Raise Zombie

Sigh....Why did you make Zombies so bad, in 095 i just summoned zombies and let them kill stuff, now i spam the raise zombie skill whenever a rare monster comes up. I am running out of bodies!

While zombies didnt have the best dps in 0.95 even with all the minion damage notes in the passive tree as well as a minion damage support they had quit a boss explosion due to minion instability.
In general I used to link my zombies with quantity//rarity and minion life so they explode for huge amounts of damage. The other possibility was with minion damage instead of life so they exploded more often which gave everybody more consistent damage instead of high damage peaks.
Their melee damage was really low as described in the spectre thread. In early stages of the game they ate mobs alive while doing 15-20% per hit which was pretty amazing and overpowered. In late game though they did 1% damage on a white mob in chaos. So if you use 10 zombies each one has to hit 10 times to kill a mob. Now compare this to any other dps build since you sacrifice about 40-50 points for those minion notes all over the tree. In general the minion build with Fire Storm in 0.95 worked very well. It was really slow compared to other builds but offered an incredible amount of safety.
With 0.96 so far, Fire Storm is just so bad I can't even described it. I lost about 800 Armor and 300 Life with my Templar only to keep my DPS Loss at about 400 since Fire Storm now is useless with those supports I used in 0.95.
a) I use 4 Links + Firestorm for 1000 DPS and 150 Mana Cost
b) I use 4 Links + Firestorm for 700 DPS and 70 Mana Cost

Of course a) is not playable since nobody can support 150 Mana / Cast without Mana Leech so there is another support which I am forced to use.
A LvL 75 AoF Build has about 400-500 Mana while a caster has about 650-700 ( most have about 600 but lets keep numbers higher ).
A 5 Link AoF skill costs 50 Mana while every support gem gives you like 3000-4000 DPS so where are those caster supports to even it up.
Whatever back to topic....the zombies need to do consistent damage or get their 200% explosion damage back. There is no point in having stupid minions all over the place while doing no damage even after sacrificing them. So give them a DPS where a zombie hit with all Zombie DMG Notes in the passive tree + a Minion Damage Gem kills at least 10% HP of a champion in Chaos.
When I am around with Groundslam AoF in Chaos I use to need max 3 Hits per Champ / 5 per Boss without being forced to use anykind of supports.

I'm actually having some measure of success in Merciless with zombies, but I haven't hit chaos yet -- for all I know it changes considerably there.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know whether the couple "10% chance to shock enemy on hit with lightning damage" applies to minions as well? They're right next to minion instability so I was thinking of picking it up -- seems like it'd work well with my no quality Added Lightning Damage.

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RoboCicero wrote:

I'm actually having some measure of success in Merciless with zombies, but I haven't hit chaos yet -- for all I know it changes considerably there.

Out of curiosity, does anyone know whether the couple "10% chance to shock enemy on hit with lightning damage" applies to minions as well? They're right next to minion instability so I was thinking of picking it up -- seems like it'd work well with my no quality Added Lightning Damage.

My guess is that your passives affect you only unless specifically mentioning minions.

I think the placement of the Static Blows cluster is to suggest you use some form of lightning damage paired with minions to build shocked debuffs on enemies thereby boosting the damage of your minion army.

I was really happy with zombies until I hit Chaos. I am constantly summoning replacements as those mobs just tear through them... the build doesn't really feel very good any more in chaos (shock nova/zombies/spectres).

The nerf of instability is a good thing , it only occurs too early imo.
It was the only damage dealing especially in chaos (minion's damage being insignificant especially in chaos)

I switched since to cold , with icespear + multi proj,like everyone almost did

If everyone made the sames characters, where's the fun ?

I use zombies (in mercyless). I have Hex master and minions instability. For now, with Curses (elemental weakness and vulnerability), my minions have not really the time for explode... I kill monsters with spark before that :p

My witch is specialised lightning and spark deals almost 800 dps.

Zombies are too aggressive.
They will attack off-screen enemies after being raised, and sometimes in different direction.

I like to think the witch is thinking "WTF?!" while standing in the middle of an empty screen after casting multiple "raise zombie" :)

Also, is it possible to have some basic UI, at least like Diablo, with the numbers of minions?
A health bar or some indication some minions are low on health would also be useful if we have a stat like "heal minions" on flask.