I would love to see a pass over some of the less utilized uniques. It’s probably too late for any of these to make it into S15, but there’s always hope.
- Ring of Sacreligious Soul - Classic automation, but now? I’ve been playing Corpse Tendrils in S14. The power rework was… I mean, it was an attempt to do something to it, but it didn’t help the item become any more useful. I hope the devs will think about what they want this ring to be: is it utility? Then it needs to provide a 30-40% damage buff in addition to its utility functions. Is it enabling Corpse Tendrils to be a damage skill? Then it needs to solve the cooldown.
- My suggestion:
- Corpse Tendrils gains the effect of all side upgrades (same, new wording) as well as the Bitter Harvest and Jaws of Death variants (new)
- When you create a corpse, you cast Corpse Tendrils. This effect can happen once every [4-0.5 (0.3)] seconds
- Deal 40%[x] additional damage to any enemy damaged by Corpse Tendrils for 4 seconds
- This combination of effects continue to leave the ring as a possible utility skill, providing automation for corpse tendrils, while providing enough of a damage benefit that it can be taken over other possible pieces in that slot.
- It also opens Corpse Tendrils up to being a damage skill via a mythic version’s faster automated cast speed.
- The Get Over Here variant is left as an option for players to choose since it changes the overall behavior of the skill.
- My suggestion:
- Blood Wake - The infinitmist boots.
- I recognize that a permanently invulnerable character is not necessarily good for the game, but the infinitmist necro is a classic archetype within D4. I believe that the build is touchy enough and has enough of a gear requirement that a mid-tier version of it could be a decent option
- Blood Wake’s current use is providing both a cooldown and a damage option for blood mist. Unless it’s changed, it triggers corpse explosion once every second over the 3 second duration of blood mist. You get 4 triggers over that span. The current T12 corpse explosion build casts at least 3 times per second to do its damage. That’s just not going to be enough.
- The LoH version of blood mist only has a 3 second duration and there is no longer a blood mist duration temper. Blood Wake therefore needs to also resolve either duration or cooldown if the goal is the infinimist.
- My suggestion:
- Blood Mist casts Corpse Explosion 4 times over its duration.
- Casting Corpse explosion reduces the cooldown of Blood Mist by 1 for every corpse exploded
- This does two things:
- Makes it more clear how many times Blood Mist will activate Corpse Explosion. The mobility version of the skill will explode 4 corpses immediately since it has no duration. This gives a Corpse Explosion build a bomb on a quick cooldown as well, as it will immediately explode up to 12 corpses, depending on how you have corpse explosion spec’ed.
- This gives all Blood Mist variations cooldown reset options, as it can be reset by hard-casting corpse explosion.
- I’d be okay with a dramatic reworking of the boots to build the infinimist concept comlpetely differently.
- Will of Rathma - Affliction
- This item only needs a slight change if we want it to be an endgame option for damage
- My suggestion:
- Add the line: “This damage scales with your levels in Iron Maiden and Decrepify”
- Just gives this item an endgame scaling option and a reason to stack curse levels
- Razorplate - Thorns
- Thorns is one of my favorite archetypes, but it’s been poorly treated since the expansion. And really for most of time on Necro.
- My suggestion:
- Casting a skill with a cooldown causes your thorns damage to pulse outward, applying thorns to close enemies immediately and once per second for the next 2 seconds.
- (Not written) Thorns damage dealt by the new Razorplate can trigger Needleflare aspect.
- This is the old Barbarian Barbed Carapace key passive with a little boost (it applies immediately after casting a skill with a cooldown rather than just always pulsing, giving us something to do rather than just staring at a boss that isn’t attacking fast enough)
- It provides an active thorns option to all classes with necro potentially benefitting the most since they otherwise lack an active thorns option.
- The Mortacrux
- Honestly don’t know what to do with this one. The Skeletal Simulacrums don’t scale nearly enough to be valuable on their own. Might I suggest making them either count as volatile skeletons from AotD or volatile skeletons from Howl from Below or as vampiric souls from the vampiric curse?
- Having each of those volatile skeletons trigger the same effect (corpse explosion where they explode) could create some interesting interactions between CE and other skills, but would alter AotD quite a bit.
- Blood Artisan’s Cuirass - Blood Spirit
- This item had about 3 weeks where it was incredible. It was doing damage based on total life rather than max life percent. Combined with blood wave and other skills that were good at conjuring and consuming blood orbs, the bone spirits that it would summon would explode for massive damage.
- To bring this back into play, it either needs to be able to spam cast Bone Spirit or it needs to be able to buff Bone Spirit damage significantly.
- My suggestion:
- When you pick up [6-2(1)] blood orbs, a free bone spirit is summoned to attack your most recent target.
- This is a substantially faster cast speed than it previously had. Is it fast enough to play instead of the core skill version? I doubt it, especially with the core skill version scaling based on essense spent. But it would create an interesting specialty/interaction build.
These changes may not bring all of these archetypes back into the meta, but it would make them at least possible for niche builds.