I'm curious as to how the various WD summons (Zombie, Fetish, Animal) will scale in D3.
Do they only scale with the level of the skill?
Or do they receive a bonus based on the stats of there summoners?
If so do pets that are obviously summoned through magic receive + to there physical based damage from there summoners +150% spell damage?
Having no experience with previous Diablo games I'm a at a loss for speculation and theory crafting. Could anyone enlighten me as to exactly how D2 summons scaled? I haven't been able to find any specific information on the subject.
The only way summons "scaled" with gear in D2 was with +Skills gear. In fact, the only way any skill scaled in D2 was from +Skills, short of the odd item with +% damage on it (Trang Gloves, Eschuta's, etc.) or Rainbow Facets. I don't think we've heard anything about how summons will scale in D3. A lot of how summons need to scale will be determined by how the end game plays out, I'm sure, as they could easily make them scale appropriately with skill points alone through the end of hell difficulty. The problem would only arise if you couldn't put any more skills in them (reached level cap) but your gear kept improving and enemy difficulty kept increasing (progressing through end game).
I think it will be scaled better this time around, pets scale in wow without leveling past. Traits may also affect them
Yeah, but, like I said, we need to know how the endgame will work before we can speculate on how pets scale in endgame. Pets have to scale with AP/SP in WoW because the endgame is so dense and there's no way to add additional levels/points into your spells/talents once you hit the level cap. In D3, on the other hand, it's kind of a foregone conclusion - we don't know for sure if there will be +Skills on endgame items or not. If there are, that would provide a method of endgame pet scaling without additional scaling through your stats, etc. We also don't know how much stronger enemies will be at endgame, so we don't know if pets continuing to scale will even be necessary.
I feel fairly confident that any Traits that affect pet Life/Damage will be taken into consideration when balancing against individual skill points put in the respective summons as well, so Traits probably won't have much effect on endgame summon scaling.
EDIT: Known traits that directly affect summons:
Ferocity - 3 Ranks: Increases the damage done by the Witch Doctor's summons.
Care of the Master - 3 Ranks: Increases the health of the Witch Doctor's summons.
Increases the Witch Doctor's damage done by Zombie skills.
Plagued
Increases the Witch Doctor's damage done by Animal and Plague skills.
Fetish Leader
Increases damage done by Fetish skills.
These 3 Traits are also assumed to buff there respective pet types, near as I can tell there 7 total summon spells and each "school" has at least two of them. That is not counting Zombie Wall.
I am just curious as to how essential these will be for summons remaining viable in endgame, was hoping to gleam some clues from the previous games.
I got bored and have begun making spreadsheets with what data I have you see.
Well I'm sure you'll have to spend your trait points on summon stuff in order to have your summons be effective. Otherwise you could have some insane summon/attack build where you get a bunch of summons and are still able to have powerful offensive abilities. Traits basically synergize with skills, so they'll be important.
Increases the Witch Doctor's damage done by Zombie skills.
Plagued
Increases the Witch Doctor's damage done by Animal and Plague skills.
Fetish Leader
Increases damage done by Fetish skills.
These 3 Traits are also assumed to buff there respective pet types, near as I can tell there 7 total summon spells and each "school" has at least two of them. That is not counting Zombie Wall.
I am just curious as to how essential these will be for summons remaining viable in endgame, was hoping to gleam some clues from the previous games.
Good catch on those three. Like I said though, I'm sure the Traits will be balanced against the skills, so yes, they'll probably be necessary for making summons viable in endgame, but it won't be the way you continue to keep them viable as you get deeper into the endgame (assuming that scaling will be necessary in the first place).
On a side note, what skills are you considering "summons?" I think the WD has a lot of skills that are just regular damaging spells that kind of masquerade as summons because they look like zombies or spiders or something. I'd really only consider Zombie Dog, Gargantuan, and maybe Fetish Army as true summons. Things like Zombie Charger, Corpse Spiders, Plague of Toads, Wall of Zombies, etc. I don't really feel are summons per se, even if they look like it. Opinions?
I was considering Corpse Spiders and Plague of Toads to be summon spells (of the animal type). This video is one of the big reasons why Youtube, Giant Toad. It seems that certain runestones are available to make these pseudo summons more persistent in nature.
My question about scaling is really due to the large amount of summoning spells at the WD disposal, No one could have them all near max by lvl60.. 6 of them lvl10 at best with the 7th skill slot used for melee/wand attack.
So to make a pure summoner some sort of secondary scaling would be a necessity. I'm curious if such a pure summoner build is something we can expect to be viable, because it seems interesting to me.
I was considering Corpse Spiders and Plague of Toads to be summon spells (of the animal type). This video is one of the big reasons why Youtube, Giant Toad. It seems that certain runestones are available to make these pseudo summons more persistent in nature.
My question about scaling is really due to the large amount of summoning spells at the WD disposal, No one could have them all near max by lvl60.. 6 of them lvl10 at best with the 7th skill slot used for melee/wand attack.
So to make a pure summoner some sort of secondary scaling would be a necessity. I'm curious if such a pure summoner build is something we can expect to be viable, because it seems interesting to me.
Good point with the rune effects, I hadn't thought of that. Guess we'll have to wait to see how that plays out.
I see where you're coming from now, and I think it's really going to just depend on how Blizz wants to play it. Regular spelly spells will obviously scale with both points put in them and spellpower, but Blizz could go either way with summons - either they're balanced vs. spells with points alone or they scale with stats like spellpower. I'm sure they can make it work in either case.
I do think a summoner build will definitely be viable, but I don't think you're going to be using all 7 (or 6) skills on summons. Skills like Sacrifice, CC (Grasp of the Dead, Mass Confusion, or Horrify) and maybe your movement skill will probably all come into play with a summoner build still. I'd assume something like Locust Swarm will receive benefits from the Animal skills Trait and it seems like that would make good utility damage for a summoner build as well. There's so many possibilities and it's hard to speculate without knowing more about skill caps and rune effects, but I don't really foresee a case where having 6-7 pure summoning skills will be better than having 2-4 maxed summons and several utility/damaging spells to back them up.
I was thinking that perhaps you could get by with using Hex as your CC skill, which is summons a fetish to cast CC for you by turning your enemies into chickens..
I'm not sure about having a nuke/dot or two of your own to cast, and I probably won't be until we know how the Fetish Fire Pit is going to work as it seems like sort of a pseudo summon/nuke to me judging by the description but we haven't seen it yet.
There is one kinda of obscure screen shot that some believe is the Fire Pit skill but it isn't confirmed and from that shot it still isn't clear how it works.
Edited to add more line breaks as usual: I should learn to hit preview.
Hopefully they'll recieve many more bonuses than they did in Diablo II because quite frankly, they were only good as meat shields. Only a necromancer with like +20+ skills could actually cause any kind of damage in hell, and it still didn't amount to what other good dps classes could pull. On the other hand, that had a LOT to do with the poor AR of his minions, so who knows.
I would also support scaling the power of summons with difficulty level, like in TQ, where they receive a hefty scaling for each difficulty level. Diablo III may not be designed in such a way that this is necessary, but I would say the introduction of such a system would be preferable to how it worked in Diablo II.
In addition, minions gleaning some stat gains from their master's gear would also be appropriate imo, just like the relationship between summoner and summonee in WoW.
Yeah, Hex would work well too, but it's unclear from the description how many chickens you can have, while the other CCs are all definitely AoE.
You're right - it's definitely kind of hard to judge what's what on some skills right now (fire pit = nuke or summon?) and how they'll work with Traits and the like...
I think a magic mod "increase summon power" should exist. I think the tradeoff between summon strength and spell strength would add a lot of diversity to WD builds.
-I personally consider only permanent pets to be a "summon". Ie; a minion that has no timed duration, or, in the case Diablo III has anything like the necromancer revives from Diablo II, a minion that can continually remain up given user input and lasts longer than a few seconds.
-Is the Zombie skill trait going to boost summons effectiveness? Or does it only effect the Zombie "nukes" like zombie wall, etc?
-As far as pure summoner viability, it all depends on if Blizzard believes sitting back and letting your pets do all the work proves for a "fun" game play experience. Now, I can say for me that I would enjoy it because I love playing as a summoner in every RPG I can, but for the general population I would have to say no, Blizzard would not like that. In Diablo II, pure summoner didn't really "work" because your minions didn't do enough damage in hell, but the synergy playstyle with Corpse Explosion (which required player input) made it... work, in a sense.
I think a magic mod "increase summon power" should exist. I think the tradeoff between summon strength and spell strength would add a lot of diversity to WD builds.
It's exactly the opposite.
If +spells = +summons (stats wise) then you can have any combination of spells and summons in your build while maintaining the strength of both schools.
If there are separate then you pretty much have to choose which one you want to not suck.
We already have to choose how we allocate points between summon and damage skills, a further stat distinction would create both unnecessary redundancy with skill point allocation and would also be additionally restrictive in build choice.
Not to mention the itemization headaches of having to hunt down even more specific pieces of gear in a completely random loot generation system.
-As far as pure summoner viability, it all depends on if Blizzard believes sitting back and letting your pets do all the work proves for a "fun" game play experience. Now, I can say for me that I would enjoy it because I love playing as a summoner in every RPG I can, but for the general population I would have to say no, Blizzard would not like that. In Diablo II, pure summoner didn't really "work" because your minions didn't do enough damage in hell, but the synergy playstyle with Corpse Explosion (which required player input) made it... work, in a sense.
It's fun for some, not for others. The ones who don't like it don't have to spec into it. Couldn't be much simpler imo.
I think a magic mod "increase summon power" should exist. I think the tradeoff between summon strength and spell strength would add a lot of diversity to WD builds.
It's exactly the opposite.
If +spells = +summons (stats wise) then you can have any combination of spells and summons in your build while maintaining the strength of both schools.
If there are separate then you pretty much have to choose which one you want to not suck.
We already have to choose how we allocate points between summon and damage skills, a further stat distinction would create both unnecessary redundancy with skill point allocation and would also be additionally restrictive in build choice.
Hmm.. i don't think so.
Hybrid characters already have the major advantage of combining damage and tank potential. If you're allowed to keep the power of both schools say farewell to all WD builds that don't use one of the two minions. In my opnion in order to use pets you should naturally loose raw firepower.
And i don't think we have to divide skills points at all. We can choose seven skills, problably raise 4 or 5 to max level. You just have to sacrifice one of your 5 attack skills to have a maxed out summon. Big deal, people will hardly need more then 2 or 3 attacks skills anyway. It's like trading a skill you barely use for a permanent tank.
When i think about build diversity I exclude the weak builds (naturally). Diversity is na high amount of strong strategies, not a high amount of strategies.
If you can have a summon w/o loosing spell damage then every Wd will use both. It's like in D2, if you allow people to summon stuff w/o loosing significant damage potential, people will allways play with summons (all amazons use valkyrie, all assassins use shadows, all druids uses bear/wolf, all necros use golems).
If you're allowed to keep the power of both schools say farewell to all WD builds that don't use one of the two minions. In my opnion in order to use pets you should naturally loose raw firepower.
Well, who says you don't lose firepower by choosing to take summons? The damage output of the summon can be scaled with the extra tanking they give even with +Spellpower modifiers. Plague of Toads probably does significantly more damage/debuffing than the Zombie Dogs do at equivalent levels, because the Dogs are not just a damage source.
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If that made sense to you, Bravo! I think I even confused myself...
If you're allowed to keep the power of both schools say farewell to all WD builds that don't use one of the two minions. In my opnion in order to use pets you should naturally loose raw firepower.
Well, who says you don't lose firepower by choosing to take summons? The damage output of the summon can be scaled with the extra tanking they give even with +Spellpower modifiers. Plague of Toads probably does significantly more damage/debuffing than the Zombie Dogs do at equivalent levels, because the Dogs are not just a damage source.
If it only depends on skills, you don't. Compere those two builds:
I do not believe in the existence of weak builds, I desire a game so well designed that there are none.
This would of course be a perfect game.. and none of us will ever see it. However I do believe that weak builds can be relegated to being the minority, by good game design.
I think you underestimate peoples creativity, simply because everyone can have a nice pet doesn't mean they will want one. The WD has plenty of powerful crowd control abilities that can be relied on for survivability, not to mention several traits to make him more beefy. And lets not forget that trait points are extremely limited, much much more so than skill points. We won't have traits to max out your skills, pets and resource management/survivabilty all at once, there simply aren't enough points to go around.
We also need to remember that +pet damage is only a pseudo defensive stat, because it doesn't directly increase your survivablity. Having a dedicated +skill/pet damage stat doesn't give you some magical survivabilty buff, its all damage. With the happy side effect of a possibly tanky little summon. (which might no even hold aggro for all we know)
But how much pet tanking is a factor is something that could swing far one way or the other. It could be really great or totally useless, and I get the feeling that will be not only a function of how much you pumped the summon skill but that your traits will have a huge impact and possibly your defensive stats as well.
Of course until we know base stats and scaling numbers this is all conjecture, and theory will only go so far in proving the viability of different systems as numbers changes can have such a drastic skewing effect on these arguments.
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Do they only scale with the level of the skill?
Or do they receive a bonus based on the stats of there summoners?
If so do pets that are obviously summoned through magic receive + to there physical based damage from there summoners +150% spell damage?
Having no experience with previous Diablo games I'm a at a loss for speculation and theory crafting. Could anyone enlighten me as to exactly how D2 summons scaled? I haven't been able to find any specific information on the subject.
Thanks Caniroth for the awesome sig!
Yeah, but, like I said, we need to know how the endgame will work before we can speculate on how pets scale in endgame. Pets have to scale with AP/SP in WoW because the endgame is so dense and there's no way to add additional levels/points into your spells/talents once you hit the level cap. In D3, on the other hand, it's kind of a foregone conclusion - we don't know for sure if there will be +Skills on endgame items or not. If there are, that would provide a method of endgame pet scaling without additional scaling through your stats, etc. We also don't know how much stronger enemies will be at endgame, so we don't know if pets continuing to scale will even be necessary.
I feel fairly confident that any Traits that affect pet Life/Damage will be taken into consideration when balancing against individual skill points put in the respective summons as well, so Traits probably won't have much effect on endgame summon scaling.
EDIT: Known traits that directly affect summons:
These 3 Traits are also assumed to buff there respective pet types, near as I can tell there 7 total summon spells and each "school" has at least two of them. That is not counting Zombie Wall.
I am just curious as to how essential these will be for summons remaining viable in endgame, was hoping to gleam some clues from the previous games.
I got bored and have begun making spreadsheets with what data I have you see.
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Good catch on those three. Like I said though, I'm sure the Traits will be balanced against the skills, so yes, they'll probably be necessary for making summons viable in endgame, but it won't be the way you continue to keep them viable as you get deeper into the endgame (assuming that scaling will be necessary in the first place).
On a side note, what skills are you considering "summons?" I think the WD has a lot of skills that are just regular damaging spells that kind of masquerade as summons because they look like zombies or spiders or something. I'd really only consider Zombie Dog, Gargantuan, and maybe Fetish Army as true summons. Things like Zombie Charger, Corpse Spiders, Plague of Toads, Wall of Zombies, etc. I don't really feel are summons per se, even if they look like it. Opinions?
My question about scaling is really due to the large amount of summoning spells at the WD disposal, No one could have them all near max by lvl60.. 6 of them lvl10 at best with the 7th skill slot used for melee/wand attack.
So to make a pure summoner some sort of secondary scaling would be a necessity. I'm curious if such a pure summoner build is something we can expect to be viable, because it seems interesting to me.
Good point with the rune effects, I hadn't thought of that. Guess we'll have to wait to see how that plays out.
I see where you're coming from now, and I think it's really going to just depend on how Blizz wants to play it. Regular spelly spells will obviously scale with both points put in them and spellpower, but Blizz could go either way with summons - either they're balanced vs. spells with points alone or they scale with stats like spellpower. I'm sure they can make it work in either case.
I do think a summoner build will definitely be viable, but I don't think you're going to be using all 7 (or 6) skills on summons. Skills like Sacrifice, CC (Grasp of the Dead, Mass Confusion, or Horrify) and maybe your movement skill will probably all come into play with a summoner build still. I'd assume something like Locust Swarm will receive benefits from the Animal skills Trait and it seems like that would make good utility damage for a summoner build as well. There's so many possibilities and it's hard to speculate without knowing more about skill caps and rune effects, but I don't really foresee a case where having 6-7 pure summoning skills will be better than having 2-4 maxed summons and several utility/damaging spells to back them up.
I'm not sure about having a nuke/dot or two of your own to cast, and I probably won't be until we know how the Fetish Fire Pit is going to work as it seems like sort of a pseudo summon/nuke to me judging by the description but we haven't seen it yet.
There is one kinda of obscure screen shot that some believe is the Fire Pit skill but it isn't confirmed and from that shot it still isn't clear how it works.
Edited to add more line breaks as usual: I should learn to hit preview.
I would also support scaling the power of summons with difficulty level, like in TQ, where they receive a hefty scaling for each difficulty level. Diablo III may not be designed in such a way that this is necessary, but I would say the introduction of such a system would be preferable to how it worked in Diablo II.
In addition, minions gleaning some stat gains from their master's gear would also be appropriate imo, just like the relationship between summoner and summonee in WoW.
You're right - it's definitely kind of hard to judge what's what on some skills right now (fire pit = nuke or summon?) and how they'll work with Traits and the like...
-I personally consider only permanent pets to be a "summon". Ie; a minion that has no timed duration, or, in the case Diablo III has anything like the necromancer revives from Diablo II, a minion that can continually remain up given user input and lasts longer than a few seconds.
-Is the Zombie skill trait going to boost summons effectiveness? Or does it only effect the Zombie "nukes" like zombie wall, etc?
-As far as pure summoner viability, it all depends on if Blizzard believes sitting back and letting your pets do all the work proves for a "fun" game play experience. Now, I can say for me that I would enjoy it because I love playing as a summoner in every RPG I can, but for the general population I would have to say no, Blizzard would not like that. In Diablo II, pure summoner didn't really "work" because your minions didn't do enough damage in hell, but the synergy playstyle with Corpse Explosion (which required player input) made it... work, in a sense.
It's exactly the opposite.
If +spells = +summons (stats wise) then you can have any combination of spells and summons in your build while maintaining the strength of both schools.
If there are separate then you pretty much have to choose which one you want to not suck.
We already have to choose how we allocate points between summon and damage skills, a further stat distinction would create both unnecessary redundancy with skill point allocation and would also be additionally restrictive in build choice.
Not to mention the itemization headaches of having to hunt down even more specific pieces of gear in a completely random loot generation system.
It's fun for some, not for others. The ones who don't like it don't have to spec into it. Couldn't be much simpler imo.
Hmm.. i don't think so.
Hybrid characters already have the major advantage of combining damage and tank potential. If you're allowed to keep the power of both schools say farewell to all WD builds that don't use one of the two minions. In my opnion in order to use pets you should naturally loose raw firepower.
And i don't think we have to divide skills points at all. We can choose seven skills, problably raise 4 or 5 to max level. You just have to sacrifice one of your 5 attack skills to have a maxed out summon. Big deal, people will hardly need more then 2 or 3 attacks skills anyway. It's like trading a skill you barely use for a permanent tank.
When i think about build diversity I exclude the weak builds (naturally). Diversity is na high amount of strong strategies, not a high amount of strategies.
If you can have a summon w/o loosing spell damage then every Wd will use both. It's like in D2, if you allow people to summon stuff w/o loosing significant damage potential, people will allways play with summons (all amazons use valkyrie, all assassins use shadows, all druids uses bear/wolf, all necros use golems).
If it only depends on skills, you don't. Compere those two builds:
BUILD 1
* Damage spell
* Damage spell
* Damage spell
* Damage spell
* Confusion/Terrify
* Spirit Walk
* Soul Harvest
BUILD 2
* Damage spell
* Damage spell
* Damage spell
* ZOMBIE DOG OR GARGANTUA
* Confusion/Terrify
* Spirit Walk
* Soul Harvest
Build 2 most likely have the same firepower of build 1 but he has summons to tank stuff.
This would of course be a perfect game.. and none of us will ever see it. However I do believe that weak builds can be relegated to being the minority, by good game design.
I think you underestimate peoples creativity, simply because everyone can have a nice pet doesn't mean they will want one. The WD has plenty of powerful crowd control abilities that can be relied on for survivability, not to mention several traits to make him more beefy. And lets not forget that trait points are extremely limited, much much more so than skill points. We won't have traits to max out your skills, pets and resource management/survivabilty all at once, there simply aren't enough points to go around.
We also need to remember that +pet damage is only a pseudo defensive stat, because it doesn't directly increase your survivablity. Having a dedicated +skill/pet damage stat doesn't give you some magical survivabilty buff, its all damage. With the happy side effect of a possibly tanky little summon. (which might no even hold aggro for all we know)
But how much pet tanking is a factor is something that could swing far one way or the other. It could be really great or totally useless, and I get the feeling that will be not only a function of how much you pumped the summon skill but that your traits will have a huge impact and possibly your defensive stats as well.
Of course until we know base stats and scaling numbers this is all conjecture, and theory will only go so far in proving the viability of different systems as numbers changes can have such a drastic skewing effect on these arguments.