Summon Zombie balance, severely undertuned in early game

I enjoy the playstyle of managing power charges, using corpses to get them, and then the idea of being able to summon a very powerful zombie using my power charges.

This playstyle is demanding, it requires a lot of effort, and it also requires corpses until late game, when you could use your permanent summon as corpses.

The effort to do this should be rewarded, since this is a gem that is available early on in the game. The problem is that these empowered zombies, fully invested, while using offerings, are fucking terrible. They are worse than an unlinked summon raging spirits in every possible way. They are worse than permanent minions which do similar damage, and almost all of them move even faster than an empowered zombie.

Maybe these are balances around using minion instability, but even if that's the case, their early game stats need to be buffed, otherwise they are just a joke of a skill, even with a high effort playstyle that cannot even work against most bosses.

Please review this, as summoning right now is only in a good state for leveling if you cheese the game with arsonists and srs.

I agree I like the raise zombie skill and managing power charges but the skill duration is too low for a raised zombie and the mana/health cost of summoning one too high. The buy in cost through the passive tree to improve it is too costly, and having a max of 3 power charges unless using passive point is too gimping.

I've managed to have my zombies duration last 1 minute with jewels and passive points but it's too much investment for 30 seconds extra.

Ultimately the cost and amount of a clicks needed keeping zombies up just got tiring and I stopped using it.

I expect a lot of this is due to the lack of the Necromancer archetype.