Detailed feedback on all Acolyte skills

Hello.

I played the Acolyte and his subclasses a lot.
I thought a lot about his skills.
I wrote this big topic hoping to help Devs and I hope they will read it :slight_smile:
And you fellow player, what is your opinion?

Rip Blood

Excellent skill. All branches of the skill have their uses.

Most often this skill is taken for the search for life, mana and ward, automatically launched Transplant.

The Rip Blood + Transplant combination is so effective and provides so much defensive efficiency, that most builds include it. I perceive this great efficiency (compared to others as negative for the diversity of builds …

Two little useful nodes:

https://imgur.com/i2eyseZ

Rip Blood costs little mana. Regeneration included. Unless you have -100 in mana because of a Chain Sacrifice + Blood Wraith, this node is very rarely taken.

https://imgur.com/ToxXKV4

I haven’t found any use for this node yet. The minions orient themselves well, and it would be harmful to constantly see them change targets.

Summon Skeletons

I find this skill almost perfect. All branches are useful and used in different builds (pure summoner, priest etc.)
I give a critical opinion on three things:

https://imgur.com/w4PebmH

Dread Phalanx so far seemed useless to me (except to reduce hardware slowdowns).

We certainly get + 80% multiplicative damage (so a real + 80%), but we have half the skeletons. So half the HP. Fewer targets to distract the enemy.
In addition, if we use skeleton archers, the chances of Freeze, Chill or Ignite are halved (since we have half the skeletons).

The advantage is that if you have 11 Skeletons, the total number of Dread Phalanx Skeletons will be 6 and not 5 (because the whole thing is rounded up).

https://imgur.com/Qe0NNWu

I like the spirit of this node.
But the reality is that people take Empty the Graves instead (which invokes 1 then 2 additional skeletons).
For two skill points invested, they have 3 skeletons invoked at 100% probability, immediately available.

Whereas Immortal, for three points, gives a 30% probability that a single skeleton will be summoned after three seconds.

In my opinion 10% is too little. It would take 15% for this skill to be interesting. With 3 points invested, that will make a 45% probability of a resurrection.
That said, I am disturbed by the existence of builds around the Chain Sacrifice.

Today Sacrifice is a skill that exclusively used to sacrifice skeletons to the chain. Players summon skeletons and then sacrifice them, endlessly, as quickly as possible.

Suddenly, making Immortal stronger would make this Sacrifice build (which I find poor, and far from the spirit of Sacrifice in my opinion) more powerful than it already is.

Anyway, this node is in the current state, not useful for 90% of cases.

https://imgur.com/df3dimt

Rogue skeletons are currently of little use. Armor shreding has almost no effect on endgame.

Mark for Death

This skill is very effective. Being able to increase the damage taken by enemies from +30% to +55% is universally useful.

However, as many players have said, this skill is a no brainer, rather boring to use.

You must curse each group of enemies, then use another source of damage.

The Chill effect is useful. Terror is less so.

Bone Prison has great potential, but as it stands this node is not interesting. Nobody uses it seriously. The 20 second cooldown time is huge.
I don’t know what to do to revalue this node.

There is also the problem of lower protection, which becomes almost useless at the Endgame. Half of the nodes decrease protection from enemies. But it’s an other problem.

In the end Mark of Death should be reworked I think, to offer a real tactical diversity.

Marrow Shards

Marrow Shard does not interest players because:

  • It consumes a lot of health, which makes it almost essential to be a Low Health build (and therefore a Lich).

  • It does damage online, like the Desintegrate spell. It is not wide area damage.

  • The tree on the right dedicated to the Bone Splinter, seems completely useless. Damage too low, impact zone difficult to control? Synergy with other skills non-existent?

  • Some skills are useful but bring too hard a disadvantage. I’m thinking of Bone of the Follower, which destroys a Minion with each cast. And Bone Knives, which doubles the damage, but removes any area effect.

So there would be a lot of changes to make your skill attractive compared to others.

Harvest

Very little skill used by players.
The two main problems are 1) the Acolyte is a fragile class in close combat and 2) this skill is well thought out but requires too many points invested in the nodes to be effective.
I believe that some nodes should have less points to invest, and be more efficient.

Wandering Spirits

Almost all the nodes of this skill are useful. It is widely used.
The tree of nodes on the left dedicated to the Fear effect, is never used, because Fear is useless (except on Transplant), see harmful if one seeks to kill the enemies quickly.

Most of the time players seek to do poison damage.
Some players use it to generate some mana and ward.

Personally I do not like the skills which are effective if we use them in automatic recast (numlock).
I do it myself, but I find it a shame that an active skill ultimately becomes a pure passive skill.

Transplant

The skill every Acolyte uses in any build.
Extremely more effective if combined with Rop Blood.
Few weak nodes:

Purgatory and Ivory (The Bone Minion are permanants) are in my opinion useless, as the Acolyte constantly Transplant, he does not need more life spawn for its minions.
Anemia (-2% health cost per point) has a very very weak effect.

Hungering Souls

A very thematic skill but very little used because underpowered.
Many players criticize the “Isolation” node, which reduces the number of souls to 1. A loss of Area of Effect which is not compensated by powerful effects.
The nodes give rather weak bonuses. For example :
https://imgur.com/F7MThAG

Players have suggested that Wandering Soul should be able to briefly own the targets. Maybe during a critical hit, or when it kills a target?
I find the idea very good and thematic.

Summon Bone Golem

Much more interesting skill since the Threat was debugged.
The golem brought to level 4 of Threat, is an enemy magnet. The Golem perfectly fulfills its role as a tanker now.
All Bone Nova nodes are effective if coupled with a spell that hits your golem very frequently (who talked about Marrow Shards?).
The nodes that increase the resistance of the golem seem powerful (but I haven’t tested them yet).

Critics:

https://imgur.com/sde0xLt

  • I don’t see the use of Twin Golem. It decreases by 50% (multiplicative) all damage of the golem. It also decreases Threat by 50% (since, I believe, the size is totally linked to Threat, but maybe I was wrong?).
    If you want to do damage (physical or magic) with your golem, this node is negative. And it’s the same if you want to tank.

  • The Blood Golem is pointless. The Blood Orbs he leech are far too weak. He would have to use the player’s Blood Orb (but this spell is already very useful and used in almost all builds).

  • The Fire Golem is disappointing. Even with equipment that increases the fire damage inflicted by Minions. And in addition I find that it consumes too many skill points to be fully mounted (17 skill points if you want to max it out completely!).
    I do not know what to do, but I fear that no one will take the Fire Golem as it is.

  • The Spectral Golem is very interesting. It seems a bit devoid of specialization nodes, but it is self-sufficient.

Spirit Blagues & Soulfeast (No Feedback)

No feedback because not enough tested.
I let connoisseurs speak on the subject.

Summon Skeletons Mages

Excellent skill. All nodes are useful.
All of them? No ! Only one leaves to be desired: Archmage.

Who will sacrifice a slot just to get a Minion Casteur?
Who will have more damage but not more HP.

I suggest that the Archmage has an additional talent, that of using the player’s skills.

Thus, an archmage using Sacrifice will do much more damage.
Likewise with a Death Knight archmage who will use Hungering Souls.

It seems to me an elegant and natural idea to make the Archmage really attractive in certain builds.

Sacrifice

A thematic and interesting skill. Unfortunately, this spell is only used competitively in one way. 3/4 of the skill branches are ignored.
This competitive way is to constantly spam Skeletons + Chain Sacrifice with the maximum aera of damage, and damages increased.

The Bone Nova branch is ignored. I do not know exactly why. Players do more damage with normal damage, combined with Chain sacrifice.

The Blood Wraith branch is very rarely used. Crimson Horror (improves a lot the power of the Blood Wraith) is nevertheless a fascinating node. I think here is why:

I tried to summon lots of Blood Wraith with Sacrifice. It’s working but it’s complicated to use, and no so efficient.

You need to constantly manualy resummon them from your skeletons. You need one skeleton slot locked for your blood wraith. You need to not create chain sacrifice with all your minions. Which can happens, as your Blood Wraith can connect with your new created Skeleton pack. You should go Bleed, as Blood Wraith are great to inflict Bleeding (and Leeching).

Finally, it’s much more simple to simply use Summon Wraith. Auto cast spell. They are much more on the battles (usefull for some reasons). And they do not lock one slot for skeletons.

https://imgur.com/Tna9PId

Last Sacrifice is useless.

In the end, I would say that it is especially not normal that Chain Sacrifice is essential in any Sacrifice build. We should be able to sacrifice a minion one by one, effectively.
And personally I don’t really like the idea of the build which continuously switches Summon Skeleton / Sacrifice, to ultimately make a simple zone spell. I find it a bit poor.

Summon Wraith

really like this skill. It is very varied. We can make Wraith of all kinds: necrotic damage, leechers, fire, poison.
Most nodes have their uses.

The nodes linked to the Corpses, which start with Haunting (bottom right) are enigmatic and in the state of little use. But I’m sure it will be clearer when the skills related to the Corps are available.

https://imgur.com/X2UA1gh

Locus of Death seemed unusable for the moment. Even in Arena, it seems to me much more useful to have Wraith capable of moving.
But I like the originality of the node.

Drain Life

I really like this skill. Original, interesting.

Pustulent End (Necrotic explosion on mob killed) and its nodes seemed to me underpowered, but I haven’t tested it enough. It must be said that there are so many interesting nodes, and too few skill points available.

Grim Harvest (Leech 10 mana on each minion hit by the spell) is essential as soon as you use Dark Shackles, which pumps an astronomical amount of mana.

https://imgur.com/mbPT1tB

I also really like Dark Shacles and Grasp of the Damned. They transform comes out into something else entirely. A very good combo if you use a lot of Minions.
Note apart: I find that the visual and sound effect of Drain Life is poor. Not very impressive.

The Condemnation node, which gives the Damned element, seemed very weak to me.

Aura of Decay

A very interesting skill, with multiple uses. You can heal your minions, and boost their poison damage. We can decrease the power of enemies.
Apart from the Armor Shrering problem, underpowered in endgame, I have no complaints about the nodes of this skill. :slight_smile:

1 Like

Since you haven’t included Reaper Form (and also fairly new death seal) i assume you haven’t invested much time/points into Lich Mastery Class? (Lich can be tanky if you wanna go that route)
I will give some feedback on the Lich’s skills im using in my Melee Lich build and you haven’t touched on much.

Harvest is by far my favorite skill in the game. Hell playing a Melee Lich was probably the single most outstanding experience in this game and the primary reason i even got into the game (at first). And i still love it.

Harvest goes hand in hand with either Mark for Death or Spirit Plague(Any curses, probably there will come even more with the Warlock Mastery). And while i really like and enjoy the playstyle, Harvest lacks a bit scalability (just 70% added damage effectivness), which i woudl guess was initially introduced, because the skill was designed and balanced around using it in conjuction with Mark for Death(at that time the only "curse).
While Harvest is really really great for clearing it lacks singletarget capabilities. Even with fully specced into crit and all direct damage nodes i can achieve no statisfying singletarget/boss killer experience.

Since that low singletarget damage i tend to not even try going into that route and use as a tool for ward generation and trash clearing, which this skill really excels at.

Some quick nodes on the minions/utility/DoT side of the Harvest Tree(Top/Right), even though i haven’t played such builds as extensivly with harvest and i generally don’t like DoT builds i feel like all of those nodes seem fine for their playstyle.

As you said, Harvest could use some more effecient nodes, that take a few less points for the same gain(espeically the Symbol of Loss Node, which gives increases the damage against cursed enemies further). That node is really good, but 7 Points is huuuuuge and i feel liek the same value from 4-5 nodes would be still justified.

Also i think Harvest could use a few singletarget/other means of scaling damage related nodes. here are some ideas:

  • If Harvest just hits one enemy it deals X% more(multiplicative) damage (1 point node)

  • Harvest can just be used with a 2H Melee weapon but deals significalty more damage (and maybe slightly increases area or make it THEN scale with weapon range)

  • Harvest does not scale with attack speed but deals significantly more damage(also maybe add something similar to shamans tempest strike were excess unused atack speed into some other stat within Harvest scales

On another very positive node i wanted to highlight some of the nodes that i absolutly love and wanna keep:

  • “Mirror Soul” which gives 1% of Max HP as ward on cursed enemy hit. I really love Max HP Ward Hybrid builds and there are certainly not many effiecient ways to support thsoe atm, nevertheless i like them

  • “Life Eater” which gives 1 HP per Int per Hit. Same as Mirror Soul, really like the hybrid nature of this. And it scales very well.

  • Elements Of Death which converts all damage(including added damage from items) to necrotic damage. This is a really cool node, which makes your dependency on BiS items a little less. Also very nice.

Mark For Death

Themetically and mechanically a really nice and still straight forward skill. Especially in conjuction with Harvest the synergy and theme is really awesome.
My suggestion would be either:

  • An additional node which increases the cast speed dramatically(mabye 1 or 2 points behind the mana efficiency or duration node)

  • Or a 1-Point node which makes this skill instant(or HUGE cast speed increase) when using a melee weapon

This skill feels really clunky on a non-caster build, like the one i play. (With no cast speed affixes)

Death Seal
I just wanna applaude to EHG and especially whoever came up with the idea of this skill. (Please @Sarno tell me who did make this skill???)
You not only came up with an insanely unique idea (to the best of my knowledge never done before in an aRPG, or any other similar games), but also integrated it in such a way that it is viable and not just a gimmick. On top of that with an absolutley awesome and varied skill spec tree.
Seriously… :clap: :clap: :clap: :clap: :metal: PERIOD

Reaper Form
This was the thing that convincted me to buy this game, this skill handedly brought me into this game. From a pure deisgn and themetic standpoint. amazing.

The only suggestion i have for this skill would be a node for cooldown recovery speed. My whole build basically tries to sit 100% in this form, but since the great cooldown and very few sources of cooldown recovery speed(which is a good thing) i often try to slow down after leaving reaper form, because i have an very aggressive build with allows me to leech and facetanky everything, but without the saftey backup of Reaper Form i often feel vulnerable.

Put a 3 or 4 Points nodes behind “Mistress of Decay”, which is the node that let Reaper Form decay slower, which fits the playstyle of maintaining a high uptime of Reaper Form.

Hey, congrats you reached the end of this Wall of Text. :man_facepalming:

Sorry for my extraordinary long rant, but i am really invested in this class and wanna see it succeeding(especially with my favorite playstyle of this game)

TL:DR

  1. Give Harvest better singletarget capabilities
  2. Give Mark For Death Cast Speed increases
  3. Give Reaper Form Cooldown Recovery Speed Node
2 Likes

Hi fire necro and also a specialised skeleton mage necro. Fire necro got me to about 160 and at no fault of minions being too weak but by me being 1 shot. Skills were fire archers mages wraiths and golems. Minions were tanky and dished out high damage and often sustaining between 50-60 wraiths.

Skelly warriors are quite weak being often the only minion type to die and deal nebulous damage bar a ignite stack here and there

Skelly mages - very dissapointing I saw all the unique affixs for skelly mages and specd into that got ym chest piece and helmet with 150% sklly mage dmg +48 and 52 skelly mage adaptive damage. As well as a full set of supporting minion affixs. They are weak. Atrociously so. Hitting for 500-1000 at the highest which overall isn’t horrible damage the issue is I have to sacrifice my survivability by committing everything to them.

Fire golems - I took twin fire golems. Damage was mediocre fairly tanky didn’t die too often but rather unimpactful

Wraiths - fire wraiths are the meat and bones of my build everything else is just a meat shield. By having two idols that increase the chance of wraiths been flame wraiths you can get 100% flame wraith chance. The good thing about them is they are ranged decay slower and deal more damage. Ranged wraiths + arena + the node for 100% dmg for the inability to move = purfect. Spec into that node + mass summoning and the cdr and your pumping these bad boys out and they will smack everything into oblivion.

Transplant - movement ability + bone armor and mana gain. Pretty simple ability. Either rework or change the blood skeleton nodes they are useless unless their sole purpose is to take 1 hit then die.

Necro fills the niche in comparison to other classes seems to underrperform due to low damage squishy minions and the vulnerability of the necro him self which is magnified by massive fps drops when you have near 100 minions. It will struggle to be up there with the rest until majority of people can play without the screen stuttering but still a overall fun choice

1 Like

Best use for those guys is transplant sac bomb I’ve found.

Yes the Pyro Golem is weak. Using two golems does not improve anything, as their damage is halved, which includes all types of damage (fire aura, melee attacks).

I agree that fire archers, and flame wraith are not weak.

As you said, the Summoner’s real problem is the massive FPS drop he experiences. The Flame Wraith appears to be particularly harmful. This drop in FPS is the primary factor that makes me die: I can no longer control the movement of my character.

This topic was automatically closed 60 days after the last reply. New replies are no longer allowed.