[Character] Necromancer

[kingpin]

Even that we will not implement Necromancer in the preview version we will start take ideas. So, what skill is good, what is bad, what needs changes?


Summoning Spells:

Raise Skeleton
Skeleton Mastery
Clay Golem
Golem Mastery
Skeletal Mage
Blood Golem
Summon Resist
Iron Golem
Fire Golem
Revive


Poison and Bone Spells:

Teeth
Bone Armor
Poison Dagger
Corpse Explosion
Bone Wall
Poison Explosion
Bone Spear
Bone Prison
Poison Nova
Bone Spirit


Curses:

Amplify Damage
Dim Vision
Weaken
Iron Maiden
Terror
Confuse
Life Tap
Attract
Decrepify
Lower Resist

[Mythrander101]

Plz keep Bone Armor, Bone Spear and Poison Dagger.

Myth101

[Desocupado]

I believe necro lacks a bit the evil looks...
Golems don't even feel evil you know... Just the blood golem fell like a necromancer spell...
Maybe there could be several kinds of skeleton, archer, two weapon wielder's, huge skeletons, multiply body made skeleton, dread spirits...

Bone wall is amaziling useful, however it conflits with bone prison, there should be just one...

Poison skills should be more impressive, maybe a rabbies like effect would be nice to poison dagger.

Poison explosion is seldom used... maybe if you increase poison dagger level and give necromancer a poison bolt skill...

Teeth is too weak... There is no use in 40 weak missiles, maybe if you allow more than one to hit the same target... since they spread it won't get powerful, just a little less useless...

Curses ned one thing... To be not a one point wonder skills... Man all necro have almost 10 useful skills for one point.. Make them all improve with skill points... exemple... amplify damage is always 100% increased damage... What's the point of putting skills points for it to last long if you have godly mana to cast it all the time...

That's what i think of necro... Hope it turns out great as it is my favorite class.

[Vendanna]

Even that we will not implement Necromancer in the preview version we will start take ideas. So, what skill is good, what is bad, what needs changes?

Necromancer is the other balanced class with the paladin, and also had a few subclasses to play with it, sadly it also had a lot of 1 point whonder skills, especially on the curses tree.

Summoning Spells:

My suggestion is leave all non-summon spells out of the tree and move them on Dark Magic tree, or the other tree (Poison & curses).

Raise Skeleton
Skeleton Mastery
Clay Golem
Golem Mastery
Skeletal Mage
Blood Golem
Summon Resist
Iron Golem
Fire Golem
Revive

Raise skeleton had a problem, the skeletons are fragile things, cost tons of mana for each class on higher levels and become only a 2 seconds shield if you don't invest on them, but they still had their uses like become a thorn shield with the thorns mercenary.

My suggestion is to make the raise skeleton change the skeletons you raised based on skill level (starting with human skeleton, then armored undead skeletons (the oblivion knights), and then change to a 4 armed skeletons OR/AND use the monequip and let them spawn with magical weapons on the second transformation)

Now the golems, I know two strong contendants, the Iron golem and the fire golem, and both of them are fine, now the blood golem is not really strong and the clay golem is absolutly crap.

my suggestion is merge the blood golem and the clay golem (transformed on Bone golem) on the same skill, so the player has no control over wich golem he will get from the corpse he casted upon

of course, if possible, the golems do different things.

and for Skeleton mages... I would suggest increase the elements they can appear with to Magic, burning, freezing.

Poison and Bone Spells:

Teeth
Bone Armor
Poison Dagger
Corpse Explosion
Bone Wall
Poison Explosion
Bone Spear
Bone Prison
Poison Nova
Bone Spirit

Teeth is probably the worst Area of Effect skill on all the game, it needs a change or transform it like multishot =/

Bone wall and bone prison both works the same, I suggest remove one of them and let the other go.

Poison explosion can't compete with the best skill the necro has, the corpse explosion, so is totally useless.

usually points distribution on the curses tree from the guides I saw a long time ago on the diabloii.net forums.

Curses:

Amplify Damage (3-4 +skills items)
Dim Vision (1 + skills items)
Weaken (1 point pre-req)
Iron Maiden (maxed in some builds, 1 in the rest)
Terror (1 point pre-req)
Confuse (1 point, maxed on mojomancer build)
Life Tap (1 point whonder)
Attract (3-4 points)
Decrepify (3-4 points useful skill)
Lower Resist (maxed in most of the builds)

most of this tree are prereq for the best curse on all the tree, that is lower resistances.

[Molmoch]

I've stayed out of most of these discussions, but now that it has turned to the necro, feel obliged to contribute something.

As it is right now, most of the summons are placeholders until you get Revive. I actually like the clay, iron, and fire golems. Clay works wonders at low levels, and its cheap cost make it a good spam with Iron maiden to kill bosses. I find the blood golem to be fairly useless, my health usually doesn't need to be restored.

Skeles are great until somewhere into Nightmare. Even with investments, their lack of health really hinders them. Magi are great support, and I find they work fairly well.

But Revives are the ultimate skill. Throw down a decripify or Lower Resist and watch your minions seriously OWN. Plus with the new number limits on skeles, you can get more minions faster by investing in Revive. 3 minutes duration on the mobs is not a big deal when you generate more corpses.

I like the idea of having the type of skele summoned change as the game progresses. Either by slvl or clvl or game difficulty.

As for curses, most are placeholders until Decripify and Lower Resist. The Dim Vision, Attract, and Confuse side is below average, although they have their uses in variant builds or in specific situations. Most of these curses do not have a big enough return on investment for the points. I'd rather have more minions.

The poison side of the tree is broken, not because of the skills themselves, but because of how poison works in D2. Make a change here, and this whole side of the tree actually has potential to work.

Bone Armor is very helpful, and Wall/Prison is useful. The Bone Spear / Spirit debate still continues, so leaving both of them is a plus. Corpse Explosion needs special attention to not become overly uber. In 1.10 it is really powerful...

Some random ideas from other mods....

Having multiple types of golems at once. It makes points invested in clay worth it if you don't automatically replace it with iron later.

Summoning demons/ pit fiend like monsters. Maybe instead of the blood golem? Maybe instead of Revives?

What if the poison skills had the ability to reanimate some of the beings killed? Or maybe a lower damage bone spell that caused reanimation?

Make curses have significant tradeoffs and improvements.

[Nevbo]

I always found revives to be the most useless summon..... even with decrepify or lower resist they dont deal very much more damage than the monsters themselfs......

I say beef up the skeletons, max their summons to 3 skeletons. Give them Life leech.

Beef up skeleton mastery.

Beef up Skeleton Magi, Change their spells, Fire casts fireball, Ice casts Glacial spike, Electric casts lightning, Poison casts a poison bolt that exploads and causes area poison. Max their summons to 3.

Replace revives with skeleton king, a super beefed skeleton, with high damage, can cast bone armor, Stun, has life leech. Can only have 1 skeleton king. The skeleton king would be like leyoric or something, and they would also have a Weaker than might aura called skeleton aura that boosts damage =P.

Then change the golems, maby make them abit more useful than meat shields too.


Change corps explosion also~ Increase its explosion radius but put a semi long casting delay on it to prevent from Corps explosion spamming. *10 sec delay?*

I dont know what everyone see's in poison dagger but personaly as a necro i perfer to stay out of combat, esp with a low AR and a weak dagger.

Replace Poison dagger with Poison bolt, on impact it creates a poison cloud.
Replace Poison explosion with Poison Mastery, increase poison damage, but not the duratoin.

Bump poison nova down 1 skill level and in the lvl 30 spot put poison spray, Like andy's high damage short duration, and pierces.

For Teeth change it into a jumping type spell, at level 1-3 it will not jump to another target but level 4+ it gets extra target hits. *greatly reduce the number of teeth shot out, cap at 5.*

Bone spear should shoot 2 spears. 3 spears at capped level.

Bone spirit should shoot 3 spirits, then 4 spirits at capped level.

Keep bone armor as is, maby add damage returned to attackers?

keep bone wall and add damage returned to attackers also.

Replace bone prison with Calcium Reinforcment. It would be a warcry type buff for you and your minions. Increases Def and HP.

And i dun even wanna bother with the curses =P

[Mylon]

I would agree with the changing of skeletons and skeleton mastery and revives. 10 skeletons are usually too much to manage and they slow down the game (Diablo 2 can _still_ choke 2ghz+ systems...). Skeleton mages, if they get the recommended boost as above, should definitely be a higher level skill.

[Nevbo]

For the modifyings i suggested, im talkin about beefing up skeleton fighters to act almost like mini golems.

And skeletal mage would be bumpted to right under skeletal king.

maby put a skill between skeleton fighters and mages, like one that helps with skeletons defense, such as adds to defense and returns damage to attackers. Call it barbed bones, or something like that.

----

I got a great idea for golems.....

Every golem requires a certain item to cast them, so there will be no more can chain cast golems wherever. But sence the golems require something to cast they will be beefed up.
There will be diffrent items for diffrent difficultys. So basicly they would have names matching. Rock Sack(normal): are ones that you find in normal difficulty, give low stat boosts. While ones in nightmare "Rock Sack(Nightmare) Give even more, and hell gives the most.
Ocassionally a special kind of item will drop, you can call it Essence of Life, and this gives the best stat boosts and can be used with any golem.

Rock Golems*former clay*: They require Rock Sacks, These sacks have stats to add to the existing stats on the golem. All Rock sacks give resist all, increase HP by a %, and chance of crushing blow.

Iron Golem *former blood*: These guys require Metal scraps, All scraps give extra Dmg returned in % and solid form. They reduce the golems defense, and Give a large ammount of HP in solid and % forms.

Bone Golem *former Iron*: Requires Bone Bundle, all bone bundles give defense, ar, hp, and chance to block.

Ancient Avatar *former fire*: Requires Ancient Scrolls, The most powerful of golems, all scrolls give attack speed boost, resist, hp increase by solid number, ar increase, and dmg %.

The Essence of Life gives stats from all the golems, the essence is based the same way the other golem components are. You can Have Essence of Life (Normal), Essence of Life (Nightmare), Essence of Life (Hell).

All golem components are dropped by monsters, and are not really common, so there is no going to town buying 20 components and chain casting golems on bosses etc.

But! Sence casting is based on a component now, all the golems are almost as strong as mercinarys, and can stand toe to toe with bosses for awhile.
Not the usuall, Boss casts a spell, all minions die type deal.

[kingpin]

Nice ideas for the golem, I like it a lot

I'm quite sure I will implement this idea.

EDIT:

I got an idea for a new type of summon skill when looking into some code today.

Raise Undead: Raise an undead minion, the miniontype depends of the body its raised from. Works only on undead bodies.

Target a skeleton body: Raises a skeleton
Target a zombie body: Raise a zombie

This above was just an example how it works. The undeads will be grouped in different groups and depend of the body you consume it will raise a different type of minion.

[Nevbo]

how about making those raise undead weak, but once they are attack they expload causing area damage to whatever killed it, kinda like those frenzy guys in act 5.

They would be a walking corps explosion and you can even remove the corps explosion spell.

Just reduce the damage they do, to like 40 - 60% of the originals hp in damage, and reduce the radius to only monsters that are right next to them.

[Vendanna]

how about making those raise undead weak, but once they are attack they expload causing area damage to whatever killed it, kinda like those frenzy guys in act 5.

They would be a walking corps explosion and you can even remove the corps explosion spell.

Just reduce the damage they do, to like 40 - 60% of the originals hp in damage, and reduce the radius to only monsters that are right next to them.

But that has no skill, ITS a necro no the atomic bomb walking

Necro players like strategy to use the skills they have, not Right click monster dead in one shot like amazons ><

and merging skeletons with corpse explosion is not what I think its balanced, while burning skeletons ITS a good idea, Corpse explosion ones aren't.

I would like more to see the Necromancer summoning Ghosts and a Lord of the Abyss.

The Ghosts drain the mana of the target and are immune to physical (or nearly immune just balance them), the Lord of the abyss could cause terror on a low area

[kingpin]

Corpse explosion are a skill that is to early avaible and deal far to mutch damage and since Necromancer have two cropse explosion skills available what is prefered to keep most, Crospe Explosion or Nova Explosion?

[GuyAskingQuestion]

Corpse Explosion is the one everyone uses

Perhaps making it a higher level skill, lower it's initial damage boundaries and make them increase slightly with more skill points. Thus removing the "one point wonder" status from the skill

Or perhaps, if possible, make it only work on the bodies of the Undead, or Undead and Demons, that would be a suitable nerf

[kingpin]

Or perhaps, if possible, make it only work on the bodies of the Undead, or Undead and Demons, that would be a suitable nerf icon_mrgreen.gif

Yeah,

That would be possible to do

Also, one possible way would be to combine Corpse Explosion with Poison Explosion and let it deal both physical and poison damage and bring up a deadly gas from the body and this could ofcourse be done so it would only work on undead bodies.

[Vendanna]

Yeah,

That would be possible to do

Also, one possible way would be to combine Corpse Explosion with Poison Explosion and let it deal both physical and poison damage and bring up a deadly gas from the body and this could ofcourse be done so it would only work on undead bodies.

Necromancer used this skill to be able to kill anything on 1.09, mainly because the rest of his skills were too weak on Hell to have a similar destruction speed than amazons.

If you balance the rest of his skills, so they can manage to finish enemies, the corpse explosion will be good but not the Best skill the necromancer had.

For my suggestion, Poison Explosion is totally useless lag, I'll keep corpse explosion every day.

A thing, Corpse explosion had the problem of being really mana intensive, so its not THAT useful on the first levels (where you only can use it one or two times and drink a blue potion)

Of course, the skill is preferible to be one of the highest level ones, if you removed it, the necromancer will loose a bunch of his power.

Other skill suggestion:

Dark Ritual: (Destroy a Corpse to get better mana regeneration mana for a time)

And for only demon... I remember some demonic Skeleton graphic (Probably D1 hellfire or similar) that could be the Skeleton you get from the Demon bodies

Another idea you could do, is less minions, but really especialized (less mob) a la:

1-3 Skeleton Warriors, but they get better equipment and resist something (also change type)

1-4 Skeleton mages (they also change type a la oblivion mage on higher skill levels)

The Golem (But golems except from bone and Flesh ones looks weird casted from necromancer)

1 Bone Dragon (or Dracolich) its all I need, only this summon and I don't need any more cool graphcis skills, its only the creature I liked most from D&D

1 Big Demon (with fear or confuse aura) called from Dark Pacts, make it possible to call a Demon that is hostile to the player.

Also you can have Ghosts or tiny skeletons (those nice stygian dolls but worse or better )

So you have less summons than in normal LOD but they give something nice like auras or Cast on attack skills to support you but conflicts with others summons.

Heck! even "Necrofagos" that are a variation of Zombies that eat corpses of the fallens to regain their life and cause diseases on touch.

[kingpin]

For necro warriors I have plan to give them one melee skill and keep the number of skeleton warriors you can summon low to reduce the lag. Anyone familar with how many skeletons you can have without to mutch problem with lag?

A thing, Corpse explosion had the problem of being really mana intensive, so its not THAT useful on the first levels (where you only can use it one or two times and drink a blue potion)

Of course, the skill is preferible to be one of the highest level ones, if you removed it, the necromancer will loose a bunch of his power.

Yep,

But ofcourse the new skills necromancer get added will make this up. So, I keep corpse explosion and remove poison explosion completely.

[Vendanna]

For necro warriors I have plan to give them one melee skill and keep the number of skeleton warriors you can summon low to reduce the lag. Anyone familar with how many skeletons you can have without to mutch problem with lag?

Basically the lag comes when there is over 12 or more summons on the minimap all of them with aura and you summon a skeleton (my old cpu)

Five to Seven for summon is very decent for old cpus, but most of this depend on the speed of the CPU the players are using.

For my old pentium 2 there is no problem with a total army of 21 little critters with aura, with more than that I got lost sometimes between all graphics moving around

[Nevbo]

Just cap skeletons at 3 skeleton summons and make them take leaps in power with more points into raise skeleton and skeleton mastery.

same with mages, i made a suggestion on this in a post earlyer if you look up =P

[Vendanna]

My suggestions for the Dark Army of Bone, after all a necromancer should have more skeleton monsters than golem variations, also skeletons are easy to make 3d models, so my suggestions are:

Skeleton Warriors (some with shield) (I talked about those above in this thread)

Skeleton Mages (same than with skeletal warriors)

Skeletal Cavalry (Skeletons riding skeletal mounts, they will charge on the enemy)

Skeleton Flagbearer this skeleton does low damage, but had a Flag with the simbol of Death that will increase the morale of your troops or cause fear on the enemy, you choose

Skeleton Archers: Skeleton that shoots at distance covering your other troops, I know a bunch of people will appreciate to have these with the skeleton mages. [passive, grants AR bonuses to your skeletal troops]

Lich/demi-lich: Different skills from the Skeleton mages or a shapeshifting skill from necromancer on another three.

Giant Skeleton or Skeleton dwarves (King leoric model with stun attack or stygian dolls with frenzy)

[this could be better adressed on the raise skeleton depending on how long the target corpse was, giant = leoric model, normal = normal skeleton, small (fallen) = stygian doll]

BoneDragon or Dracolich = the most powerful of the skeletal monster types on D&D is a special type of undead, mostly powerful dragon guardians.

Bone Golem: A golem.

Between it possible to create a skill where skeletal hands emerge from the ground trying to grab enemies? (emerge from random places on the ground, like the fissure) during a time.

Thank you for your time.

[Molmoch]

There are still potential issues with balancing if you decide to remove Revives. The trick will be to allow early summon skeleton skills that can still be decent, and not overpowering, at higher levels. Having a later skeleton summon (like cavalry - good suggestion there) to replace the warrior makes sense to me. Something that can melee effetively at higher levels is crucial to avoid all necros treating their summons solely as meat shield while they spam bone spear / spirit.

If you do cap skeleton summon numbers at a low number (like 3) than they have to ramp effectively. I always liked the idea of having an army of minions. It really suited my game. I knew there were lag issues, so I made sure not to overburden my system. Honestly, it wasn't an issue since Revive, Decrepify, and Corpse Explosion can get you through most of Hell at levels 60-70. Easy.

But part of me feels that the early warrior skills should be made obsolete later - its only a slvl 1 after all. You dont see many sorcs using fire bolts, do you? Or Pallys using might?

[Vendanna]

Warriors doesn't need to become obsolete with 20 points in skeleton mastery and sinergy from the other skeletal armies.

I was suggesting the synergies, but had to leave, that's why I didn't finished the suggestion

The skeleton mages synergy could be elemental resistance to all your skeletal troops (so you had the place of skeleton mastery)

the Skeleton Cavalry could grant them run/speed or faster attack speed, or even damage

the skeleton Archers grants your skeletan troops Attack rating they needed.

The DracoLich boost the Life of your summons and give them magic damage.

The Bonegolem grants your summons regeneration or return damage of x

Giant skeleton could grant the troops low chance to stun and damage max.

Etc...

So a only summon tree necromancer (the Overlord) can at least get a useful army without need of a Might or Thorns mercenary.

and for Moloch question:

But part of me feels that the early warrior skills should be made obsolete later - its only a slvl 1 after all. You dont see many sorcs using fire bolts, do you? Or Pallys using might?

That's totally false, the charged bolt is lvl 1 and is useful, smite is lvl 1 and is useful, warmth is lvl 1 and useful, tiger strike is lvl 1 and broken.

If a skill become obsolete is a mistake on the design team.

firebolt is crap because it does nothing that fireball couldn't do better, and for might Paladins used it on Classic (when it enhanced Blessed hammer) and could be used for an all Paladin Party if there where no act 2 might mercenary (with bug).

So its no excuse saying its a slvl 1 skill to be a obsolete skill.

[narcro]

golems

i think it cold be cool if the necromancer could create small golem statues to give to other players so they can have a golem too

one use, perhaps incresing in number of uses as the skillvl goes up

summons
skeletons; lil increase in damage per level (to other summons)
skeleton archer; increase ar
skeleton mage; adds elemental damage to rest
skeleton horse rider; increase in damage
skeleton knight;increase ar and damage
skeletal commander; grants aura (ar damage or thorns, random)

summon zombie
summon ghoul
summon wraight
summon ghost
summon wampire
summon lich

animate body
call diciple (summon a dark mage)
summon demon servant
summon lesser demon
summon demon

[Vendanna]

golems

i think it cold be cool if the necromancer could create small golem statues to give to other players so they can have a golem too

one use, perhaps incresing in number of uses as the skillvl goes up

I would prefer more Vodoo dolls that are like ID scrolls and they shoot a curse (depending on the level of the necro) since its more what a necro should sell more

summons
skeletons; lil increase in damage per level (to other summons)
skeleton archer; increase ar
skeleton mage; adds elemental damage to rest
skeleton horse rider; increase in damage
skeleton knight;increase ar and damage
skeletal commander; grants aura (ar damage or thorns, random)

That's similar as I suggested earlier, but I suggested bonegolem inestead of undead knight and Bonedragon inestead of skeletal commander.

summon zombie
summon ghoul
summon wraight
summon ghost
summon wampire
summon lich

Zombie and ghouls are too similar on this game, the same with ghost and wraith I prefer to have one of them only and not have obsolete skills later, what its possible to do is:

summon Zombie and summon wraith starts summoning the lower type of creature, and when you got a bigger level, you raise the higher level one.

This way we had variation on the summon tree, and also avoid the obsolete skills.

Also, ghost could have damage reduce, while wraith is built on manadrain

Not sure about this one, it seems to complicated if we want a true vampire as D&D, since they are highly powerful creatures, what we can have inestead is the bats you can see on catacombs having life leech and become the Vampire bats (or pipistreli on italian I think)

animate body
call diciple (summon a dark mage)
summon demon servant
summon lesser demon
summon demon

That sounds too much to "hey! I'll become obsolete when you rech the higher level one", the disciple could be a good idea, but the demons if possible on other three differently from the bone tree (skeleton and bone spells)

Demons also could be a not so god to have on one character tree, since there is already spells you can find on the game that allows you to summon demons, and it also doesn't fit the demon to serve unconditionally all the time the necromancer.

sincerely yours. --==Vendanna==--

[narcro]

you could always remove the curses skills tottally and leave a ragdoll skill (like the assasin) leaving an empty space for something else


it should be similar, i vas expanding your idea
on another note, isn't the bone dragon a little strong (perhaps add it to the perhaps add it to the necromancy books along the vampire)

about the second part of the tree
if (as vendenna say, and i agree) the zombie and ghoul are to alike i wote for the ghoul (cooler name)
ill hope to get the wraight for the same reasons, or a banshee

dark magics (ill hope the name go in)

blood ritual (ritual of blood)
increasing manaregeneration on the cost of life(maybe - to maxlife when skill is active)

pentagram
creating a flaming pentagram on the targetet ground

woodoo(other names)
gotta equip a ragdoll to use
damages and stuns target (increase damage and stunlenght per level)

death vind
stuns area and gives x chance of killing anyone in the aoe (including yourself)

control undead
destroy undead

eternal night
blinds monsters in aoe

[Dark_Baron]

Im new to this mod, but I'd like to offer my necro suggestions...

Necro is basically my favourite character, but due to the fact that I can use easier strategies with a sorceress to kill things more efficiently, I tend to not play necros

Now, for summons, the max amount should be reduced and they should be beefed up (as MANY have stated)

Golems however.... Maybe keep 2 golems and replace the other 2 with different types of summons (this idea was mentioned too.. Im just giving my opinion ) Possible ideas could be summon demon...

Poison... ahhh good old poison... Well, me and my pal decided to make chars in d2 and play over my network... and he made a straight Bone spirit necro, and I did poison skills... I can tell you my damage was displaying up around 30k, but due to the resistances and the poison length, I could not kill anything at all. So my suggestion is... redo the poison skills... lower the duration and I guess you'd have to lower the max damage too... cuz casting poison explosion and doing 30k over 3 seconds might be a bit uber hehe...

Curses... I agree most are either useless or only need 1 point... Amplify damage could have an increase in damage per skill point.. maybe maxed have 200% damage.... But I definitely think curses should be thuroughly looked over

I hope my post made sense.. im kinda tired and I dont wana re-read it I hope the necro turns out awesome