Soulwrest, a fun and unique build, completely ruined by phantasms being trash

Title.

Im playing a VD build with soulwrest, of course emphasis on minion damage. For passives and gear, you can check my character "CorpseTrayusher" here. Suffice to say I have truckloads of minion damage, and a 7-link for phantasms. But they just suck. Its a complete disgrace, they cant clear reliably, boss damage is absolutely terrible, and I cant really scale them any further without huge investment into GG jewels.

You might say "well dont use them as primary damage dealers, use spectres". Well, why would I use them ever then? They are so not worth sacrificing both weapon slots and a 6 link for a secondary damage source that sucks.

Suggestions: Improve Phantasm damage by A LOT. And give them higher aggro radius/faster projectiles. If that would make the support gem Summon Phantasm on kill support too good (which i HIGHLY doubt, I never see anyone use that, ever outside of maybe early leveling), just make the phantasms summoned by the staff different from the support gem ones.

So please GGG, dont ignore this unique. I am here solely because I love it's design, as it is truly unique. The playstyle is very fun and I would hate the idea of it being there and me not being able to use it in anything but white maps.

Your passive tree shouldn't be the problem but rather the support gems you've put into the staff. Controlled destruction shouldn't support the phantasm damage, also gmp reduces their damage and faster proj is only a increased multiplier which barely gives any damage. Try using actual damage supports like vicious projectiles, minion speed, minion and totem ele res, added chaos, added cold, etc. (no an expert on phantasms).

Well, they use a physical damage spell according to their tooltip. GMP and faster proj are an absolute staple for clear speed, GMP self explanatory and faster proj because they have a really low projectile duration. Without FP, its about half a screen. Added fire is only there because its a pain to color the staff for 2G 4B.

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13s_D4rK wrote:

Suggestions: Improve Phantasm damage by A LOT. And give them higher aggro radius/faster projectiles. If that would make the support gem Summon Phantasm on kill support too good (which i HIGHLY doubt, I never see anyone use that, ever outside of maybe early leveling), just make the phantasms summoned by the staff different from the support gem ones.

Im not sure how this special breed of phantasms works.
According to Chris, this is how the regular support gem works:

"

“In addition to being a minion, it also inherits all of the properties of the supported skill,” Wilson says. “For example, if you’re using multiple projectiles on the skill, it means the phantasms have multiple projectiles.”

So if you are linking phantasms to a projectile based active skill, then phantasms will inherit the active skills gem tags and properties.
Good to know, but this is not how the staff works:

"

Trigger Level 20 Summon Phantasm Skill when you Consume a Corpse

So what tags and properties are the phantasms inheriting or do they have their own? If you dont know that (no idea where to check tbh), you cant know which supports will work or not because of the tags.
What Im trying to say is, you actually might not use a 7l phantasm setup but a 3l or 4l or whatever and this might well be the reason why the dmg output is underwhelming.


Did you try using Spell Echo over Controlled Destruction? Or Minion Speed might be nice too. Its not that much dmg, but a lot QoL.
A curse setup might help too - like Projectile Weakness

tags don't help at all because the Summon Phantasm skill isn't a gem. Tags are only relevant in determining gem-related modifiers (example - "+1 to level of Socketed Fire Gems"). for everything else, you have to look at game mechanics (i.e., Phantasms are Minions who use Physical Projectile Spells)

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Orbaal wrote:

What Im trying to say is, you actually might not use a 7l phantasm setup but a 3l or 4l or whatever and this might well be the reason why the dmg output is underwhelming.

I checked in the character sheet, all of the gems that are currently socketed in my Soulwrest affect the phantasms. Spell echo has been reported in a few other places to not work with the phantasms summoned by soulwrest, and also has no support icon on the skill in the character sheet.

might try brutality since it is physical spell also slower proj and even if they pierce, pierce have a more multiplier.

SKill gem all over the place, Adde dlightning damage for what? use phy to light instead then and added fire damage without pen? your fire damage will deal peanuts.

Either go full phy or full elem but not in between.

Go either
PHY to light + elemental focus + minion damage +controled destruction+ slower proj+light pen /multiple proj and use the 30% conv phy to light boots or

Go all phy> slower proj, brutality, controled destruction, miniondamage, pierce,GMP

You can try Spell Echo, Faster Casting.

All of these suggestions regarding support gems are not going to fix what the issue is. Yes, my gems might not be optimal, but due to lack of ANY sort of stats on phantasms provided by GGG, I cant possibly try to find out whats best. Even if I gain a 50% overall dps increase by min-maxing support gems, phantasms wont be a viable choice compared to other minion choices, the obvious comparison being solar guard spectres. Which deal way more damage, have another layer of scaling (monster level) and deal pure fire damage, hence EE has full effect.

Considering im on a 7-link, with a skill capped at lvl 20, with all the minion damage i could possibly get on the tree, the damage they deal is pitiful and will just not work for the endgame. The support gem sees no use either. So i dont think its unreasonable, especially now with this unique, that GGG takes a second look at the stats and balances them to be good enough as a main damage source. Or make it lvl 25 phantasms to not "ruin" balance for the skill gem.

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Head_Less wrote:

and use the 30% conv phy to light boots or

Oh ok, and how do I get that to apply to my minions? You clearly have no idea how things work.

I cant go full phys either because then im gna lose hatred, which is almost equal to brutality damage-wise with generosity. Not to mention Anger aswell.

Flat damage gems since I get alot of generic damage through minion damage, and lack of good more damage supports.