Raise Zombie

A request from my current Necromancer - we wish that we could teach Zombies to break breakables. Yes, they are brain dead, but, Herald of Thunder has no brain at all, and has learned this simple trick! Zombies would smash instinctively, but who can say what motivates Herald of Thunder to smash!

I would LOVE Zombies to persist through logouts...like Spectres and Animated Guardians.

PLEEEEESE make zombies persist through log outs...

I am running 13 zombies, 95% mana reservation and no mana flasks...

Every time I log in the game I have to turn off all my auras, wait for mana to regen sloooooooooowly and summon the zombies and wait for mana to regen slooooooooooooooooooowly and summon a bit more.

What is the point of this -,-

Zombie AI is the thing keeping me from ever playing a zombie build.

Played a Necromancer in 2 leagues as main characters. Absolutely loved them, but there are a few problems with Raise Zombies that sometimes made the experience a lot less enjoyable.

Zombies are pretty passive when it comes to them attacking. Most of the time they tend to run after the player instead of attacking, this is especially hard with many boss fights where you have to get really close to the boss for the zombies to aggro. Moving away a bit from the boss makes the zombies disengage aswell, that is very frustrating. I've been countering this problem by stacking huge amounts of Minion Speed, some use Multistrike to make the zombies stick to the target for longer.

Some approaches to fixing this:

1. Improved Zombie aggressiveness, less priority to follow the player if there are enemies nearby.

2. Minion Stances: Aggressive, Defensive, Normal, or such.

3. Detonate Mines -style skill that makes zombies stick to enemies for a time/untill toggled again/range to played exceeded.

4. Threshold jewel for zombies that promotes aggressive use of them by increasing their aggressive behaviour. This could be in the form of increased aggro range, increased movement speed, and even a downside of some sort. There could also be an exclusive jewel that promotes their defensive use, which could grant a defensive bonus of some sort to the player/zombies while making the zombies prioritize the safety of the player at the cost of reduced aggro range, for example.

Well you know that the undead are quite curious, so when you put down an offering skill or any totem near to a target, they might turn into that direction and, with some luck, start to attack!

Please, fix zombies - they are dumb AF and most of the time able to ignore monsters that hitting me or them and that monsters are in close range.
Not even saying about ranged monsters - on the edge of the screen distance.
And to make them more or less "alive" I need to constantly spam some skills, i.e. channelings - without it (with me idle) they would completely ignore everything!

Also, I has a feeling that they can stuck on the each other and do not attack single enemy (i.e. boss) at all
On the paper I have 1,5 mil shaper DPS, but in fact killing bosses takes much longer than it must be with that paper DPS

This is not something, that can be called as viable summoner. Especially, after you have met some literally "oneshot Mastermind" builds without summons at all.

And I KNOW what I'm talking about
https://pastebin.com/4wF14HQ3
Even in this build gear and skills I feel myself bad with zombie's attitude - they are acting like dumbs

Man, all the updates in the past few years for Path of Exile have been fantastic. The expanded story, more atmospheric music/visuals, and the new abilities and their overhauls have been amazing. It's because of these huge improvements though, especially with the tons of new minion passive tree additions and minion skills, that make the issues with the raise zombie skill stick out even more.


I seem to recall reading back in the day that the passive nature of zombies (and other summons) in PoE unless attacking was to discourage builds like how some people played the necromancer in Diablo 2, which is to just stand around passively as their minions cleared the room. I can understand this stylistic choice if this was the case, but I feel that wouldn't be a concern with recent changes. With the fun options for melee focused summoner builds, and passives that add all you minion offense bonuses to your own character, there is just too much to gain from being an active member for your personal team to continue with their current AI.


Regardless of if this AI pattern was intentional or not, a revamp where summons were aggressive, had smart/responsive AI, and a faster base speed would help them keep up with an active summoner player, instead of greatly stifling their mobility like they do now. The option for AI stances would also help to bring summon AI to the same level as PoE's other recent minion gameplay overhauls.


As a final note, zombies could really use a new purchasable skin. With the cool heavily armed and armoured templar summon designs, and the great premium skins that have come out for the golems (specifically the fire and ice ones), it would be nice to see the zombies get similar love. Something like a resurrected warrior skin perhaps.

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borefficz wrote:

Zombie AI is the thing keeping me from ever playing a zombie build.

What he said. Zombie AI is 5/10 ... they are super lazy and someone has to actually hit you or be in melee range to make zombies actually react. Plz make them more aggressive or something.. I mean since you buff melee - zombies are also melee so give them something too ;)

Minion leech nodes from the tree is not working with zombies, not sure if anyone else is running into this issue.