Summoner Druid 2.4

General Discussion
1

I want to start with a small history. I have played summoner druid since D2 LoD came out. I reached hell act 1, after which I usually stop this build. The wolves hit like they are caressing their target, the bear is too lonely to protect you, and all other summons are even worse.

In 2.4 however, this has become a really exciting build that makes you hunger for more. As you level through normal and nightmare you get the distinct sense that this is amazing. Ravens are the main damage source, but now that you can keep all animals up, bear and dire wolves also play their part. Spirit wolves and Poison Creepers help to deal with physical immunes.

You are ready for hell!

And then reality hits. You meet the first ‘stone skin’ or worse ‘physical immune’ and realize your level 20 spirit wolves hit like overcooked noodles. 160 cold damage on hell is… nothing. And 5x160 is still nothing, because they are separate entities they all get a chonk of their damage reduced by enemy resistances, which are all high in hell. Then there is the Poison creeper, or should I say dead creeper? He seems to be the favorite meal of every monster. Worse yet, none of the druid Spirits support the off-physical damage dealers. Spirit of Barbs is… shit. Better equip an edge on a rogue or get a thorns a2 merc. Wolverine buffs only physical damage, and more hit points don’t allow you to kill things faster. So there is the main weakness. Did I mention Forgotten Tower and Arcane Sanctuary have 50% physical immune? Not fun!

“Aww, poor druid, there is a damage type immunity? Deal with it man, just like all other classes! Surely your Uberteam of ravens, bears and wolves burns through those not immune?”
And that’s where you are wrong.

The main issue with the summoner druid is, like with all summoning, the matter of surface area to dps. Let me explain this a bit, as you may know what it is but don’t know the term. Each of our minions deals damage, but not to the same mob.

Ice Blast for example, deals high single target damage, all of it is concentrated into one attack, usually fatal to mobs not immune to cold. But ravens, wolves and bears deal significantly less damage to their single target. Logical, you might say, to keep the game balanced. If they are all hitting the same target, they probably kill faster than Ice Blast. While this is true mathematically, it is almost never true in reality.

The new ‘zoo’ of summons are quite fat, especially the bear. The chances of all your summons hitting the same target, even if you specifically summon them next to it, is 0. This is because their models are in each other’s way, and they can’t move through each other. Summoner necro has less of an issue with this, because skeleton models are a lot smaller, they can all stack quite well, and magi shoot over them (but fair, you cant control their summon location, I digress).

The result is that your army is hitting all different mobs, not like Ice Blast is hitting one specific target of your choice. You have limited control to get maybe half your army to hit the same target (at risk of your own life to move your summons). As a result, everything dies extremely slowly. Worse yet, druids lack the utility necromancers have. Necromancers can Terror groups of mobs out of the way, they can amp damage up their army to deal with physical immunes, and lower resist for their magi (though arguably, that’s also still quite bad). The Druid has no way to amplify their minion’s damage against specific targets.

The only advantage is that we can summon ravens on a target, which somewhat reliably causes them to attack that target. But ravens hit quite poorly after the recent tune, even though they should be the new main damage dealers according to the tree’s synergy philosophy (a raven hits for about 900 damage after fully investing the whole tree). 900, while Ice Blast deals 3000, reliably on the target you want to kill. 900x5 ravens you might say… I say, IF they hit. This is a physical attack after all, and they miss quite often.

Problems and solutions:

Spirits need to better support the summoner druid. Wolverine adds % damage, but only up to 100%. 100% that doesn’t go to Raven, because they don’t get aura benefits, and not to Spirit Wolf, because they deal Cold damage. Spirit of Barbs is somewhat better than it was, but still won’t do any miracles. It reflects physical damage, which we don’t need more of and only counters melee. I suggest that Ravens should benefit from Spirit auras (or at least synergize with them), and/or that Barbs reflects magic (or poison) damage to distinguish it from thorns.

Spirit Wolf and Poison Creeper damage is just too low. This needs to be increased, period. Poison Creeper having a synergy outside of the summoner tree does NOT help. Give it synergy with a Spirit, and make it invulnerable. It dies even at maxed points because it moves through monsters all the time.

Raven should be changed into a single Conspiracy of Ravens. It would be just one summon that hits for 4500 damage at max level, instead of 900 x 5 separately. I would also prefer them dealing magic damage instead of physical, because otherwise a summon druid still cannot pass physical immunes reliably. No, act 3 mercs suck, don’t even get me started on the 1-600 lightning damage they do.

Bear and Dire Wolf damage is also quite bad. If you add the math its good, but we determined before you can’t do that, they aren’t an Ice Blast they are summons. 400 damage on dire and 1200 damage on bear is just sad. Right now it feels like there isn’t a clear design choice. Are they supposed to only tank for me? If so, give all their damage to Ravens for more focused damage. If not, buff their damage! Better yet, give bear a single target amplify damage! Target of the pack!

All in all, even with these changes, the summoner druid will still not be competitive. But I think that with them, I may at least be able to finish hell on my own without having to pay 30 high runes. I think I can already beat hell with one now, but will it be fun?

Thanks for your time reading.

6 Likes
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Looks like now the summon dru is a “feasible” build. With +15 to skills and basically BIS gear, might a2 merc with BIS gear, I was able to play on P1 very comfortably. Speed of clearing is still a bit slow.

I would say that it is a C tier build now. Which is great, because before, it was absolutely unfeasible (F tear) :slight_smile:

2 Likes
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Still doing some testing on my end, and I am playing on console at the moment so the ai might work differently because of console targeting, but what I found to help deal with “damage all over the place” is just yeeting my summons. I notice that if I resummon a raven onto one target, all ravens now attack that one target. This is true for all my summons. I one point wonder into shockwave, stack fcr, and keep an a2 Merc with insight to deal with mana problems. I find my minions being able to focus fire down while I am able to stunlock packs down. The problem I’m running into though is I either have to give up my might aura to slap insight onto an A1 merc and pray she nukes the right target that is phys/cold immune. At which point why not just throw a harmony made out of a grand mat bow? it’s a slow AF build, but it’s also tank af.

Honestly with the changes to skelemagi scaling and c/e being half fire, I think a Necro will still dominate as far as handling immune packs as summoner builds go. But then again, with the changes to end game zones, you can just leave the tower farming to another class. And just focus on areas that aren’t saturated with phys immunities. Which honestly is the least common immunity you will run into.

With that being said, corpse fire being phys and cold immune in den of evil made me want to smash my switch :confused:

Probably not what you want to hear, but also wolves seem to be more cc oriented, so I dumped points into them last just to minmax my ravens. Thinking of just getting the 5, dropping my shapeshift shenanigans, my creepers, and probably even my barbs and going some type of wind hybrid since magic immunities are also fairly rare. But also will require a decent number of +skills to accomplish. At least 10 by my calculations.

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I never got the point of that thing.

First of all, you have to give up HUGE bonuses because you can only have one spirit. What build couldn’t possibly be better off with the other 2 spirits?

Second of all, it gives you more physical damage but you’re also LOSING physical damage because you don’t have the damage increasing spirit.

Also, seriously, make the crappy poison vine invulnerable already. You could double their damage and make them not die and still they’d be pretty useless besides preventing monster heal. But they look so cool, i want to use one!

5

I agree its not there yet, and whats buggers me the most is the pets attack all over the screen. There AI need to be emproved to not split up that much if it makes sense. I still with all pets find it a bad build tbh.

1 Like
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Hey i suggest to you read my guide, it can help with various issues you talk about and how to solve them with current 2.4 summoner.

You can see there also test of my summoner druid on players 7 setting, clearing pit in 4 minutes with expensive equip. But elite farming could be faster.

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Hello, i’m leveling summoner druid and i have one question : are wolverine’s bonuses added to those of the mercenary? or is it better to take another mercenary ? ( armor bonus or healing etc…)

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Isn’t the survivability of the summons really high though? If you get both survivability and damage on the summons, it would be too strong. Idk exactly how it is. Before, druid was quite playable with any 1 summon type maxed for a bit of extra damage and especially nice tankiness (while you’d still be able to cast spells and use wolf or bear form simultaneously, hybrid build). And even just a 1 point bear was good enough to deal with some hard hitting stuff by tanking a few hits and ofc being recast pretty fast.

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Summon druid was always viable, you can to uber trist naked …

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so is maxed summons druid too strong now and making game too easy? or does it just open up more possibilities for hybrid stuff that include summons (which were already good)? what was bad past A1 hell was : poison creeper, spirit of barbs, plague bite. a bunch of crows were good for the blind. Not sure if the first wolves were useful other than to increase stats of the other summons but thats good already.

11

Welcome to Diablo 2 90s balance. It goes like this: ‘caster’ specs >>>>>>>>>>> weapon specs >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> summon specs

It’s funny when you have a character class that is supposed to be a physical damage dealer but his best spec is a pseudo caster spec unless you can equip him with godly gear.

What makes summon so bad is that you basically need enigma to control your 1997 AI summons.

1 Like
12

I think if the summons could do all the work, it would be too easy. If they bring in decent tankiness while having to resummon them at times, and deal some extra damage while your character does the rest of it, then it’s much better. Cause if the summons can do everything its just autowin right.