Minion Balance Changes in The Fall of Oriath Beta

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Beejaholic wrote:

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.

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