I mean, he looks cool but in battle I fail to see an actual real use for him. I don’t play him but he seems to weak for me, like Artanis level of weakness. But, what do you think about the necromancer?
2 Likes
His trait has been slowly crept into pointlessness. It used to soak ammo and basically do nothing else. With ammo gone, it lost that functionality. They tried to give it a use - skellies chase after enemies he rooted - but it’s hard to have skeletons with you in any meaningful teamfight.
Xul’s trait needs an overhaul if he’s going to be properly viable again. Maybe they can do something like have skeletons store charges that he can summon anywhere at will (up to four), instead of raising them on the spot.
11 Likes
I consider Artanis “not weak”, so… I’m probably the wrong person to answer your question buuuut… I have Xul at lvl 21 and I see him as a strong pusher who can fit into a lot of different situations thanks to his tech-talents (like lvl 1) and I think he’s some kind of a jack of all trades, maybe that’s the source of his “weak feel”, because he’s not the best in the things he does but he’s good in many.
I’d say he’s the best Bruiser you can have if the enemy has 2+ melees and you need a solid pusher.
2 Likes
I think Xul’s place is a bit different or at least not as useful now, due to the ever changing Heroes, almost having a way to slow, kite or just outright have a mobility option.
His delayed Bone Prison is simply just not going to do much as it either deters them or just gets out in time due to slow or mobility options and the delay of it.
His Spectral Scythe is pretty delayed as well, I’m not sure why nor should it even be special since it already has a low range and rather noticeable delay.
I think the only thing that’s somewhat his saving grace is his Cursed Strikes, which still remains rather decently in the game due to it reducing attack speed and being a cleave, which synergises with his talents
Overall, I think he could use something, maybe a shift in delays in exchange for other things, his ults could also use some cooldown reduction, not a lot but just a little bit.
Some talents adjustments would also suit him better, imo.
3 Likes
He’s a mostly useless hero who might as well only have bone prison as ability. That’s the extend of his usefulness in teamfights.
If you’re not laning, you don’t have a trait.
And Spectral Scythe is just about the least useful ability right now. I think it was purposely made weaker due to how he drained tower ammo. But that no longer exists.
6 Likes
as a character, i like him and hes overall pretty fun with some clear weakness 
he’s good at doing “hit and run” in lanes to clear them far and move out the problem is that due no mobility, if he’s caught by at least 2 enemies, he will not likely get away , he can prison one but not the second one.
his clear strenght in team fight is the cleaving attacks which against tank/melee heavy comps , is quite powerful ,so is pretty specific but overall , he’s well rounded i find.
however, as a “necromancer” im not a fan of because he feels nothing like the D2 necro that was said that he was. it was stated that xul was the actual necro that fought in D2. but when looking at his skills, the overall behaviors of his skill and all doesnt seems to fit too much of that lore/game play , yes theres the nostalgia of the names and similar status effects but the overall game play feels far from it. same as the amazon.
4 Likes
AMEN.
I wish this guy was the D3 necro instead, with the D2 necro coming as another character.
2 Likes
Very horrible. He is literally the only pushlaner-bruiser who can’t beat the line of a fu** murky, is it really ?. He needs an urgent buff in my opinion…
Not very common. Very good waveclear, but the problem is he’s not really good at anything else.
1 Like
He completely lacks build diversity. He does one thing well, and nothing else.
He is very strong at that one thing though. No issues with him overall, but he does need a rework to make him have more viable options.
2 Likes
Let him activate his trait to absorb all skeletons on the map into his bone armor, increasing the size of the shield by 10% for each skeleton absorbed. Bam, trait’s not worthless anymore.
Or maybe let him talent unstoppable while the bone armor is up, or give him some sort of CC reduction ala Wrath Sonya.
2 Likes
its not to take away anything from the dev but if i had to design a base concept for the necro , it would had likely fell along these lines :
melee mage
had a small dagger in a hand and a skull in the other.
Q - Teeth : fire 5 projectile in a cone shape . ( angle of the cone depends of the casting distance , casting with the mouse further casts a more narrow projectile path, casting it with mouse closer to character cast the spell significantly wider ( same as in D2 ))
W - Raise Skeleton : raise a skeleton warrior or a skeleton mage that fights for the necromancer ( max 3 ). skeleton will leash to the necro and will follow him around. clicking W on a living target or structure will order the skeleton to attack said target. ( skeleton type is based on the minion type, melee minion will resurect a warrior and mage or catapult will resurect a mage skeleton , hero will always resurect a warrior skeleton ) skeleton revived using hero corpses ( allie or enemies , will be 100% stronger )
E - Amplify Damage : target a small area and the targets in that area have their physical armor reduced by 50 for 5 seconds. ( further upgrades to the curse will be added with certain talents providing powerful end game curse in exchange of raw power. )
R -Bone Spirit : after 0.5 second , throw a bone spirit that chase the target around at a very slow pace. ( moves at about 75% speed) , spirit will pierce any untargeted enemies but not damage them. bone spirit will take a 1 second stop and move to the location of its target 1 second before. damage of the bone spirit increased by 20% for every second spent traveling.
R - Lower Resists : all enemy target in a mid range targeted area have their spell armor reduced by 50 for 10 seconds.
Trait - master of death ( cheesy i know but all other names i thought of would be too morbid or too close to inappropriate lol ) , : all nearby minions and heroes drop a corpse upon death. the necromancer may use those corpse for using certain skills.
active skills:
corpse explosion : target a corpse and make it explode and causing all surrounding enemy target to take damage equal to 60% of its total HP ( 30% in case of hero corpse )
poison explosion : target corse burst and release a strong poison lasting a significant a mount of time in a small area. ( poison potency is double if emanating from an hero )
bone armor : necromancer gain a shield that willl absord up to X melee damage.
Bone Prison : target ally or enemy have a wall of bone ( similar to naz ) that can by attacked to be broken early, ( necromancer cannot cancel it. )
revive : summon a fallen enemy minion to fight for your lane.
at level 16 necromancer gets to pick one of the golems.
clay golem : ( all golem on same tier ) summon a clay golem named Gumby that reduce enemy attacking speed once damage by it.
iron golem : ( all golem on same tier ) summon an iron golem that reflect a base damage amount to its attacker each time its gets damaged.
blood golem : ( all golem on same tier ) summon a blood golem that shares its life with the necromancer wether being healing or damages . ( yes, completely focusing it would theorically kill the necromancer as well )
fire golem : ( all golem on same tier ) summon a fiery golem that burns for a small AoE around it.
here is my logic behind this concept.
the first thing we think of regarding the D2 characters are the shear amount of skills they are able to use. which is why out of all the class the necro is probably of the best suited ones to have a bunch of active skills as well.
the fact it can also play around with corpses of enemies and allies alike gives him a bit of an Alarak feels but the player would have to be conscious of not sacrificing its allies just for power the same way alarak may sacrifice an ally just for an extra 3% sadism stack lol ( i know many would lol ) but that fact alone can help use fallen allies to turn the tide of a fight but it would require the player to also be able to manupulate the flow of a fight in its favor or out play the enemies by luring them in unfavorable situations which is all about the necro tend to do. he also had that "one man army " feeling which could be maintained in Hots, given the summons just needs to be weak enough to make up for it.
overall it makes a necro a potential strong mage, BUT will be severely crippled if out of summons as its only other damage skill will be bone teeth and amp damage only affect melee damage which leaves him in bad spot if he ever gets cornered. of course, the whole map wouldnt fill with corpse, same as butcher they would only appear when about a screen away from him. i think having a base skill of each of his bone, summon and curse skill tree would be a nice gameplay and also a nice homage to its root inspiration.
anyway, thats just my own though on the matter, maybe im out of my mind about this but regardless, xul is already in the game and still fun as well to play so i guess theres that, but as a necromancer i simply cant have any D2 necro will with him.
5 Likes
I do like the idea of giving him golems.
Another cool way to do it would be to remove all his level 20 talents, and make the four golem’s his choices at 20. Each would obviously do different things.
Would give him some cool level-20 potential. Could work kind of like Ultralisk where they come out and do something when summoned and then are controllable via targeting.
2 Likes
my biggest issue with Xul is his 20, I don’t like them much, reduce heroic cd post 20 you’re not really gonna get value out of it with the skeletons so… healing reduc… 75% is a lot but idk i don’t like it on the Q skill :S
The upgrade on the skeletal mages… I still miss his old one
otherwise for both, I don’t see the point of buffing the skeletons since they get deleted in the least impactful random AoE of a TF and require you to have picked jailors at 4 which I never do cause I always go cdr on W
Apart from this I like Xul, insane wave clear, probably the best in the game, decent camps capture before 13 and insane post 13. Strong tf capabilities with both ults (although I prefere poison nova). His big weakness is he has to be in melee range that’s about it
I don’t feel his talents tree is that in need of a rework tbh, more tweaks maybe
He suffers from 3 key issues:
- He feels a tier behind on talent power.
- He doesn’t conform to the usual meta constraints for his slot.
- He has the worst source material to port to another genre.
Structurally, Xul’s talent progression is about 1 behind other heroes – several get resource/healing type stuff at 1 or 4 (instead of 7) and they usually have a later defensive option post 10, while Xul only gets the initial mod on his active. So it could be seen that his defense/engage lacks, or that his damage & impact are so low, he takes 13 & 16 to both get offensive options to catch-up. For either case, he feels lacking in direct comparison to other heroes.
Slot wise, his cc is lacking, his debuffs aren’t unique anymore, other ‘specialists’ have slowly been retooled for new power-spikes that he hasn’t gotten (yet?) and his lane sustain won’t hold him up against solo heroes, but he works for the dual soak that’s (from my experience) fallen out of what favor it had esp because Xul doesn’t have the mobility of other heroes.
Lastly, the d2 necro is a hero class that takes more gear & talent points & spells to do the same thing other heroes do with half the time/effort/farm etc. There isn’t going to be hoards of skeleton armies in hots to passively win like some players expect, there aren’t worthwhile minions to ‘revive’, and the ‘OP’ aspect of curse cheese in d2 (such as golem + thorn spam) isn’t going to work well in a pvp game not built around pve progress.
Funnily enough, these sort of problems suit the d2 necro play very well as those tend to be behind, reliant on others for boosts and momentum to get going, and just about any other pick could do similar contributions, but they don’t talk about death & darkness every other line, so they don’t count XD.
tl;dr the game power balance has been shifting, and Xul hasn’t gotten the touch-ups nazeebo, azmo, & zag have gotten. The one thing going for his current balance was a player build for the ‘tank Xul’ shtick as it brings the best of his pve & pvp in one build; like the d2 necro, Xul benefits a lot when empowered by allies to cover for what he lacks. When he doesn’t get the tools to amplify his kit, then he’s left feeling less than other heroes who do similar stuff. He could prob use a few changes where some of the power balance on the hero is shifted to better accomodate for the transitions of the game that haven’t been as kind to the uncanny picks.
3 Likes
If it wasn’t for the fact that he’s a D2 necro, I’d say make him a full tank since his kit would work for it if he was made tankier and was tweaked a bit… problem is, that’s NOT a D2 necro at all.
1 Like
An outdated no dash melee with a 30 sec shield as his sole basic sustain.
2 Likes
Making the skeletons more beefy or giving him the ability to resurrect enemy minions killed near him are good places to start tbh. Once he has more pushing power, he’ll be more of a threat.
2 Likes
Xul is really a great tank.
1 Like
I like you. You know to classify a oversized minion
Xul is weak, only W build is good. I like bonespear but the dude lack damage with every build he goes.
Now a days if you go W build people just run from you
I know he is all about waveclear and siege but his skelletons are not that great either. You can better draft a anub who has more reliable beatles
2 Likes