Hihi me again from beta feedback threads and Eu lands.
Woke up to this week’s PTR changes and feel like I need to write feedbacks. 
I feel like this is the battle of intentions that got bounced back and forth a fair bit in beta, trying to reduce durations on summons to keep the play space in check, nothing wrong with this.
But I feel some aspects of this 12.1 rework don’t land, and re-tread things from beta.
For example: Demo Warlocks in Alpha had their minions reworked and numbers hard capped (9 imps only), and it just didn’t work or fit for them.
This is perfect, and its fun, and its graphical. This is a perfect way to reduce minion bloat.
Hopefully it’s “magus with higher duration = damage”, gives us some min maxing potential choosing when to Putrefy.
I recognise in a world where Cycle of Death exists gave far too many Putrefies, and ramped the Apex way higher than it was originally introduced in Beta. Oh well was a neat mechanic. 
Currently Soul Reaper reduces amount of GCDs needing to be used by combining Soul Reaper and Putrefy.
Now consuming Lesser Ghoul stacks means needing to generate more stacks. Which means more Festering Strike, which we really don’t wanna do, costing two GCDs.
This brings back all the awkward cooldown setup of Apocalypse:
Needing to “bank” 3 “Festering Wounds” before every Dark Transformation, so you can Soul Reaper effectively.
The benefits of using Soul Reaper on low health targets might be completely eaten up by the Rune resource drain of having to Festering Strike more often.
I feel like the opener now needs more than one Festering Strike/Scythe combo to setup both Soul Reaper, and the new Army of the Dead Orders mechanic.
It also behaves weirdly with other Lesser Ghoul stack consuming effects: e.g.
- It does trigger Army of the Dead’s new Orders mechanic. But only once, even through you consume 3 stacks.
- It doesn’t trigger Harbinger of Doom’s cooldown reduction of Putrefy.
- It doesn’t trigger San’layn’s Transfusion talent, which admittedly says it’s only triggered by Vampiric Strike. (And San’layn’s scattershot design is a separate issue.)
With consuming 3 stacks, one would expect it to do the same as other effects consuming stacks.
Ok now we get to the meat and potatoes of this feedback post. 
So Army was updated in late beta to give longer duration “empowered Lesser Ghouls”.
There remains no buff or way outside of the spell data to know which of your Ghouls are these special ones. They don’t look any different, it’s like if Imp Gang Boss was just a passive damage increase rather than a whole different Imp model.
Even San’layn’s Transfusion talent, gives a buff and bloody glow spell effect to the “empowered” Lesser Ghoul. (Today I learned.)
This is even worse now Army is “summon or empower”, so extends existing Ghouls 30 seconds and giving a hard cap of 8 ghouls.
This mechanic has many weirdness and bugs with it, as currently seen today on PTR.
- Casts of Scourge Strike cause the Army to zip along the floor like Warrior’s Charge.
They have perfectly usable Leap skill and animations to go along with it.
Its really weird to see them zipping, anchored to the floor like Beast Mastery pets with Kill Command etc.
They look like they go behind the target’s position etc.
- Damage attribution: currently reading the combat log, it’s “Lesser Ghoul’s Death Orders does X.” and “Your Epidemic Orders does Y.”
This is weird and opens the question of if all of our pet scaling effects, affect Epidemic Orders correctly.
- Naming and trigger spells: Death and Epidemic Orders seem to imply they function with Death Coil and Epidemic. They don’t. Only Scourge Strike (and Soul Reaper ?) trigger Orders.
There has been a lot of misunderstanding the idea, wishful thinking that Epidemic would trigger Epidemic Orders. Thinking there would be a variety in how to make your army do damage.
It’s also weird how Soul Reaper triggers Orders, but it triggers once, but consumes 3 Festering Strike stacks. (this is a whole other issue)
- Reducing the power of a lot of talents and causing one to cease functioning all together.
Rune of Apocalypse, less damage with less Lesser Ghouls.
Necromancer’s Cunning, less damage with less Lesser Ghouls.
Soul Reaper, less bonus to damage with less Lesser Ghouls.
Infected Claws, less damage with less Lesser Ghouls.
Doomed Bidding, stops functioning during Army of the Dead:
Consuming Sudden Doom cannot summon a 9th Lesser Ghoul and Sudden Doom doesn’t trigger Orders either.
Commander of the Dead, less bonus to damage with less Lesser Ghouls.
Outnumber, less bonus to damage with less Lesser Ghouls.
All of these might be small meaningless damage reductions, but as a whole reduces the power of talents.
- Scourge Strike triggering Orders conflicts with Apex Talent.
Army gives 40 Runic Power, and Apex gives you Necrotic Coil/Graveyard.
It’s clear you want to prioritise Runic Power spenders and Sudden Doom procs during Apex currently, with Army giving RP to kickstart you.
But now Sudden Doom doesn’t summon Lesser Ghouls, and Scourge Strike is the only thing that Orders your Army. These goals clash.
- No control over ST vs AoE.
This has been a persistent thing with this 12.0 rework.
There’s only one rotational change with AoE: Replacing Death Coil with Epidemic.
Spending Runes is only Scourge Strike, and now Army auto AoEs if there’s 3 or more targets, no way for us to control if we wanna focus target or not.
Also Showstopping Bug!
This effect is currently marked as “Your Epidemic Order” in the combat log, and therefore seems to have a range limitation.
If you Scourge Strike from outside melee range, Epidemic Order doesn’t function.
So yeah lots of weirdness issues with new army. I recognise wanting to reduce burst and reduce minion bloat, but hard capping Lesser Ghouls with a new Orders mechanic isn’t great.
This initially reads as just reducing burst goals.
But quietly the second part of Commander of Dead has been removed without note:
The duration of Lesser Ghouls are increased by 50% of your Mastery.
With the removal of this, Lesser Ghouls have also quietly had their baseline durations increased from 6 sec to 8 sec.
When this was introduced in Beta, I quietly wondered if this pet duration increase might just get folded into baseline Mastery, but now it’s just gone. Ok then.
More hard static control over minions not lasting longer than intended.
Surely this just solves the minion bloat issue for everyone, without having to deal with this weirdly implemented hard capping rework of Army of the Dead?
This is my Feedback on initial changes concluded.
Thanks for reading my Ted Talk.
Coming soon, a ramble on Disease length and mechanics, and whyyy..???
