I just beat the game with this new necromancer on Nightmare Difficulty. Unfortunately, I can't link the character as it doesn't record it on the TOME website because this is a beta. NOTE: No vault items, or save scumming was used during this run.
In short, Necromancer 1.7 is crazy OP, even with all the bugged abilities that are still not working. I only died once in the slime cave while item farming, and wanting to push the character as much as possible to see what it could take. That said, I probably wouldn't have died at all if Neverending Unlife was actually working as I was killing uniques and bosses every few turns. Overall, I primarily spammed Invoke Darkness and Black Ice. For larger groups of enemies Dire Plague and Crepuscule were very effective. Night Sphere wrecks any boss without both blind and confusion immunity. Ghouls are great, and I used skeletons and the Master Necromancer tree near the end but just found them meh.
The end of the game was just a mad rush through the 2nd continent. I had no fear, and just rushed through all the levels. Invoke darkness was doing over 2k damage every blast, and Black Ice was up there too.
To elaborate, my observations are as follows.
Hiemal Shield is still terrible, even with the update to it letting some damage through. Reforming only out of fights is quite terrible if you don't like spamming the rest key after every encounter. Perhaps on Insane or Madness Difficulties it may be needed.... maybe. You would want to use the shield in the negative health regime though, and, if you already have it on, it will be gone way before you get into negative health.
Invoke darkness is awesome once you have 4 points in it for an effective level 5. I didn't need another AoE ever, and only leveled chill because there wasn't much else to put points into late in the game.
Corpselight and its upgrade are still terrible. There are sooo many better DoT spells to pick from.
Ghouls, on their own, no other upgrades are very great for their status effects, mobility, health, and Retch heal (works great on you once you are a Lich).
Skeletons are... meh. If I really want damage you have better options, or upgrade ghouls to explode. I am just not feeling it.
Dreadmaster needs some babysitting at times. You need to keep an eye on its health and use Neverending Peril to keep it going. It has great disables. Silence is great.
Age of Dusk Tree is great, and, when used with the Eternal Night ability (healing part) and many enemies at once, you just heal so much health per turn you are very unlikely to die. I am not sure if the Invulnerability in Golden Age of Necromancy is working.
Spikes of Decrepitude scale wonderfully and were doing just over 300 damage/turn at the end game for me.
I really wish Blurred Mortality was more extreme and lowered your max health more through scalling. I had just over 1000 health at end game, and -843 health. However, due to massive amounts of healing every turn from Eternal Night, EXTREMELY high saves (rarely lost my sustains), I very very very rarely went into negative health, making points spent in Across the Veil (AtV) wasted. AtV was pretty useful up to around level 20-25, and after that I just rarely went into negative health. So if that is going to be useful, Blurred Mortality needs to be more extreme, higher amounts of negative health and reductions in max health. Also, it should be based on spellpower, NOT constitution, even though with max constitution it doesn't really allow for lower max health. Runeskin is OK, but has no scaling as far as I can tell.
The spell death tree only has one ability I made a great deal of use of, Rigor Mortis. It is your combo haymaker if you are setting up bosses, and uniques with status effects. I think I had it doing 6000 damage at times, with only 2 points invested, and Adept (4 points effective, effective level 5)
Mobility isn't a big issue with Ghost Walk and Aether boots, so I made little use of Drawn to Death. Grim Shadow damage effect doesn't work if you have max souls already, and if you are Lich you don't need the mana regen from Utterly Destroyed, but with Adept you may as well put a point in it for the move speed bonus after kills.
Boneyard is meh, as I was killing things so fast I saw little use for it. To the Grave is broken, and perhaps I would have used the former more if it wasn't broken. Doom is always great, but saw use only on uniques and bosses as the cooldown is very high, and range is short. Things died before they got in range.
Staff Combat saw a little use. Channel staff is a good filler between Invoke Darkness and Black Ice.
Lich Tree is actually very nice. With Adept you can have up to 3 shadows, which I think are pretty decent combatants considering you get them for free every 10 turns I think.
As for the second prodigy (first being Lich), I went Adept this time around (+2 points into any ability you have already put one point into), and it was a game changer. It made a huge difference in many abilities and saved that character soooo many points. Not everything scales with it though, like the radius of Chill of the Tomb.
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Necromancer 1.7 Character Win and Observations
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Re: Necromancer 1.7 Character Win and Observations
Very nice assessment.
I will say that I disagree on the constitution scaling of Blurred Mortality. It's interesting that not everything scales off of magic power and that the Necro can make use of Dexterity, Constitution, or Cunning as a secondary stat. That spices of the play style variety... for example, if you pick up the Conditioning category (or even the one key skill), you can turn the Necro into a close quarters beast who uses short burst mobility to avoid a lot of damage.
I happen to like Corpselight for precisely the above reason. Given that runes (even instant ones) increase the radius, it's pretty decent in combination with To the Grave. Drop it, add a Boneyard, and To the Grave, and then wander off to safety while your minions keep the enemies busy and Corpselight chews them up. With Spikes doing free damage as you retreat, it piles up nicely.
Since the improvement to Lord of Skulls in Beta 3, I find the skeletons to be reasonably resilient, especially if you get your resistances up and have the Necrotic Aura. Their damage is excellent, perhaps unfairly so on Normal, but it's the ability to spam that puts them over the top in my mind. Having said that, I do think the Ghouls category is better overall. I especially think Bone Wall needs to be re-thought.
Impending Doom can trigger Grim Shadow every two or three turns... this kind of damage isn't necessary on Normal and Nightmare but on Insane, you'll make great use of it. Rigor Mortis is savage if you can stack those status effects... I've toyed with Drawn to Death more in my most recent runs and it seems to play best with Skeletons and less-so with Ghouls or pure nukers.
I will say that I disagree on the constitution scaling of Blurred Mortality. It's interesting that not everything scales off of magic power and that the Necro can make use of Dexterity, Constitution, or Cunning as a secondary stat. That spices of the play style variety... for example, if you pick up the Conditioning category (or even the one key skill), you can turn the Necro into a close quarters beast who uses short burst mobility to avoid a lot of damage.
I happen to like Corpselight for precisely the above reason. Given that runes (even instant ones) increase the radius, it's pretty decent in combination with To the Grave. Drop it, add a Boneyard, and To the Grave, and then wander off to safety while your minions keep the enemies busy and Corpselight chews them up. With Spikes doing free damage as you retreat, it piles up nicely.
Since the improvement to Lord of Skulls in Beta 3, I find the skeletons to be reasonably resilient, especially if you get your resistances up and have the Necrotic Aura. Their damage is excellent, perhaps unfairly so on Normal, but it's the ability to spam that puts them over the top in my mind. Having said that, I do think the Ghouls category is better overall. I especially think Bone Wall needs to be re-thought.
Impending Doom can trigger Grim Shadow every two or three turns... this kind of damage isn't necessary on Normal and Nightmare but on Insane, you'll make great use of it. Rigor Mortis is savage if you can stack those status effects... I've toyed with Drawn to Death more in my most recent runs and it seems to play best with Skeletons and less-so with Ghouls or pure nukers.
Re: Necromancer 1.7 Character Win and Observations
Grim Shadow: The problem is it doesn't work, the blast I mean, if you have max souls. I find that I normally have max souls later in the game all the time; AoE kills, Impending Doom, Dire Plague, and just spike killing things keeps it full. If he changes it to trigger regardless if you have max souls already, as long as you would have gained a soul, then it would be worth more than a point of investment.
Blurred Mortality: The reason why it bothers me with the Constitution scaling for Blurred Mortality (BM) is that BM doesn't scale enough either way, into the negative and positive health removal to offset the HP gain from increasing your Constitution. i.e. I would like it to scale enough that if you increase your Constitution you not only won't increase your total max positive health, but will lower it further. Currently, increasing your constitution will increase your health by two, IIRC how BM scales, instead of the normal 4. Maxed out, that is 100 more max health, and you are that much further from ever triggering Across the Veil (AtV), which I feel needs to be able to trigger more often. During longer fights, such as farming items from the slime cave, I consistently found my character with lengthy cooldowns on abilities, and just sitting there spamming Invoke Darkness, Black Ice, and Channel Staff or trying to find something else worth using in the situation. The way I see it, I feel like BM and AtV should still be useful late into the game, and that means better scaling.
Conditioning (Vitality): Vitality is what I am sure you are talking about, and yes, that is craaaaazy good with my Constitution maxed, and another reason why I RARELY had negative health late game. When it triggered, it was healing 75.4 health, BEFORE the healing mod, in addition to all the healing I was already doing via other means. The necromancer, as far as I can tell, is just a healing machine. Perhaps in Insane difficulty the damage will be enough such that AtV will trigger more often.
Melee Necromancer: I have seriously considered how to create one that would be at least as good as a non-melee necromancers and I just can't see it. I was in melee range to enemies often as I didn't mind getting in their face with so much armor and defense, but I rarely used a melee attack, mostly I was just being lazy when I did. Unlike the Reaver class, which I love and is probably still my favorite to play as a ghoul, you don't have any innate abilities that support building up your melee abilities. It is all nuking/disables and minion/support with a bit of mobility. Nothing screams "MELEE!" except the fact that you can get crazy high armor, defense, and saves with little investment. Believe me, I was looking, but there just isn't anything there for melee as far as I can tell. Grim Shadow even pushes enemies away from you.
Rigor Mortis is epic, but you really need the Dread and Ghouls to stack up the status effects for you in order to make good use of it.
Drawn to Death: It is ok in that it is instant, but I just rarely needed to use it on this run. Not sure why it works better with skeletons vs ghouls or nukers. I guess your skeletons killed more often?
As for Skeletons, I just don't see the point and I agree with wall not being worth the trouble. I find they just make me have to click more often to get through the pile of them, and rarely got any kills before I one or two nuke killed enemies. Even with necrotic aura at effective level 5, I didn't see them as a great offensive tool. Mages were nice to have if they spawned, archers a little less so, and the heavy bone giant was just... meh. Lord of skulls is just more micromanagement for a meh improvement IMO. The tree required me to consistently look after them, and micromanage, which was annoying late game when I was just rushing through everything. Ghouls are tankier in health, albeit have no shield, have more status effects, only spawn a couple at a time, normally where I needed them, and if I needed a bunch at once I have that option. Retch from ghouls is a massive heal if you go Lich form, and can remove physical effects. That said, Discarded Refuse is something I messed with once and unleveled. Having to remember to turn it on and off, costing one soul and 40 mana, and turns off once you are out of ghouls... just no. Not worth the trouble. I do wish Putrescent Liquefaction was working (You hear me Darkgod!). -_-
Corpselight: Didn't know runes trigger it too, that is nice. However, the reason I discount the ability, having used it myself on other characters, I feel your points are better spent elsewhere. It is an opportunity cost situation, and I feel there is much better opportunities to spend on, with much better returns on the investment. If it expanding is radius with out having to stand in it, or expanded in radius regardless of who casts the spell, then I would find it far more useful.
Blurred Mortality: The reason why it bothers me with the Constitution scaling for Blurred Mortality (BM) is that BM doesn't scale enough either way, into the negative and positive health removal to offset the HP gain from increasing your Constitution. i.e. I would like it to scale enough that if you increase your Constitution you not only won't increase your total max positive health, but will lower it further. Currently, increasing your constitution will increase your health by two, IIRC how BM scales, instead of the normal 4. Maxed out, that is 100 more max health, and you are that much further from ever triggering Across the Veil (AtV), which I feel needs to be able to trigger more often. During longer fights, such as farming items from the slime cave, I consistently found my character with lengthy cooldowns on abilities, and just sitting there spamming Invoke Darkness, Black Ice, and Channel Staff or trying to find something else worth using in the situation. The way I see it, I feel like BM and AtV should still be useful late into the game, and that means better scaling.
Conditioning (Vitality): Vitality is what I am sure you are talking about, and yes, that is craaaaazy good with my Constitution maxed, and another reason why I RARELY had negative health late game. When it triggered, it was healing 75.4 health, BEFORE the healing mod, in addition to all the healing I was already doing via other means. The necromancer, as far as I can tell, is just a healing machine. Perhaps in Insane difficulty the damage will be enough such that AtV will trigger more often.
Melee Necromancer: I have seriously considered how to create one that would be at least as good as a non-melee necromancers and I just can't see it. I was in melee range to enemies often as I didn't mind getting in their face with so much armor and defense, but I rarely used a melee attack, mostly I was just being lazy when I did. Unlike the Reaver class, which I love and is probably still my favorite to play as a ghoul, you don't have any innate abilities that support building up your melee abilities. It is all nuking/disables and minion/support with a bit of mobility. Nothing screams "MELEE!" except the fact that you can get crazy high armor, defense, and saves with little investment. Believe me, I was looking, but there just isn't anything there for melee as far as I can tell. Grim Shadow even pushes enemies away from you.
Rigor Mortis is epic, but you really need the Dread and Ghouls to stack up the status effects for you in order to make good use of it.
Drawn to Death: It is ok in that it is instant, but I just rarely needed to use it on this run. Not sure why it works better with skeletons vs ghouls or nukers. I guess your skeletons killed more often?
As for Skeletons, I just don't see the point and I agree with wall not being worth the trouble. I find they just make me have to click more often to get through the pile of them, and rarely got any kills before I one or two nuke killed enemies. Even with necrotic aura at effective level 5, I didn't see them as a great offensive tool. Mages were nice to have if they spawned, archers a little less so, and the heavy bone giant was just... meh. Lord of skulls is just more micromanagement for a meh improvement IMO. The tree required me to consistently look after them, and micromanage, which was annoying late game when I was just rushing through everything. Ghouls are tankier in health, albeit have no shield, have more status effects, only spawn a couple at a time, normally where I needed them, and if I needed a bunch at once I have that option. Retch from ghouls is a massive heal if you go Lich form, and can remove physical effects. That said, Discarded Refuse is something I messed with once and unleveled. Having to remember to turn it on and off, costing one soul and 40 mana, and turns off once you are out of ghouls... just no. Not worth the trouble. I do wish Putrescent Liquefaction was working (You hear me Darkgod!). -_-
Corpselight: Didn't know runes trigger it too, that is nice. However, the reason I discount the ability, having used it myself on other characters, I feel your points are better spent elsewhere. It is an opportunity cost situation, and I feel there is much better opportunities to spend on, with much better returns on the investment. If it expanding is radius with out having to stand in it, or expanded in radius regardless of who casts the spell, then I would find it far more useful.
Re: Necromancer 1.7 Character Win and Observations
A few other notes I forgot to mention or want to clarify on the generic necromancer trees,
Spell/Spectre Tree, in general a pretty good tree, with some things broken. Only major change I would make is that while in spectral form, you can pass through wall as if you were in spectral form..... like all other spectral form abilities and spectres in the game.
Ghost Walk: This is pretty great by itself, but isn't working quite as described. You can warp back to the original location regardless of how far you are from it as long as you do so within the three turn limit. Speaking of which, I consistently find myself wanting to use the return feature, only to find that I have used up my three turns already. i.e. By the time I have done what I want at the location, I have used three turns. Normally it is some sort of combination of abilities. Would be nice to see that limit increase with points invested or effective talent level, perhaps up to 5 turns at 5 points invested, ETL 6.5.
Spectral Sight: Not quite working as intended. Of the three features of this passive, only two are working. The vision of all enemies after use is working, the ability to see all dead (telepathy: undead) is working, but the perception of all foes within a radius of your necrotic minions, and the ability to see where they are, is NOT working. The ability is, in its current form, a one point wonder, and I would like to see something done such that you are more inclined to invest at least three points into it.
Intangibility: Great ability, if you could tell when it is working. You need more visual feed back. I don't feel like reading the lock all the time to know that something missed me because of this ability. I am also never big on all or nothing abilities, and would rather see something more akin to a phase rune. i.e. damage reduction, perhaps higher saves, etc... rather than hit or miss which can lead to more extreme outcomes. Overall, still a great passive.
Path to Beyond: Could be great, if I ever could find it useful. As implemented, it only works if you warp back to your original location. I just didn't see much use in that, and rarely did use the warp back part. If the spirts spawned at where you warp to when you do warp, or spawned after 3 turns regardless if you use the Ghost Walk-Return, I could find the ability far more useful. Zero points in it at end game, and only tried it out finding it wanting.
Undead/Lich Tree and Prodigy, Overall, a really great tree and prodigy, which is even better with Adept.
Lich (Race Evoluction) That said, I don't like having to kill myself to become a Lich, and it wouldn't be necessary if you made the 4 HP per level increase retroactive. Also, why not instead not have the 4 HP increase at all. It would be better to just tie that into the first talent in the tree, Neverending Unlife, and have the Negative Health scale with player level. i.e. at level 50, with ETL at 5.0 give players an additional -200 health. If you became a Lich at level 25, that means you would gain another 100 life from Lich form from the additional 25 levels at level 50. However, the players shouldn't want positive life to begin with due to Accross the Veil. You want more negative life. This would give players more flexibility too. Sometimes, it maybe be better to take Lichform later.
Neverending Unlife: As noted above for the prodigy, I would rather see the health increase turned into negative health and put into this abilty. Also, I think the death portion of this ability is broken, but I am not sure. I will test it later in the slime caves I guess. That is the only place this character has died. I would like to see it changed a bit too. Allow for the killing of rares on down to add turns to your counter. Say if you kill a rare you get 10 more turns, a summon for 1 turn, elite 5 turns, etc... and once you kill that unique/boss/elite boss you are "fixed". Also, make sure you have an OBVIOUS visual to show that you have died and this has taken over, such a gray scale the screen a bit, something you can't miss.
Frightening Presence: I have no complaints about this ability. It is VERY VERY strong if you have 100+ spell or physical power (Not sure why you need high physical power as a Lich) Once you have it on an enemy, as you lower their saves, it is unlikely they will be able to resist it ever. Dropping an enemy's, especially a unique or boss, damage by 25% is very significant.
Doomed for Eternity: With Adept, you can get up to 3 shadows. I think they are actually pretty good combatants, considering they are sorta free after the up front cost in generic points. Only change I would add is make the ability usable at ETL 5.0 to summon up to your max shadows if they have all been recently killed from some amount of mana/souls, or just have a high cooldown and no cost.
Commander of the Dead: Just plain good. Statistically speaking, at ETL 5.0 you can keep this up after 4 turns all the time, and with adept it will be up most of the time after a few turns of combat.
Just to be clear and say it more categorically, even though I have covered this already.
Spell/Necrosis Tree, to summarize, it is a decent tree, but only Spikes of Decrepitude scale into late game in a significant manner, and, therefore, are worth more than one point.
Blurred Mortality: It is ok early game, but doesn't scale enough into late game to be worth more than one point. Even with max constitution, it doesn't provide enough negative health, and remove enough positive health, to support Across the Veil, which is the whole point in having negative health, in addition to a few abilities. The resitance bonus is OK, but by late game you have many of them maxed out anyhow, most notably darkness and cold resistance, making this feature rather redundant/useless late game, but decent early game. To summarize, the ability seems good early game, but falls off very hard after around level 25.
Across the Veil: This has the same problem as Blurred Mortality in that it is great early game with a few points in it, but falls off hard late game not because it doesn't scale well, but because, at least on nightmare difficulty, if you built your necromancer well and are not completely careless, you will rarely find yourself going into negative health or dying. As I said, some of these issues can be rectified by the formerly mentioned suggestions on various abilities such as Lich evolution, Neverending Life, and Blurred Mortality.
Runeskin: Not a bad ability, but not great either, just good. If you are going lichform you will only have runes anyhow. So there is no reason not to put one point into this for some more negative health. Its scaling isn't terrible, but I can't see putting more than 2 points. I suggest adding some sort of bonus at higher ETL to promote investment. To make the most use of this you would need to spend category point(s) into extra runes.
Spikes of Decrepitude: I can really only comment on the damage it deals, which is amazing, and scales very well. If my character actually went into negative life I could actually comment more on the damage reduction, which is probably very strong when stacked with Frightening Presence. I am guessing it is a multiplier stack, not additive, but would like clarification on how whether it is the former or the latter. With Eternal Night, this ability is almost like a passive heal as long as an enemy is around. With Adept and five points invested, Eternal Night returns 9% of damage as a heal. Without the spellpower boosts from other abilities, such as Commander of the Dead, my spikes were doing 340 damage each. With three enemies around, three runes, that is 1020 damage, and 91.2 heal per turn, not including healing mod.
Some general ideas about the class,
I would like to see the class play more into the negative health. Have more abilities with bonuses when you are in negative health. e.g. make Invoke Darkness blast an AoE around your character, instead of a beam. Make Night sphere have a larger radius or additional effects, allow for erupting shadows to happen more than once per turn, have river of souls blast set enemies on fire, but with darkness damage, a darkness flame, and can burn away some of their soul for a percent damage to their max health, similar to doom damage. I could go on and on if you like, but only if you are interested Darkgod. Let me know and I will post the rest of the negative health skill bonuses.
Additionally, I would like to see items that give a bonus to healing when in negative health, but also give a healing reduction when in positive health. i.e. the closer you are to max health the more the reduction in healing, and the closer to your max negative health, the higher in healing bonus. This could be a flat amount or a bonus/penalty to the healing mod. of the character. It would be nice to see more negative health items spawn. I feel like I was finding one bonus negative health item for every 10 bonus positive health items.
I feel like there are certain abilities that point to using the class as a melee character. Perhaps this was for the adventure class to make better use of the lich abilities. If not that, I am curious as to why it appears that so many abilities promote putting your necromancer character into melee, or 1 to 5 tile range of enemies?
Also, I found myself running out of toolbar playing this class. I have come close to that with other classes, but not like this. I found myself actually having to use the M key to use certain rarely used items because I couldn't fit them on my toolbar. Perhaps we need a toolbar expansion?
Part of the issue is the number of sustains, which, IMO, there are TOO many for this class. I didn't even get all the sustains, and my god there are a slew of them (10) on at the end of my toolbar, and a few others scatters around due to them acting more like situational actives. Here are a few I feel should be passives, (Fundamentally speaking, I feel only SIGNIFICANT abilities should qualify as being a sustain)
Reaping: Does weird things with total souls if triggered off. Actually, keep this a sustain, as it is quite strong, but put the bonus souls onto the passive Soul Leech. That would give players more of a reason to invest in Soul Leech, which is currently ... MEH.
Utterly Destroyed: If anything, not having this as a passive just helps to protect your other far more important sustains from sustain stripping abilities that use a specific count of random sustains to be removed. It is not powerful enough to be a sustain.
Erupting Shadows: Same as Utterly Destroyed, this should be a passive as it just supports night sphere. It doesn't even cost anything and just protects your other sustains.
Aura of Undeath: I never agreed with this being a sustain in the old necromancer (as it REALLY screwed the old one when this was striped), and I still don't for the new necromancer (although its removal is not as debilitating, and, again, it more or less protects your other more important sustains). That latter part of the ability is pretty much a passive anyhow.
Additionally, there are many actives for this class, perhaps because so many have high cooldowns. I think some of them could be replaced with some passives as I found them to be not very useful or not used often.
Bonewall: Why.... just... why?
Discarded Refuse: I think I would use it if it were a passive with some sort of cooldown that decreased with investment. As is, I don't care for how it works or is activated. Also, I don't see what putting more points into it does.
Recall Minions: Again... why? It is such a useless ability.
River of Souls: I have mixed feelings about this one. It can be decent, but you have to hope your target(s) don't move, is an AoE, but it will cost you up to 5 souls for ok damage. Whereas Crepuscule, the tree is worth the category point, only costs two souls, does a little less damage, but lasts 9 turns at ETL 6.5, can trigger on its own from "The End of All Hope" passive, and auto targets. Not sure, but I FEEL like this spot could be another passive, or the ability could use a rewrite to be on par with other abilities. I only used this if I knew a fight would take more than a 10 turns and/or I had nothing else to cast due to cooldowns. That means the ability is meh.
Neverending Peril: I hate, HATE, babysitting minions and watching their health. I would rather see this be a passive like the shadows Fade ability. Can it be useful, yes, is it practical and fun, NO! and it takes a turn to use.
Torture Souls: While this ability with little investment does decent damage, and is great for getting some souls, I would rather see some sort of passive here as I find I rarely, very rarely, use this once I have the Age of Dusk tree and only when I have little else to use and have just cast Call of the Mausoleum and just want to recover the souls quickly.
Drawn to Death: It can be nice.... but I rarely found a use for it. I sorta would TRY to make use of it as it doesn't use a turn. Not sure what else you could put here as I have already suggest utterly destroyed be a passive for this tree, but, as I said, I didn't use this ability much, or didn't need to.
To the grave: Discounting that this has never worked for me, it just gives a bug report, from its description I see very little use here. You would have to invest at least 4 points to get it to a range of 9, which is the only minimum range it is useful because you will only be using it to suck in casters and other ranged enemies. Other melee already approach you or your minions, which are in the bone yard. Sure, you can teleport to a group of enemies AFTER casting boneyard, and use this ability to teleport them to the boneyard, but why would you spend two turns for that? Your minions have leap and teleport late in the game, and while the boneyard does support your minions well, by the time you manage that combo, they most likely will already be spread out and have used their mobility abilities. It is just requires too many factors to make use of, not to mention the boneyard radius is only 5. Instead replace it with a passive that spawns extra skeletons and ghouls in your boneyard, and have them or the boneyard use bonegrab to pull them in and keep them there. Also make bone yard last at least 10 turns, or have the length of time scale with level and/or spellpower. 8 turns is meh. You wouldn't use it for an 8 turn fight. If you need that sort of boost it must be a serious fight with a boss or unique.
Spell/Spectre Tree, in general a pretty good tree, with some things broken. Only major change I would make is that while in spectral form, you can pass through wall as if you were in spectral form..... like all other spectral form abilities and spectres in the game.
Ghost Walk: This is pretty great by itself, but isn't working quite as described. You can warp back to the original location regardless of how far you are from it as long as you do so within the three turn limit. Speaking of which, I consistently find myself wanting to use the return feature, only to find that I have used up my three turns already. i.e. By the time I have done what I want at the location, I have used three turns. Normally it is some sort of combination of abilities. Would be nice to see that limit increase with points invested or effective talent level, perhaps up to 5 turns at 5 points invested, ETL 6.5.
Spectral Sight: Not quite working as intended. Of the three features of this passive, only two are working. The vision of all enemies after use is working, the ability to see all dead (telepathy: undead) is working, but the perception of all foes within a radius of your necrotic minions, and the ability to see where they are, is NOT working. The ability is, in its current form, a one point wonder, and I would like to see something done such that you are more inclined to invest at least three points into it.
Intangibility: Great ability, if you could tell when it is working. You need more visual feed back. I don't feel like reading the lock all the time to know that something missed me because of this ability. I am also never big on all or nothing abilities, and would rather see something more akin to a phase rune. i.e. damage reduction, perhaps higher saves, etc... rather than hit or miss which can lead to more extreme outcomes. Overall, still a great passive.
Path to Beyond: Could be great, if I ever could find it useful. As implemented, it only works if you warp back to your original location. I just didn't see much use in that, and rarely did use the warp back part. If the spirts spawned at where you warp to when you do warp, or spawned after 3 turns regardless if you use the Ghost Walk-Return, I could find the ability far more useful. Zero points in it at end game, and only tried it out finding it wanting.
Undead/Lich Tree and Prodigy, Overall, a really great tree and prodigy, which is even better with Adept.
Lich (Race Evoluction) That said, I don't like having to kill myself to become a Lich, and it wouldn't be necessary if you made the 4 HP per level increase retroactive. Also, why not instead not have the 4 HP increase at all. It would be better to just tie that into the first talent in the tree, Neverending Unlife, and have the Negative Health scale with player level. i.e. at level 50, with ETL at 5.0 give players an additional -200 health. If you became a Lich at level 25, that means you would gain another 100 life from Lich form from the additional 25 levels at level 50. However, the players shouldn't want positive life to begin with due to Accross the Veil. You want more negative life. This would give players more flexibility too. Sometimes, it maybe be better to take Lichform later.
Neverending Unlife: As noted above for the prodigy, I would rather see the health increase turned into negative health and put into this abilty. Also, I think the death portion of this ability is broken, but I am not sure. I will test it later in the slime caves I guess. That is the only place this character has died. I would like to see it changed a bit too. Allow for the killing of rares on down to add turns to your counter. Say if you kill a rare you get 10 more turns, a summon for 1 turn, elite 5 turns, etc... and once you kill that unique/boss/elite boss you are "fixed". Also, make sure you have an OBVIOUS visual to show that you have died and this has taken over, such a gray scale the screen a bit, something you can't miss.
Frightening Presence: I have no complaints about this ability. It is VERY VERY strong if you have 100+ spell or physical power (Not sure why you need high physical power as a Lich) Once you have it on an enemy, as you lower their saves, it is unlikely they will be able to resist it ever. Dropping an enemy's, especially a unique or boss, damage by 25% is very significant.
Doomed for Eternity: With Adept, you can get up to 3 shadows. I think they are actually pretty good combatants, considering they are sorta free after the up front cost in generic points. Only change I would add is make the ability usable at ETL 5.0 to summon up to your max shadows if they have all been recently killed from some amount of mana/souls, or just have a high cooldown and no cost.
Commander of the Dead: Just plain good. Statistically speaking, at ETL 5.0 you can keep this up after 4 turns all the time, and with adept it will be up most of the time after a few turns of combat.
Just to be clear and say it more categorically, even though I have covered this already.
Spell/Necrosis Tree, to summarize, it is a decent tree, but only Spikes of Decrepitude scale into late game in a significant manner, and, therefore, are worth more than one point.
Blurred Mortality: It is ok early game, but doesn't scale enough into late game to be worth more than one point. Even with max constitution, it doesn't provide enough negative health, and remove enough positive health, to support Across the Veil, which is the whole point in having negative health, in addition to a few abilities. The resitance bonus is OK, but by late game you have many of them maxed out anyhow, most notably darkness and cold resistance, making this feature rather redundant/useless late game, but decent early game. To summarize, the ability seems good early game, but falls off very hard after around level 25.
Across the Veil: This has the same problem as Blurred Mortality in that it is great early game with a few points in it, but falls off hard late game not because it doesn't scale well, but because, at least on nightmare difficulty, if you built your necromancer well and are not completely careless, you will rarely find yourself going into negative health or dying. As I said, some of these issues can be rectified by the formerly mentioned suggestions on various abilities such as Lich evolution, Neverending Life, and Blurred Mortality.
Runeskin: Not a bad ability, but not great either, just good. If you are going lichform you will only have runes anyhow. So there is no reason not to put one point into this for some more negative health. Its scaling isn't terrible, but I can't see putting more than 2 points. I suggest adding some sort of bonus at higher ETL to promote investment. To make the most use of this you would need to spend category point(s) into extra runes.
Spikes of Decrepitude: I can really only comment on the damage it deals, which is amazing, and scales very well. If my character actually went into negative life I could actually comment more on the damage reduction, which is probably very strong when stacked with Frightening Presence. I am guessing it is a multiplier stack, not additive, but would like clarification on how whether it is the former or the latter. With Eternal Night, this ability is almost like a passive heal as long as an enemy is around. With Adept and five points invested, Eternal Night returns 9% of damage as a heal. Without the spellpower boosts from other abilities, such as Commander of the Dead, my spikes were doing 340 damage each. With three enemies around, three runes, that is 1020 damage, and 91.2 heal per turn, not including healing mod.
Some general ideas about the class,
I would like to see the class play more into the negative health. Have more abilities with bonuses when you are in negative health. e.g. make Invoke Darkness blast an AoE around your character, instead of a beam. Make Night sphere have a larger radius or additional effects, allow for erupting shadows to happen more than once per turn, have river of souls blast set enemies on fire, but with darkness damage, a darkness flame, and can burn away some of their soul for a percent damage to their max health, similar to doom damage. I could go on and on if you like, but only if you are interested Darkgod. Let me know and I will post the rest of the negative health skill bonuses.
Additionally, I would like to see items that give a bonus to healing when in negative health, but also give a healing reduction when in positive health. i.e. the closer you are to max health the more the reduction in healing, and the closer to your max negative health, the higher in healing bonus. This could be a flat amount or a bonus/penalty to the healing mod. of the character. It would be nice to see more negative health items spawn. I feel like I was finding one bonus negative health item for every 10 bonus positive health items.
I feel like there are certain abilities that point to using the class as a melee character. Perhaps this was for the adventure class to make better use of the lich abilities. If not that, I am curious as to why it appears that so many abilities promote putting your necromancer character into melee, or 1 to 5 tile range of enemies?
Also, I found myself running out of toolbar playing this class. I have come close to that with other classes, but not like this. I found myself actually having to use the M key to use certain rarely used items because I couldn't fit them on my toolbar. Perhaps we need a toolbar expansion?
Part of the issue is the number of sustains, which, IMO, there are TOO many for this class. I didn't even get all the sustains, and my god there are a slew of them (10) on at the end of my toolbar, and a few others scatters around due to them acting more like situational actives. Here are a few I feel should be passives, (Fundamentally speaking, I feel only SIGNIFICANT abilities should qualify as being a sustain)
Reaping: Does weird things with total souls if triggered off. Actually, keep this a sustain, as it is quite strong, but put the bonus souls onto the passive Soul Leech. That would give players more of a reason to invest in Soul Leech, which is currently ... MEH.
Utterly Destroyed: If anything, not having this as a passive just helps to protect your other far more important sustains from sustain stripping abilities that use a specific count of random sustains to be removed. It is not powerful enough to be a sustain.
Erupting Shadows: Same as Utterly Destroyed, this should be a passive as it just supports night sphere. It doesn't even cost anything and just protects your other sustains.
Aura of Undeath: I never agreed with this being a sustain in the old necromancer (as it REALLY screwed the old one when this was striped), and I still don't for the new necromancer (although its removal is not as debilitating, and, again, it more or less protects your other more important sustains). That latter part of the ability is pretty much a passive anyhow.
Additionally, there are many actives for this class, perhaps because so many have high cooldowns. I think some of them could be replaced with some passives as I found them to be not very useful or not used often.
Bonewall: Why.... just... why?
Discarded Refuse: I think I would use it if it were a passive with some sort of cooldown that decreased with investment. As is, I don't care for how it works or is activated. Also, I don't see what putting more points into it does.
Recall Minions: Again... why? It is such a useless ability.
River of Souls: I have mixed feelings about this one. It can be decent, but you have to hope your target(s) don't move, is an AoE, but it will cost you up to 5 souls for ok damage. Whereas Crepuscule, the tree is worth the category point, only costs two souls, does a little less damage, but lasts 9 turns at ETL 6.5, can trigger on its own from "The End of All Hope" passive, and auto targets. Not sure, but I FEEL like this spot could be another passive, or the ability could use a rewrite to be on par with other abilities. I only used this if I knew a fight would take more than a 10 turns and/or I had nothing else to cast due to cooldowns. That means the ability is meh.
Neverending Peril: I hate, HATE, babysitting minions and watching their health. I would rather see this be a passive like the shadows Fade ability. Can it be useful, yes, is it practical and fun, NO! and it takes a turn to use.
Torture Souls: While this ability with little investment does decent damage, and is great for getting some souls, I would rather see some sort of passive here as I find I rarely, very rarely, use this once I have the Age of Dusk tree and only when I have little else to use and have just cast Call of the Mausoleum and just want to recover the souls quickly.
Drawn to Death: It can be nice.... but I rarely found a use for it. I sorta would TRY to make use of it as it doesn't use a turn. Not sure what else you could put here as I have already suggest utterly destroyed be a passive for this tree, but, as I said, I didn't use this ability much, or didn't need to.
To the grave: Discounting that this has never worked for me, it just gives a bug report, from its description I see very little use here. You would have to invest at least 4 points to get it to a range of 9, which is the only minimum range it is useful because you will only be using it to suck in casters and other ranged enemies. Other melee already approach you or your minions, which are in the bone yard. Sure, you can teleport to a group of enemies AFTER casting boneyard, and use this ability to teleport them to the boneyard, but why would you spend two turns for that? Your minions have leap and teleport late in the game, and while the boneyard does support your minions well, by the time you manage that combo, they most likely will already be spread out and have used their mobility abilities. It is just requires too many factors to make use of, not to mention the boneyard radius is only 5. Instead replace it with a passive that spawns extra skeletons and ghouls in your boneyard, and have them or the boneyard use bonegrab to pull them in and keep them there. Also make bone yard last at least 10 turns, or have the length of time scale with level and/or spellpower. 8 turns is meh. You wouldn't use it for an 8 turn fight. If you need that sort of boost it must be a serious fight with a boss or unique.
Re: Necromancer 1.7 Character Win and Observations
I will probably edit this later to add more but I did want to make one mention:
1. Recall Minions... NOT a useless ability.
The key to this is that it displaces enemies who are right next to you. I found that this ultimately proved to be one of the best defensive tools. It works especially well with To the Grave/Bone Yard combo. Teleport into a dangerous mob, through down a bunch of crap and then teleport out. When enemies try use their abilities to close on you, recall your minions, displacing them, allowing you to retreat while your DOT abilities finish them off. Even outside of that particular combo, it was very helpful against powerful melee enemies. You don't even need your minions to be far away to make use of it because the displacement happens even if your minion is right next already. It's a guaranteed "push back" in a sense.
Combine with Drawn to Death and you can basically force enemies to waste all of their movement runes or other gap closers just to get to you, all the while you chip away. I really found it useful.
2. Torture Souls was my bread and butter. I used it constantly. Good damage... hits everything... recovers souls... cheap. I think it's one of the best skills in the class.
3. I do agree that the ghost walk duration is too short. I think 5 turns would be great...
4. Soul Leech... I like this but I would like to see one tweak. In addition to its current function, I'd like to see it increase the duration of Soul Leech. Either way, it's a necessary one-pointer.
5. Neverending Peril... This is the Dread immunity skill (if I recall correctly). In general, I agree about babysitting minions BUT this one has a key synergy with another skill you hate, namely Recall Minions. If you get yourself in tight corridor or zig-zag tunnel and are fighting a tough enemy, using Neverending Peril and then Recall Minions is amazing.
Especially in zig-zag tunnels... you can snipe and use area effect abilities whille your Dread sits contends with the enemy, having potentially 9 (or something like that) turns of immunity while you sit safely out of view. It's an insanely powerful combo.
EDIT:
I will add that Eternal Night is probably too cheap. It's crazy powerful and 50 mana is... too cheap. I'd suggest 100 mana and 1 soul.
1. Recall Minions... NOT a useless ability.
The key to this is that it displaces enemies who are right next to you. I found that this ultimately proved to be one of the best defensive tools. It works especially well with To the Grave/Bone Yard combo. Teleport into a dangerous mob, through down a bunch of crap and then teleport out. When enemies try use their abilities to close on you, recall your minions, displacing them, allowing you to retreat while your DOT abilities finish them off. Even outside of that particular combo, it was very helpful against powerful melee enemies. You don't even need your minions to be far away to make use of it because the displacement happens even if your minion is right next already. It's a guaranteed "push back" in a sense.
Combine with Drawn to Death and you can basically force enemies to waste all of their movement runes or other gap closers just to get to you, all the while you chip away. I really found it useful.
2. Torture Souls was my bread and butter. I used it constantly. Good damage... hits everything... recovers souls... cheap. I think it's one of the best skills in the class.
3. I do agree that the ghost walk duration is too short. I think 5 turns would be great...
4. Soul Leech... I like this but I would like to see one tweak. In addition to its current function, I'd like to see it increase the duration of Soul Leech. Either way, it's a necessary one-pointer.
5. Neverending Peril... This is the Dread immunity skill (if I recall correctly). In general, I agree about babysitting minions BUT this one has a key synergy with another skill you hate, namely Recall Minions. If you get yourself in tight corridor or zig-zag tunnel and are fighting a tough enemy, using Neverending Peril and then Recall Minions is amazing.
Especially in zig-zag tunnels... you can snipe and use area effect abilities whille your Dread sits contends with the enemy, having potentially 9 (or something like that) turns of immunity while you sit safely out of view. It's an insanely powerful combo.
EDIT:
I will add that Eternal Night is probably too cheap. It's crazy powerful and 50 mana is... too cheap. I'd suggest 100 mana and 1 soul.