Spectres using feeding frenzy (which is mandatory for good ai) now deal over 30% less damage.

Sure am glad they finally added a way to scale minions like they promised, rather than just blanket nerfing spectres by over 30%, which overperformed on low levels of gears but did not even approach the strongest levels of power on high levels of gear. Seriously GGG, just add a way to scale minions so that they can be balanced with low levels of gear while still being good with more investment and actually worth investing into.

For clarification, using data from poe.db, risen vaal advocates (basically lightning solar guards with no beam cannon) with feeding frenzy support now deal 1480 base damage at the level of 78, while they before did 2164 base damage at the level of 82. (due to changes to the gem, spectres are now level 76 at gem level 20 rather than level 80, and feeding frenzy no longer gives 14% more damage at level 20)

Given that there is still no way to scale minion damage with the same magnitude as what any other builds (attack, spell) have in terms of %increased damage and critical stats, minions need to be given changes that are not just blanket nerfs.

In the past few leagues, minions have massively overperformed with little gear, due to the fact that minions are at base extremely strong, but have incredibly little in the way of gearing choices to increase damage, which is why summoners gear so heavily towards defense and utility. It's not because minions have too much damage and players don't want to gear for more, it's that they literally don't have enough options to scale their minions like other builds do. Please give minions that option to scale like other builds, otherwise they can never be balanced at all levels.

They should just remove those gems that change minion behavior and make something like Grim Dawn did, simple yet effective way to control your minion stance and movement...

I guess animated weapon is the way to go this league for summoners...

What is even worse for spectres is that they were dying in the fights with Sirius, Elder Slayers and Metamorphs, now not only you will lose damage but the spectres will die more often... and since re-summoning spectres is impossible mid fight they are not even worth considering anymore...

"

Johnny210 wrote:

They should just remove those gems that change minion behavior and make something like Grim Dawn did, simple yet effective way to control your minion stance and movement...

I guess animated weapon is the way to go this league for summoners...

What is even worse for spectres is that they were dying in the fights with Sirius, Elder Slayers and Metamorphs, now not only you will lost damage but the spectres will die more often... and since re-summoning spectres is impossible mid fight they are not even worth considering anymore...

Ya, its almost like they forgot it was only skeletons that were the ones that beat sirius early on, and that spectres and zombies almost always were dead before being able to do anything in the fights. Seems to be another forced meta, where now they want you playing temporary minions like AW, or herald minions stacking the new cluster notables. But who knows, maybe one of the new monsters was just broken as a spectre, and in typical GGG fashion they nerfed all spectres so that the few powerful ones were the only balanced ones, rather than doing any sort of individualized balancing.

"

cpurdy777 wrote:

But who knows, maybe one of the new monsters was just broken as a spectre, and in typical GGG fashion they nerfed all spectres so that the few powerful ones were the only balanced ones, rather than doing any sort of individualized balancing.

This is what I suspect. Which is just the WORST way to go about doing balance changes.

Nerfs to the Baron and skeletons were necessary, but the rest was the kind of overkill we've come to expect from GGG. I'll be leaving summoners alone for a while now.

At least Dominating Blow and golems are still good.

"

cpurdy777 wrote:

But who knows, maybe one of the new monsters was just broken as a spectre, and in typical GGG fashion they nerfed all spectres so that the few powerful ones were the only balanced ones, rather than doing any sort of individualized balancing.

Individual balance takes effort, meta shifts and buffing boss hp and damage (because streamers killed them too quickly) does not.

Yeah the spectre nerf hit very hard, perhaps harder than skeletons.

4 levels is huge for damage AND survivability.

"

Johnny210 wrote:

What is even worse for spectres is that they were dying in the fights with Sirius, Elder Slayers and Metamorphs, now not only you will lose damage but the spectres will die more often... and since re-summoning spectres is impossible mid fight they are not even worth considering anymore...

cyclone + CwC + spirit offering prevented that for me...but spirit offering is useless now.

well...trying out spellslinger anyways

"

cyclone + CwC + spirit offering prevented that for me...but spirit offering is useless now.

GGG should just remove spirit offering too... no one is going to use it now that it's total garbage...

My guess is that they gave necros the option to use those new 350 spectres but didn't want to waste time to balance them out... So you just over nerf to avoid super strong spectre build and to make the other players feel good about minions getting nerfed...

Instead what will end up happening is that all necro players will go skeletons, zombies or animated weapon... since they are still good and reliable builds that you don't need to waste gem slots (for aggressive AI) and are easily re-summoned unlike spectres...

"

trixxar wrote:

Yeah the spectre nerf hit very hard, perhaps harder than skeletons.

4 levels is huge for damage AND survivability.

That's ggg in a nutshell. They don't have the slightest clue. Nerfing spectres while skeletons were op is exactly what I expected.