D2 has one of the best implementations of necromancer archetype. But there is room for improvement. Here is my wishlist
UNIQUE MECHANICS
Corpses should not be “all the same” like on D3.
Corpse skills should scale with the corpse, not with necro’s weapon
Same with minion skills and other spells
If blood magic come, blood skills should require the caster’s own health.
Creatures withotut blood like skeletons, and constructs should be immune to blood skills!!!
Poison skills should damage enemy attributes, not only health.
Necromancers should get auras
OHK spells.
Transformation into a Lich or a Vampire
Skeleton mage using necro spells, not sorc spells
Minions visuals should evolve with the caster. On DDO, Pale Master summoned skeleton “evolves” into a blackbone skeleton and then, into a Frostmarrow skeleton. Golems should become bigger when the necro evolves and so on.
NEW SPELLS
Lesser Death Aura -> Death Aura -> Greater death aura -> An aura which heals nearby allies and damage non enemy undeads. Greater aura should have a greater range than the lesser one.
Animate ally -> Like revive, but works on player. The player gains a “undead template” when it happens.
Finger of Death -> OHK an enemy. High necro INT increases the chance of OHKilling the enemy. higher enemy STR reduces the chance of being OHKilled.
Toxic cloud, dealing DoT and damaging enemy STR/DEX.
Siphon blood - Like D3
All D2’s bone skills - And note, Bone Shield should work exactly like D2.
More minions - Skeleton arquebusiers/musketeers depending if there is black powder on D4 world, if not, skeleton crossbowman, and the melee skeletons should be wielding axes, not swords. Swords require more training and IMO are overrepresented.
Blood Boil -> An skill which deals high DoT and if kills the target, automatically cast corpse explosion upon the target
Bone spear Should be back and initially not pierce targets, then pierce 1, then 2(…)
Vampire/Lich form - Vampire form should boost blood magic and the lich form, bone magic. Both forms should come with drawbacks like weakness to fire.
Blood control -> Takes control over weaker enemies. Stuns non weaker enemies and doesn’t work on powerful enemies.
Just DON'T do it - list
Blood skills that works against everything. Eg - Siphoning blood from skeletons.
Skills scaling with weapon + weapon disappearing during casting animations
Androgynous looking male necromancer. On Diablo 2, necromancer has broad shoulders, a “male” face and is the second tallest character, losing in height only to barbarian.
While it would be interesting to have the skills power/effect change depending on the corpse used, it should also be based on the necro’s weapon.
I dont see why. Keep auras as a paladin specialty (unless we get a Death Knight pala/necro class of course, which definitely could be interesting). Necromancers should have buffs that might work kinda like auras of course. But curses seems more appropriate in the Necromancers toolset. Weaken your enemies rather than strenghthen yourself/your summons. Necro summons are kinda “supposed” to be expendable. Unlike a druid, hunter etc. who might care about their pets/summons.
Corpse skills should scale mostly with corpse. Weapon skill mostly with the weapon. Magic skill mostly with magic and so on. Not hard to uinderstand.
Why?
Finger of Death similar spells only doesn’t work in games where you take too much time to kill or die. For eg, Finger of Death on D&D 3.5e or 2e is not a problem. On 4e would be gameberaking overpowered. On Blizzard games, it would definitivelly be broken overpowered on WoW, OverWatch, and Heroes of the Storm, but in a game like Diablo where the combat is far more fast, it would’t be a problem.
Compare finger of death(suggested) with attract curse(D2). Finger of Death removes some enemies from the encoutner. Curse transform a group of enemies into allies. Far more powerful.
Also, be able to point a finger and “delete” the lifeforce of an enemy will help with the “master of life, death and undeath” fantasy.
Maybe not hard to understand. But not how it should work tbh.
Corpse skills is magic.
Nothing wrong with your magic getting affected by the magical power of your weapon.
You should not roll a die on whether something randomly dies. Kill things by dealing enough dmg to them.
Especially in fast game like Diablo, where your Finger of Deaths are not limited to a few casts per day.
Doesn’t fit the fantasy of a caster. Wands and Staves should ENHANCE the spells, not determine it. I an fine with my wand making a revived creature stronger, but setting the creature stats is not OK.
On DDO, they changed the vancian magical system to the mana bar / cooldown, an mid level wizard can cast it dozens of times and … You don’t see anyone saying that it is OP. DDO on the char creation interface, has a indication on how hard the class is to be played. Paladins which can excell on melee and use divine magic are the "very good’ for noobs. Pale Masters are “experts only” cuz there are a lot of things to take into account.
And note, there are a lot of undeads on Diablo. With constructs and undeads in mind, not being able to use this skill on about 35% of enemies is already a great drawback. Put a mana upkeep for X seconds each cast and you can severely limit the usage of Finger of Death, so it will be a situational spell,
The unique problem of that skill is that without any limitation on how often you can cast or which enemies it has soem chance of working, is if the best way to deal with world bosses for eg, is by having a squad of necros casting it till one is the lucky one.
That can make one of the coolest aspects of D4 into a boredom.
And your corpse spells should be enhanced by your weapon for the same reason a fireball should.
Those two seem be the exact same. Making them stronger and increasing their stats.
Seems more like it would be a very random and silly spell to use. We shouldn’t be able to randomly oneshot enemies. That is not tactical or engaging combat. Just RNG with RNG on. Which kinda reminds me of D3.
And yeah, having a squad of necromancers spamming Finger of Death on a world boss does indeed sound really bad.
No, very different. Setting their stats would be something like a revived imp or a revived pit lord are the same. Enhancing their stats should be monster stat + X.
And who said that RNG can’t have tactics on it? Poker is not considered “gambling” due the skill required. Card games like Magic and hearthstone are not considered gambling games by the same reason.
In fact, Diablo 2 has a lot of RNG, monster spawns, map formats, gear drops(…)
Fair enough. I dont see a real difference in meaning between the words, but there is indeed a difference in your examples. Yes, it should be monster stats + X.
Maybe there could also be a “control cost” based on the power of the monsters. So if you revive stronger monsters, you cant have as many around as if you revive weaker ones.
Sure.
That is quite different from RNG on your attacks though. Having a 1/100 of a one hit kill attack working is just bad gameplay tbh.
Nor remotely similar. Card games are nearly always build around trying to take control of your RNG. Affecting how you go through your cards.
And the cards themselves are typically not very random. Well, Hearthstones still are as far as I know, but then Hearthstone is also disliked by a lot of people for exactly that reason.
I’m a big fan of RNG in games. But what you do is not the aspect that should be RNG. The goal of RNG is to force you to adjust to a chaotic environment (including stuff like monster spawns, maps, item). If what you do is RNG, then you cant adjust, then you are just “passively” watching as the chaos unfolds.
I actually asked CDPR to turn Witcher into Dark Fantasy. I suppose we will see in the future. I believe theres market for Dark Fantasy RPG. Bungie has also spoken something about Necromancers.
Bungie is good on shooters but doesn’t have much experience with RPG’s.
You are assuming that is pure RNG and is not. Finger of Death with the “average” necromancer would kill the weakest imp with close to 100% of chance of success, but the strongest pit lord would probably resist the spell.
And is not as if diablo never had his RNG in combat.
Attack/Defense ratting is literally “chance of working”
Chance to cause crushing blow too.
chance to cast X when hit
Block chance
Paladin conversion
(…)
In fact, arguably Paladin conversion is stronger than my suggested skill cuz it has a high chance on working on anything, including powerful pit lords and while a finger of death can remove an enemy from the combat, the conversion removes an enemy and adds the enemy as an ally. In gameplay therms, paladin conversion = finger of death + reanimate spell. And honestly, Diablo 2 greatest strenght is this interesting skills which does more than just throw big numbers.
Well I would take Dark Fantasy Shooter too. But RPG would be even more awesome, as one could play as Necromancer. Or after second thought Im not sure, both of them sounds awesome.
Fingers crossed someone wants to do it, theres so many cool Dark Classes out there, Dark Knight, Necromancer etc.
It’s not quite the same because Conversion isn’t permanent. It only lasts 16 seconds and bosses, super uniques, and champion level enemies can’t be affected by it. They don’t simply have high resistance to it, they’re flat out immune.
Also OHK abilities aren’t mechanically interesting. Functionally they’re no different than a skill that does 999999999999999 damage when not resisted.
OHK abilities is just the conclusion of where throwing big numbers gets you.
HOw many “encounters” lasts more than 16 second on Diablo?
As for unique, super uniques and etc, they should have very high resistances against it if not immunity.
This is not truth. People debate a LOT between OHK spells VS damaging spells on DDO, building your caster around maximizing damage or maximizing the DC(difficulty check) for your spells are both viable strategies with advantages and disadvantages.
Diablo was always about HUMANS in middle of the ethernal conflict between Angels and Demons.
I love playing as a non human in a lot of RPG’s but Diablo should be human only classes. BTW, I love technomancer class, but I would’t wanna see it on Diablo. A Technomancer class can only exist on high fantasy and higfh technological setting IE - IF Blizzard mixes the universe of Diablo with Starcraft.
Corpses are a unique thing. Druid din’t shown any corpse skill.
Plenty can last longer than that, especially before you’re very well geared, but even if everything is dead you still have to deal with the monster afterwards. That means either waiting until it turns back, or having it turn back in the middle of the next fight.
There is also a notable difference between “very high resistance” and “immune”. In Diablo 2, they are immune and there is no way of breaking that. It can never work.
It doesn’t matter if people debate it vs other spells. People debate damage spells vs other damage spells. They’ll debate anything.
OHKs abilities are functionally abilities that do infinite damage when not resisted, as they will kill everything.
That is unless you want to claim there is an enemy that can survive not resisting being instantly killed. Otherwise, the ability functions the same as if it dealt infinite damage.
No, I meant all that stuff is standard Necro stuffs, not really unique in regards to the classy systems like the arsenal system. Unless I read too much into what the unique abilities were.
