Since it looks like Season 21 will be the patch that adds a new set to Demon Hunter and Necromancer, I thought now would be a good time to post some ideas I had for item and set updates for the Necromancer.
First my idea for a new set:
- 2p: Revive gains the Horrific Return rune and revived minions release a Bone Spirit upon death.
- 4p: 60% of received damage taken is instead transferred to your revived minions.
- 6p: Revive and Bone Spirit deal 10000% more damage and Feared enemies take damage from all active Bone Spirits every second.
- Rationale: Revive and Bone Spirit are both underused skills with limited support. Fear is also an underused concept because it generally is counter-productive to speed clearing. The suggested 2p effect gives a unique synergy effect between Revive and Bone Spirit while also giving easy access to Fear effects. The suggested 4p gives the set the all important damage reduction effect while also helping to trigger the 2p Bone Spirit effect more regularly. The 6p gives the set the necessary damage to be competitive while also turning Fear into a useful mechanic for adding AoE to the mostly single target Bone Spirit skill.
Next I will present some reworks to existing Necromancer sets:
Rathma:
- 2p: Enemies hit by your minions are cursed with Frailty.
- 4p: The cooldown of Simulacrum is reduced by 75% and you take 60% reduced damage while Simulacrum is active.
- 6p: Your minions deal 10000% increased damage and generate 5 essence per hit
- Rationale: This refines the Rathma set into the minion set while simplifying the requirements to maintain the toughness and damage boosting aspects.
Trag’Oul:
- 2p: Blood Rush gains the effect of every rune and curses enemies you pass through with Decrepify, Frailty, and Leech.
- 4p: Your damage taken is reduced by 25% of your total Life bonus. You gain +100% Life.
- 6p: Your life spending abilities deal 10000% increased damage and your healing is increased by 100%.
- Rationale: This set needs damage reduction and a damage boost to be viable. Adding the auto-cursing effect also gives it a unique mechanic to play with. Making the DR based on your total life bonus adds alternate gearing possibilities and should yield between 25% and 69% DR.
Pestillence:
- 2p: Each enemy hit by Bone Spear generates a corpse and each corpse you consume fires a Corpse Lance at a nearby enemy.
- 4p: Consuming a corpse reduces your damage taken by 60% for 10 seconds.
- 6p: Bone Spear deals 20000% more damage to enemies struck by a Corpse Lance or Corpse Explosion. Corpse Lance and Corpse Explosion deal 4000% more damage.
- Rationale: This set has several problems that these changes attempt to fix. First, corpse generation is added so that this set is useful outside Land of the Dead. Second, the ramp up DR is replaced with sustained DR so dying to a RG isn’t a failed run. Third, Bone Spear is promoted to the primary damage dealer that is enabled by Corpse Lance and/or Corpse Explosion. Pure Corpse Lance builds will still favor LoD.
Inarius:
- 2p: Bone Armor deals 1000% increased damage and can be used while on cooldown by spending 10 essence.
- 4p: Bone Armor grants an additional 2% damage reduction per enemy hit. Hitting a Boss or Rift Guardian with Bone Armor now grants 5 stacks.
- 6p: Bone Armor also activates a swirling tornado of bone, damaging nearby enemies for 1000% weapon damage and increasing the damage they take from the Necromancer by 10000%. (The tornado damage also benefits from this damage multiplier)
- Rationale: The change to the 2p allows Bone Armor to be spammable. The change to the 4p allows you to quickly ramp back up your DR after a death to a RG. The change to the 6p lets the tornado of bone actually do relevant damage.
And now some proposed changes to supporting Legendary items:
Maltorius’ Petrified Spike:
- Bone Spear now costs 10 essence and deals 550-700% more damage.
- Rationale: This item should reduce but not remove the essence cost of Bone Spear
Funerary Pick:
- Siphon Blood deals 800-1000% more damage and drains blood from two additional targets.
- Rationale: This weapon is never used because Trag’Oul’s Corroded Fang gives an all damage multiplier. This would at least give a similar damage steroid to Siphon Blood that Leger’s Disdain gives to Grim Scythe.
Bloodtide Blade:
- Death Nova deals 300-400% more damage per enemy within 25 yards. When 5 or fewer enemies are hit, Death Nova deals 2000% more damage.
- Rationale: Death Nova builds have great AoE potential, but are absolutely awful at single target damage. This would help address that.
Grasps Of Essence:
- When an exploded corpse damages an enemy, Corpse Explosion deals 75-100% more damage for 10 seconds. This effect stacks up to 20 times and stacks for each enemy hit.
- Rationale: Corpse Explosion does crap damage right now, this quadruples it and makes it ramp up much faster.
Lost Time:
- Activating Land of the Dead resets the cooldown on Army of the Dead. Every enemy killed by Army of the Dead reduces the cooldown on Land of the Dead by 10 seconds.
- Rationale: This item is hardly ever used because slowing enemy movement is redundant to BoTT and the extra movement speed is harder to trigger and maintain than Steuart’s Greaves for less overall speed. By changing it to support Land of the Dead and Army of the Dead it actually creates a new playstyle for use with LoD and/or Inarius builds.
Bloodsong Mail:
- While in Land of the Dead, Command Skeletons deal 200% more damage and are raised 200% faster. Command Skeletons gains the effects of the Enforcer, Frenzy, Dark Mending, and Freezing Grasp runes.
- Rationale: This item now grants the rune effects outside of Land of the Dead and makes all runes viable within Land of the Dead.
Bryner’s Journey:
- Attacking with Bone Spikes has a 100% chance to cast a Death Nova at the target location.
- Rationale: Changing this to 100% chance enables a ranged version of the Iron Rose effect. Changing it from Bone Nova to Death Nova allows you to select which rune you want to use.
And finally some supporting Legendary items that are not really Necromancer specific, but would be very useful for some Necromancer builds:
Slave Bonds:
- Your life per second is increased by 10% per point of Vitality you have.
- Rationale: Death’s Bargain builds utterly fail to scale with paragon because they are not affected by main stat. This item would scale your life per second off of vitality which would enable Death’s Bargain builds to scale with paragon.
Horadric Hamburger:
- All damage you deal is increased by 10% per point of Vitality you have. You no longer gain any bonus damage from Intelligence, Dexterity, or Strength.
- Rationale: This would give a gearing choice to scale off vitality instead of main stat and would apply to item based procs and effects.
Spectrum:
- All proc effects benefit from all elemental damage modifiers regardless of the type of damage they deal.
- Rationale: Proc based effects have fixed elemental damage types and this would allow you to make use of all elemental bonuses when building around proc effects.
While I did put a lot of thought into these effects, I spent far less time trying to tune the damage numbers for balance. I am quite sure that they need further tuning. I’d love to get feedback and suggestions for improvement from others. I hope you like some of the ideas presented.
Edit: I came up with an idea to add in the golemancer playstyle as a LoN/LoD build by adding 3 additional legendary items:
- New Chest Armor: Command Golem summons all five runed golems. Activating Command Golem only activates the golem with the selected rune.
- New Phylactery: Your Ice Golem is commanded to attack when you use Decrepify. Your Bone Golem is commanded to attack when you use Frailty. Your Blood Golem is commanded to attack when you use Leech. Your Decay Golem consumes all corpses you Devour.
- New Shoulder Armor: All cursed enemies take damage equal to 1000% of your golem’s thorns each time your golem attacks.
This would allow for a thorns based build that uses all five golems, devour, and all three curses. As a thorns build, it would also give the Spear of Jairo a use.