ARPGs with good summoners

Will definetely check out GD with the DLC, thanks.

Diablo 2 was a shitty game for that, a rape army of skeletons that made the game play itself. There was no micromanagement whatsoever.

MedianXL makes it better by giving you an AoE buff and totems to micromanage for more damage/buffs.

You can only get at most 18 permanent summoned units though, can't you? I hated how you couldn't have a horde of skeletons, or manage what type of skeletons you got, it was always random.

18 permanent ones seems high, but I don't know how crazy you can get with extra summons from gear. If you bothered to hack in or grind out the proper items you might get around that. The random skeleton unit types is probably just because it would be a pain to manage which ones you wanted otherwise, with how the game is now at least. Each type if pretty good at least, aside from the most basic one maybe.

You sure you're not looking for an RTS?

I hate RTSs

Thats still less than pre-patched diablo

To expand a bit on this, I like arpgs because you can interact with your minions more directly, by buffing them around, things like that, but without directly telling them what to do.(Yes I want something kinda mindless)

If you just want to micromanage a huge swarm of allies, go play Spellforce 3. It's a RPG/RTS hybrid (honestly you can finish the campaign with your heroes alone) where you can regularly train armies of units to back your heroes up and use your heroes to buff them up something stupid. There are also some summoning abilities but you won't be summoning entire armies by yourself in Spellforce 3.

You can have over 100 if you combine SRS with Animate Weapon and Vaal Summon Skeletons. But Path of Exile is fucking boring. The game practically plays itself and GGG's latest solution has been implementing bosses with retarded OP attack patterns to force you to walk around a bit during fights.

I actually should go specters.

Zombies are fine but not aggressive and you generally need to get too close to the enemy.
Golems can be aggressive but jewels are expensive as fuck.
SRS is homing missiles and are fine because it gives you something to do while playing summoner but building around them is not building summoner.
Skeletons suck. At least Vaal summon skeletons are fun.

But at least Spectres are fun and OP right now.

I have a necromancer going through utlimate in GC currently. Build I was using only has like 13 permanent pets, but I have a swarm of like another 10 that summon based on procs. They are basically all disposable that I summon and explode at will. And they doing fuck tons of damage and clog up the battle field while I debuff and kamikaze my zerg at everything and resummon it a second later.

Shit is pretty fun.

Grim Dawn with expansion. Simple editor means you can have as many summons as you'd like. Vid related.

Magic & Mayhem, designed by Julian Gollop (UFO/X-COM). A little known but cool game with gameplay mostly built around summons.

Grim Dawn expansion has an achievement for having 18 minion units at once. Just a warning, not all of them have to be permanent.

Specter/Golems wound up being my most successful build since beta.
Here's an approximate setup.
pastebin.com/NK2rfe1D

Not mostly built about capturing and keeping the ownership of several arbitrary magic circles laying in the open as far as possible from each other on the map? Playing around this concept was as boring and repetitive as shit. You were better off with rolling your armies from one circle to another (most of the time spent watching your units march in slomo) in hope of capturing the most weakly defended ones instead of trying to defend those you have already and only advancing on one target at once. Zero defensive installations to build, and
covertly cutting the flow of mana from your opponent was always a better option than trying to confront his armies from the front. Brain-dead AI didn't help.

Play Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim then. Your units CAN'T be controlled directly there. Or maybe Dungeon Keeper games too, if you can't stand how old they look.

*can't stand → can stand

It's been ages since I played it but I don't remember being pissed off by the objectives. It was a fairly intense game with some well developed ideas, not a classic but good enough to recommend.

Find a mod that changes the summon limit or change it yourself, see here:

Good recs. Majesty is a bit on the easy side but the bounty system is cool in that commands cost increasingly more when you want to turn them from rough incentives into "go there now" kinds of orders. It's not well balanced but it's fun.

If Majesty is too easy, play a custom freestyle game on master difficulty without any cheats. For extra challenge you can forbid any type of building you can normally build.

I now recall another title fitting OP's demands, but unfortunately it's really easy to play. It's either Overlord or Overlord 2.

I dropped overlord when you had to micro your minions over branches because they drown in 2 inches of water. Shit just wasn't fun and the gameplay wasn't good enough to make it worth getting through.

Why not play an RTS?

...

Why not read the fucking thread.

Doing anything proper in Median XL without dying to bosses requires really biting down on your own dick and min-maxing minions included. I used to run a necro with a really nice group of tanky minions. I can't remember what the build was nowadays. Its been too long. Median XL is kind of a shit show anyways.

In Grim Dawn, your minions can be either quantity or quality or both if you build your devotions right, you can even build them to have a huge buff to retaliate damage, meaning possibly the laziest pet build is possible. Then you can have minions that aren't even summoned and scale off player bonuses instead of pet bonuses. I do wish some of the class-based summons looked / worked better, like the Blade or Primal Spirit.

I have never understood how people have fun with huge amounts of summons.
I mean I can get playing with one or two for utility or as a distraction but at some point as the number gets larger you are just watching the friendly AI fight against the hostile AI.
Also Bonemancer was and will always be the best build in diablo 2

It's a power fantasy. It's a nice feeling to crush your enemies. It's an even nicer feeling to tell people to crush your enemies for you while you sit back and listen to them begging for mercy. It's an even nicer feeling to have bodies which are unthinking and unquestioning extensions of your own raw willpower to destroy your enemies, and that even if one of them falter it matters not because their infinite supply means they have no value. Diablo's the best RPG with skeletons not just because of the numbers, but also because you don't have to constantly baby sit them. They went out and hunted things for you.

That's why Diablo 2's curse skills went such a long way, you had a role cursing enemies, and the curses weren't just some piddly "10% less resistance to physical attacks", they actually made a massive difference. It gave you something to do while enjoying having the skeletons doing all the dirty work for you.

Chances are that is the original user.

No i definitely have seen one
Had it saved until my hard drive got corrupted by faulty RAM Understanding RAM is basically sorcery at this point to me

You're mostly right user, but OPs asking for a game with more summons than D2, or at least around
GrimDawn simply can't compete in terms of quantity and arguably quality, I miss my Shadow Master and/or traps

I don't think there are any, I've played just about every lootclicker I've been able to get my hands on even if they're complete shit and have yet to find a single one with a necromancer/summoner class on par with the necro from D2.

D2 is one of my favorite games of all time and there hasn't been ANYTHING to scratch that massive boner skelly itch. D3 was just rubbing shit into my wounds

I prefer the term ==zookeeper==.
I want a class that makes you feel like playing a RTS in a aRPG. Haha

I have never understood how people have fun with playing a mage.
I mean I can get playing with one or two spells for utility or as a distraction but at some point as the number of spells gets larger you are just watching your fireballs fighting against the hostile AI.
Also you're just clicking buttons!

Reminds me of Heroes and Empires from warcraft 3
Game worked by mixing aRPG with RTS, you got to choose if you wanted to play as a hero or as an empire.
You could also play as a summoner/necromancer or alternatively hire an ungodly amount of mercenaries.
The aim was to level up or develop your nation and fight the boss whilst constantly being attacked by waves as well as completing quests

Also I'm pretty sure there were warcraft 3 maps that would let you summon more minions and or skeletons than diablo 2
god i miss warcraft 3

This shit makes the game pointless, it plays itself, you fucking nigger.

Wasn't that the case with early D2 Necro before nerfing his summons and corpse explosion? And you can try balancing out having more summons with lowering their stats to keep you on your toes better.

That's stupid. Why would you want to play an RTS in a non-RTS game if you hate RTSs?

You can change all the values and properties of everything in the goddamn game, nigger. Just learn about the editor and make the summoner you want.

bump

I got as far as Malmouth in Grim Dawn with my summoner. It was fun for a while, but the build has very little agency compared to the more direct damage ones. My favorite class in D2 was the sorceress, and I am still waiting for something as satisfying as Frozen Orb in any other ARPG.

It's because he's too shit at RTS but wants to feel like he's good.

Not if you support them and focus on minions in the passive tree.

Good for you, it wasnt a bad game (the first one) but god fucking damnit if you'd ever gotten around to try the 2nd you'd rage in frustration at how shitty the controls are making the 1st game with it's branches'n shit feel like cakewalk.

this.

Any games that let me recreate or come close to the gameplay of a City of Villains Mastermind where you direct and assist a small group of powerful minions with different skills rather than huge zerg rush?

*blocks your path*

To anyone who tries to play Path of Exile for the summons, let me give you a quick crash. You can easily exceed 15 zombies, and many people don't understand that you can control minions that follow you. When you have minions that follow you, issue a command (swing your weapon, cast a raging spirit while aiming somewhere, anything at all) and your minions will move to that location. They will lock on to enemies in a certain radius of your command and will remaining locked onto those enemies until you issue a command far enough from their target. You can walk around and they will continue fighting, but if you walk too far, they will return to you, ready for new targets.

You can easily get 15 zombies. If you use the Femurs of the Saints, you can use Vaal Summon Skeleton to basically double the attack rate of all of your summons, which can make your zombies, spectres, or raging spirits eat a boss alive. They fixed the lag that used to happen when doing this. I had a ton of success doing this character this league.

Unfortunately, skeletons and raging spirits do not follow the player around. Dominated enemies and animated weapons do.

Reminder that Diablo 2 is shit for skinner-box loving kiddies and Diablo 1 is the superior game.

I don't even like dungeon crawlers and diablo is trash all round.

Diablo is a hack n slash not a dungeon crawler

Since when? Last time I played about three months ago, the only way to get your dead friends to run ahead of you is autistically spamming the order command with right click while slowly shimmying behind them with left click.

I'm talking about the zombies. They are permanent. And then the skeletons will all pop up in an instant if you speed up casting. I support them with that double-cast gem, whatever it's called.

wrong
Stack fucking minion boosting mystic orbs holy shit. The one game (and its mods) that do summoning well and you can't even fucking play them properly.

Yeah hold up lemme pull the money for mystic orbs out of my ass at level 40.

Try Myth II.

Isn't that a RTS?

...

A RTT.

Does it have gear progression?

You play as a single character, and your allies are summoned by music. Does it count? I think it's fun.

Four summons at once.
Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.
I liked it.

No it doesn't count but it reminded me of the bard class in ADOM, which is pretty fun.