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

[Delmuir]

I'll fix the description but yeah… my goal was exactly as described.

What I want is an ability that is potentially super powerful and dangerous but not that dangerous because of Sacrifice and Harvest. Even if this ability does 5k damage or more, Sacrifice would reduce it dramatically.

That's partly why I made the cool-down longer as Sacrifice has a huge duration. If you can use this spell more than once or twice a sacrifice, it'd be pretty insane.

I also think it should have a higher soul cost and medium mana cost… maybe 4 souls and 50 mana.

[Red]

Heh. It's actually kinda interesting, since it makes a choice between defense and offense. The Blood Golem is a great survival tool, but because there's no way to turn it off, it actively works against a powerful Spite. So in order to get what might be the most powerful attack in the game, you have to turn off your greatest defense.

[Delmuir]

Heh. It's actually kinda interesting, since it makes a choice between defense and offense. The Blood Golem is a great survival tool, but because there's no way to turn it off, it actively works against a powerful Spite. So in order to get what might be the most powerful attack in the game, you have to turn off your greatest defense.

That's kind of the trick: what kind of defense do you want to use.

Spite works amazing with Sacrifice or Harvest. Harvest works amazing with Chance of Life. Blood Golem works beautifully with Undeath Link.
All of those work in some form or another with Vampiric Gifts and with each other.

However, you don't have the resources for all of it so you have to choose. I think the best defensive combo with this is actually Sacrifice as it will mitigate all of that excess damage from either Blood Golem or Spite… pretty sweet deal for mitigating huge burst damage. Sadly, most damage in this game is medium-sized so Sacrifice normally sucks a bit… but we're going to make it the linchpin of your defense, along with Blood Golem.

[Delmuir]

The only issue with that is being able to exploit damage immunity, so perhaps you only get any delay at -HP? Unless you want players to exploit that.

I do want players to be able to exploit that.

The key to Harvest, to me at least, is when you use it. It's probably one of the best escapes/recoveries in the game as it cures status effects and makes you immune for 1-2 turns (2-4 with Timeless). If you're sitting at 5% life then a drop to 1 hp is not a big deal… in addition, if it triggers Chance of Life then you have a solid heal and escape attached.

The trick is when you use it seeing as it has a long cool-down. If you spend it on a big damage burst… fine, but then you don't have it for other needs, like escaping.

I wanted a lot of the powerful skills to have the big jump in ability come with a cat point seeing as you likely only have one or so to spend. The jump from 1-2 turns is huge, same if you want to run all Bone Giants as the jump from 3-4 is big.

So yeah, I do want players to be able to exploit that…

More so, some skills are set for neg-life and some at 1 or less. That 1-turn immunity may not always be your friend… Do spend that 1 turn on a heal? Escape? Big damage? Hard to say...

[Delmuir]

Here's a redo:

4. Fatal Spite:

Use: Active
Range: 1
Cost: 50 mana and 3 souls
Use Speed: 1 turn
Cool-down: 30

Delivers to 1 target, in melee range of you or one of your minions, blight/darkness damage equal to 50% of the cumulative amount of life below the max for you and all of your minions. Then, you suffer 100%-50% (scales with talent point investment) of said damage on a 1-turn delay as arcane damage.

When at or below 0 life, the delay increases by 100%.

[0player]

Hm, started rereading through your stuff and

In addition, this spell can crit and at least 1 of your minions will gain additional levels equal to (crit multiplier * 0.45) + (active talent lvl of spell).

Crit multiplier * 0.45 feels kind of underwhelming O_O in most cases, it's hardly two levels.
Are you sure there isn't multiplication somewhere?

Aura Mastery… Dark Empathy is folded into this talent as part of the sustain. In addition, at active talent level 3, 6, 9, etc., you gain 1 additional max soul capacity.

Not convinced with intersection with Animus Hoarder, to be honest with you.

Also, there's inconsistency in below 1/below 0 life work of different skills. I think it'd be more intuitive if this were unified.

[Delmuir]

Hm, started rereading through your stuff and

In addition, this spell can crit and at least 1 of your minions will gain additional levels equal to (crit multiplier * 0.45) + (active talent lvl of spell).

Crit multiplier * 0.45 feels kind of underwhelming O_O in most cases, it's hardly two levels.
Are you sure there isn't multiplication somewhere?

Aura Mastery… Dark Empathy is folded into this talent as part of the sustain. In addition, at active talent level 3, 6, 9, etc., you gain 1 additional max soul capacity.

Not convinced with intersection with Animus Hoarder, to be honest with you.

Also, there's inconsistency in below 1/below 0 life work of different skills. I think it'd be more intuitive if this were unified.

For the crit level bonus… no, it should be between 2-8 or so, depending on how high your crit multiplier is. Note, your active talent level will be between 1.3 and 6.5 which is added so even if your crit multiplier is 1.2 or so, it would give 7 bonus levels with 5 skill points added.

Aura mastery… fair enough. I was trying to give an option to avoid Animus Hoarder if one wanted to, given the soul-cost of some skills. However, I'm inclined to agree upon review thus I've taken it out.

As for the 1/0 life thing… that was my attempt to address the fact that Harvest could kill you if it reduced you to 0 life… what about this as a solution:

Harvest drops you to 0 life if you have neg-life available (thus triggering all of the neg-life skills) but only 1 life if you don't. Thus, the skill is much more powerful if you have neg-life available. Then all of the 0/1 life skills will just be 0 life skills.

Or, I could just change all of the skills to 1 life.

Thoughts?

[Red]

Well, where is the lin drawn? 0 HP is not actually negative. I've had a time where I was actually at 0 HP on a class that couldn't survive into the negatives and it was just fine. If you're setting up something to benefit from negative HP, that should only really start occurring at -1 HP, so the distinction between 0 and 1 is incredibly minor.

That being said, these are all 100% Necromancer abilities. Necromancers love their blurred mortality, and only Adventurers would ever have to worry about possibly having these abilities without Blurred Mortality. So I'd say abilities should, universally, be adjusted to work (better) at -1 HP. This, of course, means your abilities can become lethal to you if you lose Blurred Mortality, but you're playing with death itself. That's a risky venture.

[0player]

I divinate a lot of "enemy dispelled my Blurred Mortality and I used harvest" YASDs.

[Red]

The trick to having YASD is the S. You could've been just a bit more careful and found another way to win/survive, but you didn't.

[0player]

Well, yes, I wasn't making a counterargument, I was in an anticipation!

[Red]

Ooh, we should all chip in to send Darkgod a new tearmug. Now it won't just be monsters making players cry-players will be in tears after they kill themselves!

Actually, looking over page 1 again... Christ this is one sustain heavy class. Blurred Mortality would actually have a pretty good chance of avoiding a Dispersal, Corrupted Negation, or Combo Kick. Manaburn, though, is gonna be a killer. Is there any counter to it? (Aside from making your mana as high as possible.)

[Delmuir]

There are 7 sustains but virtually no one would ever have more than 6 up at once but yeah… it can be pricey and that's the point.

This class has one major problem: mana. To that end, I imagine that picking up +mana gear will take precedence over the normal obsession with crit multiplier and crit rate… at least in some cases.

Having said that, I don't want Harvest to kill you. Simple as that. I just want to avoid that problem.

So, my proposal is this:

Harvest drops you to 1 unless you have some form of neg-life, either gear or Blurred Mortality or Heroism infusion. If you have available negative life then it drops you to 0 and triggers all of the neg-life skills.

Then change all of the 1/0 skills to 0 for consistency.

How does that work?

[Red]

0 HP is positive life. Take any character without the ability to survive at -HP, drop them to 0 HP, and they'll live. Like I said, -HP abilities need to be standardized to -1 or less HP, otherwise they work at positive HP.

So Harvest dropping you to 0 HP is perfectly survivable even if Blurred Mortality is down, you have no heroism Infusion active, and no -HP gear equipped.

[Delmuir]

0 HP is positive life. Take any character without the ability to survive at -HP, drop them to 0 HP, and they'll live.

Is this true? I had no idea. That actually solves all of my problems with this… I'll fix it then.

Also, I was thinking about squeezing in another 0-life bonus but I wasn't sure what and where...