Absolution

With the buffs to this skill I think it's in a much better place, damage-wise. With some investment it clears well so kudos on those changes.

It does suffer some serious QOL issues though which I think make Absolution less fun than it would be otherwise.

1) Uptime on bosses, especially those with many phases. 25% to create a minion means you have to spam the skill. Getting enough cast speed for yourself to do this, and for the minion, is frustrating.

Solution: have increases/reductions to minion cast speed apply to player cast speed on the Absolution skill specifically.

2) Mana issues. Combined with #1, you have to occasionally spam the skill on bosses while otherwise not using it very often in clearing. An Enduring mana flask helps this a bit but if it runs out in a boss fight, you're sunk.

3) Minion AI. The minions will stand around and not move with you consistently, so they have to be dragged around constantly with Convocation. This could be easily improved and make the skill feel a lot better.

I love where Absolution is going and adding more "holy" type minions in general. Some more small QOL tweaks could make this a fantastic, really fun skill to play. I'm still enjoying it but can see how many others would not.

Absolution feels a lot better now with the addition of the aggressive mod on Delve wands, but there are still some issues with the skill. Namely the mana cost and sentinel uptime on phased bosses (all of them drop between Sirus phases for example).

I've fixed the mana cost issue with Eldritch Battery but I run out of ES on boss fights where I have to continuously cast the skill to spawn sentinels. Where running out of mana/ES becomes an issue is the 25% chance to spawn sentinels on hitting a unique, the chance feels too low and getting up to 3 sentinels with bad luck could take over 20 seconds. Spawn chance should be higher, even 100%.

During mapping the skill feels amazing, sentinels are always up and you only have to hit enemy packs every 10 seconds to keep them going.


Video reference for Sirus: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S1kFi6_W6Lo
Some notes:
-First phase I never even reach 3 sentinels
-Second phase I don't even get 2
-Third phase I reach 3 just as Sirus phases
-Last phase I never even reach 3 sentinels

While I still kill Sirus with ease (as I should with my level of gear), the low chance to spawn Sentinels on boss fights like this does not feel good. That's my only gripe with the skill now as everywhere else the skill feels really good to play. Up the chance to 100% on unique enemies and the skill is amazing.

3.16 Feedback

(1) The bonus to radius makes the skill feel better when casting on monster packs, but does not apply to the spells cast by your Sentinels.

(2) The mana cost feels somewhat constraining without decent investment into mana regeneration.

(3) I still do not understand the purpose of Empowered Absolution. It hits a larger area, but has less damage and a 6-second cooldown. Its DPS is lower compared to the normal Absolution spell, so I was expecting it to have some sort of utility effect to compensate. According to PoEDB (https://poedb.tw/us/Sentinel_of_Absolution), it has this additional effect:

"absolution blast shockwave every X beams [1] is area damage"

In testing, I found it difficult to notice any differences in damage or additional effects compared to the normal Absolution spell cast by the sentinels.

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Current Problems

(1) The overall DPS and clear speed of Absolution still feel much lower and less satisfying when compared to Dominating Blow. It often feels overwhelmed in content with tougher enemies and higher monster density such as Delirium and juiced maps.

(2) This skill can struggle with summoning and maintaining minions in content where monsters take longer to kill by yourself and are not rare or unique such as in Alva Incursions when all monsters are magic with the Time Dilation atlas passive. Absolution performs a little better in this regard at least since Dominating Blow would only be able to bring out 3-4 sentinels without normal monsters on the map.

(3) As mentioned in previous posts from other players, this skill also has difficulty in maintaining steady DPS on bosses who are very mobile or have multiple phases (Sirus) due to its low minion duration and low chance to summon on hit. Oftentimes I would not be able to summon all of my sentinels back before the next immunity phase starts or when I have to start moving to avoid a series of attacks and spells.

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DPS Comparison of Absolution vs Dominating Blow

The following tables and charts compare the DPS of Absolution and Dominating Blow based on different configurations and number of minions:

Table 1:


Table 2:


Chart 1:


The DPS values for Absolution were calculated with +1 to +4 gem levels as the build can potentially use a +2 to gem level Convoking Wand and a +2 to gem level Hunter/Warlord amulet.

Based on the data, Absolution overtakes Dominating Blow variants A and B that use Melee Splash (essentially 5-links in terms of damage) at 4-5 sentinels and places in between Dominating Blow variants C and D (specialized for single target DPS) at 6 minions and +4 to gem level (high budget gear).

For more information regarding the builds and setups used for these calculations, see the last section of this post labeled "Build Information".

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Proposed Solutions

(1) Increase the maximum number of summoned Sentinels of Absolution to 6. This will bring its potential DPS on par with Dominating Blow at 9 Sentinels of Dominance.

(2) Add a chance to summon a Sentinel of Absolution on hitting any enemy, with increased values against unique enemies. Minions that have their duration refreshed do not refresh their life.

(3) Increase base duration of minions to 14 seconds.

(4) Add a bonus effect that augments your Sentinels of Absolution when a corpse is consumed from the debuff similar to Dominating Blow that would be useful for clearing maps but not necessary against bosses.


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Updated Description and Effects


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Build Information

NOTE: POB links are not up to date with the most recent changes I made before posting this reply. I am waiting to resubmit the PoBs on Pastebin after the 24-hour upload limit passes. I had to switch out Smite for Sigil of Power in the Absolution builds since Smite does not work with wands.

Build Summary and PoB Links

The following builds use either Absolution or Dominating Blow as the main skill (6L) and is accompanied by one or more other minion type(s) to provide utility (mainly to proc Feeding Frenzy):

(1) Theoretical Absolution PoB: https://pastebin.com/1it3CEVZ

(2) Theoretical Dominating Blow PoB: https://pastebin.com/g2nzi4QH

(3) 3.16 Absolution PoB: https://pastebin.com/F7NHg7G6

- Character Name: AbsolutelyNotMango (Lv 92)

(4) 3.16 Dominating Blow PoB: https://pastebin.com/y0CWErxQ

- Character Name: AbsolutelyMango (Lv 92)

Each build is based on the Guardian ascendancy and specializes in reserving life and mana to stack auras as the primary method of scaling damage and survivability for himself and his minions.

Minions


Offensive Auras and Buffs

Defensive Auras and Buffs

Equipment

Absolution and Helmet enchants.

The other line of gems that also spawn sentinels (Herald of Purity and Dominating Blow) both have Helmet enchants that add +# to amount of sentinels.

For Absolution, in terms of DPS, we only have a mere "+# Inc. cast speed"

Should absolution also have a Helment enchant that allows to increase the amount of sentinels?

Absolution during first seconds of a boss fight

I entirely agree with the comments in the thread that during the inital phase of a boss fight (0 sentinels summoned) we are at the mercy of the RNG gods.

I had some bad luck in some fights in which it seems the Sentinels just wouldn't spawn for the first 4 seconds. It didn't feel fun at all.

I could minimize this incrasing cast speed (things like Silver Flask and Vaal Haste) during a small burst, but the problem is minimized, not eliminated.

I do not believe increasing the % spawn rate on uniques is a good idea

This can be abusable in the sense that I could disregard all forms of minion defenses in favor of having glass canon sentinels
(since the % of spawn chance is high, I just don't care if they die often)

Suggestion
A mechanic that guarantees at least 1 sentinel (100% spawn rate) if you haven't used Absolution in the last # seconds.

3.16 Elementalist here.

I've been playing Golem + Spectre + Guardian for this league and adding Absolution made mapping a lot cleaner after learning I can include it to my minion build. There is not much I would suggest looking into, but I would consider adding the refresh to duration + life to when the Sentinels cast their own Absolution. It makes sense considering they are casting the spell itself, just as a minion.

There is a lot of suggestion to adjust the 25% chance on rares and uniques higher. While that would also be nice (50%+ would solve a lot of Boss-related issues we have), with the minions also having synergy with spell echo - if the minions themselves could also refresh themselves and their sentinel brethren the necessity of increasing the chance wouldn't be necessary.

I love this skill and hope it receives adjustments in function and not damage and numbers. We have a few showcases with good build crafters that Absolution can have really good damage (crit + Doryani strat, or shield minion, zombie strat).

Thanks GGG :)

I just tried out absolution for the first time and it feels really good overall. My biggest concern is -

1. Since its a spell and scales with cast speed, it feels very bad to self-cast it. Something like dominating blow doesn't suffer from this problem because of the notable Spiritual Command and attack speed easy to scale from weapon.
Its much harder to scale cast speed and minion cast speed at the same time.

Suggested fix: Modify Spiritual command notable to apply both minion attack AND cast speed to yourself. Or add this as an ascendancy passive (maybe for guardian? since necro is already far better for minions in most scenarios)

Some other feedback
- the visual effect is very bright and hurts the eyes a bit
- mana cost is very high, running into triple digits on even 5L. Again to compare, dominating blow can fix this by getting a claw with mana on hit but only solution for absolution afaik is to get EB or lifetap.

Overall really great skill but clunky because of the above reasons. Make it possible to scale both minion and player cast speed and this will feel much better.

Some suggestions, the skill idea is cool but have tried it and found that is not viable as a main minion damage source.

1) Make them refresh their duration, like HOP.

2) Make them all phys or 100% converted to lighting. Other idea could be to make them 100% phys but converted to a random element, since EE is not a thing for summoners anymore, this way they could work similar to skelly mages.

3) Increase the limit from 3, we don't need a full army, but 4 or 5 would be a huge improvement.

4) Make Spiritual Command also affect cast speed, since summoners don't spec into cast speed the act to cast the skill is very unkward, giving us some kind of cast speed could make this smoother.

5) Change The Scourge so it gives also cast speed to minions, and gives cast speed to the summoner, make the "Minions deal 70% increased Damage if you've Hit Recently" line work with the hits from summoner's absolution spell.

My build is a necro summoner.


Positive Feedback:

-The skill feels really clean to level and play through maps with once you give the sentinels enough movement speed/cast speed.

Constructive Feedback:

-My biggest feedback is the radius increase doesn't apply to the sentinels and there should be some way to increase the minions AoE.
-The enchants are all basically useless due to base radius negating increased AoE and increased cast speed having a pretty minor impact when you already have to scale cast speed for skill to be usable. I like how most enchants either provide a QoL improvement or a significant boost to dps, the ones for absolution seem to be neither.
-It has 2 spell skills but one of them with a longer cool down doesn't seem to do anything. It would be kinda cool if it had a mega spell like solar guard does that it used occasionally or one that had some distinctive characteristic like high crit chance etc.
-At some point you stop being able to see anything that's happening as as summoner with these guys on the screen. Especially in delirium, but really any boss fight where things have a lot of graphic effects. This makes it much harder to do any type of macro to dodge attacks or see patterns of the bosses.

Necro summoner, I've been trying to pump up the build to see how it handles end game content but it seems to be really lacking in single target. Even with +5 to gem lvls and a pseudo 7-link the absolution sentinels cant really handle the final end game guardians/conquerors or even harvests with high life / ele resists in a solid way. I think the easiest fix may be to remove the 50% lightning conversion so you're not forced into full lightning conversion or add extra sentinels at higher gem lvls. For running some pretty crazy gear it starts to fall off in the high reds.