(for the sake of not quoting a huge post, i will just provide a link to the post i’m referencing here: I'm worried how builds are getting slashed, rather than being balanced - #39 by Trasochi )
So, in the above post, a dev by the name of “Trasochi” elaborated on their goals when adjusting the functionality of Wandering Spirits, and stated that it was meant to reduce screen clutter for the sake of multiplayer. and when i read that, initially my blood was boiling because they never talk to us about why they keep making necromancers so god awful to play, but as soon as a lich player stubs their toe, the lead dev appears out of the clouds with a band-aid and a warm glass of milk to make everything better for them… and then I realized that this rationale likely also applies to the necromancer.
think about it, the recent changes to wraiths and abomination had something big in common: they cause you to have less minions on the screen. and less minions means less clutter, which doesn’t benefit the necromancer. it benefits MULTIPLAYER.
Necromancers are being sacrificed for multiplayer to work, and initially I
thought this was a stupid plan, but then i continued thinking about it, which prompted me to take a screenshot that I tried to upload to this post, but this forums as it turns out doesn’t not actually accept the file types that it claims to accept, but basically imagine 2 enlarged pyre golems, 2 big ol fire wraiths, 10 flame archers, 5 pyromancers, and fire vomit zombies all active on a screen at once attacking an amount of enemies that constitute maybe 1/4 of the screen. then light all of that on fire, and imagine that there’s 3 more necromancers doing the same thing. So realistically, I can see why this is a problem, so how do we fix it?
2 real options and a joke option.
Option one: F*ck it, let the necromancers do their thing and don’t destroy an entire class for the sake of multiplayer.
Option two: make the necromancers like the blue mage from final fantasy 14, just make them overpowered gods that can do anything and are clearly the best class, but they can only be played in single player, and don’t get placed on the leaderboard for anything.
Joke option: All you have to do is just delete the necromancer and you won’t have this problem.
I feel like that would move away from the necromancer fantasy, which was big army go brrr, removing max minions more lends to what the beastmaster has going on with their elite squad orientation.
To be fair, that “necromancer fantasy” is the stereotype and doesn’t necessarily need to be followed. It could be as simple as just using corpses and skeletons to cast spells. Bone Armor, Bone Prison, Bone Lance, etc. That probably treads too much on the toes of the Last Epoch Lich concept though.
there’s also the upcoming rune master and falconer minion fantasies to worry about, you’d want each class to be unique and all that, but there’s only so many ways you can pull it off as a concept that still works in a balancable way.
Hello everyone!
I recently chose a class that I would like to play this game and I really liked the necromancer - because of this mess (I played as a necromancer in another PrOjEct, if you know what I mean) and came here, because a necromancer is - and there is disorder, chaos, beautiful balls of fire flying in all directions from skeletal magicians, etc., I came to play not in multiplayer, but in single player, so why do I need these changes for the sake of a mode that I’m not even going to play ? But will the necromancer’s pets interfere with other players in multiplayer? In other projects - you can breed your army up to 60 !!! minions (I have an achievement in another PrOjEct, I can proof it) and no one complains, this is normal, this is a necromancer!
There is no need to cut the necromancer’s army - the meaning of playing in this class is lost.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but there are definitely reasons other than balance why having 60 minions may not be good for the game… especially when the game is currently at a state where even firing projectiles on an empty map can occasionally cause framerate issues. The devs are doing great work, but the reality is that there are performance issues currently that high minion count will definitely not help.
Of course, I understand that this may affect performance, on my own PC it may not be able to cope with this on the Unity engine. But, just for understanding, because I did not write about this in my post above, I want to clarify that 60 minions were given for a while and that is quite difficult, on average, you run with three less … about 25-30 … But if you remember how things were going with that project - at the beginning, despite their own engine, the optimization was much worse …
the current maximum that i know how to get (although it’s difficult to do) is
11 skeletons
8 wraiths
6 zombies
5 mages
3 vanguards
2 golems
1 abomination
and indeterminable amount of proc based minions or extremely temporary minions
so comfortably 35 (i’m not counting the abomination)
I really hope that the developers will find a solution that suits everyone and will not reduce these quantities, and in the future, after solving the problems with optimization and multiplayer, they will also give the opportunity to increase this quantity.
in which example? i think you may have responded on the wrong post…
but that aside, it makes little sense that the abomination doesn’t gain the skills by default, then the they are buffed through the skill tree. like imagine if shamans had a blank totem that didn’t do anything, and to even spawn it, you have to sacrifice a different totem, but the blank totem didn’t gain any of the qualities of the sacrificed totem UNLESS you had skill points invested to make it.
in the case of the abomination it’s like, say i feed it a mage, i should reasonably expect it to cast some spells.
it’s more a matter of logic than of tuning, but if you’re referring to my other post on the abominations, each of my suggestions addressed tuning as well.
The way I read it, the Primalist is more about taking care of your minions and empowering them through natural abilities, while the Necromancer is more about curses and draining spells that impact your minions as well as the enemies.
All of the discussions I’ve seen so far rotate around the concept of choosing all minion skills and having them contribute to a build in some way. In terms of damage, the Skeleton Archers feel the most balanced while the other minions contribute less to the build as a whole (which is why most of the leaderboard Necros were based off Crit multipliers for Archers).
That only feels like half the puzzle to me. There are multiple items that emphasize the Cursing aspect of it (Sinathia’s Set was a huge burst of originality and then kinda fell of the face of the Earth, as I’ve heard nobody talk about it), and we do have a Warlock class coming that focuses on Curses even more.
I find the idea of Necros being unviable because of the minion changes (and yes, I know it’s quite a bit, but Volatile Zombies is a huge plus for minion builds, and big changes are going to invoke a lot of good discussion and feedback) to be a bit dramatic, as we’ve barely scratched the surface on making creative builds. The biggest challenge for me as been obtaining good defenses, but having the curses provide heavy debuffs (which could be the Wraith’s niche if they’re going to up and revamp the skill) could provide some great functionality outside of “pets = more DPS brrr.”
the acolyte maybe, the lich definitely, the necromancer, never.
another reason why necromancers shouldn’t be a suicidal class that kills their only source of toughness (even if it’s unreliable in the face of aoe)
the fundamental issue here is that we don’t get other options. the necromancer mastery fully funnels us into minions as our only viable option, as minions is the only thing that it does.
we don’t get to do our own damage, and if you try, then you’re playing a high level acolyte with a handicap, not a necromancer.
we don’t get to be a forge guard who gets to summon minions WHILE doing his own damage, we don’t get to be a beast master who has actual synergy with his own minions because he’s not constantly killing and re summoning them. we get to be “all the minions go BRRrr” this is our only niche, and right now it’s terrible.
I don’t see any basis behind that statement. I can certainly test out that theory for you, but there are plenty of good passives + affixes in the Necro tree that can the very least be tested (and I mean actual testing in Empowered Monos) to see what skills are useful, what are not, and where can the Necro-specific skills be improved.
As for defenses, the only skill I see that provides Frailty (reduced damage for enemies) is Spirit Plague, which can be spread by Dread Shade when it expires (I don’t know if that means if it only applies if you fulfill the full 20 seconds of Dread Shade or if the minion dies while under Dread Shade’s buff). It’s a nice form of defenses that can definitely be placed on a minion skill so that you passively have those defenses where other Acolyte builds need to apply them manually.
I am agreeing with you that the Necro minions skill trees from over 1.5 years ago are too cluttered with fluff and not enough things that help the Necro actually survive (mind you, this is also an issue with the Primalist minions skills, specifically the Bear and Sabertooth). I’d love the Wraith tree to be more than just "decaying pets that apply DoTs or throw more projectiles at the screen. I’d love to see a minion whose main job is to apply damage reduction or interact with Dread Shade’s non-draining ability to provide multiplicative returns where the main Acolyte abilities don’t.
The patch is only a week old, and I don’t know how many high-level Necros there are who even have all the high-level affixes necessary to even try to push the Leaderboard. I only have a single level 80 Necro, and any additional items and idols would involve leveling a new Necro from the ground to even attempt to test. There are multiple 0.8.3 minion builds already posted on Youtube (some by Boardman21, some by Zeckar, and there’s Tunk’s old 1,000 Wave Necro where we’d have to test and see how far the Dread Shade changes affected it).
Only thing to do is actually play the game and see what are the main stopping points that are preventing the build from going further (HP, damage reduction, minion damage not being enough). I’m sure the devs are taking in all this feedback and seeing how to improve the non Skeleton builds (as they’re clearly capable of going far, as evidenced by Tunk’s leaderboard Skeleton Crit build).
the necromancer mastery grants +1 skeleton, +1 mage, 50% minion damage.
any passives than benefit our own damage can be picked up by a lich.
it’s a minion class whether you like it or not.
