(2) set: Army of the Dead’s cooldown is reduced by 60 seconds and it lasts twice as long.
(4) set: Whenever your minions deal damage they generate 3 Essence and reduce your damage taken by 1% for 10 seconds, up to 50%.
(6) set: Every active Skeletal Mage or Revive minion increases the damage of your minions by 500%, up to 10,000%. Army of the Dead deals 15,000% increased damage and gains the effect of every rune.
In addition…
Mask of Scarlet Death: Revive raises a bonus minion that deals 125–150% more damage per corpse Revived.
Fate’s Vow: Army of the Dead has 100% increased area and deals 200-250% increased damage.
So you need the full 10 mages and 10 revive minions to reach full power? No thanks, the first version of Rathma required 10 mages to have max power and at high difficulties it could be problematic to kill anything while you were ramping up to max power.
Your idea for the 4 piece is interesting but I think it will take too long to ramp up to maximum power (similar to how the original Rathma set was). LoD Mage would still likely be better since your damage buff is always at max power and your DR is higher and always present. In my opinion, the only way to make Rathma viable over LoD would be to increase the Mage duration (I doubt they’d ever make Mages permanent). Now if your idea was to change the six piece to 2500% per Mage and a max of 10,000% (and dropping the Revive minion idea), I think it would be a good improvement over the current version (still not a fan of your 2 piece bonus or the current 2 piece bonus, Army of the Dead is wasted on Rathma set).
Season 21 - Idea - New Bones of Rathma - Skeletons + Revive
7 pieces set (7th piece being : belt, ring, amulet, bracer…)
2 pieces Bonus
Increase the damage of your skeletons and revived creatures by 2000%
Each skeleton or revived creature increase your armor by 2%
Devour revives a creature at corpse location
4 pieces Bonus
Army of the dead cooldown is reduced by 20%
Your minions have 50% chance to reduce the cooldown of Army of the Dead and Land of the Dead by 1 second each time they deal damage
Army of the dead increases your skeletons, revived creatures and Army of the dead damage by 3000% for 20 seconds
6 pieces Bonus
Increase damage of your skeletons and revived creatures by 4000%
You raise up to 15 skeletons and 15 revived creatures
Your skeletons and revived creatures attack 50% faster
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Objectives
Make Rathma set mechanics on par with other sets
Provide a set buffing Skeletons, Revive, Army of the dead
Provide a viable standalone 2 pieces bonus for Necromancer
Incremental damage over 2, 4, 6 pieces. You evolve with the set
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Can be used in conjunction with:
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Bloodsong Mail
While in the Land of the Dead, Command Skeletons deals 110% additional damage and gains the effect of the Enforcer, Frenzy, Dark Mending and Freezing Grasp runes. In addition, Revive deals 110% additional damage and gains the effect of all its runes.
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Mask of Scarlet Death
Revive and Devour now consumes all corpses to raise a minion that deals 135% more damage per corpse
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Fate’s vow
Army of the Dead deals an additional 4000% damage and gains the effect of all its runes
(2) set: Primary skills also cast Command Skeletons. Consuming a corpse also revives that corpse. You may raise an additional 5 Skeletons and revived minions last 100% longer.
(4) set: You gain 1% damage reduction for 30 seconds each time one of your minions deal damage. Max 50 stacks. Persists through death.
(6) set: Your minions deal X% increased damage.
Also: Skeletal Mage runes reworked so that they are all competitive.
I know they are unpopular, but the problem with these reworks is that they would render the set dungeon impossible. And at this point, there is 0% chance of them making a change that would require updating/reworking a set dungeon as a result.
The way to ‘fix’ rathma is to bump up the DR to 60-ish %, improve the speed that it ramps up or allow it to persist through death, and make support legendaries that allow Command Skeletons, Command Golem, Revive, and Army of the Dead to be useful.
This is a good point. Any change to the set needs to take into account the mechanics of the set dungeon:
Accumulate a total of 500 seconds cooldown reduction on Army of the Dead
Raise 100 Skeletal Mages
If they want the Rathma set to distinguish itself from the LoD Singularity build, they need to make Army of the Dead worth using more than:
Bone Spikes
Devour
Land of the Dead
Singularity
They could change the set mechanics so that (part of) your defense buff is tied to Army of the Dead casts, which would be an annoying move without buffing damage elsewhere or adding a legendary power that makes Army of the Dead more powerful.
2 piece - Each attack by a minion reduces to cooldown of Army of the Dead by 3 seconds
4 piece - Casting Army of the Dead gives you 75% damage reduction for 30 seconds
6 piece - Each Skeletal Mage increases your minion’s damage by 2500% up to 10,000% maximum. Army of the Dead gains triple that bonus.
With that rework, you’d need to use Army of the Dead for DR and you’d want to have minions attacking often to reduce the cooldown on AotD to maintain it. It would also incentivize AotD with a big damage buff.
That would work, though you would still have the same problem with regards to death screwing you over. If you cast AotD then die immediately, you get to wait for your minions to reduce the cooldown from near full before getting any DR after reviving. You could fix this by having the 4p bonus reset AotD’s cooldown on death.
In an effort to broaden the scope of the set, and to include something that got mentioned previously, why not allow the 6 piece to work with revives or mages, rather than strictly mages? I don’t know if it could compete at the higher end of things, but it could definitely be made to work earlier on, and it would have a very different feel from summoning mages, while still ensuring it was a pet heavy build.
if you mean that you get powered up by Revives AND/OR Mages, that would be ok, I think. I don’t recall the duration of Revived minions, so I don’t know if getting 4 revives to get max power and then spamming Mages to 10 will keep you powered up longer.
Yes, that is what I meant. And Revives last a good bit longer than mages, with a base duration of 15 seconds I think. Personally, I find Revive more interesting and dynamic than mages, and less frenetic, so it fits my preferences for a pet build better.
*Allow Rathma set to give minions a permanent duration. This will separate the set from LoD minion build.
*Army of the dead empowers all minions with increase damage while giving the necromancer damage reduction.
*Army of the dead gains stack every second up to ‘X’ amount max. Each stack increases the Army of the dead by ‘X’ amount.
*Fate’s vow needs to be tied to 2 piece bonus as well as increased damage to AoTD.
*Unlike LoD, it will be tough to fit in fate’s vow, tnt, razeth’s volition and possibly requiem cereplate, golem skin breeches . Rathma set needs to be redesigned with these issues in mind.
Through Bones of Rathma, let us command a horde of the dead. Let’s do it blizzard!
I would prefer something more like this:
2-piece bonus, your minions attacks generate essence. Vary the number so its not rofl stupid.
4-piece bonus, keep the 1% stacking damage tank, but also add in “split damage among minions.” Similar to the masquerade new set, splitting damage with the sims. If splitting the damage is too similar, or considered too OP, add in “reduce damage by 10% per skeleton and/or mage.”
6-piece bonus, buff the damage coeff.
The issue with Rathma is the skeleton mage and being squishy. The game needs an “active” ability that forces the necromancer to press their buttons. Summoning singularity mages accomplishes this nicely, and I feel the interaction between this set, the buffed shoulders, and reapers wraps adequately satisfies the “active play style” requirement. Its still missing something, which is why I think the 2-piece bonus should make the skeletons damage generate resource. That, or toss it into the Jesseth set.
However, damage mitigation needs to be addressed. I’d prefer either splitting your damage with your skeletons (who already should be getting 90% damage reduction from the gem) or tie in a flat damage reduction for every minion you have.
This would also work well and complement the skeletal mage summoning nicely. Meaning you could maybe drop bone armor in favor of golem or revive - which currently seems to have little/no place in rathma builds.
DR should never be a ramp up mechanic, as it punishes you after death
Army of the Dead has no functional purpose in the build
Minion set doesn’t take advantage of any minions except Skeletal Mage
DR and damage needs to be brought up to current levels
And despite these, it still isn’t the worst Necro set, Trag’Oul’s is still far worse.
As to fixing Rathma, there are some things that cannot realistically be done since the set has a set dungeon. You cannot remove minions from the set, and you must keep a mechanic of reducing the cooldown on Army of the Dead in the set. You must also not turn it into a no button build, since the devs hate that sort of thing.
Here is my recommendation:
2-piece: Each time your minions deal damage, the cooldown on Army of the Dead is reduced by 1 second. Your minions’ attacks curse enemies with Frailty.
4-piece: You take 90% less damage while you have at least 1 minion active.
6-piece: The damage you and your minions deal is increased by 1000% per active minion up to 10000%. Army of the Dead grants you full Essence and resets the duration of your active minions.
What this does is bring the damage and DR up to current levels, and change the build from a Skeletal Mage spam build (which LoD already provides) into a summon your minions and then use Army of the Dead as your active skill to maintain them. The essence restore allows you to keep activating command skeletons while your cooldown is being refreshed. By putting the essence restore on Army of the Dead, it actually punishes using the Singularity rune and disincentivizes the use of Razeth’s Volition. By refreshing the duration of your minions, you can now fit Revive into the build, though honestly I think Revive needs more support in general to become a true damage dealer. But at least the extra minions will help reduce the cooldown on AotD faster.
To round out the changes, I’d adjust Fate’s Vow slightly:
Army of the Dead deals an additional 250% damage and gains the effect of the Unconvential Warfare rune. Using Army of the Dead litters the ground with corpses.
What this does is provide a corpse generation mechanic for Revive and/or Devour. That way you can pair it with either Mask of Scarlet Death or Razeth’s Volition depending on how you want to play the set. As to how many corpses get created, I’d want it to be at least 10, but I’ll leave that up to the devs.