The premise of this Necro concept is that you gain bonuses when at negative life, have greater summoning utility with "super" minions, and have damage over time area-effect spells. This kills slowly but surely, with only two big damage spells unless you go Lichform and focus on Darkness damage, in which case you can be a nuker. Many things consume mana and souls and play-style options vary dramatically with sustain choices and locked categories.
This is a defensive uber-tank with solid mobility and a few "boss killer" abilities but its weakness is healing and status effects. Having few abilities that increase saves or grant resistances.
Here is the older thread which has some relevant details and discussion:
http://forums.te4.org/viewtopic.php?f=39&t=42943
Information of note:
The key skills are Harvest, Undeath Link, and Blurred Mortality. Harvest is the key to mitigating huge self-inflicted damage from Fatal Spite as well as being your only means of removing status effects. Bumping it up to a second turn with a category point makes it a huge defensive tool, especially when you're desperate for "one more turn."
Super minions like Blood Golem, Lich, Bone Giants, and Legion are also critical for defense with Sacrifice.
I've also tried to provide multiple solutions to issues, giving players options to use different skills or category masteries in order to find the solution that works best for them.
I've ensured that there are more "1-point wonders."
Additionally, minions should have an "ordering" option, i.e. who should be in the front and who should stay in the back. Also, an option to stop autoexplore if minions will die should also exist.
I'm going to call the 50% cold/darkness damage "Animus" damage.
There are now 4 locked and 4 unlocked class categories. In theory, you shouldn't need the extra category point for "Celestial/Light" which would leave most players with 1 or 2 depending on their preferences for another inscription slot.
With the two primary minion skills maxed, your minion cap is 8. With a mastery in each one, the minion cap can be increased to 10.
Essence of the Dead (EotD) is going away but some of the bonuses will remain… they only trigger when Blurred Mortality triggers, i.e. when you're at or below 0 life.
ALL bonuses granted from negative or 0 life linger for 3 turns after recovering to positive life. Harvest works as a super buff in that sense as it triggers all of those bonuses (or chance to trigger).
Necrotic Minions: Unlocked.
1. Create Minions… Summons only skeletons, ghouls, ghasts, and Ghoulkings. Minion cap is 5 and determines levels for all basic and advanced minions, and the Lich super minion.
Cost is 5 mana and 1 soul per minion.
2. Aura Mastery… Dark Empathy effect is folded into this talent as part of the sustain. Radius scales beyond level 5. Necrotic Aura becomes passive with Lichform.
Additionally, at active talent level 7, none of your spells will damage your minions within your Necrotic Aura. Nightfall spells retain "no damage" effect even outside of aura.
3. Surge of Undeath… same effect except that the accuracy bonus scales massively and it includes a bonus to minion movement speed, up to 65%. This effect is shared with you if UL is active and you're undead or classified as undead.
4. Undeath Link… this is no longer a heal but a sharing effect such that all damage and healing affecting you or your minions, excluding Husk/Forgery of the Haze, is shared equally among all of you. Duration is 5 + active talent level.
Mana cost increases with talent point investment up to 60 and cool-down is increased to 28.
Nightfall: Unlocked. Changes all damage to 50% darkness and 50% cold. More so, damage should be slightly nerfed.
Necrosis: Unlocked.
1. Invocation of Decrepitude: new active skill...
Use: Activated
Range: Necrotic Aura
Cost: 35 mana and 1 soul.
Use speed: 1 turn
Cool-down: 24
This skill causes all non-undead or construct creatures, including yourself, within your Necrotic Aura to lose 3% of their current life, per turn, for the duration of this spell, in the form of arcane damage. Damage duration increases with active talent level, up to 7 turns.
There is no save against this and it bypasses resistances but damage can be mitigated with flat damage reduction and shields.
This spell has no effect on the Undead, potentially including yourself, or constructs. This can damage enemies even if you can't see them, so long as they're in your Necrotic Aura.
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.
Non-undead must save each turn against the Necrosis effect:
The Necrosis effect is a magic effect and causes a resource and life drain of 20% of max over 6 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.
Undead creatures must save against your spellpower or risk being converted to fight on your side as minions. 5% chance per turn. Doesn't affect bosses and the like. Additionally, while every undead will have to save against this, only 1 can be converted per turn. Undead that fail the save but aren't converted are twice as likely to be converted on the next turn. This is limited by your minion cap.
Additional talent points add bonus to spellpower for the purpose of this spell.
If you increase your life above 0 life, the aura lingers for 3 additional turns.
4. Chance of Life
Use: Sustain
Range: 1-51
Cost: 200 mana and 2 souls
Use speed: 1 turn
Cool-down: 40
As long as this sustain is active, if you're dropped to or below 0 life (if this triggers, it can save you from death), there is a maximum "28/34%" chance that you'll be "resurrected" and gain 36/51% life, mana, reduced cool-downs, and teleported randomly within range 34/51.
The max life, cool-down, and mana recovery scale with magic and active talent level. For living characters, the max is 36% but for undead classified characters, the max is 51%. Same with chance to trigger and teleport range. The cool-down reduction only affects skills currently on cool-down.
The sustain goes on cool-down only if it successfully triggers and it has TWO chances to trigger, once at 0 life and again at death. Harvest will not trigger this effect.
Grave: Unlocked. All damage is 50% darkness and 50% cold.
1. Chill of the Tomb… this is no longer a normal ball spell. Instead, this spell causes area effect animus damage to everyone within your necrotic aura, even outside line of sight. Reduces enemy saves by 50% for up to 5 turns.
Costs 25 mana and 2 souls. Damage increases with talent investment.
2. Mark of the Sepulchre… target one enemy such that up to 35% of all damage that hits you (or your minions with UL active) is converted to animus damage (50/50 cold/darkness) and directed to that enemy for 3-9 turns. Duration scales with active talent level.
30 Mana and 3 Souls. Cool down is 24.
3. Soul Purge… This is just Animus Purge that leaves a lingering "Cold Flame" effect that originates from target. If an enemy is left below "25" % life after being hit, this spell has a 40-90% chance to create a "husk/forgery of the haze." This acts like a husk in that it doesn't expire until dead or Soul Purge is recast. Said husk/FoH doesn't regenerate mana or life and cannot be healed.
Costs 1 soul in addition to 50 mana. Your FoH can't cast it. Chance of success increases 25% when at or below 0 life.
4. Vampiric Gift… If UL is active, the healing is shared with your minions.
If you're classified as undead then this skill gains bonus to chance and rate of life drain of 5%.
Animus: Level 1 locked category at 1.3.
1. Consume Soul… unchanged.
2. Animus Hoarder… Passive that changes to "soul recycling" (50% chance to recover souls when minion dies) ability rather than chance to gain extra soul. Max Soul cap grows with talent investment, up to 19 total.
When at or below 0 life, chance to recover soul increases to 75%.
3. Eternal Servitude… Sustain ability such that when minions die, they still can't escape their service to you. 20-100% chance that they are retained as poltergeists. These ghosts have moderate life, can move through walls, do little damage, but have a few status effects, 50% resist all, and they have mid-level invisibility like a Dread. Ultimately, they're not a real weapon… yet.
Poltergeists still count against minion cap. This skill takes priority over Animus Hoarder and costs 50 mana. When poltergeists die, only Animus Hoarder checks. More so, if you're out of souls but still have poltergeists, spells will consume poltergeists as souls.
4. Legion… consumes all poltergeists (minimum of 3 required). This creature is always incorporeal and can move through walls and enemies for up to two tiles. When a Legion is in play, all poltergeists gain ability to cause Bleeding and Weakened Disease plus gain increased damage.
This creature can gain these abilities, based on talent point investment: Cursed Gloom, invisibility, fear effects, and resist all, up to 70% total.
Legion counts as 3 against your minion cap.
Advanced Necrotic Minions: Level 3 locked category at 1.3.
1. Create Greater Undead. This is an active skill that summons all of the more advanced minion types. Cost is 7 mana and 1 soul per minion. Summons maximum amount of minions at level 1, which is to cap or 5, whichever is smaller. Chance of best minions scales with talent level.
Increases minion cap every other talent level starting at level 2, totaling 8 at talent level 6 and so on. Level of minions is determined by Create Minions skill.
Can only have one Lich under your control at a time. It is a "super minion" but only counts as 1 against your minion cap.
2. Assemble… always consumes lowest-tiered, non-poltergeist minions for Bone Giant.
In addition, the limit for Bone Giant summons is changed such that:
lvl 1 - Bone Giant at your lvl - 4.
lvl 2 - Heavy Bone Giant at your level at your level -2
lvl 3 - At your level.
lvl 4 - Eternal bone Giant at your level +1.
lvl 5 - 20% Chance of Runed Bone Giant at your level +2. In addition, it eliminates the limit on # of Bone Giant minions except as per minion cap.
lvl 6 - Grants additional level +1
lvl 7 - Guarantees a Runed Bone Giant. Each subsequent level grants level +1.
All Bone Giants count as 3 against your minion cap. You can only have 1 Runed Bone Giant under your control at a time.
3. Sacrifice… is now targetable on any "super minion." Mana cost is increased to 25 but duration is the same for all effects.
If used on any Bone Giant, the effect is unchanged: maximum damage shield.
If used on a Lich, it converts 40% damage received into animus (cold/darkness).
If used on a Legion, it grants up to +35% resist all, and +25 saves.
If used on a Blood Golem, it increases heal mod by 350% for duration. Very powerful with Undeath Link. You still suffer the damage from death of Blood Golem, so beware.
4. Blood Golem:
Use: Activated
Range: 3
Cost: 100 mana
Use Speed: 1 turn
Cool-down: 26
This spell combines 1 basic and 1 advanced minion into a Blood Golem that is tied to your life. This creature heals with every attack, equal to damage*heal mod. Excess life from drain/heal is wasted unless Undeath Link is active.
Only 1 can be summoned and counts as 2 minions against your cap. This minion has a very high heal mod that, along with stats, scales with talent point invested.
If this golem is killed, you immediately suffer approximately 100-45% of its max life as direct physical damage that can bypasses damage shields, Sacrifice, and wards but not Undeath Link. The amount of life you suffer diminishes approximately 8% per active talent level.
In addition, Dark Empathy effect is shared with the Blood Golem such that the Blood Golem also isn't damaged by other minions.
Shades: Level 10 locked category at 1.2.
1. Shadow Tunnel… transports your minions through the underworld to you from anywhere on the map.
Additionally, you gain 4% chance per active talent level to gain up to 2 souls that tags along with your minions from the underworld.
Cool-down and mana cost decrease with talent investment.
2. Dark Vision… new passive skill.
Ability to see what your minions see. This is especially useful with poltergeists as they can move through walls.
Also, 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 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 moves within your necrotic aura. It can move on its own and attract attacks, although beams and arrows 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.
Any enemy that touches the shadow will suffer minor animus damage that scales with talent level.
Sustain goes on cool-down when triggered and effect is dropped when you raise your life above 0, although the shadow lingers for 3 turns.
4. FrostDusk… no change.
Ice: … Eliminated.
Mastery of Death: Level 10 locked category at 1.2.
1. Grasping Claws:
Use: Activated
Range: Necrotic Aura
Cost: 20 mana and 2 souls
Use Speed: 1 turn
Cool-down: 20
Causes the dead to reach up from the ground and grab at enemies within your Necrotic Aura, inflicting a small amount of physical damage and chance to pin. With added levels it gains a chance to cause bleeding, and disease.
Duration scales with active talent level, albeit slowly. It gains an additional turn at active talent level 1, 4, 7, etc.
2. Undead Explosion… Skeletons and Bone Giants cause physical damage with chance to cause bleeding. All other minions cause blight damage with chance to infect enemy with disease. Doesn't work on poltergeists or Legion.
This ability can now be used on any regular, non-ghost undead enemy in addition to your own minions. However, the success rate is equal to how much life they've lost (excluding negative life). Thus, if an enemy has lost 90% of its life then this spell has a 90% chance of success. On your own minions, the success rate is always 100%.
Does damage equal (up to) 50% of the max life of the target.
3. Blood Curse:
Use: Activated
Range: Necrotic Aura
Cost: 30 mana and 3 souls
Use Speed: 1 turn
Cool-down: 18
Causes damage to any enemy affected by pin, disease, or bleeding from any source, as long as it is within your Necrotic Aura. Damage stacks, i.e. if an enemy has more than one of the below status-effects, it'll suffer damage for each status effect.
Any enemy pinned suffers added physical damage and chance of disarm.
Any enemy bleeding suffers bloody cysts which explode inflicting radius 1 blight damage.
Any enemy that is diseased suffers blight damage and chance to spread disease.
When at or below 0 life, the damage increases 30%.
4. Fatal Spite:
Use: Active
Range: Necrotic Aura
Cost: 50 mana and 5 souls
Use Speed: 1 turn
Cool-down: 30
Only while Undeath Link is active, you deliver to 1 target within your Necrotic Aura blight/darkness damage equal to 50-100% of the cumulative amount of life below the max for you and your minions are, in aggregate. Then, you suffer 100%-50% (scales down with talent point investment) of said damage on a 1-turn delay as arcane damage.
This damage can be mitigated by shields, Sacrifice, diffused by Undeath Link, and stopped entirely by Harvest or wards.
Damage inflicted continues to scale past 100% with cat point and such but damage received does not continue to reduce.
Generics: Survival, Ethereal, and Necromancy.
Divination: Eliminated.
Ethereal: Level 1 unlocked category at 1.3.
1. Ethereal Tether... Active skill that grants 150%-350% bonus to movement speed and the ability to travel through walls. Each step, not turn, costs 12.5% of max positive (doesn't count negative) life. Ghostly movement but life slips away. This lasts for 1 game turn and is cancelled if you do anything other than move.
The life drain can be shared with Undeath Link active. Costs 25 mana and 2 souls.
2. Unholy Spirit... Passive skill that increases mana regen rate by 2-7 (!!) but reduces heal mod by 5% per active talent level. Regen bonus scales with active talent level.
At talent level 5, this gains a negative life bonus: All enemies in your necrotic aura lose 1 life per turn, half of which is converted into mana for you.
3. Whispered Warning... 60 mana sustain. This sustain saves 10-20% of your max mana pool in reserve. When the sustain is shut down, either manually or by way of attacks or mana clash, you recover this reserve. This is always the first sustain that is checked when you hit 0 mana.
The spirits give you advanced warning of attacks...
4. Soulless: Active skill that reduces your heal mod to 0 (or whatever would render heals ineffective) but grants an incorporeal status: flat damage reduction of 10-60, +20% darkness/cold resistance cap and 12-25% darkness/cold affinity for up to 8 turns. Scales with spell power.
Cost is 3 souls and 35 mana. Cool down is 24.
Necromancy:
1. Blurred Mortality… is considered passive if you're classified as undead either through Lichform, Harvest, or other.
Costs 20 mana and 20 life permanently upon first use. No mana cost thereafter.
2. Phase Soul
Use: Activated
Range: 4-10+ with active talent level but reduced by half when below zero life.
Cost: 30/60 mana
Use Speed: 1 turn
Cool-down: 8/1
This is a perfect, intermediate teleport, albeit an expensive one. It works outside of line of sight with 0% fail.
Range increases per active talent level. This teleport cannot be "targeted" on enemies, escorts, etc. Range scales with active talent level.
In addition:
If you're at or below 0 life (either with equipment, Blurred Mortality, or Heroism infusion, etc.), then this teleport's cool-down is reduced to 2 although the mana cost doubles and the range is reduced by half.
3. Harvest:
Use: Activated
Range: N/A
Cost: 10 mana and 99.99% of life.
Use speed: 1 turn
Cool-down: 36
This spell immediately reduces your life to 0 in exchange for granting the undead status for up to 15 (scales with active talent level) turns and gaining absolute immunity to all new status effects AND damage for 1 turn. Duration increases to 2 at active talent lvl 7 (so with a category mastery).
This will cure status effects (1 +1 per active talent level).
This ability does not work if you're already at or below 0 HP. This is a spell and so cannot be cast when silenced.
4. Lichform… no changes except that your Necrotic Aura becomes a passive.
Another crack at the neg-life Necro concept... Updated.
Moderator: Moderator
Another crack at the neg-life Necro concept... Updated.
Last edited by Delmuir on Wed Jun 01, 2016 6:35 am, edited 26 times in total.
Re: Another crack at the neg-life Necro concept.
This looks great but I can't help but notice that it shapes up to be a very low-range class, and the defenses that it has don't particularly match for that, in my opinion.
Re: Another crack at the neg-life Necro concept.
Some of it IS low-range, especially early before investing in Aura Mastery ... nightfall and the Lichform Celestial tree aren't but yeah, many of the spells are low-range by design.
This brings up your point about defense... well, assuming I did the math right, that shouldn't be true. I figured that the Necro could play as a moderately tanky class all the way to the tankiest class by far. I'll lay it out as maybe I'm mistaken.
Undeath Link + summons disperses damage greatly... especially big-shot damage. It's susceptible to AoE though...
Then you have the max-damage shield from Sacrifice... this again prevents big-shot damage but also helps with the AoE because Undeath Link aggregates damage into one-shot, essentially. This can mitigate HUGE amounts of burst damage.
Note: undeath link shares ALL damage (and healing) but it doesn't make the damage DIRECT. It still has to go through shields, but now potentially greatly reduced for all. This doesn't just make you tankier but your minions too. They, of course, are still susceptible to dying rapidly outside of your aura but inside it... they're hard to kill.
Then you have evasion and distraction from Grim Shadow and your other minions which allows you to avoid being targeted at all.
Then there's Harvest... this skill drops you down to 0 but it also makes you immune for a turn (or two with cat point and maxed skill). One might think this is time best spent healing but not necessarily. It can buy time to use summons, UL, and so on.
Harvest can also be double-cast, essentially, with a Blood Golem Sacrifice (with a necessary heal or regen in between... works great with a Consume Soul bonus regen or even a regen infusion... anything that gets you immediately back into positive life).
Note again all of the bonuses that come with hitting 0 life... including the "gloom" effect.
A Ghoul in particular can make use of the neg-life utility better than any other race, because of its racial skill. Of course, it loses out on the Lichform option and the Necro has no way to make up for the loss of speed but it'd be a HELL of a tank.
Then you have Mark of the Sepulchre, which acts a bit like a Displacement Shield.
Lastly, you have Chance of Life... a hail mary if all else fails, and that acts like a near-reset as it reduces cool-downs, adds life and mana.
If I've figured this correctly, a player can play this Necro as anything from fragile all the way to super-tank, depending on how they invest their talents.
My theory here is that the Necro has a good range of skills for all occasions but its primary weakness is that said skills are expensive. This is not a class that would allow for careless play but I think it should solid on defense and offense all the way through insane-difficulty.
This brings up your point about defense... well, assuming I did the math right, that shouldn't be true. I figured that the Necro could play as a moderately tanky class all the way to the tankiest class by far. I'll lay it out as maybe I'm mistaken.
Undeath Link + summons disperses damage greatly... especially big-shot damage. It's susceptible to AoE though...
Then you have the max-damage shield from Sacrifice... this again prevents big-shot damage but also helps with the AoE because Undeath Link aggregates damage into one-shot, essentially. This can mitigate HUGE amounts of burst damage.
Note: undeath link shares ALL damage (and healing) but it doesn't make the damage DIRECT. It still has to go through shields, but now potentially greatly reduced for all. This doesn't just make you tankier but your minions too. They, of course, are still susceptible to dying rapidly outside of your aura but inside it... they're hard to kill.
Then you have evasion and distraction from Grim Shadow and your other minions which allows you to avoid being targeted at all.
Then there's Harvest... this skill drops you down to 0 but it also makes you immune for a turn (or two with cat point and maxed skill). One might think this is time best spent healing but not necessarily. It can buy time to use summons, UL, and so on.
Harvest can also be double-cast, essentially, with a Blood Golem Sacrifice (with a necessary heal or regen in between... works great with a Consume Soul bonus regen or even a regen infusion... anything that gets you immediately back into positive life).
Note again all of the bonuses that come with hitting 0 life... including the "gloom" effect.
A Ghoul in particular can make use of the neg-life utility better than any other race, because of its racial skill. Of course, it loses out on the Lichform option and the Necro has no way to make up for the loss of speed but it'd be a HELL of a tank.
Then you have Mark of the Sepulchre, which acts a bit like a Displacement Shield.
Lastly, you have Chance of Life... a hail mary if all else fails, and that acts like a near-reset as it reduces cool-downs, adds life and mana.
If I've figured this correctly, a player can play this Necro as anything from fragile all the way to super-tank, depending on how they invest their talents.
My theory here is that the Necro has a good range of skills for all occasions but its primary weakness is that said skills are expensive. This is not a class that would allow for careless play but I think it should solid on defense and offense all the way through insane-difficulty.
Re: Another crack at the neg-life Necro concept... Updated.
I've updated this and welcome feedback.
I've tried to design this fairly carefully... with plenty of one-point wonders and multiple solutions to the same problems, depending on preferred play style.
One can go pure minion, pure blaster, or various combinations. There are damage-over-time + defense builds thrown in there and even a defense against the horrible mana-clash/sustain drop that's normally a death sentence to the necro... optional, of course. I earnestly think that this can be the tankiest class in the game with the right combination of skills but one that requires a careful balance as that defense comes by dancing on the precipice between life and death.
Many of the skills come with penalties, including massive damage penalties that'll have to be mitigated by skills like Harvest, Undeath Link, and Sacrifice. However, it offers lots of interesting options, depending on gear and style.
If anyone likes this enough to build an add-on for it, please do so. Send me a message if you want additional information as I did work out much of the math and order of operations.
Lastly, feel free to steal or adapt any ideas in here, including stealing labels and themes. You don't need to ask or credit... just take it if you think it's good. Cheers.
I've tried to design this fairly carefully... with plenty of one-point wonders and multiple solutions to the same problems, depending on preferred play style.
One can go pure minion, pure blaster, or various combinations. There are damage-over-time + defense builds thrown in there and even a defense against the horrible mana-clash/sustain drop that's normally a death sentence to the necro... optional, of course. I earnestly think that this can be the tankiest class in the game with the right combination of skills but one that requires a careful balance as that defense comes by dancing on the precipice between life and death.
Many of the skills come with penalties, including massive damage penalties that'll have to be mitigated by skills like Harvest, Undeath Link, and Sacrifice. However, it offers lots of interesting options, depending on gear and style.
If anyone likes this enough to build an add-on for it, please do so. Send me a message if you want additional information as I did work out much of the math and order of operations.
Lastly, feel free to steal or adapt any ideas in here, including stealing labels and themes. You don't need to ask or credit... just take it if you think it's good. Cheers.