Necromancer - what would you change in skills

[Salbahis-2547]

@Ubeogesh-2804

• Poison Dagger. Decrease the synergies strength by 50% and buff the base damage by 100% (but keep the duration high) a level 20 poison dagger without synergies should be able to kill a weaker monster in hell (let necro start off his army with 1 body by a poison dagger merc, not having to rely on a merc)

meh. doesn’t it seem a bit long for a single target skill to kill monster over 10+ seconds.

@Ubeogesh-2804

Ofcourse all of that is a huge buff so maybe there should be some tradeoff. How about reducing block chance of shrunken heads by 20%? Seriously how do you block with them lol.

same way they spawn floating bone armors. magic. would be bad for the poison dagger if the block was reduced.

[Zax-11538]

@Ubeogesh-2804

Bone prison like Diablo’s

Lol , i actualy did this in my old d2 mod

@Ubeogesh-2804

I would love if bone wall was allowed to be “painted” with your cursor and continuous cast animation like

this is out of question tho

[Floopay-1401]

Skeleton Mages

Either severely increase the casting speed or damage of skeleton mages. Maybe a bit of both.

Blood Golem

Blood golem devours corpses. Every corpse he eats increases his defense and damage significantly until he has eaten about 10 corpses.

Once he’s at his strongest, he’ll eat corpses and spit them out like a devourer. Except the damage will be closer to that of a corpse explosion.

When he deals damage he heals you, when he takes damage you take a small portion of that damage. If he dies, he corpse explodes (dealing damage based on his size) and heals you.

Poison Dagger

Severely up the poison damage and make it up physical damage on poisoned foes. Could be like the necro version of charged strike.

Bone Wall/Prison

Them exploding should deal damage and bone prison should be like Diablo’s.

Bone Spirit

Should deal splash damage.

Thanks,
Floopay

[Ubeogesh-2804]

@Salbahis-2547

meh. doesn’t it seem a bit long for a single target skill to kill monster over 10+ seconds.

it is long, but reliable and for only 20 skill points in hell

One of the things I hate about many necros is how reliant they are on the mercenary. I want that gone (but I don’t want a “spawn corpses” skill, it feels too cheap)

@Salbahis-2547

same way they spawn floating bone armors. magic. would be bad for the poison dagger if the block was reduced.

buffs should be accompanied by nerfs. Propose a fitting nerf to go with them. Imo it’s fitting that if we fortify necromancers utility and damage, his defensive capabilities should go down

[DarkHelmet-1157]

The only skill I’d like to see revamped is Lower Resist. It shouldn’t require level 60 to garner the maximum benefit of the curse(-70 to All Resistance). Rather, it should mirror Conviction aura and softcap at level 25 for -70 with additional points merely increasing its casting radius and duration.

[Salbahis-2547]

while leveling a poison dagger necromancer it’s a must to have max block. when you block, or monsters miss attacks on you the bone armor last longer. and you can get that sweet trang oul’s 3 items shield bonus. and daggers get 0,75% extra damage from both dex and strength. with shorter duration, lower mana cost and a bit more attacks per frame it could be a bit better at killing multiple targets. but i guess poison dagger is pretty niche play. over just using explosion, poison nova etc.

[Anu-11792]

Damn I forgot

• Poison dagger

Now works with swords

Upon killing with poison dagger there is a % chance to spawn a Poisonous flying scimitar that acts as a summon. It’s damage is equivalent to your poison dagger damage

[MasterBLB-1518]

@Zax look at mine and Skulm’s suggestions posted on necromancer subform:

Improvements for necromancer

Hello fellow Necromancers I have few hints how to improve the class to make it overall better, more fun to play, and suitable for additional variety of builds. Shrunken Heads automod That “Add X-Y poison damage over Z seconds” is absolute, useless crap. To make it interesting it should be changed to “Add X-Y poison damage over Z seconds to your minions’ and yours attacks and spells”. Alternative is to replace it by +mana, or +life, or a combination of these. Or another idea, perfectly fittin…

Suggested Necromancer Changes (All Builds)

Hey everyone, I am writing this post to express my personal opinion about the patch 2.4 Necromancer and how it can be modified for the future patches. This will be a long and detailed post because I will cover all three specs. The Necromancer did not see much love (other than indirectly buffing Bonemancer in PvP) whereas new builds emerged for the Paladin (V/T and FoH), Sorceress and other classes. I am writing this post to hopefully redirect the attention of the Devs to where it is needed and …

[Ultima-2587]

I would add skeleton archers with all magic attacks and physical.

[Anu-11792]

Damn so busy I forgot the holy grail of necro reworked skill

• Level 1 skeleton mage has firebolt by default

• each level it gains 2% chance to cast fireball instead

• could, at level 20, start to gain 1% chance to cast meteor per level

Repeat this with all elements

• tier1, tier2,tier3

• firebolt, fireball, meteor

• lightning bolt, lightning, nova

• ice bolt, glacial spike, frost nova

• poison dart, poison dart that creates a poison cloud, poison nova

So for example you got your skeleton mage to level 30, they got 10%change to cast meteor 60% chance to cast fireball, 30% chance to cast firebolt

congratulations you have now immensely improved skeleton mages by giving them interesting mechanics

You yourself gain better skills as you level, why not these mages

If the damage is still lacking, revert the Hp buff they got that makes them tanky and turn them into glass canon, give them a damage synergy with lower resist

Note: the % values are placeholders just to give an idea and tier3 spells is hypothetical

https://us.forums.blizzard.com/en/d2r/t/making-skeleton-mage-better-and-more-interesting-is-so-simple…-it-just-need-the-will-to-change-stuff/107151

[Indian-2161]

Poison dagger: Act like an enchant, give higher AR and IAS.
Poison Explosion: Spread like Rabies.
Bone Spirit: No more near infinite radius. Linger by the caster if no enemies in it’s area. AoE dmg.
Skeletal Mages: No more bolts casted. Fire mage gets Fire Ball, Ice mage gets Galcial Spike, Lightning mage gets Chain Lightning, Poison mage keeps the bolt but now it pierces.
Blood Golem: Add higher AR, and chance for OW.
Fire Golem: Give synergy from Lower Resist to it’s Holy Fire dmg.
Revive: Longer duration per lvl.
Curses: I think they are fine.

[Jman-1752]

Poison Dagger: Upon death, a poisoned monster’s will automatically trigger Poison Explosion.

Without some way to deal with regular monsters efficiently, poison dagger builds always devolve into poison nova builds. This change would give the daggermancer a modest AoE element without messing with it’s single-target role. It also brings poison explosion into the mix which is another skill overshadowed by poison nova.

[OldPlayer-31373]

First I think need to fix poison damage.
Now posion damage will be interrupted by other attack.

I watch Ginger Youtube, he tested posion damage and is broken.
Eg. 100 PD over 6 secs, if any other type/source of attack in between the 6 secs, the poision damage will stop depleting.

[Reeven-1281]

The top 3 QoL Necro changes for summoners:

• Replace skeleton Mages with Archers.
• Tweak the Attract curse so that minions converge on the target.
• Make Revive duration permanent, like skeletons.

[Floopay-1401]

I don’t think it should necessarily mirror Conviction; but it should be upped.

I think it should be a little nastier though. Totally think they should up it from 32 to 50% at base, and 70% at 20 with diminishing returns after that.

However, it should also do things like lower Reduced Poison Duration (So if someone has reduced duration 75% total, it would be lowered to 25% with a level 1 Lower Resistance) and also lower Damage Reduction and Magic Damage Reduction (flat). So if someone has magic damage reduced by 12, it would be reduced to 6 with level 1 lower resist.

Thanks,
Floopay

[DarkHelmet-1157]

Lower Resist shouldn’t even affect Damage Reduction since that is Physical in nature. As for Magic Damage Reduction, I just feel it should affect Resistance and nothing more like Amplify Damage/Decrepify does for Physical Resistance. It’s why integer Damage Reduction is so underrated because it can completely nullify incoming damage(even if cursed), if the Damage Reduction is high enough(which in most situations is never the case unless the damage is extremely small to begin with). I also think Poison Duration is basically the equivalent of “Absorb” by reducing how long Poison lasts on the character. It doesn’t heal you but then Poison can’t kill you like the other Elements can.

As for reducing Resistance 50% at level 1 and 70% at level 20 would imply +1 per level(on average), making it yet another 1-point wonder as opposed to something you might invest 5-10 points into to ensure you get the maximum benefit possible(like on Conviction). Just out of curiosity, what would be your max benefit for Lower Resist? -75% Resistance? -80? What level would that be achieved too?

[Floopay-1401]

That is a good point on both damage reduction fronts; but I do think it should affect poison duration. My main thought is, Magic/Poison is a Necro’s main elemental damage next to physical from summons.

I think Lower Resist should have a declining scale for bonuses or give a flat bonus. Most Necro Curses only really go up in AoE as points get pumped into them. I would rather see some synergy action come from them than maximizing flat point bonuses in them.

So it could be 50% at 1 and 80 at 20 with a decline starting at 10 from 2 points per point to 1 and 1 point until 20 and 1 per 2 points there-on until -90.

But I think adding synergy bonuses between Curses would change the curse tree dramatically. Like Iron Maiden dealing flat damage and that damage being amplified by points in amp damage.

Decrepify adding a small amount of slow to Lower Resist.

Attract having a chance to be contagious based on points in confusion. Confusion reducing attack roll based on points in dim vision. Dim Vision lowering defense based on points in Amp Damage.

Etc. Etc.

Thanks,
Floopay

[Anu-11792]

Bone wall should be reworked to be linear when cast without target and when you have a target it circles it like current bone prison

Bone prison is now reworked . When you cast it, a Diablo bone prison spawns around you and another one spawns at the location you targeted, you then get teleported from one to the other. Creating a mobility skill for necro but also a defensive manœuvre

[DarkHelmet-1157]

I don’t think Monsters have Poison Duration Reduction on any Difficulty. At least that’s what I remember seeing on Arreat Summit years ago. All I remember was Drain/Chill Effectiveness, Resistance/Immunity, Block Chance(ugh…), Monster HP, Attack/Defense Rating and what Base Damage they do. So unless it actually exists somewhere online(where someone data mined it), I haven’t seen it and therefore from a PvM perspective, it isn’t needed.

The only reason Lower Resist might enhance or increase Poison length is for PvP given that Fade and now Plague runeword now exists… It’d be a way to counter the length reduction but Cleansing/Fade also reduces Curse duration too(which there is no work-around on that front unless Curse duration was substantially increased…)

[Kick-11421]

one major thing that would make the summon necro feel alot better would be to keep the summons from game to game like the iron gloom.