Summoner question

[greybucket]

Is there any tips or tricks to knowing when a minion falls and you need to summon another? The only downside to playing a summoner IMO is not knowing how many of your guys you have out there. After a fight I would cycle through them to make sure they were all up but during a fight its impossible.

[TheBatotot]

depends on what minions your using.

if your using golems you won't have problems noticing if one is gone, their big and easy to spot

if your using skeletons, just summon them at regular intervals, i made it a habit of summoning a batch of skeletons every 10 secs since duration of rank 10 skeletons is around 50-60+ seconds

if your using zombies, just summon them at the end of their cooldown, they have 40sec duration and 30sec cooldown

archers are also easy to spot, and since you'll only use them when there are enemies you should be able to tell whenever they are gone

the problem here is the imps, these guys are a hassle to summon, they'll need corpses and they die easily, they may be very useful at first but i suggest that you go with level 10 charm mastery than level 10 nether imps, you'll have plenty of choices from the charm minions who will deal more damage and have higher survivability than nether imps.

[Harold]

I am currently playing a full summoner Alchemist with six imps, both golems, six of my own zombies, six of my dog's (when he feels like casting them...), and five skeletons (oh, and charmed monsters when I can).

As the previous poster mentioned, constant re-summoning is the best way to 'keep track of them'. This will, of course, depend on what you are doing as a regular attack. If you are constantly attacking from behind your minions using spells or skills then you probably will not have enough mana to liberally re-summon minions. However, if you are instead either holding back, using those spells sparingly, or using a ranged weapon then you should be ok.

Remember that it is perfectly ok to try and summon more than you need. Any extra units you summon will replace older ones if they've reached their max. At the very least you will be 'healing' your minions.

The Alchemist certainly lives up to his potential as the true successor to Diablo 2's Necromancer.