Full Necro concept… Pg1, now in add-ons section.

[Red]

I thought you already added a resting regen rate. To bring to mind the Anorithil resource discussion, donkatsu (I believe) brought up a simple flowchart.

Does resting set your resource to ideal levels?
If yes, great. Problem solved. If not, continue onto the next question.

Can you set your resource to ideal levels by pressing buttons outside of combat at no cost besides slowly eroding player sanity?
If no, great. Problem solved. If yes, then the question is... why??? Didn't we already establish that I'm not supposed to be able to set my resource to whatever I want it to be? If I am supposed to be able to do that, why can't I do it by resting like every other class? If I'm not supposed to be able to do that, maybe you... shouldn't let me do it?

That's what the resting regen rate is for your minions. If you need to activate an ability to make it happen, then it's added pointless button clicking or autocast shenanigans.

And I don't think you should change Surge of Undeath. I asked a question, and like I said, either answer is okay. If my minions don't regen in combat, it's irrelevant to me. They're meat/bone shields for me.

Ghouls having a high priority Retch would be interesting though. If there was a little more choice in your summoning of undead (and you were undead yourself) it'd be fun to have a medic summon.

[Delmuir]

All good points.

I think it's best to just treat like them like meat-shields and not grow too attached to them, ha ha. I'll mull this over though… great input.

[Red]

And, getting away from the crunch, perhaps add more personality to the minions. There's nothing more satisfying than seeing one of them shout "I thought you loved me!" as it gets torn to shreds. It's the same reason I murder the lumberjacks after killing off Ben Cruthdar, Proffesional Cursed.

It might be fun to have seperate sets of dialogue for friendly fire, friendly fire from minions, and outside death.

[Delmuir]

There's nothing more satisfying than seeing one of them shout "I thought you loved me!" as it gets torn to shreds.

It might be fun to have seperate sets of dialogue for friendly fire, friendly fire from minions, and outside death.

Sounds good to me, ha ha.

I did change some things because I was a bit off on my talent-point calculations…

One of the things I did was move around and tweak some EotD bonuses. I also front-loaded a couple of skills in order to make using them as a 1-point wonder more viable.

The big changes were to Shadow Tunnel and Consume Soul. I improved the Shadow Tunnel heal and made it intrinsic to the skill rather than an EotD skill. I also massively buffed Consume Soul such that it's the most powerful heal in the game. It can heal you for more life than you have, which is the point… it's to be used in conjunction with Undeath Link.

The healing shortage is still pronounced but manageable and intrinsic to the class I think. It'd work nicely with the Vile Life category.

[Pigslayer]

Yet Another Necromancer Revamp/Overhaul/Re-imagining

I like most of your ideas. Maybe I'll steal some of them and make my own necromancer addon.

BTW, Surge of Undeath needs better scaling. It also would be nice if EotD doubled SoU's effect.

I remember most of my minions having a hard time hitting the final bosses on nightmare, when they did hit it was very low damage. In general, minions struggled against anything with 80+ def and high armor. IIRC, maxed SoU only boosted accuracy to mid 60s. Summoner's pets are significantly better in the endgame from what I heard.

I've played a little necromancer, and the randomness and strength (or lack thereof) of summons just makes it a pretty "meh" style of play. Which is a shame, because that turns the Necro into a cold/dark themed Archmage instead of a truly unique class.

A more experienced player could go into more details, I'm sure, but the best way to see what he means is to play it yourself. You'll likely find yourself gravitating towards being a LichBlaster, which is a great strategy, the main issue being it's also the best by a very significant margin.

I won with a few necromancers on normal and nightmare RL. Most builds are viable. Summoner builds are extremely hard to kill, but are pretty boring to play. Caster builds deal lots of damage, but the lack of minions make them squishier. I think hybrids are the most fun to play. On higher difficulties, minions don't scale that well.

[Red]

And yet Summoners are fun to play. How odd.

I think that the randomness should be kept to a minimum in player classes, since there's more than enough randomness everywhere else. Part of why Summoners are fun is because you're making the choices, even if the actions are taken by your pets and the choice is usually pretty obvious. (Fire Drake. Problem still there? More Fire Drake.) With the Necro summon system, a big part of the skill is totally random, like Lightning spells but with the randomness lasting the entire fight, or until one of the minions kicks the bucket.

As for me saying minion builds being bad... Well, that's me being dumb and talking about stuff I don't know. Apologies for the misinformation.

[Delmuir]

So I made some additions, especially with crits and Curse of the Meek.

1. I added a feature to Animus Hoarder such that any spell crit could generate a soul.

2. Create minions, Greater minions, and Assemble can now all crit which increases the average lvl of the summoned minion.

3. I eliminated Curse of the Meek as I always hated it and its effect on game play (too much running around while waiting for it to cool down, especially against bosses).

I replaced it with something that has decent synergy with Shadow Tunnel and the below 0 life functions. I call it "Grim Shadow." It's a harmless decoy designed to distract the enemy.

[Red]

1) Good.

2) Good.

3) Perhaps change to a sustain or active ability. It's a nice idea and a good skill to have, but looking at it right now it doesn't seem like a very proactive skill. Because it's passive, it's just free extra defense at -HP. The synergy with Shadow Tunnel is nice, but I think it'd work better as something you have to make a decision on, rather than as a passive.

Perhaps a sustain that drains mana while in sight of enemies at an inverse rate to your health? So it's expensive to maintain,draining as much as 5 mana a turn at full health, but it's useful added defense (with a high chance of enemies targeting it instead of you if you happen upon enemies with the shade out) and because of the inverse scaling, it could actually give a mana regen bonus at -HP.

[Delmuir]

Good point!

I don't want a complicated mechanism… too clever by half, ha ha. However, I think a sustain is best. Really good suggestion. I'll make it 50 mana cost… and when it activates, 3.0 per turn.

The idea of it as a passive defensive bonus was the goal. It mimics a little bit of what Curse of the Meek did but eliminates the annoying mechanic of soul farming against enemies.

It has good synergy and I too like the Shadow Tunnel bonus effect. It's like having 50% evade for any enemy that hasn't already targeted you… a neat trick would be leaving the line of sight for an enemy and instantly gaining 50% evade as it wouldn't know who is who. That, in combination with Forgery of the Haze could be very strong.

So… I've buffed the Necromancer but reduced its healing ability as none of its heals can crit and it only has Consume Soul as direct heal. Shadow Tunnel can also work as can Vampiric Gifts but the Necro is limited in its ability to heal, especially if its undead.

I also removed the Surge of Undeath EotD bonus as it was just overpowered.

Lastly, I tweaked Sacrifice such that it offers three different sacrifices: max damage shield from Bone Golem, physical damage ward from regular minion, and damage shield from advanced minion. No more heal.

Now… that means that the Necro only has 1 reliable heal: consume soul. It has a lot of tricks to mitigate damage so it doesn't need a ton of heals although it also has Chance of Life. In addition, it can get the Celestial/Light tree if need be. I'm rather excited about a class that will lack extensive healing ability… it should still be quite durable.

[HousePet]

Get coding.

[Delmuir]

Get coding.

I'll take that as a sign of approval. As for coding well… I don't know that I can but I'll see if anyone wants to do it, I'll pester Dark God (and if you like, please do the same), and I'll see if I ever find the time to work on it.

My coding skills are very rudimentary.

[stinkstink]

My coding skills are very rudimentary.

This is where I started. Hell, it's where I still am, but you don't learn by not doing.

[Doctornull]

My coding skills are very rudimentary.

This is where I started. Hell, it's where I still am, but you don't learn by not doing.

All hail the wisdom of stinkstink.

[Delmuir]

My coding skills are very rudimentary.

This is where I started. Hell, it's where I still am, but you don't learn by not doing.

Yeah… I'd love to work on it but alas, my actual job (not coding related) does not afford me that luxury. That's why it's taken me a year to get this far on the concept alone.

Yes, I've found the time to toy with the math, etc., but it's just not likely I'll be getting around to trying to figure out how to do this any time soon. Of course, there's no rush so… we'll see.

Still, if anyone wants to fiddle with this, go for it or let me know. If anyone wants to steal these ideas… do it!

[Delmuir]

Still working out the theoretical kinks…

I switched the Essence of the Undead bonus from Phase Soul to Animus Purge thus allowing a second Husk. I also switched around the bonus to Blurred Mortality… I moved it from Lichform (thus keeping it essentially the same) to "Become Death."

This helps to make the below-0 life bonuses a bit more viable, especially if you're undead and don't have a heroism infusion.

Lastly, I changed Consume Soul again such that it offers the original heal/mana recovery but not it offers an added life/mana regen equal to 20% of the max per talent point over 10 turns. This could theoretically let you play comfortably without a Manasurge rune.

So, we have a Necromancer who has only one reliable healing ability and limited teleports as escapes. However, it has really good survivability with Undeath Link's damage/heal sharing, Blurred Mortality, Necromancy tree (especially Harvest and Chance of Life), and even Vampiric Gifts, plus some mobility bonuses from Will to Power.

This makes the Necromancer quite a bit different from other mages… much more durable but less reliable healing and escapes and a risky means of curing status-effects.

In theory, if combo Undeath Link, minions, and Sacrifice, you should have a caster who can essentially tank even the hugest burst damage such as from Atamathon.

The biggest weakness is status effects like stun, silence, blind (imagine Chance of Life teleporting you somewhere while blind… ouch), confuse, cross-tier effects, AoE damage (like Inferno or Ice Storm), and manaclash.

Anything that can remove sustains is going to be potentially very dangerous to this class.