👻3.20👻 Kay's Summoner💥SRS Bomber💀Poison SRS💀Melee SRS🕷️Spiders💀Skeleton Mages

I think it's too early to say for sure how the balance will shake out without knowing what these new "minion" modifiers are. We know that there will be minion crit chance on the minion wands/shields and crit damage on the wands as that was stated explicitly. There will probably be the general "%Increased Damage" and "% Increased Attack and Cast Speed" already seen on Convoking Wands.

I wonder if they might also add new flat damage modifiers to weapons and the new rings as well. Large amounts of flat damage is what's missing from minion gearing that we didn't have before now that they're adding crit.

Ring prefixes are littered with "Adds # to # ??? Damage to Attacks," it would make sense for them to have minion version of the modifiers on the minion rings. Similarly, flat damage on weapons is available to attacks (by just adding the damage to the weapon) and spells (on appropriate bases). We know it's possible since Ghastly Jewels do it.

At least, that's my hope...

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ShmooDude wrote:

I think it's too early to say for sure how the balance will shake out without knowing what these new "minion" modifiers are.

Need to wait for patch notes... but I think casual and mid level players will suffer because crafting good minion gear is already difficult (expensive). Why does having a fun time need so much specific crafting?

The big problem of flat damage is minions have high base damage. eg. level 20 skele warrior has 483-1127 damage. Current mod range for flat damage is 16-26? It's about 2% damage.

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elaineong613 wrote:

I came here to seek peace after reading the Character Balance...

Not really sure what will be OK in 3.19. So just waiting for patch notes and new version of POB.

I think SRS might be ok. Arakaali spiders too.

I think for league start day I will go to standard and check the builds.

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spaceace7373 wrote:

i plan to have 6 white sockets when i'm done with it. look at the rolls mine has... you couldn't pay me to corrupt it and chance ruining it lol besides, i got mine when they were only 4ex :)

my wand it self crafted. not perfect but i'm happy with it for now

i've been investing over the last 2 leagues to perfect my gear. now that i just crafted a better helmet, of course they are nerfing the crap out of minion builds.

Enjoy it before 3.19 start :)

Record some videos for memories :)

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Vaildez wrote:

Yeah I really don't understand why that hate RS so much... The gem is fun and I loved trying different Spectres. It just doesn't make sense to me that they would keep killing a skill that is already pretty much dead. I can't imagine there were many players running Pure Spectres anymore since the gem has become mostly for support minions.

Remember when you could use any monster for a spectre? Even just for fun you could use the frogs from the prophecy... Now the strongest monster is just a weak spectre, so we just rely on buffs (charges, shield, etc). It's sad.

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ShmooDude wrote:

I think it's too early to say for sure how the balance will shake out without knowing what these new "minion" modifiers are. We know that there will be minion crit chance on the minion wands/shields and crit damage on the wands as that was stated explicitly. There will probably be the general "%Increased Damage" and "% Increased Attack and Cast Speed" already seen on Convoking Wands.

I wonder if they might also add new flat damage modifiers to weapons and the new rings as well. Large amounts of flat damage is what's missing from minion gearing that we didn't have before now that they're adding crit.

Thing is we have a crapton of increased already. on top of this what I missed the first time I read it was the 50% MORE effectiveness of added damage was stripped from the gem as well so even getting flat will be less effective than before. It'll be rough I think the global gem mods are only just going to make up for the ascendancy changes as well

My other concern is that +2 minions will essentially greatly inflate the price of summoner chests from people trying to vaal for it.

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kayella wrote:

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Emplaid wrote:

I don't get it, mage skeletons were nerfed by 75% overall or they removed the 50% added damage from the gem and that gave a 25% damage reduction overall.

It's gain 50% more "added damage"

So if you have +100 cold damage, then the skele gain 150 added cold damage. but most people don't even use flat damage because skeles have high base damage.
eg. skele mage @level 25 has 2300-3400 base cold damage.


25% damage reduction is the main nerf.

Wait, so the 50% more added dmg does not affect the base damage of skeletons?
Always assumed it did since Melee Skeletons does roughly ~50% more dmg than Zombies if you use the same scaling factors and build.

So kinda just assumed they had similar numbers, but GGG added the 50% more added dmg mod to them to increase their scaling since they're summoned minions rather than permanent ones.

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kayella wrote:

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ShmooDude wrote:

I think it's too early to say for sure how the balance will shake out without knowing what these new "minion" modifiers are.

Need to wait for patch notes... but I think casual and mid level players will suffer because crafting good minion gear is already difficult (expensive). Why does having a fun time need so much specific crafting?

The big problem of flat damage is minions have high base damage. eg. level 20 skele warrior has 483-1127 damage. Current mod range for flat damage is 16-26? It's about 2% damage.

Right, but that's because the only source is Ghastly Jewels. They also just nerfed the base damage of all minions, I think (hope) with the intent for flat damage to make up for it.

At highest tier:
Ghastly Jewels ~20-30
Rings ~23-43 (attack)
Wands ~50-90 (spell) or ~100-180 (attack)

So potentially a weapon's flat damage is worth 3-6x Ghastly Jewel mods.

But yeah, as far as crafting difficulty, they said they're improving it, but whether the weighting is such that it's enough to make reasonable items for a reasonable price will determine if this is an issue or not (because you're right, the weighting on convoking wands as it is now is abysmal). Flat damage to spells is currently pretty high weighting on wands, so if the minion version is similar, it might not be too bad to craft.

Of course if they don't add flat damage mods... I think minions will probably end up worse off except for the very high end, which would be sad.

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Deadandlivin wrote:

Wait, so the 50% more added dmg does not affect the base damage of skeletons?
Always assumed it did since Melee Skeletons does roughly ~50% more dmg than Zombies if you use the same scaling factors and build.

So kinda just assumed they had similar numbers, but GGG added the 50% more added dmg mod to them to increase their scaling since they're summoned minions rather than permanent ones.

I think a lot of people confused about the skele mod.

skele mod looks like this:

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"active_skill_minion_added_damage_+%_final"

It's just for added damage like from Ghastly eye.

Base damage mod doesn't have 'added'

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"active_skill_minion_damage_+%_final"