Raise Spectre: Physical/Chaos VS Elemental base damage balance

Been playing spectres for a few leagues, as far as I see, physical/chaos spectres are never popular. The popular spectres, Sentinels/Wickerman/TVanguard/Solar Guard/Fire-raiser/Fire-eater, are all elemental (caster as well, but I am not going to discuss spell vs attack in this post)

IMO, the major reason is that physical/chaos mobs have much lower base damage than elemental ones due to how they are balanced around.

Let's say an average character at lv80, farming T10 maps:
1. Being an EV or ES build with 0 physical damage mitigation: Ready to go.
2. Better cap your elemental resists or you would be toasted. Capped resists is a must for every build.
3. Being -50% chaos resist: it's fine in most cases.

So basically it's safe to say:
1. Mobs' physical damage are balanced around 0 phys mitigation.
2. Mobs' elemental damage are balanced around 75% resists.
3. Mobs' chaos damage are balanced around -50% resists.

And that's why there's a huge difference in base damage of physical/chaos mobs and elemental ones.

A few examples:

Comparison #1:

Solaris Champion in lv59 zone The Solaris Temple Level 1:
http://poedb.tw/us/area.php?n=The+Solaris+Temple+Level+1
Default attack: damage: 329.1 aps: 1.25

then Solar Guard in the same zone:
http://poedb.tw/us/mon.php?n=Solar+Guard
SpecialBeamCannon Deals 2085 to 3128 Fire Damage
Fireball Deals 776 to 1202 Fire Damage

That's something like 300% -ish more dps, let alone the EE vs nothing, range vs melee, no penalty vs accuracy things.

Comparison #2

Lunarsworn Wintermage in lv58 zone The Lunaris Temple Level 1:
http://poedb.tw/us/mon.php?n=Lunarsworn+Wintermage
Glacial Cascade Deals 78 to 120 Physical Damage, Deals 144 to 218 Cold Damage

Frost Sentinel in the same zone:
http://poedb.tw/us/mon.php?n=Frost+Sentinel
Ice Spear Deals 494 to 741 Cold Damage

Both are spells in this case, still have like 100% - 150% more damage in difference because GC are partially physical.


Comparison #3

Ancient Sentry Apparatus in lv54 zone The Vaal City:
http://poedb.tw/us/mon.php?n=Ancient+Sentry+Apparatus
IncaMinionProjectile Deals 61 to 91 Physical Damage, Deals 41 to 61 Chaos Damage

while the little skeleton in the same zone Vaal Arsonist
http://poedb.tw/us/mon.php?n=Vaal+Arsonist
SkeletonProjectileFire Deals 840 to 1309 Fire Damage

well I think it's obvious enough....


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tldr: mobs have much lower physical/chaos damage than elemental by nature due to the way they are balanced around, there should be compensation in some way on the Raise Spectre gem to make those physical/chaos mobs usable as spectres.

Don't forget monsters too have ele resists but no chaos/phys mitigation. The only problem is players can lower those, if summoners weren't able to do that there'd be no need to balance anything.

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silumit wrote:

Don't forget monsters too have ele resists but no chaos/phys mitigation. The only problem is players can lower those, if summoners weren't able to do that there'd be no need to balance anything.

But summoners are not only able to but also really good at lowering enemies' ele resist. Summoner is one of the classes that can make best use of EE, which means free and reliable -50% resist. Let alone other source like penetration and curses.

In fact "mobs having elemental resist" is the factor that makes ele spectres even more superior to phys/chaos ones because the free and reliable -50% resists of EE.

I wanted to write sth like that myself. Glad that I found your post. I can add to that:

Projectile spectres are the only way to go in PoE. All other types (melee, (delayed, aoe, spell casters)) don't have any chance to be comparable to the top projectile specters.

Not only that, but we have various ways to scale up elemental damage. EE, Ele Weakness + Elemental Type Curse + Penetration + Proj Weakness. That's one perma debuff + optionally 2 resistance curses and one direct damage curse.

Phys and Chaos don't have that: No EE, no pen, "only" Vulnerability and starting with 3.1 we have Despair for Chaos Damage. No auras giving phys damage or chaos damage, apart from Envy. However the numbers Envy's giving is really low and doesn't give any mentionable advantage over not using it. Plus it's an 50% Mana Reservation Aura making it even more worthless.

The AI is also a problem on many spectre. Some have potential but are bricked by fucking standard attack. The best spectres only have on attack type, e.g. Frost Sentinel. They only use Ice Spear in every fucking situation and not like other spectres switch to std attack when in melee range.

After playing for years with Flame Sentinels, now Solar Guards, I tried to find spectres which are mechanically different and are _somewhat_ comparable in clear speed and/or single target. There aren't many good ones out there despite the huge quanitity of different mob types.

- TV and WM are fire dots (elemental again). They lack clear speed and are only good for single target. One can bypass this by switching spectres or using golems.

- Lunaris Concubine is a viable phys attack spectre, I'm guessing its damage gets converted, but at vanilla they are using phys and cold damage. Once again they are projectile spectres.

-Slashed miscreations were somewhat viable before the DD nerf, now they are utter trash: not enough damage even if fully buffed and their clearspeed is slow af.

There are some more examples but i'll leave it at that for now.

Status ailments are a no go for spectres. Put EF in and you have way more damage than any ignite could give you. Freezing / shocking doesn't work that well with spectres. They can do it, of course, however spectres are cleary designed to be dps machines.

I want GGG to give _interesting_ abilities to old and / or new mobs to make them viable and comparable at least to T2 spectres (Stygian Revenant, Flame Sentinels, Lunaris Concubine, Goatman Fire-Raiser etc.). They shall be of phys, chaos, lght or ice type, because we sure as hell have enough viable projectile fire spectres. Give Spectres unique abilities or from gems. I really can't see fireballs anymore.