Some notes before I start actually complaining:
- I love the necromancer, I think LE has the best and most fun to play class like this in all of gaming (Yes, better than Diablo 2 as well).
- I didn’t play every class yet, but so far every ability I specialized in have more than one VALID build path - and I love it.
- The idea to assemble all of your minions into one big boss is super cool idea. Switching spells around to get the most minions out (including exploding zombies and spectres with timed life or vanguards) to assemble the biggest, meanest abomination is super cool.
Actual complaints:
- Abomination has only one VALID build - and this is super sad, because most of it’s nodes are super cool thematically (You can grant it multiple abilities based on minions consumed) and sound very useful, but after respecializing multiple times I discovered they are mostly worthless.
The build: Engorgement, Epicurean, Death in family, Age of Undeath, Meat Grinder and just enough Domination and Unholy reach to get all the previously mentioned.
Damage, attack speed and even more damage + your abomination does not decay. You need 3 types of skeletons and 3 types of mages to assemble for it to work though + you can only have your mages up after creating abomination. If you create normal skeleton it will start to decay. This simply works.
- List of extra abilities we can give to abomination:
A. Arrow nova - This one is unironically decent. It just explodes from abomination without it needing to make a cast animation and the damage is actually not bad when maxed. It is also not locked behind a tons of useless nodes, so if you really want, consider using it.
B. Stomp - This one is not terrible either. It is in the tree you want to go into anyway + it doesn’t have long cast time. It’s just more explosive basic attack from time to time with a stun chance. I don’t think it is worth it, because to get it you must pick extra range anyway and the damage is not great.
C. Devouring souls - On paper it sounds good, especially with upgrade which casts extra soul per mage consumed, so you can have 5 extra souls!. THIS IS TERRIBLE. Abomination has to stop attacking to cast it and it deals less damage than abomination’s basic attacks. This ability actively lowers the DPS + you need to spend 7 points in tree you don’t want anyway! If you want necrotic damage on abomination, just consume a wraith and use reap the damned.
D. Tail slam - This one has huge area of effect (thick line going across entire screen) and on paper is amazing (especially that I love exploding zombies). There are three problems with this ability:
a. Abomination has to stop attacking to cast it, so in reality it actually lowers the DPS (Abomination has AoE basic attacks anyway!)
b. The visuals can make you try to dodge it if you are not used to them, making you waste movement ability and die to actual ability cast by an enemy.
c. It is locked behind THE WORST branch abomination has.
E. Dobule strike - Abomination double strikes and applies bleed from time to time. It has cooldown which is longer than I would like and cannot be upgraded (unlike arrow nova). It is very cheap to get though. I don’t use it myself yet (I don’t have any shard + abomination after all this play time xD), but when I get some points above 20 I will most likely go for it and extra crit chance as well.
Extra mentions:
Boosted damage short after creating abomination + Insta-creation without channeling (eats 5 minions) + increased crit chance + abomination being immobile for higher damage combined with item which teleports minions on your movement ability.
Sounds good, doesn’t work. You invest too many points and it simply does not stack for high enough damage. It also can’t activate attack speed from Death in Family.
Increased crit chance: It is good, very good. The problem with this is simple. You need to have very high crit chance already for it to be ready investing points into… and in my experience when you already have high crit chance it’s better to just boost raw damage output. It is good, but it almost feels like you need at least 3 extra abomination point above 20 to be worth it in my opinion.
All of these have common issue:
Every point you spend on these is a point you are not spending in Death in Family tree - which effectively reduces the damage output. By a lot.
Why this specific build? It simply performs the best. Damage output is crazy, especially with marked for death (I use bone curse for it) and it scales very well with high attack speed and lack of abilities which abomination needs to cast (and thus not basic attack during this time). We could go the tree for slower decay (and I tried it first). The problem with it is very simple: You combine all the minions types (Vanguards, skeletons, mages, zombies, wraiths, golems, bone minions) just for the abomination to die rather quickly anyway… and you don’t get any damage bonuses from the Death in family branch…
On paper the extra health, -35% health decay, half decay speed and life leech sounds like a combination which should keep the abomination alive (I even have this unique ring for extra minion leech and minion life steal on physicall damage) and literally every single piece of my gear is hard focused on minion damage and health. For some reason it just doesn’t live that long. The decay ramp up is just too big.
For spending majority of your points on nodes that are meant to keep abomination alive it simply dies too quickly. Compare it to build where you go full damage and it never decays… It stays alive for ever and has higher damage output. Where is the logic?
Yes, you could go full damage and just skip the node which limits you to skeletons only for even higher damage. The thing is… the abomination will die very fast on it’s own and when you are not limited to just skeletons, you naturally want to consume all the minions possible… so in reality you cast your abomination longer than you actually fight with it.
There are also 2 extremely annoying things which make playing with abomination a nightmare.
- Life Drinker and Effigies can just consume your abomination. All the work to cast abomination to be simply eaten without your control. THESE TWO PASSIVES SHOULD TARGET ABOMINATION ONLY WHEN IT IS THE LAST MINION YOU HAVE.
- To activate attack speed in build where abomination does not decay you need 3 types of mages and 3 types of skeletons (You can’t consume other minions). Sometimes (quite often actually!) the game will spawn only one type of mage, even though I don’t have any node which excludes other types. It is pyromancer the most often, but other 2 types do this as well from time to time.
There are 2 ways to fix it at the moment:
A. Kill all the mages, teleport to other location, teleport back where you were or different location and then try casting them there is a chance the game will properly let you spawn all 3 types now. This method autofails dungeons and monolith though.
B. Kill mages and remove a specialization point from them. It is unacceptable to keep leveling the same spell just to have to lower it again for it to work properly.
So far my abomination have never died to an enemy. It was always life drinker of effigies… and the skeleton mages bug is infuriating.
What I would like to happen:
- Buff every single node except for the Death in Family branch or slightly nerf this branch (and I mean SLIGHTLY. If you overnerf it, it won’t be worth going abomination over other summons at all).
Buff the abilities we can give to the abomination so people will actually consider taking one of them over dumping all points into Death in Family branch.
Especially buff the abilities which have casting time - Tail Slam and Devouring Souls.
Buff the slower decay tree the most. It is not worth spending a single point in this EVER at the moment. Maybe add a node which slows the rate of decay ramp up over time? - Allow Age of Undeath to also consume Vanguards and maybe Bone Minions (Transplant can spawn them) as well. These are skeletons too and require specialisation in other skill to spawn. We wouldn’t be hard locked into specialising into skeletons and mages or soft locked when specialised skills refuse to spawn different types of minions when they are supposed to do so!
- Rework Effigies and Life Drinker so they only consume abomination when it’s the last minion.
- Fix Skeleton Mage’s spawning only one type when nodes selected should allow for 3 types to spawn at the same chance.