Community Pokedex - Guide to All Summons

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abwhorent
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Summoner ClassesMechanicsSummonsResurrectsUbers and VideosSubmission GuidelinesAppendix

Changelog

► 2.1

► 1.7

► 1.6.2


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


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


► Detailed Skills


Necromancer:
► Necromancer Summoner


► Detailed Skills


Paladin:
► sumodin


► Detailed Skills


► Why Paladin Summoner Sucks


Sorceress:
► Support Summoner


Druid:
► doodoo dudu


Amazon:
► Unsummonzon


Assassin:
► RIP Clawblock


Mechanics
► D2 Engine Backbone of MXL


► Median XL Mechanics


► Summons Warp to You If You Get Far Away


► Summons Randomly Die If Too Far From You


► Summoners Cannot Move Too Fast For the Above Reasons



► Reanimates are not Summons


► Summons Follow the Summoner and Die if the Summoner Dies


► Soft skill level effect on procs


► Summons Warp With the Summoner


► Summon AI is Pepega


► Summons Have Unknown Frames Per Animation Breakpoints


► Minion Resistances


► Minions Have Linear Scaling


► Minions Have Unknown Attack Rating


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


► Some Observations About Aura Summons



► Minion Damage Formula


► Minion Life Formula


► Minions Are Snapshotted When Summoned
Edited by abwhorent 2 years.
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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


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

► Blood Knight

► Champions of the Sun

► Overlord

► Thunder Bear

► Shock Beast

► Edyrem

► Fallen One

► Siren

► Darkling

► Skeletal Flayer

► Void Archon

► Rampagor

► Lamia
Edited by abwhorent 2 years.
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► Glowing Fungus

► Sinner

► Avalanche

► Blade Spirit variant

► Ice Elemental

► Blade Spirit

► Fire Elemental

► Spirit of Vengeance

► Blood Skeleton

► Night Hawk

► Abyss Knight

► Iron Golem

► Rathmas Chosen

► Veil King

► Jinn

► Wolf Companion
Edited by abwhorent 2 years.
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► Guardian Spirit

► Defender Spirit

► Protector Spirit

► Elvensong

► Harvester

► Vine Companion

► Scourge

► Hoplite

► Resurrect


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.
Edited by abwhorent 2 years.
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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


► 110 Ubers


► 115 Ubers


► 120 Ubers


► 125 Ubers


► 130 Ubers


► Special Content
Edited by abwhorent 3 years.
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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


► Skill Demonstration


► Relic Contribution


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


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

► Daystar

► Shredder

► Bane Monster



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.
Edited by abwhorent 3 years.
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Reserved post.
CMBurns
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I wish this was a bit more detailed.


/s
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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
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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.