Isn’t that change only affect some select skills? Like Flame Shield, Grizzly Rage and Blood Mist?
Because this:
Skills that grant Immunity, e.g. Flame Shield and Blood Mist, now only go on cooldown once the Immunity effect ends.
AotD doesn’t make us immune. So… If it worked like that on PTR, CD starts after the effect ends for AotD, that was probably bug.
With Shademist and Abhorent Decrep you can still have insane CDR.
I don’t think (haven’t tested) that Lucion works with Feast. You are not spending resource with a skill, you just get drained because haveing skeletons out. It doesn’t work like a Core skill like: spend essence to cast. It’s: skeletons exsist thus you get drained of essence.
you are right! I honestly haven’t been on the PTR for a few days now to actually verify anything.
yeah this combo is nice but yet again its a aspect to just have a functioning char… we don’t have the space.
yeah that’s what I mean, it won’t work. You would need to spam another spell to make it work, and doing that with Great Feast is a headache, as now you have to build for resource generation. Now this would be fine if end game content was like it was in season 3 where trash was the main issue, but now its trillion health single target… its just an awful combo.
A better option would be to go back to blighted aspect instead of great feast and use lucion helm.
my main feeling regarding the ptr is everything feels clunky and awkward to get working… it lacks synergies. I want to solve problems like resources or CDR with nice synergies, not clunky awkward playstyles to try and force something that ultimately doesn’t gel. I just got annoyed playing it as everything felt awkward, but I was trying to make a hybrid skeletal mage/warrior build which was probably half the issue to begin with. I just want to play the fantasy of using all/most my minions for damage.
I think you have a good point. Especially with minions, it feels clunky. Nothing really works together without a lot of bandaging.
I think part of the problem is that necromancer was poorly designed. Things feel very tossed together while hoping things stick. For instance - there is no core skill that supports minions, yet there are 2 blood and 2 shadow core skills. There are also no real secondary skills (CE tree or CT tree) that support them either. It’s bolt this skill together and bandaid it with that glyph and hope it works as stated.
That’s because they never intended to have a true Minionmancer in the game. Remember from the outset, Minions were designed to be in a utility support role and not be the primary damage dealer that it is today.
That’s why the skill tree is missing any Core skills to support a Minion build. They never intended to have any Minion supporting skills for the Necromancer. Both the Necromancer’s skill tree and paragon boards need an update to match the current iteration of what the class is today.
It’s not just minions. Though I speak mostly to that because I mostly play minions and/or shadow.
Hewed flesh - relies on lucky hit, though we have only one skill that supplies enough lucky hit to reliably make it work. The whole lucky hit mechanic was not implemented well with necros. Lucky hit should not be 'you better stack it to death so you can even function, or rely on bugged interactions!". How many seasons did we have to stack to 70%+ LH just to get a steady supply of corpses to be able to function?
Look at skills like HBC - its range restricted to some absurdly short range (only took them over a year to fix this). Your minions spread out and most of the time, they aren’t in its effect.
Flesh-eater - its range literally covers the entire screen. So you will never have it give 15% bonus damage. So why bother having it boost damage?
Gravekeeper - it has the same range that HBC currently does. Why not make it equal to flesh-eater?
There is no real shadow ultimate - you have to aspect it to get one. Forcing us into using specific aspects to make it compatible with core damage types. Each damage type should have its own ultimate, not bolt this aspect onto xyz ultimate and here you go. Necro is already starved for aspect slots, why force more of this?
Cold mages - what cold skills do we have so that they are supported by or complementary to main skills? Ice/cold is implemented under sorcs, not necros. They easily could be doing blood damage and now they would be potentially desirable for blood necros.
Necromancer as a class is very clunky, and not exactly well defined. Don’t get me wrong, I only play necro and will continue to only play necro, but I would like to see the class feel more “completed” so to speak. It needs a lot of concepts fleshed out better and made to work with each other as opposed to mostly not working together.
Nice summary. I’ll add to your list. Why can’t the Bone Golem get Bone passive buffs? Why isn’t the Blood Golem getting any Blood passive buffs? I guess the Iron Golem could get the Shadow buffs? Right now giving the three Golems element names is thematic only and has no impact on the game.
Also Kalan’s Edict is completely underwhelming as a key passive for minions. I was hoping it would’ve been part of the minions rework for this season. The fact that most minion builds avoid using this key passive should prove that it needs a rework.
The Book of the Dead needs more attention as well. When 95% of minion builds use the Reapers as their Skeletal Warriors option, and no one uses the Skirmishers, more work is needed. Plus I tried to like using the new Taunting Defenders this season, but I found their taunts every 6 seconds to be completely underwhelming. They didn’t help as much as I hoped as the Bone Golem taunts were much more effective. I ended up switching to the Reapers like everyone else for better results, and I can’t see myself going away from them again next season even after their bug exploit is fixed.