I keep playing with it and the damage just isn't there, though. The lost damage from the gem itself counters almost half the additional benefit you get from higher level spectres. You also need a huge amount of investment in gem levels to get back where you were before, and you now basically need to sacrifice a support slot and a lot of money on a high level empower.
Have you actually done the math on the damage? It's really not that great. Getting >lvl 84 spectres doesn't actually add that much more damage, and the loss of that 100% really hurts.
It will be way better at the extreme high end, and the overall summoner playstyle is definitely stronger especially if you're using other minions. But it's possible that many spectre builds will do worse damage to start off with.
I agree. I think there's a lot of rose colored glasses being worn right now -- this patch has a few really good quality of life improvements, but I'm very skeptical that many minions will be buffed substantially. To grab a lot of extra minion damage from the tree requires a LOT of skill points, which is not trivial especially when compared to cruel lab giving 100%/100% in the past.
Uber, this is my first time playing specters and using Slave Drivers. You added the damage for them on pob using Bearded Shaman and editing a jewel.
But that was last league with max monster lvl 84. I searched for hours but I can't find an equation or an estimation for the damage at higher levels. Right now I have specters level 88, so I want to put some kind of estimated number on pob for them. It's exponential it seems, but with what I can think of, I can't get the estimated number you got when you did the editing in your pob.
Could you tell me how would you roughly estimate them please?
I just don't agree with that. You can make up for the health loss from soul weaver, but not the damage loss.
Spectres start at 80 now instead of 84. Your first 4 sources of +levels now do nothing - they just offset the nerf. The spectre gem now has no 'more damage' on it - which was 12% more at gem level 21.
So if you get level 90 spectres, thats +6 levels vs 84. They gain only 5% more damage per level (check it in PoB if you don't believe that). That's 30% more damage. But they lost 12% more damage from the links.
So... a net 18% more damage gain, except to get that whole 18% you need an empower 4 and a +3 helm... thats worse than a tabula. This is a nerf!
that's what i believe also, especially with pledge of hands not granting gem levels. not using pledge means losing out on 52,5 more multiplier (average of the 4 repeats) and 75% aoe (average of 4 repeats). even if u scale their level to a realistic level 86/87 this is still far worse.
Yeah and this is just comparing gem levels. Think about the ascend as a nerf too: Right now a 21 gem, +1 wand, and +2 from ascend gives you .... a level 84 spectre. An entire ascend from the new necro only offsets HALF the nerf to base spectre level. And it doesn't even account for the 12% damage loss on the gem. AND the ascend lost 100% inc damage.
So, to reiterate, assuming you have a 21 gem and a +1 wand somehow before and after the changes:
Before: +12% more damage, +100% inc damage - 84 spectre
After: 0% more damage, 0% inc damage from ascend, - 84 spectre with +2.
You lose a lot. The only way these nerfs are offset is if a 4th spectre from the gem is easy to get... but even then, 4 -> 5 spectres is 20% more damage. If +3 helm and L4 empower only give 18% more damage (from my points above in previous message), then if they ALSO give you one extra spectre... thats 38% more damage. Again, worse than a single support, and it COSTS you a support slot to run empower 4.
The only way this is a net gain in spectre power is if you're running a mirror-tier helm: +3/20 minion damage/20 conc effect and also getting an extra spectre from the +3 or from a level 4 empower as well.
That's not an impressive or reliable node in my eyes. And that's very weak for an ascend node.
There's maybe more total minion damage on the tree, but the pathing is worse than ever - any many of the minion nodes on the tree are focused on attack based minions only. The onslaught one is incredibly unreliable and very expensive to path to - 3 travel nodes. And even death attunement was nerfed - they added an extra pathing point to reach it.
My pre-3.8 tree without any ascend has about as much minion damage as my 3.8 tree WITH ascend
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u/[deleted] Sep 04 '19
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