Suggested Necromancer Changes (All Builds)

Necromancer
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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 perhaps create a much more enjoyable Necromancer gameplay experience.

I would like to kindly remind everyone that this is my personal opinion based on my observation and experience. You do not have to agree with me, just keep the conversation civil. Let’s begin.

1- Summon Necromancer / Skelemancer

General Definition: The summon necromancer aka skelemancer is a great build which excels in getting that first kill and destroying its enemies with corpse explosion. The build also does very well against bosses compared to Bonemancers and Poisonmancers, purely because of physical minion damage synergies with Amplify Damage Curse (Amp Damage). A crushing blow mercenary also synergizes well with this build, since it can kill bosses very quickly, including ubers.

Current Problems
The current problems of the summon necromancer are as follows:
1.1- Relies on Enigma or Teleport charged staves/amulets for repositioning the army.
1.2.- Relies too much on merc damage, the army damage only becomes essential after obtaining “Beast” runeword.
1.3- Revive duration is not ideal to play a maximum sized army build.
1.4- Requires Urdars (mauler type monsters) for their innate Crushing Blow to efficiently kill bosses / ubers. Revive monster diversification is lacking.
1.5- Only the Iron Golem or Clay Golem are viable choices.
1.6- Skeletal Mages deal near to no damage.
1.7- New Iron Golem Idea

Suggested Solutions:
1.1- Relies on Enigma or Teleport charged staves/amulets for repositioning the army.
This can easily be fixed by introducing a new “Warp” talent/ability which warps all minions at your cursor. Therefore you can remain still but teleport your army to focus their damage on single target. Alternatively, the Attract curse can be reworked with the Warp Ability, which will actually help focus more damage with its properties.

An alternative suggestion would be introducing a more budget runeword which would also grant + Teleport (on a helm slot for example), hence nerfing Enigma at the same time.

1.2- Relies too much on merc damage, the army damage only becomes essential after obtaining “Beast” or “Faith” runeword.
The current summon necromancer needs the merc damage. Especially crushing blow and some survivability gear on mercenary are priorities, if you want to be efficient at killing targets. For future patches, the melee skeletons’ flat damage should be buffed and preferably each melee skeleton should at least have 1% chance to crushing blow in addition to the flat damage buff. This can be integrated into Skeleton Mastery or Raise Skeleton.

For skeletal mages, please see #6. I will go into detail there.

This change would allow the Summon Necromancer to actually play the army commander role rather than playing a full support healer role and forcing Rejuv pots down the merc’s throat (especially during Ubers).

1.3- Revive duration is not ideal to play a maximum sized army build.
3 minute revive duration is way too short, considering its mana cost. We all play on modern pc systems and the 3 minute revive duration is actually discouraging players to invest more points into revive because it takes effort and it is not a “permanent” gain. Considering the fact that people jump from game to game especially during ladder, the whole concept of Revive requires a rework in my honest opinion.

Extending the revive duration or making revives permanent should definitely be considered, since that would actually encourage people to invest max points into revive and play a massive army.

There could be a new ability which may save a specific type of monster’s corpse, and provide you that corpse unless you reselect another corpse. Example: In my game 1, I have picked an Urdar Mauler corpse. When I join game 2, I can use this ability to lay urdar corpses on the ground (minimum 5, can go up to 20 or more with point investment) and I can just revive them. That way, you instantly start building an army on the go.

Another solution would be to change revived monsters attack frame limitations so they get way more benefit from fanaticism IAS (from Beast and Faith).

1.4- Requires Urdars (mauler type monsters) for their innate Crushing Blow to efficiently kill bosses / ubers. Revive monster diversification is lacking.
There should be more diversification for revived monsters. Urdars/Maulers are the top pick for Necromancers because of their 5% crushing blow. Revive should be reworked so all melee monsters should get innate 5% of crushing blow, and all ranged monsters should deal either elemental or physical improved missile damage based on their types.

1.5- Only the Iron Golem or Clay Golem are viable choices.
This needs no introduction. You can use the Iron Golem (IG) for adding another aura such as Insight Medidation, Pride Concentration, Infinity Conviction (if you are crazy) or Beast Fanaticism (if you are crazy) which help boost your army + merc damage. For clay golem, the slow applied to bosses provides a super safe approach. The goold old decrepify+clay golem slow on bosses is still a viable strategy thanks to this system.

Iron Golem can be improved by buffing its physical damage and removing its attack frame limitation so players can actually use big damage weapons to further buff the IG damage and IAS (Eth Thresher Pride Runeword IG can gain much more damage when combined with Faith Fanaticism [lvl 12-15] compared to Beast Fanaticism [lvl 9] if this change goes through).

Clay Golem is fine as it is.

Blood Golem can be improved so that it provides a sort of “lifesteal” aura to everyone in the party. This would work as lifetap curse but in aura form. This would GREATLY help keeping your army and merc alive. An alternative would be providing flat life increase, again as an aura so all your minions+merc and party members have their max life increased (a budget Battle Orders basically).

Fire Golem can be improved by buffing its fire damage and at the same time reworking it so it now lowers enemy fire resistance. Fire Golem is dealing near to no damage (both as pulsing damage and melee damage). If properly buffed, the fire golem will deal decent fire damage, but the real bread and butter would be the new “lower enemy fire resistance” property, which would also boost the fire damage portion of corpse explosion. I am basically suggesting making Fire Golem a fire rainbow facet so it synergizes well AT LEAST with Fire Skeleton Mage or fire skeletal archer.

1.6- Skeletal Mages deal near to no damage.
Despite the buffs, the skeletal mages still deal no damage even if you max lower resist and all masteries. I offer two solutions:

  • My favorite suggestion: Remove skeletal mages and introduce skeletal archers which deal physical damage and synergize well with Amplify Damage. Skeletal Archers may also deal additional Fire Damage.
  • Buff all flat damage of Skeletal Mages and add extra abilities to them. Poison Skeletal Mages can now cast Poison Nova, Fire Skeleton Mage can now cast Meteor, Lightning Skeletal Mage can now cast Static Field (YES), and Frost Skeleton Mage can now cast Frozen Orb. More Skeletal Mage point investment should result in higher damage and more mages rather than just increasing the number of summonable mages.

1.7 - New Iron Golem Suggestion
New Iron Golem: The Necromancer’s Iron Golem now grants thorns aura to all party members including minions. Thorns aura (same as the paladin aura) level increases with more points in Iron Golem (benefits from +all skills as well).

I propose this change for 3 viable reasons: 1- The Paladin’s Thorns aura is so much better than Iron Maiden and Iron Golem’s return hit property, 2- Bosses deal 4x damage to minions therefore Thorns is vital for any below budget necro to kill bosses easier, 3- Instead of using Bramble you can create another runeword and merge this with your IG, effectively making it provide multiple auras and pave the way for new setups.

2- Poison Nova Necromancer / PNovamancer

General Definition: The Poison Nova Necromancer is a great but incomplete build. The build also does very well in AoE farming certain areas such as Chaos and Cows compared to Skelemancer and Bonemancer, but it falls short in actual boss damage and Players 8 high end zones (Chaos Sanctuary P8 etc). Poison Nova Necromancers need their mercs and summons to be able to defeat bosses. This is mainly because of the poison nova tick rate, hidden resistances as well as other coding issues.

Current Problems
The current problems of the Poison Nova Necromancer are as follows:
2.1- The Physical Damage that comes from Merc+Army OVERRIDES/CANCELS your Poison Nova damage. Merc Poison damage can also override/cancel. Needs urgent fix.
2.2- Cannot kill bosses efficiently despite having -good on paper- Poison Nova damage.
2.3- Poison Explosion and Poison Dagger are bad synergies.
2.4- Requires very expensive/rare equipment to actually be viable.
2.5- Requires better Lower Resist Synergy.

Suggested Solutions:
2.1- The Physical/Poison Damage that comes from Merc+Army OVERRIDES/CANCELS your Poison Nova damage. Needs urgent fix.
I get asked this question multiple times in my discord channel. We also analyzed this issue on Reddit Necromancer discord (big shoutout to Hungry, Leo, Zuul, Ville, Tilwin and many more amazing people there!) We have video evidence that the physical damage from merc+army actually CANCELS the damage of poison nova. I’d like to bring this issue to light so this gets a fix ASAP.

2.2- Cannot kill bosses or Players 8 Monsters efficiently despite having -good on paper- Poison Nova damage.
The current poison necromancer is limited to certain areas such as cows, pits and chaos. When it comes to killing Players 8 high level zones, or bosses, especially Ubers, the poison nova necromancer falls short and relies on its merc+minion damage synergized with Amplify Damage. Note: This post was written before Sunder Charms were introduced What’s even worse is, a poison nova necromancer CAN NEVER KILL Uber Lilith despite having max -poison resist equipment. It is currently IMPOSSIBLE for a Pnova Necro to break Uber Lilith’s poison immunity. Therefore poison nova necromancers are 100% required to get revives, use Amplify Damage and their summons to be able to kill Uber Lilith since the army deals physical damage. The general lack of poison damage on bosses or the poison nova tick rate should be fixed. This can be done in three ways:
-Completely reworking how poison damage works and make it not cancel by other sources of damage.
-Lowering the hidden resistances of ALL bosses and making poison nova tick rate 0.4/0.5 secons instead of 1 second.
-Allowing the Poison Nova Necromancer to lower and BREAK poison resistances EFFICIENTLY. This brings us to #3.

2.3- Poison Explosion and Poison Dagger are bad synergies.
As I stated before, poison explosion and poison dagger are under utilized, bad synergies. The only reason they exist is to buff Poison Nova Damage. I suggest reworking both of the abilities:

  • Poison Dagger reworked to “Poison Cone”: Shoot a Cone of Poison which deals xx to yy damage in 2 seconds to all enemies in front of you. Required Level 6
  • Poison Explosion reworked to “Poison Mastery”: PASSIVE- Increases the damage of your Poison Spells by piercing enemies’ resistance to Poison. -20% to Poison Resistance per level.

In addition, I suggest buffing Poison Nova synergy damage. Poison Cone now grants 15% Poison Damage per level instead of 10% and Poison Mastery now grants 15% Poison Damage per level instead of 10%.

2.4- Requires very expensive/rare equipment to actually be viable.
Poison Nova Necromancers all want that Death’s Web, 2-20 circlets, PnB skillers, 125 FCR or at least 3 set Trang Ouls (Cantor Trophy for -25% poison resistance as 3 set bonus) and Enigma for a reason. They NEED that gear to be efficient in higher levels of gameplay. You can definitely pull it off with more budget variants, but you can never compete against the current meta damage (Hammerdins, Sorcs etc.). Therefore if we apply #3, the build can actually be viable without needing all that equipment. Adding the end game expensive equipment on top would make the build FINALLY POWERFUL enough to do good damage on P8 Hell or ubers.

2.5- Requires better Lower Resist Synergy
Poison Nova Necromancers just invest 4-5 points into Lower Resist and never look back in general. Lower Resist should be buffed so Poison Nova Necromancers can either get away by investing only 1 point, or LR should be buffed in such a way that Pnova Necromancers would at least invest 10 hard points into it. I suggest buffing the -resistances, radius and duration of Lower Resist further, however investing further points would not only buff the aforementioned properties but also reduce the mana cost dramatically as well.

3- Bone Spear Necromancer / Bonemancer

General Definition: The Bonemancer is a very powerful build, especially in PvP. The build relies on magic damage, which is almost perfect since only a few rare monsters are immune to magic. However, the bonemancer also falls short on boss damage, because all UBER bosses have hidden 75% magic resistance which seriously diminishes the value of bonemancer’s magic damage. Unfortunately, the Bonemancer falls short on P8 Baal boss damage as well.

Current Problems
The current problems of the Bonemancer are as follows:
3.1- Does low boss damage.
3.2- Has too many synergies which causes the build to lose out on additional powers.
3.3- Very mana hungry build that requires Insight runeword.
3.4- Requires better Lower Resist Synergy.

Suggested Solutions:
3.1- Does low boss damage.
How many times you got confused when you saw your BIG bone spear damage destroying normal monsters but tickling the bosses when it comes to boss damage? The uber bosses in Diablo 2 have hidden magic resistances which diminishes the value of your magic damage, whereas P8 Bosses have higher HP which makes them way more durable against your bone spears / spirits. These resistances are so high your bone spear / spirit tickles the boss whereas Smiter Paladin physical damage with crushing blow can easily annihilate bosses. This is one of the main reasons why Summon Necromancers excel in killing uber bosses because all melee skeletons, merc and melee revives deal physical damage which synergizes very well with Amp Damage. The bonemancer lacks in this department.

In order for bonemancer to do actual uber/p8 boss damage without making it too powerful in PvP, I suggest four options:

  • Reduce all uber bosses’ hidden magic resistances
  • Improve Bone Spear / Spirit damage tremendously, but apply a PvP nerf.
  • Rework Lower Resist so it LOWERS MAGIC RESISTANCE as well in addition to Poison, Fire, Cold and Lightning. See #4.
  • Introduce a new talent, Magic Mastery which lowers enemy magic resistance in a certain radius. This will be an aura with a certain radius: Passive- Increases the damage of your Bone Spells by piercing enemies’s resistance to magic. Radius: 7 yards. This way the ability will not destroy PvP but it will be very useful in PvE, if bone necros would risk positioning close to the boss itself.

3.2- Has too many synergies which causes the build to lose out on additional powers.
In order for a Bonemancer to do actually good damage, nearly 100 skill points should be invested into Poison and Bone tree. I suggest removing Bone Wall and Bone Prison Synergy bonuses but buffing Bone Spirit, Teeth and Bone Spear synergy bonuses. This change would allow Bonemancer hybrid build variations to emerge or more curse utilites can be utilized by Bonemancers. Freeing up skill points can definitely help choosing different golems as well (if they get reworked in the future).

3.3- Very mana hungry build that requires Insight runeword.
Bonemancer starts of great with teeth and then transitions into Bone Spear. However mana problems arise when you start casting your Bone Spears and follow up with Corpse Explosion. The build needs +mana after kill gear or Insight runeword to be mana efficient. While I don’t like to primarily offer any ability rework about this issue, I propose improving the vendors so they sell more + mana after kill or regen mana gear. Alternatives would include reworking corpse explosion and bone spear so they refund mana after kill.

3.4- Requires better Lower Resist Synergy
Bonemancers cannot lower enemy magic resistance because lower resist does not lower hidden magic resistance. I suggest reworking lower resist so it actually lowers enemy magic resistance as well. This will help massively increasing the boss damage of bonemancers while providing much needed synergies for hammerdins as well. It would open new doors for the build.

I tried to be as brief and precise as possible. I will update my post if it is required. Please feel free to share your thoughts. Thank you for reading!

16 Likes
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Awesome post! I agree that the necro didn’t get much love in 2.4
Love some of the ideas;

  • minion reposition is such as awesome idea. Linking with attract is really cool but a simple reposition generic ability would be functionally very easy to add to the game.
  • having revives leave their corpse to re-revive would be awesome
  • reworking revives by making crushing blows innate to all melee would really improve the skill.
  • giving blood golem life tap aura would be amazing. they tried to buff fire but its not working.
  • SKELETON ARCHERS such a good idea!!
  • If lower resist actually lowered magic resist that would be unbelievable. Hammerdin is already insane OP so it doesn’t matter if they get stronger. This would buff all the builds as you could make better use of maxing a bone skill to buff damage.

As this is a remaster, I don’t see them totally changing skills to different ones (even though I wish they would). I really wanted to see some major buffs to Teeth and Poison Dagger.

I like more subtle ideas as big ticket things like making teleport more accessible or revives infinite might get a lot of pushback from the purists.

I don’t mind the high gear requirements for certain builds, this feels core to the game. When you play a lot and get good items it opens up new builds for you. This gives you something to work up to. But they could introduce new rune words that fix issues. For example they could make a VooDoo Head runeword that grants teleport, since teleport is more important for necro than most builds.

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Great inputs!

Since new runewords and spec changes are possible, we can only hope. Reworks are really happening so implementing the reword suggestions alone would make necromancers super fun to play imho.

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omfg your a mind reader i thought about skeleton archers , having these archers but have them spawn with random attack styles physical or magical arrows. Increase skeletons dmg and attack speeds by 20 percent, introduce a flat 20 percent curshing blow ,deadly strike , attack speed and fast run walk and resistance.

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Glad to see we are on the same page! Awesome input. Let’s go!

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Hey Skulm,

Very nice ideas there; you might look at mine, as there are shared areas and concepts.

  1. Teleport dependency

Well, the idea to change Attract seems bad, I like it as it is. About ‘Warp’, hmm that doesn’t sound something necromancer-like…you might check my proposal for ‘Focus’ curse.
Another runeword giving teleport sounds nice though.

  1. Revives improvement

I fully agree with you mate, I’d add removal of prerequisite to Iron Golem for Revive to save skill points.
Although for just farming acts I’ve found that reviving monsters with some abilities, like Stygian Witches, vampires, gloams, frenzy minotaurs is good enough; however I’ve never attempted to do Diablo Clone or ubers.

  1. Golem reliability issues

I’ve proposed to improve Golem Mastery so it’ll allow to summon additional golem each 10th level reached; golems might be the same or different types.
However, as I think about them now golems in general should acquire another improvements in addition to what I’ve mentioned:

  • damage buff.
  • always hit so they don’t rely on attack rating.
  1. Skeletal mages

I’ve proposed something very similar, with level the mages will get stronger spells (see my suggestion for details), however the idea of replacing them with archers also sounds really nice.

  1. Poisonmancer improvement

I’ve proposed to remove Poison Explosion, which is mechanically just worse Corpse Explosion, and replace it with a passive buff <whatever name, draft is Vile Alchemy> which adds flat x-y poison damage to spells and maybe minions as well. I’ve also proposed to buff Lower Resist to provide similar resistance lowering as Conviction offers. And my last idea, designed for anti-boss scenarios, was to allow Poison Nova to stack its damage once per 10 levels, so lv10 PN could stack twice, lv20 triple and so on.
I’d like to leave Poison Dagger, but as suggested change it to Poison Attack to enable some kind of fun melee/bow/crossbow necromancer builds.

  1. Bonemancer improvement

I had very similar idea that a curse which lowers magic resistance is needed, however I’ve proposed to alter Amplify Damage so it lowers physical and magical damage by 100% (usual rate at breaking immunities). Besides, my Vile Alchemy passive would also help with improving damage for bone spells, moreover it’d provide a way to deal with health regeneration. And my last improvement for bonemancer would be to allow Teeth to shotgun the same target.

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another thing they should give you the option to have skeleton lord and skeleton mage lord at least, this would combine all the dmg of all your skeleton warriors into one, same with skeletal mages, the lords would not have the combinded hp or ar thou, the hp and ar would be cutt down by 75 percent. So say you have lvl 50 summons they would have 5k ar each, times say 16 skeletons then reduced by 75 percent and hp reduced by 25 percent. So the skeleton warrior lord would have about 19k ar and have about 15k life.

You would not need to add any skills for the skeleton warrior lord or mage, you will get it free after maxing skeleton mastery, skeleton warrior, and skeleton mage. And being player lvl of 80 or higher. This is so it wouldn’t be op and abused in nightmare mode.
This would help with bosses and in pvp.

They could also add updates to druids to, and other builds. They should add two more acts in a expansion, and add destruction mode. Basically it would be harder content, diablo in destruction mode, would be 3x as strong as uber diablo in hell mode.

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I’m always up for the discussion on the Necy, especially from people who actually play it and aren’t just asking for non-issues to be fixed! First off many of your ideas would just push the necy really far in the power spectrum but hey ask for you want and see what sticks. It also seems that some of these things are idea’s that may seem better for D4. They better put a necy in D4 and there are some great ideas for the necy in that game. If they don’t add a necy to D4 I probably won’t buy it….

Summoner!
Re-positioning, I would love to see something like this, but it needs to be a ground based re-positioning that is not a telly. Telly should be ‘hard earned’ or come at a cost. Enigma is ‘expensive’ while telly staffs are common, but the staff comes at a cost of losing a few skellys if you use it. I’m fine with that.

Merc issue – A change like this would re-do the necy as a whole, again great for D4 as I just don’t see them doing anything that much to D2. Long ago I just considered the merc as part of my damage and accepted it.

Revives - would love to see them last longer maybe 5-10 min, I don’t think they should be permanent. I think increasing the + damage % would be appropriate. The current levels were a carryover from 1.09 and before when the monster life was not as large as it is now. When a monster does 100 damage and you give it a +300% damage, it still means it does nothing to something with 5K life. Giving them +800-1000% would be more worthwhile. I’d be fine with this instead of CB. This would equate to adding a lot of + damage % to skeleton mastery for the revives.

Mages – I’ve been pitching a solution for a while which involves giving additional bonuses for skills after lvl 20. This can apply to many different skills from Sorcs to necys, but here’s the thought on Mages for it. Starting at lvl 21 mages get a greater + to damage than they were getting below lvl 20. Specifically, mages gain damage every 2 levels at this point. Starting at lvl 21 mages gain damage every level, ideally 10+ damage per level vs the 9 damage per 2 levels they are currently at. By starting this additional damage at lvl 21 you generally need to put pts into the skill to be able to access these extra ‘bonuses.’ Sure we can get lvl 25 mages with 1 pt + skills but relatively they will still be weak compared to the other skellies we are using.

Golems totally agree, Blood and Fire need some Help. I’d be fine with Blood getting its old ability to leech from IM or Thorns. It was OP ‘back in the day’ but IMO if it was given now even items like bloodmoon would be an interesting option when combined with thorns. Fire golem just needs more damage, if the damage got high enough, I wouldn’t need any -fire resists.

Poison
I don’t feel that you need Deaths Web etc to just play a Poison necy, you need those to clear the immunities. Without them we are just as gimped as a fire sorc, but with them we can break with immunity with LR and still have a good kill speed.

Boss Killing – yes this just sucks, you basically need to go get the right revives is you want to kill a boss in a decent amount of time. I would like this solution to be increasing the revive damage over an inherent – resists.

Bone necy

The solution I’ve thought was good for Bone necy is to make Teeth shotgun. This makes teeth very strong at close range while still being relatively trash at a long range. If you are willing to get up close and risk dying you have the potential of doing a significant amount of damage but if you keep your distance Spear is still your best option.

Add in a cap on mana for all bone skills and you are done. I don’t mind the Bone skills taking a lot of pts, this means you don’t get to really have strong Bone skills and minions or strong curses. The Bone necy doesn’t get to be much of a ‘jack of all trades’ but is more specialized. I’m ok with that.

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Glad to see that we share similarities. This also proves that most of the requested changes are intersecting with each other. I have read your post before writing this, and you identified similar problems and offered nice suggestions.

Your target focus curse should become the new attract. This could work. Alternatively a warp can be added to Attract which essentially forces all minions to focus a target. The warp can help managing the merc especially in tight areas such as arcane sanctuary or maggot lair. The warp ability essentially fixes the “trafficking of minions” in tight areas. If you do not include warp but only do a “focus” curse, you will not provide much benefit to summon necro especially in maggot lair. Therefore, I defend my view on adding a “warp” ability.

Very interesting. This could work.

I agree with this portion.

Read your suggestions, they are indeed very similar. I am glad you liked the skeletal archers idea. At this point I honestly think skeletal archers is a guaranteed fix and provides better overall damage with Amplify Damage.

I read your post before writing my reply. The names are cool, I like Vile Alchemy better than Rotting Marrow. In any way, replacing this ability would be better for pnova necromancers imho. I suggested introducing poison mastery, so we can break resistance and do more damage, which will help TREMENDOUSLY with boss damage.
Stacking pnova damage can also work.

Modifying Amplify Damage with physical + magic resistance might be a bit too much, but I’ll take it. Lower Resist lowering magic resistance makes more sense for me essentially.

Great suggestions overall! Enjoyed your post!

This is a great idea. Diablo 4 necromancer (we know he/she will be coming) can use this for sure :slight_smile: Not sure if D2R can make a dramatic change at this stage. Great suggestion though.

Rondel you have Blizzard Sorcs, Hammerdins, Charged Strike Amazons who can 1 shot Player 8 Hell difficulty monsters and bosses. In the meantime, you have a poison necro who cannot solo p8 bosses, a summon necro who has to wait so the merc gets a kill so he/she can build an army, and a bone necro who suffers on P8 as well. Let’s be realistic, necro needs MUCH MORE damage to actually be viable on Players 8 Hell difficulty. Necromancer needs insane damage, which should not make it overpowered in pvp. How do we achieve that? These suggestions are centered around actually improving the necro damage in pve and making it harmless for pvp. These suggestions are no way perfect, they are my ideas after all. However, I can bet my money that they are BETTER than simply flat buffing bone spear damage and its synergies.

Sounds good but what will you do in maggot lair and arcane sanctuary? You need warp/tele, plain and simple. Otherwise you will continue to encounter same problems and nothing will be fixed.

Time for a change then. Let minions do most of the damage and use merc as a secondary source.

Great, extending the duration definitely works. Although I want to see desecrate style corpse generation carrying after games for QoL improvement.

Skeletal mages need insane amount of flat damage buff. Only after that buff we can talk about percentages. New abilities are cool, I also suggested them. Honestly I think skeletal archers replacing mages looks like the best solution to me. Skeletal archers can do additional fire, cold, poison or lightning damage, but the main source should be physical. Problem fixed.

Flat damage increase also works. My suggestion works on making Fire Golem a synergy for corpse explosion at least, since CE deals half physical and half fire damage. I’d like to see fire golem lowering fire resistance and do more fire damage at the same time ofc.

I don’t know if you are playing on P8 ladder, but you need all the most expensive gear and you still don’t do good damage as poison necro compared to other classes that can one shot P8 mobs. You will never be meta if you don’t get damage increase. Utility is one thing, but hey people can just buy wands and benefit from your utilities without having a necro in the grp :slight_smile: you need damage damage and damage.

I saw this suggestion in various posts. This sounds good but idk if they can change the codes without breaking the game. Hence I suggested freeing up points in bone so bonemancers can focus on other things instead.

This is the reason why I suggested the aura change. So it does not affect PvP that much but introduces a more risk&reward PvE damage system.

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Attract curse in its current form is actually useful, and I’d like to keep it rather unchanged - it can help ex. in “need of 1st corpse to get going” scenario. If anything, Confuse could be replaced, although “Warp” doesn’t fit there. Well, any king of warping sounds weird for a necromancer…yet I agree that such ability is really needed to efficiently use your army :confused: Hmmm…
How about something called “Unburrow Ambush” in Summoning tree? Mechanically it’d do exactly you’re opting for Skulm, and visually it’d suck all your minions (without mercenary perhaps?) underground, then burst them at the cursor placement after a short delay(which could lower with levels of the skill); imagine ground exploding, pieces of soil, and bones erupting from the destination point - this will be something more necromancer-like than teleport-like Warp.
The skill might even give a temporary damage boost, or something.

After reading that I though “well, skeletal archers idea do sounds really nice, however I’ll advise Skulm something to have the best of both archers and mages - skelly archers dealing physical + elemental damage. This will be even better, as mages are unaffected by Might/Concentrate/Fanatism while archers will be, and also implementing different spells for higher level will be complicated”, but as I see:

such advise is not needed :slight_smile:
Actually, when I think about that I like the phys+elemental archers idea so much I’d like to edit my suggestion with them, if you allow.

Well, I suggested to improve Lower Resist scaling; assuming it could get max -200% all resists(and usual 1/5 efficiency at breaking immunities) Poison Mastery should no longer be needed. Meanwhile Vile Alchemy will work not only with Poison Nova, but also bone spells strengthening them in a more interesting way that just plain damage increase, with additional bonus of stopping health regeneration. And stacking of Poison Nova 2-3-4-5 times should be a gamechanger against bosses.

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Interesting ideas and I do agree with some of them. The Skill tree could use a re-work in terms of prerequisites and synergies. Namely the first thing for me is that Bone Skills require 100 points to maximize. Virtually every other skill in the game requires 40-60, at most 80 but 100? That’s where the Bone Wall/Prison skills need to be liberated and attached solely to Bone Armor. To compensate, buff the Teeth/Bone Spear/Bone Spirit synergy to 16% so as to keep the combined 640% damage buff when maxed(unless you want to nerf them… hah).

I’m torn on whether to make Revives permanent since while it’s a level 30 skill, Skeleton Mastery buffs their HP and Damage a crap ton and makes them arguably stronger than the permanent Skeletons you can summon while retaining the attacks/abilities of the slain monster(Council/Pit Vipers/Urdars are notable ones). Speaking of Urdars, they use Smite(hence always hits) and they do 25% Crushing Blow on Hell(making them godly Revives and why they’re often Revive picks). Tomb Vipers were also godly picks until they patched them in 2.4 since their bugged cloud attack did gobs of Physical Damage.

Anyways, I think a compromise buff would be to extend the duration of Revive 20 seconds for every hard point. Meaning level 1 = 180 seconds, level 2 = 200 and so on. Level 20 = 560 seconds or 9 minutes and 20 seconds. If that isn’t enough time to use your Revive, you’re not playing efficiently. I also think that Revive shouldn’t require skill investment into Golems and Summon Resistance should be its own skill(like Salvation or Mastery skills for Sorceress) or moved as a prerequisite for Revive. Summon Resist scaling could be buffed a bit too as it pretty much loses effectiveness by level 10 or so.

Blood Golem providing a Life Leech aura is intriguing I must admit but then that kind of makes Lifetap rather moot if you think about it. Perhaps +Replenish Life in an aura like Prayer with hard points increasing the radius and rate of regeneration? As for it granting +Max Life, that is already done by another class skill(Oak Sage). As for Fire Golem not doing enough Fire Damage, Lower Resist curse helps a great deal here and helps Skeleton Mages in their Elemental Damage.

Lower Resist Curse needs to scale better than what it is now. It reaches -62% at level 20 but the cap is -70. Anyone know what level that is achieved? I’ll tell you: LEVEL 60. Who in their right freaking mind would code a skill to take 40 levels to get 8 resistance points? Conviction tops out at level 25 on the Resistance side(level 31 for %Defense) so ffs how about the same for Lower Resistance? I mean I don’t need LR to break every Poison Immunity in the game(Conviction certainly doesn’t for Fire/Cold/Lightning) so the Lilith issue is no surprise to me but I shouldn’t need to invest an insane amount of points to get its maximum benefit.

Poison Cone is basically Bone Spear but as Poison? Hmm I can’t argue against that, provided the skill pierces. Poison Mastery though… that I disagree with. Yes Poison Explosion is a terrible skill but what you have to replace it is not a good idea whatsoever. It’d effectively make Poison Nova deal double the damage on anything it breaks with Lower Resist(wouldn’t need to cast LR on non-immunes) and Nova’s current damage is pretty good with solid gear and synergies maxed. Yes the gear is not easy to get(Death Web in particular) but that’s the challenge of picking an elemental/poison build. Yet unlike the Sorceress, you have the means of amplifying your Poison Damage with Lower Resist curse and breaking Immunities(Sorceress only has that via Cold Mastery and has nothing to break an immunity natively).

As for LR affecting Magic Resistance… Magic Immunity is one of the rarest immunities in the game. So rare that even PI is more common and although monsters do have Magic Resistance, anything you do to “buff” Bone Necromancers with respect to Magic Resistance inherently buffs Paladins(and they are already S+… want to make them S+++++++++?)

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Glad to see you agree with my suggestion. This suggestion is included.

If not permanent then the 3 min duration has to be extended by more point investments. 3 minute duration feels bad atm.

Wonderful

About Blood Golem, the life leech could simply be a weaker version of life tap, so life tap can also be used in situations where it is really needed. Right now Blood Golem has to offer something decent to shift the meta. I think a weaker version of BO for max life increase across the party can be better than Oak Sage since Oak Sage is super squishy. Druids can now summon a zoo, we should at least steal something similar to oak sage.

This is where I disagree with you. I have done (also the other content creators have done) MULTIPLE tests with max skeletal mages, max mastery, max fire golem and max lower resist. Lower Resist DOES NOT HELP AT ALL. Your fire golem and skeletal mages still do NEAR TO NOTHING damage with everything maxed, including lower resist. I don’t know why you said lower resist helps them do great damage tbh. This statement is simply false.

Great input

It will be a cone which will deal AoE damage.

We are talking about making Poison Nova Necromancer meta level. Poison Nova Necro does low damage in P8 while charged strike amazons and hammerdins delete p8 bosses and mobs in miliseconds. If you want to make Necro meta level, you need the damage. Poison Necromancer needs to do MASSIVE damage before getting gg gear and getting the gg gear on top should carry it to S+ Ladder meta. Poison Mastery is needed for that insane damage. That’s the only way poison nova can really pump up the damage.

Paladins are already S++++++++++++. This change would at least allow Necromancers to enter the meta.

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Naay, not a hard point, +10s duration per soft level is good enough.

Hah, that’s exactly what I proposed in mine suggestion xD

On the one hand that’s true, however Bone Prison and Bone Wall investment not only buffs offensive bone spells, but also significantly strengthens Bone Armor. As a Wind Druid I don’t afraid any elemental damage, even from Diablo or Ball, but painfully feel every encounter with physical archers, even normal ones, left alone champions/minibosses; Bone Armor is a blessing in such situation. Besides, Bone Wall and Prison give excellent tactical options, and used wisely they are an immense help for Bonemancer. The simple rework for them should be they emerge instantly, and more complex one you can check in my suggestion. So removing these synergies might not give the expected result, as you’d have to reinvest these points in Bone Armor branch anyway.
Anyway, I’m fine with 100 point investment in bone tree if Teeth can shotgun, Bone Spirit will move twice as fast and lock on targets behind corners, Bone Prison can be cast on ground not on unit, Bone Wall/Prison emerges instantly. Well, comparing to Cyclone Armor, Bone Armor might get 50% increase bufff I suppose.

@Skulm
I’ve added Raise Skeletal Archer in my suggestion, please check if I haven’t messed up anything.

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Hard points into Revive to increase its duration make way more sense than having it as a 1-point wonder with +Skills massively increasing its duration. Revives are much stronger than any Summons a Necromancer can get, hence why Revive has been capped at 3 minutes for as long as I can remember(balance reasons).

Therefore, increasing its duration should require the Necromancer invest points into it. +Skills not only increase the amount of Revived Monsters you can control but also their Damage and Life via Skeleton Mastery. In other words, they get that much stronger so it only seems fair that if you want to control them longer that you have to plop finite resources or Skill points to get it.

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And what’s wrong with being one point wonder? Not to mention revives alone, not supported by auras, curses, Corpse Explosion, teleport etc. are not that great - see summoner druid. At least they inherit base monster abilities and AI(speaking of AI, skeleton warriors have imo better AI than vast majority of revives), but still, just alone, on their own, are just okayish only. Therefore, imo soft level is good enough.

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Quoting this for below

Okay, both arguments have solid foundation. Let us now analyze the two outcomes:

1-Dark Helmet suggests Revive Duration should only be extended through hard skill point investment, hence providing extra benefits to summon specialized necromancers. Dark Helmet also adds that soft point increase should only count towards extra damage and life of revives.

2-MasterBLB on the other hand, suggests soft point increase should also benefit revive duration along the damage, life etc.

Revive by itself is a 1 point wonder. I can definitely confirm this because I am currently playing my own hybrid bonemancer/summoner build for farming P8 Diablo Ladder.

Investing more points into revive should be attractive and it should reward dedicated summon necromancers. With the current system, I can invest 1 hard point into revive and summon nearly 15-16 revives just because of the +skills gear (without any summon skillers btw).

MasterBLB’s suggestion would 100% improve the overall power of the Necromancer and make it compete vs the meta classes for sure. Soft points improving revive duration alongside the damage and life would definitely be preferable.

Dark Helmet’s suggestion on the other hand rewards dedicated summoner necromancers much more. With Dark Helmet’s suggestion, you can invest more points into revive. Would that help though? 20 seconds per hard skill point might be too low, however it is a very promising suggestion. Perhaps we can make it 30 seconds per hard skill point investment and prevent any rounding up issues. A dedicated summon necromancer can invest more points into revive and not only improve the size of the army, but also it can focus on reviving quality monsters and retain them for a longer period of time.

Both suggestions are great, obviously MasterBLB’s suggestion improves the necromancer’s power much more. Dark Helmet’s suggestion is more technical and it can definitely make skill choices more interesting.

I am personally happy with both outcomes.

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I’ve an excellent idea for reasoning hard point investment in Revive:

  • With enough hard points in Revive you can resurrect normally unressurectable monsters like Oblivion Knights/Minions of Destruction, with more hard points invested champions and minions of a boss, and with even more bosses, with even more(lv20 I suppose) Super Unique bosses like Shenk, Pindleskin etc.
  • Each hard point in Revive should give bonus to skills of the revived monster. So let’s say Vampirelords normally cast lv10 Meteor, with 10 hard points investment in Revive their Meteor becomes lv20.
  • Each hard point in Revive should increase by X% stats like deadly strike, crushing blow, open wounds etc. of revived monsters.

Now THAT IS A SOLID REASON to put points directly into Revive! Meanwhile I still stand after I was writhing before, soft levels should also increase duration of revives. This way there might arise a new summoner type build focusing only on revives, while classic summoner still be viable, and will benefit from increased duration of resurrected minions.

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I can see this working, except for being able to revive super uniques. While the idea itself is definitely entertaining, we should focus on making revive a meta level choice. Therefore, I mostly agree with your idea.

The revive quality of life should also be provided, and that is the corpse production as I highlighted in my suggestion post. Necromancers should be able to save a type of corpse and carry it over to new games in order to quickly start reviving. More hard points invested into Revive allows this new “Corpse Generator” ability to provide more corpses while Revive itself would allow for the extension of revive duration and grant more power to those monsters.

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Don’t you think nightmare is already too easy with necro? i don’t usually build with a full max of anything like “poison necro” or “bone” or “summon” i mix things up, and I think nightmare is a bit too easy. But well again I say that but the HC boards have plenty of dead necros at these levels I think so it’s probably not too easy, i just worry about that. I was using the newly improved blood golem last time and it gave so much instant heal and also barely died itself with a few points. However I definitely agree that something like poison dagger seems kinda useless and that’s a shame. Or is it… it is +20% AR per level and just applying poison neutralizes the natural HP regeneration of monsters. So if you’re using some good dagger… i haven’t really tried using it much yet. Mmmh it does have +20% synergies and then even without maxing all of that…

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Nightmare is easy for most good builds.

I recently published a video about poison abilities encountering a bug therefore not reaching their max potential.