Necromancer Summons Rework

[HousePet]

Going with the multiple minion option theme, here is a redesign I have lying around.
The core design principle was to spread the summoning options around instead of trying to keep them separate from the nuking.
Necromancer is a summoner class, so there should be more summoning talents.
Its a bit incomplete but the general idea seems to work.

Reanimation
Create Minions: Basic Minions.
Blurred Mortality: Negative Life sustain.
Absorb Minion: Kills a minion to heal you.
Surge of Undeath: Combat buff for minions.

Soul Collector
Aura Mastery: Increases aura range.
Will o' the Wisp: Dead minions spawn a Wisp. Souls you can't hold spawn a Wisp.
Soul Rip: Blight damage attack that restores a soul.
Animus Hoarder: Increases soul capacity and chance of extra soul gain from kills.

Grave
Chill of the Tomb: Cold aoe.
Cold Flames: Ground effect doing cold damage and buff/debuff burn.
Impending Doom: No healing and arcane damage over time.
Ghost Touch: Weaken target's stun, cold and mental resists.

Nightfall
Invoke Darkness: Dark beam.
Circle of Death: Ground effect doing darkness and debuff.
Shadow Tunnel: Teleport minions to you or port self to target tile.
Fear the Night: Dark+knockback cone.

Skeletal - High level
Grasping Claws: Physical damage and pin aoe.
Assemble: Turn minions into a bone giant, bone giants turn into a bone shield on master when killed.
Undead Explosion: Explode a minion for physical damage.
Skeletal Mastery: Create Minions creates tougher skeletons, grants you physical pierce, increases minion armour/hardiness.

Sanguine - High level
Blood Burst: Radius 1 blight damage burst on enemy, undead are healed by the damage.
Vampiric Gift: Life drain sustain, grants you and minions life leech.
Animate Blood: Blight damage attack that spawns a Haemogoblin.
Sanguine Mastery: Create Minions creates vampires and ghouls, grants you blight pierce, increases minions life.

Animus - High level
Animus Purge: Cold damage attempts to leave target as a lifeless husk.
Curse of the Meek: Summon innocents for harvesting souls.
Animus Lance: Consumes souls for a powerful cold damage beam.
Animus Mastery: Create Minions creates dreads and wights, grants you cold pierce, makes minions faster.

Shades - High level
Rigor Mortis: Darkness aoe that slows.
Nether Rift: Darkness version of aether rift.
Forgery of Haze: Clones self.
Shadowdusk: Darkness mastery.

Lichdom - High level - Unlocked by quest?
Lichform/Phylactery: Dying causes a darkness explosion that turns you into a Lich / restores your unlife to 0.
Consume Soul: Life and mana recovery.
Command Undead: Mass dominate undead.
Essence of the Dead: Consume Souls to empower spells.

[Planetus]

Delmuir, feel free to take any ideas you want. If I ever do make an addon of my own, I won't begrudge someone else using similar ideas.

Legion seems... Well, quite frankly, overpowered.

I think you're missing the part where a Legion would cost 2 slots, so three legions and maxed out undead slots would still only leave you with 4 weak undead or 2 serious undead. And yes, maybe they could be toned down some. Maybe just give them mental and magical debuffs, and maybe don't give them talents to cause ALL of them, just some selection of them, but this should be an effective debuffer unit. Also, invisibility... depends on how much. Remember that dreads and dreadmasters have permanent stealth (different stat from invisibility, but works the same in the end). If you only have 10 invisibility, it's not too bad. If you have 100, yeah, that'd be OP.

I'm not entirely sure we need a consistency in appearance of undead amalgamations. And I was only talking about the Bone Golem being a spell tower in terms of function. Like in tower defense games (or most any strategy game(, the bone golem would be a ranged weapons platform, not a melee attacker. It could still be humanoid in appearance. But yes, it doesn't make much sense to make a Nuckelavee from a bunch of humanoid corpses (unless you make it have two humanoid torsos, just one facing down like an animal and one upright *shiver*). Then again, it doesn't make much sense to raise a humanoid skeleton mage from a treant corpse, either. And if you consider the Nuckelavee to be pleasing to the eye... you need help.

Seriously, though, the image I linked to was pretty nice, but there are a lot of other images that are more... distorted. The head is often shown as disproportionate to the human body, or the arms are ridiculously long, touching the ground, or the whole thing is flowing with puss, or whatever. Read about it on Wikipedia or some mythology site. The important point is that it be skinless, and a horrifying figure combining something quadrupedal (usually horse) with a humanoid torso coming out of it's back. We can fiddle around with details here.

I'm a little dubious about spreading the summoning talents out too wide, simply because I feel like a single necromancer build should be able to get to them all. That may be to the exclusion of anything else, including direct damage spells AND lichform, but it should still be an option. Unless you want to make the whole necromancer class a purely minion class, like the Summoner class is. Personally, I don't think we need to do that. I like necromancers being a middle ground.

Housepet, I see a similar problem with your idea. You've got one starter tree entirely dedicated to (weak) undead, and then 3 trees that need to be unlocked, each of which ENDS in a talent to boost one type of undead. That's 8 talent points and one category point minimum just to max out one type of advanced undead. And even then, I don't actually see much about the undead being anything different than they are today. Compared to that, you have two trees dedicated to direct damage, and another that's halfway dedicated to that and halfway dedicated to making minions easier, but not more powerful.

Maybe:
[*]Reanimation:
Create Minions: Basic Minions.
Blurred Mortality: Negative Life sustain.
Absorb Minion: Kills a minion to heal you, also gives benefit based on undead type.
Improved Undead: gives chance of improved undead.

[*]Soul Collector
Aura Mastery: Increases aura range.
Will o' the Wisp: Dead minions spawn a Wisp. Souls you can't hold spawn a Wisp.
Soul Rip: Blight damage attack that restores a soul.
Soul Hoarder: Increases soul capacity and chance of extra soul gain from kills, and max number of undead.

[*]Deep Tomb
Chill of the Tomb: Cold aoe, party friendly at lvl 5, or maybe self-friendly at lvl 5 and gains 10% damage for every minion hit by it.
Shadow Tunnel: Teleport minions to you or port self to target tile.
Impending Doom: No healing and arcane damage over time.
Create Bone Golem: Combine 2 undead to create a powerful bone golem. (this would be whatever the BG ends up as, but I'd like it to be my idea... of course) This still counts as 2 undead minions.

[*]Shallow Grave
Invoke Darkness: Dark beam, party friendly at lvl 5, or gains 10% damage for every enemy hit (progressive down the line).
Grasping Claws: Ground effect doing physical and debuff (pin, stun) to enemies only.
Fear the Night: Dark+knockback cone, party friendly.
Create Amalgum/Abomination/Nuckelavee: Combine 2 undead to create a powerful fleshly abomination. This still counts as 2 undead minions.

[*]Animus
Vampiric Gift: Life drain sustain, grants you and minions life leech.
Will o' the Wisp: Dead minions spawn a Wisp. Souls you can't hold spawn a Wisp.
Animus Lance: Consumes souls for a powerful cold damage beam, gains 10% damage per minion hit, progressively
Create Legion: Combine 2 undead to create a horrifying amalgam of souls. This still counts as 2 undead minions.

[*]Shades - High level
Rigor Mortis: Darkness aoe that slows, party friendly
Nether Rift: Darkness version of aether rift, party friendly
Forgery of Haze: Clones self.
Shadowfrost: Darkness/cold mastery.

[*]Undeath Mastery - High level
Ghost Touch: Weaken target's stun, darkness, cold, and mental resists.
Curse of the Meek: Summon innocents for harvesting souls.
Surge of Undeath - Send a surge of powerful necrotic magic through your necrotic aura to boost all undead in the aura. More powerful than current version, at least a bit.
Lichform/Phylactery: Dying causes a darkness explosion that turns you into a Lich / restores your unlife to 0. Also, while undead, can be used to consume a soul for life and mana recovery.

All in all, this mixes things up a lot. There's no longer any single clear path for a minion build or a damage build. Every necromancer would need at least a little of everything. Also, spreads out the constructed undead into the peaks of each category: bones for the deep tomb, flesh for the shallow grave, and spirit for the animus. I also like that it gives Lichform a use after you become a lich, or for undead. Maybe only the transformation would need the quest to use? So skeleton liches could consume souls without doing the quest?

[HousePet]

I don't see how what you wrote above is any different?
You still have a starter category entirely dedicated to (weak) undead and then three categories which END in a talent that gives a stronger version of a type of undead. It still costs 8 talent points in your version. It might no cost a category point, but your design doesn't appear to contain much use for them anyway.
Since the entire design I posted contained no numbers, why are you assuming that everything would be the same strength as it is now? I said it was a bit incomplete.
I'm not sure which categories you think are dedicated to direct damage only, as none of them are.

[Red]

As a matter of fact, I do find it pleasing to the eye.
...
I'll just check myself into the asylum, then.

So long as the sprite that's used for the nucklave is appropiate relative to the others, it's fine. Just have it be rough around the edges, ggenerally a quick mash-up of a few corpses rather than anything smoothly made.

Mechanically, I honestly don't see the current build being all that fun for Minionmancers. You have your one basic skill, then up to three higher level summon skills. That's it. Now, there is interaction between your other abilities and your minions, but there's still not a ton to do with them.

Either there should be a category or two that gives summoning and highly interactive spells (more than just increased damage, since you can easily get increased damage by playing as a blaster instead), gives just pure summoning and summoning related abilities (buffs, controlled minion teleporting, etc.), or you have to be able to exert more control over your minions.

Just looking at the abilities proposed, it really seems like minions are an extra. They have few abilities, and the +damage interaction encourages you to treat minions like intervening buffs rather than anything else. I'm all for disposable minions, but a full minion-using Necromancer should have minions be soldiers in an army, not +damage buffs.

Minor note on Soul Rip-it'd need some restrictions to stop Necros from infinitely farming souls using stair scumming to restore enemy health or similar.

[HousePet]

But +damage buffs apply to your minions.

[Red]

I don't see where that is. I was under the impression Planetus's design gave the buffs to your spell damage, not the minion damage, and I don't see where in your build at all +damage exists.

Regardless of that, it still doesn't seem like a proper implementation. It's a bit better, since it lets you buff minions, but since the +damage buff isn't that large and (I'd assume) the spell does decent damage, it's a secondary effect and not the main goal.

Perhaps there should be a few talents devoted to minion control. "Kill", to focus all minions (or all minions in an AoE) on one enemy, "Encircle", to put a priority on encircling a foe/ally for restricting movement/protection, "Wall", for making a wall of flesh to cut off enemies, etc. These could be 1 CD, instant use spells that all share the same CD. Should not be affected by Burning Hex or anything that extends CDs, but can be locked off by things like Stun or Silence.

[Planetus]

To some degree, yes, my set-up didn't have too much to buff undead. It was a quick whip up, I guess like HousePet's. I only had Surge of Undeath behind a locked category to give a situational buff to undead. Shadow Tunnel could also reasonably buff all undead that were teleported (maybe any that aren't already in the target zone). The damage spells that gain +damage per enemy hit would, yes, increase the damage of the spell, not the minion. This was more to tie the damage build and the minion build together more, so that they're more focuses of the same skill sets, not mostly or completely exclusive setups. So a damage-centered necromancer would want to max out at least the number of minions he has, so that his attacks can hit more minions and get more boosts, while a minion-centered necromancer could have a justification to send a low-invested, low-damage beam spell through 3 minions.

We could also do some synergy, where each point invested in the Deep Tomb, Shallow Grave, or Animus tree gives a passive boost to all Skeletons, Ghouls/Wights/Vampires (fleshy undead, basically), and Dreads/Wraiths/Ghosts (spiritual undead), respectively.

Or maybe get rid of Grasping Claws in the Shallow Grave tree and replace it with some kind of situational, sustained, or passive boost to all undead, so that each of the undead-type-trees would have a setup of: Damage, Minion, Damage, Minion for it's structure. Oh, and I just noticed I have Will O' the Wisp twice, so take it out of Soul Collector and put something else dealing with your Soul resource in there. That'd give us:
Reanimation- dedicated to minions
Soul Collector- dedicated to soul resource, useful for either (maybe need some soul-using attack spells)
Deep Tomb, Shallow Grave, Animus - mix of damage and minion skills
Shades-Locked- dedicated to damage
Undeath Mastery-Locked- dedicated mostly to minions, some to straight player buff

So maybe that needs one tree dedicated to damage? Or is that too much already? I like the idea of meshing the two roles together, though, as well as meshing damage types together.

If we do 'command' spells like Red is suggesting, I'd say give each one a buff as well. And maybe make them sustains, but mutually exclusive, like Thought-Forms are? Maybe the Target command spell commands all undead to focus their attacks on the target, and gives them a bonus to damage and critical chance, while the Encircle command spell tells them all to encircle a target, to prevent it from moving (attacking normally, though being careful not to attack THROUGH the target if it's friendly) and gives them all defensive boosts, and the Wall command spell tells them to form a line and gives them chances to cause status effects (especially pin, slow, or stun) whenever they attack in any way. Although, if these are things you may want to target, or re-target mid battle, maybe they shouldn't be sustains.

[Delmuir]

Why not have the greater minions grant some mechanical function to the Necromancer…

I did the "Blood Golem" which when combined with the damage-sharing is a potentially a constant source of healing.

You could create related effects such that there's combinations and augmentations, both to your necromancer and to other minions. This would allow some strategic play in what you summon, and when. Currently, Necro-minions are just canon fodder but even more dramatically than Summoner summons. It's be nice if there was some strategic element to using them.

Personally, I loather controlling them but that's just me… I'll take a crack at in my concept and I'll check in here if anyone is interested.

[Planetus]

Yeah, I don't really think the Necromancer should be able to take control of it's minions. That doesn't really fit the necromancer theme, and there'd just be too many.

For some synergy and strategy between summons and necromancer, maybe something like:

Bone Golem gives +X% damage all to the necromancer while summoned, and when it's destroyed grants a bone shield. Not sure if that should be a damage shield ala the skeleton's bone shield, a general attack shield ala the Corruptor's bone shield, or a specific damage shield ala wards. It might be nice for the Bone Golem to record damage taken in the last 10 or so turns, and when it's destroyed grand you X wards appropriated according to the damage taken, so if 75% of the damage it took was physical, and 25% was arcane, and you got 4 wards from it, 3 would be physical and 1 arcane.

Nuckelavee shares all damage and healing with the necromancer, apportioned according to the relative HP of the two (so you wouldn't go below 0 until the Nuckelavee was destroyed). Then, since it also gains HP on kill, that is also shared with the necromancer, and if the necromancer is leeching any HP from his attacks, that also heals the Nuckelavee. Not sure what to do on death for the Nuckelavee. On the one hand, the above is pretty powerful, but on the other hand, it also leaves the necromancer more vulnerable themselves. Maybe on death the Nuckelavee explodes, dealing X darkness damage and healing the necromancer for some % of damage dealt? Especially if it did so at the same time shared damage was dealt to the necromancer, that would mean the necromancer probably wouldn't end up with 0 HP when the Nuckelavee was destroyed.

Legion, hmmm. Should probably be themed after it's status effect theme, but not sure how without overpowering it. If it extended the duration of all negative effects on-hit, that would greatly extend it's status effect power and make it OP. Maybe every attack also has a % chance to transfer one negative status effect from the necromancer to the target? And maybe at a high enough level, there's also a low % chance that the target's positive status effects will be drained to the necromancer? And maybe on death it dispells X positive status effects from whatever killed it (at any range), and dispells the same number (i.e. the number actually dispelled) of negative effects from the necromancer?

That gives each one a unique buffing role. The Bone Golem gives more powerful attacks and gives some kind of special protection on death. The Nuckelavee potentially extends the necromancer's HP and healing, as well as it's own, but potentially exposes the necromancer to more damage, and on death it most likely heals the necromancer somewhat (who will pretty much necessarily be near death himself). The Legion gives some status protection and maybe even a little status elimination on enemies while it's alive, and on death it does... more of the same? Or maybe it should give something like a Hidden Resources or Timeless effect on the necromancer when killed?

Mind you all, the above was put together over 10 minutes after working 48 hours in 5 days, so if there's anything that doesn't make sense or just seems stupid, please forgive me.

[Red]

Bone Golem-Not too shabby there, assuming the Necro grants +damage to its summons like a Summoner does. As for the shield, on death I think the all ward of Bone Shield are appropiate in limited amounts.

Nazareth-That's basically Delmuir's Blood Golem, and while I love the idea (you can see all the refinements on his thread) it already exists. If you want to co-opt it for a Blood Golem free build, by all means (and on death you can turbocharge healing factor and grant a little damage affinity? Sound good?) but I'd rather try something new for the Naqshbandi.

Since the Naxxramas is fast, vicious, but low on survivability, what if granted increased global speed to all minions (and a lesser amount to you and superminions) that increased based on how low their HP was, but also consumed a portion of their health with each attack? (Excepting you, but your bonuses would also scale much more slowly than anyone else's so as to avoid OPing you below 0 HP.) It'd greatly increase your minion's power, especially in conjunction with a Bone Golem for a damage boost, but it would also mean you'd be cycling through minions far faster.

Legion-Delmuir reference again, I think he hashed out a pretty well-balanced idea for Legion as a minion. On death, have him grant a few turns of incorporeality-greatly increased physresist, small increase to allresist, and can move through walls. Maybe also a hint of Gloom.

[Planetus]

Having trouble with Nuckelavee? It's Nuck-el-a-vee. Nuck-el-a-vee.

Seriously, though, I hadn't actually looked at the blood golem yet, so I'm not surprised I came up with something similar. I like the idea of a global speed boost, possibly scaling with missing HP, but I don't like the idea of it draining HP with each hit. Minions are hard enough to keep alive as it is (and yes, they're intended to be disposable, but I don't think THAT disposable). One thing to consider for global speed, though, is that it will be less useful (not useless, just less useful) for caster types. So not only the necromancer, but also his/her skeleton mages, liches, to some degree vampires and dreads, and also the bone golem, would see less benefit from that. Unless, that is, it also reduced spell cooldown the same amount. And then maybe it could boost movement speed on top of the global speed boost? That would make it both offensive and defensive to a degree, and wouldn't leave casters with turns best spent doing nothing, which I hate.

Still not sure about Legion. That incorporeal+resists+gloom seems, well, at the same time a bit much and also just unfocused. Sort of. Maybe incorporeal with moderate resist all? I know physical resist makes thematic sense, but practically, late game, I don't know that it's so exceptionally useful. Plenty of damage comes in in other elements at that point, so I'd rather see resists be even across the board.

[Red]

I had trouble at first, then made sure to get it right for the story. But at this point, I'm just going with anything that starts with an "N". But since you pointed it out, I'll make sure to spell it even worse from now on.

If you don't want it draining HP on hit, then the bonuses would have to be somewhat minor. Global speed is basically acting as a multiplier for anything that uses bumps or bows, and a multiplier that works directly with all your other bonuses. I do agree that it'd make your casters less useful, relatively speaking, and that's kinda the point. Summoning a Knuckles the Echidna would be the start of a zerg rush, sending minions pouring out in a frenzy that quickly die and are just as quickly resurrected.

Spell CD shouldn't be affected, since that is going to boost your most powerful minions by an unnecessarily large amount, but movement speed is fine for getting your horde to the opposition. The one spell that could have its CD reduced is your basic minion raising spell, since they'll be dying off so fast.

Make physical resist scale well at early levels and drop off at later levels, make all resist scale decently to start and better at the end. That way you get physical resist early-mid game, where it's going to serve you in good stead, and later on when you are at far more risk from other kinds, you've got good all resist from it. You'll still have that very high physical resist, it just won't matter as much. Gloom should probably be removed at this point, since it's such a powerful defensive ability the statuses aren't needed.

[Delmuir]

Just a side note if anyone codes this, I just saw an enemy for the first time ever called a "Glacial Legion." I figure someone could just steal the animation for that for the "Legion" super-summon, if they wanted to. It was fairly ominous looking…

Anyway, this whole concept is looking good… thanks for references Red.