Why is sacrifice a thing?

Genuine question because I dont get it.
Necromancer’s whole theme and mechanic is about summoning and controlling minions. So why is there an option to essentially delete the class mechanic?
If its just to be a caster then sorcerer is better?

Lets assume a perfect scenario where minions are entirely balanced and works as they should etc. Why is sacrifice there? Why not have a third option for minions instead?
Why have passives that give bonuses to not use the class mechanic?
Why not have passives that further enhances the class mechanic instead?
It seems like a lazy thing to do, like someone went “Cant think of anything more, just add some flat bonuses if they dont use the mechanic”

Can someone explain?

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Because people may want to play a death caster, not a reanimator ?

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Well it is there for people who like to play alone and without minions. It’s just another option for different builds.

Now, personally I am with you. I’d rather have a proper third option for minions instead of sacrifice and I don’t understand why people want to play “the pet class” but without pets. But, yeah, I suppose it’s nice to have options, I guess?

I don’t like pet class and thanks to sacrifice I’m enjoying Necromancer. So yeah, it’s about opinion

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If I wanted a spellcaster I would have played Sorcerer or Druid. They could have made that happen without sacrificing minions. I can see sacrificing them serving a purpose if it made the others more powerful. That would make sense. If you sacrifice skeletons+skele mages to beef golem and use it as a tank for your caster necro.

But then again, people like to play melee mages and ranged fighters in any RPG so why not make a minion class without minions. It makes zero sense to you and me but perfect sense to someone else. Gotta catch em all.

There are various minionless Necro builds since the class dropped in D2. I see Blizz giving us a way to go minionless in D4 as a good thing.

In D2, Necro could also spec into melee (through gear) or poison dagger, that’s something that we can’t (yet) do in D4.

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Fair point but what about the people that want to play a summoner, not a death caster, why does every build fundamentally force the player to spam some bone or shadow spells to lets be frank, essentially carry the summon playstyle. I don’t wanna cast these spells AT ALL, and yet that’s the only way, they didn’t give me a choice to delete those skills from my build to receive summon boost, they only did the opposite, it’s truly frustrating.

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I think the devs don’t understand Necromancer gameplay.

In end game, even with full points in minions, they are a useless nuisance. They don’t stay alive and do the lowest damage of any skill type.

So most players are forced to sacrifice and play as a slow moving Sorc at end game.

I do not recommend Necromancer until this is fixed.

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You mean, a playstyle where you do nothing and the minions do everything ?

Don’t kid yourself into thinking bone spear spamming is a more skilled or respect worthy playstyle. You don’t need to understand why someone enjoys passive minion builds, you should respect it though, in the same way you want people to respect that not everyone wants to play a minion build, not everyone wants to play a spam spam spam build either, or are you having a double standard here?

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There is a class that has a playstyle where it does all the casting and has no minions.
(Sorc)
There is also a class that does a lot of casting and only uses minions for effects (Druid)
So yes, I want a class with a playstyle that actually uses minions. That’s the whole point

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Have you never Necromancer before? Many builds didn’t have skeletons at all. It’s not just a pet class and never was.

Sure… there were builds that didn’t have minions. But minions were viable because Necromancer IS a summoner class.

You sacrifice minions for a stat bonus, I’m not sure what about this is mystifying. It also allows more pinpointed playstyles.

My blood Necromancer has sacrificed her melee minons, but does have skeletal mages out back to throw a stream of stuns at enemies (particularly bosses).

As I can hold aggro better myself, and I do better with a crit bonus than having useless melee minions get wiped out and take up perfectly useable corpses that can otherwise be used for more skeletal mages.

That wasn’t my point. Usually, summoner build are a kind of support build, where you act to empower your minions and debuff your ennemies. It’s as active as any other playstyle, except that you don’t try to kill anything by yourself.
A fully passive summoner build where you would litterally do nothing wouldn’t work in that scenario, or it would be far from its potential.

Btw, i don’t play bone spear.

It’s a good way to create game balance.
Minions can be very powerful like in the beta, or weaker like in the current version.
Blizz is known to stir up game balance by making one thing useless and another OP.

The sacrifice mechanic ensures that if minions are bad, like currently, you can always just play a different way.

The sacrifice mechanic shouldn’t be there because minions don’t work. It’s supposed to be an ALTERNATE viable build. Not the ONLY viable build

There ARE viable minion builds, they just aren’t as good right now. Be patient, Blizz tends to fix things over time. Either play what you enjoy and care less, or pick what works best at the moment. You have choices. If you want a good minion build spoonfed to you, for example, there are many online on youtube and icyveins too.
If you want to discover your own style, play and learn as you go.

I see many minion necros in the 65-75 range do rather well, myself.

It’s so unfair to other classes. We should have spear-throwing barb and melee sorcecer as their top builds.

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Sure… there were builds that didn’t have minions. But minions were viable because Necromancer IS a summoner class.

Yes but not ONLY minions, and this thread is asking why sacrifice is a thing. It’s a thing because this is not, nor has it ever been, a class for ONLY minions.

Minions performing poorly isn’t due to sacrifice. That’s a different issue entirely.

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