Bones of Rathma - Feedback & Suggestions

PTR Feedback
1

Given the top builds, and after played a couple of hours, I propose the following changes :

  • Bones of Rathma 2-Piece Set: Your minions reduce the cooldown of Army of the Dead, Simulacrum and Land of the Dead by 1 second each time they deal damage. Your skeletal warriors, spawn faster, and your revived minions no longer expire, nor cost essence, nor can be respawned until you die or unequip this set bonus.
  • Bones of Rathma 4-Piece Set: Your minions no longer take damage and spawn all together. You gain 1% damage reduction for 15 seconds each time one of your minions deal damage. Maximum of 75 stacks. Rathma’s Shield duration is increased by 200%.
  • Bones of Rathma 6-Piece Set: Each active minion increases the damage of Army of the Dead and Bone Spirit by 1000% 850% and your Thorns by 500%.
  • Defiler Cuisses: Bone Spirit’s damage is increased by 400% to 500% for every second it is active number of charges are increased by 200%. It is casted and moves 1000% faster, and will also freeze detonates and immobilizes enemies on impact in a 25 yards radius.
  • New item Bonds of C’Lena: Army of the Dead and Bone Spirit deal 300% to 400% increased damage. Bone Spirit deals an additional 2% 5% increased damage for 5 seconds each time Army of the Dead your minions hits an enemy, up to 1000%. Enforcer and Frenzy damage are turned to Poison.
  • Fate’s Vow: Army of the Dead deals an additional 200 - 250% damage and gains the effect of the Death Valley and Unconventional Warfare runes.
  • Sanguinary Vambraces: Chance for you and your minions on being hit to deal 1000% of your Thorns damage to nearby enemies. Each active minion increases the damage of you Thorns by 100%.

Explainer

Army of the Dead & Bone Spirit

  • 2p : Simulacrum and Land of the Dead CDR as options for damage
  • 2p : Simulacrum and Land of the Dead CDR as options to trigger Rathma’s Shield
  • 2p : Skeletal Mages no longer expire
  • 2p : Skeletal Mages no longer cost essence
  • 2p : All minions are permanent like Skeletons (Thus can be autocasted for Nayr’s Black Death)
  • 4p : Skeletons are spawned by pack of 7 (=limit)
  • 4p : Skeletal Mages are spawned by pack of 10 (=limit)
  • 4p : No damage reduction. Rathma players must trigger Rathma’s Shield every 12s to stay alive
  • 6p : Reduce damage per minion because 10 Permanent Mages, CDR & Poison Skeletons
  • C’Lena: Poison Skeletons are now usable (Rathma, LoD Poison Scythe)
  • C’Lena: Remove Army of the Dead bonus because 10 Permanent Mages, CDR & Poison Skeletons

Army of the Dead

  • Fate’s Vow : Death Valley allow to knock all affected ennemies into Blighted Grasp & Dead Storm

Bone Spirit

  • 2p : Land of the Dead CDR for Bone Spirit charges
  • Defiler : Bone Spirit can be used more frequently (including during interval it is supercharged)
  • C’Lena: Bone Spirit supercharges faster, just with minions
  • C’Lena: Bone Spirit’s supercharge has a top limit

Thorns

  • 6p : Competitive against LoD Thorns
  • Sanguinary Vambraces : Works on both Rathma and LoD Thorns

If possible, animations of Skeletal Mage & Revive are removed, so they won’t stop us moving if these skills are autocasted.

This way we can go 100% Poison, have the choice to play either Army of the Dead, Bone Spirit or Thorns (without skills entanglements), and relax carpal funnels. :grinning:

–

See also :
Amulet revamp : Golden Georget of Leoric : 5 Skeletons for 10s on crit or zone damage

2

You would literally do nothing but spam army of dead and nothing else.

Bone spirit, while listed, plays no rule in the current meta of this build, which is BTW topping the leaderboards with 150’s for days.

3

Army of the Dead is already spammed.

I believe Bone Spirit is underused because

  • it is slow to cast
  • it is slow to touch its target
  • its Area of Effect is limited to 1 rune (no choice) : Unfinished Business
  • has a small Area of Effect : 10 yards
  • Needs to touch an ennemy to trigger its Area of Effect

Not exactly player friendly I would say.

That’s why I made some proposals to change the its behavior

4

Plus there is no spot for it on the current META bar, and it’s damage is extremely situational.

5

I agree that, currently, Bone Spirit damage and gameplay are not on par with Army of the Dead.

Using Bone Spirit is simply a question of either excluding Army of the Dead, or keep it for bosses. Depends on intrinsic characteristics of the skill : damage, speed, etc.

It surely needs improvements.

6

I had created a topic with proposing changes to the set as well. While some of the changes you propose seem interesting I don’t see them going that far in changes. My proposed changes are as follows:

Bones of Rathma 2-Piece Set:** Your minions reduce the cooldown of Army of the Dead by 1 second each time they deal damage. Your skeletal warriors spawn faster, and your revived minions no longer expire.

Bones of Rathma 4-Piece Set:** Your minions no longer take damage. You gain 1% damage reduction for 15 seconds each time one of your minions deal damage. Maximum of 75 stacks.

Bones of Rathma 6-Piece Set:** Bone Spirit increases the damage of Each Active Minion and Army of the Dead by X% for X seconds

I also proposed that Defiler Cuisses would instead increase the damage of Army of the Dead when casting Bone Spirit.

Lastly I proposed to increase the damage that Fate’s Vow gives you and also gives you the Death Valley Rune as well as the Unconventional Warfare Rune.

Generally I more or less left the set as is but changed what fueled the sets damage. Since Bone Spirit is an underwhelming ability and doesn’t feel as if it has a place in the set by making this change it would have a place and a use also it would be similar to that of Zunimassa’s set where using mana spenders increased damage for WD pets.

One change you proposed that I do really like is to Bonds of C’Lena. I feel that the damage increase shouldn’t come from AOTD but from your minions. That is a good change for sure.

1 Like
7

People are complaining -at reason- that Bone Spirit is useless.
But they don’t want Bone Spirit to boost Army of the Dead, because Army of the Dead is already top notch on leaderboards.

They don’t want Bone Spirit to be a booster, they want Bone Spirit to be boosted.

They want to make direct damage with Bone Bone Spirit.

One solution is to boost somehow Bone Spirit and de-entangled it from Army of the Dead, so people can choose their playstyle.

8

Its sad honestly because I feel that Bone Spirit doesn’t belong in this set. It really should have been added into Inarius or Masquerade. In fact when Masquerade was first announced people were disappointed that it wasn’t a revive set or that it included Bone Spirit as it was two skills never used.

I feel that Bone Spirit was just thrown into this set honestly and its going to be here to stay. So yes getting something out of bone spirit would be nice. I would love a bone spirit build on its own I just feel that if that is the case it doesn’t belong in the Rathma set. The Rathma set should be pet based and frankly should capitalize on AOTD since it was also an underused skill that now finally has a place.

Another thing they could do however is similar to that of Masquerade’s 6 pc bonus. They could have it so that Each minion empowers AOTD by 1000% as normal but for Bone Spirit double or triple the bonus. Then change how Bond of C’Lena works with your proposal as that makes 100% more sense for that item.

9

Yes, so true !

I feel the same. Bone Spirit should have its own set.

Just like Bone Spear did not belong to Pestilence.
Now look at Bone Spear, it has its own Masquerade Set.

10

How I wanted the necro sets to be would be as follows:

Masquerade - Bone Spear build
Inarius - Bone Spirit / Bone Armor Build
Rathma - Pet, Revive and AOTD Build (utilizing curses possibly as a damage boost)
Pestilence - Corpse explosion Build
Trang’ouls - Nova build.

Sadly this is not the case haha… it’ll be interesting to see what they do to change Rathma with Bone Spirit. As of right now sadly its underwhelming still and also not being used.

11

It can work as of today, but Inarius having a limited range, it reduces the potential of Bone Spirit, which is more like a missile.

It can work as of today, but we can do so much better:

1 Like
12

Not true , most people want minions to do damage . We have enough caster set as is… It is the pet set…

13

But not by using Bone Spirit

14

I agree, i would rather use a scala of curses to buffs the pets direct (set bonus) and indirectly(curse specific)

15

One glaring problem with your idea is it involves your character death to reset minions. That just doesn’t work for HC.

16

Update :
If you unequip Set bonus, it will let minions expire.

17

Pretty sure if you un-equip something in a GR, you can NOT re-equip it until the GR is done. I know that is how it works with potions since your potion occasionally can be dropped if you misclick near it and once you pick it up, it sits in your stash until you kill the RG.

18

I didn’t even know you can unequip inside a GR.
I thought in D3 your skills/equipment must be stable during a GR.
That said I don’t see any imperious reason to unequip inside a GR ?

19

There is a bug regarding potions that it can drop from your inventory sometimes, even in a GR. That is why I pointed it out when you said to un-equip a set piece to reset your minions if needed. I’m not sure if you can remove a set piece during a GR and I am almost certain that you could not re-equip it during the GR.

1 Like
20

There is currently a bug with this set where when you change floors the mages disappear even if you just summoned them. This would make that much worse.

Personally I think the set is fine as it is. It just needs a little tweaking damage wise (it’s a tad OP). Once you run it with the right set of skills, it’s pretty fun and pretty smooth, and still isn’t a one button wonder build, because you need to keep the mages up and swing your scythe to generate essence to do so.