Review of the Summoner Necro Rework

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Dominos9189
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Hello! This is a repost of a write-up I did on Reddit, I figured I'd share it here too. This isn't really intended to be a guide, just my thoughts/experiences on the Summoner Necro rework.


Hey guys, after a little more than a week of casually playing with the new Summoner Necro, I thought I'd share my opinion with anyone who is interested in how the class fairs after the new update. Long story short: It rocks!

I was interested in the new minion summons, particularly the Night Hawks, as it seemed like a similar play style to Raging Spirits in Path of Exile, which I use on my Witch Necromancer when I play. Night Hawks are incredibly good...like scary good, especially against bosses. They are suicidal summons that die after hitting something once, however the hit has a small AoE effect, does massive damage and also hits multiple times. While it was frustrating during early and mid game due to the high mana requirement, once I was able to stop investing points into strength and dex to wear gear and throw a few into energy, it got better. It also got better the more Hawks I could summon at once due to the self-synergy the skill has. Also, being able to spam Hawks made aoe farming much easier, as that was also a difficulty in the early game.

The other summons are pretty self-explanatory. You have your skeletons which give a big damage buff to your army with more hard points invested. They also make decent meat shields in the later game when you have more minion life. You have Abyss Knights which are ranged aoe caster-type minions. I tried a build with abyss knights as main damage dealers with Jinn as the uber skill summon and it just didn't hold up to the Hawks build I started with and am currently using.

Last, you have the Iron Golem, which if any of you played D2 LoD vanilla (which let's be honest if you haven't, you really need to in order to fully appreciate Median and the D2 game as a whole), you'll notice it functions in a similar way. You use a metallic object (So no staves, crossbows, cloth armor, or any other non-metal things you can think of.) on the ground and create the golem from that. The golem gains the properties of that item and has a huge life pool and some hp regen. The golem stays summoned through games, but if the golem dies or you die, you'll need to find another item to create a golem with. An important word of advice regarding Iron Golems; Don't use an item that's too rare and you are not willing to lose, because with the way Median is and the way it's always been, you can die at literally any moment that you are not in a town. Be prepared to have to find backup items to summon new golems. I also just summon it from random blues and yellows on the ground if I don't have an interesting item to summon a golem with just to have that extra meat shield out.

The three uber skills are all summons that give some sort of buff to your party. Jinn are usually paired with an Abyss Knight build and imo are the weakest option. I have not tried Veil King, but it looks like it could have potential when used in conjunction with the Lazarus Summoner set, as you'd be able to have 2 Kings out. Rathma's Chosen is definitely the best option, as it buffs your party with attack speed and deadly strike, as well as total minion damage. I'm assuming that the "total" means it's multiplicative, so that makes it very strong. Also, Rathma's Chosen is the only Uber Summon that is invincible, so you never have to worry about it dying and having to re-summon.

The class plays great. Like I said before, I had trouble in the early-mid game due to mana issues and at one point, I was ready to give up and re-roll a different class and/or spec with the necro, but I am glad I stuck it out. I use skeletons and 1 pointer Abyss Knights (I get two with 1 hard pre req point invested.) as meat shields, a golem ideally made from a buff item so he can buff my minions with an on attack or striking proc (like bloodlust), Rathma's Chosen for the massive damage buffs, and use Hawks as my primary bread and butter damage dealer.

If anyone was curious about how the summoner does with ubers, I am currently level 121 and have done all of the ubers through lvl 120 including hell Baal. I did them without much issue. Hell Baal by far gave me the most issues, as I had to only use Hawks and no other minions to prevent him from summoning too many boss clones at once and being overwhelmed. Just for comparison sake, I had a 2H axe barb the last patch that did every uber except Laz and Samael, and some of the ubers that I had a lot of trouble on with him were cake on the necro. Unfortunately I play single player and the hard drive my character save and backups were on shit the bed and I lost the barb :(

Kabraxis was nothing, I stood there and spammed Hawks while he attacked the Hawks and they pummeled him. J-Day and the bonus was easy as well for the same reason. I stood out of harm's way and spammed Hawks until they died. Ureh was easy when I was able to get past the zombies and get to Juris Khan. I stood there, spammed Hawks while my Skeletons distracted the zombies, and profited. Those are just a few examples.

A quick rundown of my stat/skill plan in case anyone wanted to try it out:
Stats:
Str: Enough for gear
Dex: Enough for gear
Energy: 200ish hard points should give you enough to be able to sustain your Hawks.
Vit: The rest goes here.

Skills
Max Blood Skeletons
Max Night Hawks
1 Pt in Abyss Knight and Golem for the prereq (Golem does fine with 1 hard point, as more hard points only improve the health regen effect it has and those points are much better spent elsewhere.)
20 Points into Resurgence (For the max 50% minion avoid)

Max Embalming (Life for you and minions AND mana regen for spamming Hawks is too good to pass up.)
1 pt into Sacrifices (prereq), Death Pact (prereq), and bane (great as a 1 pointer)
Leftover points go into Death Ward for the survivability boost (Your minions can't always meat shield you!)

No points into either the ennead or black road skills (They're both useless for a summoner, which feels kind of lame, but you get used to having less uberish skills.)
Max Rathma's Chosen

Thanks for taking the time to read this and I encourage anyone to post their questions/thoughts about the new summoner necro!

TLDR: Summoner necro is a great build if you can stick out the early-mid game.
r41714
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Can you share some gears you recommend? Feels like an interesting build. I may level with a different build and respec when level is high enough
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PindlskinVova
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So and what?
mark989us
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Ty for the info everyone is so secretive about their builds i tried the abyssal build its good they are tankier than you would think and aoe is great just still a bit underwhelming as of not im on same build as u with mainly crafted gear and kabrax was easy
TheError
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I leveled with Skellies, Abyssal Knights, Golem and Jinn all the way and am farming Fauzt pretty easily now (aside from having to drink a lot of potions due to no LGOK or similar stuff). So Jinns definitely are not bad. There were some pretty rough experiences though, of course, especially since I haven't traded even once. Something that comes to my mind is Hell Diablo especially, he took me so long.

You gotta know which items to create with runes and TUs of course, they help immensely. Zod in gloves, Marrow Staff TU, Mask TU especially can be used very long with Knights/Jinn set up. Boots/Belt I used double mystic orb items very long (especially for 40% Minion Damage and 20% Minion res each) before I upgraded them to shrines crafts for some more defense which was needed for Fauzt. With 2*Der Nebelring and Linga Sharira RW which I use for defense reasons it became manageable.

When you have 6+ Jinns and 7+ Knights they start to be pretty decent for bossing (especially since Jinns are tanky as fuck), but yeah it's not optimal.
Dominos9189
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r41714 wrote:Can you share some gears you recommend? Feels like an interesting build. I may level with a different build and respec when level is high enough


I used tu mask, tu field plate, tu grim wand, tu zombie head, honorific gloves, belt, and boots, felblood ammy and disengagement rings or regha rings (low level req on ammy and rings means more room for mo's). For gear stats, anything minion related, try to cap res and minion res, hit recovery, cast rate, and whatever you can into defense. This build gets owned by anything physical damage dealing if minions aren't around to take hits.

I've since found some better sacred items but you should be able to do at least through the 115 and most of the 120 ubers with the gear I listed above.

mark989us wrote:Ty for the info everyone is so secretive about their builds i tried the abyssal build its good they are tankier than you would think and aoe is great just still a bit underwhelming as of not im on same build as u with mainly crafted gear and kabrax was easy


You are very welcome! I enjoyed this rework and wanted to share with everyone who might still be unsure of its viability.

TheError wrote:I leveled with Skellies, Abyssal Knights, Golem and Jinn all the way and am farming Fauzt pretty easily now (aside from having to drink a lot of potions due to no LGOK or similar stuff). So Jinns definitely are not bad. There were some pretty rough experiences though, of course, especially since I haven't traded even once. Something that comes to my mind is Hell Diablo especially, he took me so long.

You gotta know which items to create with runes and TUs of course, they help immensely. Zod in gloves, Marrow Staff TU, Mask TU especially can be used very long with Knights/Jinn set up. Boots/Belt I used double mystic orb items very long (especially for 40% Minion Damage and 20% Minion res each) before I upgraded them to shrines crafts for some more defense which was needed for Fauzt. With 2*Der Nebelring and Linga Sharira RW which I use for defense reasons it became manageable.

When you have 6+ Jinns and 7+ Knights they start to be pretty decent for bossing (especially since Jinns are tanky as fuck), but yeah it's not optimal.


For sure. I think that the Jinn and Abyssal Knights variant can work with the right gear, specifically with a lot of max minions. The Hawks variant is just much better in terms of budget friendliness.

PindlskinVova wrote:So and what?


Not sure what you mean....
Chronos69
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Dominos9189 wrote:I've since found some better sacred items but you should be able to do at least through the 115 and most of the 120 ubers with the gear I listed above.


What are your recommended sacred items?
Dominos9189
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Chronos69 wrote:
Dominos9189 wrote:I've since found some better sacred items but you should be able to do at least through the 115 and most of the 120 ubers with the gear I listed above.


What are your recommended sacred items?


I'm working on the summoner sets atm and found King's Desire, which is a really nice sacred unique wand that buffs the number of hawks you can have out at once and their damage. I don't really have a set list of items for the end game. I'm kind of just winging it with whatever I can find. I've only been playing this character for a week or so. I may write up a full guide in the future weeks if I get enough interest. Other than that, tainted crafts (minion ar and damage) are always an option if RNGesus isn't your friend.
Cheno
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I don't really recognize the early-mid game struggle, but I went for a pure minion build with Rathma's Chosen which obviously doesn't require the same amount of mana. Despite having a lot of HP, I feel that minion resistance cap is the major killer for skeletons. Diablo on Hell will kill the skeletons fairly fast with only 50% all res. Bosses with only physical damage doesn't seem to kill the minions quite as fast, as far as I can tell.
Dominos9189
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Cheno wrote:I don't really recognize the early-mid game struggle, but I went for a pure minion build with Rathma's Chosen which obviously doesn't require the same amount of mana. Despite having a lot of HP, I feel that minion resistance cap is the major killer for skeletons. Diablo on Hell will kill the skeletons fairly fast with only 50% all res. Bosses with only physical damage doesn't seem to kill the minions quite as fast, as far as I can tell.


Yeah, if you aren't using Hawks as your primary damage dealer, then mana shouldn't be too much of an issue early-mid game. Minion res is easy to cap, can have it with the TU Field Plate, and it mo'd on 3 honorific pieces and/or on your rings/ammy. You just need like 55ish res in addition to your Field Plate to hit the cap. Skeletons melt against bosses, I try to have at least 1 up for the aura buff, but I mostly focus on spamming hawks to take bosses down.