On a private server, the server settings are yours to handle as you see fit.
I believe the default setting for officials is that thralls do only 50 % damage to stuff because people were complaining that thralls did all the work for the player. I actually use that 50 % damage on my Single-Player, and my thralls are far from useless. Let them wear good armor, give them good weapons, and most importantly - participate in combat yourself, because if you leave the thrall to do all the fighting, you’re either in for a very long, very boring spectator match, or you lose the thrall, depending on what you threw them at.
“Called for nerf” would be more accurate. Players asked to stop thralls from being superheroes. Most people who have been playing since the “nerf” and who have had time to adapt have evolved past your knee-jerk reaction and figured out ways to use their thralls effectively. I don’t think there’s a single boss in the game I haven’t fought and defeated with a thrall since the update. I’ve lost two thralls since - once against a Blood-Moon beast who killed me so I couldn’t help the poor level 13 Relic Hunter archer while I was getting back to the scene, and another level 12 who got mobbed in Sepermeru by some dagger-wielding locals and bled to death. Both times I was playing a fully corrupted sorcerer so I kinda sucked at helping the thrall in those fights before I got the hang of playing with half hitpoints and stamina.
Just out of curiosity: Who was
and who were
?
There’s a difference between taking two Cimmerian berserker thralls against a wight, and taking two T1 Exile thralls against Rotbranch.