Necro cleanup/re-reshuffle

[Delmuir]

No, organic growth is completely wrong for a necromancer.

Well, what do you propose?

This entire thread seems to be oriented around a few basic disagreements:

1. People who largely agree that the Necro is poorly organized to such an extent that it isn't fun to play.

2. People who think I'm a wrong and probably an idiot.

3. People who disagree on some minor technical point such as the location of a skill.

When I read this thread, I can almost feel who the engineers (or who have that mindset) are. Those are the same people who liked DOS, which is fine but they're in a terribly small minority.

I love the nature of Tome. I love the difficulty of the game and the uniqueness of the builds. That being said, there are far too many aspects of this game that are simply unpleasant.

I mean, someone was arguing earlier as to the benefit of Sacrifice as a shield entirely earnestly, without realizing just how absurdly narrow and limiting a virtue that was… and one that takes three turns to implement. Same with Curse of the Meek, as though soul farming is an actually fun activity. Why accept that solution when you could create a better one?

There should be, in my opinion, three general ways to viably play a Necromancer. Each with it's own gameplay style, weaknesses, and benefits. Those should be caster, summoner, hybrid. I don't mean BUILD, I mean STYLE of GAMEPLAY. Right now, there's only one style of gameplay and it's exactly like most of the other characters. How is that fun?

[cttw]

Actually I see the thread as damage control. You need to play more.

[Mewtarthio]

I mean, someone was arguing earlier as to the benefit of Sacrifice as a shield entirely earnestly, without realizing just how absurdly narrow and limiting a virtue that was… and one that takes three turns to implement.

I feel I should clarify: I do not think that, in its current implementation, Sacrifice is a worthwhile talent to take. You have to go unlock the abysmal Advanced Minions tree to get it, and, as you said, it's annoyingly fiddly to work with. What I am saying is that it has the potential to be worthwhile. I personally think that making the Bone Giant a viable tank would do a lot of good here: If you want the Bone Giant on the field anyway, then Assemble itself becomes a decent defensive talent, with Sacrifice as a backup plan for when it's clear that your bodyguard is done for. Oh, and simplify Assemble as well: It should just be a simple "spend three souls and get a Bone Giant" talent (it's not like you'd only use three corpses to make a Bone Giant anyway).

Start with a couple of simple changes like that, then see how that affects things. Maybe the talents needs further tweaking: Maybe, at talent level 5, it kicks in for free when your Giant is destroyed or something. Bear in mind, smaller tweaks are more likely to get implemented than major overhauls (which I suppose I should have made clear from the beginning: I'm not opposed to a massive change to the Necromancer's structure per se, but I do think simpler fixes are better).

[Delmuir]

Actually I see the thread as damage control. You need to play more.

That's quite the claim seeing as you have little information as to how much I play.

I've been playing this game for six months now and invested quite a bit of time before ever bothering to post anything. Why? Because I try not make suggestions on things until I understand what I'm talking about.

That I value different elements from you is not an indication of ignorance on my part.

Mewthario (pardon me if I got that wrong), I see your point now. I don't disagree that it could be useful but in the interest of trying to make the character more engaging and fun to play, I don't rank that skill terribly high.

Do you have a suggestion as to how to incorporate that skill in such a way as to improve the gameplay?

[HousePet]

I was joking that organic fits better with a wilder class than a necro class.

My solution to Sacrifice was to merge it with Undead Explosion. So you get more bang for your bone(giant).

As for making Assemble just cost three souls and not require any skeletons, that goes against part of the minions are resources flavour of the class. But since it doesn't care how damaged these skeletons are, its similar to Sacrifice in utility. Oh my skeletons are dying, make them into a bone giant. Oh the bone giant is dying, well sacrifice that for a shield.

My other concern with the merging, making free of certain abilities and some of the shuffling is that it makes the class more powerful.
We know the class is pretty powerful early game, its just that the late game abilities are wonky. Moving the good late game talents to be easy to get early game doesn't really fix this.

PS: I'd be more active with suggestions but I'm working on merging my Wilder addons, so dark magics are not on my mind at the moment. Also, I didn't get much feedback on the last changes I made to the class.

[Orangeflame]

Looking over this giant debate, I feel required to put in my few cents, as I've won with three necromancers, though at least one was invalidated, and two were before the animus update.
One was a pure-caster, one was a hybrid, and one was minion-focused (eventually hybridizing).

1) Frostdusk should not be moved from the fourth spot in a high-level tree.
Look at wildfire, uttercold, crystaline focus, tempest, etc. Frostdusk is like the others, and moving it to Grave would remove that.

2) The Shades tree's problem is aesthetics.
All the skills in it are useful and should be kept, though moving them around is not out of the question. The only real problem I see with the tree is that the name and description of the tree hardly relate to the skills inside it.

3) Undeath link is weird/bad
a) it's in the Necrosis tree, which has nothing else to do with minions
b) it takes away your killer meatshields to give you a sub-par heal
I think it could be moved to where Dark Empathy currently is if Dark Empathy and Aura Mastery were to be combined.

4) ANM sucks as it currently is. Discussion:
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=5 ... NM#p169517
Fixes have been made in HousePet's Necromancy+. (And they work great!)


Overall, I think that necromancer should not get a major overhaul, but it could use a couple small changes.

[Delmuir]

HousePet,
Merge Sacrifice with Undead Explosion? Now that's an idea that I can get behind. The only question, to me, is does undead explosion still work for skeletons but just not provide the shield or would it provide a smaller shield?

I completely understand the fear about overpowering the character… trying to avoid that.

As for the Wilder add-on… I haven't looked at it yet as I've been focused on this character for a bit.

OrangeFlame,
I understand not having FrostDusk locked so why not make the Grave tree, with Frostdusk in the 4th slot, a locked tree? It would make the pure caster build a bit trickier to start but I don't think it would be that much tricker. I almost never use that tree in the first ten levels anyway, even as a pure caster, because I find it somewhat awkward at a low-level.

My suggestion has either eliminated a tree or has a tree with missing components but either way, you could make an unlocked tree for the Necromancer to replace Grave and lock the Grave tree with Frostdusk at the 4th slot.

[SageAcrin]

Merge Sacrifice with Undeath Link with Explosion, have a talent that heals you, explodes the target undead, and (if they're a Bone Giant) gives you a barrier.

...

Wait, this was meant to be a joke idea off the top of my head, but actually this sounds pretty good. You'd need replacement talents though, and you wouldn't want to use Undeath Link's current heal values(which are really too high for a single killed undead; Maybe quarter them or so.).

Also, as a note, nothing in Grave even remotely justifies it being an L10 tree that requires an unlock slot. They're fairly notable ice blasting spells that would mean any Necromancer trying to start up with a blasting orientation would require at least two Category points before they're even remotely effective. For a build I already consider non-optimal, that's pretty bad.

[HousePet]

I don't mind Undeath Link. But its values could be adjusted.
Something like reducing the amount of life drained from each minion, and stacking up the separate amounts, rather than just using the highest one.

[Delmuir]

Merge Sacrifice with Undeath Link with Explosion, have a talent that heals you, explodes the target undead, and (if they're a Bone Giant) gives you a barrier.

Also, as a note, nothing in Grave even remotely justifies it being an L10 tree that requires an unlock slot. They're fairly notable ice blasting spells that would mean any Necromancer trying to start up with a blasting orientation would require at least two Category points before they're even remotely effective. For a build I already consider non-optimal, that's pretty bad.

I like the Sacrifice/Explosion/Undeath Link combo… I think that's a phenomenally great skill. That does leave you short a skill in the Advanced Minions tree.

In HousePet's Add-on, he has a couple of great skills that I think could be good additions, especially Grasping Claws, Meat Shield (although this is pretty damn powerful) and the generic Dead Whispers, which I LOVE.

As for the Grave tree well… I think if you make all three of those current skills have darkness damage AND cold damage then it works beautifully with FrostDusk and it's more thematically appropriate to a Necromancer and even the names of the skills.

If you lock Grave and open up a re-built Shades tree (without FrostDusk and maybe with Forgery of the Haze or my proposed clone) then you can fix the thematic issue and still have a great trio of primary builds. Does it make a blaster a bit tricker? Sure but I regularly run Necros without using Grave (because I'm not a fan of early investment in that tree) quite frequently and have no problem through Dreadfell.

Hmmmm… you guys have a lot of good ideas and criticisms. I think I'll take one more crack at this later this weekend… good times.

[Delmuir]

Taking into account everyone's criticisms, this is my newest solution, including some ideas and skills from HousePet's add-on:

1. Necrotic Minions: Unlocked.

Place, in the 4th slot, Skeleton Mastery. This is a new skill that is just a truncated Minion Mastery, but only affects skeletons, i.e. the first five listed in Minion Mastery. I think it might be best to nerf the skeletons just a little in case this is too powerful.

Combine Dark Empathy with Surge of Undeath. Make it an active skill rather than a passive one. It's an all-purpose buff to minions. It could also be a sustain or a passive but I thought those were both a bit powerful.

2. Nightfall: Unlocked.

No changes.

3. Necrosis: Unlocked.

Merge Undeath Link (with Undead Explosion) and replace with Vampiric Gifts. Vampiric Gifts should also affect your minions, i.e. same percent chance that their damage will heal them.

4. Animus: Unlocked.

Consume soul gets a damage shield equal to 50% of heal at lvl five. Cost increases one soul at lvl 3, 4, and 5 capping at 4 souls total. Improve total heal.

Move Animus Purge to renamed/new category at the end… Husk causes a lot of bugs anyway. Replace it with a Curse of the Meek clone called "Lost Souls." Essentially, you call wandering spirits/ghosts/poltergeist, whatever. Works exactly the same. However, have it switch to the second clot with Animus Hoarder moving into the third.

5. Grave: Locked.

I'd make all damage in this tree fifty percent cold and fifty percent darkness. I'd add FrostDusk into the 4th slot and I'd lock the tree.

6. Ice: Locked.

No changes, obviously.

7. Advanced Minion Mastery: Locked.

Undead Explosion becomes a hybrid skill with Undeath Link and Sacrifice. If used on most minions it causes blight damage to enemy and a heal to you. Skeletons cause physical, Bone Golems cause physical plus create a big damage shield.

Sacrifice goes away and is replaced by an Animus Purge/Forgery of the Haze clone. Basically, you make a zombie copy of your soul and force it into an enemy, making a husk clone of you. You recover a couple of souls and your clone can't heal.

The 4th slot gets Advanced Summon. All of the advanced summons such as Vampires, Ghasts, Mummies, Wrights, etc. get summoned with this skill. It's just like summon minions except with the percent chance to summon improving per level like the original Minion Mastery. This would never summon skeletons… just the more advanced summons on a percentage level like they are now. It would only summon up to your max summons, of course.

8. Shades: Renamed/eliminated. See #9.

I've already moved FrostDusk, Curse of the Meek, and Forgery of the Haze so that leaves Shadow Tunnel. Move Shadow Tunnel to Undeath Link category.

9. Undeath Link: Unlocked… the description would be something like "you are connected to the underworld…"

First slot: Grasping Claws… See Necromancy+ add-on. I think the "hold" element of this is fantastic but the damage should probably be reduced a little and the range increased. It'd also be nice if it didn't target your minions (I don't know if it does now) or escorts (it definitely does).

Second Slot: Shadow Tunnel. Probably need to change description a bit… make it thematically appropriate. Have your skeletons travel through underworld or something… I'd eliminate the evasion bonus and replace it with a chance to have "random souls from the underworld came back with your minions."

Third Slot: Create a skill that's akin to the Yeek racial Dominant Will and have it only work on the undead.

OR

You could add HousePet's meat shield but I just thought it was too powerful, potentially.

Fourth Slot: Dead Whispers… See Necromancy+ add-on. It's a generic skill in the add-on but I think it's a better fit here.

Generic:

Dead Secrets:

This is from HousePet's add-on. I've moved the third skill Dead Whispers to the new category but I don't quite know what to replace it with. I'm inclined to think something that reduces darkness damage, increases soul capacity, or something like that. I'm not sure.

------------

This re-shuffle/rebuild still leaves casters viable (even pure casters), keeps all of the skills even if a couple are merged. It doesn't add a category and I think is more efficient and Minion Mastery is improved… I hope. My biggest concern is that it might be a overpowered.

Thoughts? Criticisms?

[SageAcrin]

Place, in the 4th slot, Skeleton Mastery. This is a new skill that is just a truncated Minion Mastery, but only affects skeletons, i.e. the first five listed in Minion Mastery. I think it might be best to nerf the skeletons just a little in case this is too powerful.

I'd have to see the talent in question, but tentatively I think this is fine. I don't think pet heavy Necro is at risk of being very strong right now, and new dedicated talents to invest in take away from blasting.

Combine Dark Empathy with Surge of Undeath. Make it an active skill rather than a passive one. It's an all-purpose buff to minions. It could also be a sustain or a passive but I thought those were both a bit powerful.

Just make it Surge of Undeath and give Dark Empathy's passives to it.

Combined active/passive talents exist other places. Seems reasonable enough. A nice rename would be optimal.

Merge Undeath Link (with Undead Explosion) and replace with Vampiric Gifts. Vampiric Gifts should also affect your minions, i.e. same percent chance that their damage will heal them.

Sounds good.

Consume soul gets a damage shield equal to 50% of heal at lvl five. Cost increases one soul at lvl 3, 4, and 5 capping at 4 souls total. Improve total heal.

Mmmm, maybe just have the soul consumption go up at L5 by two?

That way, people don't do weird breakpoint builds. It's always better when you level it, except possibly at L5, where there's an interesting gain/loss to it that's overall positive.

Move Animus Purge to renamed/new category at the end… Husk causes a lot of bugs anyway. Replace it with a Curse of the Meek clone called "Lost Souls." Essentially, you call wandering spirits/ghosts/poltergeist, whatever. Works exactly the same.

People really like Husk though, including me. I'm not sure that's a good change, it's a very fun talent.

5. Grave: Locked.

I'd make all damage in this tree fifty percent cold and fifty percent darkness. I'd add FrostDusk into the 4th slot and I'd lock the tree.

Again, don't really agree with heavy blasting trees being locked for Necromancer. The damage mix is, in practice, a nerf, too, as people can't as easily stack +damage for elements.

Sacrifice goes away and is replaced by an Animus Purge/Forgery of the Haze clone. Basically, you make a zombie copy of your soul and force it into an enemy, making a husk clone of you. You recover a couple of souls and your clone can't heal.

A longer lasting Forgery is probably overpowered. It's way better than either Forgery or Purge, that's certain. Without the longer lasting time, it's essentially the same spell as Forgery, which is sorta dull...

The 4th slot gets Advanced Summon. All of the advanced summons such as Vampires, Ghasts, Mummies, Wrights, etc. get summoned with this skill. It's just like summon minions except with the percent chance to summon improving per level like the original Minion Mastery. This would never summon skeletons… just the more advanced summons on a percentage level like they are now. It would only summon up to your max summons, of course.

Seems fine.

8. Shades: Renamed/eliminated. See #9.

I've already moved FrostDusk, Curse of the Meek, and Forgery of the Haze so that leaves Shadow Tunnel. Move Shadow Tunnel to Undeath Link category.

As mentioned, I don't agree entirely with some of the ideas here, but it is looking a lot more tweakable into a workable form.

9. Undeath Link: Unlocked.

First slot: Grasping Claws… See Necromancy+ add-on. I think the "hold" element of this is fantastic but the damage should probably be reduced and the range increased.

Second Slot: Shadow Tunnel. Probably need to change description a bit… make it thematically appropriate. Have your skeletons travel through underworld or something...

Third Slot: Create a skill that's akin to the Yeek racial Dominant Will and have it only work on the undead.

Fourth Slot: Dead Whispers… See Necromancy+ add-on. It's a generic skill in the add-on but I think it's a better fit here.

Generic:

Dead Secrets:

This is from HousePet's add-on. I've moved the third skill Dead Whispers. I'd like to replace that with a skill that increases the max number of souls you can possess by five. It should probably have some other benefit but that's all I've got.

I think there's already a talent that ups your max souls in Animus? Otherwise these seem okay, outside of the Dominant Will equivalent(kinda dull/overly niche/will always be 1'd). I recall feeling the Necromancer+ ideas were largely okay.

Overall this does feel a lot more workable of an idea at this point, I have to say.

[Delmuir]

Overall this does feel a lot more workable of an idea at this point, I have to say.

Thank you, I'm trying.

As to your points:

1. Consume Soul… only two souls? Good point and sounds fine to me.

2. Locking Grave… I know you don't agree but with every build that I've ever worked with, I've never needed Grave until around lvl 14, a which point a player would have a category point to spend so I'm not sure what the drawback is. More so, the new category has at least one damaging spell that should help carry someone until lvl 10. Am I missing something?

On the damage question… yes, it does nerf it a little bit because of stacking and I figured that it would create an opportunity to have cold/darkness synergy with gear. It might be tricky but I thought that maybe there could be an ego (am I using that correctly?) that gave bonuses to both. Sort of thematic Necromancer gear.

I actually really like this idea because I think it creates an opportunity for thematic gear but it also prevents having to stack cold gear at the expense of darkness, which is usually what happens because you have more cold spells than darkness ones. However, I'm also not married to this idea… if it sucks, get rid of it.

You could also add chance to freeze to the Chill of the Tomb and Will o' the Wisp in lieu of added damage or just increase the damage across the board. Seems easier to add more duel-function gear.

My other idea was that you could make it such that every point put into the Grave tree added a percent chance to raise a friendly undead on kill. The damage would still be slightly nerfed but it would have a thematic benefit. Just a thought...

3. The Husk/Animus Purgue question… I thought that the Forgery of the Haze clone could just work like Animus Purge but instead of a husk of an enemy, you'd get a husk of yourself. Then, if you add in the Dominant Will clone, you essentially have the bulk of what Animus Purge is anyway.

As for the duration question… yes, I'd assumed that we'd leave the FotH clone with the extended duration of a husk as the Dominant Will clone skill would be of short duration. Seems minor enough… I think.

4. Dark Empathy/Surge of Undeath as an active/passive combo? Sounds good to me.

5. The added souls… I really did that because I was upping the cost by separating summons and raising cost of consume soul. However, that seems minor enough to eliminate.

Perhaps I should tweak that last category, 3rd skill one more time…

Thank you Sage for you feedback… it's been very helpful.

[HousePet]

By locking Grave you are restricting a minionless necromancer to only darkness damage early game. With no source of penetration. They already get Ice as an unlockable high end category, why lock Grave as well.

I'm wondering if Frostdusk needs the cold damage bonus. Uttercold does is much better and cold doesn't fit with Shades well.

Dark Empathy is quite powerful already. I'm not sure it needs to be merged with anything at all. If other talents are a bit weak, then buff them not Dark Empathy.

The merged Animus Purge/Forgery of Haze you have in Advanced Necrotic Minions has nothing to do with minions.

Merging Curse of the Weak with Shadow Tunnel could be interesting.

[Delmuir]

HousePet,

1. I reject the notion that a Necromancer sans minions would really struggle without a second casting tree. I've already added an additional damage spell (from your add-on) to buy them time to unlock said tree. More so, you'd have (at level the Forgery of the Haze clone which used to be locked.

The first ten levels are simply not so challenging as to make Grave an imperative. I do it as a habit because I don't like the grave tree (I'm more likely to kill myself with Chill of the Tomb, ha ha) early on.

Besides, minions can be used by juggling points… I just don't think it's that big an obstacle early on. Besides, what's wrong with a tricky start?

2. I firmly support Frostdusk because if I'm playing a caster necro, I want that bonus to both. Cold is already underpowered compared to fire/arcane/lightning and it also lacks great cold-based equipment. Frostdusk helps to equalize that.

3. Animus Purge… how is that not a minion? I don't understand that criticism… you're sticking a copy of your soul into a corpse. Sounds like a minion to me.

4. I disagree with Dark Empathy. It really only has value late, late in a game. More so, my suggestion is to make it an active spell rather than a passive one which should cut some of the power.

I think that this is a good balance. Yes, a pure casting Necro has a somewhat tricker start but ultimately, has plenty of weapons. This would open up the Necromancer to a great variety of gameplay styles: A pure caster (medium), pure summoner (weakest), and hybrid (strongest) plus Lichform which makes the caster quite good indeed.