Here's an early look at the Necromancer Ascendancy in Path of Exile: Blight

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Elhazzared wrote:

Never seen empower being used in any minion build. I've never played one, I'll be fair in admiting to that. But absolutely no build whatsoever that I have seen ever used or advised at any point to use empower, even a level 4 one so I'll remain doubtful on that end. Kinda the reason i'm not particularly entused by the want +1 minion gems but they do have other bonus so... Yeah.

As for zombies dying. Again not acording to what I've seen and I've seen them stand in the uber shaper beam like they don't give a damn so. Life doesn't seems like a concern. it is early game when you don't have leech and regen on them but after you get those going, you probably don't care anymore.

I also doubt the carrior golem will be enough damage buff to make up for what the ascendency should be giving, but fair enough I'll reserve judgment there, you could be right and it could be a ridiculously high buff for a golem. I just have my doubts.

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GoldDragon32 wrote:

OMG, you're right, those Auras you reserve mana on do affect your minions - Which is totally different then how Auras affect minions as a Necromancer, thanks for asking me to think about that!

OK, sure, fine, the small passives of Guardian can give your auras 10% increased aura affect, I guess that's something. Not something I'd ever consider remotely competative with what Necromancer does for minions, but it's "something".

I just dont see how Guardian competes with Necromancer for any minion build other then Herald of Purity. It does so little for minions, while Necromancer still has a lot of pretty powerful minion stuff in it. With the possible exception of Specter builds, it seems stronger then the current necromancer to me. I'm especially excited to see Mistress getting it's self-offering penalty halved.

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DemigodParadox wrote:

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Elhazzared wrote:

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DemigodParadox wrote:

So the gem changes combined with the new necromancer means a rediculous monumental beyond stupid buff to zombies, animate guardian, animate weapon, golems, corpse builds, and a few gimmic builds. We also see a small buff to non-crit skeleton builds. Meanwhile, crit skeleton builds got a small nerf and spectre might as well no longer exist. Maybe the spectre gem also got it's strength moved to it but we don't know that.

With the minions that were buffed, Necromancer will be just as viable of an option as Champion or Guardian and we will see a lot of minion builds this league. The raw clear speed on minion builds will be almost 40% of a GG TS build now on the upper end.

What monumental buff is this we're talking about?

Bonus moved to gems? No one is entirely sure that the entire bonus was moved. We know minion numbers was and some damage and life buffs but not sure if in totatily.

More over, that wasn't really good enough back then. Not without major gear to make the builds actually good. So we got practically what we had before. The small buffs they got now are not really worth it. You'd probably be stronger going with a different ascendency because the buffs you are losing are minuscle but you can get other types of buffs, especially where survivabillity is concerned.

The 20% more life on node 10 and +2 minion levels on 12 are absolitly obscene amounts of power for all of the above mentioned. Animate guardian really will be immortal now and you won't have to resummon Zombies anymore. The damage from +2 levels on top of all of the other levels is going to be a huge damage bonus and now most minions will be moving faster. Minions like zombies were always pretty good till red maps where they hit a brick wall but now the wol and clear speed of these minion builds are gonna be drastically higher.


To put these buffs in perspective, look up how many exalts a 20 quality lvl 21 animate guardian gem had been...

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pphnx wrote:

zombies didnt die even in red maps if you are using baron and montregul. i remember i did not lose a single zombie against shaper.

+2 is huge but without montregul and baron zombies will still die in high content. may be aukunas will(zombies are corpses) and corpse pact(%50 corpse life) but if you get corpse pact you cant get bone barrier and +2 minion level node. this is the problem.

another lose is convocation cooldown(invoker) which really helps clearspeed and boss fights.
I hope they dont forget conv cooldown.

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GoldDragon32 wrote:

I just dont see how Guardian competes with Necromancer for any minion build other then Herald of Purity.

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Shagsbeard wrote:

M'kay… raise specter is out. How high can we pump it up? Level 28 would give us level 88 specters. We've never seen that before.

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KnightAgenta wrote:

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Shagsbeard wrote:

M'kay… raise specter is out. How high can we pump it up? Level 28 would give us level 88 specters. We've never seen that before.

91 is theoretical max level. At 88 it's a 10% life loss if you lose 100% increased life from the ascendancy. At 91 it's a 10% gain (I think), and keep in mind there is more minion life being added to the tree, and 20% MORE Minion life from the Ascendancy.

EDIT: To explain it better: level 84 specters with soul weaver are equivalent to level 90 specters without it. And we are getting even more minion life from the tree and ascendancy.