Rathma is my jam, and 2.7 has me scared that I won't enjoy it at all anymore

Necromancer
1

I’ve played off and on since day 1. More off till Necro was released because he’s by far my favorite playstyle. Lots of minions, netflix and chill approach.

Rathma has been my set.

This rework effectively destroys it.

My favorite way to play the game, above all, is to run through a rift/GR/bounty whatever and hold devour and pop skeletal mages (Circle of Nailuj’s Evol), and hit command skeleton or golem. I just run around and let my minions kill things. I can barely clear T10 playing this way, but I have never cared. I finished my Masquerade set and can clear T16 and I don’t even care, it’s not fun. I feel like a wizard.

I swear all the developers play a certain way and just want everyone else to play that way too. The best part about being a necro in Diablo 2 was that in later levels I could have 15++ each skeletal mages and warriors and literally not have to do a thing but pick up loot and gold.

Rathma pre 1.7 was that for me. It’s my go-to build. Now my ability to do anything is based on if I am up on my bone spirit casting. That’s not fun to me. I don’t want to do that. At all.

D3 Necro builds are all creepy wizards anymore. Where’s my chill set??? Where’s my set that makes me feel powerful without being the guy doing all the work? That’s what a necro is. Someone who is smart enough to know that if he gets enough of his own mindless baddies he can sit back and watch them burn the world for him.

1 Like
2

The argument that can, and will, be made against you is that the Legacy of Dreams version of your favorite build is a lot better than the Rathma version that is your jam. Is there any reason why you don’t want to play the LoD-version of the build? It’s just as chill and is still all about your mages doing all the work for you.

2 Likes
3

The only thing that a Rathma build (pre 2.7) can do that LoD can not do is use Jesseth set.

4

I guess I’m ignorant of the LOD version. Can you enlighten me?

Edit: If you’re referring to (remove spaces) https:// maxroll .gg/guides/lod-skeletal-mage-rat-necromancer the LOD Rat build, I’d already considered and dismissed it for a few reasons:

Bone Armor is a pain to use in D3, losing all 10 stacks because I wasn’t paying close enough attention to my buff timers sucks.

Have never cared to use Land of the Dead. The only corpse skill I care about is Devour because it is a constant source of health and essence. The other corpse skills literally take away from my primary use of corpse skills, make me susceptible to running out of essence, deny me of healing, etc. Not worth. Its 120s cooldown makes it pointless. Who has time to wait 120s to use a skill that’s basically useless?

Command Skeletons is missing. I like having a troop of skellies, and I love that Jesseth’s sends them to attack for me. They do amazing damage with Jesseth’s.

Simulcrum is okay with Haunted Visions, but without the other benefits of Simulcrum from like Masquerade, I don’t see myself ever using it.

All of these skills require me to do a ton more work than I do with my current Rathma build. Blood Rush is the only positive change that I see, but I’d rather keep my Army of the Dead. And I don’t know what the devs are saying, I’ve never been able to keep it up “indefinitely.” I get a reset on the timer once every 60ish seconds, probably closer to 90s. Because I’m playing at a level where my mages are one-shotting most things so I’m not getting the hits in they describe.

Seriously, this patch effectively ends my playstyle completely.

5

Yeah, I’m ok with that.

3 Likes
6

You know there is a way to play LoD mages without LoTD. Obviously it’s slightly weaker but so much more relaxing to play and doesn’t require any cooldowns. You basically need a generator, bone spikes works well enough cause it provides more essence for you with Railena’ Shadowhook in the cube. But most of your essence comes from dark reaping passive (very important) and consumming corpses. Only thing that you kind of want to have in order to perform well is to get ancient items for the LoD gem to give you double bonuses. And it is very friendly and easy to play if you are doing up to GR105-110 without even low paragon and doesn’t have too many toughness issues either. Give it a try and maybe you will like it. I also don’t like variations that you have to find cooldown reduction in every thing you wear and basically play around LotD so for me it is amazing. As for the Scythe of the Cycle that drains your bone armor, it’s not a problem. Yout skeletal mages last for so long that you don’t need to spam anything that reduces the duration of bone armor. Just cast it once in a while, most usually around big groups of elites and bosses to proc the stun (dislocation) and you should have it up all the time. Simulacrums is a must have though and i mean with the Reservoir rune. You cast them once and last for ever if you don’t die. Another thing not to worry about.

As for the other half of your post, quite unpopular oppinion but i enjoyed bone spirit with Rathma for some reason, at least visually. But most people prefered the army of the dead variation. For me the set should be about pets and should be less shenanigans and more straitforward and engaging playstyle. They could have even make it a skeleton build or a golem build, similar to Helltooth for example with gargantuans and dogs but with better mechanics since you can aim them to attack whatever you want. Another big cooldown build is not what the necromancer needed. Then we could have 1 build for mages (lod) and 1 for skeletons + golem (rathma) for every taste and without having the one being 30 times better than the other.

1 Like
7

@GreenLobstar

I’m just curious, why are you okay with it?

@Yukos

Fantastic response. I’m still digesting what you said (migraine, so slow on the uptake).

So take the referenced LoD RAT build, and tweak (maxroll.gg/guides/lod-skeletal-mage-rat-necromancer). I’m trying to put it together in my head.

I dislike the singularity rune, so get rid of Razeth’s, also cause running around with less than full essence gives me anxiety.

Keep squirts, Andariel’s Visage?, Requiem Cereplate, Tasker and Theo, Krysbin’s Sentence, Scythe of the Cycle, Lost Time (cause what else is there?).

Reaper’s Wraps are a meh, nice if I’m not consuming corpses constantly I guess. I think the globes in the game are a stupid mechanic and I have never really depended on or wanted to depend on them (in an already extremely RNG game, it’s just too much RNG).

In the cube we do Reilena’s Shadowhook, Haunted Vision and …?

Then for skills, Dark Reaping for the vital essence, Extended Servitude, Overwhelming Essence, and …?

And skills. I would love to integrate Command Skeletons–but without Jesseth’s, I don’t see a point. If I had to guess, pre 2.7 Rathma is my favorite set, but Jesseth’s is a very, very close 2nd. I love what it does for my skellingtons.

As for other skills, obviously devour, Skelly Mages, Simulcrum, Bone Armor. What else?

8

Singularity is by far the most damaging rune here. If you take Razeths out, you are going to suffer a big damage loss. But it’s a good thing to not have max esssence when you run around cause the shoulders prepare you for that by giving 50% dmg reduction. I used to have both Razeths and aquila so I could have that 50% dmg reduction all the time. The one completes the other.

Don’t really remember my exact skills passives and items cause I salvaged most of them due to lack of stash space but it was something like this.

Leoric crown with amethyst gem

Razeths shoulders

Aquila for torso and the chest requiem cereplate something like that that helps refill your essence was in the cube

Ice climbers (boots) - stone gauntlets (gloves) for that massive toughness. Remember you need ice climbers, cause otherwise stone gauntlets make you unable to move and attack. The boots negate this debuff. Or if you don’t thing you need that you can go with tasker and theo and steaurts greaves + bloodrush.

Pants were either the golemskin or the swamp land with elemental percentages (can’t remember which but both work)

Jewelry: haunted visions, nailuj’s evol (julian love backwards lol), krisbin sentence and the fourth can be either unity for toughness (give also 1 to your follower paired with immortality token) or convention of elements for damage.

Belt was dayntees binding. You also need a curse. Aura of frailty is the easiest to play with since you don’t need to do anything other than to be close to enemies.

Weapon was scythe of the cicle and phylactery doesn’t really matter as long as it has good stats like skeletal mage dmg, critical hit chance, etc…and in the cube was reilena shadowhook

As for important skills and passives, I remember dark reaping was amazing to refill your essence, and the other passive that increases the duration of skeletal mages, blood mages for skeletal archers that helps even more to have them up for longer, or the cold rune paired with lost time phylactery for great movement speed.

The more you play, the better you become and you can remove defensive gear and replace them with offensive as you progress and improve. Keep in mind this is not the easiest build in the game, you still have to watch for a few things but this defensive - no cooldown setup that I described is actually quite easy once you get the hang of it and very good for speeds and farming.

Edit: You might wanna take a look at this.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIIo2W26WVc&list=PLOWnTa0Nars73vmbmRKwWsrnOU2r1V4P4&index=10&ab_channel=Mnem

His is a bit different than mine, but from what i saw it works perfectly. Look at his skill bar, 2 of the 6 skills are auras and 1 is simulacrum that you only need to cast once, so basically it’s GR99+ with 3 buttons. And as i said, nothing is written in stone. The more you improve, the more changes you can make but some things like the simulacrum, or the singularity or the krysbin sentence are almost mandatory for the huge damage they provide.

1 Like
9

If I were you I would just play around with the LOD option and optimize it to best fit your playstyle and liking. Seeing as you are just fine with barely clearing T10s you really don’t have to add a single skill you don’t like. Get a full LOD set, pop Skeletal Mages with Circle of Nailuj’s evol, and hit Command Skeleton or Golem the same way you do now and you will be just fine.

2 Likes
10

Thank you. Unfortunately I can’t have Jesseth’s and LoD. I’m still trying to see if I can deal with that change.

1 Like
11

Yup unfortunately cause it counts as set. If you definitely want your play style to be with mages and jesseth, you could also try tragouls and you need razeths in the cube and pick bloodmages as a rune to count as a blood spell. I have to warn you it is a lot weaker than the lod version but for lower content like up to gr85 or maybe even more it’s very playable. Inarius technically is also something that can be played with mages since it doesn’t buff any particular spell but everything. But it feels really clunky, you have to be really close to enemies and hit them with your bone armor so i would advise against it. But it’s an option too. Lol sorry for going a bit out of topic. It would be nice if rathma got a good buff and remained a pure pet build.

12

Out of curiosity because when I used revive, it was only for a brief while to get to L70 before I even had a set and the one time I tried Rathma, I was not liking it, but… are there “optimal” monsters to revive?

Does it matter if you revive a corpse dropped by yourself or your golem?

Basically, are the revived minions static and share the same stats regardless of source or are they variable?

13

Happy to say that the end result Rathma isn’t bad. Very, very tanky. I kill things very quickly following Maxroll’s AotD guide.

It just is also an extremely cumbersome build, because I have to constantly be commanding skeletons, hitting with grime scythe for essence regen, boning armor, and hitting AotD.

By comparison, my LoD Rat build (that I tried after this suggestion) is extremely fast and just decimates everything. I move around the rift constantly due to the need to from Hex pants. Even my Masquerade is more enjoyable because I have basically two skills to hit. I set my curse as an aura on it and that was the best thing I ever did cause combined with exploding bone spear I just run into everything, bone armor, then asplode them all.

So while the changes to Rathma aren’t horrible, the set is now my least favorite by far because it’s so clunky to play. I can’t get a good pattern down for skills so I find myself mashing bone armor, grim scythe, AotD CONSTANTLY and after one GR my hands are killing from all the mashing I’ve done. Just not a really fun build anymore.

If I’m pushing high GRs, I go Masquerade Bone Spear. If I’m looking to farm or just really have a lot of fun, I do LoD Rat. I have two setups. One with purely damage gear, one with speed and gold gear (Krelm’s belt, Boon of the Hoarder, etc.). With that equipped I can clear a T15 Rift in like a minute or two, then spend 5 minutes going back and picking all the loot up. And with the follower setup on Maxroll’s + Boon I pick up gold instantly in like a 40 yard radius around me, ensuring I’m flying through the rift at max speed the whole time. It’s really enjoyable.

1 Like
14

Huh? How is Rathma tanky?

15

Happy to see you got back on track with mages.

Yeah Rathma (the set) is nowhere near the other powerful options that necro has for pushing (like bone spears, corpse explosion, scythe) and it isn’t the easiest thing to play. I play that for non - season now just cause it has some nice visuals and i have really good gear to not die easily when i am farming gr 110. The playstyle is somewhat clunky if you try the squirts necklace build so i tried to replace that with haunted visions, use simulacrums reservoir for double essence and put Railenea shadowhook in the cube for that 4.3 multiplier. It works, fine but not as strong as the maxroll guide. I also tried to make a pure ranged - sit back and watch your skeletons and army of the dead do all the work - build so the only thing that generates essence for me is dark reaping. Never liked going melee range with scythe to generate essence with that build. But for the content i am doing right now it works just fine. Only during the first few seconds of the rift, i need to be extra careful and just wait until my skeletons give me 75 % dmg reduction and then by a couple of AoTD explosions i summon few more minions and then i keep going. Masquarade is also my prefered way to play in high GRs.

16

Ohh how i hate LoD builds. If you can copy a set whit some specific legendary items and a gem, than why do we have sets at all? Sets should provide unique bonuses and mechanics that can’t be copied by LoD builds.

17

I’m so sorry blizz ruined your T10 (!) build