Kay's Summoner Memorial Page | New Guide is linked inside!

Made significant improvements to a number of Spectred monsters. Many monsters that couldn't be spectred previously now can, and many that previously only used their melee attacks in unlife will now use whatever special skills they had in life. Several Spectres that were dealing damage far above others have been toned down.

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TheChosenOne_ wrote:

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kayella wrote:

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TerroR75 wrote:

If this leak is true, then 20% less damage doesn't seem like a big deal, but what about survivability of the spectres because of the lower level? Block will be enough for them to keep them alive?

30% less life for level 85 to level 81. Block should help keep them alive, but ground degen and dot will be deadly.

patch notes are out, how bad does it look for us?

not great, not terrible

Looks like Zombies and Skeletons got it way worse than us tbh, I imagine non-Spectre builds won't have a fun time lol

Well nerf is quite significant: -4 levels of spectres it's 20% less damage, sadly. My dps in pob went down from ~4M per spectre to 3.2M. Didn't use any of author's builds tho, probably if I will optimize my old tree better I can get more dps. But I was lazy to do it in 3.9 considering that I was almost immortal on maps with ~9k life, over 1k hp regen from block and around 10k armour buffed.

Also now you can't craft (but it's still possible to have it) with fossils +1 lvl of spectres on boots. Now it's an elder influence mod. (They nerfed fossils crafts in general)

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Made significant improvements to a number of Spectred monsters. Many monsters that couldn't be spectred previously now can, and many that previously only used their melee attacks in unlife will now use whatever special skills they had in life.

I hope that they added some nasty new spectres and we will find out if there will be better spectres than slave drivers.

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Several Spectres that were dealing damage far above others have been toned down.

Hope it's not about slave drivers :)

I hope the new notables can make up some of the nerfs

Now that official patch notes are out, I'll update the guide. Basically nothing major except the nerf to spectre levels.

UPDATE (12 MAR): Bex_GGG has provided more details on Raise Spectre gem, so a level 25 gems will give level 83 spectres. Not level 81 as we had thought. Drop in DPS is about 11% and about 14% life.

Here are some thoughts about the changes:

1.

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Added a new Dexterity/Intelligence Support Gem - Second Wind Support: Adds an additional cooldown use to supported skills, and grants those skills increased cooldown recovery rate.

Might be useful as a 6th link for spectres with a powerful attack that is on a cooldown.


2.

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Several Spectres that were dealing damage far above others have been toned down. We're looking at you, Atlas Influence monsters.
Added the capacity to raise hundreds of new monsters as Spectres, including those found from Atlas Influence and from league content such as Breach.

This is a bit confusing. The 'toned down' part is followed by 'we're looking at you atlas influence monsters' and 'new monsters as Spectres, including those found from Atlas Influence'. I think this means the new conqueror spectres have separate values for monster and spectre. I don't think they mean existing spectres.

GGG has done this in the past. For example: https://poedb.tw/us/mon.php?n=Pocked+Lanternbearer


3.

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Flame Dash
The increased Cooldown Recovery Speed this skill gains as it levels up has been lowered. It now gains up to 47% increased Cooldown Recovery Speed by gem level 20 (from 76%).
Now gains 1% increased Cooldown Recovery Speed per 2% gem quality (from 1% increased Cooldown Recovery per 1% gem quality).

Probably won't notice this because it only affects the second and third cast.


4.

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Raise Spectre

Raised Spectres are now level 31 at gem level 1, up to level 76 at gem level 20 (previously level 80 at gem level 20).

Raise Spectre 25 will give level 81 spectres instead of level 85. In PoB, if you drop the spectre level from 85 to 81, they do 20% less DPS and have 30% less life.

Example: SD in my EB & MoM build: 3M DPS -> 2.4M DPS and 41k hp -> 31k hp.

The DPS drop is significant if you only think about spectres in 3.9, but if you remember a year ago (3.5 Betrayal league), the benchmark was 1M shaper DPS. And two years ago when UE was added to the game, 300k with 4 spectres was so amazing. That's 1.2M combined DPS. Half the DPS of a single SD.

HP drop is the biggest problem. It means fragile spectres like SDs will have problems in rippy content like delve 500+. For everything else, they will still be great.



UPDATE (12 MAR): Bex_GGG has provided more details on Raise Spectre gem, so a level 25 gems will give level 83 spectres. Not level 81 as we had thought. Drop in DPS is about 11% and about 14% life.

5.

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Spirit Offering

No longer grants a portion of the minion's maximum life as Energy Shield.

Big change that removes an abuse mechanic, so it's a fair nerf. I only used it for spectres and spiders, so I'll just switch that to block based like the other builds.


6.

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Summon Skeletons

Damage dealt by minions at all gem levels has been lowered by approximately 40%.

This will affect levelling iin Act 2. Not a problem. Miight switch to SRS instead?


7.

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Feeding Frenzy Support

Now gives minions from supported skills 25% chance to grant Feeding Frenzy to you on hit at gem level 1, up to 44% at gem level 20 (previously 25% at all gem levels).
No longer causes minions from supported skills to deal more damage while you have Feeding Frenzy.

Feeding Frenzy still applies the feeding frenzy buff, so no real problems there. I'll still recommend it as a 6th link for SDs for mapping because it prevents them from not attacking. It's still useful to link with the support minions so they give a buff to the spectres.

Buff is

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all of your minions have 10% more minion damage, 15% increased movement speed, 15% increased attack speed and 15% increased cast speed

8.

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Ascendancy Balance
Necromancer

Bone Barrier no longer grants Elemental Resistances per minion. Increased Life and Energy Shield Recovery per minion is now 2% (from 3%), capping out at 20% (from 30%).
Commander of Darkness now grants you and nearby allies +30% to all Elemental Resistances (from 20%).

So, this means you can choose Bone Barrier if you want a free guard skill (Bone Armour), some physical damage reduction and 20% more minion hp. Or choose Commander of Darkness if you want free +30% res, +30% damage and +attack/cast speed.

I recommend Bone Barrier while levelling up (base build). After you have good gear and a nice amount of HP/ES, switch to Commander (EB & MoM / PoH / S & S).


9.

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The "Citaqualotl's" one-handed weapon modifiers now grant 50 to 66% increased damage dealt by your minions (from 70 to 74%).

Still a great wand. People sell these for 1-5c.


10.

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Fossils can no longer craft any prefix or suffix mods that cannot be obtained elsewhere.

These mods can still be obtained through Fossil crafting, as long as the base item also fulfills the mod's requirements.

On Boots: +1 to global level of raised Spectres (now from Elder's Influence).

On Helmet: Shaper Influenced helmets can now gain "Nearby Enemies take increased Elemental Damage".

Glove, Amulet and Shield Fossil-exclusive modifiers can no longer be obtained in any form. Existing items will be unchanged.

This means we need Elder base boots. I guess it will make +1 spectre two-tone boots more expensive. +1 spectre / 35% ms two-tone boots will be extremely epensive! It does also mean you can id elder boots with the +1 mod! Or even use alt orbs.


Helmet change is interesting. Another option for crafting.

Gloves are a bit confusing. I'm not sure if it means we can't fossil craft minion damage gloves anymore. The fossil mod is 30% damage and the bench craft is 20%.

If you prefer to listen to me talk about the patch notes, I've uploaded a quick video to my youtube channel:

https://youtu.be/hoC-zSvRHYs


I'll make a league starter build video next. I'll include the levelling trees and a quick bit of advice on how to level up to maps. I hope that will be useful for people.

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kayella wrote:

6.

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Summon Skeletons

Damage dealt by minions at all gem levels has been lowered by approximately 40%.

This will affect levelling iin Act 2. Not a problem. Miight switch to SRS instead?

skellies - infernal legion - minion damage - (elemental focus)

Just cast and keep running.

About skelletons and leveling, may be i missing something but what the reason to use them with infernal legion? Don't get it.
I did few test runs in SSF A10 Kitava all passives and 3 labs included from scratch (league start simulation). Finished in ~5h30m at lvl 64 - nothing special in my opinion. I'm very bad at inventory manangement and not using movement bind to sort inventory while Im moving. Hardest part from start till first spectres in act 3 and then after act 5 it goes pretty smooth.
So about skelly - I found out that they do outstanding solo target damage (so in 3.10 it will be nerfed) and was using them with 3-4 link Skelletons-Minion damage-Deathmark-MeleePhysdamage/PhysToLightning/Multistrike. I was using them from brutus kill till the end at bosses.
With Infernal Legion i used SRS from entering prison till i got Skitterbots.
So my question is what is the reason to use Skelletons with Infernal legion if you can use it with SRS + Holy flame totem on top of it if needed. I found out that I have massive issues with solo target damage(hard to kill brutus and merveil + they constantly killing our minions) at first act. So i can cast few times skelletons and forget about them until they die and spam srs with infernal legion instead instead. Tell me please what im missing considering that we are talking about league start simulation without any specific gear.

P.S at the same time zombies are pure trash. Until level 20-30 +- they will always die, so im not even bothering to summon them and starting using them with feeding frenzy at lvl 31. (just for buff to other minions)