This post focuses on Summoner Necro only. If you don't care, skip this post.
First of all, I want to say something about Summoner nec this season before I get to the point. I tried out VK for the first time in years. (I only used him after I reached level 90). Here's what I found annoying about him: I never saw more than 5 Veil terrors on the screen. Damn, even 9 Lamia's take out more enemies. I want you to note though, that I SMAX'ed VK and left VA at 1 point. Despite the fact that VK had twice the amount of HP of VA, I never saw VA even drop in HP, while VK had nearly always low HP, in case he was useful for once and killed a fallen. So the general problems VK has, are the following:
1: He's blocked by Rampagors and skeletal flayers. --> He can't get to the enemy.
2: He's blocked by Rampagors and skeletal flayers. --> He can't hide behind your minions like VA does (attacking from a safe spot), making him vulnerable as soon as he tries to become useful.
3: He's also blocked by Veil Terrors --> His usefulness is basically limited by his own passive effect. Like the function of sqrt X, there's an invisible asymptote, which VK can get close to, but never reach it. And the worst part: His usefulness is inversely proportional to the amount of minions you have. In a pure summoner build VK becomes useless. VK only excells at soloing, but even for that he's too weak.
I took him on a couple of ubers, so I hope you can understand, that this isn't just a simple "VK sucks because I tested him for 1 minute", but because I thoroughly tested him in different locations as I progressed.
My conclusion: VK is good for early game, but as soon as you get a decent army, he's falling far behind VA both in damage output and usefulness.
Okay. Now, that the, for most people already known, bad part has been said, let's get to the new skill: Rathma's Chosen.
I love this skill. It adds so much to the game. You finally did what PoE did years ago: Implementing a summon with a wide AoE attack. This is basically the best part about it. The additional tri-elemental damage is a great feat, which adds a good amount of base damage to summons, the DS is useful as well and the damage reduction for DFT and HT are also insane. You never have to worry about these 2 totems. This skill also frees up 23 points (at least in my build, where I used to use nightwalker so totems can survive better) which let's us also increase the damage output of Frostclaw totem and its survivability as well.
However, this skill also has 2 downsides:
1) You loose a big chunk of defense for yourself. And especially now, that Azmodan's level has more enemies that penetrate your minions and attack the summoner as well, this is a tiny bit dissatisfying. Needless to say that at some point you simply can't use RC anymore. The 20-35% of Avoid from Black Mass aren't great enough to bring us the required defensive values, and as a matter of fact, you can't always use this skill, since for example in fauztinville, you also need to distract Necrobots with minions summoned behind them. So you're left to go back to Death Ward and suffer heavy losses in kill speed.
2) There is such a huge missed opportunity here. How awesome would be Jinns in combination with RC? It's as if those 2 skills were meant for each other, yet they lock each other out. Imo that's such a wasted chance.
Okay, at this point it seems like I'm a total snob, who just wants an OP build to be buffed even further. But that is not my intention. I understand that you had to make this in order to balance this build at least a little bit out. Now you have to choose between survivability and damage output, and I'm fine with that. However, what I can't agree with is that a pure summoner necro is still nearly impossible. What I really want is a summoner build that works
without a merc. Because let's face it: It's both impractical and costs lots of money since the AI is simply too stupid. And other than that, the damage the merc can spread is just ridiculous overpowered. 17 k damage (With Rathma's Chosen and a very weak bow) to every enemy on the screen, with each attack is just insane. And you don't even have to do anything for that! You just teleport around and everything dies as long as you and your merc survive. At least in the farming place (TA) this is ridiculous considering the only sacred Item on both my merc and myself is a crafted sacred long battle bow (not even a war bow lol).
So what I truly want to see: Basically a removal of both DFT and HT. Bring their effects as a passive directly onto the minions if that's possible.
This will adjust many problems this build has:
1. You get rid of the mercenary abuse, who can kill the whole screen in a matter of seconds with TU's only.
2. You can't get 600+ MF right after you hit level 120 if the merc isn't the only thing killing stuff. (tbh, when I farm TA, I never summon Rathma's chosen, because this guy just steals my merc the lasthits --> Less profitable run. The problem is that all his effects are passive, but increase the merc's damage output even further. It woud be different if RC had an aura with all those things, but I figure that's impossible, else you would've implemented it that way already)
3. You actually have points you can put into minions and don't need to sink your points into the totems just to increase their strength equally.
After I said all this, please let me list, what a pure summoner necro really lacked in
previous versions:
1 Big AoE of minions
2 Damage of minions
3 Good movement speed of minions (so they can quickly travel over the battlefield)
4 good attack speed of minions (Dark Power can be used, but you usually don't pick it because you need the stats from a good staff, and Dark Power from
Blackheart
Blackheart
Grim Wand (4)
One-Hand Damage: 6 to 8
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 11
Required Dexterity: 15
Item Level: 1
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: 11 to 17
(Necromancer Only)
Required Level: 29
Required Dexterity: 23
Item Level: 31
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: 51
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: 77
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)
on switch poofs the additional minions from Santa Compana --> unusable)
5 Good amount of Survivability (it sucks having to use an uber skill that isn't meant for a summoner necro. That way we often can't really make use of 1 of the 2 uberskills that are actually meant for a summoner. Deathlord can't be used most of the time due to the cut in minion stats --> your meatshield dies away quickly & you have a lower cast rate.)
6 Good amount of minions that don't block each other/or much rather their damage output (blocking each other is necessary, so Rampagors and Skelektal flayers can spread and keep one safe though. Lamias are good in numbers vs bosses or other tough enemies. But you only get the good amount by using
Santa Compana
, which will be nerfed in the future anyway, or
Goetia Plate
Goetia Plate
Full Plate Mail (Sacred)
Defense: (8467 - 9339) to (10376 - 11445)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 700
Item Level: 120
+3 to All Skills
+1 to Maximum Necromancer Minions
+(151 to 200)% to Summoned Minion Life
+(51 to 75)% to Summoned Minion Damage
+(172 to 200)% Enhanced Defense
+100 Life Regenerated per Second
+750 to Life
+375 to Mana
-4 to Light Radius
Socketed (6)
which is way too fucking rare to easily get your hands on. (1 Goetia plate was sold for 425 TG this season. Ridiculous))
What the new patch solved:
point 1 Big AoE of minions
point 2 Damage of minions
But that costs:
point 5 good amount of Survivability
So basically: You already solved a third to a sixth of the issues. Congratulations and thanks a lot. I have a couple of suggestions on my mind, but I leave that to you devs, who know more about game design.