Summoner Build Idea: Need Feedback

[Jary]

What's up everyone. First off, I'm still only lvl 24 with my char so this is mainly theory crafting for fun. I was always a fan of Summoner builds as Druid/Necro in D2, so I wanted to see if I could brew something up for D3.

This is my concept so far:
https://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculat...1Xb!Zed!aYZcZa

I was wondering if some players who are up to lvl 50+ could give some feedback on some of the skills. Would this kind of summoner build be viable? If not, through nm... hell?

It's probably obvious, but basic idea's to maximize summon power:

Zomgie Dogs 'burning' + Sacrifice 'next of kin' + Zombie Handler => Recycle/chain xplode as many dogs as possible. I figured flaming dogs 'cause... well, they're gonna die anyway, might as well deal some more damage

Blow Dart 'Splinters' (fastest attack speed?) + Fetish Sycophant => constantly spitting out lil' hornets.
Fetish Army 'Ambush' + Voodoo 'Boogie Man' =>Maximize damage with fetishes, recycle more dogs to explode.

Gargantuan: Tank. Consistency of build, otherwise I'm guessing I'd get steamrolled at times.

I think what might be looking into is:
1) Mass Confusion vs. Vodoo for recycling zombie dog
2) Jungle Fortitude/Fetish Sycophants vs. Zombie Rites


The first one I'm not sure. Second one, I want to know what ppl think about Zombie Rites, its a significant drop in cooldown but is it worth it... worth it over fetish sycophants ability?
Thanks.

[dannyone]

I just started a WD and I would like to be a summoner. My question is what stat do you need to pump in order to keep summoned characters alive longer? The dogs die so quick and take forever to cooldown. Will pumping vitality or intelligence improve them? Thanks.

[pcguy]

1. Fetish Sycophants is pretty useless in Inferno. It can get some use in hell, but you really have to spam. It goes way better with corpse spiders, in my experience.

You are better off taking Jungle Fortitude, as it makes you super durable and allows you to survive some of those big hits the enemies send your way.

2. There is no move called Zombie Rites. There is Tribal Rites or Zombie Handler and I wouldn't recommend either of them unless you are running with a group. Groups love the Hex/Big Bad Voodoo and Fetish Army is immensely helpful when cornered or when you need some burst dps.

3. I haven't made sacrifice work successfully in Hell/Inferno. Your cooldowns are too precious to waste on a move that isn't guaranteed to kill your target and simultaneously leaves you very vulnerable to damage. Big Bad Voodoo's radius isn't that large, and it's going to be a hassle trying to lure enemies into it's radius to kill them. The whole Recycling thing looks good on paper, but it is difficult to pull off and the payout isn't worth the additional effort and waiting time.

4. Burning dogs are going to die in about 3 to 6 seconds unless globes are dropping, or enemies are falling, or something else is healing them. Leeching Beasts are much more reliable since they heal themselves and heal you as well. Both versions of Zombie Dogs can't seem to take a hit unless you have the gear to support them. You will know if you have the gear or not when you can clear a champion pack and still have one alive.

5. Gargantuan is fine as it is. It probably won't die unless you are undergeared or it gets caught in some nasty molten/plagued/arcane damage.

This build will definitely work in Nightmare, but will most likely fall apart in the middle of act 1 hell or beginning of act 2 hell. This build is not Inferno-viable unless you have some insane gear and a party member to tank/disable/pull mobs off of you while you run around wishing your cooldowns were up so you can sacrifice again.

It's a fast-paced game. Even one or two seconds of helplessness can be the death of you. and it doesn't seem like you have any kind of escape mechanism in place for when Sacrifice fails to summon new dogs and your cooldowns are all still ticking down. What are you going to do, shoot darts? Have a single fetish tank for you?

That all being said - Get some awesome gear and try the build out, maybe it will work with some tweaking here and there.

[sacridoc]

I think the only summon build that will actually be viable is stacking thorns + life regen with Fierce Loyalty. Beyond that your pets are just going to fall apart. And it's kind of difficult to find the right gear for such a build without using the AH and spending a lot of gold that you probably don't have.

It sucks, but pets don't work the same in D3 as in D2 where you just summon them and that's it. They're more like distractions most of the time. Like if you went with Circle of Life and Fetish Sycophants the only point of those summons is to divert attention away from you really.

Also, sacrifice really isn't that great, and definitely won't be in Inferno. It's probably the WDs best ability to use against single targets or like champion packs, but against normal monsters the weaknesses become apparent really quickly. After you sacrifice all 4 dogs, then the remaining from Next of Kin, then summon them again and do the same thing, you're left with absolutely nothing. And the range of the explosion isn't great for enemies that are spread out. So you end up having to use a primary most of the time which gets old and you have no real defensive abilities either.

So yeah, if you want to use a summoner build you'll need really really good gear that isn't available to most people at this point.

I'd go with something like this though probably: https://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aRYTQP!Zdg!aacZYb

___

I guess I should also mention that pets automatically benefit from the main 3 stats (minus vitality). And they only benefit from life per sec, not life leech, etc (when used with Fierce Loyalty).

So if you're making a summoner build, you would stack thorns + life per sec + defensive stats. Mainly just resistances and armor, because thorns doesn't work when you dodge I don't think.

[jamesL]

Pets/Summons suck in D3
Blizzard really does not want you tanking with them.
I'm in Act 3 NM and 2 out of 4 dogs die every fight
So after each fight I stand still and do nothing or portal back to town and wait for the cooldown to finish so I can resummon. I'm playing HC so the last thing I need is to have a another mob come after me while I'm short 2 dogs.

I have Zombie Handler, so their health is increased by 20%
I have Jungle Fortitude so they take 20% less damage.
I have Bad Medicine which means monsters do 20% less damage when poisoned, and I keep them poisoned with Spider Queen and Splinters.
But still, my dogs die.

My damage is 1277.92
Max Life is 24487

Rakkis Crossing, on the way to the Siege Breaker is freaking ridiculous. Its just mob after mob after mob.
I always make it through and I always kill the SiegeBreaker, but getting to him is always 3 steps forward, 2 steps back.
I push ahead, kill a few, then I'm pushed back.
Then I have to run, kite, spam Grasp, spam SpiderQueen, wait for the ZDog cooldown to expire and finally I can move forward again.
This is the first time I have really been in danger and have had to use potions.

The only time my pets are useful now is when I join public games that has a wizard or 2 in it.
The monsters stop, stand in one place and focus on my pets. This allows the wizard to wipe the monsters pretty easily and safely. My pets usually manage to stay alive too.

But is is just depressing how much more damage the wizards do compared to me.

Dogs do not benefit from my vitality at all. They do benefit from intelligence because that increases my damage, which increases theirs.
I'd like to see the cool down of dogs reduced to 30 seconds or see them get some sort of bonus from my vitality.

On the other hand, the Gargantuan is awesome. He never dies. Ever.


edit: yeah, I'm dead
gonna try a wizard

[WD pimpin summons]

Yeah, the dogs are bloody awful and the fetishes from Fetish Army and Sycophants really don't seem to do anything.

The only reliable summon is the Gargantuan and that is not much.

[Jary]

All right, thanks for the replies and the honesty.

http://us.battle.net/d3/en/calculator/witch-doctor#aiZVYT!cZd!aaaZcY

Not that I don't believe the dogs are bloody awful, but off pure stubborness I'ma try a different approach with them, at least Norm-->NM, when I get to hell we'll see how badly I'm getting raypd.

Okay, for my new build I'ma go the Poison + Magic Medicine approach. Acid Cloud & Big Stinker with Grasp 80% slow, then Splinters for focusing down targets. Tradeoff is I lose thorns, but I'm essentially getting like.. 40% DR for me & pets, not including defense bonus. Zombie dogs get leech to keep themselves alive, no sense them having life regen anyway, 'cause their destiny's to blow up anyway XD

I'll let ppl know if it works out ok.

[Thrakhath]

JamesL, dog survivability is based on your Intelligence and Armour. Scrap your Vitality items and replace them with Strength/Intelligence items and your dogs will survive much better.

I am running a pure Sacrifice build right at the end of Nightmare, and it is working incredibly well. I seriously think it should work through Hell, and I will let you know how it goes.

Skills:
Plague of Toads (Explosive Toads) for high damage killing when absolutely out of dogs
Sacrifice + Next of Kin (more dogs is crucial)
Zombie Dogs + Final Gift (health globes will keep you alive!)
Spirit Walk (eventually with Healing Journey, you need a healing skill and an escape skill)
Mass Confusion + Devolution (awesome skill, plus, more dogs)
Big Bad Voodoo (eventually runed for more dogs)

Passives:
Pierce the Veil (sacrifice costs no mana!)
Zombie Handler (essential)
Circle of Life (more dogs!)

Items:
-Heavy damage 2-handed weapon. DPS is irrelevant as it factors in attack speed, high dps with a fast weapon is actually very little damage per hit. Damage per hit is all that counts.
-Lots of intelligence, you will need to kill to live.
-Zombie Dog cooldown reduced by as much as possible, just 3 seconds makes a huge difference in practice
-Gold pickup radius increased!!! Improves Circle of Life and makes Final Gift a hundred times better.
-Enough armour to ensure dogs can get in position safely before you blow them up.

I have tried so many builds so far and this is genuinely the one working best for me; I can't recommend it enough.

Also, sacrifice really isn't that great, and definitely won't be in Inferno. It's probably the WDs best ability to use against single targets or like champion packs, but against normal monsters the weaknesses become apparent really quickly. After you sacrifice all 4 dogs, then the remaining from Next of Kin, then summon them again and do the same thing, you're left with absolutely nothing. And the range of the explosion isn't great for enemies that are spread out. So you end up having to use a primary most of the time which gets old and you have no real defensive abilities either.

After you sacrifice all 4 dogs, then the remaining ones, and then the remaining ones, etc, any pack of normal monsters is dead. And Circle of Life is much better than you would expect. With Summon dogs + circle of life + mass confusion + BBV, running out is really rare. It is actually champion packs I find hardest, something like Extra Health means the dogs do actually run out, and a mistake with Shielded enemies means you waste a cast.

[Chaosmage]

I played a similar build all the way through hell but am stuck at the butcher.

If you use sacrifice the best bet is to use mass confuse with devolution because of the shorter cooldown you can use both but mass confuse is competently useless for boss fights without minions. The bad thing is that the gargantuan becomes less and less useful further down the road making the zombie handler passive wasted.

Also poison dart is not really the best attack skill if you go that route.
You can get the cooldowns down using grave injustice but you absolutely need Zombie bears to benefit the most from it. That concludes the passive with addition of vision quest. There are a few other skills which benefit from grave injustice but they all have their shortcomings and almost all of them need vision quest.

Often the pets serve as a manageable way to keep up vision quest since with things like grasp or hex it becomes too much of a click fest.

[Thrakhath]

Mass Confuse works on the second-last boss in Act 2