Necromancy isn’t only about raising the dead, in fact, raising the dead is only a small portion of it.
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Fix a class and redesign it from the ground up to be its own unique identity, and implementing another class are mutually exclusive with Blizzard’s so called “Effort” and “Lack of Resources to do so.”
I agree though, and I’ve said this for years. They need to take every single class. Butcher them completely and decide what they want that class to embody as a fantasy for playing it, then design them to fit that fantasy. Then gradually start adding in abilities that fit that fantasy, then specs for ways that class could theoretically be played and encouraging it.
It was obvious they forgot that somewhere around the time they designed three classes to be: “Leather wearing melee class with a lot of mobility and damage.”
Every single class at this point needs a fundamental redesign beginning at the fundamental class and gradually going upward to the actual specs. Some classes are already fine, druids have a pretty carved out and diverse skillset where each spec is actually a completely different approach to playing the class. Pure DPS classes do not get that liberty and it’s doing the same thing with a very slightly different method. Be that warlocks where it’s either: Dots, Pets, or yourself. Mages where it’s “Arcane, Fire, or Frost” or rogues where it’s “Dot damage, consistent damage with better AoE power, or do damage and more damage within these little burst windows.”
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would be interesting to see this be the first expansion with a class introduced either in the middle or towards the end of the expansion.
either way, necromancer has needed to happen for years. i don’t care if it’s similar to things we have, it needs to happen.
Because of why exactly? Because people have begged for it to be a thing because some NPCs were that class? There is literally nothing pointing to “Necromancer needs to be a thing.” aside from people have been crying about it for years, they eventually shut up with unholy dk being a thing and now it’s made a resurgence because “EXPANSION THEMED AROUND DEATH, WE NEED NECROMANCERS!”
At this point I’d rather Blizzard stop designing classes that are basically one offs that are thematically designed around content that we’ll engage with for two years tops. Monks somewhat get a pass because our own soldiers on both factions learned their ways. What about Demon Hunters exactly? What is their objective now that the Legion is gone? Necromancers would fall into the Demon Hunter category.
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oh for the love of god unholy death knights are pretty much necromancers
shooting plagues? check
an ability called death and decay? check
has some cool unholy death ball ability? check
can raise a whole bunch of dead stuff which is pretty much the whole necromancer thing in a nutshell - check
I’d love to see someone come up with a design for a necro on WoW that doesnt have to rip half of the death knight abilties from it
That would be a nice surprise. Who knows, nobody expected allied races to be a thing. They’ve done a lot of unorthodox things over the years.
I think it would make a lot of people happy and entice some into trying for the first time. There’s a lot of appeal in the Necromancer. But of course it would have to be done right.
Doubtful. No posts on WoWhead, MMOchamp, or any of the Youtubers that give out trustworthy datamining information.
Necromancers would be a big deal and everywhere if true.
No, that’s pretty much the entirety of their usage in WoW and how every Necromancer NPC has played out minus a handful just for the sake of having an interesting mechanic. This is excluding necromancers in literally every other game that follow this very specific trend. Utilize the dead to kill a target. If the dead can’t achieve it use dark magic or disease, proceed to utilize the now dead target as a servant to accrue more dead targets for more minions.
If you want to get technical, necromancy in the real world as a practice was more akin to mediums who believed in convening with the dead in order to get some insight as to what happened to them.
The general premise of “Raise the dead as servants, utilize pestilence to achieve having more corpses to manipulate” is pretty much the only thing about Necromancers throughout all of WoW.
Now where have I seen the idea of “utilize disease to kill the target and reanimate its corpse as a servant” before? Eh, it’s not ringing a bell, maybe the Unholy Death Knights could point me in the right direction.
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Eh? The Dead and the Undead are two very different things. Shadowlands is literally the realm of the Dead, not of Undeath.
Forsaken and Death Knights are the embodiment of how Undeath breaks the natural cycle. Necromancers perverse this cycle and are anathema to Death.
I don’t imagine strolling into the Realm of the Dead seeking to destroy what they literally are designed to to, would go over so well with them, yeah?
They have tried and tried again and with each attempt they have been unable to make it work. They wanted Necromancers in classic wow but the idea was scrapped. They wanted to add Necromancers in Wotlk alongside the Death knights but couldnt make it work as the death knight and warlock classes were pretty much similar to the necromancer.
The idea has been asked for many times throughout the years by the community and Blizzard has tried to do it mutiple times throughout the development years of World of Warcraft. Its no surpise they tried again in Shadowlands, and its no surprise again they couldn’t make it unique.
I have no doubt they will try again at a later time as it will still be continued to be a requested class.
Necromancers don’t need a new class, they just need to give Warlocks Undead Glyphs.
That’s literally all Necromancers are; Warlocks. Give players undead glyphs for each specialization, and bada-boom! Necromancers for all.
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I agree that a lot of casters in game can just get alternate spell / name changes with the exact same affect. Like sand / frost mages and necromancer / demonology warlock. Just have “Glyph of Alternate Design” where the name changes, the icons changes, the animations change but they do the exact same thing and the animation is similar in a way from those that they are based off of.
Yeah the cross over between unholy DKs and demon locks would make it just seem stupid
They’d pretty much have to retool unholy DKs to have extremely limited undead and then some how now make locks different aside from having skeletons instead of imps
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Shadow bolt (warlock) = Shadow bolt (Necromancer), Summon imp = Summon Skeleton mage, summon void walker = summon skeleton guard, summon fel stalker = summon giest, summon sexy demon (dont know how to spell that name) = summon some undead with similar design, summon = fel guard = summon abomination. Corruption = shadow word pain (necromancer version) and so on.
I doubt that’s the reason. Just ask Warlocks.
I feel like a good realistic necromancer class would be the combination of shadow priest, unholy dk, and demonology warlocks.
That’s the thing. It couldn’t be done right because your end result would be a diverse class that is nothing like a necromancer in how people are envisioning it, or it would be a class that just feels like a simplified version of two classes smashed together into one.
I can picture it now, the class literally focused on controlling the dead. We should give them an iconic ability. Now this might sound crazy but what if we gave them a channeled effect that summoned a horde of dead minions to attack their foes? Certainly there isn’t something like that in the game, oh boy the Death Knights will be so pleased with the idea they’d wish they had it in their class!
But for real, there’s no way Necromancers could exist without either being a sloppy job feeling like the simple child of two existing classes, or removing abilities from the parent classes. Oh boy, you thought Metamorphosis complaints with DH from the Demo locks was bad? Just wait until you take away the most iconic ability from Death Knights.
which brings me to my previous post about just making a glyph / questline that is similar to the green fire of warlock but just changes the theme of your spec but every spell on that spec is literally the exact same affect.
Honestly, that wouldn’t be a bad idea and I’d be fine with that. The glyph system does need some love.
The other approach would be to somehow manage to make unholy death knight a ranged DPS caster spec that uses cloth. Which is largely unlikely to happen, way too much BS required to fundamentally redesign a class based on one spec unless you made them stances or something for the spec where in melee stance they stacked up disease and in caster stance they utilized those diseases and could better control their undead minion. If they wanted to get creative, make your minion a necromancer that just had derp AI like any pet, then you could dump all your runic power to take control of the necromancer which made your actual player a derp minion and you unlocked more abilities on the necromancer as your runic power drained. Kind of like Void Form.
For real though, I can’t help but feel if unholy death knights were just made into a ranged caster that used cloth armor we wouldn’t really even be having this discussion. Almost like they’re the same thing or something just with one using plate and being melee but the same general vibe.
We have Holy Paladins who were pratically a ranged healer / dps class in mist of pandaria, but they were pratically gods. If it was possible for the holy paladin back in mists they would find a way to make it work with unholy dks.