Mostly this is gonna be for necro. I’m aware that Lich needs some love too, though, I’m just not sure how the Lich is gonna compare to the Warlock and don’t wanna step on Warlock toes too much. Necromancer is very clear about what it is though.
General commentary/suggestions/thoughts:
Rework damage types over the Acolyte subclasses. Acolyte can currently scale off of physical, poison, necrotic, fire, and cold (mostly minions). This is a large spread, and several of these damage types are barely half supported. It would take work, but consider dropping both fire/cold for void including rebalancing acolyte specific items, such as Lich’s Scorn. This gives void damage new life in LE, fixes the way too many elements that Acolyte can have (reducing it from 5 to 4). Compare this to Primalist (4, phys/cold/light/poison), Mage (3, light/cold/fire), Sentinel (4, phys/fire/void/light), Rogue (5, who also needs love, phys/fire/cold/lightning/poison). It’s also thematically appropriate that the class most typecast for being “evil” would get access to the lore-“evil” element.
Add more synergy and skill support for the Damned condition. There’s a bit of half-support spread between some skills and items, but it doesn’t get quite the love that every other damage over time ailment seems to get. There’s very few chances to focus on or scale it.
Either remove or standardize and increase support for the “wisp” nodes in Drain Life, Spirit Plague, and Soul Feast. They are useless currently. Instead of “chance on kill” consider committing to the necrotic or poison wisp entirely, and give them a chance on either hit or chance per second. Also consider having them not be classified as minions, or add more (meaningful) minion support to these skills, or simply add them to other relevant skills with minion support type abilities already.
I’m sure I’m not the only one who looks at the Acolyte/Necromancer/Lich passive tree and is woefully disappointed when comparing it to the Runemaster tree. I imagine, and hope, that the Warlock release will resolve this but I’m saying it here just in case every single other person didn’t notice: there are no “threshold” bonuses in the entire acolyte/lich/necro passive trees. There are some “doesn’t scale with points”, but those can become one point wonders instead of “it’s worth it to invest 5/8 points into this node” like the Runemaster has on… ~19 different passives. Wow.
Here are more specific suggestions, I just chose random names for new node suggestions, no promise the names haven’t already been used.
Specific Skills:
Infernal Shade
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Add a necrotic conversion branch for Infernal Shade. Add Damned support?
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Consider a node for Infernal Shade that removes the DoT tag and simply makes it hit repeatedly, for better ailment support. Or just add better ailment support to Infernal Shade, I guess? Kind of like how the Runemaster’s Glyph of Dominion gets increased ignite frequency scaling with ignite chance.
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Consider changing the “Fire Burst” to “Bone Nova” and hiding it behind the physical conversion. It’s a skill Acolyte is already familiar with, it has some synergy/crossplay/style for Zombie->Infernal Shade, Zombie->Marrow Shards, Zombie->Sacrifice.
Summon Wraith
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Buff “Spectre of Death” Damned Chance on Death → 2/4/6 Stacks of Damned on Death. This may seem high but 20 mana to apply 6 stacks of Damned to a group enemies (after a considerable delay, without really being able to directly target) isn’t really a good value either, but it’s better and plays well with Aberrant Call and later suggestions.
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Add a branch to Summon Wraith dedicated to Wraiths dying near the “Spectre of Death” node. Below are some ideas. I’m aware these could have potential “strong synergy” with Volatile Zombies. That’s part of the point.
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Hungry Ghosts - +5 mana cost, -10% less Wraith health. When a Wraith dies, it summons 1 Wandering Soul in its place. This uses your Wandering Souls skill tree and your stats. This makes Spectre of Death useful for non-minion-damage necromancers (because of the Damned scaling in Wandering Soul) without forcing player scaling on Spectre of Death. Also it’s cool. Instead you could make this into the wisps for the stuff above, if you want it exclusively for minions.
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Boney Boy - -10% less Wraith health. When a Wraith dies, it casts Summon Skeleton in its location. Costs mana equal to Summon Skeleton, uses Summon Skeleton tree. Can encourage normal recycling minion builds, or even Sacrifice fun.
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Taste for Revenge - When a Wraith dies, your nearest non-Wraith minion gains +4 Added Necrotic(Physical? Untyped?) Damage for 4 seconds. This buff can stack. This encourages “single strong minion” builds like Archmage, Abomination, or Golem but can also be decent with just mixed minion builds, even for minions that don’t otherwise get much support.
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Buff/change/fix the Summon Wraith poison branch so that the projectiles actually hit (and therefore, apply other ailments), for minion ailment support. Consider making it a base projectile that gives all ailments 25% increased duration and does very little base poison damage or added damage scaling. This could also change Spectre of Death to apply poison. Similarly, the Flame Wraith node could change Spectre of Death to apply ignite.
Assemble Abomination
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When one of your minions dies, the Abomination heals x% of its max life. (or reduces/resets the decay speed? Adds support for an active Abomination build without having to pause to re-summon abomination)
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When you directly cast a minion spell, (This is the same as above, and might be done instead of above. Might be better this way, to prevent Cycle of Putresence from trivializing the above node. Dealers choice.)
Harvest
- Buff the Spirit Shard nodes. They’re awful. Maybe make it so that your minions get +x% more damage, where x is the number of spirit shards you have, and the shards simply last a duration instead of expiring at 13. This encourages active Harvesting, encourages up close/risky play, encourages different stat spread (melee aspd), which also encourages necrotic res shred in the tree. Also, how cool would it be to Summon Skeletal Mage into enemies with the Death Knight branch and just have you and your boys cleavin away? The answer is very cool.
Dread Shade
- Change or add to the Symbiotic Apparition node so it’s always summoned on YOU and no longer drains life at all. Maybe even make it an aura instead? Encourages an active minion+melee build with risk and lets you play with minions who can die without having to constantly re-cast Dread Shade, as long as you risk getting in melee. Also pairs well with Martyrdom node, and removes the ‘penalty’ from it by making you assume the risk, as well as Aura of Decay, and Bone Curse.
Summon Skeletal Mage
- A node off of Archmage called Simulacrum that makes Archmage use some of your stats instead of minion stats? (or in addition to minion stats?) This one just kinda came to me, but I like the idea of providing some possible fun synergy for non-necromancer’s to step into the necromancer skills.
Soul Feast
- This has some very basic minion support behind Damned. If you changed the “on kill” trigger to an “on hit” trigger for the Wisp, and maybe added a few new minion nodes behind it, you could have some active fun play for necromancers.
