How the Necro sets should be in my opinion

Necromancer
1

This is just my opinion of how the Necro sets should be. Frankly I feel that the Necro sets in general are just all over the place. There is many skills in some sets that just don’t make sense and should frankly be in others as well as many skills unused that could fit well if the sets were designed in a different manor. I just feel that the necro in general is very rushed and just designed in a very poor way.

Here is my opinion of how each necro set should be reworked below.

Rathma’s Set: I think overall some of this set works however there is changes I would make. I would say a large group of people want a pet build where the pets are more than just fuel. Curses would be the fuel in this case and would give a vintage D2 Summon mancer feel.

2 Piece: ( Leave Unchanged)

4 Piece: Your Minions No Longer Take Damage. You gain 4% Damage Reduction for each permanent active minion, Double this bonus for Golem. Max 75%

(This would be 76%, 10 Revive Minion + 7 Skeleton Warriors X 4% = 68% + 8% for Golem as the bonus is double = 76%, However cap it at 75%).

6 Piece: Your Curses gain the effect of every Rune. Enemies inflicted by one of your curses take X% damage from your permanent minions and Army of the Dead (lets say 20,000%?)

Inarius Set: This set has so much potential and should be the all around bone set, why other bone skills are in other sets is beyond me… makes zero sense.

2 piece: Bone Armor Gains the Effect of Every Rune. (Bone Armor is a defensive and Utility Skill there is literally no reason it should do 1000% weapon damage, which is also very low damage to begin with)

4 Piece: Bone Armor grants an additional 6% damage reduction per stack of Bone Armor. (This would be a flat 60% however with wisdom of Kalan amulet increasing stacks by 5 in theory you could get 90%)

6 Piece: Bone Armor also activates a swirling tornado of bone, damaging nearby enemies for 1000% weapon damage and increasing the damage they take from Bone Spear and Bone Spirit by 2000% per stack of Bone Armor. (This would be 20000% up to 30000% if you of course have the amulet wisdom of Kalan) (Of course if too high of damage we could easily make it just 1000% per stack)

Masquerade of the Burning Carnival: I think this is the only set that honestly is in a good place and frankly the only thing I would change is the 6 piece bonus. Frankly I feel this should be more like a melee mancer.

2 piece: Leave unchanged

4 piece leave unchanged

6 piece: Your Grim Scythe deals 10000% increased damage. Simulacrums gain triple this bonus.

What I like about this change is the fact that this would make a solid build utilizing items like Nayr’s black death, leger’s disdain, and also have skeleton mage actually fit in a build to be a utility to drain essence to give that leger’s disdain off hand an actual used offhand.

Pestilence Set: This set just needs some tweaks and slight changes. Also remove Bone Spear it does not belong in this set.

2 Piece: Leave Unchanged.

4 Piece: Each enemy you hit with Corpse Explosion and Corpse Lance reduces your damage taken by 3% up to a max of 75% lasts 30 seconds.

6 Piece: Each corpse you consume outside land of the dead reduces the cool down of Land of the Dead by 0.5 seconds. In addition, Corpse Lance and Corpse Explosion damage increased by 3300% (perhaps this could be increased?)

Trag’ouls set: Frankly this set is difficult to think of changes, however I feel that this in all honestly is basically the Nova set. Should heavily focus on the Nova skill.

2 Piece: Blood Rush and Leech gain the effect of every rune.

4 Piece: Gain 1% damage reduction for each 1% of missing life Max 75%. In Addition, healing from skills is increased by 100%

6 Piece: Your life spending abilities cost 50% less life, deal 5000% increased damage and Blood Nova deals 15000% increased damage. (perhaps damage is too high?)

2 Likes
2

The 6 pc pest needs to likely be less CDR to land of the dead and the damage needs to be at minimum doubled, if not tripled or get another item that does that. The grim scythe thing is interesting. I guess making inarius use bone spear instead is ok. Need CDR for Bone Spirit though. The bone armor damage from inarius contributes to the bone tornado.

3

I’m pretty sure it was not intended in your Trag’Oul idea, but the way you worded it, Blood Nova could get both the 5000% AND the 15,000% damage bonus. That would be a TAD OP!

4

Yeah I didn’t notice that myself lol Did the calculations based on no rune scythe of cycle and 30 enemies with bloodtide using trag’s. It’s 8.2m damage % with the way it is now, with that buff, the damage % is over 1b lol it would be about 120x stronger. Which btw a few seasons back was the pusher build with LoD I believe. It would wipe out groups in a few hits on 150 when it was maybe 40x weaker.

5

I love the idea of golem and skeletons being the damage dealers with a pure pet set. Let’s not forget that there are already 2 items ( a chest and pants) that buff these skills respectively. All that needed here is some damage multipliers on those items. I would love if Rathma could do that. Masquerade doesn’t need a rework for scythe. There is a LoD build for that, and Inarius can also support this playstyle. For those that like Land of the Dead, i would change Tragoul’s nature to be able to support this playstyle, giving the set an actual identity.

6

Inarius and Trag’oul are designed to be versatile sets (not skill bound), and it is great for build diversity.

You cannot buff both Army of the Dead and minions damage with a single set, that is too strong. You have to choose.

If you want to make damage with minions, I have a suggestion:

1 Like
7

Yeah probably didn’t word it properly but no it wouldn’t get both damage bonus that would be yes insane.

1 Like
8

You could word it that Life Draining abilities deal 5000% extra damage and Blood Nova receives triple that bonus.

9

The problem with versatile sets, is we already have versatility with Legacy of Dreams and Legacy of Nightmares. The only thing I would agree with is the versatility with Trag’oul as the “versatility” is as long as there is life spending skills. Therefor instead of having Trag’s increase damage of something like Nova specifically we could say that the 6 piece could be changed to what I have so that life spending skills are 50% less life and then just the overall damage of life spending skills is increased by X%

Also keep in mind I am in no way good in numbers, I’m more wanting to focus on the mechanics that I have mentioned as I think this makes more sense.

10

When the Necro launched, Trag’Oul was the highest damage bonus but only affecting life spending skills, which is usually only one rune option for any skill. Inarius affected everything in it’s limited radius, but the bonus damage was nowhere near what it currently is. Pestilence and Rathma at launch had MUCH smaller bonuses (Pestilence used to only buff Bone Spear and give you free Corpse Lances and Rathma ONLY affected minions and the bonus was 1/4 of it’s bonus before the recent rework). Trag’Oul has been woefully neglected and has not changed in WAY too long.

11

I agree with you about there being a problem with versatile sets but, unlike you, I also belive this problem to apply to a bonus as wide as “damage of life spending skills is increased”. I’m no developer but I really can’t see how you could possibly balance such a wide bonus. What life spending skill would you balance it around, without making any of the other life spending skills become greatly under- or overpowered, or rendering another set obsolete?

How do you make Blood Lance powerful enough to be worth using without the Pestilence set becoming worthless? What’s the point of boosting Blood Spear damage if it’s still inferior to the damage inflicted with the Masquerade set?

12

I have one proposal about this :

13

I’ve seen this and it definitely contains some interesting concepts. One of the major problems you fail to adress however is the fact that life draining skills require life to be cast. You discuss how the set would synergize well with Shi-Mizu’s Haori and how Blood Lance and Final Embrace would be good life-draining skills, but the BIG problem is that all life-draining skills cease to be cast when you reach that 1 hp level.

Staying within that Shi Mizu-range is simply too difficult today so something would have to be done to adress this issue.

14

Wroooooong.

It’s a common misconception.

See this concept, based on Pestilence + Blood Lance at Zero Life :

Diablo 3 Blood Lance while being at 0 Life

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qICl2PwYBO0

They continue to be casted :smiley:

Why ? Because Life cost is expressed as percentage of your Life. You don’t pay a static amount but a percentage. If you have 0 Life and must pay 2%, then you pay 2 / 100 x 0 = 0. It’s free !

But you are squishy as hell so you need strong defense.

15

See this is why I believe that Necro in general needs to go completely back to the drawing board. I agree with your concern regarding Blood Lance being so powerful that it out competes the Pestilence set but this is exactly why the Pestilence set should focus on something different. When I think Pestilence I’m thinking Corpse Explosion, Corpse Lance, Poison, etc. There is many things that could be done with the set, mechanics, and other items to make the pestilence set still capable of competing with a set that for example would increase the raw damage of the Blood Lance Rune. Pestilence could in fact instead also increase the damage of Nova. Perhaps making the Pestilence set the classic Novamancer build, relying on poison as the elemental type and Nova, Coprse Explosion and Corpse Lance as ways of playing a poison like or corpse like mancer.

16

Yes, it should buff poison skills, as the name implies.

17

Sorry buddy, but you’re actually the one who is completely wrong on this one, and I don’t blame you since I only recently figured out the mechanics surrounding life-consuming skills.

If you look at your video you will notice that a ton of lances are flying directly out of your body up until the moment you reach 1 hp, at which point they suddenly stop being generated entirely. THOSE are your Blood Lances that deal an additional 525% damage and cost 2% life to cast, while the lances that keep being spawned while at 1% hp, and lead you to think you are still generating Blood Lances, are really just generic lances that have been colored red for coolness.

As for life cost; there is no such thing as running around with 0 life. Whenever you reach that number, your character will either die or a cheat death be triggered, which means your life cost formula based around your character having 0 hp is wrong as well.

You can easily test this yourself by trying to cast Corpse Explosion - Final Embrace while at 1% hp. What you will find is that red corpse spiders will be spawned like crazy until the point you reach 2% hp or below. From then on, a spider will only be cast every time you manage to heal over the 2% limit. This can of course be done at a rather high pace with for example Devour - Cannibalize but then you find yourself in the situation where you need to keep your healing rate at an identical or lower rate than your life consumption if you want to stay within Shi Mizu-range or get the full benefits of your Trag’Oul’s Avatar suggestion.

18

Here is the thing :
You can’t die from your own skills.