Now necros can’t achieve top rank season solo the same GR than other classes. We are 18 GR away from other classes.
You need to pump thorns build OR pump flesh and blood set.
By the way lightning pylon should consider to proc nice damage based on thorns number too. Otherwise this pylons is useless for full thorns character with no weapon damage.
In terms of Greater Rift, conduit is not based on character weapon damage but rather has its own formula. Conduit damage scales with GR tiers with no diminishing values.
wait, is necro underpowered??? guys buff him asap
Buffs, buffs, and even more buffs, when will this madness stop. Bring on D4.
Hey PardalBR,
Necromancers are a bit of late bloomers in terms of solo pushing Greater Rift levels.
For Example:
In North America, the GR level/Paragon expected is on target for Non-Season, but in season, they’re a decent bit behind compared to Barbarians and Crusaders.
Necromancer set pieces need a little bit of love while also being weary of Rat Run metas and RGK 4 mans. We’ll be able to revisit balance and legendary items in future patches, especially when Necromancer’s get their new set.
Let us know what you think or if you have any suggestions for Necromancer going forward.
Rebuff and make the Inarius set viable again, like with Morticks Bracer being removed, the original proc co-efficient of 1.0 on Bone Armor in today’s meta is by no means game breaking, if anything it could still use a few more buffs on top of the initial release.
Currently Inarius is at best a GR90 ish tier build.
While the necromancer is and has been my favorite class in diablo, the current necromancer is extremely boring to play.
In the end game, the necromancer is tied to:
Land of the dead + Corpse Lance
Land of the dead + Singularity
Thorns (Yuck 
)
There are so many other skills that aren’t being used for the simple fact that they aren’t viable at higher levels :
Bone Spear
Bone Spirit
Non-Singularity Skeleton Mages
Command Skeleton
Command Golem
Revive
Army of the Dead
Death Nova (terrible single target damage. Damage needs to stack while channeling).
One thing that im still waiting on and have been waiting since the release of RoTN, is a proper minion build where i can control an army to do my bidding. Rathma set and any other set for that matter needs it’s uniqueness and not just boost in damage or it will get swallowed up by Legacy of Dreams. Currently LoD mages completely outclasses the rathma set.
Singularity mages needs to be redesigned. The essence dump can go to either death nova, bone spear or bone spirit. Minion damage with rathma set needs adjustment to bring the other skeleton mages runes up to par. Rathma should allow the unique ability to make all minions permanent to separate itself from LoD and allow the necromancer to amplify the minion’s damage through curse, krysbin proc etc. Army of the dead cooldown should work like starmetal kukri where a second is shaved off every time a minion hits. Instead of gaining damage reduction through per minion hits, damage reduction and damage increase can be gained upon casting army of the dead to give this skill its place. Rathma shield passive can be changed to grant enhanced damage reduction or a shield absorption similar to galvanizing ward for certain duration. Rathma set gameplay should be focused on small damage by a large army and not so much on large damage by a small group hence a proper ‘minion’ build that revolve around all minions.
Jesseth Set should also allow command skeleton to gain the enforcer and dark mending rune.
Command Golem
Necromancer specific bracer - The necromancer takes x% less damage while the golem is alive and the golem gains the following ability. (To allow the Golem to do some AoE damage)
Base Golem - chance to cast tendril nova on hit
Flesh Golem - chance to shed a corpse when hit by an enemy.
Ice Golem - chance to casts frost nova on hit
Bone Golem - chance to casts bone nova on hit
Decay Golem - chance to cast blight nova on hit
Blood Golem - chance to cast blood nova on hit.
Sorry for the long read but just by looking at the set bonuses and legendary items for the necromancer you can clearly see that the necromancer was rushed. Too many unused skills and legendary items not to mention no class specific bracer still to this day. 
Hope the upcoming changes will bring back the necromancer we know and love! Thanks much.
Hey Matt,
Would be cool if you guys buff the Inarius Set, and specifically the “Bonestorm” build so people can play the bonestorm build in GRs like any other class.
Necro also desperately needs a buff to its defenses, as even with 5 or 6 damage reducing items, the class doesnt reach anywhere near the damage reducing perks of the Band of Might the barb has, yet the Bonestorm build is also a melee build.
Thanks for the info…
Beside this post theme…can you give us the information which next chars will become the new set? That will help us, to concentrate on these chars with ideas and give better featback before you start to work 
Thanks!
Could it be that one of the first pandemonium buffs freeze enemies, basically making the thorns necro do nothing anymore? Since it happens so much it could hurt the build or not?
I think part of it is the pandemonium event not working with the standard Op playstayle. I just took a look at the NA leaderboards for the season and necro is waaaaaaaay far behind everyone else.
I’m now intrigued to make a build that might take advantage of it somehow. 
*1 - Aswell like golem should spam one aoe damage when a corpse it’s exploded. Or other way to interact one skill to other. (cuz corpse lance is too easy). Skeletals could to self destruct on monsters too and get it’s damage increased after x seconds a corpse has been exploded.
Necro needs some new legendaries, before new set. Some skills are cool, but nearly unusable.
We don’t have many possibilities, we could use some new Phylacteries.
Idea: Dead Harvester Phylactery
You stack “bodies” to a certain limit, and you can use them for body-linked skills, like detonate dead later.
-> I kill 20 mobs, I have 20 harvest stacks, which I can use later for detonate dead/revive when there is no mobs/bodies around.
how about you add class specific bracers for necro ,this class doesn’t have any bracers with skill multiplier at all
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I really think skeletal mages as a spender is a bad design choice, which makes Rathma’s really clunky to play. I doubt such a rework is plausible given D4 is on the horizon, but I really feel like the general theme of the necromancer would work aesthetically and mechanically better if skeletal mages functioned like skeletal warriors, except maybe as a channel spell you direct their spellcasting.
Jesseths set: deal 500%-600% increased damage while skeletons are active.
-slight damage buff, does not apply only to minions, makes the set viable for all necro set builds
Also, please don’t kill the lod singularity necro when disassembling rat runs. Nerfing that build will completely kill off the best build for necros. Instead just nerf znecro and have it so that brittle touch doesn’t affect other peoples damage. But please don’t nerf single player reapers wraps
Hi Matt, Bone spirit is a very strong skill. You probably watched Achilles rgk guide. Its very fun to play not only as a necro but also as zbarb/zmk as needing skills to maintain some rg in the path of BS on imoact. However it is minority interms of popularity due to its maximum damage occurs from the rotation starting from 450 yard out. We are not going to lie at that distance locking on RG require ‘plugin’.
2 solutions to this. A: making max damage of bone spirit occurs at 50 yard ish (max zeis distance). B: display rg position and direction on minimap while out of range.
While i feel dh/wd deserves buffs to be in meta groupings. More options to open flexibility is healthy at this stage of d3. We really past that ‘sorry we need xxx rgk, sorry we need xxx to kill trash, please leave’ stage.
Army of the dead is another high base weapon damage skill, however the damage output on the rathma set is lack luster. Perhaps your team can look into its formula. Few runes are DoT, if we have support items simular to jade and ambo that deal the total duration instantly, this skill will be an interesting trash kill build. Its disappointing a 50k% wd skill deals damage so low compare to singularity mage even w/o scythe of cycle buff.
Any chance necromancers and their new set will be in the next patch/season?
Anyways, I absolutely love Trag’oul and Pestilence set but I am really hoping they get some much needed buffs and support/buffs to existing items or new supporting legendaries.
I’m playing Necro this season and it’s not that enjoyable as none of the barbs or crusaders want a rat or znec in their groups. Possibly as RGK with a good LoD lance build. I’d say I’m seeing roughly 60-75% less advertisements for inviting necros into groups this season.
I’m slowly working on and trying to test the existing sets along with giving suggestions for how they can be more thematically relevant, along with what I believe is their current strengths and weaknesses.
I’ll be writing an extensive summary of all this in the coming days once I play around more with the old sets on season and non-season.
I’d like to post an idea I had for a new set as well as a quirky build that could use some support items/options.
First, the new set:
I’d love a set that focused on Revive and Bone Spirit, with a heavy theme of fear. Bone Spirit and Revive are two necro skills that only really see use in LoD setups, and even there they aren’t really the focus of the build. Fear is almost universally avoided by all builds because monsters running away generally just slows down your progress. What I am proposing is a set that attempts to fuse these aspects into a fun new playstyle.
2p: Revive gains the effects of all runes.
4p: While you have at least 1 Revive minion, 50% of received damage is instead transferred to a random Revive minion.
6p: Bone Spirit deals x% increased damage. Any enemy under the effects of Fear takes damage from all active Bone Spirits every second.
What this does is enable you to use any Bone Spirit rune of your choice, and Bone Spirit is already an excellent single target skill. By adding the mechanic that Feared enemies take damage from active Bone Spirits, you enable Bone Spirits to function as an aoe skill by inducing aoe Fear. Because the damage to enemies under Fear does not require direct hits from Bone Spirits, the fact that the enemies run away does not interfere with damage output. Revive having the benefits of all runes means that Horrific Return will cause aoe fear every Revive. Revive also benefits from the Purgatory rune so when minions die from taking 50% of the incoming damage, you can Revive them again for another aoe Fear effect.
To further support this build, examining the different items that interact with Fear for a balance pass would also be helpful.
Pandemonium Loop
Increase the radius of the cascading Fear effect.
Maloth’s Focus
Add that enemies under the effects of Fear take x% more damage from all sources.
As for the quirky build that I would love to see get some support:
I have a build that makes use of many items that are not normally part of any build. This build deals all of its damage through the Death’s Bargain item. In order to do this, I experimented with lots of different mechanics to see how best to increase the damage that this item deals.
The build is as follows:
(helm) Andariel’s Visage [amethyst] - 20% phsyical damage, life per second, socket, vitality
(chest) Shi Mizu’s Haori [amethyst] - life per second, vitality, life%, sockets(3)
(legs) Swampland Waders [amethyst] - 20% physical damage, life per second, sockets(2), vitality
(feet) Boots of Disregard - life per second, vitality, intelligence, armor
(shoulders) Pauldrons of the Skeleton King - life per second, vitality, life%, armor
(hands) St. Archew’s Gage - life per second, critical hit damage, attack speed, vitality
(wrists) Strongarm Bracers - 20% physical damage, life per second, vitality, intelligence
(waist) Dayntee’s Binding - life per second, vitality, life%, intelligence
(weapon) Trag’Oul’s Corroded Fang [emerald] - attack speed, vitality, increased damage to elites, max essence
(off-hand) Lidless Wall - 20% physical damage, life per second, vitality, life%, max essence
(neck) Wisdom of Kalan - socket, life per second, attack speed, critical hit damage
(ring1) Rogar’s Huge Stone - socket, life per second, critical hit damage, attack speed
(ring2) Lornelle’s Sunstone - socket, life per second, critical hit damage, attack speed
(cube-w) Reilena’s Shadowhook
(cube-a) Death’s Bargain
(cube-j) Krysbin’s Sentence
(legendary gem1) Legacy of Dreams
(legendary gem2) Bane of the Trapped
(legendary gem3) Molten Wildebeest’s Gizzard
(skill1) Grim Scythe - Dual Scythes
(skill2) Leech - Osmosis
(skill3) Bone Armor - Thy Flesh Sustained
(skill4) Frailty - Aura of Frailty
(skill5) Devour - Satiated
(skill6) Blood Rush - Metabolism
(passive1) Draw Life
(passive2) Overwhelming Essence
(passive3) Spreading Malediction
(passive4) Stand Alone
This build functions by standing still and spamming grim scythe to trigger strongarm bracers. The challenging bit is that you have to stay at 1% or less of max health. You are plenty tanky because you end up having a regenerating shield in the millions with a total damage reduction of >98%.
There are 4 main problems with this build however:
The solutions that I propose to these problems are:
The Horadric Hamburger
On console, this weapon can roll the life per second affix, allow PC versions to also do this. Additionally add the legendary affix: Your life per second increases by 1% per point of vitality you have. This would enable the build to scale with paragon by investing in vitality. This item would replace Reilena’s Shadowhook and move Trag’Oul’s Corroded Fang to the cube allowing The Horadric Hamburger to be wielded. This would also free up the Overwhelming Essence passive for something else.
Insatiable Belt
Modify this item’s legendary affix: Picking up a Health Globe increases your maximum life by 5% for 15 seconds, stacking up to 5 times. You no longer heal from picking up Health Globes. This enables group play and changes pickup radius into an affix that boosts your effectiveness. Using it in this build would replace Dayntee’s Binding costing you a 50% DR source, but the build should still be extremely survivable.
Finally, add an option to disable the low health warning effects. This will help protect my sanity while playing this build and enable me to turn sound on again.
I hope its not too late to reply. I think it would be cool to improve the Nova build for necro, I feel like it could be a cool trash killer.
Additionally, the corpse skills are too tied to cooldowns, it would be interresting to add items that put corpse skills on a resource spending model, or items that spawn additional corpses to a point where they are more spammable so you can do somewhat consistent dmg outside of cooldowns.
Necro has some cool items but they are lacking a lot of multipliers on many skills. They have a lot of general purpose dmg increases, which is nice overall, but this means that they are lacking items that puts a build in a direction. (Like the ring for Mages build) which is a really cool items. 1. Cause it doesnt inherently have a major dmg increase added to it. 2. Its flavorful. 3. It encourages a build without the 1000%dmg increase which is what we like to see.
There are so many abilities in diablo that isnt getting the love they deserve. I would hope D3 development has the resources to continue supporting new items. Maybe one day I can fullfil my dream of making a Sacrifice based Witch Doctor 