Raise Zombie

My question is when I pick up necromantic aegis, do my zombies gain passive benefits applied to my shield? E.G. additional block.

My updated opinion on this skill:

Zombies seem very weak at first but as they level up and you grab minion life and damage passives their power increases drastically to a point where they slay bosses on their own and generally seem overpowered.

But even though they are powerfull the fact that they only scale with their own passives and with skill gems (except NA which atm still seems bugged to me) makes building summoners extremely boring since you cant use any cool synergies with the rest of your build.

i will explain this further in another thread which can be found here:

http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/154190

greetings M3ph

Does the support gem Weapon Elemental Damage linked to Zombies increase the damage my Zombies put out from Hatred and Anger auras? Also, if I have an Added Lightning Damage linked as well, will it increase that damage too?

not sure that they use weapons but all elemental (and physical and chaos) damage is boosted via increased minion damage. if weapon elemental damage works as assumed, then it'll be yet further increase as that support is a "more" modifier.

Are there any plans to share with players the amount of damage that minions do? It's pretty unfair that nearly every other build is able to calculate their DPS, figure out what combination of supports is ideal, etc. Whereas Necromancers have to pretty much guess and estimate just by what they see while fighting.

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Crevox wrote:

Can we please fix the derpy AI? Summoner is getting quite annoying to play because the AI is just stupid.

In MANY occasions, I summon skeletons right in front of a monster's face, and they will literally just walk away slowly in the opposite direction of the monster, and make no attempt to kill it. No, they're not walking to another mob; there are no other mobs around. The majority of the time they just don't do anything, even IF they walk toward the mob. In many situations they WILL work toward the mob, but then they stand there and stare at it, doing nothing.

I don't know if this is supposed to be some sort of anti-afk/bot measure, but it's a problem when it's negatively affecting the gameplay of actual players. Zombies have the exact same issue, too. It's becoming a chore just to try to get them to kill anything because even though there are monsters nearby, they just don't attack. Playing solo is a big waiting game hoping that your pets will attack the mobs. Yeah I can and should and do use other spells to attack too, but then what's the point of the pets? By the time the pet AI fixes itself and (a few) of the pets decide to attack a mob, I've already killed it or done a lot of damage to it. I'm aware of the functionality that seems to exist that attacking a mob with something causes your pets to attempt to focus it, but it just doesn't happen. I've blasted my wand at things and they just don't do anything. Sometimes it seems to work, but for some skills (firestorm?) it seems like they just don't care, ever.

There are some things I can live with. The fact that mob AoE sometimes decimates pets is fine, I can live with that (and perform countermeasures to fix it). The fact that the skeletons move slow can even be fixed with the (albeit, poor) minion speed gem. Plus, the fact that you can summon them on the monster is great, so they don't have to travel much. However, there is NOTHING I can do to even make them decide to attack the monster and fix their derpy AI. The pets hit fairly hard and have a pretty good amount of survivability so far, it's just too bad they're just so stupid.

If you don't want to change the AI, at least give us an "attack move" button so that we can tell the pets to move toward a specific location and attack everything along the way to that location. Something, anything, would be very helpful.

+1 to this, I have to constantly resummon skeletons on top of mobs hoping they choose to fight rather than wander off.

Been almost a year (9.7) since I've played summoners, and with all the changes introduced in the "summoner patch" (9.12) the early gameplay has certainly not improved. The core problem in my eyes is that all these AoE (elemental) mobs were introduced to the game (which I enjoy encountering on non-summoner characters), but the minions were not adequately adjusted.

The dilemma facing each of my new zombie-users is that while rushing minion nodes they remain in a underwhelming position when the horde gets wiped out instantly to a pack of lightning arrow skellies. Even fully speced into minion nodes it feels more efficient to stop summoning (sometimes for entire maps).

Quality of life improves when using Flasks of Animation, and after picking up Necromantic Aegis (which I actually like now).
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Suggestion - Give zombies innate resistance to AoE damage. Lower their health values to compensate.
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The problem with zombies seems not to be the invincible late game after all the bonuses from passives, gem levels, and uniques adds up- it is the arduous early game.

Early game feedback:

Upper Submerged Passage: This is the young summoner's first taste of what lies ahead. Not particularly terrible experience though, due to the Daughters being slow to react and the player likely has firestorm/ ice spear available to snipe them before the waves decimate zombies. (Merveil's Daughter - Throws cold wave)

The Rocky Climb: Playing a summoner truly becomes a pain in the ass at this point. Zombies are unsupported, have very few bonuses from the passive tree (probably none if you are templar), and have a knack for standing in the ground fire. Usually forego the summoner play-style in frustration for this map. (Flame Helion - Burning Ground on death; Goatman - Leap Slam; Goatman Shaman - Fireball, Molten Shell)

Lower/Upper Prison: Lightning Arrow is the bane of my existence as a summoner in act 1 and 2. (Brittle Thief? - Lightning Arrow)

Prisoner's Gate: At this point zombies will die after nearly every encounter due to burning ground, and initally when mobs are aggrod due to leap slam. How exciting, you can now use your first aura to boost your minion horde. Zombies remain frustrating same as in Rocky Climb. Usually will favor newly acquired skeletons or just go without the summoner playstyle this map. (Bearded Goatman - Leap Slam; Highland Helion - Burning Ground on death)

Ship Graveyard/Cave: Map isn't too bad if you remain vigilant at sniping these before they AoE the horde. Minions with aura are doing good damage and summoner gameplay starts picking up. (Merveil's Chosen - Throws cold wave)

Cove: Good map for summoner, no AoE damage.

Cavern of Wrath: finally, minion life! Things get better until Chamber of Sin.

Currently playing a Witch (lvl 46) with this skill and I often end up with self exploding Zombies while entering a new area or reentering from town. I picked "Minion Instability" in the skilltree and linked the gem with "minion life" and "minion speed". Not sure if it has anything to do with it, just reporting the circumstances. However, when I enter a "hostile" area, one or more Zombies just explode, even when porting back from town or the last area was wiped empty. I just asked in the chat and it seems more people have this issue.

Lvl 63 witch Auramancer here to put in my two cents..

Zombies :

There is much to be said about zombies, where to begin... The entire premise around being summon based is your abilities and survival are tied to your pets. That being said, the amount of gimp you become to allow your summons to be tough feels like a net loss than a fine balance.

1 - All summons are pretty stupid. Skeletons are another story (and honestly, the fact that many MANY MANY classes use them as spell totem fodder says a lot). However, zombies really do take the cake in terms of infuriating. Their attacks are brutally slow, and for a mob that is (I guess) suppose to be an archetypal tank, it doesn't do that job very well. I feel like a quarterback with a team of midgets as my offensive line playing against a team of amazonian high jump athletes. There was one instance in the Cave of Wrath where a yellow mob somehow managed to work his way through 6 zombies and 3 skeletons in one of the small passageways and decimated me on the other side. HOW? I WOULD REALLY LOVE TO HAVE THAT ONE EXAPLINED TO ME. Fix their hit boxes. That sort of thing is unrealistic and unacceptable.

2 - Projectiles seem to travel THROUGH summons pretty often - sometimes in rapid succession. I know sometimes it is unavoidable, however this happens a bit too much to be realistic. How can arrows travel past 20+ minions and hit me over and over and over?

3 - The wandering. Let me think, I am a summoner, and they shrug their shoulders and walk off instead of being a good summon and continually try to find a way to the target. The enemy AI will do this all day, yet my AI won't. Is this a design flaw that is intended to "balance" because that is a poor way to deal with it.

4 - Aggro range. This is what really gets me going. I should start submitting screen shots/videos of this. There are times when I will be standing there - preferrably behind my wall of undead to avoid being swarmed by the superior AI who acts like defensive ends with a 3.0 50 yard dash time, and my zombies will do this stupid back and forth dash and will keep doing this until they die instead of attack the mobs throwing projectiles.. THAT I CAN VERY CLEARLY SEE ON MY SCREEN, NOT EVEN AT THE EDGE... maybe a default aura range away. If I can see the mobs on my screen, they should attempt to kill it. I have skeletons if I need a quick defense. I have decoy totems I can throw in doorways. I can use traps. I do not need my Zombies to stick to me like glue if I am in NO IMMEDIATE danger and there are more/better ways to deal with an occasional 1-2 mobs who see me and b line. To those who have this problem - If the zombies attacked mobs within the screen range right away - they wouldn't target you immediately and you wouldn't risk being swarmed/need to have them be near you at all times.