So I was suggested to, by a friend, give my thoughts and perhaps even offer up recommendations for summons, given I played through the whole of the 3 act campaign twice now as a summoner. Both in the hellish state they were in before the 1.0.4.0 patch, and now again in the somewhat improved state they occupy. So just getting into it...

1.) The first thing that has to be talked about is the first thing you'll likely notice when picking up Feeding Swarm from Demetra. Their terrible starting health. Feeding Swarm starts at level 1 with 9 hit points. Literally less than some of the one-shot fodder you dispatch during the Svriir Swarm quest immediately after getting them. And of course the recommendation here would just be to increase the health of summons, both Feeding and Hunting Swarm at the lower skill levels, 1-20 say, so that you're not stuck into a loop of constantly resummoning them before you're able to get the Sacrifice of Flesh and supplementary nodes from Plaguebringer.

2.) Continuing on with the topic of Swarm spells, the next thing to discuss would be the terrible AI on the archers. While their damage is low enough to not really matter to begin with, and could use increased, there is the issue that it's still a significant portion of your damage if you're going strictly summoner, and they will CONSTANTLY be shooting into stairs or into walls when trying to get at enemies. Especially in the later stages of Act 3 where I noticed stairs being pretty much everywhere, and it could really use some fixing up. Not much to 'recommend' for this one aside from pls fix.

3.) My next gripe is with the active on Feeding Swarm. https://i.imgur.com/KeodlLD.mp4 - Nuff said. Though given I would actually like this ability to matter, seeing as the summoning aspect is supposed to be a bit more involved in this than most other summoner builds in other games - in the devs's words, I would like to recommend the skill being changed to be similar to Warpath. Not in the incredible amount of damage it can deal of course, but in the ability to push aside enemies on the path you send them charging, and perhaps removing their collision during the charge enabling your Feeding Swarm zombies to go through one another and your other minions which will often get in the way of and literally body block them out of their charge.

4.) Livor Mortis. Basically, the taunt sucks. The taunt on Livor Mortis while effective is only melee range at its best and really if they're in melee range of your Livor Mortis, then 99.9% of the time, they'll already be attacking it anyways after they one-shot your limp-noodle, low levels zombies. The taunt sucks and could really do with being bigger, or at least having a 2nd/3rd row modifier that makes it bigger so it sucks a bit less.

5.) Parasite is great but the mechanics of it suck with how the game currently works. Every time you have to Return to the Main Menu, disconnect, crash, or even do in-game stuff like move to a new act, your Parasite'd minion always disappears. And I'd be willing to bet people like having certain parasites for their abilities or attack patterns. While this wouldn't be so bad if you could go back through acts and just snatch your favorite one back up again, you can't, and best I can tell, you can't choose specific map layouts with particular mob types in the end game either. So the recommendation here is either make them persist through logout, or add in a lot more side areas with a lot more enemy variety to fill in for what may be missing from whichever act you're in. And/or if you could choose what end-game zone you go into to grab whichever of your choice, like the old method of getting Spectres in Path of Exile, that would also work.

6.) Next up, summons need more damage. Given summons don't scale off any of the player's stats, they really could use more damage. Now I understand there's an argument in this where if you buff the base summons too much that they'll be too strong as filler in other builds that really shouldn't have them, and fair enough. In that case, allocate summon damage to gear or add more summon-related passives. Have it so certain pieces of gear can roll summon damage modifiers but in exchange, always sacrifice other important modifiers like spell damage, ailment chance/damage, etc. when those summon modifiers are on them. Or if going the passive route, have it reduce non-summon damage like some ailment nodes have, reducing non-ailment damage. So by going with the summon damage staff/passives, you forgo a number of other build-defining weapons/passives. And heck, you can make some really awesome summon-specific uniques too, which would add a bit of flair to the whole ordeal of being a master of the undead.

7.) Summons need to be a little tankier. While I know they can sort of hold their own after the Sacrifice of Flesh nodes and a couple dozen skill levels to amp their hit points, there is the issue that most bosses have this thing called AoE or Area of Effect, and with the inability to macro all your summons out of the way, or micro specific summons out of the way, not even melee zombies since their charge is terrible, it would help if summons had some degree of innate AoE/ground effect resistance to help deal with all the area damage that bosses put out. Maybe a shield for AoE and ground effects specifically that break after a while and only refresh when they're resummoned, similarly to the shields some monsters already have against specific damage types, or just a passive % less AoE/ground effect damage taken. Or of course, just more control over where they stand. Granted that last one wouldn't help much with the act 1 boss with how much he jumps about and how fast he does it, but it could still help against the rest.

8.) Expanding on the last one a tiny bit, the ability to control your summons better, because as it stands, they are dumb as bricks. And good lord when you're up against an enemy that summons its own minions? God damned nightmare that not even the Rotten Roots-Oxidized Edge modifier combo seems to help with any. And since the player is encouraged to right-click enemies already to generate Willpower/Rage, I say a good move would be to make your minions attack whatever you're attacking. This would also help in the cases where they just randomly stop fighting and stand still for who knows what reason, as you could kick them back into gear by attacking a target which would force them to begin attacking or trying to attack it too.

9.) Next issue up - minion skill modifiers. Increased Damage, Increased Health, Increased Movespeed, Increased this, that, and the other. How much increased? I have no idea! And I don't know what they're getting increased from either since that information doesn't show up on the skill for them like it does for literally every other ability.

10.) It would be nice if minions, like players, had pop ups showing how much damage they were dealing to certain mobs. They're effectively your damage source and knowing how much they do and what they're doing it to is really valuable information. And believe me, way more than you'd think.

11.) While I'm sure something like this is in the works for the player's own character, it would also be nice if minions had health bars showing above their heads, toggled with the 'show allies health' option, so I can see how screwed they are in certain situations and also see what if anything I'm doing is helping them. Say using Parasite on them to heal.

12.) And ending on a really out-there idea. I would like to suggest a 4th ring to the passive tree, which in the theme of expanding on minions, adds stuff specifically tied to the third wheel, seeing as passives in the 3rd wheel seem to be just two build enabling passive webs worked into one. For plaguebringer as an example, it could branch out on one side more into poison, and on the other, more into summons, and give us some really neat, specific-for-this-build options. Perhaps it would have a passive-point cost to unlock this new outermost wheel since you already have sooooo many excess passives later on, and for balance sake, it could lock out every other 4th-wheel tree once you start to spec into one, of course re-opening them if you refund out of it.