Raise Spectre

Spectres have so much potential for fun, but in current state, they are snuffed by a few things resulting in low diversity in viable choices. I am sure I am not the first to bring it up

My main gripe is: Spectre skills and AI
There are so many interesting spectres that use cool skills. Yet the non-viability of them can summed up by 1 simple entry row from poedb.tw/

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Skill | 1 | Default Attack skill_can_fire_wand_projectiles [1] skill_can_fire_arrows [1]

The fact that a monster can do a default attack almost makes them completely worthless as a spectre. You become forced to run 3 or 4 of the same one (though admittedly you're going to do this anyways but not always which is where the 'interesting ideas' comes in), just so maybe they can be spread out enough so that ONE of them are not in melee range of mobs and can maybe use their cool skills.

Especially since 3.0 has come out, a lot of new monsters have been added to the game, it is disappointing to find that so many of these cool things are worthless because they either have some 2 second cooldown on their skills or just love to stand in melee range and do jack all.

Here is an example video of a spectre that sometimes looks fun and under the right circumstances, will feel like they are destroying everything, but 90% of the time melees and has a long cooldown so after they use their skill they will continue to run to your targetted area

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IJeAOSFpYcY&t=2m26s Everytime they use their mortar I have to target elsewhere so they can run away to get out of melee range and fire again. I had a frostwall setup to try and see if I can wall off enemies so that my spectres STAY OUT of melee range. It worked in small corridor areas and I had to bring a phase run so i didn't completely stop my progress every time I used frost wall.

There are so many interesting monsters in this game. For example, does anybody know that reliquarians do the most absurd fireball in the game, with 100% ignite chance that do pretty much insane burn damage?

Too bad they also have a pure physical "firestorm" spell that won't scale very well with any burn damage. And all of their actions are so slow I have had my slow beacon of corruption build who has to summon a golem twice using spell echo in basically melee range to place the golem and then kill the golem, then when all the mobs die from the cloud, a damage over time, the reliquarian finally finishes shooting its fireball. And if one monster gets close range? Well they are not going to even try casting the worthless firestorm, nevermind the 3 second fireball, because they will be meleeing.

Elevation will fuck most spectres. Spectres that fire projectiles will not angle them up properly, and will fly directly into the ledge wall below. Mortars will either land too early as they fired their path acting as if the target was on an elevation lower than they really are, or will not even go past the ledge walls and just act like magma orb against a wall, falling straight down.

I have played with shavronne's visions, the coolest little map device (also not desecratable, so playable for like 5 levels tops), they shoot like 3 sets of mortars with spell echo then never again and do nothing
Molten lions are also cool, they spit out this pretty strong burning ground that is also projectile scalable... once every year. And despite it being like melee range projectile skill, they prefer to claw at stuff rather than make molten stuff.
The spectres used in the video above are undying inductors. Their apparent cooldown makes them nearly unusable compared to something like a flame sent or solar guard.
My personal favorite spectres, undying operators (one of the two variation, distinguished by lack of "extra lightning dmg"). When I first saw these guys changed in 3.1, I was so excited. "IM GONNA BECOME LORD ESH". I did it, it was the clunkiest thing I ever played, and I mentioned above I played beacon of corruption where you have to place a golem and kill it off at slow cast speed and deal with golem cooldowns/use spectres which need corpses and similarly gotta kill them off by exceed spectre count... It sort of kicked ass in single target provided the target stayed absolutely still and you didn't have to pull them back out of melee range every few seconds, but not by a large margin.
Even in the old double dip era where i tried bleed/poison knitted horrors, sometimes mobs just run too fast into their faces and they are stuck doing nothing.

A lot of above spectres have another similar problem: Because of their cooldown, modifiers to cast speed, one out of the two most direct scaling options, are pretty much worthless. which leads to...

Secondary annoyance: Lack of passive tree building options.
Pretty much every minion build gonna be the same, the exact same minion damage clusters, as many jewels as you can (esp if skeleton mage), and pool (life/mana/es). Also you're probably gonna be a necro, definitely if spectres. Aside from EE, MAYBE minion instability for niche builds/pvp, or necro aegis, or some extra curse (usually conveniently close) aura stuff, if you are crazy enough then umbilicus immortalis (how to dispel cb) or ignore survivability, and lastly if you play skeletons, or zombie, OR beacon of corruption/MI, then one/two cluster of extra skeleton and zombie nodes (which are also minion life nodes). I think beacon of corruption using spectres is more unique in that you purposely don't pick extra spectre just to be able to more reliably place your clouds...
But this is a thread for spectres.

In the tree it is clear that damaging ailment scaling is typically different, the values for those dedicated ailment nodes are sometimes easily twice or even three times as high as regular damage nodes (holy fire, 100% damage over 3 nodes, bloodletting and fatal toxins 115% over 3), minions can't get this, and are stuck with gimped damage ailments.

On another note they also can't easily get stuff like pierce/chain/fork without support gems where there are sources for these for players normally, they are too 'balanced' compared to the rest of the game.

Basically there is so much cool spectre potential. I get that monsters can't all have like no default melee attack, but would it be impossible for their cooldowns and AI to be tweaked as spectres?

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Galtrovan wrote:

Now that POE persists Raised Spectres through logout and/or disconnects, and adds currently Raised Spectres to an area’s “monster table” to allow the Spectres to be re-raised via Desecrate, I decided to try Raise Spectre in Mayhem.

While the above is nice, if not required to make the skill playable, I still have to ask why Spectres do not automatically level up to a new zone’s higher area level upon entry to the zone. Why should I have to stop playing and repeatedly SPAM Desecrate, inspecting each corpse in turn, until I can re-raise all my current Spectres at the current area level?

Do you know how annoying and time consuming this can be, especially when you get into maps?

While playing through the 10 acts, it was annoying enough that I only re-raised my Spectres when the area level went +2 higher than my current Spectre’s level, which in Part 2 basically allowed me get through an entire Act with only 1 or 2 re-raises.

For mapping, you really cannot get away with this. The Spectres need to be, at the very least, the same level as the area level. Thus, re-raises need to be done every map tier. This increased re-raise frequency, coupled with the fact that map “monster tables” have way more monster variety, brings about a whole new level of annoyance.

Desecrate corpses are RNG. RNG with increased monster variety is the bane of getting what you need. Having to stop, SPAM Descerate, and inspect corpses until you get what you need is in itself annoying, and not fun. This being the case, what do you think this scenario becomes when one enters and new map and gets stuck doing nothing but SPAMMING Desecrate and inspecting corpses at the map entrance for 8 minutes straight (literally… this happened) before getting the 3rd same-corpse type required to re-raise the 3-same Spectre army at the current area level?

To me, with POE’s recent Raise Spectre QOL improvements (beginning of my post), as long as the Raise Spectre gem is sufficient level to allow it, at this point and time I see no reason why Raised Spectres shouldn’t automatically level up to a new zone’s higher area level. The ground work for being able to do this has already been laid as POE persists the Spectres.

To summarize, Spectres should never scale their level down to match a lower area level. Spectres should auto level up upon entering a higher area level (if the gem is leveled appropriately to allow it), and then remain the higher level until entering a new higher level or until they die. If they die, well, yes, one will have to go through the pain the rear to find an area that has the Spectre type. But if/once the auto-level-up is implemented, at least one won’t have to then go to a higher area level and repeat the SPAM Desecrate, inspect corpse non-sense just to re-raise the just retrieved Spectres at the higher level. This latter part is such an irritating was of time, especially when RNG forces you to spend 8 minutes doing it. (Do you know how long 8 minutes is? In 8 minutes, speed runners just ran and cleared at least 4 entire maps, well skipping the map boss, while I was stuck SPAMMING Desecrate and inspecting corpses trying to get my 3rd Spectre.)

100% agree, QoL is very low using spectres. Also when you put gem or armour / weapon where gem is socketed OFF you should keep spectres still. Amount of re-summmoning is very high and make this gem very bad in time / efficiency.

I love playing necromancer. The feeling about commanding a horde of minions is amazing. Raise spectre is my main skill, alongside with raise zombie and desecrate. I'm playing a solar guards build.

But in my opinion, there are some changes that could improve a lot the Raise Spectre and the Desecrate abilities. It's absolutely fine that when a spectre dies, we have to resummon it. I'm using desecrate to do that. Also I think it's fine that if I have a high level spectre (above level 80) and it gets killed, I have to go to a high tier level map to summon it again. But there two QoL changes that would be great:

Raise Spectre:
- Make spectres persistent not only when you disconnect, but also when you unequip the gem. Everytime I want to try some variations on my build (for example, changing one socket's colour for trying a different gem) I lose my high level spectres. If I manage to raise my spectres in shaper's map, for them to be highest level possible, and then I lose them cause I want to change my armour or one
of its socket's colours, I lose my spectres and that it's not fair. Spectres should be lost only when they get killed. If I want to have different spectres, it's just as simple to summon them so they override old ones.

Desecrate:
- It's reaaaaaaaly annoying to spent 10 or more minutes trying to desecrate the specific corpse that you want. For example: I want solar guards. I go to solaris temple and use desecrate, then I use raise spectre on one of the solar guard corpses. But as they are low level, then I go to one high tier level map (guardians or shaper). Then I use desecrate but it takes a loooot of time to get the solar guard corpse cause desecrate uses mainly the map's pool of monsters. So in my opinion, it should be as simple as 1 of the 5 corpses that appear when we use desecrate should be from player's spectres pool. And the other 4 should be from the map's pool. That way, if you want a monster from the map, it's pretty easy. And if you want one from your pool (a solar guard, for example) you can get it easy too.

I find it completely and utterly stupid that the real DPS of Spectres is completely unknown to players. If GGG made Spectre stats transparent, we Necros as a community could give legitimate feedback on which ones are good and which are unplayable. With this information, GGG could diversify the Spectre builds in the game instead of caging us within the Solar Guards - Vaal Advocates - TVs - Wicker Man - Kitava's Heralds meta.

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rhenk10 wrote:

I love playing necromancer. The feeling about commanding a horde of minions is amazing. Raise spectre is my main skill, alongside with raise zombie and desecrate. I'm playing a solar guards build.

But in my opinion, there are some changes that could improve a lot the Raise Spectre and the Desecrate abilities. It's absolutely fine that when a spectre dies, we have to resummon it. I'm using desecrate to do that. Also I think it's fine that if I have a high level spectre (above level 80) and it gets killed, I have to go to a high tier level map to summon it again. But there two QoL changes that would be great:

Raise Spectre:
- Make spectres persistent not only when you disconnect, but also when you unequip the gem. Everytime I want to try some variations on my build (for example, changing one socket's colour for trying a different gem) I lose my high level spectres. If I manage to raise my spectres in shaper's map, for them to be highest level possible, and then I lose them cause I want to change my armour or one
of its socket's colours, I lose my spectres and that it's not fair. Spectres should be lost only when they get killed. If I want to have different spectres, it's just as simple to summon them so they override old ones.

Desecrate:
- It's reaaaaaaaly annoying to spent 10 or more minutes trying to desecrate the specific corpse that you want. For example: I want solar guards. I go to solaris temple and use desecrate, then I use raise spectre on one of the solar guard corpses. But as they are low level, then I go to one high tier level map (guardians or shaper). Then I use desecrate but it takes a loooot of time to get the solar guard corpse cause desecrate uses mainly the map's pool of monsters. So in my opinion, it should be as simple as 1 of the 5 corpses that appear when we use desecrate should be from player's spectres pool. And the other 4 should be from the map's pool. That way, if you want a monster from the map, it's pretty easy. And if you want one from your pool (a solar guard, for example) you can get it easy too.

This is my first league using Spectres as I avoided them because of how painful it looked managing them. Even with this "fix", it is still a pain. I think only losing them when they die is fair enough, but accidentally unequiping a gem or item SHOULD NOT lead to you wasting 30 minutes of your life getting them back.

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Moerlin wrote:

I find it completely and utterly stupid that the real DPS of Spectres is completely unknown to players. If GGG made Spectre stats transparent, we Necros as a community could give legitimate feedback on which ones are good and which are unplayable. With this information, GGG could diversify the Spectre builds in the game instead of caging us within the Solar Guards - Vaal Advocates - TVs - Wicker Man - Kitava's Heralds meta.

It isn't just spectres all minion's stats are obfuscated leading to only the insane going through all the spectres to test them out instead of just with what we know works.

The usability of this skill is simply baffling. Ironically, it's always been this way. It's hilarious because the usability of this skill is also tied to GGG hiding information for... no apparent reason.

First of all, the viability of spectres in the only content of the game that matters for longer than it takes you to masturbate: Maps. There are a lot of mobs in this game. Like, a lot. Even some of the recycled ones have different attributes and attacks depending on where you find them. Unfortunately, magic/rare mods don't persist when Spectre-ing, nor can you spectre a rogue exile. Why? I dunno, probably some Christian-logic about humans having Agency. Wouldn't put it past them.
Anyway, of all the monsters in this game, only a handful, probably even less than that, are halfway viable. Tukohama Vanguards, Wickermen (LUL), Solar Guards, and maybe fire/ice Banners (that's a strong maybe). So, once again, we have a game promoted on the pretense of diversity that does not offer diversity. I'd want a refund but this game also advertises itself as free while making you pay for conveniences that should be part of the base game to begin with. I guess this is marketing. Go figure.

Additionally, the lack of information provided about these spectres is... baffling. When I raise a Tukohama Vanguard, I have no fucking idea what level the raised spectre is. I don't know what its defenses are, how much health it has, resistances, anything. I have no fucking idea if cast speed augments the totems. I have no clue if adding LMP/GMP will apply to the totems. All I know is that it's raised.
Why this information is hidden from the consumer, I have no idea. I can play pretty much any game on the market that supports some kind of pet/follower-based system and actually see information about my pet/follower. PoE, however, prefers to take the route of secrecy. Why? Well, because you'll spend a lot of time trying to figure out what should be given to you so you'll pad the numbers when they release a list of active accounts to make the game seem more alive than it really is. Then again, I have a permanent in-game mute across all of my characters, so wtf do I know.

The persistence of spectres is another problem. Spectres came out a long time ago. In fact, they came out before I started playing. And I started playing maybe 4-5 years ago. It was only somewhat recently that this feature was implemented. Let that sink in - The ability for your spectres to persist through a logout/disconnect was only added recently. After years of this game being released. The same spectres you have to desecrate in a story map, take into a higher tier map (if you had any), and desecrate spam until you get the desired type/quantity and pray you don't get hit with a random disconnect.
Ironically, it didn't take them long to completely neuter Zombies. I guess this is a sign of priorities. Whether they're in the interest of the people paying their wages or not.



Overall, I'm excited to see how the list of usable spectres will gradually shrink until the next major expansion. 12/10 take my money

Oh fair warning to anyone else. If you have gear that gives you just enough attributes points for gems and want to swap it REMOVE support gems from spectres or it will unsummon them when you can no longer use their attached gems.

So that was a nice and unintuitive experience I just had.

Like I know it has been mentioned before, but Blizzard figured this crap out back in 2004 with pets in World of Warcraft. Then get this, Blizzard again improved their class pets and vanity pets in 2007, 2008, and 2011, each time making it so your character could store more pets in easier ways so crap like this wouldn't happen and forcing you to waste yet another half hour getting the spectres and spamming desecrate in a high level map hoping for their RNG corpse to show up.

Yes, I am upset, and not just because removing a ring caused my spectres to disappear. Summoners in general are just really fun for me, but the assbackwards mechanics and hidden information make playing summoners really frustrating, frustrating and sad. Sad that such a potentially great skill has such a shit gameplay ruining interaction.

Just a head's up.

So far we still have...

* No clue as to the attributes of the raised spectre
* No clue as to the level of the raised spectre
* No clue as to the abilities of the raised spectre
* No clue as to the tags on the abilities of the raised spectre
* No clue how support gems augment raised spectres, except for trial and error (and not even very enlightening, at that)
* No clue as to anything relevant about the spectre except that a certain amount is raised, so if you have a mixed bag, you'll just have to look and see which one might've died.

But hey, at least there's a new MTX for our handful of viable spectres!

Priorities, ladies. They're very evident.

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Elua wrote:

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Galtrovan wrote:

Now that POE persists Raised Spectres through logout and/or disconnects, and adds currently Raised Spectres to an area’s “monster table” to allow the Spectres to be re-raised via Desecrate, I decided to try Raise Spectre in Mayhem.

While the above is nice, if not required to make the skill playable, I still have to ask why Spectres do not automatically level up to a new zone’s higher area level upon entry to the zone. Why should I have to stop playing and repeatedly SPAM Desecrate, inspecting each corpse in turn, until I can re-raise all my current Spectres at the current area level?

Do you know how annoying and time consuming this can be, especially when you get into maps?

While playing through the 10 acts, it was annoying enough that I only re-raised my Spectres when the area level went +2 higher than my current Spectre’s level, which in Part 2 basically allowed me get through an entire Act with only 1 or 2 re-raises.

For mapping, you really cannot get away with this. The Spectres need to be, at the very least, the same level as the area level. Thus, re-raises need to be done every map tier. This increased re-raise frequency, coupled with the fact that map “monster tables” have way more monster variety, brings about a whole new level of annoyance.

Desecrate corpses are RNG. RNG with increased monster variety is the bane of getting what you need. Having to stop, SPAM Descerate, and inspect corpses until you get what you need is in itself annoying, and not fun. This being the case, what do you think this scenario becomes when one enters and new map and gets stuck doing nothing but SPAMMING Desecrate and inspecting corpses at the map entrance for 8 minutes straight (literally… this happened) before getting the 3rd same-corpse type required to re-raise the 3-same Spectre army at the current area level?

To me, with POE’s recent Raise Spectre QOL improvements (beginning of my post), as long as the Raise Spectre gem is sufficient level to allow it, at this point and time I see no reason why Raised Spectres shouldn’t automatically level up to a new zone’s higher area level. The ground work for being able to do this has already been laid as POE persists the Spectres.

To summarize, Spectres should never scale their level down to match a lower area level. Spectres should auto level up upon entering a higher area level (if the gem is leveled appropriately to allow it), and then remain the higher level until entering a new higher level or until they die. If they die, well, yes, one will have to go through the pain the rear to find an area that has the Spectre type. But if/once the auto-level-up is implemented, at least one won’t have to then go to a higher area level and repeat the SPAM Desecrate, inspect corpse non-sense just to re-raise the just retrieved Spectres at the higher level. This latter part is such an irritating was of time, especially when RNG forces you to spend 8 minutes doing it. (Do you know how long 8 minutes is? In 8 minutes, speed runners just ran and cleared at least 4 entire maps, well skipping the map boss, while I was stuck SPAMMING Desecrate and inspecting corpses trying to get my 3rd Spectre.)

100% agree, QoL is very low using spectres. Also when you put gem or armour / weapon where gem is socketed OFF you should keep spectres still. Amount of re-summmoning is very high and make this gem very bad in time / efficiency.

I agree aswell, and I have to admit, I have not read all the posts about raise spectre but isnt it possible to make a Raise Spectre gem bound to a certain monster of the player's choice? Kinda like a eternal orb can "save" the stats untill used again. Could be a temporary change in name for that particular gem like "Raise Zombie Spectre" or "Raise Crab Spectre". That would save alot of time and one didnt have to dig through those piles of corpses? In that way one could easily bring 4 of the favorite bound raise spectre to swap between them in maps to increase the effeciency right? I apologize yet again for not reading all the preposts. I do want a summoner to be smoother, and it seems/feels that spectres are the ones that slows down the farming process.

I am looking for a good spectre as a supporter for a team consisting of:

Necro with Soulwrest (20 Phantasms)
Guardian with Dominating Blow, Purity, Relic (a lot of minions, too).


So I don't need another damage dealer (also only have a 4-link max for the spectre) and try to find one which would support the team. Tried the ape chieftains, but they use their frenzy charge cry not often enough, you most of the time end with having no charges at all even with two apes.


Are their useful support spectres besides curse specialists?