Necromancer's in wow?

Community General Discussion
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Long post TL’DR at the bottom.

I honestly haven’t really noticed it till recently i’m not sure if they have been named such in the game for a long time or if they are only just now getting renamed to necromancers.

I’m saying this because i recently did the whole of eastern plague lands and saw that some gnolls where necromancers and you went through a whole process of looking for the guy teaching them necromancy.

I, for one, Love the idea of necromancy its part of the reason i play a warlock is because currently in wow the warlock is the closest to a necromancer i can get. But i also don’t see how they could bring them in cause they would have been brought in in the lichking expansion if anything.

Regardless, i would still like to see a playable necromancer class for us in wow. and i have a few ideas on how it might work on the balance of wow and to make it slightly different from most other classes out there aside from casting spells.

I do want to point out that currently we have a melee oriented necromancer so to speak in the Death knight more specifically the unholy Death knight. Them being able to summon that one minion and use it as an added dps to their own is kinda like a necromancer is a way but more focused on themselves over their minions or actual spell casting.

So here is how i think a necromancer could work, First you summon skeletons maybe with a chance of a zombie thrown in there. You do this via a spell maybe costing life over mana but still requiring the use of some mana i’m not sure on that. I do think a combo of mana/health requirements fro a necromancer could be interesting in its own right i feel if that should happen the necromancer should have a self heal in the form of a life sap or a mana tap type spell.

moving on by summon these undead mostly skeletons with again some zombies thrown in they wont be strong they die easy and do a little dps enough to see the damage on the target but not enough to be seen on the dps meter as high dps. The necromancer then uses the bones and or flesh of the his/her minions to cast spells like Bone cage to cc the target or bone spikes to deal damage to the target or flesh something to do damage or cc. Mainly im looking at the necromancer as having to choose between CC and DPS when casting the abilities they would get.

But before casting they have to intertwine the summoning abilites to make sure they have the bones or flesh required to do so. Now there is a slight problem with this though. Where are the getting the corpses for their minions? I think its something like the DK situation where they used to require a body and a reagent but fro the sake of ease they removed both needs and just made the minion pop outta the ground.

With all this said lets talk specs. I feel like you would have three specs. first spec would be something akin to the demonology warlock focusing on the minions and dealing DPS/CC targets, not sure on the name. Next you would get a weird type of healing spec using your own blood/Health fro healing and having to do damage to things to heal yourself and maybe using debuffs to heal your allies via your damage to things to heal yourself and switch between healing allies and healing yourself.

Finally the final spec Being a tank spec… I know im crazy to say tank spell caster right? But hear me out. why not have this spec focused on buffing the minions of the necromancer, Not the dps but the tankyness of them. Maybe adding a spell that makes your minions deal increased threat to a target or an aoe taunt spell that send stuff to your minions and then the necromancer focuses on healing the minions with his own life.

I think that would an amazing addition to the wow class roster and if they take any of my ideas for this i think it would be even better and really bring a uniqueness to a spell caster instead of being the normal spell user this one uses minions. Let me know if people like this idea or if its just not something people want in wow cause i would love a necromancer.

TL’DR: necromancer, specs, minion tank, spell DPS/CC using minions, healing using own health.

Tank spec: Minions tank while you heal minions using health but very little spells for yourself other then cc and spells to keep things on minions.

DPS/CC spec: Minions and weak and die so you use spells using their dead bodies. Skeletons enable bone spells zombies enable flesh spells. Combo of mana and health with more health than mana costs.

Healing spec: Heal using own health then heal yourself from either mana tap like spells or life draining spells.

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As the mechanics in wow are now, a pet based tank would be very difficult as tanks needs mobility and precision placement of mobs that would be pretty much impossible with pets under the current game mechanics. So for this to work they would have to change pet mechanics.

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Unholy can do a lot of ranged spells as well. It can summon multiple ghouls between its base ghoul, skeletal archer, Apocalypse summons ghouls, army of the dead summons ghouls and skeletons.

They meddle in necromancy and shadow magic. Id say they have Necromancer pretty well covered, and the only way to create this generic fantasy everyone has would be to overlap/take away from them

I applaud Blizzard for making a different type of necromancer. The generic one is overdone

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The Lich King, Kel’thuzad and the entire Ebon Blade: “Are we feling jokes to you?”

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I just feel this would bring a uniqueness back into wow with the way this would work is all :slight_smile:

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maybe give dks a ranged spec.

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Besides some tweaks (like giving Frost 2h weapons again…) I would rather they didn’t completely destroy a spec the way they destroyed Survival.

We’re not casters. It’s part of the class lore that we rely on heavy plate armor and our weapons.

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Exaclty dks are not casters. they migth be partly inspired but not necromancers themselves… i want a true necromancer class… not traditional necro but maybe something similar to my idea like using the minions for your spells instead of just casting spells

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naw, im not saying change a spec. make a 4th one. or just make a necromancer class that starts at high levels like demon hunters and only has 2 specs

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I feel i need to point something out. before blizzard start making new classes they really to fix the current classes and bring back either uniqueness to them and/or give us a way to bring uniqueness into our classes.

They already had this via the talent tree’s but we all know those aren’t coming back to retail so they need to do something to fix this before adding any new classes at this point in time.

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Necromancer’s already exist as deathknights.

Trying to add necromancer’s would involve gutting warlocks even more, and gutting deathknights as well.

I’d rather not see more taken away from classes just to force another class with an already existing fantasy. If we are going to put an effort into a new class I’d rather it be something new.

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Deathnights are not necromancers. they are a form of melee necromancer but not a pure spellcasting necromancer. im wanting a spellcasting necromancer. like others have said a deathnight is as much a necromancer as a pally is a priest. not the same thing but similar.

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K my point still stands. I don’t want to see other classes gutted for the sake of adding a class with an existing fantasy.

To make a necromancer work you would need to rip from warlocks, deathknights, and maybe even disc/shadow priests to make it work. I don’t like that.

Want a disease/dot based spec? Go affliction/shadow.

Want a pet based class? Go demonology.

Want blood based healing or draining spells? Affliction/blood dk.

Now making a glyph or quest akin to green fire that changes warlock spells to diseases and minions to undead? Sure go for it. That would be awesome.

But definitely a hard no on trying to make necromancers a class.

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Death Knights are Necromancers. But I do understand your point in that you want a “cloth wearing, ranged caster style” Necromancer.

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How would a spellcaster necromancer differ from, specifically, a demolock?

Presumably you would be raising generic undead, not re-raising the mobs you just defeated (that would either be imbalanced or they would need to make that work as just a reskin) nor would you be raising your own party members, so you’re running around with anywhere from 2 to 10 skelemans or ghouls to do your bidding.

That’s essentially a demolock/unholy amalgam. Bit too much overlap mechanically for it to be its own class, tbh.

What would be cool would be is if that “leak” (emphasis on the quotes) that came out a month or two ago were true, and prestige classes of some sort made it to the game, and warlocks could be reskinned to necromancers.

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More variety is cool. I was even thinking they could easily do a technomancer style as well and have the minions all being robots and such. A gnome technomancer would be interesting.

Depends on what the pets are doing.
I’ve thought a necromancer tank pulling from ideas of Diablo 2 would be neat. the bone armor exoskeleton that necromancer gets on there, then have pets doing the damage while the necromancer takes it, consuming the minions at times to replenish the exoskeleton that protects him. Maybe other abilities to further empower or replenish the minions.

Maybe even the ability to summon a tank minion on occasion like a shaman’s earth elemental that can help out. Big bone golem or some such.

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I feel as if the DK already do partially some things the necromancers iconically do like rez dead corpses. I don’t know if necromancer will ever be a new class because DK’s kinda do the same thing.

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Yeah, but even playing an unholy DK, I’d still rather see a proper caster necromancer done whether it involves retooling unholy or not.

Could easily leave unholy as is, and still add a proper necromancer. Although I’d kinda like to see artifact undead summon that was made the new ability this expansion…was it called Armageddon? Something done to make it more useful. Currently it’s really only useful on bosses or harder mobs as everything else dies before the minions are even fully summoned.

Something I’ve thought that could set a necromancer apart is that while a unholy DK summons a number of minions, this is something a necromancer does with ease and is second nature, so it’s not even really a focus.

The necromancer being a master of summoning the dead basically does this passively. Could add some additional summons too, but I was thinking maybe the minions were your resource, so they’re consumed in the spell casting or consumed to power them up into a better form.
So say you had 6 skeletons that were always present. They could serve as your “auto attack” damage when attacking and when one dies, another shortly replaces it passively. Then the necromancer focuses on empowering these into better forms knights/mages/archers…combining more than one into golems.
Perhaps there’s a certain number of slots for empowered minions…a golem occupies more than one but can tank, or maybe a blood golem deals damage, but causes an AoE Blood splash that heals friends in range.

Other plain skeletons can be consumed to cast things like a bone lance, or maybe an AoE Bone storm spell…a few skeletons are consumed to create a storm of bone shards in the targetted area.

There’s plenty of ways you can set it apart from a DK while still keeping the minion aspect and making it feel different.

The lazy way would just be reskinning a demo warlock.

Most all of the demon hunter abilities are just reskins of abilities from other classes. Could do the same and make a necromancer feel kinda unique compared to a demo reskin.
Don’t have to even change the DK. It’s fine as it’s more of a plate focused melee build that also has summons.
At one point I even thought you could change the summons from skeletons for a DK to spirits to kinda reference the spirits contained in frostmourne/runeweapons, so there’s more of a visual distinction but it’s still summoning minions. Army of the Dead could go to the necromancer while DK keeps it’s own copy called Cries of the Damned that does essentially the same thing but summons a bunch of spirits.

Just have to get creative.

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Pet mechanics are pretty dated, an overhaul would be pretty much welcomed.

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unholy + demonology already have this. you’d wreck these specs and i don’t know if the warlock population has it in them to forgive them for changing demo that much this soon after the last rework and the… meta thing.

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