[3.11]QUEEN OF NECROMANCY - STRONGEST ZOMBIES EVER? 55M+ DPS 7K+ LIFE MAX BLOCK 90% CHAOS RES

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caladblog wrote:

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Msciwoj wrote:

Anything else you've noticed?

You forget the "socketed gems are supported by this and that" are out of the mod pool so that's a big chunk of damage out of the equation.

I don't think the one we needed is. They mention mods that roll together with %inc physical damage. These are Fortify, Onslaught and Endurance Charge on Melee Stun on Elder 2 handed Axes for example. Our mod is just "supported by Maim", without %inc physical damage so I don't think this change is relevant for this build.

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LegendaryMewtwo wrote:

Are Skeletons a viable alternative? Post-Zombie nerf

I'm not sure on the numbers but I use skeletons on a second 6L in my chest and they still can do T16s on their own in a non-maim chest but they're slow. Maybe half the damage of zombies? And they're losing probably 15% more damage themselves with the Feeding Frenzy nerf.

Summons are definitely still viable and definitely still very strong early league. Without the ability to instantly melt endgame it seems pretty bleh as an endgame goal. I guess that's GGG's goal with their forced metas. Make all the old stuff that was good into crap and dredge up something new to sell new MTX for.

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DiabloImmoral wrote:

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LegendaryMewtwo wrote:

Are Skeletons a viable alternative? Post-Zombie nerf

I'm not sure on the numbers but I use skeletons on a second 6L in my chest and they still can do T16s on their own in a non-maim chest but they're slow. Maybe half the damage of zombies? And they're losing probably 15% more damage themselves with the Feeding Frenzy nerf.

Summons are definitely still viable and definitely still very strong early league. Without the ability to instantly melt endgame it seems pretty bleh as an endgame goal. I guess that's GGG's goal with their forced metas. Make all the old stuff that was good into crap and dredge up something new to sell new MTX for.

Yeah, definitely have to rethink my league starter build now. I generally like to stick it out with 1 new build per league.

I wasn't too fortunate during Legion chasing the meta (Cyclone), so the possible upside is less demand for summoner gear next league.

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DiabloImmoral wrote:

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LegendaryMewtwo wrote:

Are Skeletons a viable alternative? Post-Zombie nerf

I'm not sure on the numbers but I use skeletons on a second 6L in my chest and they still can do T16s on their own in a non-maim chest but they're slow. Maybe half the damage of zombies? And they're losing probably 15% more damage themselves with the Feeding Frenzy nerf.

Summons are definitely still viable and definitely still very strong early league. Without the ability to instantly melt endgame it seems pretty bleh as an endgame goal. I guess that's GGG's goal with their forced metas. Make all the old stuff that was good into crap and dredge up something new to sell new MTX for.

I'm not sure that we won't melt - You have to consider the nerfs:

loss of maim on 2h
increased phys res/ele res/chaos res
lower overall zombie dmg from the gem
lower feeding frenzy (swap to minion dmg for bosses anyway and this is a non-issue)
Loss of 4 total crafted mods - 3 cap now, this hurts some, but we need to see what mods we want on new influence weapon types.
Slam nerfs - aren't huge, hurt a bit.
Zombie hp - We might need to invest a tiny bit more into zombie survivability, but shouldn't see a huge problem.

However the buffs so far:
new multristrike support, possibly other supports we might use
We'll add skeletons back to the build to make up lost dmg

new influence types - ??? This is the big unknown, and could give us a lot more damage back.

I would not consider us not able to instantly melt endgame - I have 19 zombies from blight league, using just 1 and I still kill shaper faster than other builds, if I use 8-9 its still instant phases, and that's 50 less dmg.

We're far from dead. And we have a lot of unknowns still! Who knows what the new influence types/uniques can do for us.

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lower area on their Slam, no life multiplier per gem level and a longer Slam cooldown.

The reduced AOE and slam cooldown I assume would impact clear speed.

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Msciwoj wrote:

The 3.9 Balance Manifesto has been published.

Thanks for giving me a very easy outline to go off of!

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Minion Movement Speed increases on the passive tree and Necromancer have been lowered.

I agree this is subject to how much MS was nerfed. I’m a bit annoyed by this because MS was never a zombie strength, but overall for minions it makes sense. Right now we get 30% minion MS from Ascendancies and 38% on the tree. These changes may actually make it so we want to anoint Ravenous Horde if the MS is cut from minor passives.

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Both the damage and the buff from the Feeding Frenzy support have had their values lowered, as the support was providing too much damage; Even if a player didn't want Aggressive minions, the support was too powerful not to use.

Im not too concerned here. I knew it was coming. I just hope they don’t further cut out minion MS with this (buff gives 10%). I think it’s likely the buff will be nerfed to give 10% attack/cast/movement speed

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Raise Zombies had too much damage and life for a small investment. They've been lowered in power slightly in several ways: lower base damage, lower area on their Slam, no life multiplier per gem level and a longer Slam cooldown.

Slam nerd hurts, but it shouldn’t be detrimental. I’m not too concerned with the life loss. It will hurt Delve progression, but if running the Cyclone setup, they get so much ES recovery as is.

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We felt Raise Spectre was too easy to get a third Spectre at gem level 21, especially with Necromancer’s Unnatural Strength passive. The third Spectre is now granted at gem level 25, giving a more challenging threshold for characters to strive for.

This is a hard hit to Spectre builds who reached 5 Spectres but not so much to us. Yeah, as Msciwoj said, we’ll need a L21 gem, but that won’t be too hard to come by. Remember, we’re off-meta, so everything will be cheaper in general.

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The "Can have multiple crafted modifiers" mod has been changed, now granting "Can have up to 3 Crafted Modifiers". Multi-mod crafting an item was proving too powerful for too low a cost compared with rolling an item of relative power. We'll be keeping an eye on the modifier to see if further changes are required.

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Some modifiers no longer appear on Shaper or Elder items, like the "increased Physical Damage and Socketed Gems are Supported By" modifiers on Two Handed Weapons.

This hurts, but it is a nerf across the board. Most builds craft weapons, and they are pushing away from that. It probably will still count it, so the craft will cost 2 ex in order to obtain a second craft. Likely the new mods will be preferable to something we could craft anyways. We’ll probably aim at strength and +1 mods since we can’t get Maim by rolling. Heck, we might be able to get 8+ links with this.

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We've lowered the base Shock Effect and Chill Effect of some mechanics that have a guaranteed value. Shocked Ground now has a minimum of 15%, which will affect similar mechanics like Skitterbots, Necromancer’s Corpse Pact and Storm’s Gift.

This is a pretty significant nerf if using Skitterbots. The shock will do ~7% reduced increased damage taken. The chill will likely be nerfed at an unspecified amount.

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Monster Armour has been largely irrelevant beyond a very low level for a long time, reducing reasonable physical damage hits by almost nothing. To mirror the resistance changes on monsters, we're updating monster Armour growth to be something that noticeably impacts physical damage characters when fighting highly armoured monsters.

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Impale is significantly affected by the higher armour values because of how its damage is dealt in many small hits. Impale isn't directly affected by your modifiers, so it doesn't benefit from the stat mentioned above. Instead, some Impale passives and the Impale Support will cause impales applied to give monsters -x% to Total Physical Damage Reduction against Impale. This effect doesn't stack for each impale applied. These bonuses will usually have higher values than the generic hit reduction found on the tree.

This isn’t too surprising since monster resistances are being buffed. We’ll have to wait and see how much this affects us. I haven’t the faintest clue how it will affect impale, but it sounds as if they are trying to nullify adverse effects high armour has on it. I want even aware impale hit...thought it was supposed to be reflected physical damage and ignored all mitigation.

Its 6 am here, and i don't wanna say too much before the patch notes themselves hit, but we should be good.

We lose movement speed, which is fine, as we should be able to acquire permaslamming zombies with pulverize and multistrike plus (depending on the CD nerf). So we will always resummon the zombies that started slamming to us via either convocation or the general resummon mechanic for permanent minions.

We lose the "socketed gems are supported by x maim" which in my opinion is the biggest nerf we see as of now, as the maim is ~30% dps loss. However we may see new mods on the new bases, which may even end up benefitting us greatly.

We lose about 50k life on our zombies, this should only be a problem in very deep delve, as 8k ES every 0,7 second aswell as the minion regen and leech should be more than enough, and if it isn't we should EASILY be able to negate it.

Feeding frenzy will take a nerf, which is fine, in theory we can swap feeding frenzy for meat shield in boss fights or minion damage, depending on how much tankiness we need on the minions. (minion damage would/ melee physical instead of feeding frenzy would almost give us back the 30% from maim loss, due to feeding frenzy acutally not being that good dpswise).

The over all AoE, CD, Base damage nerf aswell as feeding frenzy nerf i won't say much on, as i want to see the actual values before saying much about it.

All i can say is the current dps went from ~35m shaper dps at the top to 32m DPS assuming we use minion damage instead of feeding frenzy aswell as multistrike plus. So calm yourselves ^^

Skitterbot nerfs will hit us abit, however minor nerfs.

But if we drop feeding frenzy, the minions will no longer be aggressive. Isn't that a big loss?

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crapp7y wrote:

But if we drop feeding frenzy, the minions will no longer be aggressive. Isn't that a big loss?

You just simply don't need it for bosses.

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I’ve decided to try for an Awakener kill in SSFHC. I have zero chance at the race and won’t even attempt it. If I die (likely will in Acts), I’m dropping out. It’s very unlikely I will succeed, but I do want the challenge. I just hope the delay doesn’t cause me to miss out on hitting 36 achievements.

Good luck dude! Slay them all