Almost everything for minions seems to want you to get rid of them lately. From any buffs that kill your minions to now what 4 different minons that decay quickly or go poof when they attack?
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Well⌠Playing the devil advocate here. Necromancer in Role-playing games have always been all about hordes of disposable minions. So it makes a lot of sense for them to focus on a duration/sacrifice/decay system, and i personally find that more engaging gameplay than just moving while your permanent/immortal minions murder everything without any thought.
Furthermore LE actually gives you an alternative, if you want minions that stay with you forever and even have singular names, you can play primalist and spec into the companions, which are permanent minions that canât even be resummoned (you have to revive them when they die) since they are your âfriendsâ and not just disposable minions.
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As Mintfoxx says, the entire point of the Necro as compared to the Primalist is that the Necroâs minions are disposable & some have decaying hp.
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You sure? I remember minions in D2 lasting til they died. In PoE skeletons had a timer (instead of decaying hps unless you took the node to make them die and explode?) or raging spirits which seemed more like a spell in use than âminionsâ.
For me a timer is better than decaying hps.
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I agree with OP, for me every minion with a decaying system is a turn off, i want to have a reliable army not one that could vanish any moment, one could say that minions with health do that too but for me is easier to track how much life have my minions than to track how much time is gonna last, also if a decaying/time minion have a decaying system and also life like Assemble Abomination is just annoying, because i can track one of them but both is just ridiculous.
If they want to keep doing decaying minions at least copy a system like warcraft III had (i know summoned minios in war III also have hp), put a âlife barâ that represent the time that the minion left before vanish or put a timer on the minion avatar icon
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Grim Dawn necromancer too, skeletons last forever
It seems to me the necro has the minions fight, the primalist fights with his minions, thats the distinction. As I have said before I absolutely detest having decaying or timer minions. If you want that then there are already some out, or ways to make your minions die to do damage. Let those people who want a pure minion build play it without the gimick of âherp derp bag of bone die!â the actual cost of the buffs are insane vs what they provide. If you look at the buffs alone they take basically 4 costs to use. how many other buffs do that? how much do other buffs give? Slot opportunity, spell cost, target cost(IE must have a target summoned), target decay. In addition any of the decent buffs in the tree come at an even larger cost of blind the minion, root the minion, make minion go pop faster decay ALL minions near.
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This is really not an alternative. Minion focused builds are my favorite, but when I tried a full-on companions Beastmaster, it was not a good experience and absolutely does not fill the same gameplay fantasy as the traditional Necro archetype of âminion armyâ. Itâs just not comparable to have only 5-6 pets that are designed with the intent that youâre fighting alongside them.
Just to be clear, though, I also disagree with the scope of OPâs complaint, because the minion army archetype is already met pretty well with Necro as-is. I donât like decaying minions either, but you absolutely donât have to take them to get the traditional minion army gameplay. You can very easily fill out a Necro with zero decaying minions (unless you count Dread Shade, which only barely counts IMO).
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I agree with a few points that you have, I disagree with already met as is, it is more split half and half, with the buffs completely on the decay of minions as such, adding in the other costs involved is to much in my personal opinion. Currently there are only 2 buffs for minions that you can utilize and both end up killing your minions fairly quickly. Dread shade, which I believe should be changed to dread commander as someone else brought up in another thread and set as a perm pet, maybe an option to make it 2 in the tree.
the other is infernal shade, which slaughters the pets at an insane speed.
If you go through the Necromancer tree, they get only a single non decay pet, skele mage, every single other thing in the tree is about killing the pet or decaying pets. To me this is just the opposite of what a necro should be and more of what a warlock should be, curses causing explosions, curses doing aoe fire, decaying minions to spread cursesâŚ
A necro should be about minions that dont just go poof, but atm they get sacrifice (kill pet) Dread shade (kill pet slowly) Abomination (kill all pets for a decaying hp pet) summon wraith (decay pet) the base class of acolyte is a better necro than the necro. hence the reason people are making lichâs and its a âsummoner minion classâ
Lich should be about nasty poisons and disease, Necro should be about undead army that stays around, warlock should be spreading curses burning your soul type stuff making some undead to spread the curse goes along with that, actively dumping minions is the exact opposite of what a necro is.
I mean, my Necro is running around with 17 minions that all never die while I command and support from behind. Thatâs exactly the traditional minion army fantasy as far as Iâm concerned.
Bone Curse and Aura of Decay are two other options and neither of them kill your minions. Debuffing enemies is a different side of the same coin as buffing your minions directly.
It seems to me that you are fixating just on the skills that come from the Necro tree, which I understand, but donât think is entirely appropriate. The Necromancer - just like any other class in LE - is not exclusively the Necro passive tree and Necro skills. It is the totality of what is available to you once youâve chosen the Necro as your spec.
Not for nothing, but necromancers arenât real. There are no rules about what they should or must be. Yes, that particular archetype often falls under the label of ânecromancerâ, but that archetype is not the exclusive definition of a necromancer. A well designed RPG class is not limited to a single archetypical playstyle/fantasy. Weâre perfectly capable, right now, of building and playing a necromancer with minions âthat donât just go poofâ - even when using Dread Shade, which we already agree on our dislike of. It is an exaggeration to say âalmost everything for minions seems to want you to get rid of themâ.
the real problem is that, by making the decaying minions (specifically wraith) last so long, and can be extendable by gear/talents to the point where you have HUNDREDS of them, it goes from class fantasy of disposable minions, to homogeneous clump of nonsense that occasionally inconveniences you by dying, and the same can be said for dread shade and infernal shade, thereâs no REAL cost to using them, since youâll just re-summon the minion and recast the buff, thereâs no purpose behind the punishment, thereâs no real trade off, itâs just a pointless inconvenience that would be better served just not hurting your minions at all.
The necromancer tree itself is almost completely about getting rid of the minions. Yes I am fixated on that as the necromancer tree is supposed to be the pet tree, except its not, its the get rid of your pets tree. It is literally fighting with itself to accomplish anything. Bone curse and AoD are not really minion buff spells, they can if specced, have a small benefit to minions but they are far from being a buff skill for them. The only actual minion buff skills delete your minions. At the moment the tree only gives a single ability for people who dont want to kill off thier minions out of 5? That is not a necromancer, that is either a lich or a warlock.
Generally with AoD most people just build into lich and put some points into necro, it is not a minion skill and should never be treated as such. AoD is your skill and everything else supports it.
My minion build atm is using 18- 19 minions, if i want 2 golems. problem is there really is no good option for another skill. We both agree dread shade needs a change so i wont even go into that. Infernal? that thing nukes minions so they die faster than wraiths not worth all the investment, it should be a warlock staple as a curse not necro. Bone curse is meh at best as you must gear for all minion if you want them to not be trash, transplant? Harvest?really what else is there?
Take a look at the other tree on the list. Lich, it completely fills its role of rot/decay master massive aoe, huge dots, drains, wards⌠all in the tree. It plays much faster, for the most part safer, and is just honestly better than necro as it actually focuses on its specialization. Necro fights its specialization.
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The shade spells only hurt people who dont go bug abuse wraith garbage 300+ minions build. It is not enough of a benefit to justify the cost, and the people who do basically abuse the bug dont care about the detriments because it doesnt matter to them at all.
I donât understand these complaints. Necromancer has the option to play with permanent minions or with decaying minions. Or you combine them.
Infernal shade isnât mainly a minion buff. Itâs a spell that scales with character stats instead of minion stats. The minion buff is a niche branch for very specific builds.
Dread Shade is a great minion buff that can be specced into not hurting your minions (I do that in 90% of my builds).
Bone Curse can also be a great buff. It can apply 30% more damage and different on hit effects (bleed, armour shred).
There are two ways to play decaying minions:
- Work against decay with minion health leech, reg, hp and all the skillnodes that decrease the decay rate.
- Utilize the dying of your minions with all the proc effects on minion death.
Even if I personally favour permanent minion builds, there are people that like the other build options.
Itâs totally ok to disagree with some skill designs. I agree on the clunkyness of Abomination in itâs current state.
But I have to say that I like the most skills and interactions that are presented as if they need to be changed to be of any use or fun. Not everything is 100% straight forward. Thatâs also a thing I really like about LE.
If you have a desire for more permanent minion skills or buffs, maybe suggest some additional skills instead of trying to change existing skills entirely.
I think of the abomination as the opposite of say D2 butcher (fresh meat) he was always dripping flesh off him (decaying) as he ran around the room. In that sense, the butcher is fodder for the player, much the same way an abomination acts as fodder for the enemies.
Donât forget the freeze, chill and cull that Bone Curse can provide.
I will stop you there, Necromancer in its current form is about slaughtering your own minions, period. All but one skill for keeping minions around comes from Acolyte, not from necro. Dread shade, as was pointed out in another thread should be a minion, preferably a perm minion. It is not a point to combine or work with one or the other, you do not really have an option to have a perm only, you can easily make a decaying build, or 2 or 3 with all the decaying options granted. Think about it, you get skeletons (from acolyte) golems (from acolyte) and finally skele mages (from necro) thats it for perm minions. you can as a very sub optimal choice spec bone curse or transplant to grant you sub par trash minions. For decaying minions we have, any of the minions with sacrifice/dreadshade/infernal shade the new exploady zombies, abomination, wraiths and the afformentioned transplant and bonecurse minions that naturally decay.
The entire decaying option could just be put into warlock as it fits more into curses and burning souls and make the necro an actual undead army type perm minion class. While I have no problem with just doubling or tripling the options available to necromancers and i doubt most of the people wanting these changes would honestly mind, it does end up showing massive favoritism to a single class as it now has 3x the skills of any other class. Just let the necromancers have the perm pet route, let warlocks have the sacrificial pet route and that would honestly solve everything.
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It doesnât matter if the permanent minions you build around come from the base Acolyte tree or from the mastery necromancer tree. There are tons if useful passive nodes in the necro tree to buff a permanent minion build.
No, they donât decay. Skeleton Vanguards are permanent.
No, it should not. It is a shade and by its theme a debuff of the object it is applied to.
By your line of thought a lich should perform just as well as a necro as a minion build since they have a lot of stuff in passive tree to help minions, ohh wait it does perform almost the same. even though it also specializes in other things it does perform about the same.
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What game are you talking about?
In Last Epoch the Lich doesnât perform the same with minions than a Necromancer.
If you really think this is true, theres absolutely no basis for us two to go on any further in this discussion.