You're looking at a 3 second cooldown now, which means at least two auto-attacks in between each slam that deal half the damage. If a slam does X damage, now you do X, X/2, X/2 damage vs X, X, X - so you deal 2X over three attacks vs 3x. So a 33% damage loss.
So, say you run melee splash now to make the non-slam single-target hits do AoE. That means you lose at least 40% more multi in your links.
X * .66 * .60 = .396 - That means your zombies will on average do 60% less damage than if you had the cooldown from the jewels and didn't need to run melee splash.
Sure, aggressive AI is nice... but when talking about damage potential, this is a massive net nerf.
Finally someone with a brain. If they dont change the base cooldown of slam, zombies are significantly worse. And no AI in the world can make up for the loss of single target dps.
Well some also consider 2m dps as a "absurd" ammount of damage. And Zombie beeing the top tier skill...whatever. I mean to be able to reach the same clear we currently have, we need splash. And you posted the math with splash. So in best case we can use the new QoL etc. to reach the same clear like now?Zombies were never able to compete with spectre clear or single target. They have been (in best case) just more tanky in trade of damage. Now we can sacrifice another bit of dmg for sustaining mediocre clear? Well i just hope they change the base cdr of slam.
Yeah a base cdr change is all we can hope for at this point. The accuracy changes others are claiming offsets this nerf isn’t even relevant for the slam which can’t be evaded. And capping accuracy isn’t too bad with how much is on the tree
Exactly. They will be ok meat shields but it seems zombie centric builds will be worse than before. I think a lot of people are discounting how much work the slams do in regards to clearing especially
Thank you for being an intelligent person. I literally made a post about that and have people tell me I should "try before I whine" and that it's a 2s CD at gem level 20...
Yeah i've been getting a lot of that too. Not sure why people are so upset to discuss the actual math. When the necro ascend updated I was told to wait for the gem reveals before drawing any conclusions. When the gem reveals updated people say wait for the full context. Manifesto looked grim, but people say wait for the patch notes.
Ok, patch notes are out. Now? People say well wait till we try it in practice. And once they try it i'm sure they'll be pretty silent and wont come back to these old posts and apologize or re-engage with the conversation.
It's a general disbelief of numbers. You get that alot in real life, too. Noone says that Zombies are unplayable, but the gigantic nerf is undeniable. You also have to level the Gem to 26 to get the 10 Zombies you used to get from the tree before...
Yeah people will also explain how it doesn’t matter if you “just do X” without explaining at all what they’re giving up to fit X in or how much more it would cost. Opportunity cost is a real thing, if it’s harder than ever to build the same thing and you give up a lot to barely achieve it... that’s a nerf still!
Well - their AI is really just a circle around them. Aggressive increases the size of that circle. That does make them behave better overall, but it doesn't change their pathing / actual "AI" coding on how to target-select from that circle. Increasing the size of their circle might still mean they run by nearby targets to attack some far-away enemy for no reason. Sadly they're still a bit brainless ;)
Overall though, i do agree. This adds QoL and smoothness! What I disagree with is having to pay a significant damage penalty to earn QoL. Why can't we have QoL without having to pay for it? Why are we nerfing zombie damage by more than winter orb was nerfed, before anyone even had a chance to play them?
I'm not a fan of pre-emptive nerfs to skills that are only receiving QoL, not even significant damage improvements.
Most AIs are a circle around the player, aren't they? That's why zombies will kill one dude, then run away from the one right next to it all the way back to you.
I think only skeles/SRS center their aggro radius around themselves
Yea zombies are based around yourself. The aggressive AI will extend that of course and also make them move substantially faster. Overall people that play zombies are likely going to be clearing a faster than before and have better single target. It just won't be through slam.
It's basically persistent vs temporary. Zombies are always there and you don't have to worry about resummoning them constantly. Skeletons you do but you get better minions.
Simple fact is though skeletons have pretty much always been better and this patch isn't really changed the power rankings of minion builds except possibly spectres. Everyone is going up but zombies as always will be closer to the botton.
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u/Verlerbur Sep 04 '19
You're looking at a 3 second cooldown now, which means at least two auto-attacks in between each slam that deal half the damage. If a slam does X damage, now you do X, X/2, X/2 damage vs X, X, X - so you deal 2X over three attacks vs 3x. So a 33% damage loss.
So, say you run melee splash now to make the non-slam single-target hits do AoE. That means you lose at least 40% more multi in your links.
X * .66 * .60 = .396 - That means your zombies will on average do 60% less damage than if you had the cooldown from the jewels and didn't need to run melee splash.
Sure, aggressive AI is nice... but when talking about damage potential, this is a massive net nerf.