Summon Druid Endgame Guide

I have few spare points in srt/dex to be able to wear all gear while swapping other gear for presummoning.

Don't have enough buttons or problems with HP to bother with CTA, so my main hand is alibaba for 400MF on "normal/dps" build=)
Shield just looks cool and it gives some rez and ocasional

Fade proc.

deadwulf7 wrote: 2 years ago

If you see me watch and learn

Do you have a video of your build?

Makes sense when you swap gear a lot.

I also sent you a PM here.

I know this is a long shot and a bit off topic too but I'm still looking for skin swap on one of my Summon Skill charms.
And here I have a lot of Summon Druids in one place increasing my chances ...

Long story short. I need a 43 Life skiller with the "monster" skin for my "eye" skin.
post2424647.html#p2424647

Sorry, my druid is still too "bottom tier" to have 40+ lifers.

A bit more on-topic:
Can they just go and fix summon AI please?! Been starting to lvl him a bit again and watching half the summons just standing there doing nothing 80% of the time is just..painful.

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Sorry, my druid is still too "bottom tier" to have 40+ lifers.

A bit more on-topic:
Can they just go and fix summon AI please?! Been starting to lvl him a bit again and watching half the summons just standing there doing nothing 80% of the time is just..painful.

at least all ravens will attack you're target when you click it. nice against those annoying monsters that resurrect. like shamans.

Also great to target out bosses who are surrounded by other minions when you don't want to telestomp in (e.g. DeSeis).

tmGrunty wrote: 2 years ago

Also great to target out bosses who are surrounded by other minions when you don't want to telestomp in (e.g. DeSeis).

yea. or to snipe those mean packs in

Travincal from a safe distance.

MrXoXoL wrote: 2 years ago

deadwulf7 wrote: 2 years ago

If you see me watch and learn

Do you have a video of your build?

No all I can say is that as far as end game farming, even player 8. shockwave summon is surprisingly viable and kind of fun. requires a lot of teleporting and switching tho

i'm thinking about act 3 fire merc's damage potential. looking at youtube it looks like you can get around 300-400 damage from the merc

Enchant with max skills. and if you use Beast runeword that's 1.8 to 2.5 attacks each second for each of the 9 minions. total around 17 attacks per second as the wolves are a bit slower then the grizzly. around 5100-6800 damage per second. and you can use Lawbringer / Plague on the merc to reduce resistance. and with the added % bonus to attack rating, fairly decent damage from merc, and extra fire resist aura if you use Flickering Flame. this doesn't sound that bad.

Udyret wrote: 2 years ago

i'm thinking about act 3 fire merc's damage potential. looking at youtube it looks like you can get around 300-400 damage from the merc

Enchant with max skills. and if you use Beast runeword that's 1.8 to 2.5 attacks each second for each of the 9 minions. total around 17 attacks per second as the wolves are a bit slower then the grizzly. around 5100-6800 damage per second. and you can use Lawbringer / Plague on the merc to reduce resistance. and with the added % bonus to attack rating, fairly decent damage from merc, and extra fire resist aura if you use Flickering Flame. this doesn't sound that bad.

Sadly, it doesn't even come close to an A2 merc.

Lawbringer doesn't work to proc

Decrepify because A3 mercs are casters, they really don't swing their sword.
Plague will work fairly badly because A3 mercs have defensive AI, meaning they don't want to get hit which kind of defeats the purpose of a when struck proc.

Might alone should outweigh the gain from

Enchant by quite a bit. Now, that one you could somewhat make up for by giving your A3 merc a Last Wish for the aura. But what you can't make up for is the lack of

Decrepify, not to mention the merc dmg itself (A3 dmg output is just...sad whereas A2 is actually solid).

Decrepify damn near doubles most of your summons' damage (excluding Spirit wolves, adjusting for uptime). Nothing on an A3 merc even comes close to that.

A1 and A5 are viable alternatives, depending on playstyle (A1 if defensive rather than telestomping, A5 if not dealing with too many undead that Lawbringer would keep knocking back/'saving for a while').

Schnorki wrote: 2 years ago

Sadly, it doesn't even come close to an A2 merc.

Lawbringer doesn't work to proc

Decrepify because A3 mercs are casters, they really don't swing their sword.
Plague will work fairly badly because A3 mercs have defensive AI, meaning they don't want to get hit which kind of defeats the purpose of a when struck proc.

Might alone should outweigh the gain from

Enchant by quite a bit. Now, that one you could somewhat make up for by giving your A3 merc a Last Wish for the aura. But what you can't make up for is the lack of

Decrepify, not to mention the merc dmg itself (A3 dmg output is just...sad whereas A2 is actually solid).

Decrepify damn near doubles most of your summons' damage (excluding Spirit wolves, adjusting for uptime). Nothing on an A3 merc even comes close to that.

A1 and A5 are viable alternatives, depending on playstyle (A1 if defensive rather than telestomping, A5 if not dealing with too many undead that Lawbringer would keep knocking back/'saving for a while').

a3 merc

Enchant can double and even triple the amount of the damage from Spirit wolf. but yea the lack of

Decrepify suck. at least you don't need the curse if you farm undead monsters.

Pindleskin runs, some of the undead tombs, or something. blizz should change

Sanctuary Aura to work against both undead and demons. just like they did with

Holy Bolt and FOH.

The

Sanctuary Aura is really bad for your Summons to be honest.
The knockback just pushes the monsters away which slows down the killing because the summons have to contantly "catch up".

It's the main reason why I think Act 2 merc is so much better than Act 5 (not even counting the price of a Last Wish compared to the free aura).

And Unfortunately with an Act 3 merc you lose both.
Also that fire damage from his

Enchant is misleading. You have to factor in resists which can cut that the damage to half.

tmGrunty wrote: 2 years ago

The

Sanctuary Aura is really bad for your Summons to be honest.
The knockback just pushes the monsters away which slows down the killing because the summons have to contantly "catch up".

It's the main reason why I think Act 2 merc is so much better than Act 5 (not even counting the price of a Last Wish compared to the free aura).

And Unfortunately with an Act 3 merc you lose both.
Also that fire damage from his

Enchant is misleading. You have to factor in resists which can cut that the damage to half.

you have resist for physical damage too. and ravens that remove

Decrepify.

The

Raven removing

Decrepify is basically a non-issue.

Normal mosters pretty much die after 1 hit if they have the curse on them.
And Bosses that take more than 1 hit can't get blinded so the Ravens don't overwrite the curse.

I know it's cute to try out the new mercs and they look fun and don't look half bad on paper. I tested them both a lot during PTR myself.
But in reality none of them comes even close to an Act 2 Might merc with a Reaper's Toll for a Summon Druid.

tmGrunty wrote: 2 years ago

The

Raven removing

Decrepify is basically a non-issue.

Normal mosters pretty much die after 1 hit if they have the curse on them.
And Bosses that take more than 1 hit can't get blinded so the Ravens don't overwrite the curse.

I know it's cute to try out the new mercs and they look fun and don't look half bad on paper. I tested them both a lot during PTR myself.
But in reality none of them comes even close to an Act 2 Might merc with a Reaper's Toll for a Summon Druid.

i know that. i'm just trying to find a use for the merc. ah well. can't have act 2 reaper toll merc in normal. so at least you can use the a3 merc while leveling. and maybe blizz boost the

Enchant damage on some later patch.

tmGrunty wrote: 2 years ago

The

Raven removing

Decrepify is basically a non-issue.

Normal mosters pretty much die after 1 hit if they have the curse on them.
And Bosses that take more than 1 hit can't get blinded so the Ravens don't overwrite the curse.

I know it's cute to try out the new mercs and they look fun and don't look half bad on paper. I tested them both a lot during PTR myself.
But in reality none of them comes even close to an Act 2 Might merc with a Reaper's Toll for a Summon Druid.

The one exception to that is if you run ubers.

Baal's phys immune adds become beyond annoying thanks to

Raven blind, to the point where I for one don't even use ravens for that fight.

But yeah, everywhere else (at least everywhere I've been to since PTR/2.4) it is a non-issue.

Udyret wrote: 2 years ago

tmGrunty wrote: 2 years ago

The

Raven removing

Decrepify is basically a non-issue.

Normal mosters pretty much die after 1 hit if they have the curse on them.
And Bosses that take more than 1 hit can't get blinded so the Ravens don't overwrite the curse.

I know it's cute to try out the new mercs and they look fun and don't look half bad on paper. I tested them both a lot during PTR myself.
But in reality none of them comes even close to an Act 2 Might merc with a Reaper's Toll for a Summon Druid.

i know that. i'm just trying to find a use for the merc. ah well. can't have act 2 reaper toll merc in normal. so at least you can use the a3 merc while leveling. and maybe blizz boost the

Enchant damage on some later patch.

Honestly, it feels like they've given up on A3 mercs.

A5 got mad good (depending on your build) with

Frenzy and even the non-

Frenzy ones got made better with more weapon choices and the extra

Shout.
A1 gets more interesting with added weapon choices as well.
A2..is A2, enough said.

A3 is just pointless in every way. No synergies to make Dragon and the like any good on them. No synergies to make their own crap damage spells any good on them. Not even a good enough AI on the lightning one to just mindlessly spam

Static Field. That actually would make at least the light one kinda good but since he only casts it like once every 10 spells it feels like and thanks to that usually only when your targets are already too low for static to still even do anything...complete waste.

Unless they SIGNIFICANTLY buff their damage, completely rework the lightning AI to just spam static as long as there's any mob >25% around AND at least make some of the clutch runewords available to them (Infinity + Insight swords), A3 will sadly remain a complete waste of the gold it takes to hire/resurrect one.

If static actually was being spammed and he could wield either an infi or an Insight though..I can immediately think of a number of builds that would gladly switch to A3 without hesitation.

i think the Act

Enchant can be quite good for Summon Necro.
Especially if you don't have Infinity or want to focus more on the Skeletons than the

Corpse Explosion.
But that's about it unfortunately.

I just got this beauty of a Pelt But it's on ladder ...
Now I have to wait 4 months until I can actually use it (and hope for 2 sockets).

aaaaand

Larzuk just screwed my and only put 1 socket into it