Suggestions for skill changes - part 1 (amazon+necromancer)

General Discussion
1

I think that devs should consider some skill changes. It doesnt have to be at release, but definitely later. There is so many not really used or useless skills.

If game is being remastered why not improve it in areas where original game is actualy pretty bad.

Lets speak about characters and skills to change. This first part is about necromancer and Amazon, feel free to comment and share you opinions.

AMAZON

  • Impale - not really used because its too slow. I would change it to some kind of elemental or magic attack.
  • Charged strike - this skill can be exploited by client side, i will not say how but its pretty major and it is not known in most of d2 community. It should be fixed.
  • Fend - doesnt work properly because of bug
  • Slow missiles - not very used skill, it could fo something different
  • Dodge & Avoid & Evade are kind of bugged with combination of other skills or attacks, so it need fixing
  • Magic arrow should do slightly more damage i think.
  • Immolation Arrow - its just my opinion but i think funtionaly exploding arrow is just better so i would change this skill somehow.

Generaly speaking i would like to see elemental arrows to have different mechanics so its not just one version of 3 of them being used at higher levels.

NECROMANCER

  • Clay golem has way too low dmg output. Its laughably on hell.
  • Skeletal mage - i personaly think that Skeletal mages are way too weak and should have buffed damage, any necro summoner player disagree?
  • Blood golem - i would lower leech % but improve the damage, its too weak and its probably disadvatage to have blood golem currently.
  • Iron golem should be buffed a lot to be usable, it should do more damage and amplify the stats of items from which was golem created.
  • Dim vision should have different effect, its pretty much useless.
  • Weaken should scale the dmg reduction with level instead of being fixed at 33%
  • Iron Maiden would probably deserve little buff
  • Confuse is pretty much useless and should be replaced by something else. Or confused monsters should have buffed damage.
  • Attract is another useless curse, i would replace it by something else or targeted monster would have lowered all stats so skill is actualy viable.
  • Poison explosion should probably have buffed damage to be slightly better and usable, or it should partialy do different kind of damage together with Poison.

I think rest of the skills is fine. I was maybe thinking about replacing Attract with curse to lower defense of monsters and then give enhanced damage and attack rating to Poison dagger, so melee necro could be more viable and we have something else than just Poison nova necroes.

What do you think guys?

2

I’ll comment on the Necy stuff

Mages - I definitely would not mind a damage boost with them, but only a small one. I use them, and when used with lower resist they can do some nice damage output. So too much of a boost would make them OP.

Glay golem - His appeal is not his damage it’s his slowing effect. If you cast him on a boss and decertify it, the movement and attack speed slows to a crawl. Gumby is also cheap and easily re-castable so you can throw him as a distraction to any group coming at you. You can even cast him ahead to agro things if you aren’t sure if it’s safe.

Blood Golem - haven’t used him since they took his damage to caster off. But he is pretty much useless.

IG just needs to not get lost. You make him out of a good item and he just wanders off. A re-summon to bring him back home would be good. His appeal is the Thorns on him, but that benefit was totally lost when we could get a thorns merc. Perhaps if he gave a low end ‘thorns’ to all the group. Not as powerful as a Pally thorns but about like a spirit of barbs.

That said Golems in general are pretty weak. You can’t make a viable golem master even if you dumped all your pts into them.

Dim Vison is amazing, I would only change it to not kill as much of the duration in Hell. I can shut a whole side of the screen down of ranged attackers while my skellys deal with the other side of the screen.

Weaken is never used, I wouldn’t mind seeing it improved. It just doesn’t compare to decrep.

IM - Godly, but again it’s situational. It’s great for strong groups that stun you or heavy hitters like frenzytaurs or Duriel. I tend to use it more when I have weak skellys like late normal and before I get my summons skellys up to lvl 30+. Once the Skellys are sufficiently strong I move to Amp. IM benefits form skellys getting hit more so weak skellys are the best option for IM. It’s also rendered useless if you get a thorns merc.

Confuse is in the shadows of attract or Dim. The monsters don’t reliably attack each other. Perhaps if you could confuse and IM them/IM didn’t overwrite confuse.

Attract + IM is one of the most fun ways to keep a group occupied while they kill themselves. Don’t touch it.

PE is great for poison damage, but I wouldn’t mind seeing it carry a bit of physical damage. Perhaps only 25% physical.

3

What if Iron golem could be transfered back to item he was created from? Only his death would be loss of item forever :slight_smile:

Btw, thank for opinions.

4

no. imo the golems are fine

5

I think the moment you make him you should lose the item, but perhaps you can ‘re-summon’ him as long as he didn’t die. My main problem with him is he just wonders off and you lose item and him.

Considering the functionality of the Clay golem, that I can just summon him anywhere and I do. If I see something coming at the right side and my skellys are on the left, I throw the glay golem at the right side to delay things. Or a boss fight I throw Gumby on the boss.

It would be great if I could re-summon the IG if I cast a different golem. Or a ‘put away’ option where he just goes away but you don’t get the item back. I have made them out of some seriously good items and I don’t think it’s fair to ‘give it back’.

6

when did him wondering off and not returning become a thing? serious question, ive not played the last few patches (been 10 years since ive played a necro) and my IG’s did wonder off, but always came back in 1.10 and before.

7

it mostly happens in the ‘indoor’ area’s where he gets stuck behind a wall. Now that I remember my main fix was always my telly staff to bring him back. Ideally that shouldn’t be a problem but I’m not the only one complaining about it. Someone else made a whole bug request thread on it.

In the end Gumby was my favorite golem for my ability to cast him anywhere and cheap re-casting so after a lot of experimenting with IG I gave up on him.

8

Then why is only fire and clay golem being really used?

I honestly still think that clay golem should have more damage if you skill him up as he should work as base to kill something so you can build up army of skeletons. I would partialy nerf his slow part. Lower it by some % so he is not so op with higher damage.

I understand that he is more to be tank than damage dealer but i think his dmg output is way too weak.

9

I generally looked at Clay as the tank and Fire as the damage dealer. Not that either excels at the job.

10

Anyway thank you for feedback, if you want to share more opinions about other heroes feel free to share it here or in my other parts with different heroes, i dont mind when people tell me that ideas are bad if they explain why :slight_smile: i will be working on druid and assassin changes today.

11

I only have enough experience, I think, to speak on Necromancer from a summoner perspective:

Mages I think are fine overall. I don’t think a damage boost would be overpowered but I don’t think it is desperately needed.

Something needs to be done with Revive. It was a decent skill pre-1.10 if memory serves (or maybe it was even before then) but is just garbage now. Timer, Weaker than skellies, and worse patching issues… ehhh… They need more synergies or straight buff or something else I feel to really ever find a home.

Golems… Golems are in an odd position. Clay has his role as the slow and is fine there and Fire is weak but has a role. Blood and Iron just don’t really add anything. Blood’s syphon isn’t good enough and Iron has a lot of problems due to unsummoning and damage issues that all golems gave (though Clay not having is fine imho). I think, and have always thought, that Golems really need focused rebuild in a balance update to just get them up to a decent place to help the Necro"s Army.

Curses: I think outside of Confuse the curses are okay. Weaken gets overshadowed eventually but maybe that’s okay? I’d like to see Curse Mastery from PD mod added. It allows curse stacking after 10 Base Levels which was nice to stack, say, Amp and Iron Maiden. The other curse I’d like to see changed is for Lower Resist at say level 25 or something get scaled to the point where it breaks all immunities. That much investment (20 points) I feel should provide full breaking for Poison Necros.

Edit: Note: I’d like to see Curse Mastery but unlike the other suggestions I would never expect it. I just really liked that ability so would love to see it.

12

Btw do you think it would be ok if amplify damage would be scaling with level. The %? When first level would lower dmg res by -30% for example? And then additional 5% per level?

Golems should be maybe buffing each other more so you can have them as army build up to lvl 20 and use 4 of them.

Good point i will edit my suggestion later to reflect this.

13

Zax i see all that you have written about and I diss agree with all of it. I dont have the time nor the energy right now to talk about why, Iam not ready to write a novel. But almost all of the changes you are suggesting create more and more problems and balancing issues then the current state of the actual game in 1.14d.

I will give you 1 example and its the first point you make about Impale, that skill does upwards of over 20k physical damage when the amazon is using something like a ebotd war pike. the reason its slow is because it represents the amazon pulling back the spear and very forcefully puncturing it through an enemy that is why its called Impale. If you make this Faster first of all it will break the game that is enough damage to 1 shot most players and even while it is slow when used on a boss it deals massive amounts of damage its a finishing move. If you change the damage type well now it is easily absorbed and mitigated by resistance and other things in pvm and PvP.

Im not even going to get into the amazons passive ability that increases there chance to deal double damage. you really need to think about what your suggesting because none of it really makes any sense and only creates more balancing issues then what is currently part of the game.

Not every single skill has to be viable as a main attack to focus an entire build around witch seems to be what most of your ideas are for changes. some skills need only ever 1 point and they are used in conjunction with the skills that do work as main primary focus for a build to add utility and support and create Techniques during pvp and pvm situations. if you want to play a game that is Not Diablo 2 please do so.

14

Thats fine i was ready for that as many people dont want any kind of change. Are you strictly against changes or could you be ok with that if they will be well balanced and tested when it would raise number of fun and viable builds?

Well if you will have time, i appreciate any kind of feedback :slight_smile:

I would be curious which ones. Which kind of problem. Everything would be of course tested with top gear to find possible unbalanced parts. Its just suggestion for now with numbers being ± as how it could work well in places where i mentioned numbers.

So is it really used skill in pvm and pvp currently when it deals so much dmg as you say? Honest answer please.

Maybe it could work differently and 2/3 would deal cold damage, 1/3 would be physical and make it little bit faster but not too much. And damage nerfed little bit too. I would just like to see all skills viable and if they are almost never used now, whats the point of keeping them in game instead of rewoking them to something usefull which will give more option to players how to play characters?

And thats very bad skill design. Take for example battle command skill. It feels like when they were designing skill for barb, they didnt know what to give him so they gave him +1 skill point skill just to fill 30 skills per character. That skill is absolutly pointless for putting more than 1 point. Why you can level it to lvl 20 then when there is no point? I call it very bad skill design and thats why i tried to improve it so its actualy worth investing points in it.

I want to play Diablo 2. Do you think that players who wanted expansions and assasin+druid didnt want to play Diablo 2.I think its normal to improve flawed parts of the game in new patches for example.

I dont want to be mean but everyone who thing that game is perfect as it is and cant be i proven is honestly blind :slight_smile: i think its more about fear from changes.

15

As I remember when 10 in Lower resists would break immunities I’m fully behind having a point when Lower does break immunities again. I’m not sure 25 if needed because you would need to invest heavily in it. 10 was really easy to get with + to skills so maybe 15 or so would break immunities. A point where you have to actually invest in it, but you can’t get easily with + to skills/you need to have + to curses at the cost of + to summoning.

Amp is totally fine as it is. What you are considering would nerf it, which may make things ‘different’. As is the curse line is almost all 1 pt wonders for a necy. Sometimes you will invest more like when all you needed was 10 in lower resists to break immunities, but most curses function great with 1 pt + skill adders.

I feel many people playing a necy don’t know when to use different curses. I see them throwing amp at enemies as if it will actually damage them, or using amp with ‘weak’ skellys. If the Skelly can’t hit, does low damage or has low def and takes a lot of damage, you are probably better off with IM. One of my favorite; all your skellys are engaged to one side of you and monsters start coming on the other side. I see people start amping them even though no one is there to fight them. Dim Vision, attract, confuse etc. would serve so much more.

16

No. If you buff it all the game will be ultra easy. No, no, no, nooooo.

17

Depending on the level of the Necro there is a large period of time when Amp might be the only curse the Necromancer has. I do agree that Amp and Decrep are (or were in Decrep’s case) overly used.

As for Confuse I’m not sure it needs a buff as much as just the AI being more consistent with the confusion. Sometimes it feels like it does nothing, lol

18

My Vote : When you invest 20 skill point into something, those points aren’t redundant. The ability has some overall point or quirk, that makes them worth investing to the maximum. ( They don’t have to be the best, but they shouldn’t be miles away ether. )

19

I’ve seen that and at the core I disagree with the build order the necy is doing. I’ve seen players put pts in amp and nothing else until they are over 30 instead putting it all into skellys, which IMO is a big mistake. Your skellys will be weak no matter what, the better curse is IM. As I’m planning my summoner once D2R goes live I’ll start with a Prayer merc in normal and probably use IM more than Amp at first.

20

I dont get it, why will be game more easy when you make useless skills usefull? Its not making game more easy, its making more builds viable.