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

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Deadandlivin wrote:

GGG mentioned this in the patchnotes:


So they said that at gem level 20 all minions should have recieved a ~20% dmg nerf. You think this is slapped on top of all other nerfs?

For example, Skeleton Mages recieved a blanket ~25% dmg nerf:


So in total, mages in this case would have recieved a ~45% dmg nerf from the skill gem nerfs alone if we disregard the removal of the 50% more added dmg multiplier. Keep in mind that this totally disregards the nerfs to power and Frenzy Charges so I think we're still looking at MASSIVE dmg nerfs across the board for mages.

It's kinda funny to read GGG's solution actually!

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Generally minion life and damage is unchanged in the very early game. 30% lower at gem level 1.

Is 30% less the same as unchanged? Maybe my English is not good.

I'm not sure what GGG will do. But this is my guess. You have POB right? Look for act_int.lua to see gem scaling. You can find part for stats and then levels. So they can add "active_skill_minion_damage_+%_final" and put level 1 = -30, level 2 = -29, -until level 30 = -10.

This will add scaling damage per level.

If you just compare ascendancies... Guardian are better for minions then necro now, except phys spectres maybe?

Should we swap from necro to guardian? - charges,20% free all res, +30AOE, 10 more dmg, 30 inc damage, 40% attack and movement speed, 80% curse res. Just from ascend.

I would assume vicious projectile support works with Skeleton Archers from Phantasmal summon Skeletons but POB doesn't show them getting any damage form it so now it has me doupting myself.

Anyone know for sure whether that combination works or not?

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DontRepairYourselfMind wrote:

If you just compare ascendancies... Guardian are better for minions then necro now, except phys spectres maybe?

Should we swap from necro to guardian? - charges,20% free all res, +30AOE, 10 more dmg, 30 inc damage, 40% attack and movement speed, 80% curse res. Just from ascend.

Sadly, I think Kay will grow a long neck in 3.19...

Guardian two ascendancy:
40% ias
40% ms
10% more damage
intimidate/unnerve

I think we will all be using melee minions because skele mages are too nerfed and range spectres too weak. So the 40% ms makes a big difference. And 40% ias is a big buff too.

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DontRepairYourselfMind wrote:

If you just compare ascendancies... Guardian are better for minions then necro now, except phys spectres maybe?

Should we swap from necro to guardian? - charges,20% free all res, +30AOE, 10 more dmg, 30 inc damage, 40% attack and movement speed, 80% curse res. Just from ascend.

Personally, I'm not very impressed with Guardian. I think it actually still does less damage than Necro. Necro still gives 100% increased minion dmg, ~20% minion attack speed as a base.

We're also most likely going to be picking Plague Bringer(Assuming Bone Barrier isn't required to keep minions alive). This should give us 30% AoE, 10% more dmg mod and 10% reduced dmg taken which is very strong. With Desecrate on a 4 second Trigger it should be fairly consistent. Might have to selfcast Desecrate though for bosses which is kinda yikes.

30% minion elemental resistance is also extremely undervalued. No one wants to get minion resistances from gear or in the tree. Without Commander in Darkness, your minions are most likely not going to be resistance capped unless you invest alot into your gear or run something like Elemental Army.

And finally, the most important thing for Summoners in general is the quasi requirement to run Mistress of Sacrifice for Bone Offering to cap both spell and attack block. But maybe running Glancing Blows as a guardian would allow minion builds to continue abusing Aegis Aurora, even if you're dropping Bone Offering.

If I had to guess, Necromancers will still be the best minion ascendency in general. I think Elementalist will be the best conversion/elemental minion build(Not Mages), especially if you run Mistress of Sacrifice on forbidden Jewels.

I also think Occultist most likely is better than Guardians, especially with mistress from forbidden Jewels.

Honestly, I personally don't think Guardians offer too much.
(Btw, Harmony of Purpose does not work for your minions. They are not Party Members, had it worked, then maybe Guardian would edge out Necromancers)

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Torguemada wrote:

I would assume vicious projectile support works with Skeleton Archers from Phantasmal summon Skeletons but POB doesn't show them getting any damage form it so now it has me doupting myself.

Anyone know for sure whether that combination works or not?

It should work!

There are some gems that don't work for minions in POB but work in the game. It's because the minion skill doesn't have all the right tags. For example some spectres don't show damage increase when you use multistrike in POB. But if you link it in the game they will repeat their melee hit.

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Torguemada wrote:

I would assume vicious projectile support works with Skeleton Archers from Phantasmal summon Skeletons but POB doesn't show them getting any damage form it so now it has me doupting myself.

Anyone know for sure whether that combination works or not?

A tip, don't use Phantasmal Skellies. Archers are the weakest minion in the game, they're more undertuned than raising the small crab spectres in the Strand when you start the game.

For some reason, they have an abyssmal scaling.
Here's their numbers on their only attacking move:

For reference, these are the numbers of normal skeletons:

The reason why you probably aren't seeing the dmg increase from Vicious Projectiles is probably because you don't have Skeleton Archers checked in your PoB, but the base Summon Skeleton.

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Deadandlivin wrote:

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DontRepairYourselfMind wrote:

If you just compare ascendancies... Guardian are better for minions then necro now, except phys spectres maybe?

Should we swap from necro to guardian? - charges,20% free all res, +30AOE, 10 more dmg, 30 inc damage, 40% attack and movement speed, 80% curse res. Just from ascend.

Personally, I'm not very impressed with Guardian. I think it actually still does less damage than Necro. Necro still gives 100% increased minion dmg, ~20% minion attack speed as a base.

We're also most likely going to be picking Plague Bringer(Assuming Bone Barrier isn't required to keep minions alive). This should give us 30% AoE, 10% more dmg mod and 10% reduced dmg taken which is very strong. With Desecrate on a 4 second Trigger it should be fairly consistent. Might have to selfcast Desecrate though for bosses which is kinda yikes.

Plaguebringer's problem is Offering eats all 5 corpses from desecrate. You need alt quality desecrate to get 6 corpses so there is one extra to activate it.

Necro only gives 10% ias. Maybe 16% because we can run 2 auras in 3.19? So Guardian has +24% ias. It's not too bad!

Guardian has 20% inc + 10% more + 10% damage taken (intimidate/unnerve). So Necro has 80% inc. I think for good gear, Guardian will be better because of stacking inc damage.

Block is a good point, but it's possible to cap block without offering and GB with reckless and brassdome... my updated spider uses that.

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DontRepairYourselfMind wrote:

Guardian are better for minions then necro now, except phys spectres maybe?

Not really.

Necromancer undispudetly is the strongest summoner for full chaos conversion (4 white sockets Triad Grip) in 3.19:

Herald of agony, zombies, animate weapon, skeletons (melee/archers), etc.

Permanent unholy might is super strong for it, just slightly weaker than +2.

Basically, changes of necromancer pretty much binding it to chaos/poison damage, but its definitely worth it.

Full chaos convertion is very beneficial - monsters and bosses have less chaos resistance than elemental, there is no chaos reflect, and some more.

For builds like herald of agony or animate weapon, getting 4 sockets triad grip was better than running hatred aura.

Overall, all minion builds are severely nerfed.

But in 3.19 ascendancies become more niche: Necromancer is for physical/chaos/poison builds, Elementalist is for golems again. I can't say that Guardian is for everything else tho.

So, yes, Necromancer isn't a go-to minion ascendancy now, but it doesn't change the fact that it definitely excells in its niche.

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kayella wrote:

It's kinda funny to read GGG's solution actually!

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Generally minion life and damage is unchanged in the very early game. 30% lower at gem level 1.

Is 30% less the same as unchanged? Maybe my English is not good.

I think you're misinterpreting the information by merging two quotes together.

There's:

"

Generally speaking, minion life and damage is unchanged in the very early game, roughly 30% lower in mid acts, roughly 20% lower at level 20 of the minion skill, and roughly 10% lower at level 30 of the minion skill.

Basically, this says that minions very early game (Act 1) will be the same, mid acts (Act 4-6) will be about 30% worse. There's nothing about gem level there so for example Zombies, which you get almost right away, will be unchanged at gem level 1, but Golems which require level 34 for gem level 1 will already be somewhere like -20% to -30% (depending on the definition of "mid acts").

Then there's the next section which contains things like:

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Summon Skeletons: No longer has Minions gain 50% more Added Damage. Skeletal Mages now deal approximately 5% less damage at gem level 1, scaling to approximately 25% less damage at gem level 20. Now costs 5 mana at gem level 1 (previously 4), up to 16 at gem level 20 (previously 12).

Note, that this second section is in addition to the information from the first.

So level 20 skeleton mages:

-20% from general minion nerf
-25% from targeted nerf
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-40% total nerf (60% of 3.18 damage)

Not counting the "added damage" change, but since those stats made very little difference before, it's not very important here.