I wish they would remove pet collision, i think one of the main reason PET AI sux big time is due to pet trying to avoid colliding with each other.
Any ways great post. Love the improvement ideas
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Forum staff when they see this thread:
Thank you for the feedback.
They should simply add Skeleton Archers. They shouldnāt remove Mages.
As for mages themselves, they should change them all to a shoot a magic bolt, basically a singular Tooth as seen from the Teeth spell. The Fire Golem should also be changed to a Magic Golem, and the two should synergize with each other for a Magic based minion build.
Physical builds could use Warriors, the new Archers and a golem of their choice (probably blood, clay or iron).
Magic based summoners can use fire/magic golem and mages for damage and skeleton warriors for tanks.
I think they should also condense golem mastery and skeleton mastery into one skill, summon mastery, and take all of the inter-golem synergies and put them into the summon mastery. If for some reason you want golem mastery to remain, then the golems themselves need to be way more powerful, and they should not synergize with each other (and all those synergy buffs should be pushed into golem mastery).
Now, the real controversy - Nerf the crap out of corpse explosion. Make it do a smaller percent of enemy health as a baseline with flat scaling damage. Make it better than it is now if you invest points into it, and add synergies to it through amplify damage for the physical damage and lower resist for the fire bit.
For summoners, they could stop being forced to take corpse explosion if the upgraded minions did enough damage to be efficient on their own, or players could still roll half summoner/half CE if they like the playstyle.
Frankly, Corpse Explosion is super OP on P1, and very lackluster on P8 because it doesnāt scale off of the monster health on higher player settings. It is also so powerful that the rest of the necro, especially the summon necro, is gimped out because they are expected to use CE as a crutch until they reach the most extreme levels of gear. It is a cool skill, and it should be a good complement to other builds if players like it. However, it is currently a center piece of the necro but as designed is too powerful to scale with higher player settings, meaning the necro is not very strong on high player settings. In a way, every necro is a Corpse Explosion necro that just needs to figure out how to get its first kill with the rest of its points.
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Nice input. I agree with most of your suggestions.
First the parts I somewhat kindly disagree with:
-Just remove skeletal mage, adding archer on top is a good idea but that would overcomplicate the build. Replacing skeletal mage with skeletal archer is better in my opinion, since archers will deal base physical damage, but they can deal added elemental damage on top.
-In its current stage, Fire Golem is not doing noticeable damage. I would REALLY love to see a Fire Golem Necro that can benefit from Fire Sunder charm, Flickering Flame and Phoenix that combines everything with Infinity and Lower Resist. Buffing Fire Golem may open up a whole new build tbh. Magic golem idea is cool but it would move away from the original game too much imho.
Now the parts I agree with:
-Very interesting idea about condensing golem mastery and skeleton mastery. I would say keep them apart still, but move all golem synergies into the golem mastery, with the new added increased flat and % golem damage increase from golem mastery. Nice one!
-Corpse Explosion does not scale and it takes P1 monster HP so in P8 games it starts to lose its power. I think the main problem for a Necromancer is getting the first corpse, as you mentioned. Different specs achieve this in different ways, but as I stated in my original post, removing some of the Bone synergies opens up a whole new dimension. Bone Prison and Bone Wall no longer synergize with Bone Spear and Bone Spirit, but now the remainder of the Bone Spear synergies provide more damage, so you retain your damage but have free points. This would allow Bone Necro to properly invest in summons or curses.
-Fixing the poison nova damage canceling would GREATLY buff poison nova necro, since it can now benefit from army damage and poison nova damage at the same time.
-Skeletal Archers or buffed Fire Golem would GREATLY benefit the Summon Necro.
Great input overall, I personally prefer to stay true to the original game, so applying much needed fixes with some minor rework could work wonders for the Necromancer.
Hate to be the one to re awaken a semi old post, but would like to add some input. I love the necromancer and agree he could use some buffs, probably more specifically to the summon tree in comparison to others.
IMO i like the idea of summon resist not needing any pre reqs and is similar to how salvation, or any of the resist auras, works in the paladin tree.
As for skeletal mages, i like the idea of them maybe becoming archers that do elemental damage. However, id certainly miss them being mages. Id personally prefer them to stay as mages, but their damage just needs to be increased signifcantly and perhaps include either faster cast rate or piercing to their bolts in skeleton mastery (or their skill itself). Perhaps include both of these for them.
However, i think the easiest thing to do would keep them as is, but just improve their damage. Like crank that knob up man lol. I dont think thatās too much to ask for.
Id definitely advocate to separate revives from needing golem pre reqs.
Then i also like the idea of revives gaining additional duration per point invested, perhaps even soft points as well. IMO the idea of 10 seconds per hard/soft point isnt half too bad. For someone just getting them as a āone point wonderā might have them around level 15 with gg gear. So thats basically an additional 150 secondsā¦ Then of course if one invests points into them then theyāre potentially adding another additional 200+ seconds.
I also like the idea of golem mastery providing the necromancer to be able to summom multiple (different) golems. So perhaps, and I believe this was already suggested, every 10 hard points gets you another golem. At level 20 you can have 3 golems out. Itād also be nice to see all the golem synergies to become a part of golem mastery as suggested by others.
As others have mentioned, all golems need a fairly signicant increase in the flat/base damage they do via. their skill.
I like how the golems kind of have their own identity and IMO should maintain that. However, i do have some suggestions to further improve them allwhile maintaining their identities;
Iād personally like to see the clay golem maintain his slow effect, but also receive 1% crushing blow per skill point. That way if its a āone point wonderā then can potentially have between 15% to 25% with gg gear. Then by one actually investing into the skill will just have almost double that. IMO this can help any necro build with killing bosses at higher difficulties.
As for the blood golem, he should maintain his current tooltip mechanic wherein the life he steals is also applied to the necro, just ensure all of the necro summons are also included. THEN one addition to the blood golem should be open wounds per skill point, similar to the crushing blow proposed for clay golem. So 1% open wounds per skill point. So if the blood golem is a āone point wonderā well then one could still get like 15% to 25% open wounds from blood golem. Then of course investing points in the skill just improves that. This will give an opportunity for the necro to prevent high life replenish from bosses via. things like ubers.
IMO the iron golem is fine as is considering you can make him out of runewords that provide auras, etc. All he needs is increased damage via. initial paragraph stating all golems need a (signifcant) increase to their damage done.
Then IMO for fire golem he should explode on death, similar to how the sorceress meteor functions. So if the necromancer either recasts fire golem, or the fire golem just dies, then heād explode dealing x amount of fire damage and leave behind a patch of burning flame for 4 seconds that deals x amount of fire damage per second. To help prevent a necromancer from spamming this the fire golem would keep a high mana cost. Then of course the fire golem maintains his holy fire aura
For the poison and bone spells i feel like there is a lot of good ideas here. IMO poison dagger should instead be able to apply to any weapon of choice, as another has mentioned. This would help create a kind of melee necro/necro that actually uses a weapon or bow/crossbow if wanted. My only addition to this is perhaps have this new poison strike instead act as an enchantment, similar to the sorceress enchant? So basically the necro can provide a poison enchantment to his allies AND summons. This would help create a little bit of a synergy for a poison/summon hybrid.
I agree that poison explosion needs a re workā¦ there is some good ideas in here for it. Ive also seen some other good ideas as well. Overall, it needs a rework, because no one is going to use poison explosion over corpse explode for sure lol. I personally like how it creates the poison cloud, but i just dont like that it is a corpse ability, albeit it makes sense. Perhaps just remove it being a corpse ability and allow its poison damage to operate separately from other poisons, similar to how rabies works? Overall, i do like the poisonous cloud effects it does. Perhaps make the poisonius cloud apply a debuff of sorts, ie. additional -enemy poison resists?
IMO poison nova is fine as is, but the whole bug issue where the poison damage gets canceled by your minions or any physical damage needs to be fixed. If this bug gets fixed then i think poison nova would be fine, especially if some of these other poison buffs are applied, via. poison enchant/strike, and a re work to poison explosion.
Overall, for a kind of buff to poison damage perhaps each kind of poison operates separately? So you have poison damage from weapons/attacks (this includes the idea of poison dagger becoming an enchant/strike), poison damage from druid poison creeper, poison from rabies, poison from the new poison explosion if it continues to do any kind of poison damage, poison damage from poison nova, poison from venom, etc. IMO all of these could act separately.
I like the idea of separating the bone wall/cage from bone spear/spirit/teeth as a synergy and just let those synergize with bone armorā¦ BUT by removing the bone wall/cage synergies DO NOT reduce bone spear/spirit/teeth damage. The damage should remain as is, but just reduce the synergies needed to get there.
This would provide options for a bone necro to hybridize for more damage OR if he wanted to have more survivability then he can still invest into the bone wall/cage/armor. IMO separating these synergies just provides potential for more options/decisions/choices. But yes, please dont improve bone spell damageā¦ IMO just reduce synergies to then give him options for more damage from other sources, ie. getting raise skeleton and skeleton mastery maxed, or perhaps he goes the golem mastery route with multiple golems, assuming that became a thing, etc.
Lastly the curses, yes please remove lower resists insane diminishing returns lol as it is atm its not worth putting more than 1 point into when you have gg/high +skill equipment.
Then as others have mentioned perhaps include some kind of āwarpā or something for the necromancers minions. I like the idea to add this to attract. So the attract curse still works as it does, but add some kind of delayed āwarpā to necro summons. The more points invested into attract would just reduce the delay to a point that its non existent.
I just wanted to mention to add curse synergies to other necro skills. For example amplified damage could synergize with raise skeleton, increasing their damage by 5% per level, for example. Perhaps lower resist synergizes with skeletal magi to improve damage. Perhaps allow decrepify synergize with clay golem to improve his damage and perhaps make his slow effect last longer? Maybe allow iron maiden to synergize with iron golem, improving the attacker takes damage done. If they make the fire golem explode then perhaps corpse explode synergizes with it.
Idk IMO necro could have more synergies to help promote improving his damage as well, probably more so for summoning skills.
Do i expect any of this to happen? No, unfortunately not, but it is fun theorizing, to include i guess hoping they do another ābalanceā patch like 2.4, wherein perhaps some of these things are included.
Anyway, nice ideas in here everyone and was nice to read through them!
I like the warp suggestion for relocating your army, but I think fixing it with a skill and ai would be better.
Also I wonder if they removed the revive skill altogether. Would you guys miss out.
My suggestion would be something like this
Replace revive with Lich strike
Lich strike
A powerful attack that commands your skeletons to focus the target.
Damage %
Attack rating %
Focus duration 3 seconds
I imagine the focus would make your skeleton to switch targets to a focused target. However pathing issue due to monsters and other skeleton being in the way they might just be attacking a target near your focus.
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Fixing AI would be the dream but looking at D2R I can already see it is in maintenance mode. Therefore I honestly think both suggestions (including mine) fall under the pipe dream category at this point.
I cannot give up revives. First of all they really help Necro to do ubers (Urdars with Crushing Blow are unrivaled for it). Second, Lich strike could very well be the solution to minion ai issue, so removing Revive is not necessary.
In all honesty, making Revives permanent and carry over through games would make Summon Necro super fun to play for ladder games.
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For poison necromancers I agree poison in the game need to be reworked. I like the poison cone suggestion too however I think it should replace poison explosion instead of poison dagger. With lower resist I think they could add a passive to the ability similar to the paladins resist fire, lightning, cold. The passive could be 1% pierce to poison.
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Poison Dagger sucks too thou. its just a meme at most most ppl make melee mancers they are garbage in hell.
Pet Ai needs to be adjust always getting stuck on inbetween doors
While I would support a melee necro build, we simply do not have enough talents to be able to create a build without relying on niche items. Personally speaking thatās not how I like my class. The fundamental power of a build should come from talents + build structure and it should reach its maximum potential through end game gearing.
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I agree poison dagger sucks. I think poison dagger should stay because the application of the skill is more unique than poison explosion.
They should also buff poison dagger too considering the fact it is single target, melee range and is blockable.
What would you think about this change for Iron Golem?
New Iron Golem: The Necromancerās 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 Paladinās Thorns aura is so much better than Iron Maiden and Iron Golemās return hit property, 2- Bosses deal 4x damage to minions therefore Thorns is vital for any 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.
I will update the summon necro part of the main post and add this, just wanted to see what other are thinking about my idea.
So first off I like it, yes what summoner wouldnāt? do I think itās balancedā¦no.
This removes the benefit/need for Bramble on high end builds and it removes the choice of merc of either the thorns merc or might merc or rouge with Edge. It gives us the best of both worlds by allowing the might merc and thorns aura from the golem rather than the merc.
It also makes one golem far superior than the others. Now thatās currently a problem but we are making the problem worse. I would like a real balance between the golems where they each have a use and we could summon up the one that makes sense to use āat the timeā.
Clay slows, Blood heals, fire agroās and iron can give an aura if the item had it. By making it an consume the items and use that aura it creates a greater cost. i.e. if you use a bramble to get thorns you lose that bramble when it dies. I would like so see these golems be all better at what they do so they are worth using.
What we need is a ācheaperā bramble just like the did with Cure. So effectively a new runeword helm or lower end armor that gives lvl 5-10 thorns. Iām kinda liking making it a weapon so for lower end we have to chose between insight and āthornsā. At higher end you get the armor versions making you chose between bramble and fortitude.
Then again they donāt seem to be concerned with balance these days so they might as well just make CE scale again.
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I laughed out loud with that statement. Well said. Your view about balancing is solid and I see what you mean. I personally think all golems should be buffed, because the S tier bracket just keeps rising. Mosaic Sin exists in this game, what can I say more?
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Fire : Needs to be a Dragon Paladin with insanely ticking Holy Fire Aura which actually does damage. Some better synergy with Fire sunder charm and perhaps Fire golem obtaining synergy from enemy negative fire resistance gear as well? We can see a decent fire golem necro finally.
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Clay: Best budget friendly tankyboy. Let his slow be splash damage, or just donāt buff him, heās great.
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Blood: Party replenish life, some sort of BO-like ability maybe. See my main post
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IG: Item + Thorns.
My point is basically stating that all golems need buffs and all of them should be powerful so player agency comes into play.
I see your viewpoint as well, and while it is more conventional/traditional, I agree with your last sentence, hence my suggestion
a summon necro, is basically a merc build with corpse explosion. pets are just there for protection.
all other skills in the game have gotten synergies, with a lot more damage.
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Isnāt every Necromancer just a CE Necro with different methods to get the first corpse?
For Golems, I think they should just unlock multiples completely like they did with the Druidās critters. Itād be neat to have a full-on Golemancer with 4 Golems going at itā¦ to get the first corpse for CE I guess, lol.
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I imagine the druid bear skill to be similar to the golems.
The blood golem would be most similar being focus on single target
while the fire golem would be focused on aoe damage.
I just see a tanky golem being less usefulā¦
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I agree, with a note that the golems should also be reworked a bit. Fire Golem needs to deal way more damage and perhaps it should receive proper enemy negative fire resistance from gear as well. Imagine flickering flame becoming viable for Necromancer not only because of CE, but also for Fire Golem as well.
Good idea. I would not completely dismiss a tanky golem though, since it can very much help/be the default pick for budget builds. It is especially useful in normal with iron maiden against bosses, or on hell with thorns+amp on bosses.
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Now I donāt have a lot of insight for poison or bone builds. but iāve played a summoner since i was a teenager. I love some of the ideas posted in this thread. Iāll offer my remarksā¦
I seriously doubt that the d2r devs are going to create, or vastly modify any skills(referring to attract being worked into warp), Iād love to be wrong, but i donāt see it happening.
I agree that the source of teleport needs to come from something other than enigma. there are several options.
- Adding +1 to teleport to the necro armor runeword. Easy fix, and only necros get the full benefit from the armor(+2 skill). still can upgrade to enigma later.
- Increase max sockets on necro sheilds to 3, create a new runeword that has teleport on it, keeping it cheap is imperative though. Nothing higher than a pul, and some of the lesser used mid level runes, ko, lem etc.
I do like the ideas presented about magesā¦
- Archers could be fun, but mastery should give them a chance of deadly strike.
- Mages could in fact be given secondary abilities. i absolutely love the idea of electric mages getting static. fire could do fireball instead, to boost aoe(i think meteor is a bit extreme). Ice could do frost nova or glacial spike. Poisonā¦ i have a hard time with this one, maybe just a high damage strike? of course, the mages still need high damage overall.
I would also love to see skeleton warriors with a chance of CB. would have to be a very low chance. maybe .1% per point of mastery? at level 40 would be 4%, which may even be too high.
Revivesā¦ I agree they should probably be permanent, but their numbers would have to be gated. nobody likes managing 25+ revives, not to mention the AI freaks out and the block each other. maybe 6 -10 max revives(scale similar but less than raise skele)
Ahh the golems. Which golem you use should be a tactical choice IMO, if we cant have them all at once, then they need to support you and your minions, each offering a distinct advantage.
Clay - is perfect as is, except maybe AOE slowā¦
Blood - Perhaps he should enhance your health/mana, and offer some regeneration bonuses. also, he shouldnāt kill you if he gets hit. CE and other abilities are hard on the ole blue orb.
Iron - He absolutely should provide thorns to you, and your minions(maybe even party?). instead of creating him from an item, just give him an item to take its property, similar to merc, i get tired of destroying insights because the AI gets stuck.
Fire - My thoughts, is that he should enhance the damage of your minions, either through enchant, or provide his own might aura. this would give you more choices for your mercenary, me and Haseen have been bros a long time, but sometimes i would like to see other options usable.
For poison dagger i can offer this suggestionā¦ its duration is entirely too long, it needs to be compressed, and similar to smiteā¦it should never miss.
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