That is easily half a fight right there. On lower dificulties, even tough things won't take more than twenty turns, and on any dificulty you should probably be skedaddling if the fight is taking much too long over that limit. That's fine if it was just the player, since Legion and Sacrifice require significant investment into minions but doesn't offer protection for said minions, or 1-3 turns for everyone, but 6-8 on everyone? Too much.
Edit: As for where to stick Legion, absolutely nowhere. The current build is based on a few categories for minions and a few for blasters, plus some extras. It is not compatible with four superminions. (Nuzlocke, Legion, Bone Giant, and Blood Golem) If you want the new summoning ideas, you'll need to redesign your redesign, or at least do a hell of a lot of shuffling around.
I'm not crying. I'm offering a sacrifice to DarkGod in hopes he'll show favor to me.
Have the Sacrifice bonus only apply to you and make it a really, really powerful invisibility such that it's still useful on Madness, etc., but only have it last for 3 turns as you suggested.
I figure it this way:
Grave:
1. Chill of the Tomb… cold/darkness damage.
2. Will o' the Wisp… probably change name to "Refuse Death" or something like that. I would say 20-70% chance upon minion death of preserving the soul as a Revenant/Ghost.
These ghosts would have low life, high physical damage resistance, immunity to certain status effects like bleed, poison, etc. In addition, they would be able to move through walls.
They would do minimal damage but it would be cold/darkness in type. In addition, they could inflict certain fear-effects. These ghosts would still count as minions.
It would maintain the % chance to summon ghosts/revenants upon a critical hit when at or at max soul capacity.
3. Legion… this is a super-summon that can move through walls and use invisibility. More so, it would have a full Gloom effect and mind power based off of your mind power stat. I would argue for massive physical and blight damage resistance with cold/darkness affinity, but probably only about 120 life even at max-level. It's other resistances would be based off of the Dark Empathy effect in your Necrotic Aura.
When sacrificed, it would grant temporary invisibility and the ability to move through walls for 3 turns.
What I'm thinking is that the power of the Legion is based off of how many Ghosts you use… basically, this skill ALWAYS uses ALL of your Ghosts as long as you have at least 2 of them. The more you consume, the more powerful the Legion.
This is where I'd add "Cold Flames" back into this. With each talent point invested AND with each Ghost consumed for this monster, it unleashes Cold Flames… the more powerful the Legion, the greater the radius, duration, and power of the Cold Flames.
As for your updated idea, I like that updated Legion. A lot. Absorbing all your ghosts is a cool idea, gives you a trump card when all your minions have fallen, and encourages turning off damage sharing temporarily to let ghosts survive. Not to mention that it stops you spamming Legions, since you have to wait for at least two other minions to die, and quite possibly more. And by using Gloom, it's not too powerful since each turn only has a chance of affecting an enemy.
The one issue is its mindpower being based off your mindpower. As a Necromancer, you could have a good mindpower, or you could have an incredibly shitty one. It's an irrelevant stat for you in every single way except this one talent, so either you put a lot of points and equip slots towards this one skill (bad) or end up with Legion's Gloom being useless (also bad). Perhaps have Legion use mindpower equal to a portion to your spellpower, based on talent level and how many ghosts it ate.
And I do think it's reasonable that if you manage to get absolute maximum ghosts consumed and have TL 7+ in Legion for it to have something like 200% your spellpower as mindpower. It'd be overpowered as hell, but still fragile, wrecks most defenses by giving you only one, low HP minion to share with, and how often are you going to get 13 (I think) 70% chances to succeed in a row WITHOUT any ghosts dying?
I'm not crying. I'm offering a sacrifice to DarkGod in hopes he'll show favor to me.
Love the story and about your question about getting all of your ghosts at once, yeah… it'd be tough to do, ha ha.
As for the mind power question… as a Necromancer, you'll be investing in Will and Cunning which both, if I recall correctly, boost mind power. Of course, your solution works quite nicely by basing Legion's mind power off of your spell power… that ought to work.
Glad you like it. I'll toy with it a bit probably make the change tomorrow.
Perhaps I'll also change the name of the Blood Golem to the Nukelavee and grant it extra movement speed. That way, we'd have covered the extra minion ideas… or who knows?
I really like the three super-minions. I especially like that each functions differently and in different circumstances would or would not encourage using Undeath Link.
The only question about the Ghosts, to me at least, is how much resistances should they have? I assume they'd get some of yours from Dark Empathy but in addition to that, they might also need extra physical resistance and whatnot, lest they be ultimately useless.
In addition, because of the talent point cost, it's unlikely that one would max every possible summon unless they were doing a pure summoning build, which is kind of my goal. Still, Legion would be a favorite of mine because of the Gloom effect. Combine that with Rigor mortis and you can status-effect someone to impotence. Good times.
Do Nabokov and Blood Golem cover the same offensive role? Obviously you want to combine the offense of Naagloshii and the utility of Blood Golem, but I'm not sure you should. Blood Golem can be made into an important survival tool even for low summoning builds, but Nawaz Sharif is simply another offensive superminion.
Honestly, I see nothing wrong with four superminions. It gives you a lot of room to play around with in your late game summons, something not even Summoner has.
I'm not crying. I'm offering a sacrifice to DarkGod in hopes he'll show favor to me.
Aye, but where would I fit it in? That's the problem…
The other thought I had was about the Lich. I kind of think that when you complete the Lichform ceremony, it ought to convert the Lichform sustain into an active that lets you combine 3 minions into a Lich.
That way, the only person who can ever summon a lich, is a lich. More so, it would eliminate the farming of Lichs.
Wherever you want. Like I said, you want superminions? Rebuild the entire class (again) because the current build doesn't sustain it. You can't put it in any more than you could mount a sixteen piston engine on a deer.
The Lich bit... I dunno about that. Liches have blaster tendencies, so giving them an awesome summon is unneccessarily buffing blasters over minionmancers.
Perhaps make it mutually exclusive-buff Lichform so it's actually quite good, but force a choice when you do the ritual. You can either become a Lich yourself, or gain the power to summon minor Liches as your own minons. Do you want to become the ultimate undead blaster? Or gain the (not so) ultimate (anymore) superminion?
I'm not crying. I'm offering a sacrifice to DarkGod in hopes he'll show favor to me.
Given how ridiculously powerful the lich-minion is, why not just get rid of "Forgery of the Haze" and replace it with a the Lich minion as a super-summon?
Ultimately, the blaster-necro is the more powerful and FoH and Animus Purge/Husk don't make that much sense. I tried to fix it in this version but honestly, why just stick a Lich minion in there and do away with them entire? It's essentially the same effect (added target with nuke potential) but more thematic… plus, it'd work with the super minion idea AND it would open up one more slot for another talent.
Agreed, but it won't free up any talents. You combined Forgery of the Haze and Husk into Animus Purge, so you're just removing one talent.
In addition, you still haven't made the base concept compatible with superminions. You could find a way to put them on your current build, Delmuir, but that's going to make OOPzemancer look like nothing if you do.
I'm not crying. I'm offering a sacrifice to DarkGod in hopes he'll show favor to me.
This might look like the Lichform is OP at first but if you look at the necessary talent point investment, there's a lot of opportunity cost involved.
Essentially, skeletons and ghouls get a slight buff to their appropriate minions, if you're of that race. If you're not, you have the Lichform option. Three locked trees… this class will be a bit short on category points but it looks worth it to me.
I also eliminated the Grave tree.
I also addressed the minion-to-minion and minion-to-you damage in Aura Mastery. The you-to-minion damage mitigation in Nightfall was eliminated in favor of a total effect from either Undeath Link (when active, you can't hurt your minions with any spell) OR Through the Crowds prodigy. However, you don't necessarily need either as many spells are targeted rather than beams or cones so they have no chance of hitting your minions anyway… I think it provides a TON of flexibility in build and play-styles.
I think this is a pretty good, and dramatic variant. Perhaps we have TWO good build ideas here.
Skeletal Minions:
1. Create Skeletons… this creates up to 5 skeletons only. Raises minion cap up to 3 when maxed. These gain +2 level if you're a skeleton race.
2. Grasping Claws… skeletal claws reach out from the ground to do damage and potentially cause pin and bleeding. Only hits enemies.
3. Charnel… Sustain, up to 50% chance that every time a skeletal minion is killed, it grants you and/or the nearest minion a physical ward.
4. Bone Giant… combine 3 skeletons. At level 6, this always creates a Runed Bone Giant. Armored spell-tower essentially. Counts as 3 minions.
Animus:
1. Consume Soul… grants heal AND radius "x" darkness/cold blast. This is not a "nova." Rather, this skill targets up to "x" enemies, based on effective talent level, in necrotic aura and damages just them. The damage is moderate to low never misses.
2. Command Specters/Will o' the Wisp… sustain that grants % chance that each lesser minion killed will have its soul stay as a Ghost. These ghosts have low life, low damage output, physical damage immunity, and can move through walls, enemies, and other minions. They also have 200% movement speed. All damage is 50/50 cold and darkness.
3. Animus Hoarder… this changes to the soul-recycling idea such that you can recover souls when your minions die.
4. Legion… combines all (as long as you have at least 2) ghosts into Legion. The more you combine, the more powerful it is. This terrifying specter is incorporeal (70% resistant all), can turn invisible, and has "gloom" effect with mind power equal to your spell power. In addition, it can move 2 spaces through walls and other minions. Regular movement speed and counts as 3 minions. Damage is 50/50 cold and darkness.
When a Legion is in play, all ghosts gain ability to cause bleeding and weakened disease.
Undead:
1. Raise Undead… this raises up to 5 ghouls, ghoul kings, vampires, and similar. Raises minion cap up to 3 when maxed. All damage dealt has chance to inflict disease if your playing as Ghoul race.
2. Undead Explosion… you can blowup your undead or skeletons to do blight or physical damage plus disease, bleeding, and pins.
3. Blood Curse… active that damages all enemies that are diseased, bleeding, or pinned.
4. Nukelavee/Blood Golem… combine 3 undead to make this minion. It's fast, and can convert damage into life. When it dies, you suffer some of its max life. Counts as 3 minions. This minion moves faster and converts damage to life at a higher rate when you're at or below 0 life. Counts as 3 minions against your minion cap.
Nightfall: Changes all damage to 50% darkness and 50% cold. Gets rid of "won't damage minions effect."
Advanced Minion Mastery:Locked
1. Aura Mastery… Shares your resistances and saves with minions. Minions no longer damage you or each other. However, you can still damage them. Increases Aura radius.
2. Surge of Undeath… same effect except that the accuracy bonus scales massively.
3. Sacrifice… different effect when sacrificing a greater minion.
Bone Giant… max damage shield for up to 15 turns.
Legion… become incorporeal, granting you high-powered invisibility and ability to move through walls for 3 turns. the ability to move through walls can be shared with Undeath Link but not invisibility.
Nukelavee… grants Vampiric Gifts effect to you (and minions with Undeath Link active) for up to 15 turns. VG proc rate is based on Nukelavee level. Duration is based on Sacrifice level.
4. Undeath Link… this is no longer a heal but a sharing effect such that all damage and healing affecting you or your minions. Duration is 5 + active talent level. It will also, occasionally, share an added ability from one of your minions...
While active, this reduces all of your damage to minions 20% per level.
Necrosis: Locked at lvl 10.
1. Invocation of Decrepitude: new active skill...
Use: Activated
Range: Necrotic Aura
Cost: 35 mana
Use speed: 1 turn
Cool-down: 25
This skill causes all non-undead creatures, including yourself, within your Necrotic Aura to lose 2% of their current life, per turn, for the duration of this spell, in the form of arcane damage. Duration increases with active talent level (2 + 1 per active talent level) and there is no save against this.
This spell has no effect on the Undead, potentially including yourself.
In addition, while you're at or below 0 life, this spell does an additional 1% of current life.
2. Impending Doom… gains 100% spellpower solely for the purpose of overcoming the enemy save when you're at or below 0 life.
3. Become Death… new passive skill:
Whenever you're at or below 0 life, your Necrotic Aura becomes enhanced such that it functions in a similar manner to a Cursed Gloom effect.
All enemies within your Necrotic Aura must save against you spellpower each turn, and if they fail, they lose one beneficial effect or sustain of any type (including anti-magic and prodigies). For the purpose of this spell, you gain a spellpower bonus equal to 12% of your real magic power per active talent level. Non-undead can also be inflicted by the Necrosis effect:
The Necrosis effect is a magic effect and causes a resource and life drain of 25% of current over 8 turns. Doesn't affect odd resources like souls, paradox, equilibrium, et al., but will still drain life. Affects: Stamina, Mana, Positive and Negative Energy, Vim, Hate, and Psi.
If you increase your life above 0 life, the aura lingers for 3 additional turns.
4. Spiteful Revenge… active skill that deals damage to 1 enemy in melee range of you or one of your minions equal to the total amount of life below max for you and all of your minions. Then, you suffer half of that amount on the next turn.
Lichdom: Only available if you perform the Lich ceremony. This would Replace the Celestial/Star Fury tree.
1. Cheap, 3 turn cooldown darkness/cold beam.
2. Chill of the Tomb or clone… except this leaves a lingering residue that continues to do damage for 3 turns.
3. Chance of Life sustain… no change from page 1.
4. Command Lich… this allows you to summon and command 1 lich. Counts as 1 against minion cap.
Grave: Eliminated…
Shades: Locked.
1. Shadow Tunnel… transports your minions to you. At level 2 and beyond, it has a chance to release souls from the underworld, per minion/talent level, at their original location. These souls act like the Will o' the wisps, doing cold/darkness damage.
2. Dark Vision… new passive skill.
After any enemy or minion is killed, you gain a radius "1 + active talent level/2" vision in that spot for "1 turn per active talent level." This is due to your ability to communicate with the dead… it essentially acts as a limited Arcane Eye.
Radius and duration increase with active talent level.
3. Grim Shadow… new sustain skill.
Cost: 50 mana
Instant Cast
Cool-down: 36
This skill infuses a portion of your life into your shadow to grant it the appearance of life whenever your life is at or below 0 life. This shadow will spawn somewhere within your necrotic aura and has no skills, takes no damage. It exists as an added target which can be moved to a minimum and maximum pre-set range. It can move on its own and absorb attacks, although not beams, etc., as attacks just go right through it.
Enemies cannot tell the difference between you and the shadow and will target each of you equally. The shadow can be cancelled and while active produces a constant mana drain of 1 per turn, per talent point invested. With each additional active level, there is an added 3% chance that enemies will target the shadow.
If the Shadow should stand in any magical darkness such as from a Doomed, it will cause the Shadow to be unseen and thus ignored by the enemy. Shadow is cancelled should it leave your Necrotic Aura, i.e. if you teleport away.
Sustain is dropped when you raise your life about 0 although the shadow lingers for 1 turn per active talent level.
4. FrostDusk… no change.
Thus, you'd have Survival, Divination, and the new Necromancy as your generics.
So, if I want to play as a blaster... What do I do?
And looking at the build, remember 67 class and 49 generics. Since you only have three generic categories and Harmony/Vile Life aren't too useful for this class, you're looking at being able to completely fill two categories and drop 9 points in the third without escorts. Another generic would not be a bad idea at all.
Class points have a lot more choices. With 67 points and 9 categories, you'll have 113 places to fill up after you spend all your points. That's not bad. However, I'm going to look at your categories and see what they are for blasters.
Skeletal Minions: One attack (Grasping Claws), everything else is minions. Attack is T2 so requires 1 extra point spent for non-minion builds.
Animus: One utility (Consume Soul), everything else is minions.
Undead: One attack (Blood Curse) that relies on status conditions inflicted by minion abilities. Everything else is minions. Attack is T3, so technically requires 2 extra points and will be effectively useless without more.
Nightfall: Attack category.
Right, so there are your unlocked trees available from the start. You get 6 attacks out of 16 abilities, two of which are locked behind minion skills, and one of which is basically useless without minion abilities. However, you could spend points only in Nightfall and Consume Soul, so let's move on to locked abilities.
AMM: Minions only. Also, you have to be level 10 and spend a cat point to increase aura radius. That's kinda harsh.
Necrosis: Three useful non-minion skills, one minion skills. However, IoD and Become Death rely heavily on a larger aura, which you can only get through AMM, requireing a cat point spent in an otherwise useless category for blasters.
Lichdom: Three good abilities, one minion. Doesn't actually require that much investment for some really powerful stuff.
Shades: Two utility skills, two minion skills. Utilities are locked behind the two minion skills.
Right, so let's tally it all up. If I don't care about minions and just want to blast, here's what I get:
10 attacks (requiring a minimum of 3 extra points to get and somwhere around 10 class points and a cat point to use them all, as well as being forced to use minions for UE)
5 utility abilities (requiring a minimum of 2 extra points being spent and somewhere around 5 class points and a cat point to use them all well)
Ignoring the extra points cost required to get some abilities, you could easily max 13 of the 15 abilities you can actually use. Counting the extra required to actually use your abilities points (which have overlap, so only use the higher value) you can max 11, but you will be forced to use zombie summons and UE to use Blood Curse.
You've basically made Blasters... Well, stop existing. If that's what you want, well played, but if you want players to have choices you have safely removed any chance of properly playing a blaster. If the player decides not to bother with Blood Curse or aura based abilities, you can max everything useful except Blood Curse, IoD, and Become Death with 5 points left over.
Whereas Minionmancers have something useful in every single category except Nightfall, do not rely on any Blaster abilities to use their own, and even if they totally ignore the abiltiies above (some of which are just utility) still have more places to spend points and less wasted points.
On the positive side, I really like the bonuses Skeletons and Ghouls get. Consider adding something to Animus for the addon Ghost race.
Generics are pretty much fine, it could just stand to have an extra categoryor two. Something to give a little more options.
I'm not crying. I'm offering a sacrifice to DarkGod in hopes he'll show favor to me.
The pure blaster has gone away, sort of, but the mostly blaster is still around.
Note that Grasping Claws also helps with Blood Curse as is really the best skill for it. Also, Undead Explosion works on enemy undead as well (based on how low their life is) in my concept so don't necessarily need to create ghoul minions to use it.
Most blaster classes don't have that many skills to begin with and if the cool-downs on the Lichform categories are short enough (that gives you two beams with 3 turn cool downs… that's pretty good) then you should be fine. If you choose to go pure blaster without going lichform, that's the only situation in which you'll have a few extra points and they'd be well-spent in the Shades tree. I think the point distribution is okay…
Note that you'll get to level 10 pretty easily, and still in the starter dungeons, plus you'd be able to make use of a minion or two just in the early going, to be safe.
Category points… well, you have to spend them on something. My intention is to raise the starting radius for your Necrotic Aura to 4 or 5, which ought to be acceptable until level 10 or 20, depending on what you want to do. However, I could just make it such that the aura increases with level and not talent point investment. Then, you'd only need aura mastery for your minions.
As for the ghosts well… I wanted them to be different, which is why they're a sustain and not an active. More so, there's no ghost race for you to play with. Ultimately, I wanted them to be a support summon more than a primary summon.
Also, there's 70 total talent points and 50 generics if you get the alchemist quest and eat the sand worm queen heart.
The issue is a lot of it is locked away. I missed the Grasping Claws/Blood Curse combo, so you can at least avoid your own summons, but UEing enemies only works when your enemies happen to be undead. Even with that, though, a lot of attack abilities are just higher tier with the lower tier abilities being minion abilities.
The reason it's bad is that Minionmancers can use Blaster abilities. Minions aren't expected to carry everything by themselves, and with the ability to get friendly fire, the blasting is just something to fill the off-time. You could have minions only take 50 class points and still be okay, since blasting with only 20 points is still a nice bonus. However, if I drop the 60ish points required to go pure Blaster, and the remainder into minions, my minions are going to suck. There's a ton of synergy between minions, which is cool, but has the side effect of making minions unhelpful without major investment. It's not an issue early game, since weak minions can help against weak enemies, but late game? You need more powerful minions to have them make a dent, or even offer appreciable mearshielding.
In addition, Blasters don't really have defenses. They've got a little from the Necromancy generic category, but all the big survival tools (Sacrifice Shield, Vampiric Gifts and damage/healing sharing) are minion only. Blasters have usually been similar to Archmages, with a focus on cold and darkness and a few fun abilities Archmages lack, but under this design they're Archmages with less utility, one hell of a lot less survivability, and more HP through Blurred Mortality.
What I'd suggest is making more focused categories. Instead of having most categories intermixed between minions and blasting, have a mix of mixed. Some categories can be mixed, but some should be full minion or full blaster. That way, there's no penalties for playing blaster, minions, or hybrid. As it stands now, minions do great, hybrids are pretty well off, but blasters face steep costs compared to the other builds.
Few minor notes: Lichform giving you extra abilities is all well and good, but remember you have to beat the Last Hope Graveyard to get it. You can only start investing around level 20, should not start investing until level 24 when you can max Lichform itself, and have to beat the Last Hope Graveyard to get it. That's a mid game category at the earliest.
Aura radius 4 or 5 isn't enough. You don't want enemies getting that close. Mages operate near the edge of LoS, it's Anorithils that want mid-range, and even they stay at range 6. If attack abilities are going to be relying on your Aura being large, you cannot put the Aura Mastery ability in a locked minions category. It shouldn't be locked at all, or should be locked in a universally useful category.
There's a Ghosts addon. Not in the vanilla game, sure, but neither is this.
I'm not crying. I'm offering a sacrifice to DarkGod in hopes he'll show favor to me.
However, Sacrifice is a HUGE skill past normal and the primary defense. If you're playing past normal, you need that skill, even for a "pure blaster." As such, no such thing really exists for a Necromancer. You're going to need to use some minions, even if just to do things like get your shields up, etc.
You're right. There is no PURE blaster from start to finish. Ultimately, I wanted someone to have to transition from hybrid to pure blaster throughout the game rather than being able to play one style from start to finish.
I could change that by just adding a blasting category or returning the Grave category and said skills. Chill of the Tomb was, for many players, the cornerstone of their offense. Personally, I hate that style of sniping play.
Personally, if I was going to add another nuking category, it'd be locked. The question is what?
Perhaps I could re-introduce vampiric gifts along with an entire related blaster-primary tree…
Last edited by Delmuir on Sun Jan 11, 2015 10:07 pm, edited 2 times in total.
Delmuir wrote:You're right. There is no PURE blaster from start to finish. Ultimately, I wanted someone to have to transition from hybrid to pure blaster throughout the game rather than being able to play one style from start to finish.
...
Personally, I hate that style of sniping play.
Right, so you're forcing choices upon the player. It's fine if to play Insane+ you absolutely need minions for Sacrifice, since Insane is the point where you have to optimize, but it should be designed as much as possible for the different builds to be reasonably balanced against one another and each one perfectly viable below insane, not for it to be required to swap styles because there's not enough skills for one.
If you're redesigning the Necromancer for yourself and what you want, it's understandable, but if you want to make a universal Necromancer+ addon, then you have to accomodate people whoe did like to snipe like that and who refuse to raise a corpse.
My personal thoughts on general class categories is to have three unlocked from the start, one blaster, one hybrid, and one minions. For the locked categories, have one blaster, one minions, and two hybrid categories, each split two and two on minons/blaster skills and each starting with two in a row, either minons or blasters. This gives each pure build 2.5 categories to work with without spending a single point on something from the other pure build.
For the remaining class points, have one unlocked and one locked general utility tree useful to both pure builds.
Now, this isn't hard and fast, and doesn't neccessarily play well with the current skillset. But something like that, where you have choices between pure builds and can stay pure throughout the entire game, should exist.
Biggest thing, I think, is to balance to Normal. Ignore Insane+, because that's when powergaming is mandatory. I don't care if pure blaster can't beat Madness, because a lot of things can't beat Madness, and if it's nigh-impossible on Insane, who cares? Insane is when picking bad skills kills you instead of just making the game a bit tougher. On Normal, though, a good player should be able to play with any style and win, and not have either points in abilities outside his style or unspent points. Stuff like that is for real niche builds, and blasters are not niche.
I'm not crying. I'm offering a sacrifice to DarkGod in hopes he'll show favor to me.