Necro cleanup/re-reshuffle

[Orangeflame]

(at level the Forgery of the Haze clone...

I suppose that's supposed to be an '8', not a

1. I reject the notion that a Necromancer sans minions would really struggle without a second casting tree. ... I'm more likely to kill myself with Chill of the Tomb, ha ha

I completely agree with you here. Nightfall is easily 5/1/5/5, and has a different style of play than an archmage (read: more running away). Also, Chill of the Tomb was probably my #1 necromancer killer until I came to my senses and stopped using it.

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.

Cold is underpowered, but a +10% damage boost from a dark-themed skill is negligible. Wouldn't it be more thematic and synergystic if it gave a cold damage boost of up to some % (25? 33? 40?) of your +%dark damage, and slightly nerf the dark affinity?

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 strongly disagree that it is a late-game skill. For my minion-based necromancers, it is a *priority* to 5/5 it for the protection. Manathrusts to the back are a huge cause of stupid deaths and aggravation.



No meaningful comment on the 'Animus Purge/Forgery of Haze', other than that I'd prefer them to stay as they are.

[HousePet]

1: My concern about locking Grave isn't the limited amount of talents, its that you would be stuffed once you encounter something with high darkness immunity.

2: Its 10% and lack of equipment should be balanced with more equipment options.

3: It doesn't improve/affect your minions in any way. Therefore it shouldn't be in Advanced Minions.

[Delmuir]

1: My concern about locking Grave isn't the limited amount of talents, its that you would be stuffed once you encounter something with high darkness immunity.

2: Its 10% and lack of equipment should be balanced with more equipment options.

3: It doesn't improve/affect your minions in any way. Therefore it shouldn't be in Advanced Minions.

On point one… that's a good point and I honestly hadn't considered it. I've never really run into that problem within the first ten levels but I definitely know it can be an issue pretty soon after that. Doubly so playing a skeleton or Thalore… I'd hope that juggling summons for a few levels and Grasping Claws would be enough but perhaps not.

Point two: I agree with this.

Point three: I suppose we could just swap place with Shadow Tunnel in the Undeath Link category… but, your point is a good one. I'm not sure that Shadow Tunnel is a great fit. Hmmm… back to the drawing board.

As for the Dark Empathy criticism… I've not had that problem but I'm also not really opposed to overpowering it a bit.

I'm going to stick with Grave being a lockable tree in my theoretical redesign but let me see what I can with the rest of this. Good points, thanks.

[Pigslayer]

I was the 1st person to win with a necromancer (and it was on roguelike). It makes me sad when people constantly complain about how "weak" pet necros are. The only major issues I had with the class was how OP probability travel was and how terrible advanced minions are. Advanced minions isn't worth the investment, when your team of master archers and mages are capable of killing everything without issue. None of the talents in ANM are worth wasting a category point on tbh.

Pet necros are not weak. PROTIP: Protravel behind a wall and wait for your minions to kill everything. If they die, just summon more. You'll never get hit by anything, since you'll spend 90% of battles beyond anyone's reach. No walls around? Stay behind your pets. Go invisible, if you want. It's not like you have to participate. Pet necros are pretty boring though.

I never found pet management to be annoying, because I don't care about them. If they rot away I'll just summon more. ANM could use some improvements, but I don't think necros need a complete overhaul.

Edit: Undeath Link was nerfed, since I last played. It used to be all your minions' health was used to heal you. Now, it basically destroys all your minions and only 1 counts toward healing. I'm not sure why. Its only use was being a panic button.

[Mewtarthio]

Re: Forgery of Haze:

Is it really that good a talent on minion necromancers? It always struck me as more of a blaster necro trick. I'm not sure what minion necromancers are supposed to do with it. I'd be opposed to moving it to Advanced Minions simply because it fits better with blaster builds.

[Pigslayer]

Forgery of Haze doesn't increase a pet necro's damage output as much as a blaster necro, since the forgery can't summon. And if you're relying entirely on minions, then you probably aren't focusing on spell damage.

[Delmuir]

Re: Forgery of Haze:

Is it really that good a talent on minion necromancers? It always struck me as more of a blaster necro trick. I'm not sure what minion necromancers are supposed to do with it. I'd be opposed to moving it to Advanced Minions simply because it fits better with blaster builds.

Honestly, I'd assumed that even summoning necros would use darkness spells so it would still quite a bit of value. However, it's a noteworthy criticism so I'm taking another look at moving it around.

Also for Pig,
I'm not making the claim, nor have I ever, that the Necro is weak. It's quit strong. I just think it's messy and dull. I'm just trying to improve the gameplay and make he skill-points a bit more efficient for Lichform.

[Delmuir]

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.

Move Dark Empathy to Advanced Necrotic Minions.

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. Double cost to two souls.

5. Grave: Locked.

Add FrostDusk into the 4th slot and lock the tree. I'd also like to add two bonuses to this tree, in spite of some objections: damage is split fifty-fifty with cold and darkness on all abilities. I realize that this nerfs the damage a little but I think that's acceptable here. If anyone objects, why not add a small chance for Chill of the Tomb and Will o' the Wisps to cause freeze or blind and add the chance to blind to Cold Flames.

6. Ice: Locked.

No changes, obviously.

7. Advanced Minion Mastery: Locked.

Undead Explosion becomes a hybrid skill with Undeath Link and Sacrifice and moves to third slot. 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. I think the damage should be increased a bit as well...

Dark Empathy sits in first slot.

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 Eidolicism category.

9. Eidolicism: Unlocked… the description would be something like "You're surrounded by ghostly apparitions. Their tortured whispers hard, even for you, to endure."

First slot: Grasping Specters… See Necromancy+ add-on. I just renamed Grasping Claws and would change the description to "ghostly visages claw at enemies" or something like that.

Second Slot: River Styx… this is just a Shadow Tunnel clone with a ghostly name. Description is "minions traverse the underworld, guided by a nightmarish apparitions, to appear at your side." Their sudden appearance improves their evasion.

Third Slot: Ghostly Vision: this is a new active skill that gives non-undead enemies a glimpse of a hellish underworld. It's range is equal to the Necrotic Aura and it causes non-undead enemies to suffer one of either Anguish, Off-Guard, Weakened, or Bleeding, in addition to a tiny chance of instant death. Make the cost significant… probably 60 mana(?).

Fourth Slot: Whispers of the Dead… See Necromancy+ add-on. It's a renamed generic skill Dead Whispers. I think it should be a passive. I also think that the vision radius should start at 1 and bump up at level three and five, maxing at vision radius 3.

Generic:

Dead Secrets:

This is from HousePet's add-on. I've moved the third skill Dead Whispers to the new category. To be replaced with some defensive ability… I was thinking cold and darkness resists. I'm not sure if the Necro needs a generic tree but if so, here's one that's already testable.

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

I'm hoping the this is my last re-shuffle design.

Thoughts? Criticisms?

UPDATE: I made some tweaks based off of HousePet's critique below. I didn't feel like reposting the entire thing again.

[HousePet]

Undeath Link category is a mess of unrelated abilities.

I'm thinking it could be nice to move the cold damage bonus from Frostdusk to Essence of the Wisp.
And add a chance to summon a Wisp when you hit with a spell. Then the talent would have minion and caster uses.

[Delmuir]

Undeath Link category is a mess of unrelated abilities.

I'm thinking it could be nice to move the cold damage bonus from Frostdusk to Essence of the Wisp.
And add a chance to summon a Wisp when you hit with a spell. Then the talent would have minion and caster uses.

Unrelated abilities… that was a big part of the reason for this re-shuffle. At least now we only have one category that's a mess instead of three or four.

The problem skill, thematically at least, is Shadow Tunnel. Get rid of it and it's easy to clean up the Necro. Keep it and it's trickier.

That being said, they needn't be unrelated because relating them is entirely a matter of description. See, I renamed it Eidolicism (means haunted) and changed the descriptions. Now it works!

As for moving the cold bonus… you wrote an add-on so test it and see. I dislike it thematically because the Necro's uniqueness is in specializing in two elements that are under-utilized and not related normally (can't get them together normally). Thus, separating them out turns the Necromancer into a poor man's Archmage with two elemental categories. I'd rather blend than separate…

[Pigslayer]

Also for Pig,
I'm not making the claim, nor have I ever, that the Necro is weak. It's quit strong. I just think it's messy and dull. I'm just trying to improve the gameplay and make he skill-points a bit more efficient for Lichform.

This thread started off with you complaining that necromancers have a "significant skill point shortage", because you can't max out all the skills you want. Not being able to max out everything is part of the game balance. When I think of "significant skill point shortage" I think of a class stretched too thin to be effective. However, necromancers don't have any problems winning.

Overhauling a class is pretty drastic. It suggests that there's something fundamentally broken that must be fixed. You already admitted that you never won with the class. And you seem surprised when people claim necros are easy. This thread feels like a not-so-subtle attempt at make this class easier for you to win with.

Most of your suggested improvements are heavily biased towards minionless necros. Starting a thread complaining about having to make meaningful choices, then suggesting that Shadow Tunnel and Curse of the Meek should be removed (which are vital to summoner necros) seems foolish. If you don't want to disrupt the balance, then the changes should be relatively minor.

Class suggestions:

Surge of Undeath - Additionally grants your minions the ability to blind-fight or sense invisible/stealthy enemies, because your minions spend half of the final battle not being able to target one of the bosses when he decides to flee.

Undeath Link - A mediocre panic heal. Necros now have access to consume soul, which is significantly better. Make it an activated talent that redirects a % (based on spell power) of the damage you receive to your minions for %d turns.

Assemble - Lower the cost.

Undead Explosion - When used on a skeleton or bone giant it creates a bone nova. Wisp: radius 2 freeze effect. Everyone else: blight damage.

Minion Mastery - The easiest fix would be to give them better spells. Maybe Create Minions should only create melee minions, while this talent creates caster minions.

[Delmuir]

PigSlayer,
Given that everything is recorded, I don't understand why you're misstating my case… again.

I didn't argue that the skill-point shortage was because I couldn't max what I wanted. Very few classes and builds can. I don't mind you disagreeing or even be condescending but at least do it in response to a point that I actually made.

The people who've been active in this thread have been largely focused on NOT overhauling the class and my most recent reshuffle is the least overhauled of all. That's the goal.

Most of my suggestions are not oriented around casters and I'm not sure exactly how you can suggest that… did you note that Advanced Necrotic Minions gets most of the attention? That Grave gets locked and even nerfed a little? The overwhelming bulk of my suggested ideas are tied to freeing up 3-5 skill points and organizing the builds such that there are more enjoyable, efficient, and viable gameplay styles with more build ideas.

In fact, some of your suggestions are included. It's not clear that you even read it so I'll help you: it's four posts above this one. At least read it before responding.

[jotwebe]

I wouldn't mind the cold/dark dual damage, but I don't think adding small debuff chances is the way to go. Why not just raise the damage slightly?

Not a fan of your proposed new tree. First off it's Eidolism, not Eidolicism. Secondly: Considering that your stated problem was a shortage of points, adding a tree seems a strange way of solving that. Not sure what those skills are doing (never used Necromancy+), so I won't comment on that. I will note that "Dark Styx" is a worse name than Shadow Tunnel in that it references real world mythology which does not exist in tome. I'd be okay with the adjective "stygian" since it more or less stands on it's own.

Moving Dark Empathy into a locked tree is IMHO not a good idea - currently it's very important to help with unfriendly fire from skellymages, and hybrids need it just as bad as pet builds. You're making it harder to skip Advanced Minions, which is pretty much the opposite of your stated goal to make the class less messy.

Same thing with Skeleton Mastery - another proposed new skill? Why?

[cttw]

You necroed this thread to beat it up? How meta!

[jotwebe]

Oops, I should have checked the dates more closely. Sure didn't want to necro it. Nothing to see here, move along