Monster types: Unlike minions created with the skill Raise Zombie, raised Spectres retain the basic abilities they had in life. Although magic and rare enemy corpses can be used to create Spectres, the Spectres will be the normal version of that monster type, lacking any additional modifiers they may have had. However, intrinsic mods for the normal monsters will be maintained except for some minion-raising abilities of their own. For example, Necromancers will curse enemies but not raise minions. Some monsters like Reanimators and Spectral Tacticians can summon their own minions (Zombies and Raging Spirits, respectively), but their minion's stats will only be affected by Minion-specific support gems and stats that affect allies, like Aura. Since they're not directly summoned by the player, stats from player's equipments and skill tree that modify minions will not affect them.

Support gems: Raise Spectre can gain the benefits of many different types of support gems, but not all of them may be beneficial depending on the type of Spectres raised. Minion-specific support gems will work on every type of spectre. For example, Greater Multiple Projectiles Support will affect spectres with projectile abilities, while Increased Area of Effect Support will affect spectres with area abilities.

Lifetap Support will affect both the cost you pay to use the skill, and the cost the resulting spectre pays to use its own skill. This can help certain spectres such as Carnage Chieftains use their skills more often.

Spectres receive the support of linked gems that are currently linked to the Raise Spectre gem, not the ones linked to the Raise Spectre gem at the time the spell was cast. This means that a player using Chaos Inoculation may first raise a spectre without Lifetap Support linked (expending mana to do so), and then link the Lifetap Support gem afterwards to add its properties to the spectres.

Corpse targeting: Holding down the corpse targeting toggle (defaults to the "A" key) makes it easier to choose a corpse to raise. Note that you must continue targeting the corpse while raising the spectre. If you let go of your corpse target button you may raise a different spectre.