ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

The Necromancer is a bit of a mess. It has critical skills scattered about with unrelated skills producing a significant skill point shortage. It also has inefficient skills and it lacks synergy (essence of the dead for example) and elegance. This is my attempt to clean it up without messing up the balance:

1. Grave tree: I'd suggest Frost dusk in the 4th slot and moving Vampiric Gifts. This would streamline the non-summoning build and make Lichform viable by leaving a few skill points for the Celestial/Star Fury tree.

2. Necrosis tree: move Undeath Link and replace it with Vampiric Gifts.

3. Necrotic Minions tree: integrate Dark Empathy and Aura Mastery into one skill. At this point, it's just a skill point sink and this class doesn't need that. I'd also have this raise the max soul cap by one for each point invested. Put Undeath Link in the 4th slot and buff it by giving it the same effect, at level 5, that it would get with Essence of the Dead. You could also not buff Undeath Link and instead put it in the two slot and put Aura Master/Dark Empathy combo into the 4th slot.

4. Advanced Necrotic Minions tree: Sacrifice is a problem… one turn to summon, one turn to build, and one to cast. That's THREE turns in order to build a PARTIAL damage shield, which doesn't make any sense when you can just use a rune or use one turn for displacement shield. I'd eliminate it and put Forgery of the Haze in there… maybe tweak the description such as "copy your mind into an undead corpse" or something.

5. Shades tree: I've left this tree with only two skills: Shadow Tunnel and Curse of the meek. I'd eliminate both and, as a result, the entire tree as it doesn't seem thematically consistent with the Necro. Seems more suitable for the Doomed or something...

6. Nightfall tree: make it such that each point in the entire tree adds a 1% chance to summon a ghost (or undead of type, whatever) upon killing an enemy. These undead would not cost souls (but you also wouldn't gain a soul) and would be akin to the risen ghouls from the Ghoul's level 5 gnaw skill.

7. Animus tree: Essence of the Dead. I'd make this instant and last a bit longer akin to other buffing abilities… OR, I'd change it entirely and make it consume 85-100% of your souls and give a significant, short-term buff to anything you summon and any spell you cast for the next two turns. The idea being that you'd better kill something with that buff or you'll be out of souls. If you change it to the big buff then it would need a longer cool down.

Then take Animus Hoarder and make it such that it creates "x" % chance of recovering a soul when a minion is killed, scaled to magic and points invested.

Consume Soul… this should have an incrementally higher soul cost… maybe one soul per level but the effect should be greater and at lvl 5, it should create a 3 turn damage shield equal to fifty-percent of the heal. It should also have a longer cool-down, maybe four more turns.

This would solve the Skill-point shortage and make Lichform much more viable by making the Celestial/Star Fury tree more useful (having more points). More so, it would make it cleaner to play and I don't think overpowers the Necro as a player or enemy.

However, it would get rid of the soul-farming ability of Curse of the Meek, which I think my suggestion fixes by making souls recoverable and a bit more plentiful.

Thoughts? Criticisms? It'd be much appreciated as I think this class could be really fun to play but it's a bit awkward right now.

UPDATE: After feedback and debate, I decided re-work this and I posted that on page three.

UPDATE #2: Another attempt on page 4, using some ideas from HousePet's add-on.

UPDATE #3: Attempt on page 5. This is the closest to the current incarnation of the Necromancer but has added HousePet's Generic tree with one new skill.

I agree with quite a few of the points you've raised, honestly.
Currently it is inefficient, but your changes seem to streamline without unbalancing.

I'd personally like to keep Curse of the Meek, somehow, though. Even if modified.

Thank you Revanchist…

Well, I did eliminate an entire tree… I didn't want to confuse the matter by trying to also make another category. I'll look at my notes again and see if I can sneak it in anywhere...

Perhaps you could keep Curse of the Meek by making it somewhat common on "necro gear…"

UPDATE: I looked at my notes and I think we can eliminate Surge of Undeath and replace it with a Curse of the Meek clone more thematically called something like "Call Specters." It could have the same chance to generate souls and have Curse of Hate. Essentially you're "calling wandering spirits" and then capturing their souls once they're destroyed. Just a thought...

I like it. It's thematic (they're there, so why not use them!) and replaces something you've already delegated elsewhere. Plus, it seems to fit better in that tree, which seems to be about managing souls.

As for "Necromancer" flavoured gear, perhaps a common theme would be "undeath", which there is already, as well as less common effects like health regeneration penalty in exchange for spellpower/defense? Even a general "paying for power" theme?

The Revanchist wrote:
As for "Necromancer" flavoured gear, perhaps a common theme would be "undeath", which there is already, as well as less common effects like health regeneration penalty in exchange for spellpower/defense? Even a general "paying for power" theme?

I like it! I'm on board with this idea… not sure I've got a good enough grasp of the technical balance issues to come up with ideas for this but in theory, I like it.

I'd love to test this re-shuffling of the Necromancer… perhaps as an add-on but I can't make one. If it works the way I think it could, I think it would make the Necromancer a much more fun and playable class.

On a non-substantive point: we should be able to see souls on the screen. Whether they rush to you when they are captured, or just hang around and make you pick them up. The rush-to-you approach would just be neat, and be a reminder you just picked up a soul: I'm thinking a swoosh of cloudy glowing stuff headed from the death to you. The pick-them-up idea would make you stroll around after the battle and walk onto the cloudy glowing patches, which are just overlaid graphics with no gameplay effect. But walking around to collect them seems a little annoying. Maybe the cloudy souls could walk toward you, so you get a bit of a delay in increasing your soul count...and if you teleport out before they get to you, you lose them. I don't know. Right now the Soul# just seems like an <int>, instead of being really in character.

1. Grave tree: I'd suggest Frost dusk in the 4th slot and moving Vampiric Gifts. This would streamline the non-summoning build and make Lichform viable by leaving a few skill points for the Celestial/Star Fury tree.

I wouldn't entirely have a problem with this, but I do feel like Frostdusk fits better as an unlockable category talent. All similar talents are.

2. Necrosis tree: move Undeath Link and replace it with Vampiric Gifts.

And I like Vampiric Gift more as a capstone than something you're forced to get a level in on the way to something else. At its cost, that's very questionable design.

(Granted, I forget if Lichform, being as it's rather odd, actually requires you to have all the previous talents to level it.)

3. Necrotic Minions tree: integrate Dark Empathy and Aura Mastery into one skill. At this point, it's just a skill point sink and this class doesn't need that. I'd also have this raise the max soul cap by one for each point invested. Put Undeath Link in the 4th slot and buff it by giving it the same effect, at level 5, that it would get with Essence of the Dead. You could also not buff Undeath Link and instead put it in the two slot and put Aura Master/Dark Empathy combo into the 4th slot.

First idea seems reasonable. Don't see any reason at all for it buffing soul cap, though. Since I'm kinda iffy on the reshuffling ideas already, I'm not sure what to say exactly about the latter half of that, though Undeath Link probably could use some form of L5 ability.

4. Advanced Necrotic Minions tree: Sacrifice is a problem… one turn to summon, one turn to build, and one to cast. That's THREE turns in order to build a PARTIAL damage shield, which doesn't make any sense when you can just use a rune or use one turn for displacement shield. I'd eliminate it and put Forgery of the Haze in there… maybe tweak the description such as "copy your mind into an undead corpse" or something.

It's three turns, but you can pre-use two of them. Moving Forgery of Haze into that tree makes it very centralizing, and Forgery of Haze isn't even thematically very similar to an advanced necrotic minion. I'm not saying Sacrifice is necessarily awesome-haven't mucked with it since it got retooled-but I don't feel it's a concept that needs to entirely be tossed. Maybe it could take a random undead instead of only Bone Giants?

5. Shades tree: I've left this tree with only two skills: Shadow Tunnel and Curse of the meek. I'd eliminate both and, as a result, the entire tree as it doesn't seem thematically consistent with the Necro. Seems more suitable for the Doomed or something...

Curse of the Meek and Shadow Tunnel are highly useful utility talents that I don't really like to outright remove. The latter makes herding undead far more easy, while the former is one of the few mid-battle Soul restoration options, even if it isn't very stable.

6. Nightfall tree: make it such that each point in the entire tree adds a 1% chance to summon a ghost (or undead of type, whatever) upon killing an enemy. These undead would not cost souls (but you also wouldn't gain a soul) and would be akin to the risen ghouls from the Ghoul's level 5 gnaw skill.

I don't see why it needs this kind of buff. It's already a tree that sees quite heavy investment, and many Necromancer players don't even like to herd pets around, preferring to play them purely as darkness/cold casters. I don't think they'd thank you for forcing pets on them.

7. Animus tree: Essence of the Dead. I'd make this instant and last a bit longer akin to other buffing abilities… OR, I'd change it entirely and make it consume 85-100% of your souls and give a significant, short-term buff to anything you summon and any spell you cast for the next two turns. The idea being that you'd better kill something with that buff or you'll be out of souls. If you change it to the big buff then it would need a longer cool down.

Again, not sure why the latter change. Death Blow used to consume all of your Stamina for a short term power gain-and no one used it because it did that, and its cost was heavily cut to 50%, and it still doesn't see a lot of use.

When is blowing all of your souls going to be worth it for a short term buff, compared to summoning minions? And if you do make it worth it, won't you heavily encourage no-minion builds to the point of making them overly centric?

Having said that, I don't think there's necessarily anything wrong with buffing the duration. It is a little short.

Then take Animus Hoarder and make it such that it creates "x" % chance of recovering a soul when a minion is killed, scaled to magic and points invested.

No problems with this idea. Hoarder's probably a bit weak, and that certainly fits.

Consume Soul… this should have an incrementally higher soul cost… maybe one soul per level but the effect should be greater and at lvl 5, it should create a 3 turn damage shield equal to fifty-percent of the heal. It should also have a longer cool-down, maybe four more turns.

No real problem with this idea either, tentatively.

This would solve the Skill-point shortage and make Lichform much more viable by making the Celestial/Star Fury tree more useful (having more points). More so, it would make it cleaner to play and I don't think overpowers the Necro as a player or enemy.

Necromancers have a skill point shortage? This is genuinely news to me. They only have seven Class categories, two of which start locked. For a frame of reference, Archer, one of the most linear classes in the game, has...eleven. Doomed, the lowest class options class in the game right now, has... six, IIRC.

I don't think cleaning up the play of a class with this few trees is necessarily desirable. Cleaning up iffy talents and improving them, yes, but I don't see that there's a glut of talents here.

Sacrifice is appropriately powerful as it is. Needs a bit of wisdom to understand it's worthiness, but it is good. It's only huge downside is being impossible to perform again in the middle of fight; otherwise vault would be filled with proud Linaniil necro killers.

The main problem Necromancers currently have is horrible AI of minions. I would easily spend couple of prodigy points just to stop that bunch of summoned liches from wandering out of my aura. Maybe, advanced minions should be givem some movement speed, reduced decay rates, ability to avoid decay for couple of turns during autoexplore - anything to prevent those pricey Master Vampires from dying right after hitting 'z' on anyone but Ghoul (actually, Ghoul too..)

SageAcrin wrote:Necromancers have a skill point shortage? This is genuinely news to me. They only have seven Class categories, two of which start locked. For a frame of reference, Archer, one of the most linear classes in the game, has...eleven. Doomed, the lowest class options class in the game right now, has... six, IIRC.

You are kidding me, SageAcrin.. They have nine class categories, Star Fury included, and plenty of class point sinks. Namely, anything, related to minions/souls, is huge point sink because of how hard it is to manage them otherwise. And there are also those mandatory Lichform/Invoke Darkness sinks.

Sage,

On your points… in no particular order...

1. Forgery of Haze not being thematic to the necrotic minions tree? True which is why I re-described it so that it would be, although it could use a more "thematic" name. That's a cosmetic problem though…

2. On general criticism… your criticism seems extremely minor compared to the potential game-play benefit. Whether or not Vampiric Gifts is a capstone or not!?! A small price to pay. Curse of the meek "being very useful!?!" I addressed that by replacing its function elsewhere… namely the soul cap increase that you "didn't understand."

3. No skill-point shortage? Have you played a Necro???

4. The big-buff idea… admittedly, that was a bit of a throw-away idea in case someone thought that I was nerfing Essence of the Dead. That particular idea is not significant so the criticism is well taken.

I don't mean to be rude as I usually find your criticisms informed and interesting but this feedback reads like you only gleamed over the post and didn't note the overarching objective of my plan. It (largely) wasn't a series of singular ideas but a re-organization of skills that are each dependent upon another in order to keep the Necro balanced but more efficient. The "buffs" I suggested weren't standalone ideas… they were designed to make up for the changes such as eliminating Curse of the Meek, which two posts later, I re-added at the suggestion of Revanchist.

I'm mostly baffled by the defense of Sacrifice… this is truly a gameplay problem and waste of skills. Sacrifice doesn't do anything well OR efficiently. Does it "work?" Yes but that's a pretty minimum standard and it's torturous to use given the clear superiority of Displacement Shield.

I regularly hear on this site things like "a smart player" shouldn't have a problem… which is often an excuse for poor design. I'm not suggesting the my idea are optimal (but I think they're good) but they are at least addressing the problem.

AlexanderR wrote:Sacrifice is appropriately powerful as it is. Needs a bit of wisdom to understand it's worthiness, but it is good. It's only huge downside is being impossible to perform again in the middle of fight; otherwise vault would be filled with proud Linaniil necro killers.

The main problem Necromancers currently have is horrible AI of minions. I would easily spend couple of prodigy points just to stop that bunch of summoned liches from wandering out of my aura. Maybe, advanced minions should be givem some movement speed, reduced decay rates, ability to avoid decay for couple of turns during autoexplore - anything to prevent those pricey Master Vampires from dying right after hitting 'z' on anyone but Ghoul (actually, Ghoul too..)

I'm aware of the power of Sacrifice. Note, that the buff serves a secondary function… namely to help replace the strength lost by eliminating two skills (and one half-filled category). These suggestions are designed to organic and dependent, not stand alone ideas.

Also, really? That's what you think is the biggest necro problem? Not the lack of skill-points. Not the inefficiency? Your problem is that they don't play like alchemists?

If a Necro could keep their minions for a long time then they'd be over-powered. They'd almost always run into battles with a meat-shield up and a Ghoul could keep their powerful minions alive forever so once they build a powerful army, they'd be nigh unstoppable.

AlexanderR wrote:The main problem Necromancers currently have is horrible AI of minions. I would easily spend couple of prodigy points just to stop that bunch of summoned liches from wandering out of my aura. Maybe, advanced minions should be givem some movement speed, reduced decay rates, ability to avoid decay for couple of turns during autoexplore - anything to prevent those pricey Master Vampires from dying right after hitting 'z' on anyone but Ghoul (actually, Ghoul too..)

I'll respond to this with a quote, courtesy of the Dark One Himself.

For those of you that won't follow links... Here's the quote.

darkgod wrote:The point of necro minions is not to keep them around forever, they are disposable commodity

Even the most powerful minion is just that. A MINION. Not something to be cherished, loved, or respected. Something to be used. Advanced Minions are just stronger tools.

Despite necro only having a few class trees compared to stuff like Archmage or Solipsist, they do feel very point-starved. I think this is because so many of the trees feel vital - pretty much any flavour of necro needs a large investment in Nightfall, I always feel compelled to take Shades to counter the large number of Darkness resistant enemies in the game, Lichform is a massive boost so you'll need to sink 5 points into that, and so on. Whereas something like Archmage you can basically pick any tree+the advanced version and do pretty well with minimal splashing into other categories. I'd rather necro gets a bunch of skills merged and cut down, then give them some new categories to play with - maybe a frost/darkness focused nuke tree, a different flavour of minion tree, or give them a new element like an acid dot/nuke tree or a variation on Corruption/Bone. I've actually drawn up a necro rework and am slowly trying to code it (so far 1 skill complete out of dozens!) but my lack of LUA skills makes it a slow progress.

AlexanderR wrote:

SageAcrin wrote:Necromancers have a skill point shortage? This is genuinely news to me. They only have seven Class categories, two of which start locked. For a frame of reference, Archer, one of the most linear classes in the game, has...eleven. Doomed, the lowest class options class in the game right now, has... six, IIRC.

You are kidding me, SageAcrin.. They have nine class categories, Star Fury included, and plenty of class point sinks. Namely, anything, related to minions/souls, is huge point sink because of how hard it is to manage them otherwise. And there are also those mandatory Lichform/Invoke Darkness sinks.

Oh, right, I looked up the birth file to scan it and forgot to look at the unlockable(Ice) or the one that isn't shown there, since it's over in Lichform's file(Star Fury). The dangers of posting near sleep.

Nine's still not a big number, however(Again, see Archer's 11). And I strongly, strongly disagree that minions are a heavy class point mandatory sink. One in Shadow Tunnel, 3-4 in Aura and 5 in Minions is not that bad for a pet at all.

You can do more if you want to keep them constantly alive(Which I dispute the worth of, when you're not a Ghoul. You can't heal them until your own Ghouls learn Retch otherwise, and even then it takes ages for them to heal that way. Also, see the above post; Word of DarkGod is that they are indeed meant to be disposable.), but if you want to just use them as an anti-boss nuke, it's pretty cheap.

In short, nine's not a big number when it represents a playstyle split between more minion heavy play or more damage casting heavy play.

2. On general criticism… your criticism seems extremely minor compared to the potential game-play benefit. Whether or not Vampiric Gifts is a capstone or not!?! A small price to pay. Curse of the meek "being very useful!?!" I addressed that by replacing its function elsewhere… namely the soul cap increase that you "didn't understand."

That's just it, I don't actually see a gameplay benefit to most of this.

I see a buff, sure, but buffs aren't always good. How does this make Necromancer more interesting? It seems like it makes Necromancer more linear instead.

Required skill point sinks may be psychologically unsatisfying, but they can be necessary to allow for single, powerful talents. If Alchemists just took 5 to throw bombs at full power, or Archmages took 5 to have the full Wildfire impact on Flame/Fireflash, they would spiral out of control very quickly.

More interesting would be making the iffier skills better, and making them feel like leveling them fully is a better choice.

3. No skill-point shortage? Have you played a Necro???

I have the first Ghoul Necromancer clear on the vaults. It was my first clear, even.

I don't mean to be rude as I usually find your criticisms informed and interesting but this feedback reads like you only gleamed over the post and didn't note the overarching objective of my plan. It (largely) wasn't a series of singular ideas but a re-organization of skills that are each dependent upon another in order to keep the Necro balanced but more efficient.

Yeah, but if Necromancer can effectively run its full offensive game, as well as the full power of the minions end, is that actually a good thing for gameplay? Or should it be a choice?

If one end is weaker or stronger than the other, certainly tooling needs to be done, but there's nothing wrong with having multiple ways to play, and there's especially nothing wrong with making them a sliding scale of options, rather than a single "Take this summoning talent, or not" choice.

I'm not saying that Necromancer's perfect, but I don't see that it needs a teardown like this.

I regularly hear on this site things like "a smart player" shouldn't have a problem… which is often an excuse for poor design. I'm not suggesting the my idea are optimal (but I think they're good) but they are at least addressing the problem.

I often hear people complain that they don't have enough points.

This always strikes me as someone basically wanting to have their cake and eat it too, psychologically. That they don't like making meaningful decisions.

But that doesn't make meaningful decisions a bad thing-meaningful decisions are the basis of a huge amount of gameplay, essentially. You decide if you're going to use a shotgun or a pistol in an FPS, or who your team will be in a sports game, or what powerup to use in platformers.

However, Necromancer should be a case of meaningful decisions, and if some of the talents aren't meaningful, they do need help.

Lichform is a massive boost so you'll need to sink 5 points into that, and so on.

Actually Lichform is, and always was I believe, intended to be more of a valid sidegrade instead of a massive boost.

If it's being considered centric for reasons rather than "It's cool", it probably should be nerfed somehow. But this is the first time I've ever heard Lichform described as "a massive boost"; Before Star Fury was added to it, it was considered one of the worst talents in the game by many players.

(Well, after it got fixed so you couldn't use Infusions with it.)

Whereas something like Archmage you can basically pick any tree+the advanced version and do pretty well with minimal splashing into other categories.

Archmage is one class. Not every caster should play like Archmage, and Corruptors/Anorithil/Paradox Mage certainly don't just 5 up two trees.

(To say nothing of the fact that 5ing up two trees and largely ignoring other things is almost entirely unique to Archmage as a gameplay decision; Almost no other class can do that and clear, only Doomed, and maybe Solipsist and Summoner, even come close. It's still pretty badly non-optimal with all of those classes, too.)

The main point is that casters shouldn't play similarly, though. If Necromancer isn't playing exactly like Archmage... good, that means they're not a superflous class that should be removed, since Archmage plays like them.

Actually Lichform is, and always was I believe, intended to be more of a valid sidegrade instead of a massive boost.

If it's being considered centric for reasons rather than "It's cool", it probably should be nerfed somehow. But this is the first time I've ever heard Lichform described as "a massive boost"; Before Star Fury was added to it, it was considered one of the worst talents in the game by many players.

(Well, after it got fixed so you couldn't use Infusions with it.)

I disagree. You can no longer use infusions, but the new status-removing runes and Consume Soul allow you to still have a substantial amount of healing and cleansing. Then you also get a large amount of stat boosts, immunities, resistances, bonus health, and access to an entire new tree. Maybe minion necromancers could skip this, but a nuker can't go without Star Fury. Point-for-point I don't think any talent in the game offers so many bonuses.
In my opinion I'd rather have the skill removed and have the quest grant you the ability automatically, but not provide all the bonuses. Then give a Lich tree that offers some unique skills, either as a generic, or replace Star Fury with more Necromancer-themed stuff (which I admit would be a very controversial opinion due to people liking Star Fury).

Archmage is one class. Not every caster should play like Archmage, and Corruptors/Anorithil/Paradox Mage certainly don't just 5 up two trees.

(To say nothing of the fact that 5ing up two trees and largely ignoring other things is almost entirely unique to Archmage as a gameplay decision; Almost no other class can do that and clear, only Doomed, and maybe Solipsist and Summoner, even come close. It's still pretty badly non-optimal with all of those classes, too.)

The main point is that casters shouldn't play similarly, though. If Necromancer isn't playing exactly like Archmage... good, that means they're not a superflous class that should be removed, since Archmage plays like them.

Skill setup doesn't make classes play similar. In my opinion Archmage's talent tree setup is something more classes should emulate, as it's one of the few classes where you can have multiple unique builds within a class. As for classes that you mentioned, some of them have design flaws too, but that's a different topic entirely.
My biggest problem with Necromancer, there's far too many skills that feel like a requirement and offer no real choice. You absolutely have to get Shades for Frostdusk, even if 2 of the skills are fairly pointless for a nuker necro and 1 can be actively dangerous if you have Chill of the Tomb. Then you need Lichform to get Star Fury, and sink a bunch of points into that and Nightfall as those are your best nuking options. Then you probably want a few points into Chill of the Tomb, Consume Soul, and suddenly you have very few points free. It comes down to unlocking Ice, getting Vampiric Gift, or putting more points into Animus, which does offer some choice but not a great deal. I'd prefer to see alot of those trees cut down/merged and new trees added, so you could, lets say, play a Necromancer that forgoes Nightfall/Star Fury entirely (or at least only needs to get 1-2 skills) for alternate damage trees. I'm thinking of how Solipsist can get Mind Sear and then focus either on Dream Smith, Distortion or more Psychic Assault and still be viable.