I Hope Limiting a Player to 3 (Clear-Only) Empowered Zombies is Worth the Inconvenience of Charges

TLTR: Charges are still inconvenient and not dependable when it matters (boss fights). So, hopefully, limiting a player to 3 Empowered Zombies out of 10 is worth the inconvenience.


These are just my initial thoughts on this newest change (11-12-2025). I'm still very excited to try it out.

"Raise Zombie: Creating a Zombie from a Power Charge now also creates 2 additional non-empowered Zombies. Empowered Zombie now deals 122-253% more damage with Hits at Gem levels 5-20 (previously 100)."

Is the idea that a user, with a limit of 10 zombies, can only have 3 Empowered Zombies raised at a time? This seems to:

- Dilute the needed power boost of Empowered Zombies
- Dilute the reward for investing in charges.

I've been using Empowered Zombies since the beta came out, and I was excited for the new changes to Empowered Zombie damage (as it was needed). This new change confuses me a bit, as Zombie/Powercharge sustain was never an issue while clearing (and it's non-existent in boss fights), so why the focus on meeting the zombie cap instead of damage? Zombie players still have to use to a completely different skill in boss fights without extra enemies (which they have to plan around), and players were easily at their zombie cap while clearing.

Considering Empowered Zombies don't get a health boost compared to regular Zombies (and how much a build sacrifices to commit to charges), this change conflicts with gems like "Minion Instability", which are very typical gems to use on temporary minions such as Zombies. Why bother with Empowered Zombies at all? If zombies don't exist in a boss fight, because of a lack of corpses, and corpses are found in plenty while clearing, why care about the raised quantity? Is it simply the mana cost savings?

I guess I'm just failing to see how this improves the zombie experience at all. Now that I can only have 3 Empowered Zombies at once, why would I bother investing so much of my build around charges when only 33% of my skill will benefit from it? I guess the hope is that 3 Empowered Zombies are worth the bother of Charges? Hopefully that's the case. But, balance-wise, those three Empowered Zombies will need to be more impactful than 10 regular zombies blowing up (Minion Instability). Otherwise, it's not worth the inconvenience of Power Charges at all.

Those are just my initial thoughts on this newest change (11-12-2025). I'm still very excited to try it out.

Still wanna know what the purpose of making Zombies temporary is supposed to accomplish.

Gemling can generate a charge every 5 seconds so maybe there will be more options to sustain Empowered Zombies in the future? We already have a number of ways to generate them so maybe they wanted to create some niche synergies.

Yeah this change seems really weird. It would make sense if empowered zombies had a separate minion limit from the normal ones, but there was no indication of that in the patch notes at all. I was thinking about using zombies this league after seeing the power charge scaling buff combined with the new offering support that grants charges, but now with this change I'm not sure I want to.