

Celestia's Passion

Celestia's Passion
Maiden Spear (Sacred)
Two-Hand Damage: 255 to 335
(Amazon Only)
Required Level: 90
Required Strength: 346
Required Dexterity: 500
Item Level: 1
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.15 per Dexterity)%
Mega Impact
Amazing Grace
1% Chance to cast level 4 Ward of Fate on Melee Attack
1% Chance to cast level 13 Gift of the Wild on Melee Attack
Adds 75-125 Damage
+200% Enhanced Damage
50% Bonus to Defense
Socketed (6)

Celestia's Myth
(Amazon Spear Set)

- Low proc rate, but good effects.

Shadowfang

Shadowfang
Bastard Sword (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: (164 - 207) to (272 - 341)
Two-Hand Damage: (232 - 285) to (337 - 416)
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 535
Item Level: 120
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.16 per Strength)%
Area Effect Attack
20% Chance to cast level 40 Veil King Plague Grasp on Melee Attack
Adds (50 to 75)-(150 to 200) Damage
Ignore Target's Defense
+(160 to 200)% Enhanced Damage
+60 to Stormlord
Slow Target 25%
5% Reanimate as: Veil Terror
Socketed (4)

- Iron Golem gets to cosplay as Veil King. Probably better than Iron Shard, but it's an SSU.

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)

- Unless your other minions are truly cutthroat, Bloodlust will probably proc often enough

Golden Chariot

Golden Chariot
Setzschild (Sacred)
Defense: (11002 - 13867) to (14557 - 17982)
Chance to Block: 4%
(Amazon Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 770
Item Level: 105
Gematria
(Bonus per Socketed Great/Elemental Runes)
+250 to Life
+0.5% to Maximum Elemental Resistances
15% Chance to cast level 1 Mythal on Melee Attack
+(2 to 3) to Amazon Skill Levels
+(120 to 180)% Enhanced Defense
+(500 to 2000) Defense
Physical Resist 10%
+(25 to 100) Life after each Kill
Socketed (6)

- Mythal: Reduces enemy elemental resistances by 20%, short duration. Only applies if enemy is in the skill AOE.

Rodeo's Hide

Rodeo's Hide
Bull Shield (Sacred)
Defense: (3466 - 4208) to (4694 - 5493)
Chance to Block: 1%
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 500
Required Dexterity: 374
Item Level: 105
10% Chance to cast level 14 Fowl Fight on Melee Attack
5% Chance of Crushing Blow
+(140 to 200)% Enhanced Defense
+(500 to 1500) Defense
+(200 to 1000) to Life
Maximum Life +(2 to 6)%
25% Gold Find
25% Magic Find
Socketed (4)

- Cheap because unused by Barbarians, but good tank stats

Sarandeshi Hellcaller

Sarandeshi Hellcaller
Broad Sword (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: (114 - 132) to (119 - 138)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 244
Item Level: 120
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Strength)%
5% Chance to cast level 16 Spellbind on Melee Attack
4% Chance to cast level 43 Pentagram on Melee Attack
100% Attack Speed
Adds 250-313 Magic Damage
Adds 63-125 Fire Damage
+(160 to 200)% Enhanced Damage
+75 to Energy
Requirements -50%
Socketed (6)

- Spellbind: Reduces enemy (physical attack) damage by 40%, physical resistance by 25%, base defense by 50%, Velocity by 50%. Low proc rate, but it should work often enough on bosses

Tylwulf's Betrayal

Tylwulf's Betrayal
Bastard Sword (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: (101 - 114) to (108 - 122)
Two-Hand Damage: (161 - 182) to (165 - 187)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 535
Item Level: 105
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.16 per Strength)%
9% Chance to cast level 10 Time Wave on Melee Attack
1% Chance to cast level 1 Timefield on Kill
5% Chance to cast level 10 Time Strike on Striking
+(1 to 3) to All Skills
Adds 125-250 Magic Damage
(1 to 10)% Mana stolen per Hit
+(130 to 160)% Enhanced Damage
Slow Target (10 to 20)%
(10 to 20)% to Strength
Socketed (4)

- Honestly a pretty mediocre pick, but the Time Wave and Slow Target proc combo gives good coverage at the very least

Darkspite

Darkspite
Spetum (Sacred)
Two-Hand Damage: (165 - 228) to (302 - 392)
Required Level: 80
Required Strength: 453
Required Dexterity: 492
Item Level: 105
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.15 per Dexterity)%
15% Chance to cast level 6 Rust Storm on Melee Attack
(20 to 50)% Attack Speed
Adds (40 to 80)-(140 to 200) Damage
+(120 to 160)% Enhanced Damage
(5 to 10)% Deadly Strike
50% Curse Length Reduction
-5 to Light Radius
Socketed (6)

- Rust Storm: Reduces enemy FRW by 40% and enemy base defense by 71%

Berserrker

Berserrker
Backsword (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: (130 - 144) to (138 - 153)
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 526
Item Level: 120
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.16 per Strength)%
1% Chance to cast level 2 Gift of Inner Fire on Striking
+(2 to 3) to All Skills
+(18 to 24)% Bonus Damage to Bloodlust
+(18 to 24)% Bonus Damage to Mark of the Wild
60% Attack Speed
+(171 to 200)% Enhanced Damage
+1 to Bloodlust
+1 to Gift of the Wild
Socketed (3)

- Gift of Inner Fire: Grants Inner Fire to nearby allies (Unknown radius). Inner Fire regenerates 100% of Life in an unknown (but very short) amount of seconds. Low proc rate and it's an expensive SSU to toss at Iron Golem, but it's basically one of the few sources of GoiF.

Claw of the Spirit Wolf

Claw of the Spirit Wolf
Ida (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: (107 - 121) to (113 - 128)
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 552
Item Level: 120
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.14 per Strength)%
10% Chance to cast level 22 Gift of the Wild on Kill
+(3 to 4) to Barbarian Skill Levels
40% Attack Speed
40% Cast Speed
+(115 to 143)% Enhanced Damage
Enhanced Weapon Damage +(61 to 90)%
+(41 to 60)% to Summoned Minion Life
+(20 to 30)% to Summoned Minion Damage
(31 to 50)% to Dexterity
(31 to 50)% to Energy
Elemental Resists +(15 to 20)%
Socketed (6)

- Gift of the Wild: Grants Mark of the Wild to nearby allies (Unknown radius). MotW grants 20% increased Attack Speed, 30% increased (physical attack) damage, 10% elemental spell damage. Modest proc rate on kill, similar to Qarak's above.

► Rathmas Chosen

Rathma's Chosen
Role: Support

Damage: Low - Medium
Life: N/A
Mana Cost: Low

Maximum Minion Count: 1
Sources: Innate (Necromancer) | |

Relic (Rathma's Chosen)

Rating: B

Review: Since patch 2.1, Rathma's Chosen has been streamlined to be the Melee/Crossbow Ultimate skill of choice. The Necromancer minion damage synergy it formerly had was moved to Veil King, making Veil King the Summoner's Ultimate skill of choice (rather than the former potential for a Summoner to pick any of the three Ultimate skills based on their build). This means that Rathma's Chosen should not be leveled by a Summon Necromancer.

Furthermore, due to the buffed effects of Evocation Aura at base level, Rathma's Chosen Relic is now highly desirable by all Physical attack builds. This means that any Summoner seeking to buff their minions with Evocation Aura will find it expensive and difficult to attain.

Rathma’s Chosen grants Evocation Aura to allies within 16 yards of itself. Evocation Aura grants 10% Deadly Strike and 25% increased Attack/Cast Speed, with each base level scaling the Deadly Strike by 1% and IAS/ICS by 5%. As of patch 1.7, Rathma's Chosen grants Evocation Aura from the Relic, but it will not be scaled because Relics =/= Base levels. Still better than how it was previously. Evocation Aura's increased Attack Speed/Cast Speed are not useful for summons due to summons being gated by attack delay rather than frame data.

► Veil King

Veil King
Role: DPS / Tank

Damage: Medium - High
Life: Very High
Mana Cost: Medium

Maximum Minion Count: 1
Sources: Innate (Necromancer) | |

Relic (Veil King)

|| Mod on Rare (or Crafted) Assassin Shields
Rating: S

Review: The legendary Veil King is tank of tanks, with life higher than every tank and life regen to match it.

Veil King does best on Necromancer, due to inheriting all of Necromancer's summon tree passives, such as Iron Golem's regeneration. Since patch 2.1, I have not tested this functionality with passives such as Hawks' Violent Immolation or Abyss Knights' Chaos Nova, but it is certain that Grim Vision and a point in Metal Solace are solid skill tree picks for Veil King. As a Relic or oskill, he is inferior but still alright in Summon Barbarian's hands. He's not worth mentioning on anyone else.

The Veil King has numerous supporting effects aside from his massive health. He casts Crucify on attack, which means his damage can be fairly sizable. He has Area Effect attacks on top of the Crucify AOE. He has Slow Target by 50%, although Uber bosses cap slowing effects at 25%. He has a 10% chance to cast Plague Grasp on attack, which rapidly reduces the enemy’s life in a way similar to Tremor. Finally, he has a 15% chance to create Reanimates that can act as distractions, although they will not warp with the player.

Currently, the Veil King may only have his minion count increased (by 1) through the full set effect of the Lazarus set.

Since patch 2.0, Veil King's summon penalties have been reduced. Furthermore, in patch 2.1, the Ultimate skills were streamlined entirely; Jinn was made irrelevant to Summoners, as was Rathma's Chosen. Veil King is now the only real choice for Summon Necromancers (Rathma's Chosen summoner skill damage bonus was moved to him). Functionally, this is applied as Total Minion Damage per slvl. This is a total damage modifier that multiplies the result of your minion’s damage. Unfortunately, it only applies to innate Necromancer minions as a synergy when the summon is active, so don't think of trying to improve Necromancer minions as a non-Necromancer as you literally do not have the skills for it to work.

He has the unique trait of becoming hostile when killed, but the player can mitigate this downside by resummoning him to refresh his life before he actually dies, as resummoning does not trigger the betrayal mechanic.

Mechanically, the betrayal mechanic works by spawning in a new and hostile Veil King where the original died, with stats varying based on the difficulty level of the game. Enemy Veil Kings are usually strong enough to outright one-shot any player, so make sure not to let them get close enough to hit you. Fortunately, enemy Veil Kings are much easier to kill than the player’s Veil Kings due to how differently players and enemies scale their damage.

For more about Veil King on Assassin, check out the [navlink]Summoner Classes[/navlink] section above.

► Jinn

Jinn
Role: Support

Damage: N/A
Life: N/A
Mana Cost: Medium

Maximum Minion Count: Unknown
Sources: Innate (Necromancer) | |

Relic (Jinn)

| |

Dux Infernum

Dux Infernum
War Axe (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: (115 - 128) to (140 - 156)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 581
Item Level: 120
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Strength)%
Level 8 Hellfire Aura
+(4 to 5) to All Skills
Adds 500-1000 Fire Damage
0.5% to Fire Spell Damage (Based on Character Level)
+(150 to 180)% Enhanced Damage
+200% to Summoned Minion Life
Maximum Cold Resist -2%
+200 Life on Melee Attack
Socketed (6)

| |

The Warmage

The Warmage
(Sorceress Fire Set)

Warmage's Breath
Warmage's Fireblade
Warmage's Flameshroud
Warmage's Wake

Set Bonus with 2 or more set items:
+24 to Fire Cascade
+50 to Strength

Set Bonus with 3 or more set items:
+16 to Banish
Elemental Resists +75%

Set Bonus with complete set:
2% Chance to cast level 40 Lifeblood when Struck
+5 to Sorceress Skill Levels
10% Movement Speed
+25% to Spell Damage
+30 to Jinn
100% to Energy
5% Chance to Avoid Damage

Rating: N/A

Review: The Jinn has been altered since patch 2.1. It is now a special summon, meaning that even Melee Devotion users may summon it. Furthermore, it cannot be targeted by enemy attacks (and therefore, cannot serve as a tank), nor does it attack anything at all now. This means that it is basically a walking maximum Fire Resistance and Enemy Elemental Resistance (Pierce) aura. It will still apply to nearby minions, but since the 2.1 changes to Veil King, Veil King is now the de-facto choice for Summon Necromancers. I can only recommend the usage of Jinn on a summoner as a Relic; given that Abyss Knights no longer convert their damage to elemental, only oskill summons will use elemental damage, meaning that Jinn is not offensively useful.

Jinns possess Hellfire Aura, which grants elemental resistance piercing to all nearby minions and allies. Hellfire Aura also increases Maximum Fire Resistance, which is just a useful effect that shines most in the Dimensional Labyrinth. Similarly to Rathma's Chosen, Jinns only have this Aura if at least 1 base point is invested. Fortunately, the Relic gives points to Hellfire Aura directly, ensuring 2% maximum Fire Resistance and 14% Elemental Pierce. If your minions or allies deal elemental damage of any variety, the piercing resistance modifier will act as a damage multiplier and be somewhat useful.

► Wolf Companion

Wolf Companion
Role: Support

Damage: Very Low
Life: N/A
Mana Cost: Very Low

Maximum Minion Count: Unknown
Sources: Innate (Barbarian) | |

Relic (Wolf Companion)

Relic
Required Level: 75
Hunter's Mark: Increased Damage per Hit
+(15 to 26) to Wolf Companion
2% Reanimate as: Spirit Wolf

| |

Maffer's Frenzy

Maffer's Frenzy
Light Plated Boots (Sacred)
Defense: 784 to 868
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 625
Item Level: 115
2% Chance to cast level 13 Psionic Scream on Kill
+1 to All Skills
25% Attack Speed
(10 to 40)% Movement Speed
Adds 3-5 Damage
50% Bonus to Attack Rating
+18 to Wolf Companion
Elemental Resists +(20 to 30)%
+20 Life after each Kill
Socketed (4)

Curse of the Zakarum
(Zakarum Set)

Rating: C

Review: An untargetable summon that inflicts the curse Hunter’s Mark on attack. If you are a Barbarian with the passive Spirit Guide allocated, being nearby a Wolf Companion (~16 yards) will grant you a massive amount of Cast Speed and a fair bit of Weapon Attack Damage, easily enough in the former case to hit your top cast speed breakpoint. The curse increases the damage taken by the target by an amount that scales increasingly with base level investment.
The Relic increases the effect of the curse by an amount that scales alongside the level of the skill. At earlier levels, the increase starts at +41 flat damage. However, at base level 23, the increase from the Relic only goes up to +129. Relative to the overall increase of 719 (+129 -> 848), we can conclude that the Relic’s impact on the increase is negligible.
Most Barbarian Summoners use this as a one-point wonder, so the curse effect will definitely be negligible (+15 Damage).

Non-Hawk summoners rarely have a need to summon in a hurry, although it’ll shave off precious seconds from your summoning routine (but only if you summon outside of town, where the effect applies). If anything, mana can tend to be more of the problem in these cases. As such, this summon is a fairly mediocre support for Summoners, but is highly useful for Warcry Barbarians who need faster casting animations.

[abwhorent]

► Guardian Spirit

Guardian Spirit
Role: DPS

Damage: Very High
Life: Medium
Mana Cost: Medium

Maximum Minion Count: Unknown
Sources: Innate (Barbarian) | |

Relic (Guardian Spirit)

Relic
Required Level: 75
+1 Extra Guardian Spirit
+(22 to 35) to Guardian Spirit
+25% to Summoned Minion Damage
Spirit Walk Heals an Additional 5% Maximum Life while Carrying All Shaman Relics
(Defender Spirit - Guardian Spirit - Protector Spirit)

Rating: S

Review: The Guardian Spirit is the damage dealer among the Barbarian's trio of innate Spirit skills. He scales with increased attack speed and attacks with a wave of 2-6 (Depending on difficulty of game) physical EWD% piercing projectiles that do not shotgun that travel up to a range of ~16 (?) yards. Like all Spirit summons, the Guardian Spirit scales heavily from the Barbarian's base Strength points, Shamanic Trance, and base point investment into the Barbarian Spirits skill tree (All summon-related skills plus Nephalem Spirit). As such, the Relic for this summon is a min-max for the Barbarian and is rather pointless when used on other summoners, as said summoners have none of Barbarian's innate scaling. Barbarian Summoners typically have Nephalem Spirit, which does not affect the tooltip of any summon when active but does have an effect (although elemental damage without pierce is rather lackluster). Barbarian Summoners max this skill without question.

The Barbarian Spirit trio is affected by increases to Maximum Barbarian Minion counts, which include:

-
Toraja's Champion

Toraja's Champion
Gilded Shield (Sacred)
Defense: (7944 - 8978) to (9847 - 11129)
Chance to Block: 1%
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 700
Item Level: 105
+(2 to 3) to Barbarian Skill Levels
+2 to Maximum Barbarian Minions
+(30 to 38)% Damage to Protector Spirit Bloodlust
40% Cast Speed
+(21 to 25)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(115 to 143)% Enhanced Defense
+500 to Life
+250 to Mana
Elemental Resists +10%
+10 Life on Striking
+(6 to 7) Mana on Striking
Socketed (4)


-
Gladiator's Rage

Gladiator's Rage
Spatha (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: 46 to 48
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 500
Item Level: 120
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.14 per Strength)%
4% Chance to cast level 16 Bloodlust when Struck
+(2 to 4) to Barbarian Skill Levels
+(1 to 2) to Maximum Barbarian Minions
40% Cast Speed
+(50 to 75)% to Summoned Minion Life
+50% to Summoned Minion Damage
+50% to Summoned Minion Resistances
(10 to 30)% Gold Find
(10 to 30)% Magic Find
+(3 to 5) to Light Radius
Socketed (3)


-
The Guardian

The Guardian
Ring Mail (Sacred)
Defense: (5848 - 6579) to (6434 - 7238)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 550
Item Level: 1
+2 to Barbarian Skill Levels
+(16 to 20)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(140 to 170)% Enhanced Defense
(21 to 25)% to Strength
Fire Resist +(41 to 50)%
Poison Resist +(41 to 50)%
Socketed (6)


Spirits of the Nephalem
(Barbarian Shaman Set)


-
Thundercloud

-
Khan

-
Morthwyrtha

Morthwyrtha
Barbarian Helms
'IoSur'
Runeword Level: 75
+(3 to 4) to Barbarian Skill Levels
+1 to Maximum Barbarian Minions
+3 to Banish
+(16 to 20)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(50 to 75)% to Summoned Minion Attack Rating
Regenerate Mana +(6 to 10)%

Goetia Plate does not increase Barbarian minion counts while Overlord's Dark Legion Aura does.

The Guardian Spirit may have its damage effectively doubled through the combination of

Undead Crown

Undead Crown
Crown (Sacred)
Defense: 4437 to 4914
Required Level: 110
Required Strength: 675
Item Level: 120
12% of Minion Damage Increases Added as Deadly Strike
40% of Minion Life Increases Added as Bonus to Defense
Deal No Crushing Blows
Orb Effects Applied to this Item are Doubled
50% Attack Speed
+200% Enhanced Defense
Socketed (4)

and

Skeld's Battlesong

Skeld's Battlesong
Kriegsmesser (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: 53 to 57
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 642
Item Level: 105
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.14 per Strength)%
Guardian Spirits Inherit 100% of Your Deadly Strike
+(3 to 5) to Barbarian Skill Levels
1% Base Block Chance
+(13 to 25)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(25 to 75) to Vitality
Regenerate Mana +(10 to 30)%
Maximum Lightning Resist +(1 to 2)%
Socketed (6)

if the summoner can achieve 100% Deadly Strike (doubles physical damage only when proc is successful). This is an expensive combination that can enable a Barbarian Summoner to achieve damage that is capable of killing certain Uber bosses, Dimensional Labyrinth enemies, or higher player count Fauztinville instances in a timely manner, but it is not at all necessary to simply farm Teganze, Fauztinville, or Bremmtown normally. This combination also has no effect on other summons and can't even be used by other Summoners, which limits its usefulness.

► Defender Spirit

Defender Spirit
Role: Tank

Damage: Low - Medium
Life: Medium
Mana Cost: Very Low

Maximum Minion Count: Unknown
Sources: Innate (Barbarian) | |

Relic (Defender Spirit)

Relic
Required Level: 75
+1 Extra Defender Spirit
+(22 to 35) to Defender Spirit
+25% to Summoned Minion Life
+5% to Summoned Minion Damage
Spirit Walk Heals an Additional 5% Maximum Life while Carrying All Shaman Relics
(Defender Spirit - Guardian Spirit - Protector Spirit)

| |

Nahual

Rating: B

Review: The Guardian Spirit is the primary tank among the Barbarian's trio of innate Spirit skills. He scales with increased attack speed and attacks with a basic melee attack with a chance to proc Retaliate on hit, a 0.7x EWD circular wave around the attacker that creates a knockback effect. Like all Spirit summons, the Guardian Spirit scales heavily from the Barbarian's base Strength points, Shamanic Trance, and base point investment into the Barbarian Spirits skill tree (All summon-related skills plus Nephalem Spirit). As such, the Relic for this summon is rather pointless when used on other summoners and even on Barbarian himself, since the Defender Spirit functions as a tank at 1 base point invested and the Relic only grants 3 soft levels and 10% Minion Damage. Barbarian Summoners typically have Nephalem Spirit, which does not affect the tooltip of any summon when active but does have an effect (although elemental damage without pierce is rather lackluster). Barbarian Summoners only put 1 point into this skill.

The Barbarian Spirit trio is affected by increases to Maximum Barbarian Minion counts, which include:

-
Toraja's Champion

Toraja's Champion
Gilded Shield (Sacred)
Defense: (7944 - 8978) to (9847 - 11129)
Chance to Block: 1%
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 700
Item Level: 105
+(2 to 3) to Barbarian Skill Levels
+2 to Maximum Barbarian Minions
+(30 to 38)% Damage to Protector Spirit Bloodlust
40% Cast Speed
+(21 to 25)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(115 to 143)% Enhanced Defense
+500 to Life
+250 to Mana
Elemental Resists +10%
+10 Life on Striking
+(6 to 7) Mana on Striking
Socketed (4)


-
Gladiator's Rage

Gladiator's Rage
Spatha (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: 46 to 48
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 500
Item Level: 120
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.14 per Strength)%
4% Chance to cast level 16 Bloodlust when Struck
+(2 to 4) to Barbarian Skill Levels
+(1 to 2) to Maximum Barbarian Minions
40% Cast Speed
+(50 to 75)% to Summoned Minion Life
+50% to Summoned Minion Damage
+50% to Summoned Minion Resistances
(10 to 30)% Gold Find
(10 to 30)% Magic Find
+(3 to 5) to Light Radius
Socketed (3)


-
The Guardian

The Guardian
Ring Mail (Sacred)
Defense: (5848 - 6579) to (6434 - 7238)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 550
Item Level: 1
+2 to Barbarian Skill Levels
+(16 to 20)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(140 to 170)% Enhanced Defense
(21 to 25)% to Strength
Fire Resist +(41 to 50)%
Poison Resist +(41 to 50)%
Socketed (6)


Spirits of the Nephalem
(Barbarian Shaman Set)


-
Thundercloud

-
Khan

-
Morthwyrtha

Morthwyrtha
Barbarian Helms
'IoSur'
Runeword Level: 75
+(3 to 4) to Barbarian Skill Levels
+1 to Maximum Barbarian Minions
+3 to Banish
+(16 to 20)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(50 to 75)% to Summoned Minion Attack Rating
Regenerate Mana +(6 to 10)%

Goetia Plate does not increase Barbarian minion counts while Overlord's Dark Legion Aura does.

The Defender Spirit's ability to kill weak monsters in an AOE and keep enemies away from the Summoner can be somewhat useful, but the knockback can also be slightly detrimental at times. Due to the ratio of tankiness/resummon potential and the readily scalable minion count for this summon, he rates near the top of his tier as a tank. However, with his rubbish attack rating and damage, don't expect your groups of Defender Spirits to go off killing Necrobots in Fauztinville. His main specialty is getting hit by enemy projectiles and distracting enemies while dealing some AOE chip damage.

► Protector Spirit

Protector Spirit
Role: Tank / Support

Damage: Medium
Life: Low - Medium
Mana Cost: Low

Maximum Minion Count: Unknown
Sources: Innate (Barbarian) | |

Relic (Protector Spirit)

Relic
Required Level: 75
+1 Extra Protector Spirit
+(12 to 20)% Damage to Protector Spirit Bloodlust
+(15 to 25) to Protector Spirit
+25% to Summoned Minion Resistances
Spirit Walk Heals an Additional 5% Maximum Life while Carrying All Shaman Relics
(Defender Spirit - Guardian Spirit - Protector Spirit)

| |

Nahual

| |

Dagda

Dagda
Necromancer Staves
'ChamIoIst'
Runeword Level: 83
3% Chance to cast level 1 Lifeblood when Struck
+(6 to 7) to Necromancer Skill Levels
15% Cast Speed
+(26 to 35)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(110 to 130)% to Summoned Minion Attack Rating
+(31 to 40) to all Attributes
Maximum Life +5%
Maximum Mana +20%
19% Gold Find
10% Magic Find

| |

Brocken

Rating: A

Review: The Protector Spirit is the secondary tank and sole support among the Barbarian's trio of innate Spirit skills. He scales with increased attack speed and attacks with a basic melee attack while also having a chance to cast Bloodlust (Increases %EWD and Elemental Spell Damage) in an area of effect around himself. As noticed in the Mechanics section above, %EWD is effectively Minion Damage. Like all Spirit summons, the Protector Spirit scales heavily from the Barbarian's base Strength points, Shamanic Trance, and base point investment into the Barbarian Spirits skill tree (All summon-related skills plus Nephalem Spirit). As such, the Relic for this summon is debatably useful when used on other Summoners but undoubtedly useful when used on the Barbarian himself. The Relic grants up to 50% Bloodlust Physical damage for Bloodlust casted by Protector Spirit, plus 2% Physical Damage and 1.25% Elemental Spell Damage per soft level granted by the Relic. The Relic's secondary effect can grant up to 16-17 levels into this skill, which is insane value for a single socket. Getting as much of this Relic as possible is advisable. Barbarian Summoners typically have Nephalem Spirit, which does not affect the tooltip of any summon when active but does have an effect (although elemental damage without pierce is rather lackluster). Barbarian Summoners can choose to put more points in this skill to scale the Bloodlust damage and the summon itself, but those points are better spent on Wolf Stance.

The Barbarian Spirit trio is affected by increases to Maximum Barbarian Minion counts, which include:

-
Toraja's Champion

Toraja's Champion
Gilded Shield (Sacred)
Defense: (7944 - 8978) to (9847 - 11129)
Chance to Block: 1%
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 700
Item Level: 105
+(2 to 3) to Barbarian Skill Levels
+2 to Maximum Barbarian Minions
+(30 to 38)% Damage to Protector Spirit Bloodlust
40% Cast Speed
+(21 to 25)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(115 to 143)% Enhanced Defense
+500 to Life
+250 to Mana
Elemental Resists +10%
+10 Life on Striking
+(6 to 7) Mana on Striking
Socketed (4)


-
Gladiator's Rage

Gladiator's Rage
Spatha (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: 46 to 48
(Barbarian Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 500
Item Level: 120
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.14 per Strength)%
4% Chance to cast level 16 Bloodlust when Struck
+(2 to 4) to Barbarian Skill Levels
+(1 to 2) to Maximum Barbarian Minions
40% Cast Speed
+(50 to 75)% to Summoned Minion Life
+50% to Summoned Minion Damage
+50% to Summoned Minion Resistances
(10 to 30)% Gold Find
(10 to 30)% Magic Find
+(3 to 5) to Light Radius
Socketed (3)


-
The Guardian

The Guardian
Ring Mail (Sacred)
Defense: (5848 - 6579) to (6434 - 7238)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 550
Item Level: 1
+2 to Barbarian Skill Levels
+(16 to 20)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(140 to 170)% Enhanced Defense
(21 to 25)% to Strength
Fire Resist +(41 to 50)%
Poison Resist +(41 to 50)%
Socketed (6)


Spirits of the Nephalem
(Barbarian Shaman Set)


-
Thundercloud

-
Khan

-
Morthwyrtha

Morthwyrtha
Barbarian Helms
'IoSur'
Runeword Level: 75
+(3 to 4) to Barbarian Skill Levels
+1 to Maximum Barbarian Minions
+3 to Banish
+(16 to 20)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(50 to 75)% to Summoned Minion Attack Rating
Regenerate Mana +(6 to 10)%

Goetia Plate does not increase Barbarian minion counts while Overlord's Dark Legion Aura does.

Since Protector Spirit does not have Area Attack or any skill that functions similarly, it cannot function as a damage dealer. They deal nearly twice as much as Defender Spirits, but far less than Guardian Spirits. An unleveled Protector Spirit will have relatively low Attack Rating, even with Tainted craft % to Minion Attack Rating, and thus be even less worthwhile as an attacker. As far as using Runeword sources to gain access to Protector Spirit in order to buff one's other summons or even oneself, I wouldn't recommend it. Those slots are better spent on other gear and one can use the Act 5 Mercenary with

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)

(or self-buff with 4x socketed Nih runes in

Shamanka

Shamanka
Long Staff (Sacred)
Two-Hand Damage: 56 to 58
Required Level: 100
Required Dexterity: 203
Item Level: 105
Dexterity Damage Bonus: (0.15 per Dexterity)%
+(3 to 6) to Sorceress Skill Levels
45% Cast Speed
45% Hit Recovery
+50% Damage to Undead
+(21 to 25)% to Fire Spell Damage
+(21 to 25)% to Cold Spell Damage
+(21 to 25)% to Poison Spell Damage
+(6 to 16) to Bloodlust
Maximum Life +(10 to 13)%
Fire Resist +(50 to 70)%
Lightning Resist +(50 to 70)%
Socketed (4)

) to achieve passable results. The Relic, on the other hand, is fair game due to the usefulness of the affix and the low opportunity cost of a single gear socket.

► Elvensong

Elvensong
Role: X
Maximum minion count: X
Sources: X
Rating: X

Review: Placeholder. No clue about Druid skills.

► Harvester

Acid Fiend
Role: Tank / Support

Damage: ???
Life: ???
Mana Cost: ???

Maximum minion count: 5
Sources: Innate (Druid) | |

Relic (Acid Fiends)

| | Rare/Crafted mod on Sorceress Body Armors
Rating: A

Review:
Renamed to Harvesters in 1.7. Placeholder for Druid commentary on Harvesters. I get the impression that they are a great staple in many Druid builds, serving as tanks for most Druids and DPS for Poison Druids. They were reworked in patch 1.6 to have fewer numbers, but be far tankier on an individual level.

As of patch 2.0, Harvesters are now useless for non-Druids. This is because only Druids can allocate the relevant passive that grants Harvesters their Venomous Aura, which increases one's movement speed, among other stats. Combat speeds are irrelevant to summons anyways, as their attack patterns are gated more by AI delay than by their frame data. As such, Harvesters from a Relic would only serve as rather pitiful meatshields.

► Vine Companion

Vine Companion
Role: X
Maximum minion count: X
Sources: X
Rating: X

Review: Placeholder. No clue about Druid skills.

► Scourge

Scourge
Role: DPS

Damage: High
Life: Low - Medium
Mana Cost: Medium - High

Maximum Minion Count: 15
Sources: Innate (Paladin) | |

Relic (Scourge)

Rating: A

Review: The superior summon available to Paladin Summoners. Scourges have a low chance to Avoid Attacks, which is better than having no innate chance at all. They proc Crucify on attack, which is a fairly damaging skill that does its best damage when the attacker is surrounded by multiple enemies. However, it’ll still do fine damage even on a single target, especially with 15 summons. This damage is enough to nuke early Ubers and farmable content, but even with thousands of minion damage, you’ll start to feel difficulties around the level 120 Ubers.

The Scourge has mediocre life, but as the only summon innately available to an optimized Summoner Paladin, he’ll also have to serve as your tank. Even with level investment, Scourges won’t have enough maximum Life to survive anything harder than farming-tier content. He’ll also start to cost large amounts of mana to summon, so consider investing in Energy and Mana Regeneration alongside Vitality. The Scourge’s physical damage components will be bolstered by the Colosseum debuff and his Attack Rating, although respectable, will be irrelevant due to how the debuff strips 100% of the target’s defense.

The Relic is still a valuable pick despite the low HP and scaling due to the decent damage output. Scourge is likely among the best physical attacker relics for summoners.

In summation, the Scourge is emblematic of the Paladin Summoner as a whole. It has design potential and internal synergy with its skills but is held back by the inferiority of its numerical scaling and needs significant gear to reach the damage and utility of even a poorly equipped Barbarian or Necromancer peer. As a Relic, it encompasses the entire value of the

► Hoplite

Hoplite
Role: Tank

Damage: Low - Medium
Life: Low
Mana Cost: Medium

Maximum Minion Count: 5
Sources: Innate (Paladin) | |

Relic (Hoplite)

Rating: C

Review: The inferior summon available to Paladin Summoners. At a glance, it would appear that Hoplites are designed to be the tank counterpart to Scourges. Their tooltip states that they have a high chance to Avoid Attacks and that they have a chance to cast Inner Fire on attack. In addition, they proc Retaliate on attack instead of Crucify, which solidifies the idea that they’re an area-control self-sustaining tank.

Unfortunately, the Hoplite is unable to fill this role effectively. Paladin Summoners either choose between picking Hoplites or Scourges and scaling them each with investment into the Unholy and Holy trees, respectively, or they get both summons but get none of scaling from those trees. In addition, getting more base levels into each summon requires a 2 point investment into a certain passive skill for every 1 Maximum Level granted to the summon. Maxing both by going for the Neutral path is impossible due to the sheer amount of skill points needed. As such, Hoplites are either not picked or would have vastly inferior stats to Scourges.

But even with full investment, Hoplites are still mediocre at dealing damage. They have one-third the maximum minion count as Scourges. They deal worse damage because they use Retaliate instead of Crucify, which also isn’t helped by the fact that there’s just less of them. Investing points into Plague (Even though Hoplites scale damage through the Unholy tree, not the Holy tree) and using Hivemind is pointless because Scourges still deal more damage by design.

Finally, Hoplites are just numerically inferior to Scourges even when full investment is given to them if we consider them as a tank: They don’t even have the maximum Life to really serve as tanks on Barbarian Paladin with his massive % Minion Life, let alone natively on Paladin. If you can get Hoplites from the Relic and you have literally nothing better to use in your sockets, they’re fine. Otherwise, they’re only marginally more useful than joke oskill minions.

► Resurrect

Resurrect
Role: DPS / Tank / Support

Damage: Variable
Life: Variable
Mana Cost: High

Maximum Minion Count: 3
Sources: Innate (Paladin) | |

Asgardsreia

Asgardsreia
Spangenhelm (Sacred)
Defense: (2894 - 3192) to (3206 - 3537)
(Amazon Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 337
Item Level: 120
5% Chance to cast level 1 Arrow on Striking
-2% Base Block Chance
-(29 to 35)% to Enemy Fire Resistance
-(29 to 35)% to Enemy Lightning Resistance
-(29 to 35)% to Enemy Cold Resistance
+(4 to 7) to Resurrect
+(172 to 200)% Enhanced Defense
(31 to 40)% to Dexterity
Requirements -50%
Socketed (4)

| |

Relic (Resurrect)

Relic
Required Level: 90
+25% Magic Find When Near a Revenant
+(11 to 23) to Resurrect
+(21 to 40)% to Summoned Minion Life

Rating: A

Review: The options created by this skill’s existence literally expand summoner options to nearly the size of much of the Median XL Bestiary. See the section below for more coverage on useful Resurrect enemies, which also doubles as a compendium of Reanimates.
In this entry, we will simply cover the basics of Resurrect. Resurrect allows the summoner to target corpses and resurrect them as one’s own minions.

- Resurrect resistances are the exact resistances of the target enemy and are not subject to the summoner’s Minion Resistance.
- Resurrect life is equal to the target enemy’s life, modified by the Resurrect modifier on the tooltip. The tooltip’s base values are subject to the summoner’s Minion Life modifier (unsure of formula).
- Resurrect attack and spell damage is equal to that of the target’s skills, subject to the Resurrect modifier on the tooltip. Spell damage does not scale with Minion Damage at all, while Attack Damage is equal to half the summoner's Minion Damage plus scaling.
- Resurrected enemies keep the modifiers from the original enemy, such as Extra Strong, Extra Fast, Cursed, Stone Skin, etc.
- Some enemy corpses are programmed to disappear and not be considered a corpse shortly after being created, usually for performance reasons. Examples include the corpses left by Baal’s waves of summons at the Throne of Destruction or most Cows in the Secret Cow Level. By being quick enough, you can Resurrect their corpse before it despawns. Corpses in Diablo 2 also despawn under ? circumstances.
Resurrect cannot be used on targets without corpses, Ethereals / Followers of Akarat, or Super Unique enemies (including Bosses).

In summation, Resurrects will tend to have high amounts of Life and a fair amount of Damage, depending on the chosen Summon. Due to their low numbers, they can’t serve as the sort of tanks that screen the summoner against projectiles, but they can serve as super-tanks against certain Ubers. Certain Resurrects will have useful pack-clearing skills, debuffs, curses, or buffs. All of these factors combined mean that Resurrects can neatly fill all three roles to varying degrees of success.

Resurrects

This section is WIP. I strongly suggest checking out the Google Sheet in the Submissions section for a place to dump information if you don't want to just post in the thread.

In 1.6, many enemies that formerly had auras had them disabled as part of a performance improvement change by the team. This is unfortunate, because many formerly useful Resurrects with great auras have been devalued, such as the Destroyer Shaman (Demon Blood Aura), Void Archon (Warp Field Aura), Fallen Knight-class of enemies (Concentration Aura) and so forth.

Template:
Minion Name - Location(s) - Monster Level (Dependent on Locations) - Skills Used - Comments

Slimer - Locations: Lower Kurast (~Lvl 100)
Skills Used: Miasma - Comments: A useful debuffer, but they have a tendency to walk up to enemies and melee them while also being squishy (aka, they die easily). Miasma debuff lasts for 5 seconds, the Miasma pool lasts for 3 seconds, and they cast with a cooldown of 10 seconds, so Miasma is better used by bosses or through a Mercenary or Iron Golem's proc.

Rust Claw - Locations: Arreat Plateau, Frozen River (~Lvl 100)
Skills Used: Rust Storm - Comments: The debuff applied by Rust Storm reduces enemy base defense by a staggering 71% (Discount Colosseum) and the enemy's Faster Run Walk by a flat 40%. It also has a wide AOE when it procs, making this a great debuffer choice for attack-type summons.

Aberrant Lizard - Locations: Dark Wood, Underground Passage (~Lvl 100)
Skills Used: Spellbind - Comments: Spellbind is a ridiculously powerful debuff for any physical-damage based build, but the summon only procs it on melee hits. This Resurrect is definitely still worthy of consideration.

Black Cat - Locations: Maggot Lair, Ancient Tunnels, Harem (level 2), Arcane Sanctuary (~Lvl 100)
Skills Used: Nightmare - Comments: Nightmare reduces enemy velocity and (supposedly) healing. Velocity affects FRW but not Combat Speeds. These enemies are quite squishy and proc it on hit, but they are also ranged summons. Overall, not a bad debuffer.

Cow Shaman - Locations: The Secret Cow Level (~Lvl 110)
Skills Used: Thunder Slam - Comments: Cow Shamans are among the best of the best when it comes to attacker Resurrects. Thunder Slam is an AOE stun with huge range and 3 Cow Shamans can proc it constantly, dealing great damage and making clearing much safer.

[abwhorent]

Ubers and Videos
Note: Videos coming soon. They still need to be uploaded, but they're already recorded.

"Uber" bosses and level 105+ content are the mid and end-game content of Median XL, starting in Act 1 Hell and carrying on through to content that can challenge even well-geared level 150 players. This guide aims to describe the content broadly, as well as any summoner-specific quirks for those Ubers. Due to having many tanks and an indirect or automated playstyle,summoners are regarded as fairly competent farming classes and are quite safe for Hardcore, even in high ping situations. However, even a summoner isn't safe when unprepared against Uber content. This section aims to use text and video formats to show different summoners handling Uber content to demonstrate summoner playstyle in Uber content.

► 105 Ubers

105 – Butcher’s Lair
Rating: Easy
Charm:

The Butcher's Tooth

The Butcher's Tooth
Required Level: 105
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+10 to all Attributes
20% Magic Find
+1 to Light Radius
Horror Under Tristram (Uber)
Difficulty Level: 125
Transmute 10 Butcher's Teeth to unlock this quest

As one of the first Ubers, the Butcher has very low Life. He has even lower health than Griswold who stands right outside his room. Or maybe that’s just Griswold’s Stone Skin at work. Just let your summons do the work and stand a safe distance away from the Butcher. The Butcher procs Earthquakes from his Sacrificial Altars whenever he hits things, so make sure not to stand in their path. Otherwise, completely straightforward.


105 – Death Projector:
Rating: Easy
Charm:

Laser Focus Crystal

Laser Focus Crystal
Required Level: 105
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Maximum Life +3%
Maximum Mana +10%
+(6 to 10)% to Experience Gained

One of the easiest Ubers, especially for a summoner. Make sure one of the Techpriests is nearby the Projector so it becomes vulnerable, then let your summons kill the Projector as you circle around it to avoid the Mind Flay projectiles that it spews. Your summons can also bodyblock those projectiles. If necessary, resummon your minions (likely if your minions lack resistance and get blown up by the Projector). Hawks should be summoned directly onto the Death Projector, lest they be wasted on the invulnerable Techpriests.


105 – Infernal Machine
Rating: Medium
Charm:

Optical Detector

Optical Detector
Required Level: 105
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Unlocks Mastery Skill: Tenacity
+5% to Summoned Minion Resistances
Elemental Resists +(11 to 15)%

This one is actually one of the more difficult early Ubers. The Infernal Machine starts with a large cave room jammed full of Elite monsters and slowly summons more. It can teleport short distances, but it’ll rarely go further than a small part of the room. This means you don’t have to clear out the whole room; you can just go straight for the boss. The Elite monsters are quite dangerous at level 105, even with capped resistances, so sit back and let your summons shield you from their damage. Once the Elites are all dead, the Infernal Machine itself should be a cakewalk. The charm gives Minion Resistances and resistances to you, so it's quite desirable early on.


105 – Island of the Sunless Sea
Rating: Medium
Charm:

Six Angel Bag

Six Angel Bag
Required Level: 105
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
(3 to 5)% Innate Elemental Damage
Fire Resist +(21 to 25)%
Lightning Resist +(21 to 25)%
Cold Resist +(21 to 25)%

The enemies here can inflict Fear on your minions, which can be annoying. Hollow Disciples are numerous and invisible, so make sure to summon your minions wherever you want to go first so the enemies target a summon before they target you. The minibosses of the area, the Sunless Angels, are nothing special. They cast Blizzard onto the location of whoever kills them on death, so be sure to get away from your damaging summons ASAP. If you’re having issues, socket more Perfect Onyxes to increase your Cold Resistance, as everything here was recently changed to deal Cold damage. If you can’t handle the Torajan Jungle, I suggest farming this place for Gold instead to get started with Mystic Orbs. The charm is very desirable because it gives resistances.

► 110 Ubers

110 – The Secret Cow Level
Rating: Easy
This Uber can be overwhelming if you have inadequate damage and defenses. Make sure to improve both so you can at least survive Cow Shaman thunderslams, Cow Honcho projectiles, and Cow Ninja ambushes. You’ll want to have better hit recovery breakpoints, more maximum life, and summons that can clear out the cows quickly. If you’re doing Cows in pub games for quick experience, they’ll start to deal more damage and have more life, so be wary of that and gear up accordingly. The Cow King is nothing special compared to the rest of the level. This place has a Shrine drop bias, so you'll want to get Tainted Shrines from here if you can't trade for them.


110 – Tal Rasha
Rating: Easy
Charm:

Scroll of Kings

Scroll of Kings
Required Level: 110
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+(8 to 10)% to Spell Damage
(16 to 20)% to All Attributes

A very pathetic Uber, even if you have virtually no elemental resistance. The Horadric Mages render Tal Rasha invincible, so kill them all before taking on Tal Rasha. Tal Rasha can be a little beefy for an ungeared summoner, but he only has low range elemental spells. Increase your Minion Elemental Resistance and watch your summons eat him for breakfast.


110 – Creature of Flame
Rating: Easy - Medium
Charm:

Horazon's Focus

Horazon's Focus
Required Level: 110
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
(3 to 5)% Life stolen per Hit
(3 to 5)% Mana stolen per Hit
-50 Defense
+(21 to 25) to all Attributes

This Uber has the potential to be dangerous if you lack DPS, which is quite possible for a fresh level 110 Summoner. Not only are his flame AOEs quite damaging to anyone with low resistances, but the portals he spawns will eventually overwhelm you if you can’t destroy them or him rapidly enough. If you find yourself having trouble with this Uber, just come back after you get more damage on your gear or more levels.


110 – Torajan Jungle
Rating: Easy
A straightforward area for farming Signets of Learning and Greater Signets of Gold. Otherwise, it just connects several Ubers together. The enemies are nothing special.

110 – Lord Aldric Jitan
Rating: Medium
Charm:

Moon of the Spider

Moon of the Spider
By Richard Knaak

Required Level: 110
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+(21 to 25) Spell Focus
+1 to Jitan's Gate
Half Freeze Duration

An irritating Uber for squishy builds, but summoners have the edge in this fight. With your summons as shields against projectiles, fight your way through the Rakkis Guardsmen in the jungle corridor leading to Jitan’s area. Take it slow if necessary: the arrow-spamming Fortresses will go away eventually if the Guardsmen are no longer alive to proc them. You’ll need to use your summons to lure Jitan and his guards out from the ruins by summoning them into chokepoints with line of sight, then retreating slowly. Use the walls to block the projectile spam from all of their Fortresses but be careful: it’s very easy for the guardsmen to creep up on you and spam Fortresses into your location or otherwise just poke you to death in a matter of seconds. Once you’ve managed to isolate Jitan, make sure you have summons in his melee range. He’ll stop summoning Fortresses and will instead start using melee attacks or a poison-flavored version of Singularity (?).

Killing Jitan early on is helpful so you can get a Warp, albeit one with a long cooldown, if you lacked one innately.

Pax Mystica

Pax Mystica
Staves
'Tir'
Runeword Level: 10
+1 to All Skills
+7% to Spell Damage
+(2 to 5) to Blink
Elemental Resists +(11 to 15)%
(11 to 13)% Magic Find

works but it would have to be on your weapon swap, which doesn't fly with some summoners.



110 – Akarat
Rating: Medium
Charm:

Visions of Akarat

Visions of Akarat
Required Level: 110
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+(201 to 250) Defense
+(21 to 25) to all Attributes

For non-Hawk summoners, it is very likely you’ll struggle to deal enough damage to kill Akarat during his vulnerability period. You need to kill one of his Followers nearby him to render him vulnerable, then you get an 8 second window to deal damage to him. He will recover Life rapidly once he gets to low Life, which is why you need burst damage. Don’t worry about Akarat if you can’t kill him as a fresh level 110 Summoner: get a friend to help you, or otherwise just come back once you have a lot more damage.


110 – Bul-Kathos
Rating: Easy
Charm:

Sacred Worldstone Key

Sacred Worldstone Key
Required Level: 110
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Enhanced Weapon Damage +(25 to 30)%
(21 to 30)% Bonus to Defense

Similar to Tal Rasha, except the throwing Shamans in his boss room don’t make him invincible. Use your summons to slowly whittle away the throwing Shamans that guard Bul-Kathos while hiding behind them or some nearby pillars to block their projectiles. Bul-Kathos himself is nothing special, as he just uses melee attacks. Probably the easiest among the 110 Ubers.

► 115 Ubers

115 – Azmodan
Rating: Medium
Charm:

Azmodan's Heart

Azmodan's Heart
Required Level: 115
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Maximum Elemental Resists +2%
Elemental Resists +(11 to 20)%
-5% to All Vendor Prices

The area leading up to him is filled with Elite monsters, which should serve as a basic test of your build. If you’re dying to random enemy hits, you’re not defensive enough. If you’re not killing enemies before they overwhelm you, you lack damage. Azmodan’s charm is very desirable due to granting both Elemental Resistance and Maximum Elemental Resistances, so I encourage killing him as early as possible.

Azmodan himself is a very tanky boss. He casts Flamestrike and Fire Fountain which creates delayed fire-element explosions nearby him and he periodically creates corpses, which are consumed by invisible Ravenous Beasts (unkillable Firebloods) around him to unleash slow-moving but powerful Pyroblast projectiles. He also uses Fortress periodically. Improve your physical resistance or defenses and be mindful of the fire being slung around, and he’ll die eventually if you stay back and let your summons handle him. If he kills your summons faster than you can summon them and you’re running out of mana, consider more Minion Life and Resistances and some Mana Regeneration jewelry or Mystic Orbs.




115 – Zakarum’s Avatar
Rating: Easy
Charm:

Zakarum's Ear

Zakarum's Ear
Required Level: 115
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
(6 to 10)% to All Attributes
+(6 to 15)% to Experience Gained

Stationary enemies that buff nearby Ethereals (or they just make them look shiny?) in the Library of Fate and cast Meteor Shower when they die. They have only a chance to drop Zakarum’s Ear when they die, so you’ll need to kill several. Nothing special, just kill them and move on.


115 – The Veiled Prophet
Rating: Medium
Charm:

Idol of Vanity

Idol of Vanity
Required Level: 115
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Unlocks Mastery Skill: Continuity
15% Combat Speeds

A mixed bag of an Uber. The start of the fight is easier for summoners because the invulnerable Nuns of Vanity will focus on your summons. There is now a pillar between the Veil Piercer’s lightning spam and the entrance portal, so the most immediate threats are the Nuns. Place new summons nearer to the Veil Piercer to get rid of it, then finish off the now-vulnerable Nuns before attending to The Prophet who spawns in place of the Veil Piercer. The Prophet is strong against weak summons because he uses the highly damaging Shower of Rocks and Frozen Orb skills. Kite him around the upper part of the arena as you put summons in his path to stall and kill him. If it’s truly necessary for your playstyle, you can also visit the bottom part of the arena and kill the Simulacrums to get more breathing room for kiting.



115 – Tran Athulua
Rating: Medium
Charm:

Sunstone of the Gods

Sunstone of the Gods
Required Level: 115
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
(3 to 5)% Innate Elemental Damage
Maximum Life +(3 to 5)%
Maximum Mana +(11 to 15)%

One of the most dangerous level 115 Uber areas when you also happen to be level appropriate. If you have defense, Avoid, Block, or Physical Resistance, this is where it would come most in handy. The Amazons proc Arrowside on death, which has a chance to inflict Crushing Blow and empty your health pool in seconds. Crushing Blow chance is reduced by having Physical Resistance and other defenses can help with just not taking hits in the first place. The three Priestesses can attack with Phalanx and small AOE spells of their respective elements. Much like every other dangerous place, you’ll want to warp and not move as a summoner when you’re in danger, as this is key to getting your summons to block projectiles for you. Only move normally if you’re confident in your defenses. This area has a drop bias for Unique items, though it cannot drop higher than SUs due to the area level. The route shown in the video is optimal for killing Priestesses if you want to farm the trophy/charm.


115 – Kurast 3000 BA
Rating: Easy
Charm:

Hammer of the Taan Judges

Hammer of the Taan Judges
Required Level: 115
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+1 to All Skills
+1 to Necromancer Skill Levels
+(21 to 25) Spell Focus
Enhanced Weapon Damage +0.1875% (Based on Character Level)

Known as K3K, this is a benign Set farming area when compared to Tran Athulua. You need a bit of defense and capped Resistances, but this is nothing special. The Ennead Necromancers at the ends of the map don’t always drop their charm, so you may need to kill many of them. They’re also nothing special, so just kill them like every other enemy. The enemies are numerous and the area is large, but this place’s low level and lack of good drops means that it’s only a transitional farming location until you get to Duncraig.


115 – Black Road
Rating: Easy
Charm:

The Black Road

The Black Road
Required Level: 115
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Unlocks your Black Road Skill
+150 to Life
+75 to Mana

Leave a portal behind and make sure you have a Warp of some kind (Jitan’s Gate, at the least) before handling this Uber. The boss, Buyard Cholik, is only vulnerable when he stands in the fire circle of his boss room, so a Warp will be useful to reposition yourself and all of his summons so Buyard walks into the circle of his own accord as he attempts to melee hit you. He’ll deal big damage with Pyroclastic Blast, so stay away while your summons deal with him. The statue within the fire circle periodically summons hordes of Wayfinder’s Acolyte from the edges of the room, which are rather weak adds; the Possessed Cultist projectiles and melee slaps from Buyard Cholik are far stronger. But they can be threatening to a level 115 player.




115 – Legacy of Blood
Rating: Easy
Charm:

Legacy of Blood

Legacy of Blood
By Richard Knaak

Required Level: 115
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Unlocks Mastery Skill: Endurance
(3 to 5)% Life stolen per Hit
(3 to 5)% Mana stolen per Hit

Also known as the Chamber of Blood or Bartuc or whatever. Leave a portal right outside. Even though your summons will attempt to screen against the exploding golem projectiles, they might not always succeed. Otherwise, this is just a straightforward kill, as Bartuc has very low maximum Life. If you find yourself dying here, make sure you’re standing behind your summons properly and socket more Perfect Bloodstones or just get more Maximum Life. Summoners, by dint of having summons, should have an easier time with this one. Keep mobile to avoid being totally destroyed by the fire traps that the golems create under your feet as they die.


115 – Lord Primus
Rating: Easy
Charm:

Spirit Trance Herb

Spirit Trance Herb
Required Level: 115
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
10% Attack Speed
10% Cast Speed
(21 to 150)% Bonus to Attack Rating
+(2 to 4) Life Regenerated per Second

Gore Crawler projectiles can nuke you if you’re squishy. Don’t walk around without summons to protect you. Primus himself attacks with Bladestorm, which will shred through you if you’re nearby. Let your summons handle him but be wary of being hit by the Gore Crawlers while your summons are occupied by Primus. Primus himself is fairly squishy, hence his rating, but his charm isn’t that rewarding for a summoner, so feel free to ignore him if you lack gear and levels. However, he must be killed to access the Bastion of the Triune, so you’ll have to do him eventually.


115 – Bull Prince Rodeo
Rating: Medium - Hard
Charm:

Fool's Gold

Fool's Gold
Moo moo moo Moooo! Moo!

Required Level: 115
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+(0 to 38) to Strength
+(0 to 38) to Dexterity
+(0 to 38) to Vitality
+(0 to 38) to Energy
(11 to 15)% Bonus to Defense
-10% Gold Find
(16 to 20)% Magic Find

A difficult Uber for non-Hawk summoners. You cannot use Warpstrikes or Warps of any kind in Rodeo’s boss room, and Rodeo himself will spam Hoof Stomp, a series of physical-damage projectiles in a screen-wide AOE nova that inflict a 3 or 4 second stun. This will be extremely debilitating to your summons and you’ll need to summon fresh ones just to get hits in on him. Of course, Hoof Stomp also deals massive damage to low-level characters that lack physical resistance, so you’ll need summon attackers into his range while hiding behind walls. There’s no shame in treating this guy like Akarat since his gimmick screws with persistent summons. Hawks don’t care about being stunned, so they’re fine.

► 120 Ubers

120 – Duncraig
Rating: Medium
Charm:

Demonsbane

Demonsbane
By Robert Marks

Required Level: 120
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+(0 to 2) to Sorceress Skill Levels
+(0 to 2) to Paladin Skill Levels
+(0 to 2) to Necromancer Skill Levels
+(0 to 2) to Druid Skill Levels
+(0 to 2) to Barbarian Skill Levels
+(0 to 2) to Assassin Skill Levels
+(0 to 2) to Amazon Skill Levels
+5 Life Regenerated per Second

This is where you really need to have your build together or else you just won’t make it. Slain Souls are resistant to various elements and come in huge packs. Their melee hits are quite strong and the barrels they throw are a test of your clearspeed. The Necromorbs are similarly annoying: Physically resistant, they’ll scatter everywhere and shoot damaging projectiles that will test your defensive layers. If you don’t kill fast enough, the barrels will be a huge hindrance or even kill you outright. If you have sufficient clearspeed, you’ll walk through them easily. You need good Hit Recovery frames, a Warp, good damage, and a bit of survivability, especially if you get into melee range alongside your summons.

The boss of the area, Assur, is nothing special. He dies in 2 hits of Purify (Gained from Assur's Bane or

Neutrality Pact

Neutrality Pact
Required Level: 130
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+(1 to 2) to All Skills
+(61 to 100)% Bonus to Summoned Edyrem Life
+(2 to 5) to Purify

)but has a massive amount of Fire resistance piercing with his Flamestrike and Flamefront. Run circles around him and shoot him with Purify. If you are truly terrified of him, get ~300% Fire Resistance and then his pierce will do nothing. Make sure everything nearby is dead or the fight will become unnecessarily difficult. Summons can help to distract Assur if you need to line your shots up better.



120 – Athulua, Amazonian Goddess
Rating: Easy - Medium
Charm:

Weather Control

Weather Control
Required Level: 120
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Jitan's Gate Cooldown Reduced by 1 seconds
(2 to 5)% Innate Elemental Damage
+10 to all Attributes

Summon her through an Askari Call used at the center of the Island of Skartara. Askari Calls are dropped by the Priestesses of Tran Athulua. Summoners fare better against her than other builds because their summons will tank Athulua’s Guided Arrow. Just warp onto her whenever she warps around until she’s dead. If you or your summons are dying, that’s a sign that your gear isn’t up to snuff.


120 – Kingdom of Shadow:
Rating: Medium
Charm:

Eternal Bone Pile

Eternal Bone Pile
Required Level: 120
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+(1 to 2) to Sorceress Skill Levels
+(1 to 2) to Paladin Skill Levels
+(1 to 2) to Necromancer Skill Levels
+(1 to 2) to Druid Skill Levels
+(1 to 2) to Barbarian Skill Levels
+(1 to 2) to Assassin Skill Levels
+(1 to 2) to Amazon Skill Levels
10% Movement Speed

This area is a test of your build, mechanical skills, map knowledge, and client to server connection. Mostly that last one. Firstly, study a map, video, or route of this place; Otherwise, you’ll just be running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Secondly, get Defense, Avoid, Block, maximum Life and surround yourself with summons. Thirdly, get the best or second-best Faster Hit Recovery breakpoint you possibly can if you’ve yet to do that. Summoners do better here than most because they get meatshields for free, but that doesn’t give you a free pass to do this Uber. Follow your route to the end: Juris Khan, who is an absolute pushover if you can get to him.

My number one tip for this Uber is: Only run if there are no Citizens nearby. If you’re not confident at all, just don’t run at all. The run back to this Uber will take longer than the few seconds saved by running. Running means that you have 0 Defense, so walking is the safest move. If you have enough Faster Run/Walk, you’ll still walk faster than the Citizens. My second tip would be to save your Warp if you’re still using Jitan’s Gate. You’ll absolutely need it for getting over walls and for getting out of tight spots or past huge swarms of Citizens in narrow corridors. If you get caught without your Warp, you will die.



120 – Quov Tsin:
Rating: Easy - Medium
Charm:

Silver Seal of Ureh

Silver Seal of Ureh
Required Level: 120
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+1 to All Skills
+(21 to 30) Spell Focus
+(11 to 13)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(11 to 15)% to Summoned Minion Resistances
+(11 to 20) to Strength
+(11 to 20) to Dexterity
+(11 to 20) to Vitality
+(11 to 20) to Energy

Cap Minion Resistance and improve your own Maximum Resistances; get flat damage reduction if possible (Diablo 2 engine mechanic quirk: if an attack or spell's physical damage component is sufficiently mitigated by flat Damage Reduction, the elemental parts can also have their damage reduced).

At range, Quov Tsin will cast the highly damaging spell Trinity Beam, cast poisonous Hives, and debuff your Elemental Resistances with Mythal. At melee range, Quov Tsin will cast Bone Spear novas and teleport away, constantly. Get into his face with your summons and don’t let up and he’ll go down eventually. Make sure you don’t die; use a town portal if you must. Quov Tsin has the Soulstealer modifier, which means that he heals if any nearby player dies. Quov Tsin is quite squishy and there's no lockout, so he’ll die sooner than later.




120 – The Triune:
Rating: Medium
Charm:

Corrupted Wormhole

Corrupted Wormhole
Required Level: 100
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus

This area is filled with dangerous enemies that will test your damage and survivability, much like Duncraig. Impaler Archons deal mostly unmitigable Magic damage with their projectiles. Primal Clays will proc Showers of Rock that will decimate summons and yourself if you stand in them. Meteor Spires will kill anyone who’s unobservant and too stationary. Kraken Guards will just annoy you with their slowing effects. This combination of enemies, much like the Slain Souls in Duncraig, ensure that you need a certain level of tankiness and clearspeed to stay alive, or you’ll just die repeatedly.
The boss Lucion is always done in the same way: charm him repeatedly with the Tome of Possession and let Malic kill him. Unsummon all of your summons beforehand so Malic’s AI isn’t thrown off.


120 – Teganze:
Rating: Easy - Medium
Charm:

Umbaru Treasure

Umbaru Treasure
Required Level: 120
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Cube with Essence/Runestone to Roll Stat
+(6 to 10)% to Spell Damage
Essence Slots: 20

One of any summoner’s favored farming spots. Similar to Quov Tsin, a test of resistances as every enemy here deals elemental damage. The Umbaru Spirits here spawn in large packs and periodically shoot singular balls that can be lethal if you’re hit by several at once. Warping then standing still will render you nearly invincible in Teganze. However, it’s more rewarding to let your summons naturally warp around you and kill the enemies if your damage is high enough, so be aware that this is a second playstyle option available for Summoners. Regardless, warping and standing still lets you basically be braindead when you clear Teganze.

The boss, Zagraal’s Shadow, attacks with Noctule and can chew through anything less than an Iron Golem, so stay well away when you fight him and be ready to resummon. He’s invulnerable in bat form and vulnerable in biped form, so it’s just a matter of RNG which form he takes at any given moment.



120 – Kabraxis:
Rating: Easy - Medium
Charm:

Soul of Kabraxis

Soul of Kabraxis
Required Level: 120
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+1 to All Skills
Maximum Fire Resist +(1 to 3)%
Maximum Lightning Resist +(1 to 3)%
Maximum Cold Resist +(1 to 3)%
Maximum Poison Resist +(1 to 3)%

One of summoner’s easier Ubers. Kabraxis can Pounce onto distant targets, attacks with Whirlpool in melee range, casts Balefire (grounded projectile that explodes into spreading multi-hit fire on the first target it hits), Flamestrike (telegraphed multi-hit pillar of flame that deals high damage), and Punisher nova. When there’s a target in melee range, Kabraxis will favor using Whirlpool on it, so just having melee summons on him guarantees his predictability.

He will occasionally break out of this pattern and cast Flamestrike on distant targets, so stay on your toes. Due to his high damage output, a supertank like Jinn, Iron Golem, or Veil King is recommended for this fight, but you can make do with just repeatedly summoning a weaker summon onto him to always ensure that he has a target to hit. Kabraxis has Soulstealer, so don’t die to him or else he'll recover Life.




120 – Judgement Day:
Rating: Easy
Charm:

Crystalline Flame Medallion

Crystalline Flame Medallion
Required Level: 120
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+1 to Summon Edyrem
Fire Absorb 5%
Lightning Absorb 5%
Cold Absorb 5%
Cube after Killing Imperius and Malthael
(Max: 1 minute from each other)

A relatively Easy Uber that acts as a DPS test. Imperius and Malthael each summon invulnerable Edyrems and spam Tremor, which inflicts percentage Life damage. Don’t be afraid if your Life drains rapidly; chug potions and let your summons do the killing. Both of them are squishy, so your build will need serious improvement if you have issues with these guys.



120 – Baal:
Rating: Hard - Impossible
Charm:

Spirit of Creation

Spirit of Creation
Required Level: 125
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Unlocks Mastery Skill: Specialization
+25 to Strength
Maximum Mana +(1 to 5)%
Regenerate Mana +10%
Elemental Resists +(1 to 10)%

See my video demonstration below for why this Uber is categorically impossible for any summoner except Hawk Necromancer.

Baal is tankier than every other 120 Uber by far. He has many skills of varying lethality, drains your mana, but worst of all, has a chance to summon Minions of Destruction and “Visions” whenever he hits a target. Minions of Destruction will pounce onto their targets and inflict Fear constantly, which is debilitating to Summoners.

But the Visions are worse: They are copies of Andariel, Duriel, Mephisto, and Diablo that render Baal invulnerable if they are within 16 yards of him, and there’s no cap on how many he can summon. That means that if you’re killing some Visions while Baal is still hitting your summons, he can summon them faster than you can kill them. You need to separate Baal and his Visions before killing the Visions. The vision proc chance increases with the number of targets and he can summon more if he hits more targets. It is also speculated that his proc rate increases when he’s low on Life. Since summoners rely on their persistent minions to deal damage, this means that fighting Baal with a summoner will result in a hilarious but quick death at the hands of dozens or hundreds of fairly strong enemies.

Otherwise, if you have access to Hawks, just use Veil King or Iron Golem to tank and chip away at Baal with Hawks until he’s dead. If Baal summons a Vision, get away and try to kite either Baal or the Vision out by stepping into their aggro range, then use your warp to get across the arena without drawing Baal into the area and kill the isolated Vision.

► 125 Ubers

125 – Xazax:
Rating: Medium - Hard
Charm:

Xazax's Illusion

Xazax's Illusion
Required Level: 125
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+(0 to 2) to Necromancer Skill Levels
+(0 to 2) to Paladin Skill Levels
+(0 to 2) to Sorceress Skill Levels
+(0 to 2) to Barbarian Skill Levels
+(0 to 2) to Druid Skill Levels
+(0 to 2) to Amazon Skill Levels
+(0 to 2) to Assassin Skill Levels
+(10 to 25) Life Regenerated per Second
Poison Resist +(26 to 50)%

At the start of the fight, Xazax will pounce onto you and summon a Penitent, then he’ll do this periodically throughout the fight. Penitents are invulnerable and use a damaging AOE melee attack. Be careful not to be near them or you’ll get stunlocked to death. Penitents punish melee builds Hard, so you’ll need Blast Wave if you have a melee-like playstyle. Apart from that, Xazax casts Meteor Shower, Devouring Cloud, and Glacial Spike novas. The Glacial Spikes are the most damaging, but the Meteor Showers will destroy hordes of weaker summons. Warp away to save your summons, if necessary. Use tanks as distractions for Penitents and kill Xazax with your DPSers. If necessary, kite Penitents away completely and break line of sight, then warp back to Xazax.




125 – Astrogha:
Rating: Hard - Impossible
Charm:

Astrogha's Venom Stinger

Astrogha's Venom Stinger
Required Level: 125
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+1 to All Skills
Jitan's Gate Cooldown Reduced by 1 seconds
+(200 to 500) to Life
Poison Length Reduced by 50%

Similar to Baal, categorically impossible for non-Hawk summoners. Summons will either die instantly to Astrogha’s Frozen Orb, or they’ll be valid targets for Astrogha to summon Spider Statues onto. Said summons will end up killing them to heal Astrogha, curse themselves and you into being very slow and vulnerable, all while not outdamaging the healing of the statue. Summoner builds just don’t have the fine control needed to kill Astrogha outside of the usage of Night Hawks, unless you just summon your whole army and repeatedly jump onto Astrogha to kill him without somehow breaking a statue (you'll certainly die to Frozen Orb if you do this). Not really worthwhile in my opinion, but it's your choice.


125 – Viz-Jun:
Rating: Easy - Medium
Charm:

Cold Fusion Schematics

Cold Fusion Schematics
Required Level: 125
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
1% Chance to cast level 10 Time Strike on Striking
+(11 to 30) to Strength
+(11 to 30) to Dexterity
+(11 to 30) to Vitality
+(11 to 30) to Energy

Outdated and unrewarding content that only serves as a connector to Lazarus and the Master Control System Charm. Upon entering, you’ll be immediately swarmed by hostiles; leave a portal because you can’t get back in through the Proving Grounds. Most enemies here deal physical damage, so use Bear Stance or get defenses. Don’t step on any mines, slowly Warp your way down to the MCS, and Purify it for your reward.


125 – Yshari Sanctum:
Rating: Medium
Charm:

The Ancient Repositories

The Ancient Repositories
Required Level: 125
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+(0 to 1) to All Skills
(101 to 150)% Bonus to Attack Rating
+(11 to 15)% to Spell Damage
(6 to 10)% Chance of Crushing Blow
Fire Resist +(5 to 20)%
Lightning Resist +(5 to 20)%
Cold Resist +(5 to 20)%

The maze is straightforward (except for where it twists and turns) and gives you the chance to have a Veil King duel with the Mephisto clone. Valthek is a Purify fight, so Summoners do him the same as anyone else.

125 – Toraja:
Rating: Easy - Medium
Charm:

Lylia's Curse

Lylia's Curse
Required Level: 120
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+(11 to 25)% Bonus to Summoned Edyrem Life
+10 Life Regenerated per Second
Elemental Resists +10%

See the Edyrem summon section for more details about Toraja. Braindead farming area that is feast or famine due to how Sha’ad Runes drop. This place is also a good place to earn early money as a summoner.


125 – Spirit of Giyua:
Rating: Hard
Charm: Ghost Trance (Upgrade to Umbaru Treasure)
I never do this Uber, so someone else will need to comment on it.

125 – Belial:
Rating: Medium
Charm:

The Book of Lies

The Book of Lies
Required Level: 125
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+(100 to 500) to Life
+(50 to 250) to Mana

Keep your eyes on the rat and warp onto him constantly with your summons in tow, or just cast Night Hawks; it’s a waste of time to kill the clones. Belial can stack invisible damaging Phalanxes that will blow you up even with large amounts of Fire Resistance, so make sure your summons are screening projectiles for you.




125 – Fauztinville:
Rating: Medium - Hard
The endgame farming zone. You’ll need high defense to survive Necrobots and many tanks to survive the sheer onslaught of enemies. Depending on your damage type, you’ll hate different enemies here. For an Abyss Knights build, Concealed Smiters are a rather benign enemy to be resisted by. But many summoner builds deal physical damage and Necrobots will be your worst nightmare, sporting offense, defense, and numbers in spades. Clearing this content above Teganze, Bremmtown, and Duncraig is typically the last stop for most summoners.



125 – Bremmtown:
Rating: Easy
Charm:

Dragon Claw

Dragon Claw
Required Level: 125
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Unlocks Mastery Skill: Chemistry
+(50 to 150) to Life
+(25 to 75) to Mana
Cube after Killing Dark Star Dragon in Under 1 Minute and 30 Seconds

If you can’t take hits from Howling Ghosts because you’re lack defenses, put summons in front of yourself as you advance so the Howling Spirits pounce onto them instead. Otherwise, it’s straightforward and easy. The charm must be cubed in 90 seconds, which is a generous window from the start of Bremmtown down to the boss. For the trophy, you might need to get a friend who can clear faster.



125 – Nymyr’s Light:
Rating: Medium
Charm:

The Sleep

The Sleep
Required Level: 125
Cube with Trophy to Awaken
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
Maximum Fire Resist +(0 to 1)%
Maximum Lightning Resist +(0 to 1)%
Maximum Cold Resist +(0 to 1)%
Maximum Poison Resist +(0 to 1)%

It’s a Purify fight. Get maximum Life and don’t touch Witches. Has nothing to do with being a summoner, unless your summons can tank Atanna Khan’s damage.

► 130 Ubers

130 – The Void:
Rating: Medium - Impossible
Charm:

Books of Kalan

Books of Kalan
Required Level: 130
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+1 to All Skills
+(3 to 15) to Teleport
+25 to Life
+50 to Mana

Summons lack the requisite control to not kill Lilith… unless you’re a Hawk Necromancer. In that case, you’ll want to keep Lilith alive and away from the ice orbs that Inarius summons by placing an Edyrem near her to manipulate her AI, or otherwise walk over said orbs yourself. She’ll periodically cast a damaging Blood Ritual AOE which you need to lure Inarius into, at which point you’ll be able to damage him.

130 – Uldyssian:
Rating: Hard
Charm:

Neutrality Pact

Neutrality Pact
Required Level: 130
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+(1 to 2) to All Skills
+(61 to 100)% Bonus to Summoned Edyrem Life
+(2 to 5) to Purify

Everything up to Uldyssian himself is a snoozefest. Blood Raven, the Countess, Radament, the Summoner, Mephisto, the Ancients (Only need to kill Korlic to open the portal), Nihlathak, Andariel and Duriel (Only need to kill Andariel to open the portal), Azmodan and Belial (Only need to kill Azmodan to open the portal), and the three Prime Evils (Only need to kill Diablo, who will likely walk to you if you even move slightly down and away from the portal) are no trouble at all.

Uldyssian is where the real fight begins. He’ll throw piercing projectiles, use Divine Apparition to freeze your summons, and create annoying Edyrems of his own. But his two biggest gimmicks are a timed Hoof Stomp and Deathstrike Cascade, which hits in six directions around him. They are offset from each other, so you’ll usually get hit by one then the other. However, they can sometimes sync up and a Hoof Stomp stun can lead into a Deathstrike and possibly your death.

The Hoof Strike is a simple gear check: Either you have enough maximum Life and physical resistance, or you can’t do Uldyssian because he’ll kill you and you’ll have no ability to avoid it. The Deathstrike is seriously annoying for summoners who rely on persistent summons; even if you warp away, the Deathstrike starts centered on Uldyssian. Which is where many of your minions will be. Unless you can anticipate it quickly enough, some of your summons will die and you’ll lose DPS uptime. Make sure not to die to Uldyssian, or else he’ll heal with Soulstealer. Apart from that, he’s the simplest of the level 130 Ubers and is a straight gear check.

130 – Archbishop Lazarus:
Rating: Hard
Charm:

The Glorious Book of Median

The Glorious Book of Median
Required Level: 130
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
+1 to All Skills
Adds 10-15 Damage
+(24 to 45)% Damage to Demons
Elemental Resists +(5 to 15)%

It’s a Purify fight. Get combat speeds and a Warp, then just get good. Lazarus is a skill-based fight, although having the right class and a 3 second cooldown warp helps. Has nothing to do with being a summoner.

► Special Content

120 to 135 – Dimensional Labyrinth:
Up until Tier 11, you’ll do as well as anyone else or even better. Summons make for great meatshields against Erinys but are countered by Colossal Tunnelers that cast Cold Fear to send your minions scattering. Observers are a mixed bag: Frozen Spheres will impact against summons, but Forked Lightning will go right through them. Summons can also act as great supports with their various auras and debuffs. In short, Summoners can make for well-rounded supports in Lab but will have trouble keeping up the damage in multiple player games at higher tiers. They’ll have some mixed utility for bosses: dealing sustained damage will be unlikely as your summons will constantly die to high damage skills that they're too numerous to dodge, but keeping the bosses distracted is valuable.

135 – Deimoss:
Rating: Impossible
Charm:

Dimensional Key

No.

135 – Samael:
Rating: Impossible
Charm:

Vial of Elder Blood

Vial of Elder Blood
Required Level: 135
Keep in Inventory to Gain Bonus
-5% to Enemy Elemental Resistances
Maximum Life +3%
Maximum Mana +(6 to 10)%
+50 Life after each Kill
+(5 to 25)% to Experience Gained
Transmute with a Nephalem Dimensional Key
and a Greater Signet of Learning to open
a portal to the Heart of Darkness

No.

[abwhorent]

Submissions Guidelines
I named this guide the “Community Pokedex” because I am hoping the community will step up and share information and resources about summons. Median XL has a bit of a wild west vibe when it comes to information: Nothing is centralized, definitive guides are few and far in-between, and most information is just stored in the heads of experienced players.

That being said, the guide will have a certain level of proof required behind the information: a couple of words with no screenshots or videos to back your point up will not be convincing for the standards of this forum’s guides. To submit information, you can post in the thread, PM me on the forums, or DM me on Discord. I encourage you to do either of the latter two, since the thread will not notify me when a reply is posted.

There is a read-only spreadsheet that will be updated with the thread's findings if you feel like skipping the guide formatting and text.

Here are some general guidelines on how to submit content and what is considered to be adequate proof if you're unsure of how to proceed:

► Scaling information

Please include a screenshot of the skill’s tooltip at level 1 (or if granted through a Relic or Item, at the level granted exclusively by that skill).

Please mention the character level of the character you have taken the screenshot on (character level scales minion life) and make sure to remove all equipment that might scale the minion’s stats in any way.

► Skill Demonstration

Include a few sentences about the capabilities of the summon and what content it might specialize in. Ideally, have a video of the summon with all of its skills displayed.
Summons do not exist in a vacuum, so make sure to mention any summons you think it would synergize with.

For any demonstrations, please show your D2Stats Minion Damage, Life, and Resistance so we are not misled about the summon’s capabilities. Please only demonstrate the summon at first, though you may include additional footage with other summons to demonstrate any synergy if so desired.

► Relic Contribution

By making this guide, I am making myself a public figure. As such, it would be highly detrimental for me to act in any way that would screw other people over for my own gain, since I would easily be reported and banned without recourse.

This trust means that if you do not have your own summoner or recording setup, I encourage you to share your Summon or Buff-related relics with me so I can create a demo of what they can do in the hands of a high level summoner, which might even help you with selling your Relic.
In fact, I would prefer to demo them instead of buying them (unless it is a Relic I can afford and personally need).

I will return your Relic after the demo materials are recorded and I have a good measure of the summon’s abilities. You are welcome to sit in on the demo, although 2-man HP can distort the results.

If you're specifically looking for information that badly needs to be touched up or included:
Guide related:
Need to format classes section and include demonstration videos (Duncraig recording, Fauztinville recording, Bremmtown recording)

Need to record and upload Paladin related videos, also the Ubers section

Need to fill placeholder for Abyss Knight and Iron Golem

Standardized formatting

► List of Information Still Not in The Guide or Spreadsheet

Hidden minion attack rating of several summons

Exact base life and attack rating of several summons

Any data on: Thunder Bear, Daystar, Sinner.

Exact yards and leashing radius (visuals included) of minions

Improved description of minion AI and attack skill list

If Alnair’s Blade Spirits scale the exact same as regular Blade Spirits through slvl

If Alnair’s Blade Spirits proc is Blade Spirits innate or the variant (variant could just exist to have 20s CD)

If Alnair’s Blade Spirits benefit from Sorceress passives as the innate ones do

Whether the following auras have an effect on minions (without explicitly stated synergies): Frost Essence Aura, Champions of the Sun Aura, Zann Esu’s Rite Aura, Avenging Aura, Forest Aura, maximum Fire Resistance component of Hellfire Aura

Actual mechanics behind Veil King’s Grim Vision aura relative to Blood Skeletons

Whether the following auras have an effect on other players: Champions of the Sun Aura, Avenging Aura, Forest Aura

Exact yard radius of all auras above.

Hitbox mechanics and sizes of all minions, including how larger hitboxes can envelop the player

Explanation of collision for minions and why some have problematic collision while others do not (transparent minions = no collision?)

Maximum minion count of the following minions (if any): Spirits trio, Wolf Companion, Sirens, Night Hawks, Champions of the Sun, Blood Skeleton, Abyss Knight, Daystar, Elvensong, Thunder Bear

Need to add a list of “functional” minion cap for most minions? Is this necessary?

Whether auras from Spirit of Vengeance, Vine Companion, or Jinn have an effect when sourced from: Buried Hawk/Dux Infernum/Warmage set without base points invested into those skills.

Proc rates of all on-striking minion casts or procs, including Lamia Doom, Veil King Crucify, Scourge Crucify, Defender Spirit Retaliate, Protector Spirit Bloodlust, Hoplite Inner Fire and Retaliate, etc.

Almost everything about Resurrects

The effects of the mods on Blade Spirits (Nova Death, Teleporting Hit)

More detailed entries for innate Amazon, Druid, and Sorceress summons

Why my second Veil King keeps dying, god damn it.

Number of times an individual Night Hawk can hit in one attack

How Darklings thorns and flat reduction scale up and work

Video and picture demonstrations for several minions, check the appendix Drives for details

Secondary scaling mechanic for minion spell damage underlying the elemental minion trio

Actual effect of Lamia Doom

Legacy Summons
Legacy Summons are summons that are no longer available from any source that is obtainable in the current ladder. As such, they cannot be obtained by the vast majority of the game's population and are irrelevant. Their entries have been moved here as to not clutter the main guide and they have been removed from the Summon Table of Contents.

► Familiar

Familiar
Role: Support

Damage: Low
Life: N/A
Mana Cost: Low

Maximum Minion Count: Unknown
Sources: Innate (Sorceress) | |

Relic (Familiar)

| |

Horned Hunter

Horned Hunter
Stag Bow (Sacred)
(Amazon Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Dexterity: 557
Item Level: 105
Innate Tri-Elemental Damage: (40.0% of Dexterity)
3% Chance to cast level 20 Spiral Dance on Kill
7% Chance to cast level 10 Arrow on Striking
+3 to Amazon Skill Levels
Adds 150-200 Fire Damage
Adds 150-200 Lightning Damage
Adds 150-200 Cold Damage
-(22 to 28)% to Enemy Elemental Resistances
+1 to Raven Familiar
10% Chance of Crushing Blow
(21 to 25)% to Dexterity
Socketed (6)

Rating: A

Review:
As of patch 1.7, Familiar is a Sorceress passive rather than a minion with an aura. This means that this entry's talk of Support Sorceress is no longer accurate. Familiar is still a strong passive for casters; it's just not a minion, so it won't be talked about as a minion.

Familiar is a useful untargetable Sorceress summon that is the exclusive source of Zann Esu's Rite Aura. This aura has an approximate range of 1 screen (16+ yards). This aura grants 25% increased Energy, 15% increased Cast speed, and +1 to Skill Levels at base level. Zann Esu's Rite aura gains an additional +1 to all Skills per 4 base levels in Familiar. Furthermore, the Sorceress may summon an additional Familiar every 5 base levels. Typically, Sorceresses get around 6 Familiars, but wearing

Atanna Khan's Dress

Atanna Khan's Dress
Ceremonial Armor (Sacred)
Defense: 10306 to 14529
(Sorceress Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Dexterity: 722
Item Level: 120
+20 to Maximum Familiar Skill Level
3% Chance to cast level 60 Magic Missiles on Death Blow
30% Movement Speed
+(5 to 10) to Arcane Swarm
+200% Enhanced Defense
+(1000 to 3000) Defense
Elemental Resists -25%
Physical Resist (5 to 10)%
10% Chance to Avoid Damage
Socketed (6)

when allocating skill points will allow for far more base levels to be invested. This item is the basis of a support Sorceress, who has high potential to support oskill-based casters. Since oskills can only scale from soft levels, they are typically designed to scale well from them. Familiars can push oskill builds like Orb of Annihilation to the next level with their level support.

Familiars stun their target on attack, but cannot chain stun them. This is only a minor benefit given how Familiars can only target 1 enemy at a time each. It is possible to use

Frozen Heart

Frozen Heart
Lamellar Armor (Sacred)
Defense: 7746 to 8400
(Sorceress Only)
Required Level: 100
Required Dexterity: 499
Item Level: 120
+(3 to 4) to Sorceress Skill Levels
+(9 to 12) to Ice Elementals (Sorceress Only)
+(50 to 75)% to Summoned Minion Life
+(50 to 75)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(25 to 30)% to Summoned Minion Resistances
+200% Enhanced Defense
Physical Resist 10%
100% Bonus to Defense
Socketed (6)

alongside level snapshotting from Atanna Khan's Dress to increase the damage of Familiars and create a Sorceress Summoner. However, Familiars are melee attackers that may only hit one target at a time, so Familiars alone make for a fairly weak DPS summon.

Ultimately, Familiars are mostly useful for their aura; even 1 soft level from the Relic could be huge for supporting Energy-based allies. According to snowbird, the Relic bears all of its base level effects. It is unknown whether the aura benefits minions in any way (given that skill levels are ambiguous, they may not have Energy, and cast speed is irrelevant), but it's certainly good for players.

► Daystar

Daystar
Role: X
Maximum minion count: X
Sources: X
Rating: X

Review: This summon has yet to be tested as nobody has come forth with a Relic of it. There is an Elite monster known as the Daystar that casts Holy Trap and other such skills; it is unknown if the Summon behaves similarly to this monster.

► Shredder

Shredder
Role: DPS / Support
Damage: Very Low
Life: Very Low
Mana Cost: Very Low
Maximum minion count: 10
Sources:

Relic (Summon Shredder)

Rating: C

Review: Shredder is a summon with incredibly low stats all around, making it unsuitable for basically anything. What sets it apart is that it casts D2 Sorceress’ Frozen Orb and that you get up to 10 of them. There is only one situation in which this minion will do anything for a summoner: A Necromancer with leveled Jinns and an automatic source of Mythal (procs). With these enemy resistance reductions, Shredders will start to approach a respectable amount of damage that could be used to clear non-Cold resistant enemies in Fauztinville and Duncraig. Shredders have noticeably improved frames per animation (much like every other caster summon) from increased Attack Speed, so a source of Wolf Stance or Venomous Aura is recommended.

The constant slowing effect that Frozen Orb provides is useful because of how it’s being spammed, which is what also gives Shredder the support role. Keep in mind that Frozen Orb’s bolt spread is positioning dependent; warping to a location will bring your Shredders with you and they’ll all spam Frozen Orbs in the same direction, lowering your screen coverage. You’ll also have to resummon them periodically, as they are incredibly squishy. For an Abyss Knights Jinn Necromancer, Shredders are an interesting possible addition to the team. For everyone else, they’re unusable due to their awful stats.

► Bane Monster

Bane Monster
Role: Tank
Damage: Very Low
Life: Very Low
Mana Cost: Very Low
Maximum Minion Count: 10
Sources:

Relic (Summon Bane Monster)

Rating: D

Review: Bane Monsters are a Demon-type minion with a low mana cost and fairly high maximum minion count that cast the lightning spell Flash. Flash is a very short-ranged multi-hitting (hits 4 times?) lightning AOE skill around the caster. Flash has increased damaging scaling from the caster’s Lightning Resistance, but it is unknown if this monster’s variant of Flash has increased damage from the summoner’s Minion Resistance (similar to Avalanches). It is currently not known if the minion does not appear to scale with increased Attack Speed or has otherwise hit its animation breakpoint cap, but it doesn’t appear to easily benefit from a high level Wolf Stance apart from simply being quite fast.
Regardless, the minion has the unenviable honor of being yet another weak piece of trash with horrible base stats and scaling as to make you wonder why it exists in the first place. The stats are just irredeemably bad.

Appendix
Here are all of the folders and sources for all collected evidence that was used to write this guide. I encourage you to check it out and submit contributions yourself, as interpretation of evidence is not infallible. Ditto the opinions that are put forth in this guide.

Folder containing Picture submissions + spreadsheet
Videos not included currently because they break my Google Drive storage limit. I suggest uploading your own videos and I can feature them for you.

Rumblealex and Frank for sharing Wolf Companion relic to test its effect
Marco for giving me answers sometimes
CMBurns for a bit of proofreading and carrying my fat ass
The dozens of people who’ve received thousands of tg from me this season for meme garbage
MXL Discord for being a hot garbage fire
Meek for helping a lot with Necro gear and giving feedback
Funxion for letting me test the Summon Shredder relic
Mort for info on the elemental trio’s unique damage scaling (explained how I noticed synergy difference between Barb/Paladin when testing the relic on 2 respec’d characters), also for Bane Monster
Penguincha for suggesting the use of snapshotting tank minions for non-summoners.
snowbird for providing proof of the Familiar relic's aura functionality
Ryunp and wulf for formatting guide and advice + corrections, respectively
And thank you, reader, for wanting to learn about summons. Hopefully, you can contribute to this guide as well.

[abwhorent]

Reserved post.

[CMBurns]

I wish this was a bit more detailed.


/s

[Lynderika]

Good job there. I never played summoner but will keep this somewhere for the time I inevitably try
Happy to see Sirens are as beautiful and useless as ever, as my proud first relic ever it make me feel warm inside

[snowbird]

My pally has Familiar Relic and receives all three bonuses without base levels. Indeed a good relic for all non sorc casters.
And Skeletal Flayer's orange Text works for merc with Khazra plate equipped. If u play a caster without any bonuses for minion survivality and ur summoned flayers get instadeleted, u can just put it in any gears of ur merc with khazra plate and the merc demon blood aura will provide u and ur allies 15% more elem dmg.