whist wrote:Well, summons were surely improved in Sigma. To start off, a brand new summoning skill function was implemented. The functions allows tons of features such as, summoning packs in one cast, creating caster summons (and they still follow you), temporary summons (kinda like dopplezon?), and also summon skills that summon randomized types (kinda like vanilla necromages that had varied elements). Another nice thing... summons are able to summon on their own! So we can have a overlord-like summon that spawns minions on it's own. For example we could configure the void archon to constantly summon shadows or something like that.
Additionally, all the stuff needed in order to make stats such as minion life%, minion damage%, etc, will now all be handled directly into the summoning code, rather than via skill calcs, which means we have tons of room to apply custom stats of all kind to summons (in current state 95% of calc fields are wasted for core summon stats)
With these changes I'm hoping to make it so that we can focus on quality rather than quantity. The current summon necro on realm is a real lagfest, it's no suprise that tons of minions like this on the screen would lag. I'm hoping to make it so that summons are more viable and therefore we can reduce the maximum amount of minions on screen while keeping it at the same level.
Nice. I think ideally most summon skills should have a timer and spawn small numbers of strong minions. That way you can summon them and then switch to some other task (like buffing the minions, casting a damage spell or attacking enemies alongside them), and they should be tanky enough to be useful without you needing to spam them. Timer-less summon skills should be on builds that are specifically known for minion spam.
For example I think the Summon Fire Elementals skill in the zon tree should stay timerless, because they have a powerful death proc and by spamming them in areas where they die quickly you get an interesting alternate-style fire caster. Although if possible I would adjust the skill to have a slightly higher proc chance and lower damage per proc, it feels too strong while leveling whenever it procs, and can be annoying when it doesn't proc when you need it to.
