Summon Skeletons

I will bring up the topic again, since it looks like there hasn't been an answer yet:

Does the 50% reduced elemental damage penalty on Summon Skeletons affect the damage they deal with minion instability?

My Summon Skeletons Build:

>Linked with minion damage + increase 30% phy. damage when full life + spell totem
(if you got 5 slotted equip put + increase HP)
(if you got 6 slotted equip put + increase HP + added chaos(DPS)/added cold damage(freeze chance)/any support you want)
more linked support means more mana but you need to summon 1 totem at a time

>Getting passives necromantic aegis and minion instability.


For Regular mobs:

Spell totem summons instantaneously on the nearest mob, giving higher chances of hitting an enemy at full HP. (w/c will make your +30% phy. dmg. when full HP very useful)
Necromantic Aegis boost chances of hitting at Full HP by putting on a Shield w/ energy shield and giving also your minions probability to block some damage.


For Mobs w/ high attack power or massive aoe (specially for bosses):

Put on a shield w/ high HP boost. This will make your minions mini bombs due to minion instability. More HP means more damage. (Best w/ +increase minion HP)

This makes summon skeleton best disposable DPS.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9bAe96bMik

why did you change it in the first place to have a dead zone?:(

"

VictorDoom wrote:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b9bAe96bMik

why did you change it in the first place to have a dead zone?:(

this is summon skeletons feedback? not shock nova


by far skeletons probably have the smartest ai because they can track and find enemies, on and far off the screen. the only thing i would like to see is a bit of artwork change, so that they dont only wield shield and sword, a variety of melee weapons being spawned, even if it doesnt change the damage, it would make it look better than having 8-14 identical skeletons walking across the screen.
(or being continuously spawned by the scrubs using skele totem. yes im talking to you, its useless as a true summoner, and you insult the usefulness of them by using it as such. bone shield is all it is).

Okay, something needs to be done to address the AI of spectres and minions in general indoors.

I've been playing summoner for a long time now. I'm level 79, continuing to do end-game maps. I would be so much higher level now for my play time, but for reasons below and my own personal reasons, I have issues with dying. I don't really mind that; but this issue really needs attention.

The more I do these maps, and the further I get, the more I notice a very large issue: minion AI is really bad indoors. There's just a ridiculous number of issues with it, which leads me to begin to question the viability of my build:

-Minions often do not want to go through doors, even if it's just a small archway. They will sit around outside of it, eventually maybe squeezing 1 or 2 through and the others just sitting outside. They will die to everything in the next room without even trying to go through the door. Even directing them to go through with wand attacks doesn't help.

-Minions don't want to shoot through doors either. My spectres shoot fireballs, and there are enemies clearly right ahead through the door, but they won't shoot. They will take poison bombs to the face from an Undying Alchemist/whatever and just die, without any retaliation.

-Narrow corridors are terrible. Minions stop for no reason, get stuck on each other, and even if enemies are in melee range, sometimes they just will not fight. I just went through a Arachnid's Nest map and the final corridor to the boss was impossible: the minions WOULD NOT walk through the corridor, no matter what I did. My guess is that it was too skinny of a path? I have no idea, but I ended up dying a few times simply because they would not go. My final attempt was to run past everything in order to get them to "warp" into the next room, but that didn't work either.

The minion AI is a severely limiting factor of summoner builds. You'd think more minions would be a good thing most of the time, but because their AI is so bad, it ends up being a bad thing. With 11 Zombies and 16 Skeletons, I end up not even bothering to resummon a few lost zombies because the benefits I should have don't exist due to derpy AI. Whether it's them getting stuck on each other through doorways, standing around doing nothing... it's just a mess. I will say that outdoors they work well for the most part, but even improvements there can be made to their reaction/aggro radius/something (in general, they can still be quite derpy). My build uses a +16% quality minion speed gem on zombies and skeletons simply because I want them to be able to do what they need to do as soon as possible as soon as their AI realizes what they should be doing. In addition, I (hope) that it helps them unclog themselves in bunched up situations, or actually adjust their position to where they are happy enough to melee back at the enemy whacking them, but most of the time it does not.

I have to ask you that please take the time to refine this a bit in some way, with indoors issues being priority. Most end-game maps are "Area is a maze" in order to maximize loot drops and enemy spawns, but it usually ends up being a horrible mod for a summoner for the wrong reasons (derpy AI). Maps like Tunnels and Mine are a death sentence. My minions are tanky, but there's only so much they can take while standing around and doing nothing. If I had a support gem that gave my minions the ability to walk through each other (or improved their AI indoors) I would use that over anything else.

Thank you for reading.

The worst about skeletons is that they just walk off while enemies are close.... instead attacking them

Make them a little smarter please, theres no reason to make them so extremly stupid.

give them more speed please, they are to slow even with +40% minoin speed and +18% form quality

an increase from 20 to 30 seconds wouldnt hurt either

thank you

I was building a dual skelly totem summoner since I thought a neverending wave of exploding skeletons would be nifty. Turns out the summoning AI get's bonkers with two totems. They seem to each have their own max count (it also still displays 1 too many per totem, still not fixed??) and "steal" from each other's count. That means they both constantly resummon fresh skeletons, not giving them time to get exploded or do a lot of other usefull things.
Please fix.

Quick suggestion that is for an item, but relevant only to this skill:

Queen's Decree has a skeleton duration boost mod.

Given the way skeletons behave (which has, I think, been clarified by a dev as intentional AI design), I can't see much use for this. BUT... if skeletons behaved like zombies temporarily, then it would be a useful mod.

So, how about add either an additional flag to skeletons or Queen's Decree that gives skeletons zombie's "follow" AI while the sword is equipped?

"

onefinemess wrote:

Quick suggestion that is for an item, but relevant only to this skill:

Queen's Decree has a skeleton duration boost mod.

Given the way skeletons behave (which has, I think, been clarified by a dev as intentional AI design), I can't see much use for this. BUT... if skeletons behaved like zombies temporarily, then it would be a useful mod.

So, how about add either an additional flag to skeletons or Queen's Decree that gives skeletons zombie's "follow" AI while the sword is equipped?

Oh god that would make the sword amazing.
"skeletons follow player"
Put minion move speed and duration on that as well.
Please make this happen devs.

Do Skellies get the damage penalty when cast by a totem?

I ask since its not actually a skill that does damage but a skill that creates a minion which has its own damage stats.