The Downfall of Zombies and Spectres in late game

The problem with minions isn't really the size of their life pool. That's why the 13% life buff to zombies was rather pointless. Minions need better mitigation, especially against AoE damage. A while ago they lowered zombie HP and gave them armor to compensate this. That was a step in the right direction, except that they only gave them like 700 armor... I don't know what that was suppose to do. That's like 10% reduction against a 500 damage attack, which isn't even that large.

Anyway, please give zombies, spectres, and skeletons some innate AoE damage reduction. Spells are tagged as AoE already, so this shouldn't be hard to code in. I honestly feel like 30%-50% wouldn't be too out of line.

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Cooley wrote:

The problem with minions isn't really the size of their life pool. That's why the 13% life buff to zombies was rather pointless. Minions need better mitigation, especially against AoE damage. A while ago they lowered zombie HP and gave them armor to compensate this. That was a step in the right direction, except that they only gave them like 700 armor... I don't know what that was suppose to do. That's like 10% reduction against a 500 damage attack, which isn't even that large.

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lol , the armor thing was supposed to be a nerf so that you couldnt have 20k life zombies regenerating 2k life per second/ abuse minion instability (which not many peeps use anymore shocker)

Its just so painful and a total waste of space to even think about spectre's in late game. I was forced from being a summoner to a caster just to meet endgame content requirements...

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Saltychipmunk wrote:

lol , the armor thing was supposed to be a nerf so that you couldnt have 20k life zombies regenerating 2k life per second/ abuse minion instability (which not many peeps use anymore shocker)

Ah, didn't realize that was there reasoning. Speaking of minion instability, that keystone needs to be redesigned. It's counter-productive. In order for your minions to do enough damage to hurt anything they have to get so much health that it takes forever for them to explode.

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Zinja wrote:

Its just so painful and a total waste of space to even think about spectre's in late game. I was forced from being a summoner to a caster just to meet endgame content requirements...

I feel spectres are like garbage in Atziri. Easily die in one blast and unable to Convocation them in time once your character has reached safe zone from the flameblast range.

Once they are dead, you got to search for them again or choose not to bother resummoning them again due to portal limits. Failed.
Right now, screw spectres in late game maps.
Goodluck to every summoner based on Spectres or Zombie on not rolling damage implcits on ultimate end game maps.

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Cooley wrote:

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Saltychipmunk wrote:

lol , the armor thing was supposed to be a nerf so that you couldnt have 20k life zombies regenerating 2k life per second/ abuse minion instability (which not many peeps use anymore shocker)

Ah, didn't realize that was there reasoning. Speaking of minion instability, that keystone needs to be redesigned. It's counter-productive. In order for your minions to do enough damage to hurt anything they have to get so much health that it takes forever for them to explode.

I'd just like it to remove the requirement that it has to be alive and at 33% that way each summon has it's own niche role (1 hit kill = no effect atm)... but to be honest if they made a support gem (and give me a reflect support gem! one that supports summons and molten shell)of this AND made it proc even if the minion was killed in one hit I'd be happy beyond belief because then I can limit it to just the skeletons. Disposable cheap (in borderlands style) tediore like weapons to their fullest then and I won't have to have the effect on my much more important spectres. Or at least let us flavor the instability explosion because those exploding chaos dot zombies the blacksmith has made me jealous as hell....


edit - I'm still wanting and waiting for them to allow us to link 1 skill to a summon type... zombies with molten shell, artic armor, viper strike, tempest shield or whatever would make summoning quite fun. All that would have to happen is to make summon zombie itself a support of the skill that you wish the zombie to be able to use and then we have versatile zombies that can do whatever the summoner needs it to, a walking skill totem.

I haven't played very high 70+ end maps but...

A. Purity of Fire and Purity of Lightening w/ +50% Effect increase = 81% Resist for caster and minions.
Add Bone Offering for spell and regular block
Keep minion life low only grabbing the ones you need to get to the damage ones and use rejuvenating totem to top off life especially during a bone offering.
Give Zombies Stun+EndurOnStun+MinionDamage for endurance chargers to supplement the armor and top off resists. Determination may be a good addition if you can find someone to run it for you.

Grab spell casters for spectres so that they are not up front taking all the same AOE as the zombies. Use spell echo, chaos damage, minion damage, life leech.

Not squishy even though they have very little life. Little life equals easier to heal with totems.

If you don't want to use bone offering, grab agies and give them block with Rathpith and use flesh offering for higher damage.

I never use curses but maybe i should...

That is all fair and good. But really physical damage is rarely an issue and honestly determination does nothing for minions, spectres don't have any armor and zombies just a tiny bit (I think around 1k at lvl20).

Bone-Offering is good, but to be fair I used Spectres with Saffels and Necromantic Aegis and Purity of Fire. They die. Fairly often even. For regular combat you don't need that, Spectres exspecially ribbons are actually quite good at avoiding the frontline. Unless there is a boss that just bypasses this by either being in a incredible small room or just using projectiles that are able to penetrate your frontline.

Exspecially Evangelist or any kind of Alchemists murder my Zombies. Tentacle Miscreations with Multiple Projectiles also can put some hurt on them. Interestingly they don't care about Cole or Brutus, however they get toasted quickly by Voidbearers or those snakes.

And Atziri... well Zombies likely survive a non-crit Flameblast from her. Spectres however don't. I don't actually think that Zombies are the real weak-spot. They could get some buff or some easier specialisation because sacrificing the shield for Necromantic Aegis is a huge tradeoff... it doesn't really help if your zombies survive but you die.

The Spectre/Zombie-Combination works fairly good for all of the normal content and propably... I would guess up to 76 maps with a few exceptions. At this point you stumble across two issues:

1. Massiv AoE (Crematorium...)
2. Your Spectres are likely still lvl68 if Evangelists or 66 if Flame-Sentinals

As a summoner once you reached the upper sceptre the game outscales you. Your Minions won't get any stronger after this point. Well maybe a lvl21 Gem, which would require lvl70, but lvl68 basically ends summoner-scaling. After this the summoner might get a bit more defense and such but his minions likely stay the same (well that is if he got a cheap tabula to already have 6l spectres... which isn't even that great). He might switch tabula for a better 6l chest, but this won't help his summons in any way.

Why not create specters from those higher level areas to use in those areas?