Lich and Necromancer Skill Tree Nodes Suggestions

[Heavy]

So @sauin suggest some stuff in anotehr thread that was not entirely fitting for that thread, but still worthy to discuss IMO.

Here are the suggestions:

@sauin

Sacrifice
Turns into Corpse Explosion. Only works on corpses on the ground but does X% more damage.

Bone Curse

Bone Prison now can be used to trigger Corpse Explosion. Corpse Explosion triggered this way does NOT get the X% more damage.

Summon Skeleton

You can summon 5x your usual amount and it works as an aura now, consistently refreshing your summons. They are however, considerably weaker.

Wandering Spirits

Enemies killed while Wandering Spirits is active turn into Wandering Spirits themselves.

Lich Form

Instead of keeping your bar of skills, much like Bear form, you get a wealth of new skills. This is of course a separate passive, so it needs to be taken to get this form. Much like Bear Form, other skills are linked to this form through skill passive trees and can trigger those skills or passives if you have also gotten those. The skills acquired being overly edgy hybrid melee and range stuff. Like a gigant scythe for AOE or something.

I have no idea how you’d balance this stuff. Honestly, I was just thinking of my favorite builds from other ARPG’s I’ve liked. As for Lich Form, I enjoyed Bear Form and would like something similar.

Oh also, Death Seal. I hate that skill. I hate how it’s almost always mandatory on Lich. So if they could be changed in some way, that’d be amazing. Or maybe I’m alone in this?

Here are some of my thoughts about some of these:

Summon Skeleton

You can summon 5x your usual amount and it works as an aura now, consistently refreshing your summons. They are however, considerably weaker.

EHG tries to go away from nodes that massively increase the amount of minions for performance and clarity reasons, espeically looking forward to the upcoming MP.

I would like a something similar to this though. The idea of having a “aura” constantly summoning weak miniosn is something that I actually really like.

Maybe this should work with your regular skeletons without increasing the cap and make them decay. There could be some follow up nodes giving the skeletons some extra benefits if they die (or maybe benefits to you).

There are already nodes, items and passives that benefit from minions dying and having these endless cycle of summoning and decaying minions is something that I really like.

Wandering Spirits

Enemies killed while Wandering Spirits is active turn into Wandering Spirits themselves.

There is already a unique that does something very similar, but I like the idea.

Lich Form

Instead of keeping your bar of skills, much like Bear form, you get a wealth of new skills. This is of course a separate passive, so it needs to be taken to get this form. Much like Bear Form, other skills are linked to this form through skill passive trees and can trigger those skills or passives if you have also gotten those. The skills acquired being overly edgy hybrid melee and range stuff. Like a gigant scythe for AOE or something.

Did you see and try Reaper Form already? Its basically almost what you describe already with a little bit less skills (it only has one unique skill).

Reaper Form is very old and oudated and a potential future rework/overhaul could make this much more like something you describe.

Especially the “giant scythe attack” is something I totally want to see.
Because Reap from Reaper Form is very underwhelming and I would prefer a option to make this a non-movemetn skill that deals a lot of damage on a short-medium cooldown.

Oh also, Death Seal. I hate that skill. I hate how it’s almost always mandatory on Lich. So if they could be changed in some way, that’d be amazing. Or maybe I’m alone in this?

Death Seal is definitely really strong, but also forces a lot of buidls into not using ward as much.
For non-ward builds Death Seal is very very strong. I would necessarily say mandatory, because for ranged buidls it doesn’t really do as much.
For ward builds you really don’t need or want it anyway.

[DiceDragon]

@Heavy

I would like a something similar to this though. The idea of having a “aura” constantly summoning weak miniosn is something that I actually really like.

Maybe this should work with your regular skeletons without increasing the cap and make them decay. There could be some follow up nodes giving the skeletons some extra benefits if they die (or maybe benefits to you).

There are already nodes, items and passives that benefit from minions dying and having these endless cycle of summoning and decaying minions is something that I really like.

Yup I really want more ways to passively create minions, currently there is actually a rich passive selection and effect selection for effects on minion death from summoning zombies, to casting sac on death, to recovery and ward generation.

But you currently have to micro manage the minion part way too much to the point it feels either extremely clunky or is set up through some auto cast loop, id much rather see something that drains mana and just spits out fodder.

@Heavy

Death Seal is definitely really strong, but also forces a lot of buidls into not using ward as much.
For non-ward builds Death Seal is very very strong. I would necessarily say mandatory, because for ranged buidls it doesn’t really do as much.
For ward builds you really don’t need or want it anyway.

This skill and reaper form is why I basically never play lich. These two skills define lich in such a hard set way it feels like all lich builds boil down to being extremely similar and building exactly the same.

I think you can leave death seal alone since it does have some interesting options like the minion branch. But I think reaper form certainly needs an overhaul so that its not just a stat stick second life bar I think after playing with revamped druid I want to see reaper form be a transform like bear where you get lots of build in skill synergies to try and explore.

[Heavy]

@DiceDragon

This skill and reaper form is why I basically never play lich. These two skills define lich in such a hard set way it feels like all lich builds boil down to being extremely similar and building exactly the same.

While both skills are very prominent you really don’t need to use them.

You can play a regular lich caster with any skills withotu those skills.

But I see where you are coming from and maybe if lich gets a 3rd exclusive skill it will give some other very lich-esq thigns that are not tied to healkth decay or other downsides liek no ward.

[DiceDragon]

Yeah im a huge ward enjoyer, I put ward on every build I can, it just makes dealing with chip damage so easy and carefree.

Lich feels like the perfect ward class in some respects, then flops massively. I like hungering souls LL lich, I get all the generic damage to scale ailments in lich, as well as a way to turn off leech as well as hungering souls having lots of generic more damage its great.

Then you realize that you have no way to actually use more then 1-2 skills. Hungering souls, then I can use 1-3 minion skills, but its most effective to use either skeletons set up to cast 3 at once with max 3 with lots of life, or use an archmage and two bone golems. Then you have transplant… oh I guess I could try and micro manage wandering spirits for some extra fluff damage if im a poison build

And that its. There is nothing else really to use because reaper form and deathseal are unusable with LL ward builds or most ward builds in general.

I think one of the two core lich abilities needs to offer more support for ward build options.

[Irrelevant]

Okay I realy hate pet classes BUT if there was a way to keep the minions arround me rather then 2 screens behind fighting a rabbit or beeing unable to walk in straight line because there are 2 pixel they find odd I’d be a happy camper. This might help out builds with ranged pets too but I don’t have that much experince in LE because I never played the Necro for a long time.

Reaper Form is a topic that was mentioned a lot of times and iirc the Lich crowd wanted to skin me alive when I even mentioned Reaper form should work like Druid forms back in the day when it felt like you waste all your points but those in sweep and werebear ^^. I think the base idea is allright but with the outdated and booooring skilltree Reaper Form is nothing fancy but get’s the job done.
personaly I’d like to have a reaper form that is split up a bit. A part that helps with movement and upkeep… an utility branch so to speak as well as a caster branch that offers benefits to the caster aspects of the acolythe class and a melee branch that changes as heavy already mentioned the skill into another melee (nuke) skill but removes the movement aspect of the skilltree.

Death Seal is bad by design from my point of view. Almost mandatory for in your face builds and totaly useless for ward users. This should never be the case and i think it’s poorly implemented and balanced.

[Shrukn]

@Irrelevant

Reaper Form is a topic that was mentioned a lot of times and iirc the Lich crowd wanted to skin me alive when I even mentioned Reaper form should work like Druid forms back in the day when it felt like you waste all your points but those in sweep and werebear ^^

imo being forced into skills when you transform is actually not a good thing, Reaper form is superior because you can do whatever you want, theres maybe 2 good Werebear builds and they are almost the same probably, you Swipe or Jump, such difference

Death Seal is a great skill and its actually overpowered, you just want to abuse Ward mechanics as Ward is too strong but in reality DS makes you almost unkillable anyway if you know how it works

[Irrelevant]

@Shrukn

DS makes you almost unkillable anyway if you know how it works

As I said flawed design :).

Reaper Form is superrior to Druid transformations and will most likely stay that way just for the mechanical differences. Druid is pretty blunt while Lich feels like a swiz army knife.