2.4 patch was awesome for balance changes, even still necro suffers in some aspects, i would suggest 2.5 patch to:
Buff a little fire golen life and defense, he is dying a lot.
Fix Iron golen to stay alive after create a new game, this would help a lot and we could play with runeword iron golens.
Buff skeleton mage damage because they are very weak and skeleton warriors are very better, with mages buffed damage we could have a summon mage build.
Buff decrepify in some way to be more competitive against amplify damage and lower resist or maybe create some sinergy.
Buff decrepify in some way to be more competitive against amplify damage and lower resist or maybe create some sinergy.
Decrepify isn’t just used by necros, but most physical damage builds through procs. Buffing it buffs a lot more than just necro. Really changing it in any way opens a while box of worms. About all you could add would be a synergy that increases range/duration/slowing effect, and that wouldn’t be that good however you slice it so it likely wouldn’t see much use.
Either way I don’t see an issue with it, but yeah decrepify is one you gotta be careful with buffing. It would have to be a synergy to not effect other classes… and then… who pumps a curses synergy?
Lower Resist synergy with Mages → +5% damage per level.
Life Tap synergy with Blood Golem → +20% damage per level
CE Synergy with Fire Golem → +1% Fire damage for CE per level in Fire
Golem, +20% damage to Fire Golem per level in CE
Decrepify Synergy with Clay Golem → +1% Slow per level in Decrepify
Iron Maiden Synergy with Iron Golem → Golem adds +20% Iron Maiden damage per level. Iron Maiden adds +20% thorns to Golem per level.
Mages → Mages receive 1 full mage level per point Mage rather than 0.5 levels.
Something like this would make an Lower Resist Necro viable (fire golem, mages, CE, LR.)
Note: I understand that Poison necros use LR.
EDIT:
Poison Dagger and Poison Explosion → reduce duration each level rather than extend duration. Leave damage as is. This would make the more difficult to use poison skills powerful as boss killers or skill shots, where PNova is the easy-to-use skill for normal killing.
Buffing the necro mages will just make the necro more OP then you can put 1 point in that. Not only you have deadly attacking skeleton and revives, you also have mages who do major elemental damage while casting lower resist.
Not really → almost all your damage as a necro comes from your merc, amp damage, and corpse explosion.
Giving a reason, aside from poison nova, to cast LR would be nice as an alternative playstyle. What’s more, you still would have to choose between Amp and LR, so optimizing towards mages vs. skellies would be a build decision.
Currently playing with a necro and yeah amp damage really is all you need and your merc.
Having additional skelly mages will just make it alot easier hence why I said end game items will make it S-tier.
They need to some how separate the skills so you could go skelly mages or skelly warriors.
we have discussed the mages problem a few times here. atm they are supposed to be an additional ranged, elemental dmg and a specialization for the typical summoner. you go for skellies (40 pts) and either go for a golem, mages, or corpse explosion as specialization. buffing mages with that setup could make them op. you could redesign mages to be an alternative to melee skellies, but that would require quite alot changes. synergies, making melee skellies and mages count as the same summon group or so, buffing mage dmg ALOT (melees and mages do roughly the same dmg without auras, its the auras that give melees a 20x factor, while the mages only get a 2x factor from lower res at best. meaning you would need to 10x their dmg)
Poison Dagger and Poison Explosion → reduce duration each level rather than extend duration. Leave damage as is. This would make the more difficult to use poison skills powerful as boss killers or skill shots, where PNova is the easy-to-use skill for normal killing.
i like the idea of making poisen dagger a bosskiller move. i suggested that a while ago. it would be similar to a weaker version of static. risk melee range, but have a high reward. but i think it would also need some other stat tweeks like maybe ar. the 10x factor for lvl 45 poisen dagger sound like alot, but i dont think they have very much ar sources beside that. maybe if they go for maxblock. but if not they would only have 105 ar x 10 from poisen dagger.
As a necromancer Main i think that they should remove the bone wall and bone prison bonuses from bone spear and bone spirit and replace em’ with bone sheild and buff the damage to fit the loss of a bonus.
AGREED! People keep trying to find roundabout ways to try and buff hammerdins more and more. Decrep is just fine the way it is. Hell at Hell Baal, decrep, clay golem and merc with obedience takes him down with ease. I’d say decrep works very well the way it is.
i would say no, top end mercs do like 7-9k dmg. Most folks dont use top end gear as in 70 percent of d2 doesnt even have hotos and enigmas and the game is 8 months old. Your skeletons do much more dmg then even a good geared merc. lvl 41 skeleton warriors 14x do 700 dmg per skeleton not even factoring the buffed skelton mages. The warriors do 9.8k dmg.
I was super excited to play necro on ladder since summoning seemed way stronger. Nope. Mages still do no damage compared to their melee counterpart. And they’re annoying AF blocking skeletons behind them. Why can’t they move freely through each other ? Blocking is super annoying.
decrep doesnt need buffing, it’s the middleman of all the curses(slow, lower res, lower damage, lower phys res).
I want skele archers instead of mages, because elemental damage is so heavily resisted across the board that mages will never compete with melee necros. the other thing is I want skeles to not block eachother, I hate watching a mage duo block a doorway as the pelt an enemy until it finally kills them and the melee skeles get to work.
if not a archer skele, then add magic damage mage skele. something to penetrate the elemental resists of enemies. skele mastery should get buffed, raise the +dmg for mele skeles a lil bit and raise the bonus dmg for mages too.
back to decrepify, the only buffing I can see being acceptable is range and duration, anything else will throw the balance out the window.
a little? Jesus, Iron Golem needs pretty big buffs to be relevant. It’s health at 56 is 12.9k, equivalent to a Fire Golem, for such a hefty investment of something like an item, or Runewords, it needs far higher HP buff, something like 30k at skill level 56 should be far more interesting, as well as a slight tweak in reflect damage being higher.
Defense should be a 10% per level bonus for the synergy bonus, and finally Summon resist needs an overhaul, ASAP. The diminishing returns on it is way too harsh for Hell, especially if you go around a corner and encounter Conviction mobs/Lower Resist doom knights in Act 4 and 5. Needs something like 3%/level after skill level 9. This way, it’s still a one point wonder for most builds, but if you want to go full on minionmancer/Golemancer, you can have a super minion that can actually have a chance to survive in Hell, and even stick around Ubers instead of just melted in a few minutes of a run.
Also that regen of it’s is pretty bad, only 236 hp/sec for 56 iron golem/56 Golem Mastery and 50 Blood Golem. Needs to be either higher, or it’s resistances need to be better across the board.
56? twin soj, arach, full inv of summon gc’s+anni&torch, +2 skills armor, hoto?(AOKL doesnt do much for golems), homunc, shako, maras(or +2 ammy)…i think thats it? making the max +skills at +27…how did you hit +36?
