Necromancer

[Addah]

- Summons likely have the same Crushing Blow numbers as monsters, not player / hirelings, but I cannot say for sure.

- I don't understand the question?

- No, just like players with the same auras, the highest level aura will apply. If they are the same level it will only be affected by 1.

- No, it has the state of thorns aura, but it isn't actually an aura.

- Clay Golem aura with Goka Uln? It lowers magic resist. Neither monster you named uses magic damage, so no it does not help them.

- No, I do not think auras will update summon's tooltips.

- Not sure what you're asking again, I think Golems are fine right now. Their goal is to be pretty tanky and offer a secondary bonus, each Golem does its own thing. I have no real plans to modify Necromancers much in the future as they are in a pretty great spot right now.


Concerns:

- As Acyroma mentioned, summons clear just fine with corpse explosions.

- Summoner is pretty strong already, I have no plans of buffing them. Use Skeletal Burst to help kill large packs of enemies!

- As mentioned earlier, Golem does "okay" damage to weaker enemies with his aura, but there is no plan to make Golems high damage, that is not their role.

- Uhhh... hmm. Clay Golem is probably a little bit stronger against monsters that are not physical immune or have high physical resists, however a lot of bosses are physical immune and Clay Golem does not benefit from -physical pierce while Fire Golem does indeed receive it's summoners piercing. I think Fire Golem will outdamage Clay Golem in the long run.

My thinking here is that Necromancer can be lowered and heightened in different ways to give a better experience, I see it's strong already but my concern now is the mechanics of being a Summoner

I feel these would make improvements as overall mechanics, perhaps through new items or just directly included:

- Clash of tank mechanics: Revives can be unkillable, melee Skeletons are unlimited, Golems are unlimited and unkillable except by Bosses or a pack of inferno cows. I think currently Summoner has a lot of tanks and not enough damage per second done by the summons, furthermore I think auras are a good way to help that.

- Iron Golem with Thorns aura, since many summons have a high %DR it would not be as overpowered as it appears at first glance, this would give the Iron Golem some incentive to be used because odds are like 34:1 something else will be getting hit instead of it

- Fire Golem with higher level Holy Fire aura, even being stacked higher by having extra fire golems to reward end-game Summoner, would mean at least this golem could be used for its damage dealt rather than purely tanking, since Clay is superior in that regard, considering all the immunes or fire resist enemies it doesn't seem overpowered to me

- Skeletal Archer should have a longer sight range to move around less and keep up damage per second

[Game]

My thinking here is that Necromancer can be lowered and heightened in different ways to give a better experience, I see it's strong already but my concern now is the mechanics of being a Summoner

I feel these would make improvements as overall mechanics, perhaps through new items or just directly included:

- Clash of tank mechanics: Revives can be unkillable, melee Skeletons are unlimited, Golems are unlimited and unkillable except by Bosses or a pack of inferno cows. I think currently Summoner has a lot of tanks and not enough damage per second done by the summons, furthermore I think auras are a good way to help that.

- Iron Golem with Thorns aura, since many summons have a high %DR it would not be as overpowered as it appears at first glance, this would give the Iron Golem some incentive to be used because odds are like 34:1 something else will be getting hit instead of it

- Fire Golem with higher level Holy Fire aura, even being stacked higher by having extra fire golems to reward end-game Summoner, would mean at least this golem could be used for its damage dealt, considering all the immunes or fire resist enemies it doesn't seem overpowered to me

- Skeletal Archer should have a longer sight range to move around less and keep up damage per second

Revives are tanky, sure, but they are the highest damage summon there is. They are designed to be DPS just as well as tanky.

Iron Golem isnt really meant to be used for his thorns... his secondary bonus is he takes the stats of any item. You can give him 100% Crushing Blow, or an aura, or whatever you want to do with him. Not to mention he can pretty much be physical immune.

Fire Golem already hits the skill cap level on Holy Fire even on just a moderately geared summoners now, cannot go any higher! His damage is already much higher than other Golems by default, I really have no plans to change Golems anymore right now.

Unfortunately I have no way to increase Archer range.

I know you have a vision in mind for Summoners, but I don't think we're going to be able to reach an agreement. We have two different ideas of what they should be. Considering how many summons a Necromancer can have I simply cannot make their summons high DPS machines without potential abuse, there is no middle ground here honestly. Summoners are not meant to play the role of insanely high summoned monster damage, and they never will, that isn't how I wanted them designed. They can zerg most bosses down or tank for days, while providing great utility to a party. They do put out pretty decent damage though, especially on single target. I've changed summon necromancers more than I have any other class on Annihilus with constant updates, to get them where I want them, I am very happy with how they are right now.