I'm playing summoner necromancer. It's not that bad

Necromancer
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I have 2 full summoner necromancers, level 73 (HC) 80 (SC) , both with a completely summoner-focused build.

I don’t understand many of the current complaints. My summons are alive 99% of the time, and I’ve literally only seen the blood golem die 2 times between levels 50-80. To be honest, my only current complaint is that sometimes the summons spread out too much, making it difficult to focus, but that has improved a lot in the latest patch with the curses.

Here are some tips:
1º Maximice Golem mastery, inspiring leader, bonded in essence, death defense, and hellbent commander in the skill tree, also the skeletal mages/warrior and golem mastery. Death’s Reach and ‍Death’s Embrace are really good too.

2º And most important, on the paragon board “cult leader”, max literally every rare and magic node for the summons (+dmg, -dmgtaken, +attack speed, armor, etc…), best page by far for that build, and my summons nearly never die.

3º Use Deadraiser Glyphh on top right “cult leader board”, to improve a lot those 2 rare nodes, (it gives a lot of minion dmg and dmg reduction, it buffed my minions a lot).

4º Make sure to use using the following 3 legendary aspects:
-1 [Aspect of Frenzied Dead]
-2 [Aspect of Hardened Bones]
-3 [Unyielding Commander’s Aspect] (optional if you are playing Army of the death like me).

5º In weapons and armor, always look for the following stats whenever possible:
-Minion attack speed
-Minion life
-Minion +% dmg or -%dmg taken
-Critical chance
-Critical dmg
etc…

To conclude, I would like to say that not all internet guides have absolute truth, and there are many errors in the builds of the most well-known websites. I can perfectly solo and ‘quickly’ handle nightmare dungeons that are +10-15 levels above my character without much trouble, and I can easily kill the Butcher every time he spawns.

Apologies for my English, and I hope these tips can help you all. Have a nice day!.

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Well everything is maybe true… minion is not as weak as people makes it out to be… just the butcher part is not lol… if you are looking for minion buff on all of you armor affix and not dead by the time butcher stun you… well everything falls apart there… especially if said butcher is 15+ lvl above you in nighmare dungeon

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Three questions:
Do you play with the ring of mendeln? If yes, how high can you go without it?
Which skills do you use on the two remaining skill slots? (Because four of them you need for the build after the curse changes).
Do you use the golem paragon board (which is usually also a part of a minion build)?

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From my own perspective, the issues are:

  1. The streamer-side of the community has created a narrative (intentional or not) that in order to be “good” one must push nightmare dungeons 10+ levels above them.
  2. In addition to #1, the pursuit of chasing clicks on videos also includes things like HOTA Barb doing 60 million damage. Watch my video to learn how to snap your fingers and play Thanos!
  3. People have really high expectations of performance (and some of this is due to 1 & 2).
  4. Necromancer is incredibly gear dependent. Solo summon builds may be conceptualized as being low-investment for more casual play. That doesn’t really seem to pan out in D4’s current reality.
  5. There is a very noticeable issue with certain elite damage effects (e.g., every fire-based ability and lightning ability) which appears to ignore pet resistance mechanics.

So, the issue is a multifold compounded issue including some mix of FOMO, direct personal experience in seeing certain problems, and unmet player expectations.

I myself run a skeleton build without the Golem. That one cluster of Paragon nodes in the Cult Leader board with the glyph socket is so critical to keeping them up. That damage reduction spot, and it being enhanced by Deadraiser, is game changing. I’ve run WT4 with and without it. It is absolutely noticeable.

However, this also puts some strain on player resources. You really do need to increase the ranks of Deadraiser in order to keep improving the outcomes if you want to push. I’m willing to bet a lot of players do not want to do that. Furthermore, some gearing is also a requirement to get more out of the pets. I.e., the damage resistance Legendary is a nice stop gap while leveling Deadraiser, the additional skeletons are pretty much mandatory (and this takes up 2 separate slots), and so on.

I also run a Blood build. The amount of specific gear it takes to make it work is also pretty ridiculous.

Meanwhile, anyone can essentially take advantage of Bone spells which compound multiply off critical damage AND the spec supports this built-in. Sure, Bone is also gear dependent, but it is much more accessible than almost anything else in the Necromancer class.

And, THAT is what I think is the fundamental issue. Accessibility just isn’t there in a way that a lot of players seem to think it should be.

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If they had some sort of built in resistance to the aoe affixes or were at least commandable, it would be more tolerable. At least you could chalk it up to player error. But it feels real bad spending the bulk of your skill points and paragon points as well as a lot gear slots buffing your minions to have to all be for nothing when they get deleted by a set of affixes inside of a few seconds. Without minions, the whole spec is useless. Combined with some mob ai apparently set to ignore minions and focus on the player, it just makes everything really unfun and feels like your just sort of out of luck with no real way to outplay a bad roll of the dice.

I’d be okay with them doing low damage if they were at least tougher than they are to compensate for poor ai. Seems like a waste of time if they just go down without much a fight and your forced to abandon a key when facing any affixes that you can’t do anything about.

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Wow, I agree with everything. It’s even strange for me to find people with common sense in these forums.

I particularly agree with the Dreadraiser Glyph on the Cult Leader board, as you said, really a gamechanger, i’m really glad I’m not the only one who has noticed.

Also i was thinking today in try the build without the golem, and try some builds more, (Decrepify seems mandatory now), usually i try first on my sofcore necromancer and then change to hardcore one.

Thank you for your feedback and tips.

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Congrats, you can do 1/10th of a single Bone Spear. No one cares if it CAN clear. People care about efficency. Bone Spear blows every other Necro build out of the water.

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Post #1231231 of clueless guy in low tier dungeon and/or using ring of mendeln clearing dungeon at 1/10th the rate of bone spear and other classes and not understanding anything.

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That has nothing to do with the streamer community and is outright game balance.

When full spec minions are hitting for 10-15k damage and other builds let you hit for 5-20 million, there’s a significant disparity and obvious issue present.

Don’t be so thoughtless as to try and pass this off as some streamer fueled sentiment- it’s a very obvious balance issue, plain and simple.

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I can infimist in and tendril, bone spirit packs (most of what was on the screen) for 15-20 million. It 1 shots elites at nightmare 65 at I’m L85. It might require more setup than bone spear, but it’s certainly up there (and more fun IMO).

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OP is comparing a hyundai elantra to $100k luxury sportscar- has no idea what he’s talking about.

The only thing keeping pets alive for 4 hits is death’s defense- 400%hp 50% armor/resists 50%DR does not matter. Pets will melt in 2-3 seconds to packs with multiple elites, especially ones with fire aura. All of those pet survival stats are irrelevant endgame. Pets are hitting for 10-15k with full invest, which is beyond unreasonably low damage output.

You get these weird people in here coming up with niche circumstances acting like this broken class mechanic is somehow functional- it isn’t, and it will get a major overhaul.

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My point is that it shouldn’t require tons of setup. Gear should simply enhance abilities not make them viable.

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Agreed, but there’s a line between viability and gear needed to progress to harder content. I guess the question becomes where that line is

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Sounds like you haven’t ran any NM 50 + dungeons yet. 40-49 is relatively easy depending on the dungeon. While I do agree that minions CAN work, the builds we have rely on one unique that I just found on my 82 Necro…so to have to wait even longer for my build to come online is not fun to me.

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Take your own advice. You’re cherry picking my post.

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You lead off with an absurd and vastly inaccurate statement, which rightfully deserved correction. Don’t try and be manipulative to avoid ownership- this may work in some of your personal relationships but not with other actual adults.

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I lead with a statement of my own perspective. That is what I see out of the community broadly speaking. If you think that is inaccurate due to your own personal experience, that is totally fine.

However, you’re initial response was completely thoughtless in the context of the remainder of my post. You quite literally cherry picked one comment without care for the rest of it.

Seriously, take your own advice.

Here is some additional advice free of charge; get off your high horse.

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Really just gonna recycle my words and project rather than own it? You may be oldschool but your integrity is very newschool.

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What is there to “own”? I already did that in the first post. “My perspective”. What of that phrase is difficult to understand?

I did not make a statement from a place of authority or make a different claim as you suggest.

Projection? Really? Look in the mirror. You’re crafting a strawman.

Or perhaps you are just arguing for sport. Either way, there isn’t a discussion to continue here.

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You’re right- it ended when I objectively closed out your opening statement.