Minion Balance Changes in The Fall of Oriath Beta

Looking forward to logout spectres and skeleton mages finally being of potential use...? Perhaps the mages should be convocable, but I'll be okay with them as-is, let's see.

rubbish! that's not balancing. that's just reducing server load.

not a single idea can be found in that manifesto that relates to playstyle or how to make minions more fun.

if you reduce the number, most of all you'd have to increase the survivability of the fewer minions. instead, all the "manifesto" states is reducing numbers and upping damage. eg. golems with added life already die during red maps all the time. they all should have some leech or regeneration to not die in every breach, essence and boss encounter.

that's a shame of a "manifesto". it is missing all points on how the game will become better by the changes. and no, serverload is not a point for a "minion balance change" manifesto.

Is no one else reading this as skeleton mages becoming their own skill gem? They are distinguishing it as it's own skill, not as a sub-note of the regular summon skeleton... is this an indirect reveal of a new skill gem?

Yeah, just throw more damage at it. I really wonder what you actually work on, because these are the changes you come up with while taking a crap. You guys are a fucking joke.
Also you already store animated guardians, there should be zero problems storing spectres. That you haven't come up with a solution for years is mind-boggling.

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Chris wrote:

Skeleton Warriors
These have been significantly increased in damage, and now deal 135% more damage per second with a level 20 gem. Their attack animation has been sped up and improved so that they strike earlier in the swing. The Summon Skeletons skill has had its cast time reduced to 0.5 seconds from 0.8 seconds, and now only summons one skeleton per cast. The mana cost of the skill has been significantly reduced. Skeletal Warriors now have an inherent 20% chance to block. The skill now summons up to 5 skeletons at all levels of the gem, instead of growing from 4 to 6 as the skill increased in level. They now have a -30% multiplier to added damage, down from -50%, bringing them in-line with the multiplier on Raging Spirits.

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.

Is this for real? Are you NERFING Summon Skeletons? WOW. And here I'm leveling a Skele Summoner in LSC thinking at least one of my characters won't be nerfed to shit into 3.0. May as well just dump it now.

As a summuner from all league I play, I am very happy for those changes.

Buff damage of Zomby and Skelly are really good.

The only thing that kept me from rolling a spectre build this league is how aggravating it is to have to keep re-summoning spectres. Combine that with the utter abysmal performance this league and I just can't be bothered to keep being kicked and re-summoning them. Especially since there's no 100% guarantee that you'll be able to re-summon your exact spectre on demand (*sigh* trying to get flame sentinels and constantly getting galvanic ribbons is pure ragefuel).

Allow people to pick the spectre they want and allow them to persist through logouts and I probably will just go summoner all the time. lol

It's a good start, thou there is room for improvement.
But I've already PMed my thoughts on the matter.
Still, happy Minions are getting a look over, they are in dire need of readjusting.

As a long time summoner and I mean a freaking long time summoner.

The damage buff is fine and sure I'll take that, but that isn't even remotely close to what we have been asking.


Spectre: Stop with the level of the corpse stuff, either tie it to the gem lvl or the char level. It is frustrating beyond belief helping a low lvl friend and having your lvl 77+ spectre die against normal dominus.

Nothing to help with the AI at all? It gets frustrating casting a offering behind me so all of sudden my minions fall back standing there until I cast a curse or something on the mobs they should be hitting all the time. They really need to be more aggressive.




I tried the skeleton mages with, the dmg buff wont do much to help them. What they need is to be affected by separated from melee skeletons. Making a build for them isn't fun when their cast isn't even affected by spell echo. Not to mention they need chain/fork/pierce/lmp/gmp to even be half ass at hitting all mobs. You need to work on how they work against more mobs.

Since all elements get spawned by the same gem, make the chain/whatever come from each elements. Make Fire about AoE, Lightning chain and frost pierce all automatic and instead we can focus on having them survive and deal decent damage.

It´s been years, with minions being realy realy realy bad. I love to see improvements, but THIS?!
This doesnt change a thing.
Biggest minion problem overall?
- Minion AI is crap (ie, I retreat and instead of keep hiting the fkcing boss my retarded zombies follow me-.-)
-Minion Movement speed way 2 fkcing low (try queens escape once and c how much this actualy inpacts clear speed/minion reaction times und overall smoothnes)
-way too hich cd on convocation(only way in this game to actualy somewhat control those dumb minions and it even wastes sockel slots)
-Minion defense(If your not running a lvl 24/25 zombie gem your zombies die to almost every andgame boss and its impossible to just resummon since their mana cost is ridicolous)

The damage was the smallest problem here. How hard can it be to just increasing their base ms, decrease convo cd and make them go ham like the golems do(AI wise).