RollsRoyce wrote:Frost666 wrote:Summoner barb seems useless
thats what i thought as well. But to be fair here are my thoughts about this build.
1. The passive (greater manifestations) adds so much minion life% and minion dmg% (to your spirits only!) that stacking those stats on your gear does not make any difference at all. And since you will not stack those stats, using oskill mobs seems rather underwhelming (not to mention that even those are rather weak)
My suggestion therefore is that: Buff the base life and dmg stats and change greater manifestations to add flat defense to the spirit aura as well. This synergizes with the spirit guide aura, leaving your summons with a good amount of defense.
Im sick of watching ice and fire elemtals tank insane loads of damage and see the "mighty ancients" die in the den of evil.
Now we got 3 types of spirits:
1. the axe throwers - they have very very low life and as soon as something on the screen is not stunned they will die. I do not see a way to balance them at all, buff their base life and remove the stun of their attacks. At least they can spread wdm in a good area
2. Retaliate casting spirits. You need to adapt your playstyle if you want to use those. They are great at spreading poison damage, but its not helping if they all attack the same target over and over again, so you need to find a way to help them spread over the screen (which means you have to stance dance between snake and wolf stance)
3. Protector spirits: Those guys are completely useless, you just need them to keep that insane bloodlust buff active at all times. But with those you can play a caster based summoner which is incredibly strong!
Once you got klaatu + Nero Belt + sssu saber + a decent mercenary you can just stack vitality and end up with 1 million defense and more than 30k life and a max eagle stance, so you will not die at all.
While you can just teleport through the map, killing every enemy in your way with frostclaw totems + path of flames + hive. If you feel bored, switch from time to time your weapon slot, where you can easily equip Lo-weapon + a decently defensive shield and 50% slow snake stance and slow the entire screen with thunderslam (83% slow)
I am trying a summoner barb right now.
Colliding Fury
,
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)
,
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)
,
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)
,
The Defender
The Defender
Long Sword (Sacred)
One-Hand Damage: (174 - 207) to (205 - 264)
Required Level: 100
Required Strength: 270
Item Level: 105
Strength Damage Bonus: (0.11 per Strength)%
+150% Bonus Fire Damage to Retaliate
Adds (75 to 90)-(100 to 140) Damage
(50 to 100)% Bonus to Attack Rating
5% Life stolen per Hit
-20% to Enemy Fire Resistance
+(120 to 160)% Enhanced Damage
+(10 to 20) to Retaliate
(10 to 20)% to Strength
Physical Resist 5%
Requirements -50%
Socketed (6)
, Magical crafted gloves and boots for minion life and res.
I was using
Blade of the Jitan
because I thought the Death's Fury totem would be a very useful asset to the 100+ minion army, but found out that even with the decent amount on the oskill, its still only like 90 per element, which is really minimal. That's about as good as a mid-hatred necro, so there's no use for it on an SU that requires level 100 and would ideally be used for Destr areas. I'm sure it would match well with a crafted Kraken stance helm, but my gear choice didn't involve that because I wanted the minion stats and the Veil King oskill from the helm (which by the way is incredibly strong in relation to the oskills on Colliding Fury. Granted... its 1 Veil King in comparison to 25 ice eles.. but still)
I guess the build seems okay, but spirit walk feels buggy with the teleporting at times -- sometimes it just won't teleport when you cast it.
Also, for Colliding Fury, can the Ice Elemental oskill be fixed so they provide their proper auras and %DR? They just become useless meatshields otherwise. I haven't really noticed yet, but I imagine the Fire Elementals are also invalid in the same way that their Inner Fire and Fire Cannonade don't proc as they should. But again.. I haven't really paid attention to see if those work or not. That's my main issue with the character right now. I would like the summons to actually be the summons they should be -- not a nerfed Ice Ele (for reasons unknown to me or just an issue with the oskill in the d2 engine?) when you're expecting a real Ice Ele with the defensive buffs they provide on a sorceress.
I also wish the spirits would follow you like normal minions. With the decreased density in areas within the last patch or two, it makes it harder to find an enemy to Spirit Walk onto to collect your minions back together.
I use Protector Spirits strictly for their.. roughly 600% bloodlust buff for the rest of my summons to put out more DPS. They have the highest life as well. I think you should be able to summon two types of spirits though. It seems wrong to have to choose a less mechanically useful spirit just to get their bloodlust buff, whereas you could decrease the amount of extra spirits that Spirit Trance provides PER SPIRIT TYPE (so instead of.. 28ish protector spirits, you could have 14 protector and 14 of the Retaliate ones.)
It just feels like summoner barb would be more useful. The necro minions follow around. Why can't barb summons be the same way? Barbarians can't get close to the same cast rate as a necro to be able to continuously recast summons as you move too far away with no enemy to target, unless you use some morph like Creep staff, which would be really dumb for a summon barb.. I bet way more people would at least test out the build, if not use it more often overall with a few of these changes. The summon barb felt like a cool concept, but the skills and mechanics just don't seem to match up as they should.