The Downfall of Zombies and Spectres in late game

"

Starxsword wrote:

This shouldn't be common at all. At level 65, I think your Spectres are around level 16 to 18. Assuming you are using the level 68 Undying Evangelist, they should not be dying.

Well, it's getting uncommon as they lvl, very true.

But how about this:
Did a zana mission on palace map, lvl 72.
Went to dominus and killed it.
BUT
He killed 2 out of 3 spectres in his first form, the last spectre lost in his second form.
That's palace lvl 72, let alone 78 ffs


Minion life was linked to them.


I do not give a **** I lost them.
I do give a **** I was not able to re raise em. Even tho it was palace map they just woudn't appear in desecrate.

It needs imprint and be on par with desecrate lvl not zone level.
Or some other reworking. The only reason I keep playing that build is because I want the gems to hit lvl 20 so I can sell em.

End of minion build and try again in several patches IF they get reworked

"

DigitalBeating wrote:

The easiest solution for this would be to just let us imprint a spectre of our choice onto the skill and have it scale with the current zone level. When the spectre dies it just needs any corpse and then we can summon again without any problem in maps.

In the current game if your spectres took a Dominus smash or a flameblast to the face in maps there goes all your DPS. Sure I could continue to summon zombies over and over again but they do no damage. I have tried clearing maps before using only zombies, they take forever to kill anything.

If only what you said can be done in POE, summoner would have had a whole new level of playability.
An imprint of any specific Spectres shouuld be viable as an option to fix the critical issues faced by them currently.

----------

On the other hand, about what you said about Zombies, it is not entirely correct.
Zombies DPS is huge, and in most cases, they can outdps certain popular builds.
For example, a simple basic gemming with;
Melee Physical DMG, Faster Attack, Multistrike where all of them are lvl20/20q linked to lvl20 Zombie in +2 Helm able to reach 130000 DPS easily. The value alone is from the summarized DMG of 9 Zombies.

The fallback of which made us think they deal low DPS


Meanwhile, Spectres have a huge flaw and advisable not to use it in ultra late game.
To save slots and investment, its better to just drop Spectres entirely and focus on spamming Zombies. Those spared sockets from dropping Spectres, get be use to get gems like Vaal Haste linked with Generousity etc or perhaps going for the less desirable path which is Totem + Summon Skeletons as DMG buffer.

Regarding the Storm Herald DMG from nemesis monster, Sidtherat made some his point right.
By simply having a lvl20 Purity of Elements, minions tend to get tankier against such DMG. Most of the time, by having capped resistance, Minions able to survive DMG from the Nemesis enemy long enough to kill it before it kills them.
Though, it is safe not to conclude such DMG mitigation is safe from heavy dealing DMG storm herald of Piety, Lightning spells from Dominus, Magaera's Firestorms and etc because it is those kind of elemental DMG that nullify Zombies and Spectres build.

Most forms of AOE elemental DMG such as I have mentioned including Ice Arrows from Piety avatar can wipe even 11k hp Zombies with 75% Ice Resistance. Taking Necromantic Aegis is a debatable option, if your character is not uberly geared, not just Elemental but physical damage can one shot the player in ultra end maps.

Such flaws, such end game fate, I can hardly cheat myself to say this build is doing fine, let alone saying there are choices to be made.

"

Starxsword wrote:

Your suggestion for Raise Spectre is beyond OP. Allowing Nemesis mods on Spectres is too much. There are enough mods that make the game trivial, like Soul Eater, Proximity Shield, etc.

Maybe just let them have rare mods and not nemesis mods? Any suggestions from u?

"

sidtherat wrote:

Sp3ll block on necro aegis solves this problem completely

Really? Possibly yes, but what about build diversity, if summoner have to take this keystone? :)

Not only taking all minions passives stretch your defense too far, but you also have to give up your shield, and most of summoners uniques have the worst defensive stats from all uniques here.

No wonder that new FoTM are SRSes as they work without any minions passives. And all other summoners are "diversified" into being auras totem, the best on low life to put even more auras.

"

tmaciak wrote:

"

sidtherat wrote:

Sp3ll block on necro aegis solves this problem completely

Really? Possibly yes, but what about build diversity, if summoner have to take this keystone? :)

Not only taking all minions passives stretch your defense too far, but you also have to give up your shield, and most of summoners uniques have the worst defensive stats from all uniques here.

No wonder that new FoTM are SRSes as they work without any minions passives. And all other summoners are "diversified" into being auras totem, the best on low life to put even more auras.

question: is what we currently have what you would call build diversity,
as you have pointed out , minion build almost always devolve into two camps ,

minions , totem aura with no defense, or faster casting duration tanky srs.

not to mention ggg nerfed aura summoners by about 5 - 6 nodes of inefficiency by nerfing and moving aura nodes/ potion nodes / life nodes ( those life nodes on the scion highways (not the wheel) are awful.


we can also look at the issue another way in that some summoner items feel almost mandatory.
like the bones of uller , which have garbage stats (well to be fair decent stats for a low level item)

but that + 1 to zombie and specters translates to a 50% boost in specter damage and a 15% boost to zombie damage.

but the big thing is that there are no comparable stats for rares. the masters have some mods , but they are ultimately of little consequence

15% minion life here or +2 skeletons there really isnt all that attractive especially since skeletons have all but been replaced by SRS and that 50% elemental damage inefficiency makes them entirely incompatible with a huge amount of popular minion auras and gems.

"

Saltychipmunk wrote:

question: is what we currently have what you would call build diversity,
as you have pointed out , minion build almost always devolve into two camps ,

I don't like being aura totem and for me summoner have to have, you know summons, a lot of them :) so I work on some "hybrid" as I wrote few posts ago, using spectres, zombies and SRSes and only 3 auras and no curses: http://www.pathofexile.com/forum/view-thread/1003665

For sure I will not do Atizi but I hope I will be able do at least 77s not much hope for 78s.

odd build

I hope GGG includes "+x% minion damage", "+x% minion resistances" into crafting mods so that we can make minion tankier and deal more dps. The "+15% minion health" is way too low and it does not provide a good return for summoners.

Other than that, GGG did not consider summoner's survival as monsters are getting tougher and summoner simply need more armor to deal with it. We are too preoccupied into thinking how to buff our summons damage and survival, but... what about us? Are summoners born to die in the battlefield all day long (assuming this is softcore)?

Downsides of zombie/spectre summoner are:
a) Weak summoner
b) Weak zombies/spectres

"

ELLE_Birthday wrote:

I hope GGG includes "+x% minion damage", "+x% minion resistances" into crafting mods so that we can make minion tankier and deal more dps. The "+15% minion health" is way too low and it does not provide a good return for summoners.

Other than that, GGG did not consider summoner's survival as monsters are getting tougher and summoner simply need more armor to deal with it. We are too preoccupied into thinking how to buff our summons damage and survival, but... what about us? Are summoners born to die in the battlefield all day long (assuming this is softcore)?

Downsides of zombie/spectre summoner are:
a) Weak summoner
b) Weak zombies/spectres

you dont need any more 'minion resistances' - zombies gain resistance as they level, and have (afaik ) 35% fire/light and ~60% cold resists at lvl 20. you overlevel them ofc, so at 22 (minimum) they get probably 2-3% more

there are 2 or 3 resist nodes on the tree

add purity of elements (with aura effect nodes) and you are capped at 75%

add block from necro aegis (and you can freely swap between saffaels, perandus, rathpith and decent uber rare or lioneyes) and zombies are pretty hard to kill already. grace + discipline and minions in general tend to not die so easily. with spectres it is almost as easy

for a fight that is known to be hard for minions (these are single dimensional mainly - like Crematorium or Cells) just get the correct purity

and re-check new flasks with 'of Animation' mod - these if used pretty much remove any non one-shot deaths from your minions. it is INSANE healing

"

sidtherat wrote:

you dont need any more 'minion resistances' - zombies gain resistance as they level, and have (afaik ) 35% fire/light and ~60% cold resists at lvl 20. you overlevel them ofc, so at 22 (minimum) they get probably 2-3% more

there are 2 or 3 resist nodes on the tree

add purity of elements (with aura effect nodes) and you are capped at 75%

add block from necro aegis (and you can freely swap between saffaels, perandus, rathpith and decent uber rare or lioneyes) and zombies are pretty hard to kill already. grace + discipline and minions in general tend to not die so easily. with spectres it is almost as easy

for a fight that is known to be hard for minions (these are single dimensional mainly - like Crematorium or Cells) just get the correct purity

and re-check new flasks with 'of Animation' mod - these if used pretty much remove any non one-shot deaths from your minions. it is INSANE healing

Necromantic Aegis.
Do you even realize why everyone playing as late game summoner have the same thing to say about the fragility of of Zombies in the first place here? One of the reason is that summoner tend to get certain gearings for survival as well, if you dedicated so much into minions, the char survivability is non-existent or entirely depends on luck, dead or escaped from collateral dmg around.

Your theorycraft is impressive, seems almost valid. Though, you forgot what kind of gears to sustain the survivability of your char. With Necromantic Aegis, don't even expect a cheap build for the character.

Solaris Lorica? Non-200 exa build when you have taken Necromantic Aegis for Minions in ultra late game maps, I can't wait to see your theorycraft works indiferently than most of us here than have been through that path.

I think you need to stop theorycrafting and start being practical as Zombie and Spectres in ultra end game maps.
You keep avoiding to be practical, which seems a bit dissapointing.