Necromancer needed Minion changes

[rr4545-2560]

Hi all

I love the game, and like to play my Necromancer Summoner. But as many other I see flaws in how D4 handles Minions. So I have made a long list of suggested changes, and would love it if other could support it (or make suggestions to other changes) so we can get Blizzards attention.

Suggested changes:

Corpse Explosion / Blighted Corpse Explosion:
Check that Lucky Hit actually works with ALL. Read on forum that Ring of Medlin doesn’t work with this.

Death’s Reach / Death’s Embrace
These work for minions? if not, make them.
How does close/distant work for minions? Is it the distance between necromancer and enemey, or minion and enemey?

Inspiring Leader
Remove the check for Healthy. Make the % allways be on. Impossible to get these bonuses in higher difficulty, especially when enemies ignore minions and go directly for the necromancer.

Kalan’s Edict
Remove the check for not taken damage. Make the % allways be on. Impossible to get these bonuses in higher difficulty, especially when enemies ignore minions and go directly for the necromancer.

Hellbent Commander
Remove the check for distance to the necromancer. Make the % allways be on. Necromancer summon build is meant (in my mind) to be the commander that can be anywhere on the battlefield directing minions.

Army of the dead
Change base skill to have the current ‘Supreme army of the dead’: i.e., all minions are raised with the use of this skill, but change minion raise time: All minions are raised at the same time (i.e., not one by one as it’s now).
Change base skill to have the current ‘Prime army of the dead’: i.e., When volatile skeletons explode they have a 15% chance to leave a corpse
Change: Make minions unstoppable x seconds (3 sec?) after using this skill

Prime army of the dead
Change this completely to: Your minions gain +100% attack speed while army of the dead is active

Supreme army of the dead
Change this completely to: Your minions gain 90% damage reduction while army of the dead is active

Skeletal Warrior Mastery:
Suggested rework of this skill (3 skill points assignable, more can be by other sources like items/legendary):
0 pts: You have 2 skeletal warriors.
1 pts: You have 3 skeletal warriors. They have +15% increased dmg/life/movement speed
2 pts: You have 4 skeletal warriors. They have +30% increased dmg/life/movement speed
3 pts: You have 5 skeletal warriors. They have +45% increased dmg/life/movement speed
4+ pts: pr point = +1 skeletal warrior, +15% dmg/life/movement speed

Skeletal Mage Mastery:
Suggested rework of this skill (3 skill points assignable, more can be by other sources like items/legendary):
0 pts: You have 1 skeletal mages.
1 pts: You have 2 skeletal mages. They have +20% increased dmg/life
2 pts: You have 3 skeletal mages. They have +40% increased dmg/life
3 pts: You have 4 skeletal mages. They have +60% increased dmg/life
4+ pts: pr point = +1 skeletal mages, +20% dmg/life

Golem Mastery:
Suggested rework of this skill (3 skill points assignable, more can be by other sources like items/legendary):
0 pts: You have a golem (if you unlocked it in a quest)
1 pts: You have a golem (if you unlocked it in a quest). It has +50% increased dmg/life
2 pts: You have a golem (if you unlocked it in a quest). It has +100% increased dmg/life
3 pts: You have a golem (if you unlocked it in a quest). It has +150% increased dmg/life
4+ pts: pr point = +50% dmg/life

Minions (warrior, mage, golem):
Lucky Hit: Make sure that ALL Lucky Hit works for these with a good rate. Some doesn’t trigger on Decrepify for example (while Reaper seems too work). Does it even work with the Ring of Medlin? (it should)
Stats: Make a separat page in book of the dead to show ALL stats for all your minions.
Scaling: Make the scale better (especially for harder difficulty)
Crowd Control: Make it so that they can’t be feared. A skeleton should not be fearable…
Minions AI / attack pattern: Unless directed by the ‘Minion Active button’ describe below, their AI should be improved: Protecting the necromancer, grouping up on enemies, actually attacking, priority targets (elite, normal enemy). These should be configurable in the book of the dead.
AOE dmg vs minion: Difficult to control them on this, so one option would be to lessen AOE vs minion even more.

Minion Active button:
Remove current buttons for Golem and Skeletons, and ‘merge’ them into ONE ability button that activates like this when pressed (all of this happen):

• Change the ability button to a cooldown: 5 seconds (i.e. only possible to use it while it’s not on cooldown)
• Your golem (if you have one) will use it’s ability (same abilities like today). Your golem doesn’t need a separat button to be summoned/created.
• Your minions (warrior,mage,golem) will attack your target (this is VERY important)
• One skeleton is raised if there is a nearby (close+distant) corpse and your not on your maximum number of skeletons. Does not require to target a corpse.
• A skeleton priest is summoned to heal your minions (warrior,mage,golem): a Heal-over-time for 5 seconds (not like today where it’s a one-time-heal at the end of duration). This does not stack with it self if necromancer has activated it before 5 seconds has elapsed (because of cooldown reduction affixes).

Legendary Aspect: Unyielding Commander’s Aspect
Change this completely to:
Something else or keep it (while making the changes above to the skills). Keeping it while making changes above to the skills can maybe be to powerful, so changing it to something else might be better.

Legendary Aspect: Blood Getter’s Aspect
Change this to:
Skeletal Warrior Mastery: +2 skill points

Legendary Aspect: Viscous Aspect
Change this to:
Skeletal Mage Mastery: +2 skill points

Add to Codex of Power:
Unyielding Commander’s Aspect
Blood Getter’s Aspect
Viscous Aspect
Coldbringer’s Aspect

General item affixes:
Make these skills possible to get on a normal +X skill on items: Skeletal Warrior Mastery, Skeletal Mage Mastery, Golem Mastery

[Giemer-1549]

I like the aspects that add to minion count, so that’s preferable to +skill points in my mind.

The activation abilities are fine as is, to an extent, butt it would be nice to have some more abilities to use - or at least be able to map more in general - but that general game play stuff.

Core issues in my mind are still mostly:

1. Minion targeting. It would be nice to be able to set a target, as stated, but I’m not clear on how specifically to do it without adding a command. Perhaps when the Skelly action is targeted at a mob, vs a corpse - but I can see that becoming its own issue in the spam and accidental trigger when you want one vs the other. Tying it to the golem skill is equally suspicious. I had to change my controls around to get something comfortable play - skell, golem, decrypt, CE, blight, AoD. Not settled, but its where I’m at right now (not end game). It’d be nice to add in some synergistic stuff, either bone, or CT that I can build around, but … eh.

2. Minion aggro. I get dive bombed from off screen, through my entire horde, all the time. This is not the play style you’d expect with a minion build, and doesn’t even make sense. It’s fine if I’m doing direct damage beyond my minions and they get pulled, but there’s literally no reason that should occur. Minions should have general aggro and mobs should fight them first and foremost unless I do something to cause the issue. I’m OK with a balance, but it tends to always be running away from the mobs the entire fight for no reason - its as if some don’t even register that I have a golem beating on it.

3. Visibility is hot garbage in this game… Minion builds, at least mine, is blight/CE - aka ground effects. Its is hard or impossible top see attack indicators or even mobs in the spam. Getting randomly one shot by mobs or actions I can’t even see is not enjoyable game play. This isn’t a time to react issue, it is a no-indication-you-are even in danger - issue. Getting seemingly 1-shot by invisible nonsense is super fun.

Granted I can’t speak to damage scaling yet, but it does seem a lot of work needs to be done - at least with aspects - where the only ones relevant are more minions and increase damage.

It’s also not super clear how to build around it to boost it’s damage, most class/builds have some mechanic to work around, barrier/fort for survival, or overpower/vulnerable for damage - neither are very natural with a minion build. Skills that “might” help like the shadow synergies, really don’t. CC based damage -might- be a thing, but that also doesn’t seem super synergistic.

Minion builds don’t need to be DPS based, I’d say they tend toward survival in general. I think fixing the issues I mentioned will at least get it to the point where you can even think about what the build really needs in the end. Mostly, because minion aggro is nonsense right now, survivability is very questionable…

[hobocat76-1144]

Some of these changes would be more than welcome I think. Especially a minion stat tooltip, or something in the book of the dead that indicates what your minions stats are.
I don’t know if what I am grabbing is going to effect my minions or not, and I really want that visibility.

A button to redirect minions would be a good addition as well. Don’t need my skelly’s running off to attack a barrier mid fight. I know the barrier looks menacing, but I assure them that it won’t hurt them.

Also I like the army of the dead ideas, especially raising all minions at once. It’s a bit irritating that they just come in one by one occasionally.