Raise Zombie

Oh, now Zombies are Really Nerved... I wanna play a Summoner after the Closed Beta, but the Zombies died all few mobs... 49hp.. this is a joke or? they cant stay one attack... still this is not really fun.

If u want, we Should cast more Zombies, okay, but then u should maybe let us Raise Zombies without Corpses...

I think u Nerved the Zombies to hard.

even at about gem lvl 4, + 30% life from passives, still die very fast. Necromantic aegis didnt help much, u may need a gosu shield.

Yeah, the zombie health is nerfed too much. My zombies (at level 5 gem, with passives to support them), in the Prisoner's Gate are dieing as fast as the skeletons are, which is making me need to summon them back constantly and eat basically every corpse in the area. Having 50 health more than the skeletons is one one hit or two hits more, which is not enough.

They're supposed to be much stronger than the skeletons if you need corpses to summon them, yes? Before, they had a good hunk of health, and usually lasted much longer than a skeleton. But now if I get into a big fight I'm lucky if I have any corpses left at the end.

Zombies are much weaker now until about Gem lvl 9, where I noticed a much higher increase in health overall. (From about 600 to 800). I have some passives, so these aren't base values, and the jump is inflated a bit.

This kind of confuses me, as I thought the changes were focused on making the leveling curve for Zombies more even so that they aren't as trash early on. Really what has happened though is that they're trash for much longer than previously. One, because of the health adjustments, and two the addition of act 3 and the rearranging of levels.

It doesn't seem like they're going to be garbage late game, but if their intention was to level the curve a bit so it's not as painful for summoners early on, that has pretty much gone backwards.

It's really hard to judge how much it was nerfed since I didn't keep notes of my zombies leveling before, but they felt weaker and still feel weaker atm. I'm 50 now, have all the minion life nodes in the passives and minion life support on zombies and they have 2659health(based on tooltip) which seems like a pretty good amount since it's like 2.5x what I have, but at the same time I'm in act3 cruel and every single map has one type of mobs that can wipe my whole zombie army in one or two shots. Even with Purity and Reanimation flasks I'm having a lot of trouble keeping anything alive and mostly rely on skeletons and OP spectres(since the mobs are OP, the spectres are too ^^). I did lose Discipline in the transition though because it just feels too weak atm so I skipped it until I can get a Reduced Mana support from someone. That was a pretty decent ES buffer for zombies but still. Also using Enfeeble against rares and stuff but the ones with aoe still destroy all my zombies quasi instantly.

As for early levels, it definitely looked worse than before even. They were as useless as usual in act1 and most of act2 but then act3 hit and they're way inadequate for that too. They still do good damage when they don't die though.

I guess I understand why they'd be nerfed kinda, but I feel if I invest points to grab every health nodes in the tree I should have zombies that can tank quite alright. Maybe mixing some elemental resists to the health% nodes or scaling the new bonus they get on the gem or something could help with this. A big part of the problem is how AoE intensive is act3 though, regardless of the buff zombies would still die all the time, it's like doing maps against leap slamming goatmen with damage mods on the map.

Was also thinking about a new summoner keystone, which would be like Minion Instability but defensive. Maybe even make the 2 exclusive to each other. Basically, when a minion is low health, he detonates and heals all other minions around for x. So if a zombie gets blown up, he heals all the other zombie, and so on, so aoe would be mitigated with only a certain amount of zombies dying and the rest surviving from the heals(assuming not all the deaths are calculated instantly).

I guess in a way this nerf makes Necromantic Aegis more desirable, but like, that's a pretty terrible way to go about it imo.

The change is underwelming.
It's almost impossible playing solo as a summoner in act3.
It doesnt matter if you got all the minion nodes plus minion life. They die in one hit.
Same in acts 2 or 1.

No idea in later game (in close eta they were nice), but I think the nerf to the zombies is as big than its almost impossible to complete the game solo with a summoner and bad gear.

They got zero chance of surviving at the moment :/
Even white monsters destroy them.

This is very very sadly. Nobody wants a summoner that is overpowered and play without skill, but also I think noone will like to play a character that can do anything with his magic or minions. Just relying on other people the entire game, not only for bosses but almost every pack of champions. Specially in hc. It looks like impossible solo, imho.

I just started a summoner Witch as my main class in D2 was a Necromancer (specialized in Skeletons and Fire damage, no less!). Now, I'm WELL aware of the fact that Necromancers were OP PvErs in D2, with 0 risk and amazing clear speed because of how durable skeletons were, so I really wouldn't mind if Zombies were relatively weak and died.

The problem I'm having is that my Zombies die so fast that at some points I can't replace them fast enough to maintain any sort of army. I like the idea someone else brought up to add a Keystone that makes it such that when one undead dies, nearby undead get healed (or, if they're getting one-shotted, +es). That way at least not all of your zombies are dying at once, so while you will need to replace them you will at least have some cover from the remaining zombies to do so.

Yeah, I tried to make a summoner Witch, but I didn't get too far before I canned her. The zombies were barely worth casting to help fight normal mobs, so I wasn't getting my hopes up for a boss fight. And I was right not to, because the Brutus fight was almost comical. My zombies go to attack Brutus and the first one there gets his hands into the air ready to strike when Brutus' first attack connects, one-shotting all four of the zombies. Literally worthless. I killed Brutus by running back and forth spamming Fire Trap (since you can't get corpses in that area), and took it as a sign of things to come. I don't see how I could have improved their effectiveness further at that point, as I'd taken the minion buffs near the Witch starting point.

Maybe I'll try again once they get buffed or once I have gear to twink my summoner and help her get past the low levels.

Same here... I'm reviving my whole army after every fight in act 3 normal, with a LVL 8 Zombie gem , A LVL 4 Minion Health and Minion Dmg. Can't keep up with the damage dealt on them.

Please make them more durable ! The whole appeal of a summoner class is to have an army to do your bidding. I spend most of my early game going for nodes that are supposed to give my summons DMG and Health... Yet all I get is CI bombs that explode before doing any melee Dmg.

In this case, take a page from Diablo 2. In D2, summoning the summons is a small part of the Necromancer's role... Most of his actual gameplay time is spent cursing and using spells like corpse explosion, poison nova , bone wall, etc, to control the battlefield. He's more of a tactician.

In this iteration of the game, the necro barely has time to cast curses, let alone do any crowd control... He's too busy chugging potions and reviving his minions who drop like fly every two seconds.

Personally, I would make Zombie more durable, with resists and armor that scale with difficulty levels and monster levels.

As for Skeletons.... Personally, I would make them frail when not equipped with the Minion Health stone... And pretty tanky once that stone is equipped...
I think having a passive that removes the expiration timer from them would be cool too... That way people that like to use them like bombs would continue using them as such, but those that want a big permanent army would keep them as pets.

Or maybe turn the exising skeletons into tanking skeletions that last longer (Maybe up to a minute)... With another group of Kamikaze Zombies with very low HP and that detonate themselves as corpse bombs...