Why is summon skeleton health still so god awful?

Raging spirits have almost double the HP of skeletons, and they are not drawing any aggro from enemies, meaning they survive even longer. How come a little skull is more of a tank than a full skeleton?

Skeletons need more health to ever be useful late game, they just get wiped out by everything, even if not targeted.

Minion instability, i would guess.

There was a build ages ago that played into summon skeles coupled with instability.

Well then its about time it gets changed. The amount of power creep currently in the game is way beyond what a minion instability build focused on skeletons would ever dream of.

Overall i think GGG has to bring gems up to speed with the current top tier skills, cold snap, ice spear, there are just plain better skills that do the job way better.

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13s_D4rK wrote:

Overall i think GGG has to bring gems up to speed with the current top tier skills, cold snap, ice spear, there are just plain better skills that do the job way better.

Something is always going to be better...just the way the world works, if the equalize everything properly then the game pretty much dies because the choices you make don't matter at all.

Also ice spear is still workable https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z_IXPKEMb38

I saw that. Also, anything a berserker uses is "workable".

How does it influence the choices we are able to make in the way you describe? Doesnt having skills that are just better at what you want to do narrow down what choices you take? Im not talking about making all skills do the same, im talking about making skills that have been neglected for a long while decent at the ever evolving shitstorm that is mapping (not even talking about sextants, but mostly about all the league mechanics that litter the maps and you lose alot when you skip them).

I am somebody that tries to make things that nobody cares about useable, thats the challenge for me and where most of my enjoyment in the game comes from. I always wanted to make a cold snap character, but im always turned away by how god awful the skill is, protecting myself from huge disappointment and burnout.

Same with skeletons. I planned the build out in PoB, looked all very nice, damage was good, shaped up to be a nice build. Then i saw the max life of skeletons, and i almost threw up. 3.3k life per skeleton. Compared it to SRS, 6.1k life. Level 20 skill gems. And SRS was still dealing more damage with the exact same setup(factoring in the minion limit, 20 SRS vs 9 skeletons). Not to mention SRS having better speed and are able to fly over cliffs.

I can stomach using off-meta skills that are still good in any way, but skeletons are just not bearable. Even Woolfio, king of hipster builds, couldnt take the blunder that is summon skeletons.

Okie I don't see what you are trying to build here...

Normally one scales and build a SRS setup alot different then a skeleton setup.
They just happen to be minionskills both of them... thats about it.

Also very different playstyles, well at least for me.

So compairing the base hp on the pure gem is not realy a good idea.


If your going with a minion instability setup, you can't have too much hp since you want your skelies to get killed, well or almost at least, even though it's the easiest way to scale the damage.


Quite a while since I tried a ignite minion instability setup, perhaps it's time for that again. (probably don't work great though..)

Funny things is that they buffed Skeletons in the past, because their DPS got worse and worse considering the new content came out. But for some odd reason they forgot to also tune their HP.

I have a Summon Skeleton build that can faceroll red Elder, facetank Chimera while Skeletons mow him down. Each of them have ~100k DPS (130k with Hatred version, altho no pen so it is a little lower).
But I can't do Shaper for shit because they simply melt on these dumb vortexes. No matter if I put minion life or not, they still melt. And yes, I've invested in defenses - I'm using Necro Aegis with Bone Offering, meaning Skelies have 64% block chance and 34% spell block. But what does it matter when they have 4k hp and all that shit is damage over time?

What can I do? go for Mages and ignore the vortexes. Oh and yeah, then you can use Spell Echo which allows you to use one of the Unique jewels for skeletons, because they repeat additional time, meaning you summon 6 at once, instead of 1.

Terrible bullcrap, if you ask me. As a dedicated melee Skele player, I find this highly annoying, to say the least.
Honestly, I wouldn't even call for increasing their base HP if you're not investing anything, but to give them far more options to actually invest in it. All you can do now is pick some life nodes and stick in Minion Life... and thats it.

/rant

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Perq wrote:

Funny things is that they buffed Skeletons in the past, because their DPS got worse and worse considering the new content came out. But for some odd reason they forgot to also tune their HP.

I have a Summon Skeleton build that can faceroll red Elder, facetank Chimera while Skeletons mow him down. Each of them have ~100k DPS (130k with Hatred version, altho no pen so it is a little lower).
But I can't do Shaper for shit because they simply melt on these dumb vortexes. No matter if I put minion life or not, they still melt. And yes, I've invested in defenses - I'm using Necro Aegis with Bone Offering, meaning Skelies have 64% block chance and 34% spell block. But what does it matter when they have 4k hp and all that shit is damage over time?

What can I do? go for Mages and ignore the vortexes. Oh and yeah, then you can use Spell Echo which allows you to use one of the Unique jewels for skeletons, because they repeat additional time, meaning you summon 6 at once, instead of 1.

Terrible bullcrap, if you ask me. As a dedicated melee Skele player, I find this highly annoying, to say the least.

/rant

Good feedback :)


I read the above as "HP is fine except when there are ground effects like shaper vortexes, then due to the sawdust as brain they have they just stand there and melt instead of move out of it"

Off course not everything can be avoided with better AI, they are a ground based unit after all, aka they need to be able to waddle through ground effects (and survive) to get to the target.


Damage over time reduction nodes for minions? Thats perhaps the solution for shaper and such..

Well, I take it that they have very high damage (not quite rivaling the ridiculous things you can do with Specters and/or mines, but whatever, for me that is the level that is balanced without making everything absolutely trivial) but are somewhat slow and dumb. They don't clear the fastest, but they are pretty good taking out static/slow enemies.
And that is ok. I don't expect them to be the best build to clear Breaches or whatnot. But they HAVE to be good at something.
And if they are supposed to be good at killing bosses, being as bad at killing Shaper as they are, I think something went VERY wrong.

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Dharall wrote:

Okie I don't see what you are trying to build here...

Normally one scales and build a SRS setup alot different then a skeleton setup.
They just happen to be minionskills both of them... thats about it.

Also very different playstyles, well at least for me.

So compairing the base hp on the pure gem is not realy a good idea.


If your going with a minion instability setup, you can't have too much hp since you want your skelies to get killed, well or almost at least, even though it's the easiest way to scale the damage.


Quite a while since I tried a ignite minion instability setup, perhaps it's time for that again. (probably don't work great though..)

This is my PoB https://pastebin.com/s6DW5qpJ Victarios influence that uses anger hatred and haste to make use of the 50% more added damage. I just compared to SRS to see if skeletons were doing good, turns out they arent. Summoning them is different, but same cast speed. Unless you invest into 1-2 jewels to get more skeletons summoned at once, you get the same amount in the same timespan. Their horrible AI paired with slow movement speed almost forces you to use a queens escape if you want to use skellies to clear somewhat reliably, or invest into costly jewellry with minion MS.