Not sure if anything can be done about this, as it impacts the gameplay of lower difficulties with the Skeleton uptime game.
On normal Cata, Skeletons are fine.
I’ve tried some deeds on Cata, and the Skeletons die really quickly and feel as though they have no real impact.
I was also playing a ranged build, which felt as if it wasn’t really doing much of anything. This was with Dread Seneschal (Skeleton HP Talent).
The feeling I get is that only a melee high Crit% build with 15% CDR on Elite Kill is the only non-clunky and viable option for Cata+.
The main issue being, that the Skeletons offset you having no real defensive stats, and make up for the RNG damage. Their lack of uptime means you don’t get those benefits.
Should add that I know the Army of The Dead Talent partially helps with this (CDR is still a long time), but build variety is severely limited. The Skeletons was dying on the first pack of Elites. It was Harder Better Faster Stronger.
fireball ranged build is on cata + more horde + vanguard insane as a ranged build she is one of the best careers when it comes to deal high enemy density.
Yeah conflag staff performs poorly on her thats true. Also as soon as you have a high amount of elites in front of you and you dont kill them fast enough by yourself, your skeletons will be shredded. But try this one out:
At the scoreboard you can find my item properties. Weapons were fireball staff and dagger.
Gameplay is spam quick charged fireball over the place and when you are on high overcharge, just sacrifice a skeleton to loose 70% overheat.
there is also a more a coruscation staff build with scythe which is also quite nice and deals even more damage XD.
yeah thats why i only use them for sacrificing and for being a meatshield. Spirit leech and army of dead helps a bit, so you can summon them whenever you want.
Haha i can feel you, yeah at first i also was trying around setting up a support build, because the gameplay trailer seemed she would be a good supporter. Also she was communicated being melee orientated. But all those melee focussed builds are a bit weak. It is all about mass sacrificing and casting as often as you can with coru and fireball, which is a bit sad
But the scythe with reaping feels really good, but it is more like i use it when i need it but the main damage comes from the staves
I mean that is the issue that happens when you have one balance state for all difficulties. If you look at the Steam Forum where you can see a complain that Necromancer is to strong on Veteran and Champion because your Skeletons don’t die.
If you would make Skeletons withstanding SV overheads on the Harder deed - and we shouldn’t forget that at least half of all careers get one-shotted by that very same attack - they would be … extremely durable against hordes. This are still six hits which don’t kill you. If you want to try harder content maybe look how the performs against more hords or more specials. Pretty sure on the no-items deed they are extremely strong. And Necromancer might be the best bet to solo (+bots) Back to the Roots deeds.
I’d say the solution is to include a modifier across all difficulty so giving skeletons % bonuses to damage and damage reduction so their experience is relatively consistent throughout.
Heck I feel this should be the case for a few other aspects of other careers too sometimes so things aren’t only useful in a single difficulty but useless on others
Just giving feedback, as I prefer to have lots of builds available at higher difficulties and not just be advised to play 1 of 3 builds.
I kind of expected something like the build I suggested to be viable in some way, but Necro is way to rigid in Talent choices. E.g. 15% CDR is kind of necessary, even though DMGR would be beneficial.
You don’t get any defensives, and if the skeletons die, you’re just staff spam part 4 - £7.
I’d actually say the main issue isn’t that skeletons die that quickly, though it’s certainly a pretty big issue and a major problem of balancing a summoner in any game.
The main issue is you only summon skeletons with a 110s cooldown. Skeletons should regenerate passively over time, with the class ability buffing your skeletons in some way when used (for example, empowering them, making them invulnerable, corpse explosions, that sort of thing.) You should also be allowed to resummon skeletons faster when performing well in combat, so that they can be sacrificed and can die mostly uselessly without shutting down such a core component of the class.
I’m not sure of the exact form this should actually take, but this is the issue as I see it.
I’d also consider, in addition to the above mentioned passive resummoning of pets rewarding more pets for better play in combat, also straight up giving the pets some form of life steal and/or passive regeneration.
Funnily enough, on at least 1 legend game, a grail knight got both damage reduction and normal grim regen, and I think I lost exactly 1 skeleton after they got grim regen that wasn’t just me sacrificing them myself. I’m not actually sure the skeletons benefit from GK buffs, but they sure feel like they do, and it very much is an unholy combination if my observations are correct.
I can’t speak for cata because I don’t play cata too often and am still mostly new to necro to begin with without a crew of 3 others to really play with, but part of my complaints with necro relate to micromanaging skeletons, needing the defense stance to keep them alive on legend, and them just being too fragile in general without intense micro, which might not even help on cata from the direction this thread is going.
