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Cyclone benefited from a combination of melee range and area modifiers in a way that let it surpass the area of effect of almost any other skill, alongside all of the other benefits that Cyclone has. Rather than punishing other skills that use melee range, we've changed how Cyclone calculates its area, making the increase granted additive with other area increases.
This has meant that we've been able to provide more melee range on the passive tree. Master of the Arena, Brinkmanship, Bone Breaker and Splitting Strikes now grant +2 melee range, up from +1. Cleaving, Flaying and Claws of the Pride now grant +1 melee range. This will improve the area of Strike attacks, making them easier to use and more effective at taking on packs of enemies.
I really like this, means the range nerf of cyclone isn't as big and other melee skills get buffed in general.
In general a good balance, but feel like to many changes and buffs to necro and minions, and properly going to be way to powerful when top players figure it out. They could just have started with the better AI and minion control gems. The 2 plus to minion gems will get nerfed to 1 in next league.
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I made a scorching ray trickster in PoB last night to use as a starter and of course the manifesto mentions burning dmg changes lmao
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The things that were the most interesting for me:
Pulverise Support now provides Increased Area of Effect instead of More Area of Effect. The skill provided too much area of effect for heavily invested characters, so we've changed the values to be additive with other area increases. The support now grants more damage than before to make up for the loss of area.
Ouch! That sucks even for Zombies, but it's way more devastating on regular AoE melee skills like EQ and Sweep.
Convocation's cooldown has been shortened, now that the Necromancer no longer has a notable that grants cooldown recovery to it. Its life recovery is now a percentage of maximum life, rather than a flat value, letting it scale to higher levels a little better.
Desecrate has had its cooldown removed, and now has a shorter cast time. It has a shorter duration and a lower corpse limit now, but this will make it a much more reliable tool for both Minion builds and builds that explode corpses.
Offerings are now more reliable and easier to manage. They now have a higher base duration, gain an additional second for each corpse consumed, consume half as many corpses, and they have an ongoing marker over the player rather than on the ground, so you'll always know when they expire.
Oh boy, all these 3 things make my decision whether to play a minion league starter or not easier, especially the Offerings part.
Also a whole lot of changes to DoT, especially to burning damage. Maybe something like Burning Arrow with ignite proliferation can be quite potent this league. And they finally nerfed the Tornado Shot lab enchant, lol.
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Hadn't thought too much about
we've also changed the Guardian so he no longer grants specific bonuses to Herald of Purity and Dominating Blow minions, and have built the Crusade Slam effect into the minions themselves.
but was watching uber's mulling over the balance manifesto, and hadn't realised the Guardian ascendancy changes had leaked alongside Necro/Saboteur/Raider/etc:
+ Show Spoiler +
- I'd been settling on a Champion summoner, but Guardian not being tied to Dom Blow/Herald of Purity is preeeeeetty tempting if you can go zombies/skeletons/golems/etc.
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The change from more to increased on Pulverise is only a nerf when you already have increases to AoE from other sources. And since there isn't much inc AoE for minions it will probably be a buff in most cases.
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On September 03 2019 19:40 Alur wrote:
The change from more to increased on Pulverise is only a nerf when you already have increases to AoE from other sources. And since there isn't much inc AoE for minions it will probably be a buff in most cases.
That's a good point! At most 30% if one picks Plaguebringer, the new Zombie gem doesn't seem to give inc AoE. And I'm not sure if Plaguebringer is going to be my pick if I go for a "classic" summoner build mainly focussed on Zombies & Spectres (still unsure tho, SRS seems tempting too and Skellies are great too). +2 minion gem level and the phys res/ele res node seem too great to pass, and then there is only one more to pick.
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Dont think PB works with damage from other sources then poision you deal your self not totems, traps/mines or minions, but would be surprised
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Whoa, patch notes were earlier than expected! Only skimmed through - Healthy Mind being limited to one is going to impact Mana Guardians a bit; a PoB I had lost 6K ES from removing four of them, but here's an unexpected delight:
Several Damage over Time-only skills, such as Righteous Fire, Contagion and the Death Aura from Death's Oath, can now break barrels and other objects throughout the world.
The ele hit jewels now working for Wild Strike is pretty interesting!
It was expected, but it's still a little frustrating to not have specific gem levels for the post-20 breakpoints for extra minions, e.g.
Now allows you to raise additional Spectres as the gem levels, up to 2 maximum Raised Spectres at gem level 20 (and more at higher gem levels).
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Summon Skeletons- Now summons 2 Skeleton Warriors per cast (from 1).
- Now summons more Skeleton Warriors per cast as the gem levels up, up to 3 at gem level 20.
- Now increases your maximum Skeleton limit as the gem levels up, up to 8 by gem level 20 (from 5).
Does this mean it summons 2 skeletons at level 1, up to 5 at level 20? Or 2 at level one, up to 3 at level 20?
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On September 04 2019 13:29 ASoo wrote:Show nested quote +Summon Skeletons- Now summons 2 Skeleton Warriors per cast (from 1).
- Now summons more Skeleton Warriors per cast as the gem levels up, up to 3 at gem level 20.
- Now increases your maximum Skeleton limit as the gem levels up, up to 8 by gem level 20 (from 5).
Does this mean it summons 2 skeletons at level 1, up to 5 at level 20? Or 2 at level one, up to 3 at level 20?
I read it as 3 on level 20. But do you get the extra before level 20 and if so can u get 4 with higher gem level. Also seems like you can summon 9 or even 10 with higher gem levels. Seems like everything got buffed for minions except the removal of more spectres on items and passives. They are properly extremely powerful in testing.
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A slight nerf to scorching ray, hopefully the skill tree changes will compensate for this. Betrayal and delve changes are hype 
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If you invest in spectres, I suppose you wont really have less of them than before.Probably at most one, if you were using vis mortis before, but i never did. Even then with all the +gems stuff, I wouldnt be surprised if it would be possible to get two additional spectres from gem alone. And honestly, I dont think you need more than 4 of these anyway, especially with the option of using another minion type like skellies for single target.
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A lot of changes in the passive tree. Got a feeling something like Fireball + Ignite Proliferation gem could be sick, but I don't think I'll try that as my starter. Still would be nice to have proper proliferation builds back
A lot of minion changes in the tree, for example Onslaught & Unholy might on kill for 4 sec for minion, but I think it's better to pass these for non Spectre focussed builds even though the Onslaught one gives a lot of minion speed... but the location of it is pretty bad so I don't think it's worth getting.
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Regarding location on tree, u can get them with new enchantment on amulet. Also seem like u can make enchantment with notable on 4 new unique but not sure if I misunderstood
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if i wasnt so super hyped for summoner stuff, i'd actually consider playing wild strike now that combat focus works with it. Especially with the buffs to ancestrall call mapping should be super smooth, and the conversion shenanigans might make it possible to get great single target too, which was basically the greatest weakness (except for the sound that it makes :D )
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On September 04 2019 16:06 HolydaKing wrote:
A lot of changes in the passive tree. Got a feeling something like Fireball + Ignite Proliferation gem could be sick, but I don't think I'll try that as my starter. Still would be nice to have proper proliferation builds back
A lot of minion changes in the tree, for example Onslaught & Unholy might on kill for 4 sec for minion, but I think it's better to pass these for non Spectre focussed builds even though the Onslaught one gives a lot of minion speed... but the location of it is pretty bad so I don't think it's worth getting.
Fireball + ignite was what I did two times already with tricksters since they started fixing ignite again. It was good even then. Now they are buffing it even more.
My plan is certainly Zombie Detonate Dead Ignite Necro using Aukuna's Will and Montegrul grasp.
I expect to have up to 50 000 HP zombies that will blow up for 6% of their max life + base damage of the gem. It should reach over 4000 base fire damage which is more than fireball or other good ignite skills.
And having 4/5 50 000 HP aggressive zombies to tank for me will certainly help
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I think RF also got buffed quite nicely, since there are many (fire) damage over time multipliers now and the new gem at lvl 20 is basically the same as the old one if you had 7500 life before (and can be even better than that with more gem levels). Looking at the videos of Blight I'd guess the AoE is too poor though when monsters attack from multiple directions.
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6-link scorching ray clocking in 500k dot damage on Shaper in PoB with no gear (lvl 90 trickster, 4 power charges, 4 frenzy charges, EO, EE, flammability curse, lvl19 gem to adjust for SR dmg nerf). With gear getting +gem levels and +% fire dot mods it's going to be super solid.
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I'm fiending for level 20 gem info; really want to know if the self-damage of Infernal Legion is enough for it to be a viable replacement for To Dust in Heartbound Loop builds.
One of these leagues I'll start off with something good instead of something stupid like Heartbound Loop nonsense, but not this league.
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EPT![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/IQLGspY.png)
![[image loading]](https://i.imgur.com/8NK3diZ.png)
