Minion Balance Changes in The Fall of Oriath Beta

I assume that the Skeleton's A.I. will be improved, as the biggest issue they have, more than their damage, is targeting enemies. Like seriously, you can summon them near the enemies and they will not attack immediately, they will travel around a bit and then attack.

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AkitakeKun wrote:

Making minion based spells popular is fine as long as you guys think about the network impact those new popular builds will have, especially in parties, and improve the netcode effectively.

People party?
Last time people partied was pre-2.0 or 2.0 back before we had stupid damage.

I see a lot of people asking about animate weapon, SRS, golems, etc.

This post is about undead minion skills. Skeletons, Spectres, Zombies.

cool..maybe I can try summoner without expecting my cpu to smoke...

Hi Chris, these buffs are quite nice, but one thing I think many people would like to see: Are there any changes coming to minion AI?

Currently zombies and skeletons spend too much time wandering randomly and not attacking enemies nearby. Adding AI similar to the golem jewels "Aggressive" mod would do quite a lot to rectify this.

Another option would be to make that a keystone or notable in the minion clusters, one that makes them Aggressive and one that makes them Defensive.

what are they doing to my skeletons?!

one per cast?! no more helm enchant (god that thing was sexy but a pain in the ass to get)?!

i dont see any health or movespeed buffs... kinda feels like a nerf? but why...

Dear GGG

As someone whose darling build is a skeleton summoner, i need you to understand this:

Skeleton damage is fine, its the other aspects of them that gimp them to their current unpopularity:

They're slow, no inherent aoe, and have no special niche. Skeletons currently are the interim of zombies and SRS, Lower damage than SRS, lower durability than zombies, but way slower than both.

I tend to say the slowness is alleviated by being able to summon them at a range, but the ridiculous mana cost gimps this.

Lower cast time and mana cost being changed "significantly" are lovely, if not for you gimping the skill once again, with "now only summon one skeleton at a time". Are you trying to force people to use echo on them? There is a reason any skeleton build strives for the +1/2 skeletons per cast, because to keep up any sort of momentum, you need it. One at a time max is going to slow down the playtime of this skill WAY too much, even moreso than it already is.

I do dig the 20% base block for 'em, thats nice.

Instead of the dmg buff, while nice, i'd much rather something akin to a high movement speed, or a flicker-esque skill to alleviate their slowness... They don't need damage to fit the current trends, they need mobility.

As i see it, GGG's plan for skeleton warriors is to make them slow, less durable zombies that hit like a truck, which means people will use them (if ever) exclusively for immobile bosses, except it'll be 5 seconds to hit 10 skeletons with base cast speed, currently doable in 4 seconds base, 2 seconds with lab enchant. Thats 5 seconds to get your damage to its "maximum", in a meta where people full-clear maps in under a minute. Allegedly, im not saying skeletons should be capable of the same by themselves, but in the time another clears a map in a minute, the skeleton summoner has cleared what, 12 packs? And thats assuming every skeleton summonup clears 2 packs.

Skeletons don't need damage, they need either mobility or utility.

yea this is nice and all but AI on minions is still bad the only good AI would be decoy totem and only because they divert bosses away from you

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Chris wrote:

There are now fewer sources of additional skeletons; Uniques and items that granted additional skeletons (Including existing items) will now grant no more than 1 additional skeleton, and there are fewer sources of additional skeletons to be found in the passive tree. The helmet enchantment that spawned additional skeletons per cast will be reworked or replaced. With investment in uniques and passives, a player should be able to reach around 15 skeletons. The Army of Bones jewel will now grant 1 additional skeleton, has a limit of 1, and is being reworked.

Of course... right when I started playing around with a cast while channeling skeleton build...

I do not understand the reason for this reduction in numbers unless skeletons are going to be absolutely insane now (which I really doubt). Having a lot of skeletons made up (a bit) for their bad AI and their tendency to just turn into random stragglers who looked like they were trying to locate the buffet instead of a mob. Is the Summon Skeletons gem going to be renamed Summon Skeleton now?
What will happen to the old jewels (Army of Bones with a +1 and limited to 1 does not really sound like an "Army f Bones" anymore, sadly)? The +2 helm enchant?
I mean, will this be nerfed or become legacy? (commence the jokes of it being a legacy league item)

If anything, skeletons need to be aggressive (like have it just build into the skill). Nothing like summoning skeletons on top of a mob and they start walking away from it...