Raise Spectre

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somatica wrote:

For example, there are those large red gorilla mobs in Act 2 who have some kind of buff they’re able to provide to themselves and maybe nearby monkeys (the animation looks like they’re beating their chest).

The gorilla chest-beating summons monkeys from nearby trees. This still occurs when you Spectre gorillas. I don't think any mobs in the game give buffs the way you think, other than rare monsters. And the Spectred rares don't give auras, they are regular versions of the monster.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

This is correct. However, if there was a monster type that inherently had a skill to cast a buff on allies, a spectre of that type would have access to that skill and would be able to use it on you,. your party and/or your minions, at least in theory.

If there was such a monster type who could also go between zones with the player, in theory, that would be really awesome for the spectre skill.

/insert wink-wink-nudge-nudge

Love the game you've created.

In short: Spectres are basicly support minions for pure summoners, zombies excel in every way usually. Spectres are useless to anyone else, and they should have another skill equiped instead of spectres.

Long version
Spectres usually do not have the hp to justify using the mana to use as suicide bombers even as a pure summoner. It's generally better to use your skills even if they have no damage boosts on them.
Because of this, Spectres should be left to being ranged enemies. Unless you find a mob with a very large ammount of health, like the bear or golem. If you make melee spectres, they usually won't last long enough to make it worth it, whereas using ranged minions will do relatively the same attack. Allowing you to cast some spells yourself, even if not specced into damage, you will generally do more damage than your minions due to aoes, and there's only soo much room you can place melee enemies around elites, and elites with elemental reflect and/or life regen are the main concern.
At this point, I don't see a reason to level up spectre. Level 1 is all you need, and there's barely any bonuses to leveling it up, but it requires more mana. Because of this, low int users could use the spectre gem to raise a spectre and have it be almost as effective as someone that leveled up the gem a lot. Whereas low int users cannot use zombies at higher levels because they dont have the hp to survive. This is probably the only time someone would use a spectre, and not zombies.


Usefulness of each type of spectre:
Melee enemies:
Spectre of zombies: Too slow to even touch anything most of the time if you have raised zombies around. They seem to be decent in hp+attack though.
Skeletal armsman: little bit weaker than the zombies, but walk slightly faster.
Placeholder skitterer and the little monkeys: these enemies are the absolute worst things to make spectres due to having basicly no health. When they explode it hardly injures the enemies. Better to just save your mana, and either not cast it, or raise a zombie
Bears: Nice movement speed, damage, and hp, generally all above the otehr enemies. Nice to have, usually you have to pick between this and the golem though.
Golem: Very slow, but Super high HP, I would assume it has high damage but I haven't seen it's damage yet because it takes forever to get anywhere.
Spiders: average everything, but a lot better than grabbing something weak like the little monkeys.
Bandit meleers: they are average as well, but don't expect them to live too long due to the hp nerf of the skill.
Fire and lightning skeletons: These guys do quite a bit of damage compared to most things, you can choose to get archers or these guys, but shadow fragments are still better.
Fast zombies that throw rocks: These guys will always be able to chase something down, just like your raise zombies. Though, these still do much lower damage.



Ranged:
Rock flingers (crab thingies): For quite a few maps these are the only ranged enemies you will face. So I generally grab these guys for spectres
Skeleton archers: The have longer range, more accurate, and seem to have more health than rock flingers. They walk slowly.
Bandit archers: Hard to tell if these guys have the same ammount of health as the skeleton archers or not due to these guys not taking much damage because they run away from enemies so quickly.
Mages: Slow, but powerful. Glass cannons, but they run away from stuff that gets too close so they usually won't die.
Shadow fragments: These guys are so glass cannon it's rediculous. Fun to see how much damage they do, while sniping from offscreen, especially when you have several of them. However, if something gets near them, you may as well consider them dead.
Merveil's Chosen: Good HP, energy shields+runs away, aoe chills make this a minion that will survive a while, and make the swarms of enemies die down much faster. This minion has a tendency to run away, and stay alive for a LONG time if left alone and being attacked by a melee enemy.


Winner for DPS: Shadow Fragment
Winner for best Overall: Merveil's Chosen
Winner for Tankiness: Golems



Suggested Spectres for each map:
Twilight Strand, terraces, tidal island: Rock flingers
Mud Flats: Anything, the rhoas/stalkers don't have much health, but can keep up with zombies. whereas zombies may have more damage and health, but they are waaay too slow. So both are horrible spectres.
Submerged passage 1 + waterfall cave 2: Rock flingers
Submerged passage 2 + waterfall cave 2: Merviel's chosen
The Ledge: Rock flingers untill you get skeleton archers
The rocky climb: Skeleton Archers
Prison: Mages
Upper Prison: Possibly mages if you have good zombies, and flasks to heal zombies, otherwise don't bother and raise more zombies so they can tank for you. Since you only have around 5 minions to make.
Prisoner's gate: Rock Flingers
Ship Graveyard: Merveil's chosen
The Coves: Rock Flingers
Cavern of woe+anger: merveil's chosen
Merveil's lair: No summons for 1st form. Tough luck for you summoners!
The Forest: Big monkeys.
Old Fields: Bandit Archer, or Golems
Crossroads: Bears, Golems, or archers
Fellshrine ruins: Archers or Golems
Church dungeon, Chamber of sins cathedral of bones: Skeleton archers, until you find mages.
Broken Bridge: Golems, archers
River Crossings: Archers
Dark Forest: Bears. I generally summon spiders if i can't find a bear because I like picking on a friend, and because I don't really use spiders anywhere else.
Ancient Pyramid: Shadow Fragments


Coming from a level 51 summoner. When I get to the maelstrom of chaos, I will probably post again to say what I think of spectres of any new monsters there.



On a side note: After realizing that melee spectres were usually bad and went to ranged, the summoner build feels more complete. Due to archers being in a line behind me, zombies being up close taking all the damage, and myself sitting in between using shock nova (zombies make it easy to get the right distance for max damage), or using frost wall to shove enemies away from my archers.

@Keeshu

I was just curious as my summoner is only level 32 or 33, but how much +minion damage are you running with from passives, skill gems and equipment?

I only ask b/c I believe I have 2 atm (2x +15% minion damage) and it seems like the ranged damage spectres literally output almost zero damage regardless of what they're attacking and the only semi-worthwhile melee damage comes from using something like a bear or golem for a suicide bomber.

The zombies are great thus far, but it feels like the spectres are a waste of mana and a potential zombie corpse more often than not based on their dps output. I'd love it if they could buff the zombies, but i'm just not seeing any dps output from them and was curious as to what kind of thresholds i'd need to hit from passives or gear to get them up to snuff.

Thanks

105% from minion damage passives
30% to go, which I'd have if I went up through the elemental damage area near the minion skills by witch's starting area instead of mana regen+flask area.

To increase damage of minions just add some support gems like some of the following (not all support gems are shown on the announced support gem list and I don't have everything yet):
- Chaos Damage (good luck trying to get it though)
- Lightning damage
- Fire Damage (add chance to ignite as well if you want stuff to burn. you also need strength for this, so mainly for templar summoners)
- Cold damage (not good as you lose corpses that way, unless you have burning cold support in as well)
- minion damage (of course)
- melee physical damage (for zombies, and bear/golem spectres)
- crit chance. (crit damage to, but don't do just crit damage as 5% chance is not much of a chance at all)
- Faster attacks
Ranged spectres only and require dex to use (hello ranger summoners):
- Multiple projectiles (think of it as more aoes for each ranged spectre)
- piece (More aoe power)
- Faster projectiles (slightly more damage)

However going to the minion passives in the middle will allow you to wear these other supports to have their level 1 abilities so it works at least.
Edit: Forgot to mention, increasing spell damage with passives and wands increases the damage the support gems do. I would assume that getting fire damage passives would increase damage on the added fire support gem as well. Spell crit and crit chance do not effect zombies according to C, so if you want miniosn to crit, use the support gems.




Like I said before. Spectres are supports to zombies (unless you're a low int user, level 1 spectre will be stay good no matter what level you are and will save a life flask sometimes, while being low on mana)

Zombies have very high hp, and pretty good damage. Spectres usually can't compare in damage, only exceptions being the glass cannon spectres like mages and shadow fragments. Because of this, it's best to just keep your spectres as any ranged enemy so they deal damage, without being attacked by enemies. This makes it so there's some extra damage, as opposed to no extra damage from them not existing. And you really don't need that many skills. Unless you're getting hex master and 2 of those unique rings that give +1 to max curses (assuming it stacks) and just curse everything to oblivion, but even then you only need 1 attack spell. Frost wall, teleport are both just convience.

If they want spectres to be a main form of attack like zombies, then they need to be buffed big time, or have more special enemies that are stronger than the other enemies so spectres will be useful. However, I feel spectres are fine as a supportive skill, sort of like how frost wall is supportive, but is not a main form of attack.

Edit again:
I hear that zombies do spell damage, and that they are not effected by passives like spell damage. I wish I could see the base damage of zombie by pressing C. Right now it only says casts per second, spell crit chance, and spell crit damage. Unless you start adding stuff to zombies of course.

Might want to change it so it doesn't say spell crit chance and spell crit then. That's very decieving.
Is spell damage supposed to increase the element damage on fire,lightning, etc support gems? Or is it a bug that C says that when you have lightning support gem added to the zombie, then decide to get a spell damage passive, it increases the lightning damage?

The default melee attack, is it based of your own basic melee attack? I assume not, but I figured I'd ask to just make sure.

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Mark_GGG wrote:

[Zombies] aren't affect by your passives because they don't have you passives - you do. The exceptions are the specific passives which improve your minions, which do affect zombies, just like other minions.

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Keeshu wrote:

Is spell damage supposed to increase the element damage on fire,lightning, etc support gems? Or is it a bug that C says that when you have lightning support gem added to the zombie, then decide to get a spell damage passive, it increases the lightning damage?

Judging by what he said above, that's definitely a bug. Unsure if it's known or not.