#Good
- Sienna looks great and it’s refreshing how different Necromancer is compared to her previous careers.
- Skeleton management is very involved. Whether you’re playing as a spellcaster or melee focused, the process of counting your resources and managing the positioning of your vanguard is pretty engaging.
- In a lot of ways, Sienna’s Defend Command is a superior version of Sister of Thorn’s base Thornwake, by a huge margin.
- Soulstealer Staff is a great problem-eraser of medium-sized elites and specials, albeit the overheat cost is very high.
- This DLC overall has been great, though it may not seem like it if you compared the amount of things I write in the “Good” section of this post to everything else. Make no mistake, I’m enjoying Necromancer A LOT.
#Middling
- Scythe is a fun weapon, but has a few things I don’t like about it.
- The damage profiles against Armored on Heavy Attacks is so weird. With vs. Armoured and vs. Skaven Charm against a Stormvermin – First Heavy: 17.75, Second Heavy: 17.75, Third Heavy: 30.75. The “First Heavy” beyond the first two heavy swings becomes the “Third Heavy”. I wish this was more uniform where all damage profiles for Heavy attacks were the same as the “Third Heavy” considering that there isn’t much difference between their horizontal swings.
- Special attack is… weird. It does a burst of small damage and knockback in front with all the fancy VFX but doesn’t apply any ticks of damage over time. It also does a weird animation after doing it. It can also be charged longer for no benefit.
- Scythe’s single-target 2nd Light attack applies burn, for some reason, the same way Crowbill’s single-target 4th Light attack does. I’m just left wondering why.
- Skeletons becoming instantly limp when Sienna has been disabled.
- This one’s a bit contentious because I understand that they don’t want her to be an absolute Solo monster. But at the very least there should be some grace period where, if Sienna has been pinned by an assassin, the skeletons can have autonomy for 1 second in order to save Sienna instead of instantly going limp the moment she’s been jumped.
- Situations where Skeletons are already engaged in combat from a horde, then Sienna gets disabled by an Assassin, and thus the Skeletons being unable to change aggro to attack the assassin off Sienna after more than 1 second, is completely fine.
- Spirit Leech is extremely strong. I didn’t want to say it because I’m afraid of this talent being nerfed, but it really enables Sienna as a summoner class. It doesn’t help that it feels necessary to take because of Raise Dead’s 110-second cooldown, which is absolutely ridiculous.
- As long as Raise Dead’s cooldown is that long and the Skeletons are this frail without Dread Seneschal, Spirit Leech will always be a must-have.
#Lacking
- I think there’s a weird bug where the tick rate of damage-over-time effects has become slower because of Cold Flames doubling their duration.
- One particular fantasy of Summoner classes in videogames is being able to command an army of units and have them be your primary source of damage, while you yourself casts supportive utility. Unfortunately, this particular fantasy cannot be fulfilled with this career, as the Skeletons themselves do very poor damage and can only withstand medium amounts of damage in Defend Mode.
- That being said, it’s understandable considering the genre of game that Vermintide 2 is. It’s just, if you’re someone who’s looking for this sort of playstyle (like me), this DLC cannot provide it for you.
- Soulstealer Staff’s overheat cost on normal attacks (LMB) is a little too high, in my opinion. Sure, it can do quite a bit of damage against Monsters if they’re able to constantly apply DoT, but the value it brings in moment-to-moment gameplay outside of that scenario is very small compared to its cost.
- I didn’t want to believe it, but Army of the Dead talent is indeed a meme talent. I wish it was better and served a wildly different function compared to other Lv30 talents that would bring more utility to the table.
#Suggestions:
- The HUD for Skeleton management could be closer to the center of the screen so we can easily see how many skeletons we have left without taking our eyes off the action.
- Make the VFX for aiming with Icon of Death in preparation for Defend Command much more visible.
- Make it so the action of aiming with Icon of Death in preparation for Defend Command can be queued from blocking or casting with staff (RMB).
- Drinking a potion should immediately switch to melee weapon, instead of Icon of Death.
- Ensorcelled Reaper
- Set all of the damage profiles of Scythe’s heavy melee attacks to be the same as the “Third Heavy” attack.
- Scythe’s special attack function to be similar to some of Darktide’s melee weapons.
- Change: Activating the special attack plays an animation of Sienna touching her weapon, and either using Light or Heavy attack will slam her staff on the ground, dealing a small amount of damage to a large area in front of her, while also applying damage-over-time.
- This change would enable a lot of Sienna’s talent synergies without having to resort to pulling out your staff to apply burn or use the Barrow Blades talent.
- Soulstealer Staff
- Reduce the overheat cost of Soulstealer Staff’s normal attacks.
- A more satisfying SFX upon using soulrip, please! Make it as satisfying as Darktide’s Brain Burst.
- Speaking of Brain Burst, having to maintain a cone LoS on a target while using Soulrip feels clunky. Darktide has already figured this out. I wish it was implemented the same way.
- Reduce Raise Dead’s cooldown by a lot. From 110 to 80 seconds.
- Talent, Soul Harvest
- Too inconsistent and hard to find value for melee builds even WITH Barrow Blades.
- Change: Killing an enemy grants 1 stack of Soul Harvest. Killing an enemy afflicted by Malediction of Nagash grants 2 stacks. Having 8 stacks of Soul Harvest causes the next attack to be a guaranteed Critical Hit.
- Talent, Wither Touch
- As far as I can tell, it only deals a very small flat amount of damage over time regardless of what weapon you hit an enemy with. This makes it less worth running compared to other talents along its line (Cursed Blood and Soul Harvest). Changing its effect to be more universally effective would be nice.
- Change: On releasing a skeleton, all of Sienna’s damage over time effects deal 30% more damage for the next 15 seconds.
- Talent, Army of the Dead
- Probably the weakest out of all of Sienna’s Lv30 talents. It provides very little value outside of consuming a Concentration pot. In normal gameplay, your skeletons simply doesn’t have any sort of utility like the ones Barrow Blades and Dread Seneschal can bring.
- Change: Raise Dead now causes Skeletons to remain for 20 seconds before decaying. Skeletons constantly regenerate a small amount of health. When amount of skeletons is below 6, passively raise 1 Skeleton every 15 seconds.