A simple solution to Bone necromancer PvP\PvM balance

General Discussion
1

In version 2.4 Bone Spear and Spirit received a damage buff, in the form of increased synergies. It was really a strange choice in terms of PvP, because he is one of the best characters there.

But in PvM, a lot of people still aren’t impressed by the change - the damage buff didn’t change that much. I feel like I am the only person on HCL playing a Bone Spear necro. I just love the kinda skillshot element where you line stuff up and pierce it all for optimized AoE (for that same reason I love playing magezon).

The real problem is, to get Bone Spear to max damage, you need 102 skill points. That’s level 90, and it is without getting clay golem and decrepify (the minimal utility for a bone necro).

What I would like to see, is to remove the synergies for Teeth, Bone Spear and Bone spirit from Bone Wall and Bone Prison - just incorporate them into the 2 remaining synergies, so you get max damage with 61 points.

The synergy values can also be reverted to version 1.14 or 2.3 values. I.e. Bone Spear gets 14% synergies, Bone Spirit gets 12%. In the end you will still get more damage where it mattered.

Thus you can have decent damage at a reasonable level, but you get it by sacrificing protection from Bone Armor. If you want bone armor, you can still spec exactly like before and nothing will change. If you want damage sooner, you can get it at the expense of protection.

P.S. freeing up skill points will also allow doing all kinds of changes to the curse tree, like making some curses worth investing more points into.

The Bone Armor balance could also be changed, so that people would actually put points into it… make it like Cyclone Armor, where the direct skill points increase flat amount, and synergies add a percentage bonus.

1 Like
2

There should never EVERY be any balance between PVM and PVP. They are totally different things, and the game should only ever consider PVM when making balance changes.

3

well my suggestion suits BOTH so i don’t understand how is your comment contributing. The fact that you are not interested in PvP does not give your voice any additional power.

1 Like
4

Ignore rasalom he is one of those village noobs that thinks PvM in this game is hard and all the gg items in the game are just for PvM. None of the BIS items are required to PvM successfully whereas they are needed in PvP so please see yourself out.

I dont like OPs suggestions but Bone Spells didnt need adjustment to start with. Yea it sucked PvM and still does but who cares when Necros had one of the easiest times PvM and as mentioned Bone Necs are easily tier S+ in PvP…

5

see you are being the polar opposite of Rasalom by dismissing PvM. Both modes are important.

Can you elaborate what exactly you don’t like about my suggestion? Considering that the goal is to make the game more interesting in the most possible ways. Right now literally noone plays Bone Necro in PvM - perhaps some will try it with such change. As for PvP, my recomendation is to revert the old damage level (just achievable earlier, with sacrifice in defensive capability), so it will bring down the bone necro a bit there too.

1 Like
6

How am I dismissing PvM? Never did I say anything bad about PvM, I enjoy it but the truth is PvM is very easy, you can “beat” the game with blues and yellows with any class… and fine no one plays Bone Nec in PvM but who cares when PNova/CE/Summon absolutely dominate PvM…

Your changes suck because now you give at least 40 free points for PvP Bone Necs to spend into Clay Golem, Decrep, IM, Revives… Bone Necs are unfortunately in a weird position and giving them buffs is not a solution neither is reworking how monsters take magic damage (hammerdin too op cry babies incoming)

7

like this:

Sure, you can, but that is not all PvM.

Right now necros contribute very little in party games. They have never been utilized in 8-player speedruns too.

Bone necro overall is just lacking damage for PvM, until you get him all the good stuff and a lot of levels.

Those are not free. Those take away from the bone armour.

1 Like
8

Bone Armor does nothing in PvP against Sorcs, Trapsins, Hammerdins, FoH, etc and Bone Necs already have the upperhand against Wind Druids, Bowazons and BvCs. They don’t need any adjustment, yes sucks that they aren’t same level in PvM as PNova/CE/Summon but what Blizz tried shows they have no idea how to fix it without completely breaking the game in other aspects.

And you’re a cry baby if that is dismissing PvM. PvM is easy. Being top at PvP is hard.

9

Why are you like that man? Can we have a civilised discussion please?

10

I was trying to and you’re so adament that I’m putting down PvM when I’m not. We are both on the same page that Bone Nec in PvM sucks. But I don’t see a problem with it. Can’t have it all… would rather see blizz buff things like MA Sin or Fire Ele…

11

give players 50% magic resist vs other players
/thread

12

That’s just oddly specific, isn’t it? Such things make the game less noob friendly and more convoluted.

13

…

really? this is the game your talking about not making convoluted?

the one with hidden breakpoints, runewords u need to look up on websites

skills that doesn’t match their description at all ( feral rage)

hidden weapon speeds for each weapon class hidden ranges
a dclone spawn method selling a certain unique to merchants. in a high number…

this is the game … your worried about that idea of lowering magic damage vs players by another 50% being convoluted to new players?

1 Like
14

Man, why are you so emotional. Yes, those things you have listed are issues too - i agree. I would love them to be fixed as well. And adding another to the list is not good.

15

tbh i dont think that your solution would change very much. and it would buff pvp necros because they got more points to spend for pets. i think the reason why bonenecros skillpoint inverstment is so high is to avoid that. you could either give the bonenecro spells better aoe (maybe something like bonespirit exploding like fireball upon hit? though not really a fan of that) or maybe divert the bonemancer build in pvp and pvm build by giving lower res a bit of -mag res, but only at higher levels.

16

I like the idea of Lower Resist reducing magic resistance because it would be a significant buff to PvM necros while accommodating PvP at the same time since it can be a banned skill in GM PvP rules. It would also be a cool callback to when it used to reduce magic resistance in old versions of D2.

Thus my suggestion: Change the Bone Spear/Spirit synergy values back to 2.3 but allow Lower Resist to reduce magic resistance to increase their damage instead.

This change would have the side effect of improving Blessed Hammer damage which is certainly not needed because Hammerdins are already overpowered as it is. However, there are ways around this.

Blizz can make it so that hammers don’t benefit from reduced magic resistance, this behavior can already be seen with Crushing Blow (Crushing Blow doesn’t deal increased damage when a target has negative physical resistance) so we know it’s possible to do something similar for hammers.

TL;DR:

Change Bone Spear/Spirit synergy values back to 2.3 and prior, change Lower Resist to reduce magic resistance. Make it so hammers don’t benefit from reduced magic resistance.

17

pvp already has manner rules, just add more for bone spear.

i for one, love pking pvpers with bone necro and i dont want it changed.

j/k but pvp was never a diablo thing, it was pking and that’s it, but some people made rules and block games from those that dont follow them. Kinda communistic imo

18

bone armor helps a lot against assa. Like, A LOT (mindblast dmg, shadow master dmg, kick dmg, whirl dmg if you are facing a spidersin…)

And ele druid rekt necro

19

just accept that some skills are meant for pvp and some are meant for pvm. Nec has enough pvm alternatives. Nova, ce, skeletons.

Could start complaining that CE has no use at pvp aswell.

20

How can you say that bone spear is meant for PvP only though. If it was the case, it wouldn’t pierce.