Necromancer: Not enough focus and synergy on skeletons. They feel like an after thought

Warhammer: Vermintide 2 Feedback
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I know FS stated they had intended there to be 3 paths to necromancer Sienna, a summoner, warrior, and caster, but to be perfectly frank, if I wanted a warrior I’d be Unchained, if I wanted to be a caster I’d be Battle Wizard, and if I wanted to be a load I’d be Pyromancer.

Considering the key to a Necromancer’s identity and fantasy is their ability to have undead puppets accompanying them, it’s disappointing how little they factor into her passive abilities and talent trees outside of a select few when it should be the opposite. Why does she have so many critical hit talents? That’s the Pyromancer’s schtick.

My suggestion is to replace/rework her talents so that being a summoner is always at the forefront of her playstyles, whether it’s as a caster or warrior or commander.

Vanhel’s Danse Macabre - keep the speed boost, but also give it to the skeletons too, maybe even boost their damage by how many skeletons are standing

Death Ascendent - arbitrary and passive, worse of all have nothing related to her skeletons or Necromancy. Instead repeated spell casts should buff the skeletons and give them increasing damage stacks.

Reaping - again passive and irrelevant to Necromancer or skeletons. Instead of a critical boost, make it so consuming a skeleton should grant a guaranteed damage boost and infinite cleave to the next attack. Summons a skeleton if attack kills an elite or special.

Soul Harvest - again why does this have nothing to do with her career or being a Necromancer on any way? As Withering Touch is her “warrior”-talent already, make this boost her playstyle as a summoner. Every X-kills should heal all of her skeletons and make their next attacks a guaranteed Crit and Stagger.

Army of the Dead - it needs an extra effect because currently it’s useless. This talent should emphasize power in numbers. Passively boost the max skeleton cap by 50%. Skeletons deal bonus damage for every other skeleton attacking the same target.

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This is a neat idea, a number of talents could be converted to instead apply to skeletons. In this case it might make DPS skeletons like Barrow Blades a more viable option.

Also, great one, I think having a talent that can get you some extra summons is a good idea, and killing an elite/special with a crit seems like a great way to do it. This would also be a good way to counteract them dying.

9 Skeletons total is not a bad idea, but I also like the idea of the original where you get to keep a few extra skeletons for a bit. Instead, I would prefer a 30% cooldown reduction with an estra 10-20 more seconds before the old skeletons vanish, but if any suggestion that makes this talent more viable and involves more total skeletons is implemented, that’s great to me. This is currently the most disappointing talent in the skill tree.

All your suggestions look good to me. It’s surprising that there’s so little emphasis on necromancy in her skill tree and her playstyle is closer to a diet pyromancer than a necromancer.

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Army of the dead is far from useless in an adventure map (but you need a concentration potion). It’s the talent that makes “ultimate spam” a viable strategy with her too. I see it as designed around the concentration potion.

I like reaping a lot!
I think it’s important if you want to play the careers as melee, which is always a reasonable option to have. Infinite cleave is precisely the feeling you want to get from a bigass scythe. In my mind the fact you need barrow blades and soul harvest for it to proc reliably is worse a design fault than the talent itself.

I agree with death ascendent though, and the idea of building smaller buffs to the skeletons through talents. My biggest gripe with the skelly though is the fact they vanish when you are disabled and that they are quite unsuited for high difficulties. It would be nice to have them be a bit more resilient.

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I think the whole point here is that the career isn’t focused enough on necromancy, it’s not that any of her talents are ineffective or not enough. It’s a lot of melee and ranged talents, but not much to influence how you use the undead.

Many, myself included, were more interested in this career being a summoner type of career with more talents and options to buff summons or get more summons.

I would like to see at least one talent on each row that has something more to do with necromancy and raising the dead; she is, after all, a Necromancer. Ideally, at the very least something to bolster their numbers besides Army of the Dead (which I don’t should be so dependent on potion use), something to restore their health, and something more to buff their damage/defenses besides level 30 talent options.

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Reaping is OP as hell and should be reworked. Every other class needs potions or bombs for killing patrols fast (or solve bad situations). With reaping you just swing once or twice and the whole patrol is gone, no potions or bombs or even skill needed.
I played Necro for two weeks and then had a lot of getting used to switching back to other careers because this talent made every situation trivial.

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Well it’s not like every strike is a crit.
I know many players who prefer the attack speed, but I prefer the reliability of reaping over something arguably stronger but which I’m going to lose in clutch moments

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Maybe i have an unpopular opinion for this thread, but for me her skeletons work very well together with her warrior and caster abilities. You can block the enemies at choke points and just cast into them without risking to be hit. If you play care about integrating skeleton gameplay while being a caster or melee you can be quite efficient. For example you block a choke point with the defense command of the skeletons. The enemies will now stack up at the chokepoint if you now hit some heavy 1 attacks with your flail in the stacked up enemies or you cast fireballs/ set pillars with coru/ cast aoe damage with beamstaff into them you will delete all enemies at once. And those situations are no exceptions you can do it on every map. Also you can trivalize the mid event of blightreaper with that.

Furthermore i am not a fan of buffing the skellis so they do all the work for you, i dont want that the necro becomes a walking simulator. For me it is much for fun to have the skellies for another tactical and strategic layer for gameplay. And this layer was introduced very well. I also dont have the problem that the skellies are dying to fast, even on cata or cata + deed. Most of the time you will be able to summon new ones as soon as there are only 4 skellies up, if you take “spirit leech” (even if my skellies run with “barrow blades”).

So for my playstyle and my enjoyment with the skellies, i have to disagree that those melee/caster talents are not welcome.

I understand that some guys want more focus on skellies, but this should be solved like this example of you

So that you will be buffed AND the skellies. I dont want to rely on skellies by buffing them and my sienna on her own is useless XD. I enjoy to be able to build into a caster and melee role. I want to have action on my own and dont just walk while skellies are doing MY job.

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You’re kind of way over exaggerating what’s being requested. I’m not asking for Witch Doctor from Diablo 3, I’m asking for Rexxar from Heroes of the Storm or Rangers from Pillars of Eternity. Sienna’s Necromancer career is currently more Amazon’s Valkyrie summon from Diablo 2. It exists to pull a bit of aggro while 99% of contribution is the Amazon’s self-multiplying lightning smart-javelins.

And I’m not saying she shouldn’t have her melee/caster talents (okay maybe the Crit ones that would be better on pyro), but they should connect to her Necromancer and Summoner identity instead of “casting more magic makes magic hot harder!” it should be more “skeletons do bonus damage to enemies damaged by staves” or if you go warrior, instead of “critical hits do more damage and cleave” it should be “consuming Skeletons enhance your next melee attacks” (seriously though, Reaping would be great on Pyromancer)

The main problem here is we want a Necromancer, not another Pyromancer who happens to summon skeletons. I’m her current state, barely any of her talents have anything to do with her being a Necromancer or her skeletons.

[quote=“Max93, post:7, topic:87436”] I enjoy to be able to build into a caster and melee role.

[/quote]

Then why even play Necromancer? That’s like saying you want to play Bright Wizard without setting enemies on fire.

Warrior caster or commander, her playstyle should all be done in the context of what defines her identity as a Necromancer.

Death Ascendant, Reaping, etc. are just arbitrarily powerful talents with nothing to do with her career.

edit: I give up, I don’t know why the quotation is broken all the sudden

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That pretty much sums it up. I played Necromancer a bit, but aside from the skeletons and ult, she just feels too much like Battle Wizard without all the stuff that makes Battle Wizard good, at best, she can farm some nasty crit damage like Pyromancer.

There are plenty of ways to synergize with skeletons without “turning the game into a walking simulator”. None of the ideas put forward in the original post up top would enable a player to passively walk through a mission relying only on skeletons.

At a minimum, I think there should be one talent on each row that has something to do with necromancer. Most of it is damage, defense, and fire for Sienna herself.

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Necro is able to put out way more damage then battle wizzard or pyro, the only thing which makes battle wizzard better in cata+ is her double dash and maybe for sniping volcanic force.

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Missing the point, this is a Necromancer but feels more like another fire wizard.

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hmm maybe a bit but as i said i use skeletons pretty often for an additional tactical layer, so i dont feel like this.

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she on each row such a talent except for level 5 and level 15 of course.

Vanhel’s Danse Macabre - for level 10 (12% attack speed when 4 skeletons are alive.)

Withering Touch - for level 20 (On releasing a Skeleton, all Sienna’s attacks for the next 15 seconds ignite enemies, causing damage over time.)

Curse of the Undeath - for level 25 (Casting Raise Dead reduces damage inflicted on Sienna by 80% for the next 3 hits.)

and her level 30 talents are also necro themed.

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Make an offensive bonus to the skeletons.

Make something with a chance to summon a skeleton.

Make something to heal skeletons.

These are all buffing sienna. There’s nothing here to incentivize or bolster the playstyle of a summoner managing their summons, or rather, a necromancer managing her undead minions.

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That’s missing the point, the problem is never whether she’s too weak or not (on the contrary some of her talents are pretty op)

As I said before, the problem is how barely any of her talents and passives have anything to do with her identity as a Necromancer or her skeletons, the qualities that defines the career.

Look at all other well designed careers. They have tons of talents that directly supports what makes the career unique, in most cases 1-3 talents at each level has to do with their identity.

Something like Bounty Hunter’s Blessed Combat and Weight of Fire clearly and heavily supports it’s style. Necromancer is just a collection of powerful general talents that have nothing to do with Necromancy.

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As you can see neither support or benefit her use of skeletons. They all support Sienna. If Van Hel buffed the skeletos too, or if Withering Touch summoned a skeleton on kill or something, sure.

This is just a really general Talent that isn’t specific to her career skill at all .

Other careers have these style of talents too, but they also have plenty of talents that synergizes with what they do unlike the Necromancer.

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Yes - and that is bad. She should not have been so strong around flames. It does not makes sense that she has strongest flames as a necromancer.

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Yes, that would make Pyro great again. .-)

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more like op which is bad.

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She would not be OP, she would still have a very weak survivability. Like OE, she has nothing to save her in difficult situations. With Reaping She could at least compete with other Sienna’s careers.