Hey,
I have tried multiple Necro Builds now, and the biggest problem I’ve found is that it is a class of extremes.
With Skeletons he’s broken, without he’s a baby that needs cuddling.
Just to see how I’d do, I switched to a minionless blood build and tried Nilcar. Got absolutely destroyed 3 times.
Switched to a Darkness + Minions Build and my skeletons had him dead so fast, he couldnt even summon his last minion.
What is this?
Is it supposed to only be viable with Legendaries? I haven’t seen a single legendary that buffs sacrifices.
But even then. You basically sacrifice at least 7 (I have a legendary for 2 more reapers, so for me it’s 9) sources of damage for 10% Shadow Damage and at best 15% Vulnerable Damage. Even with 3 points (which is impossible at level 25) in Memento Mori, that’s 16% Shadow Damage and 21% Vulnerable Damage. Which is ridiculously low considering each Reaper alone does 30% of your damage for a total of 120% and Mages for 90%, plus the ability to get a stun of mages or more damage instances for the shadow skills.
SO what gives? Why are the Sacrifice Boni so low? Are you only supposed to sacrifice in World Tier 3 and 4 because “Uniques” buff that? OR are there legendaries I am missing?
Now the secondary problem is Ultimates. Why is there no Darkness Legendary? this could at least somewhat alleviate the problems with Sacrificed Minions, but there are only Blood/Bone/Summoning Options? Why is there no Darkness Option?
IN total, while I enjoy Necromancer on a basic level, after all, watching Elites get absolutely destroyed by 6 reapers is fun, it just feels underwhelming considering, at least in Beta, the amount of viable builds seems so low, simply because sacrifice builds are so bad.
Pets are always stronger early game because you are weak as hell. No matter what boost you get you can’t beat weak times seven. Skeletons will likely be useless at endgame. Done a bone build and done fine, done a shadow build done fine, and doing a corpse explosion build and doing really good.
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The problem is, that it can’t mathematically work, if they inherit 30% of your stats.
Because no matter what they are 30% as strong as you are.
Unless all your ability damage scales significantly through legendary effects, (4+3)*0,3 is always gonna be more than 10% Shadow Damage or 15% Vulnerable damage can provide.
Also looking forward, it seems Darkness builds in particular scale with damage instances, rather than big bursts, considering the keystone deals extra damage for every 10th instance of shadow damage, which obviously scales better if your Mages and Reapers all get hits in additionally to Blight, Corpse Explosion and Reap/Decompose.
In the meantime I also found a legendary effect that causes Bonestorm/Blood Wave to become Darkness Skills, so for now I’m gonna try to play a minionless Darkness build. Sadly that means I am probably bound to Reap, because I need a corpse to get started in each encounter and waiting 2.5 seconds for a corpse through decompose is a bit much.
The 2.5 second decompose really does feel way too long. You can get a 18% damage reduction by not having minions and a 60% sacrifice for getting rid of both mages and soldier skeleton which also frees up a slot for a different skill. Don’t know what else to say about the minions. Really can only wait and see.
Endgame minion builds will be viable, I think everything else will balance out as you get higher level and better gear especially since you can sacrifice having minions to empower yourself.
Ye. The only reason I could think of, that would justify Decompose being that long to spawn a corpse, is that it is specifically meant to be played with minions, while Reap is specifically meant to be played minionless. Or it was meant to scale with attack speed at some point.
The 18% damage reduction is non-physical only though and it feels like it was designed to be the only viable option considering how weak 16% Shadow Damage is, but the crit chance might be worth it. 8% Crit is not that low.
What my concern is, that the sacrifice boni are not worth taking over having 7 ( or more) minions that scale with your damage. especially since it’s so easy to keep them healed up and give them more damage (stay close to them, keep up the buff when you cast Summoning at max minions (which is especially easy if you use the bonus that reapers spawn corpses))
Over all it just seems the usefullness of having minions significantly outscales sacrificing them at any point.
I did find a legendary which made decompose branch off to two other targets and had a chance to make corpses spawn under all three when it does. All I can say is that I heard summoner build was not anywhere near the top builds of the closed beta. Golem was kept for the 15% damage reduction but that was it.
That legendary only spawns corpses under chained enemies, if the original target spawns a corpse so you’d need to wait for 2.5 seconds either way, you’d just get 2 more corpses
Minions are useful until they aren’t. Once the world tiers scale up and minions start dropping faster than they can be replaced, saccing them will be more and more attractive.
Altho Necro can feel really good and even better with correct legendary power. Would never play it again because of how slow it is. Leveled it to 25 and logged back to play Sorc. No mobility skills just kills it for me.
gotta say i did a shadow build + minions and the first stage is easy with them, i died once on veteran. and thats because i got a phone call i had to take, probably late game when they die more due to higher lvl enemy, + when we get world tier 3 and 4 they probably wont be so strong as to make the game feel easy.
Plus any legendaries that impact Sacrifices.
There is also opportunity cost to consider here. The Necro is strong early, but it doesn’t have a lot of Legendary slots and as the difficulty rises, minions will take more and more aspects in order to stay relevant. The dev team seems like they want to keep item options open as much as possible, but as difficulty rises choice naturally drops. We may not have to allocate as much stacking damage as we did in D3 for a skill to work, but by endgame damage sources will need serious item support. Whereas in the beta, you can run a few minions and about anything and be good just on the baseline power of minions.
So, my current build uses Corpse Explosion, Corpse Tendrils, Decrepify, Bonestorm, Reap and Sever.
There are a few very good legendary effects and now I kinda crit elites out of life with 1 sever when my combo is set up:
Bonestorm is Darkness and gives a dot
Crits with Sever increase Attack Speed
Using Reap increases Sever Damage
Corpse Tendrils gives 20 crit when it hits and increases crit damage by 59%
50% more damage against stunned enemies
Reap for corpse
Corpse Tendrils
Decrepify
Corpse Explosion
Bonestorm
Sever
usually any elite dies instantly
After that use decrepify with the Lucky Hit CD reduction to get Bonestorm ready again
Oh for Sacrifice Effects:
Increased Crit Chance
Increased Damage against Vulnerable
10% Attack Speed
Edit:
Also got a second build, using Minions with:
2 more Reapers
2 more Mages
Skeletons get increased Damage the more they are alive (26%)
Skeletons get Attack speed whenever they hit (up to 33%)
50% more damage against stun
Consuming Corpses increases core damage (blight)
Over all stacks up extremely well, at least at level 25.
Guess we’ll only have definitive answers when the full game releases.