The Poll Winner: Let's Look at Dread Shade!

  Dread Shade
 
30 Mana
 
Target minion takes 3% max health per second for each second the shade has been active, but it and minions around it deal 40% more damage.

 
Dread Shade is a Spell coming to Necromancers in Patch 0.7.9.

The base functionality of the skill causes a massive damage buff to apply in an area around a minion. That minion will be subjected to increasingly large amounts of damage each second, and the buff will end when the minion dies or after 20 seconds - whichever happens first.

 

Gallery

 

Specialization Tree Nodes

  • Dread Shade is cast on enemy targets instead of minions. Minions within the area of effect are buffed as normal. The enemy is neither buffed nor subject to health degeneration. Duration reduced to 10 seconds.
  • Dread Shade drains the health of all affected minions. Doom Brands are applied to affected minions, causing them to explode on death dealing Necrotic Damage to nearby foes.
  • Dread Shade now affects you and other non-minion allies in addition to minions.
  • Dread Shade applies Damned to affected enemies and minions each second.
    • 1 stack per point; maximum of 3.
    • Damned deals Necrotic Damage Over Time, and scales with generic increases to damage, and increases to Necrotic Damage, Damage Over Time, and Spell Damage.
  • Area of effect increased by 100%. Dread Shade now buffs minions outside the area of effect. Dread Shade no longer buffs minions within the area of effect.

 
As an aside, our current intention is to remove the Acolyte skill Mark for Death in Patch 0.7.9. Acolytes will receive a replacement skill, and the base effect of Mark for Death will continue to be available through alternative means - including Dread Shade’s specialization tree!

15 Likes

Yes gimme that juicy undead goodness!!
Sad to see Mark For Death go though…

Might actually play necro for once! Also RIP Mark for Death

cool stuff guys!

1 Like

I dont like the removal of Mark of Death at all.

Yay, I was right! It’s not an acolyte skill!

Oh, wait…

Could non-Acolyte’s get a new skill from time to time? Maybe the Mage? Or even the Rogue, that class is positively barren skill-wise!

Have no fear, it’s getting replaced by something much better. Much better.

7 Likes

It looks great! Very necromantic.
Looks like an active skill, which is very important in my opinion.
And looks like a skill you have to use smartly, not a spammable skill.

Please less auto skills and more active skills like that. :slight_smile:

1 Like

I will take your word for this, but i hope the new skill has at least the same flavour as Mark for Death.

Especially for my “main” build that i am enjoying (Melee Lich) Mark for Death just “feels” very cool, especially in combination with Harvest.

Let the new skills have at least the same amount of interaction with Harvest, if not even more please :hot_face:

It’s hard to talk about it without giving away everything about it but your plea has not fallen on deaf ears.

4 Likes

Very Nice!

Combat necro with suicidal explosive wraiths time?

2 Likes

Oh, that’s double “much better” there. So, one can easily extrapolate that this new replacement will be 2x as good…guaranteed. :sweat_smile:

1 Like

Well I hate pet builds… the option to make pets go BOOM thou… sounds like fun to me army of undead bombs. Just spawn as many melee minions as possible and make them all go boom. Finaly a pet build worth playing because… well you kill all your pets :D.

1 Like
  • Dread Shade drains the health of all affected minions. Doom Brands are applied to affected minions, causing them to explode on death dealing Necrotic Damage to nearby foes.

… Wait so you can summon a huge army of minions, cast dread shade to make them explode on death and… cast sacrifice to force them to explode?

Does that mean it does 2 explosions? (1 for doom brand and 1 for sacrifice?)

Only thing that can stop the onslaught will probably be mana issues.

1 Like

Not surprised that Mark for Death is removed because quite frankly it’s a boring skill. I hope the replacement can also improve the combo playstyle of Mark/Soul Feast and Mark/Harvest.

2 Likes

So I am with you on the outcome of the combination of harvest and mark for death. But For me it kind if had a non fluid flavour becaus of the constant need of debugging your enemies.

Btw, you can use spirit plague for the same purpose :wink:

Agreed, sometimes it felt a little bit clunky, i already suggested some changes to mark for death some week ago, before we knew that it will be replaced.
One of two things i suggested there were eiter very high value cast speed nodes(like up to 100% or even more), since it’s just a utility/debuff spell that wouldn’t be “broken”. Or the other thing i suggsted was a node that made it an instant cast while wielding a melee weapon

I am curious if the new skil lwill fill the exact same purpose as mark for death with a better application. And maybe it will have some of my suggested nodes/mechanics.

Yep, i know, but spirit plague doesn’t have the “theme” i am looking for with my melee lich.

But i already thought about some hybrid melee DoT build with the spirit plague nodes involving hitting mobs with spirit plague to spread it.

Is Mark for death it removed from acolyte to get into Lich only skills ?
I’m playing manly with Soul Feast and I really like the combo. Tagging trash mobs for a futur instant death and fearing them in the process is pretty fun to play.

Some passives and some skills have the ability to apply Mark for Death

(necromancy minions are able to proc it), or Lich: reaper form x% chance on hit

Still those are currently fairly sub par ways to apply the debuff to alot of mobs.
Maybe we’ll recieve idols (XX% chance to apply mark of death on hit or when using xxx skill)
or maybe some unique item