Has anybody figured out how/why the bone husks bone spikes fire?

Working on pet project of mine for a thematic necromancer since burning spectres and solar guards are kings but they don't exactly fit. The thing that stuck out to me with 3.0 was Bone husks. Decent damage, spectres are tanky as all hell, and they actually look necromancery.

Their initial shot is fine enough, especially for single target it feels, but it can sometimes take forever for their bone shot to explode into the bone nova. With quick testing the bone novas seem to not care about gem links at all, seemingly that it is triggered by enemy presence as far as I can tell. But still plenty of times that the bone spires from the mortar sit there and just take up moving room.

I am looking for any suggestions to try. I actually feel that especially with the united in dream envy and poison combo I have been playing with, if we can get the mortars to trigger much faster, some combo of phys, poison, chaos with husks plus zombies and maybe skeletons in some fashion could beat burning spectres and solar guards for viability. Of course the united in dream probably needs to be skipped since it would put the build miles above burning spectres for build cost. Bleed might be another alternative going pure phys and bleed but I don't know.

Problem is that I am kind of assuming this delay was made on purpose so that husks would not be op as hell both as mobs and as spectres. Maybe updates could make them more viable but until then it is still just a slow pet project.

Edit: Just realized that Summon Phantasm on kill might be what Husks need to fill in the down time, aside from the path blocking. Will have to see. Wasn't planning on doing a Summoner all the way through Bestiary but will definitely probably be my league starter now since its so cheap and easy.

No idea on the bone husk question; I'd consider perhaps Kitava Heralds myself, if you wanted something a bit more predictable and performant?

When I played around with spectres earlier this league, I had some fun/weird spectre ideas...
The act 5/10 statues with their triple EQ
Reliquarians (though the delay on their abilities is a bit long unfortunately)
Those act 5/10 kitava crossbow guys (again, the delay is a slight problem against faster enemies)
The zombie summoning guys from lunaris are also fun. You get an army that creates an army. It's hilarious.
Wrong type of spectre build, but rime/infernal sentinels. Decent aoe and damage.
Last, but not least, Chrome infused chimerals. I was surprised by the damage those guys can deal. Though I think it's part phys, part cold.

Edit: As for the main topic, no idea what determines it. I tried to find that out myself, mostly to avoid those novas as a player. They HURT.

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FCK42 wrote:

When I played around with spectres earlier this league, I had some fun/weird spectre ideas...
The act 5/10 statues with their triple EQ
Reliquarians (though the delay on their abilities is a bit long unfortunately)
Those act 5/10 kitava crossbow guys (again, the delay is a slight problem against faster enemies)
The zombie summoning guys from lunaris are also fun. You get an army that creates an army. It's hilarious.
Wrong type of spectre build, but rime/infernal sentinels. Decent aoe and damage.
Last, but not least, Chrome infused chimerals. I was surprised by the damage those guys can deal. Though I think it's part phys, part cold.

Edit: As for the main topic, no idea what determines it. I tried to find that out myself, mostly to avoid those novas as a player. They HURT.

Someone posted a 266 SRS build or something, using the spectral tacticians that summon them as specters. ;)

I found the reliquarians pretty decent, but not as good as heralds.

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FCK42 wrote:

When I played around with spectres earlier this league, I had some fun/weird spectre ideas...
The act 5/10 statues with their triple EQ
Reliquarians (though the delay on their abilities is a bit long unfortunately)
Those act 5/10 kitava crossbow guys (again, the delay is a slight problem against faster enemies)
The zombie summoning guys from lunaris are also fun. You get an army that creates an army. It's hilarious.
Wrong type of spectre build, but rime/infernal sentinels. Decent aoe and damage.
Last, but not least, Chrome infused chimerals. I was surprised by the damage those guys can deal. Though I think it's part phys, part cold.

Edit: As for the main topic, no idea what determines it. I tried to find that out myself, mostly to avoid those novas as a player. They HURT.

Your edit is why I want to figure this out. With 4 of them and a United in dream I was just doing a plaza map and the boss just melted whenever the the Nova actually went off. Again. The delay be purely tokeepthem from being op spectres.