I’m yet to try it and definitely will try it. I’ll report how I liked it.
Rathma was okay, now it’s dead. Now we have so many pets running around but it’s not our pets that do the damage.
I always thought it was bizarre to include Bone Spirit in the pet set anyway, but to just drop it unannounced like that is real bad form from the devs. And it is stupid to not have the pet set buffing all the pets so you can play an actual pet build. First it was Mages only, then it was the strange inclusion of Bone Spirit, then the unannounced removal of Bone Spirt, and now it’s a cooldown skill made to look like pets. Isn’t there some way they could rework the set so that Mages, Skeletons, Revives, and Golem all contribute significant damage, with a burst assist from Army of the Dead? That would be an actual pet build. Or at the least make it possible to have a build based on any of the 4 pets along with AotD?
Been asking for it but never happened. As to why, … no clue.
Loved AoTD being somewhat viable again after years of being left in the dust to rot even though bond of c’lena could use a increase in damage. But just waiting on AoTD cooldown as it’s your only source of damage is bad 
.
Rathma’s shield could use some tweaking too now that it’s facing the same problem that rathma set will be running into of being unused… again
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makes it easier for me…no necro this season 
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Easy way to fix, change army of the deads name to army of the diablo 3 player base.
And it’s 100% accurate
The patch blog said it, and they just removed it after the patch went live.
Rathma shield shouldn’t have an internal cooldown but it should be proccing with the same frequency like it did before but instead of invulnerabitilty it should give a x% dmg reduction and crowd control reduction.
Something like: After you use AoTD you take 50% reduced damage for 4 (or more) seconds and 50% resistance to cc affixes.
Now it is the most useless passive in the game
Extended Servitude is almost useless. Unless you’re reviving without Rathma. I suppose skeleton mages are still impacted, so half of it is has a meaning.
Now I tested it. I must take some of my words back. I liked it quite a lot. However, with my quick thrown together test build with para 1100, I couldn’t do much more with GR85 with my first attempt.
However, it was nice to have revive minions around NOT needing to spam the skeletal mages all the time. With Flesh Golem helping me get started and command skeletons + bone spikes and zodiac let me spam AotD pretty frequently.
Stricken helped me with bosses. Other stones I had: BotP and BotT but I think Zei’s might be better than BotP.
So as you can see, I mostly messed around but had fun nonetheless.
Edit. Heh, I had not the new bracers yet.
To each his own I suppose, but my bubble has burst with this.
Looks like DH more than likely for my seasonal starter. Maybe Barb. I have no desire to watch AotD’s CD all season.
Extended servitude is/was useless to me. The passive didn’t grant a significant increase in duration for me to pass on other passive that could give me more of a benefit.
With extended servitude,
Skeletal mages w/out CoNE = 1.5 sec increase
Skeletal mages with CoNE = 2.5 sec increase
Revive = 3.75 sec increase
Revives are also unreliable in reducing the cooldown of AoTD due to the fact that they don’t attack half of the time. I wouldn’t mind if they made an adjustment to the 2 piece bonus to read:
(2) Permanent Minions reduce the cooldown of Army of the Dead by 0.5 seconds each time they deal damage. Command skeletons also spawn 6 additional mages that each deal 100% of your weapon damage and Revived minions no longer expire.
This way you can also increase the minion damage without having to worry about Singularity mage being too powerful. Just have 6 piece bonus increase damage of command Skeletons (+ specific mages tied to command skeletons), revive and golem.
I can understand the frustration. However, rather looking AotD’s CD than seeing the skeletal mages vanish like rabbits. 
Well like I said, to each his own, but this could have been so much better as a minion set. Necro sets seem to all revolve around long cooldowns like LotD, and they just kept following that trend.
Big opportunity to do better missed here.
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Too bad they’d be overpowered but a legendary that made skeleton mages permanent would be awesome. Could always limit it to 2 present, similarly to Simulacrum. Or some other viable number.
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