So has anyone been playing around with this build? I managed to hit lvl 23 in around 3 hours solo. Wondering if anyone has solid advice on gear/procs i should look for?
The decompose needs to be bluffed from 8 DPS to 9 or 10 DPS it just a little weak i think
This is actually my preferred way of playing the Necromancer. The skeletons being composed of toilet paper in this didn’t help, however; I didn’t get a chance to test out their new durability after the fix before the Server Slam was done, so I won’t know more until release (and I still plan on playing Necromancer as my main).
Problems arise in boss fights, however, at least those without a ton of adds to help with corpse generation. With minion durability as low as it was for most of the Server Slam, Vhenard was absolutely unbeatable for me on T2. Most of my damage was coming from Bone Spear and Corpse Explosion, and Bone Spear eats up Essence like crazy. But with Vhenard’s adds moving about like they do, and with her energy bolas moving around, it was hard to channel Decompose long enough to get an appreciable amount of Essence back, let alone generating a corpse for rezzing one-shotted minions (and actually getting to use Corpse Explosion was just an absolute non option). Might be some build tweaks I could use to change that (watching Asmongold try out the Necromancer, I think I might have done better dropping points into Skeleton Warrior Mastery, but it just wasn’t an issue for me in the prior beta, so I wasn’t thinking about it).
I think the devs are moving in the right direction; like I said, I wanna see how their slight buff to skeleton durability changes things, which I can’t for another two weeks.
I got through that Vehnard fight using decompose and summons on T2 before the hotfix at lv16. Minion mastery passives were a must. I also found rare gear with additional minion health boosts. I had a couple times where I was worried about corpses but always seemed to manage just well enough to keep them up.
My main damage dealer was also corpse explosion but you had to be careful not to spam it and waste corpses that weren’t in play in the arena. I used the ones away from the action as a summon pile and the others in the action as my explosion pile. Because the fight moves around constantly that means your corpses on the ground also change up uses frequently. It was a much more engaging fight than the previous beta where I made a pile of corpses and spammed explosion until it was over.
After the hotfix I ran the final two bosses plus a couple dungeons and strongholds and the minions hung in there longer which turned into more corpses as I was using the reapers in addition to decompose. That turned into significantly more DPS especially if you layer down a curse and corpse tendrils for vulnerability which amplified the explosion damage even more.
The post hotfix Necro summoner is in a really good place but will still need the passives to drive it which means players will still feel some frustration with it until they get deeper into the tree. My suggestion if you are going to main Necro is to not mainline the story and dungeons out of the gate, get your altars of Lilith and renown up for the extra skill and stat points first and then start hitting the story. There are enough easy side quests to get you there without setting foot in a dungeon.
I am thinking of maining this class out of the gate but still leaning toward Druid because I’m still curious how the class will play with it’s missing mastery skills.
Thanks for sharing your experience with the build. A while after i posted this i found some decent uniques that gave more skeletons and corpses dropped while casting decompose which was a big help.