Yeah, it’s that guy again, yeah, it’s been like, 2 hours since the update went live. Here’s what i have to say so far, more to come after in depth number testing.
Wraiths: Not a lot to say since i don’t know if the issue is a bug that will be fixed in a minute, or intended but not clear, especially in light of it being advertised as a feature of the rework, but currently “Covenant of souls” (+2 maximum wraiths) doesn’t work with twined spirits, i.e. it doesn’t increase your limit from 2 to 4 as it suggests. if this is a bug, then once it’s fixed i’d say the wraiths are better overall for not having to mess with them, however if it is intended, then just like archmage and dread phalanx, it is a legitimate nerf to our own damage for the convenience of not having to press a button to maintain 100% uptime and an already easy to maintain spell in light of the new cap of 6 (or 8 with covenant) so more on this when (or if) we get clarification from devs.
Abomination: this unfortunately has the exact same issue i was worried it would have, and got slapped with a wet noodle for expressing before the patch went live, although it does seem that the devs attempted to mitigate the early concerns by increasing the minion limit before the abomination decays from 2 to 5, it continues to be problematic.
To start, my big necromancer (i have two, i’m going based off the high level one for convenience of skill leveling) can have 11 skeletons and 5 mages, which can be eaten to create a permanent abomination with 480% increased damage (30% per minion) compared to a (theoretically consistent) 780% power abomination that’s allowed to consume 10 extra minions in the form of 8 wraiths and 2 golems (i’m not including temporary minions, as i fundementally don’t believe that they should be consumable to begin with, furthermore, having the above list of minions means locking all 5 spell slots anyways so you’d have to sacrifice golems to get one or two more temporary minions, and put simply i’m just not interested in that level of theory right now)
So out the gate, our abomination is losing ~40% of it’s power just to gain the convenience of not having to press the button every few minutes to maintain 99% uptime. I’ve said so in the past, but exchanging considerable power for minor convenience just feels bad. incidentally i would have made the same complaint about wraiths, however the devs actually took step to mitigate this issue for them by adding a talent that considerably increases wraith potency just after the twin spirit node, however the abomination gets no such love.
unfortunately the issues with the new abomination talent doesn’t stop there, as not only do we have to suffer a 40% weaker abomination, but it also forces us not to use our maximum mages and skeletons, or in other words, it actually is a talent that nerfs 2 other skills in addition to it’s own. as i said earlier, i can have 11 skeletons and 5 mages, but if i want my weaker abomination to stay permanent, i can only resummon my mages, and it effectively deletes summon skeletons from my bar only to deal less damage than a scenario where i get to have all my skeletons, all my mages, and a nearly twice as strong abomination with close to 100% uptime which is controllable as i need it. so lets say it ry to mitigate my skeleton and mage losses by running dread phalanx and archmage, which means i’d have 1 big mage and 4 big skeletons with a permanent abomination, just 2 skeletons shy of my max under those circumstances.
this would mean that my abomination goes from being 40% weaker with 16 consumable minions, to 75% weaker for having less minions to eat, but those minions are moderately stronger (while still being inherent nerfs to their own trees, as has been the known case for more than a year)
Simply put, the abomination change isn’t even worthless, it’s actively toxic game design. do not use that talent, do not use this spell. they could’ve fixed everything by not limiting the minions you can re-summon, but they didn’t and until they actually fix it, it’s a dead ability.
No comments on dread shade, i didn’t use it before out of spite, and this shall continue to be the case.