Or any hybrid character that actually uses more than 2 active skills?
If you actually try to add some variety to your playstyle you’ll be kicked hard in the balls for it and any other strategy other than Hyperfocus on one single attack/summon will not be rewarded.
If you look at all the ‘pro’ builds they’re just some guy right clicking all the time and at best pressing ‘1’ to throw his only debuff/secondary AoE if he really really feels like multitasking.
I’ve been trying to build a summoner that actually does more than just sit back and jack off but it seems that as soon as you try to make some room for a new skill in your gear and levels you’ll experience a net loss in efficiency and there’s hardly any new synergies that could help compensate for it.
Even Path of Exile, a game already terrible when it comes to this, allows you to use more skills and still perform reasonably well in the endgame, even if it won’t encourage you either.
I’m not certain how you’ve built your summoner, but the one I just built uses all of the front slots for active skills or pet restore,
and 3 of the back ones for toggled skills. I also have a skill added to my right mouse button because there wasn’t a slot left for it. If you’re using your devotion points solely to support your pets then you will notice that some of them come with skills that have to be attached to an active skill such Bloody Pox or Curse of Frailty. On top of that I join in with my weapon so I suppose it really boils down to your build’s selected skills.
Dang bud! Is this one button build in ultimate? If so, sign me up for that! All the pet builds I run, including a hybrid, require a lot of pet management, player movement, and active skill use in order to pull off.
Technically you can beat the game without using any skill buttons at all. But I’m sorry most builds aren’t right click and that’s all. People use many different support skills with their builds. And builds that rely on skills with cool downs will always have at least 2 active skills (usually 3 or 4 but always at least 2)
Even melee builds that rely on WPS use at least 3 buttons (Basic attack replacer, Pneumatic Burst & and some kind of movement skill.
Also using multiple skills is a great way to take advantage of the huge added power of devotion procs.
So yes some builds might only use 1 or 2 buttons, but to say that most do is flat out a lie.
I’m curious to see that build. The main roadblock to variety on top of gear focus is the limited amount of points you can spend on skill slots. See this for example. This is my build at level 50. There’s not going to be much extra points past that level to break through anything game changing.
The problem with devotions is that they’re the only thing encouraging hybrid playstyles. The rest of the system doesn’t follow. The skill you attach to the devotion is a glorified placeholder for the bonus effect to trigger on your pets in this particular example.
Technically you have two buttons since you can resummons the Hellhound to deal a large amount of AoE damage where it dies.
As for your build right now? Sure, two buttons (or 3 since you’d resummon the skellies). For the future of your build you’d probably add a bunch more buttons for like Curse of Frailty, Blood of Dreeg, Call of the Grave, perhaps Ill Omen/Mark of Tormet and maybe Reap Spirit.
Not to mention other skills that you can acquire via itemization + potion use.
I posted my build at level 50 because this is when things start to get tough and I needed a decently tinkered build to avoid slugging through every fights.
What doesn’t feel right for me is that you apparently need to wait until level 75 to experience variety.
Yeah but that’s the problem. It’s a level 100 build that relies on specific legendaries. Good place to aim once you reach the end game and already have a full stash of previous build legendaries you accumulated.
I see you want to play some hybrid pets. The best one is Dachiv’s guide that Safarel mentioned.
First of all. You need to know why people rarely post hybrid builds.
It is very hard to build at full potential and have good performance comparing to average pure pet and pure character. No one wants to post under performance builds unless it has something interesting or special.
The creator need to know most of the game mechanics and have experience in playing pure character and pure pet to its peak performance. To know more/less importance things is. How to take the character participate in pets.
The gears which allow to build and works fine enough to get your char and your pets together.
If you want to play other than the builds available. Try to make it yourself especially when you don’t have the same items they has. Step out of the comfort zone and try something new. Trials and errors.
I toggle about 4 buttons constantly working on 5 to keep all my summons up at once; that’s not lazy that’s massive micromanagement that leaves no leeway for any side build focusing on direct attack.
Here’s a hint though, crate hates ranged and summoners (because a true meat shield summoner is a screen away round the corner invulnerable to attack).
You can’t fight the direction crate wants to take it’s product, it’s just unfortunate that their restrictive guidance pulls the class choices together into the general one way forward.
The game is meant to be hard and brutal (Action) so they do everything to keep the player engaged, ranged must kite, aether rayers get nerf’d so hard they better rethink their skill specialization.
At the end of the day you need to go in the direction the game is pushing you, (path of least resistance) which is why some of the most powerful characters Ret.Warder & Blademaster simply work where interesting builds like a lifesteal chaos ray Arcanist completely fail.
If you are having trouble with making a Necromancer/ essentially soldier (because you are focusing on melee) it helps to get a list of three things for each you want to focus on.
For example with a necromancer.
1)No. of summons
2)Resilience of those summons maintaining agro
3)Party enhancers (because aura’s effect pets while bonus to pets only effects pets)
For Your Melee
1)Reduce damage & return (retaliate)
2)Mass (Multihit) hinder (slow, freeze, stun, knockdown, confuse, terrorize, petrify, lastly lower resists)
3) Damage enhancer synergy (Necro is all about Vitality, if you want to do great damage try focusing on either raising %vitality damage or lowering enemy%vitality resist; the later being better as it helps you and your minions)
There are three ways you can accomplish these goals and the balance between the two roles is up to you in the end.
You can change up your gear+components, Devote to goal & multiclass/skill to attain your focus.
The game wants to spread everything out and make it hard to navigate a direct line forward; so don’t just try to make a beeline for what you are looking for & tailoring everything towards that goal.
What I mean is that you will have more success by saying to yourself I need to feel more impact in melee, but my summons are the meat of the build so I’ll look for summoner gear with melee damage vitality and use component aura’s to benefit both; backing up damage with an AoE attack skill with a Devotion that procs knockdown with extra damage.
As you can see I’ve looked for a number of ‘High Priority’ goals spread over multiple forms and am accepting items with more than one focus.
I also think every 10 levels is a good time to re-evaluate your gear and skill choices assessing if the build is developing any needs (perhaps your a bit too squishy).
The biggest problem you should run into is the slog to get through what devotions ‘do what’ for you and what a 10% bonus from it in ‘this and that’ is even doing for your bottom line.
Anyways I hope that helps a little.
because I was so busy pressing buttons all the time. I actually prefer only using a couple of active skills.
For a start Raven doesn’t need 8 points and Mend Flesh and Ember Claw don’t need to be maxed. Reduce them all down to one point each. For L50 you’re way too low in the masteries. Use some of those points to climb a mastery to get more survivability. Put some into Curse of Frailty which may be a better option than the Signal. Also Blood of Dreeg will help you and pets’ survivability too.
