Barb player here. Leveling with a friend 1-70. He’s 70. I’m 65. We’re in WT4~Tier 35 Nightmare dungeons.
I pop all shouts, use my HOTA (biggest damaging ability) and inflict 1% damage to elites HP bars and some times non-elites.
Necro friend leisurely runs by, casts Bonespear. It deletes everything in the room with 1-3 casts as it bounces off walls and ricochets off of monsters. The room is clear. No sweat.
Meanwhile I’m struggling with full 750+ Item Power, 2.6k DPS weapon, all armor great stats, some great aspect synergy. Something is terribly off. I’ve scoured the top HOTA barb builders and gamers and it’s not a me issue ~ the scaling Bonespear is currently receiving is a joke.
Either HoTA Barbarian is trash (which it’s been proven not to be by a long shot) or Necro Bonespear is just in a really strong bracket WT3 to WT4~Tier 35 Nightmare Dungeons.
If you’re playing a Necromancer and currently having any issues what so ever, I highly recommend you switch to Bonespear before it gets nerfed because my buddy is having no issue. what. so. ever.
We all know about bone spear.
Not everyone wants to play bone spear. It’s boring, and pretty much required for most major builds. (Yeah there are variations but if you wanna clear things fast Bone spear or bust.)
It’s boring to get to endgame and be forced into one meta spec. Most necros are trying to find ANYTHING that isn’t bone spear.
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I completely agree. At least you have that option I guess. I’m feelin’ pretty scuffed next to my buddy. Definitely don’t want to reroll and definitely don’t want to play WW.
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Kind of comes down to class identity doesn’t it? Every class fulfils its primary fantasy with the limited options each class has at the moment; Barbarians still swing their weapons, Sorcerers cast their spells and teleport, Druids shapeshift, but the main defining summoner identity of the necromancer does not work.
People signed up as a barbarian to smash/shout/swing big weapons, they settle for whirlwind as the best option that also happens to coincide with that class fantasy.
People signed up as a necromancer to summon and command minions and deal in death and decay, the only options they are given is to throw bones while having no pets, this doesnt satisfy any core fantasy aspect of the necromancer.
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Agree here, right now bonespear is the only build that can perform at high level.
We are all commenting on it and Im sure blizz will see the weekly data as of which classes are progressing at what rates, and we will see further refinements.
And yes, not everyone wants to play bonespear.
What you’re seeing means absolutely nothing. Leveling and anything below 80+ sigils is meaningless in terms of balance discussion. Bone Spear is far better at the lower end of wt4 than most classes and plateus extremely hard at around sigil 65. Going further requires exceptional gear and almost the entirety of your paragon board unless you want to struggle like crazy the entire time.
As an example. HotA barbarians with decent gear hit in the range of 15 to 25 milion damage (With room to easily go up to the 30-50s at bis if not more), 100% fortify uptime, some of the best mobility in the game, unstoppable always ready when needed and THE best damage reduction skill in the game in the form of Challenging Shout. Not to mention the fact that they do not need to ever worry about resource generation
Comparatively, a bone spear necro’s damage caps out at barely 20milion (Highest I have seen so far) while hitting spear + 5 shards. A class that has literally 0 mobility, has poor fortify generation reliant on glyphs and clunky mechanics such as blood orbs, can very easily go out of essence in poor fights and has exceptionally poor survivability. Literally every skill that isn’t Spirit/Spear/Bonestorm/Tendrils/Mist is worthless outside of utility purposes, not to mention bugged skills and passives (Tendrils not going off or not grabbing enemies, Necrotic Carapace not working via Hewed Flesh and many more)
Necromancer is by far the most underperforming class in the higher tiers right now. Gaining a foothold that is competitive in the 75+ sigil bracket requires twice as much effort compared to other classes. Soon more people will get there and realize how bad the situation is for the class.
14 Likes
And that is our #1 highest performing build, not even going into all the other builds that cannot begin to compete with it.
It makes me think the devs intended us to have shadowblight bonestorm or army of the dead + its corrosponding legendary with 100% uptime through decrep luckystrike, and being able to just mow stuff down at HotA speed
But even if we DO get those to 100% (you can see where they were headed, theres a leg to allow bonestorm to generate a barrier, and another to increase its duration) uptime they still wont compete
I wonder if anyone has checked to see if AotD’s exploding skellies synergize with Howl from Below or Black River or CE abilities
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This topic is kinda mindblowing, so you’re playing HotA barb instead of the broken WW build and make a post on the forum saying people who play another class are unaware how broken one build of their class is?
Really what is the point of this?
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Don’t forget this version of bone spear is not nearly as great to play solo or vs Bosses. Your friend has the benefit of having you around to be his personal tanky minion and drop a few bodies for him so he can setup that wombo bone spear.
Things to consider when talking about bone spear necro.
Can I delete entire rooms in 2-3 bone spears? Yes.
Does that leave me entirely drained of essence to the point where I now have to stand around exploding corpses at nothing so that I can recoup my essence before entering the next room? Yes.
Do I end up sitting around for 90% of boss fights spamming my resource generator after lining up a few good bone spear shots with next to 0 nearby corpses to help regen? Yes.
Bone spear can absolutely DELETE with certain builds and situations, but those situations are also much less ideal once it no longer 1 shots things, or in solo play.
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I just recently did some testing with Black River, and I don’t even think Blighted CE works with it… I actually just made a post about it not 5 minutes ago because it doesn’t appear to be working with Blighted CE (neither in the damage modifier, nor in the radius).
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things will always keep changing the is game only 1 week old most of us are months away from end-game content. IM not worried about what doesn’t work today vs tomorrow. Sorry for you power players only one option right now.
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Interesting take. You’re trying a non meta build and being a tank/corpse generator for your buddy. You would do alot more using your meta build, dont you know how poweful that CAN be and still be good in solo? Doesn’t feel good to be told to play your meta build does it?
Problem is your meta build can blow through everything with 0 difficulty in 5 minutes and necros meta build cant even do it in triple the time. We take more set up than you think to be able to pull it off.
Well just got to level 70 WT4 and just tried to solo a tier 21 nightmare dungeon…I’m getting absolutely recked by the elites…my minions can’t tank and I’m getting one shot killed…Maybe my gear is not up to par but I was doing decent in WT3 and tier 20 dungeons.
Yep. You can just blaze thru tier 20 WT3 and then spontaneously explode as soon as you step in a tier 21 WT4
I would suggest sneaking around Helltides or Whispers to build up some Ancestral replacements for your Sacred gear first
I’m not using bone spear or bone spirit, and i am one-shotting elite packs on NM 26+ on WT4 and 3-shotting the dungeon bosses. It’s been this way since level 30+, I haven’t found anything that has remotely given me a challenge yet. Necromancers are broken if you build them correctly. Gear affixes and paragon points spent properly make a huge difference.
Sadly, 75% of the people on this subforum are pretty bad while being the most vocal, while the 25% who have any idea on how to play the class are constantly shot down by the rest.
Only issue I have with the Necromancer class at the moment is that 90% of the aspects and unique legendaries are underpowered or pointless. My build is overpowered with general aspects on 80% of my gear. Imagine how much more powerful Necromancer will be if they start to buff/rework the Necromancer legendary aspects and uniques.
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This guy doesn’t know that his two best aspects are turned off right now.
Stop lieing, we are playing the same game. Show a video of you “blasting through” the content with ease. I guarantee every other class can do it in half the time.
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Another broken build for Necromancer is also Shadow DoT without minions. But with Corpse Explosion issue you cannot use it, unfortunally.
So, seems that Bonespear is the only one option.
I pass, I rolled a Mage.
Oh, I know. No one’s ever seen my build yet lol
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Can someone explain me in a simple algorithm what is required to make Bone spear such killer? I played necro only to 42 - yes until main line quest with killing Brol it was relatively no brain … Spear, CE to restore essence - risen and repeat. But Brol (and any “fat” bosses) as soon as they start playing “script” pretty much nullify this raceroll tactic. I ended up killing Brol … with autohealing skele magi and wiping trash waves with blighted CE. I know, I probably doing something wrong - just trying to figure what is that