Raise Zombie

I have 6 zombies up. A zombie dies and blows up from Minion Instability. Clearly i have 5 zombies now. I summon one more zombie. Instead of receiving a 6th, it destroys one of my current ones to spawn.

It must be using the same fifo priority system as resummoning zombies, except here it's a much bigger deal since instead of it occasionally overwriting zombies with max health, here it's overwriting a full zombie instead of summoning a new one!

I like how minions will quietly repop right on top of you if you run and they aren't in combat. However, i noticed something now that i have a ton of minions. Only 1-2 of them spawn, at one second interval. Instead, why not spawn the whole team on top of me, at 5 seconds interval? That way minions wouldn't get lost along the way even when out of combat.

I didn't use this skill for long, but it seems that monsters usually ignore zombies and just target the character most of the time.

Can this gem work with the +life gain on hit support gem? I was messing with it last night and I didn't seem to be getting any health gain from my minion's hits.

I think my problem with my minions wandering off after enemies I can't see could be fixed if their agro range was smaller.

One other annoying thing is that as I am running and they spawn on top of me to catch up, most of the time the immediately start walking in the opposite direction I was going making them almost instantly useless again because they are to far away.

I use this skill a lot, and always try to have all my Zombies (7) out as soon as I zone and kill a few mobs to give me the corpsess I require.

A lot of the issues are currently known about, and are being addressed with the issues highlighted in the GGG posts. Things such as them zoning with you will cure the probles with the levels such as Upper Prison, and Merveils Lair, where there are no corpses at all in the level to use.

I'm not sure that portraits will be a good feature, unless the portrait can be very small. Screen real estate is currently at a premium at 1600x1200, and having 7 zombie and 4 spectre portraits may take up quite a lot of space.

I do feel however that having no idea how many minions you have summoned, or their health is a bit limiting, so perhaps the portrait is the easiest way to keep track on this.

The things that bug me about this skill currently, are that the zombies do tend to wander off randomly at times, and tend to not head in the same direction I'm moving in. As they also run slower than the character, this slows down progression through the level, as you stand and wait for the zombies to play catch up.

There also sometimes seems to be issues with aggro, and I'm not sure how the aggro table works for the skill. The majority of the time, the zombies will pick up everything, but sometimes mobs just run straight through the pack and no matter how many times I circle around the pack with the zombies whacking the mob, it sticks to me like glue.

I love the new speed upgrades that the zombies got. It makes them much more useful. However, it also exacerbates one of their biggest problems: wondering off.

Most of the time I feel like I have to follow my zombies or I'm going to miss out on the drops from the kills they make. This feels off; my minions should be following me, not vice versa.

A couple of (admittedly naive) solutions I can think of: 1) make staying in screen a high priority for the zombies, and /or 2) make the aggro of the zombies not extend outside of the screen.

Since the zombies got a speed and attack speed buff, I'm unstoppable. I think maybe halve both of these bonuses, because it's just ridiculous, especially when you have 8 of them and minion instability.

EDIT: In a level comparable area, Rangerpas and myself were running through, not even having to kill anything because of my 8 zombies. I highly recommend decreasing these buffs, perhaps 1.5x Attack speed or something.

EDIT: Also combined with Minion instability this makes zombies way good, perhaps even reign that back to 1.5x life?