Raise Spectre

Here is a suggestion that I would LOVE to see implemented.

With the latest removal of snapshotting, it has severely decreased the amount of 'set up' time a summoner has to go through when summoning zombies/spectres however the issue still exists of having to find the ideal spectre that you want within a certain area (Burning Miscreations for example).

This then means that I have to run around an area until I find 5 Miscreations (between 2-5 depending on your build) and only once that is done do I feel comfortable running maps/areas.

This fundamentally means that being a summoner automatically puts you at a disadvantage in terms of the amount of fun you have because it is EXTREMELY frustrating when I have spent a few minutes summoning my army of zombies/spectres only to DC/game crash and have to re-do the entire process all over again.

This may not seem like a big deal to most of you but being a summoner since closed beta, I've always yearned for a fix so I thought I'd finally throw my two cents in.

I wish we could have an item that 'Stored' the spectre that we're interested in, it could be something as simple as a gem that works in a similar manner to the 'Mine' Gems where you have two separate functions, a 'Place Mine' Function and a 'Detonate' Function but instead this would probably be something like 'Obtain New Spectre' and 'Summon Old Spectre'

The 'Obtain New Spectre' part of the gem could "remember" the stats of the monster you are interested in (level, hp, damage, etc), you would have to use this part of the gem over the type of corpse you're interested in. The second function of the same gem could simply work the same as the 'Desecrate' Gem but instead of skeleton Corpses being raised, it would raise corpses identical to the one's that you used the 'Obtain New Spectre' function on. You could then use your 'Raise Spectre' gem on these corpses as normal.

This is my suggestion, would love to hear the dev's side of the story!

Much Love,
Sage

PS: I love you guys

OH MY LIFE I DIDN'T REALISE IT RAISED CORPSES BASED ON WHAT AREA IT WAS LOCATED IN!!! THIS IS FREAKIN FANTASTIC. MY EYES HAVE BEEN OPENED!!!

My feedback:

Just make specters remain even after you log out.

=)

What I would very much be interested in knowing is why spectres scale down with area levels, but do not scale up? Seems to me that it would only make sense for spectres to scale up or down. What am I missing? Having level 68 evangelists in low-mid 70s maps just doesn't make sense and they don't appear to be too easy to find either.

I was considering a spectre oriented build to take me to a higher level, but if the information in the past few pages is correct, this would be a terrible decision?

"

JNF wrote:

What I would very much be interested in knowing is why spectres scale down with area levels, but do not scale up? Seems to me that it would only make sense for spectres to scale up or down. What am I missing? Having level 68 evangelists in low-mid 70s maps just doesn't make sense and they don't appear to be too easy to find either.

I am also interested in the reasoning.

Surely it would make sense to give the spectre a "base level" determined by the level of the corpse it was summoned from, regardless of the zone level summoned in, and scale from that? I know it works by corpse level already, but are desecrate corpses are also capped at the zone level when summoned? Is this the problem?

It makes more sense to summon a spectre through the use of desecrate to get a higher level corpse, and scale it thereafter, either to the zone level or your level, whichever is lower, with the maximum being the "base level" of the corpse it was summoned from, not the zone.

"

I know it works by corpse level already, but are desecrate corpses are also capped at the zone level when summoned? Is this the problem?

Yep, that is likely the problem. Desecrate's corpse level is capped by zone level. So, in a 66 zone, you can only summon up to level 66 corpses.

I have mentioned this before, and I should mention it here. Just make Raise Spectre ignore corpse level altogether. Have Raise Spectre scale by its gem level. So, level 20 Spectre Gem summons a level 79 Spectre or something like that.
Of course, it will scale down according to zone level like it does right now, so it wouldn't be overpowered, but it would make life a lot easier for players and players can try out different spectres in different acts and not feel robbed.

"

JNF wrote:

What I would very much be interested in knowing is why spectres scale down with area levels, but do not scale up? Seems to me that it would only make sense for spectres to scale up or down. What am I missing? Having level 68 evangelists in low-mid 70s maps just doesn't make sense and they don't appear to be too easy to find either.

Spectres should definitely scale based on the lower of zone or character level.

"

Pathological wrote:

Spectres should definitely scale based on the lower of zone or character level.

The only logical reason I could possibly see for this being an 'issue' of any sort, after taking some time to deliberate on the matter, is that it would be grossly overpowered if a lower level player were to go into a high level area, summon a spectre, then take said spectre back to a low level area and proceed to kill everything without any resistance whatsoever, but because spectres scale down with area levels, this is a non issue. So, with that being said, what is the problem with raising a spectre from the Sceptre of God, and then having that spectre scale up to the level in which it's in? Character level might be a stretch, because I can see how my spectres scaling up to match my character's level might be overpowered (level 90 in level 75 maps for example), but at least their matching the monster's levels of the area in which they're in would rectify our issue of their dying too quickly. They're just too difficult to find in higher level maps and this would at least make prioritizing them more viable.