Curious as to how people feel about this

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People who live in cinder block houses can throw whatever they want.

Voted no. They're tank when no dps-tank is in team, just like bo/oak charges/oskill are meant to cover one char crucial role less. I'd vote YES but I'm afraid you'd like to put 5secs on blades. Buffs, small changes, just like Mancer said.

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People who live in cinder block houses can throw whatever they want.

that do exactly
as fully geared barb
Meaning BARBs are garbage.
If only role of barb is too take hits then I say its bullshit. Sorcs clear game with 1 spell and do bosses as well? Meteo sorc can solo nihl, I watched 10 nihls done with my zon doing absolutely nothing(no ma, no buffs, no decoy) than grabbing runes after he's dead.
I said blades are for tanking if no dps-tank is in team, but something like dps-tank doesn't exist this patch on hell diff, so ofc ppl will say blades are better. Is this a reason to NERF something again? NO, just look on prev patch notes, all unbalanced build got buff unlikely others got nerfed so lower them to the same level of averageness. Only rabies was destroyed only to be buffed 33% on small update making it very good boss destroyer as build is done @ 45lvl.

incidentally Steel - I don't have a problem with the recastables personally. Just curious what other folks think as it has come up in topics.

you need to relax a bit, you've been hangin with Rasta too much and I think his spaz mode has rubbed off on you.

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People who live in cinder block houses can throw whatever they want.

I'm relaxed, I'm cool, I'm just throwing my opinion. I don't fight anyone here, if there'd be ever a vote to remove something I could live with it, I wouldn't rage and quit hu. I believe when people share different opinions and willing to discuss they can always find the middle ground. So yeah. I don't share every Rasta's opinion on melee, aka soloing bosses, but I don't want melee's to be Nec's 5th spirit blade.

just buff my bear so he is as good as 2 barbs and i'll be happy.

I wouldn't mind seeing a decrease in the tanking ability of summons. Some summons do things differently than others though, so should be balanced differently. I think the goal is that a single player can not use summons to tank a boss, but a single tank-built player could.

For an example, Decoy is purely a tanking summon with no other purpose. Consider it with a static 10 second cast delay, a static 5 second duration, and make it nearly indistructible to everything (pretty much like it is now). The duration being half the cast delay ensures that a single Amazon can't use Decoy to tank a boss, while the numbers of 5 and 10 are pretty arbitrary (3 with 9 or 6 with 10 would be reasonable choices too). Decoy would buy time for a tanking player to heal or something. A group of 2 or 3 Amazons could indefinitely tank a boss using Decoy and some coordination, although it's more likely that a single Amazon would assist tanking along with some other characters.

I do not see a large problem with most of the other tanking summons, since generally the characters recasting them do not have the time to do much else. If there are some summons that seem to tank too well while they do damage to a boss, and they survive longer than their casting delay (i.e. they allow a player to easily solo bosses outside of Norm), then consider reducing the summon's HP so that they usually do not outlast their casting delay when fighting bosses in NM or Hell. This would take quite a bit of analysis to balance though (e.g. consider the HP and resistances of a maxed summon relative to the damage output of bosses).

Voted no for a couple of reasons, mainly being:

1) Enough duo's/trio's were severely hurt this patch. I don't really want to see the mod moved into having even more of the "perfect" 4-man party to get things done.
2) Melee characters don't function as a tank, they function as damage dealers. Recastable summons have nothing to do with the fact melee are broken currently.

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A Lannister always pays his debts.

my lvl 47 decoy still dies in under 4 seconds to mephy dury etc if im trying to solo,voted no

just what ever you do don't nerf summon druids more than they are please.

Nec:
I'd put a 11 seconds delay on lv1 blades, lowering by 0.5 seconds per hard point, getting to 1.5 (same as it is now i believe) when 20 points are invested. I would give them more damage and life to compensate that.
(Derailment:Corpse Explosion's delay is linked to golems, i would remove ce delay and set its damage to approx 2/3 of its current value.(Yes before saying that i considered the nerf happening to ce ctc and oskill gear and to enemy's ce and i think it would cause no imbalance afaik.)

Dru:
More damage on bear and wolves.

Zon:
Tiny increase in recast delay for decoy, more damage on valk.

It's my totally updatable opinion
edit:was unclear, by updatable i meant ill change my view if u point out something i missed.

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No pretention, we're all god anyways.
I am better en francais sorry about my engrish sometimes XD

More dmg less tankage sounds good.

not starting at 11 ofc but delay reduce with investment.

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“Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism”

Yeah 11 is a bit too much, maybe starting at 5.5 with -0.25 per hard point.

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No pretention, we're all god anyways.
I am better en francais sorry about my engrish sometimes XD

edit - ninjaadmin\

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“Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism”

summons will hardly do any dmg in hell even at lvl 40 [valk blades are the only ones ive played with though]even with auras amp etc they are tanks/distractions for bosses not dmg dealers. blades will never hurt any monsters lol, go cast 4 and try to kill something in hell.

no one spoke of more dmg less tankage. Dien spoke of more dmg (more than nothing i guess) without nerfing tankage.

I feel that the recastable tanks are necessary for groups of non-tank-chars to play which is necessary.

If the argument is 'But it hurts group play' i answer that other mechanisms are better suited to encourage group play than creating mandatory charcombinations. The anti-rush mechanism is a good-working one. In Hell there are immunities so yea we dont need further constrictions.

So you're saying you agree with me?

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No pretention, we're all god anyways.
I am better en francais sorry about my engrish sometimes XD

Im saying blades dont need more dmg or life they arent damage dealers, they are recast able mini distractions for boss fights. and extra targets for trash fights. my blades have 6k life at lvl 38 or something w/o BO or oak sage even with they isnta die to hell bosses on 1 player. and they do around 2k dmg

so unless you double their max life to 12 k at lvl 20 and their max damage to like 4-5k then they may serve some other purpose.
unless you are pure summon build with a2 might merc with pride, max amp and you wearing a faith then thats a diff story.
decoy doesnt need a longer cast delay either they die 4-6 seconds as well to bosses even at lvl 44 BO OAk etc



summons wont kill stuff so a dmg buff i dont see the point. a cast delay you are just taking away from their purpose of boss fights

yeahhhhhhhhhhh lets make all summons into golems

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“Education has failed in a very serious way to convey the most important lesson science can teach: skepticism”

With my suggestions, having 20 points in blade puts the recast time as it is now, it is to encourage investing in the skill.

Also, anything is possible, the sky's the limit, so im maintaining my point (raise blades damage) cuz imo it is too low atm.

I agree with u that the main purpose of that summon is boss distraction but since it got damage, why dont we set it to decent damage so it helps a bit in thrash?

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No pretention, we're all god anyways.
I am better en francais sorry about my engrish sometimes XD

My valkyrie can kill some non act bosses, huh. Ofc with some time, you can't expect 20 point skill to be better than fully geared char.
IMO delay on blades isn't right idea, I mean the progress one with delay reduced, it will be a must to max for summoner, as for now summoners can cast only these and curses on act bosses. And even 1lvl helps, its always one hit less for "real" tank.
2 sec delay imo would be ok, just like on dire wolfs.

About the damage on blades, it might make the enemy blades more powerfull also and they are fine as they are so forget it.

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No pretention, we're all god anyways.
I am better en francais sorry about my engrish sometimes XD