ToME: the Tales of Maj'Eyal

aCombine the Dread and Rimewraith categories into a locked "Greater Summons" category with four talents: Dread, Rimewraith, the active ability from each category in one skill, and a new minion.

1. Dread - The Dread gains the Souleater function at level 3 and Dreadmaster at level 5

2. Rimewraith - it gets Frigid Plunge a level 3 and Permafrost at level 5.

3. Establish a new talent that grants the remaining ability to the corresponding "greater summon." So, it'd grant the Neverending Peril ability to a Dread and Gelid Host to the Rimewraith. Call it "sacrifice" and the price is no mana or soul but one lesser minion.

This, of course, leaves space for one more ability... And for this spot I'd put a new minion that actually ties together some of the other abilities and restores resource management as a concern so it doesn't further increase the already notable power of the necro. What is it?

4. Soul Eater:

A sustain summon that pays its mana and soul cost EACH TURN... so 25 mana and 1 soul.

What you get is a ghostly summon that is immune to all but arcane, manaclash, and mind damage damage. It doesn't do any damage itself or cast status effects. Instead, it uses one soul per turn to restore to full life to one of your minions and clearing them of some status effects. If it targets a ghoul, it would save its life if it were to be used for discarded refuse or corpse explosion and so on. It would never heal you though.

IF you or minions kill something that turn then it uses that soul. If not, it consumes one of your stored souls. Thus, you'd need to recover two souls a turn to break even or you'd need to use hidden resources or similar.

Functionally, it'd be really helpful against mobs... as your mana recovery and soul recovery could keep it going. Against bosses, it'd be riskier and more situational. One potential use would be to set up a single Lord of Skulls and use Soul Eater to keep it at full life as it'd be the only thing to target. Theoretically, if you invested in Dire Plauge and Soul Leech and Torture Souls, and got Highborn's Bloom and Hidden Resources, you could keep it going for a long time.

This would restore some resource management problems to the Necro without ratcheting up the power because the category would be a talent point sink and would require some compromise elsewhere but it would increase diversity of builds and make the Dread and Rimewraith more useful for regular play.

One final point... for this new category, I figure a thematic cost. By this, I mean, each talent you pick up "permanently changes the world" and can't be removed. More so, each talent you pick up reduces your positive life by 50 and increases your negative by 40. Note, that is -10 life per, so -40 in total. This would be because these minions are so powerful...

Necromancers are the last class that needs a buff. Right now, on current patch; if you can get past The Master alive you're home free for most characters simply because Lord of Skulls gets prodigies and not even most bosses get that luxury, to say Necromancer's are over-tuned is an understatement - they perform well in sustain, shields, damage, damage resistance utility and have minions (But you could play them without a single point in a minion skill and you'll hardly notice lol, even though the minions are themselves very powerful.)

On my Necromancer win I was deathless, had no minions and spent most of the game with mobs unable to break my hiemal shield far less get me to below 1 life (Which is where my all resistances and procs activate, as well as necrosis - completely unnecessary but you know it's there)

Meanwhile Alchemist is over here going NOTICE ME. NOTICE ME! BUFF ME! PLEASE!

Their golem is so bad that it will fall off as early as T2 dungeons and will be irrelevant for the rest of the game. Your best bet with alchemists - I shitteth thee not - is to grind patrols with your golem's eye beam really early on before he's outscaled and extract gems from their gear whilst assembling your BIS, then enchant a bunch of copper agate rings until you get two randart orange rings that are good, buy your runes, buy everything you can because you will always be a worse arch mage no matter what you do. You will always have less utility than a paradox mage, you will always have less shielding than an archmage, you will always have a worse minion than a necromancer, you will always have no pluses and all minuses.

And if you're lucky, and if you find penitence (And make it physical for the physical affinity, super duper important) then, over a period of time, really really slowly, you can kill the late game with the worst spell in the game, gem bomb and squeak out a win.

TLDR: Nerf Necromancer into the ground please, rework Lord of Skulls, then we can talk about adding even more toys for the class with the biggest toy box.