I was rather excited for this one; Though I liked singularity mages, I can still play that with Legacy of Dreams.
First thing I did when I got home was to try out the reworked set, and boooooy was I disappointed.
50-ish CDR, 17, or 18 pets out, and it takes hella long to get the CD off of Army of The Dead.
The concept sounded fun; Spamming a rarely used skill that I quite like the visuals of.
However, it feels wrong to see 17 minions rapidly slashing at enemies but dealing zero damage; They should at least be enough to clean up injured stragglers, but as things stand, if you want the last wounded survivor of your attack dead, you’ve gotta wait for AotD to come off CD.
A CD which, is just too long. Buffing the pets’ 0,5 sec reduction to four times higher would not yet be overkill; especially since the Rathma’s Shield passive was effectively rendered useless.
(Related idea: Changing said passive from a few sec invulnerability on a long CD to partial dmg reduction with no CD)
AotD’s long CD also meant, for me at least, that chosing any rune beside Death Valley further reduce the set’s playability, as damaging casts being so rare, one simply can’t afford not to hit the entire screen when he has the opportunity.
I’m sure the set as it is, COULD potentially be used to run between packs and strike at select moments at juicy targets of opportunity, but the rest of the time, it’s incapable of killing anything, and if your target doesn’t die to the first cast of AotD, you’re still reduced to run circles around them until the CD drops.
It’s also worth noting that the set is designed to cap out it’s DMG bonus at 18 pets, yet the worth of going beyond 17 (losing a skill slot in favour of the Golem) is dubious at best.
Overall, it’s slow, very conditional, boring, and unviable for general play. Reliably popping AotD at least once a second would be preferrable, and possibly even more often if the smaller aoe runes are used. Perhaps it could last longer. Pets should also be dealing some damage; Perhaps a % of our last AotD or Bone Spirit cast’s damage over a few seconds, to avoid changing it’s focus back to a pure pet based set.
Maybe it could also grant a free flesh golem - supplies corpses to get revives, rounds up the number of pets to 18.
That’s what I think, at least.