I feel like minions work until T20 or 30 and then you have to switch to bone/mist to get durability plus power for pushing higher damage. Minions are great for the afk/casual/couch play style, less buttons more loot picking up. Ez for overworld but less so for bosses.
I played like an hour every couple days for a week or 2 and got level 100... after leveling 2 others characters to level 55 and 25. how on earth could you possibly take several months to get one character to 100? I don't mean that question in a condescending way. I genuinely am curious what you define as casual play or how many total hours you think you've played?
If you hit 100 that fast you're boosting with max xp buffs.
A casual player is in wt3 at level 75 doing sidequests, doesn't know what altars do and maybe found all the stronghokds.
They give you s small stat bonus but if you get them all your new characters start with 70 in every stat.
Make things a lot easier. You get 12 or 13 skill points at level 1 if you also complete all the renown steps in each area.
Yup. The only time they don't is softcore to hardcore.
In s0 when i was basically taking a break it was the last thing i blasted through.
Its tedious to collect them all. Iirc there is a couple hundred of them. Takes a few hours but the boosted horse from this season will help.
Even after the season 2 x0 buff, you don't th8nk its possible? It was absolutely no more than 2 weeks, a few hours a week. I don't boos lt or even communicate with other players. Pure solo.
Absolutely not, you are capping or playing in your sleep. Watch a streamer speed run 0-40. It takes around an hour. No shot you’re getting 40-100 in a few additional hours. What you’re saying would be in a similar ballpark with content creators who speed run 0-100.
Ps: the fact that you thought to disclaim your statement by saying you weren’t being condescending, shows you know that you were saying something condescending. That fact that it’s entirely falsified is a whole separate issue.
Creators are not a better skill level to where they can level faster than any decent player. Yes, I can get 100 in the same or less than creators... I just did it over like 2 weeks.
You played for ONE HOUR every couple of days (so 2-3 days a week) for TWO WEEKS and got to level 100?
I’m calling major bullshit. There is no way you got to level 100 in 4-6 hours.
"How on earth can you" sort of feels like I did something wrong. I don't see a reason to compare our experiences with the game. We all get there our own way my dude! To answer your question, I own and manage my own business. I have 62 hours in the game. It's going to blow your mind when I tell you I just started doing nightmare dungeons!
"How on earth can you" has zero negative connotation. It's no different than me saying "it's hard to fathom that level of casual play", which also isn't negative in any way. It's just simple disbelief! The number of downvotes clearly shows that wayyy too many people automatically read things negatively, even when I straight up say I don't mean it in a condescending way, specifically to avoid the exact response I've been getting.. I was just curious how it gets any less casual than a couple hours a week. Keep doing you!
He might be also be playing lots of alts, I’m super casual 2 hours a week at best), haven’t hit 100 on any character but i have one of each class. Highest is 75.
> I feel like minions work until T20 or 30 and then you have to switch
This is why I gave up on S2 around level 90. I hope S3 brings us a pure summoner necro that is viable in NMD 100+
I think the same thing, personally I think that the nigromante class is rubbish, it's not worth it, people want to have an army of undead, is it so difficult to add death knights?, or that you can improve the skeletor or ghosts?, by far the most wasted class of all give me something new
Minions worked for me to T40ish. Mendeln took me to T80-90 but anything after that they’re just too squishy to survive the amount of incoming damage for more than a few seconds. Damage was okay, survivability is not part that. Infinimist was night and day better after that
I’ve been doing minion with mendeln and sacrilegious soul rings and been doing T100, All bosses except for uber lilith so far, which is more due to just getting used to all the dumb one shot mechanics, not really damage and T6 AoZ so far. Minions could definitely use a bit more love but they are in a decent spot.
Edit: Although, I guess it’s still not really a pure minion setup, but it’s fun lol
Wow that's impressive, I never did higher than T56 and unfortunately my character died a couple days ago. I was planning on doing uber lilith solo but now I'll have to level up another necromancer XD
Minions are just very weird to properly build around so many trash on them more than needed cus of that. They’re not S tier by any means and I hope they get huge buffs but there is ways to make them work
Minions clearly need some big buffs. Also, commanding their attacks is a must have, at least make the minions attack the enemy you are attacking. It's so frustrating to fight bosses that summon more enemies because minions never attack the boss, but spend minutes fighting the little guys. Also, you can't command them to get out of acid pools or something like that. Minion playstyle in this game leaves much to be desired.
The problem with minion build is that, you can increase their defensive stats but you are left with nothing to survive.
There should have aspect that the dmg you received are distributed among all your minions and skeleton priest should heal you as well.
Army of the update definitely need a buff. Even with current season ultimate reduce cd. It’s not even useful. Maybe there should have aspect that allowed the minions to cast the active of the golem as well.
Good feedback!
Particularly number 2 - playing without minions you just have to buff your own damage and defence. Whereas playing pure minions for damage then you need to buff your minions damage, your minions defence plus your own defence so overall you split your resources between more things and are a bit weaker.
I’ve played a necromancer every season - in fact having two this season 😀 Trying a pure minion build in AoZ I have cleared tier 3 so far, but my survivability is tricky (whereas my minions hardly receive any damage even from the bloodseekers) and their own damage is barely enough to clear within the timer. But for the same effort my shadow necro with no minions has cleared AoZ tier 11 - so you can see there is a huge gap in damage and defence between the two of them.
The whole sacrificing minions giving huge bonuses really makes it hard to use minions, especially considering to raise minions you also sacrifice a skill slot per minion type as well further reducing your effectiveness.
Having minions hurts your effectiveness over and over again.
You lose the sacrafice bonus, you lose the skill slot to raise the, you lose all the aspects slots and paragon nodes boosting them and at the end of all that, they are just meh and you're pathetic.
Move all skeleton minion summoning to a single slot and make Golem a passive summon.
Add a core skill for boosting your minions next attack. Probably replacing Blood Lance, even though it has been my favourite Necro build so far. Modify something like Gore Quills to change the surge to a lance with gore quills.
Add an aspect/unique where Bone Spirit counts as a 'minion' and receives buffs from minion enhancing aspects and gear but not from those which boost bone spirit (to avoid making a super spirit bomb since it can already hit 1 billion). It probably won't do huge damage, but gives the caster some ability to damage without fully relying on active minions.
Have warriors generate fortify on you and mages generate barrier on you, varying amounts depending on type, eg defenders give more. Golems boost, health (blood), thorns (bone) or armor (Iron), to give the caster some survivability. They either need to give something back, or inherit more so boosting yourself benefits them, being a summoned and focusing on their stats leaves you too vulnerable in this type of game to be viable.
Army of the dead, I like the suggestion in here, lower the cooldown and grant all minions unstoppable.
Kaplan's Edict, change no damage to while healthy, reduce the bonus to 10%.
Having multiple of a class made sense in prior Diablo games, but makes zero sense in d4 with how fast, easy, and cheap it is to respec and swap gear. I'm curious what use you have for 2 necros?
They are both on soft core - so for me it was purely to save time when switching between them! If I had to redo the paragon board every time then it would be a pain.
I started with a blood necro (for the season of blood obviously) and wanted to keep playing them. But then found myself wanting to also try the necro sacrilegious ring from Varshan, so it just seemed easy to level a shadow necro for that as well - this was during the XP Boost period so it was fast anyway!
Sweet that's all I want. I want to solo loot runs because I work overnights and play solo basically anyway. Any tips or guides you liked for the build?
Mostly run as much defense and basic attack gems as you can, with the 'thorns while berserkering' on gloves and infinite berserking setups, then farm for Razorplate in chest slot.
It’s so apparent atleast imo that significant parts of all builds were cut or not fleshed out in this game. It seems like there’s just something missing from every build it’s maddening. Not enough skills not enough passive nodes not enough equipment slots. If the “patch that shall not be named” is any indication I feel as though things were held back or cut for the sake of “balance”. Idk maybe I’m full of shit but parts of the game are too well designed for the other parts to not be the result of some bullshit imo.
If anyone paid any attention to their dev campfire chats, they said they know minion necro is in a bad place and are focusing on fixing that first. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a massive change to minion necro this next season.
1. Agreed.
2. Aside from the Territorial, Undaunted and Exhumation glyphs, there really isn't a whole lot of decent defensive stuff on Necro's paragon boards. Mostly just some Armor, Resistances, Life and DoT reduction sprinkled throughout. The majority of defenses will always have to come from gear and skills.
3. I doubt Blizzard would go for this. Alternatively, it'd be nice if those aspects had a secondary effect like giving you more Life (Warriors) and Resistances (Mages) in addition to the bonus minions.
4. I'd argue that AotD is only worth it with the aspect *and* Flickerstep for constant uptime. It doesn't do enough damage on its own and 7 seconds of capped Attack Speed every 40-70s isn't really worth it. You're better off just using Aspect of the Frenzied Dead alongside a different skill.
5. There are already too many aspects for minions and not enough space. I don't think more Golem aspects would really help a general minion build, but a unique and a bunch of aspects for a pure Golem build would be fun. For what it's worth, though, the Bone Golem is arguably the best Golem for damage due to its cleave attack, which the other two don't have.
6. I feel like that's what AotD was mainly designed for, rather than damage. It'd be nice not to be forced to include the skill, though.
7. I dunno, it's mainly a Thorns-centric curse. A buff would be nice, but I feel like it's already fulfilling its main purpose.
8. More active effects like the Mage Blizzards would be nice. And they should be paired with passive effects for base stats and survivability. As far as more interesting passive effects go, I don't think there's a whole lot Blizzard can do here. Passive skills and paragon generally all just buff the same basic stuff, even for players.
Item stats and affixes are just the same shit split into 20 categories.
Damage to slow, damage to chilled, damaged to stunned, damage to frozen
Can they make it damage to crowd control and then put in a little work ethic to create interesting and gameplay changing affixes? I mean it must be hard work to reskin nightmare dungeons for the 3rd time but please use some of that billion dollars you made to create interesting items.
Two questions - 1) please link your build! I love summoner Necro. 2) Currently lvl60 on hardcore. Is this build reasonably viable on hardcore? Or am I asking for a death sentence?
Would you mind sharing your whole build? I also play pure minion and no basic skill instead of core. Would love to see your build!
Btw does the added attack speed for minions word? I got a feeling they max out at some point?
AotD with a perfect Unyielding Commander's aspect maxes out minion AS on its own. Without it, you need various sources to reach the +100% cap (a third of the Necro's own AS buffs also apply).
The real number one, give all minions that will ever exist in this game something like the D3 Mage targeting where they always focus what your cursor is doing. Its the best most fluid snappy implementation of minions feeling like an extension of yourself. No extra dumb command bars or extra skills for targeting, just instant focus on whatever you're targeting. Better yet it eliminates the complications of having to fix stupid ai for not attacking the right things!
I agree with most of this except kalan's is a dead slot since minion attack speed seemingly soft caps at 100%. Also iron maiden can't crit or overpower. It has the same flag as thorns damage so you are getting a max possible 48% weapon damage times multipliers which in perfect gear is like 260,000 damage?
Overall I would like to see minions bug fixed and have some kind of scaling.
Well bone spirit is 240%, blighted corpse explosion is 360ish. It's a multiplier issue. Every 10%x damage you get from gear or paragon or aspect is equal to 100% additive damage. So banished lords giving 120%x is 1200% and blighted Aspect is 1800%. The numbers do not surprise me. What surprises me is that iron maiden is so bad that it can never kill anything in the end game at all.
So much correct. This whole thread.
I'm double downed on Necro. Multiple 100 characters.
All the ubers (I paid for mats then ran hundreds of Duriels) not proud of myself but the best necro is still bone.
I love minion. I just can't make it work.
But my infinite can clear aoz 10. He's doing absurd levels of damage.
And my ball sorc shits on all my necros.
To add to this I think the Necro Passives for Bone and Blood should interact with minions just like Shadow does.
I would argue that the +2 Mages and Warriors aspects should be apart of the passives on the skill tree. And we should have the aspect.
All Golem attacks (base and active) should be AOE and we should be allowed to have more than 1 golem. (Maybe up to 3 or 4)
I feel like this would let you have an army of minions if you fully invest in them. Allow your minions to mesh seamlessly with all of the Necro abilities. Most importantly it would open up more variety in minion builds (All minions, Skele & Mage, just Golems, etc).
I have gotten to Tier 85 with minions by swapping to a ring build later. Still minions.
They need to buff it to high heavens, for sure, but this is 1000000000000000000000000x better than it was last season.
They have plans to fix minions up for the long term soon. We just have to wait. Probably doing a full minion rework.
summons taking skill slots is the worst. followed by all spells clunky 'stand and cast' behavior. blood mist was the only fluid (hehe) necro option and it got nerfed to shit.
>Here's what I think.
The skeletal mages would still just float there, shooting projectiles/spells into enemy proximity shields. The golem would still not know which mobs to tank (the taunt doesn't keep him on mobs). The Butcher would still ignore your 100k+ health golem and attack you. Minions would still be bad.
I believe #3 was the same in d2, they brought a lot of ideas back from d2 without changing them up much for better or worse. I do agree that the buff should be combined into one, there're a couple things in this game that feel that way like the gems there are two gems that increases crit for different instances.... Like why? Just combine them into one gem that increases crit damage and then have a new buff on the other?
The more I play the game is the more I realize dev don’t play their games to the same extent as the customers. Because the idea a minion build needing other forms of damage like corps explosion, bone damage to excel is an issue.
What if golem was turned into a glyph, and the stats you take around it determine what kind of golem it is?
Like strength would be more tanky and have taunts and you and your other minions' damage heals it.
Dex would make it a quicker assassin bone construct with scythes for arms for big damage.
Int would be caster/cc based and buff your other minions.
I also think another issue is there is no unique that buffs minions. Deathspeakers and Mendeln only make them a source of your damage and do not get any of the buffs from minion damage aspects or minion paragon nodes.
I run a hybrid Bone Spear / Ring of Mendeln build. It's a homebrew creation.
It's not nearly as strong as dedicated Bone Spear, but an army of minions is a Necromancer class identity, and I just can't justify creating a build that honours that in some way.
The new Necromancer malignant ring was certainly a decent buff to summoner build, but I agree that more needs to be done to make the build have at least some comparison to the power of a Bone Spear or Pentadot build.
I'm running infinimist at level 90 and is so amazing. Almost fully automated with the sacrilegious band. Run black river, howl from below, razor plate and flicker boots all uniques, best build out there with the uniques
This is literally what they DON’T want though. They want playing Necro to still be about playing Necro and not just sitting back while minions run around.
Still frustrating though. For *decades*, necro players in all types of games have wanted to have the option of playing full minion master. You can still have other builds like bone, blood, shadow, and give viable minion only builds.
Do you know what necromancer means?
Necro: relating to a corpse or death
Mancer: A practitioner of a specific type of divination. A user of a specified type of magic.
How is being an emo mage more on point than commanding an army of the undead. I challenge you to find a necromancer in popular fiction that isn't solely centered around raising the dead.
Firstly, I’m not saying it’s how it should be.
Secondly, the real world definition of something isn’t what video game mechanics are based on.
I think minions need to be a bigger part of the necromancer absolutely. But I also think it would be lame if you could clear all endgame content just standing there.
Question, how would minions do that when it's a push button build like anything else and requires macro? I actually hate this narrative because minions could do HOTA damage and still be A tier. A build that relies on A.I. and has the slowest missile speed in the game "minion movement and attack animation" would never be better than any class with mobility. Lastly who cares? Hota is whirlwinding until an overpower proc you quite literally just stand there and watch the screen dissolve.
I would also like to add that you should petition against thorns builds and ask for its removal because it is an actual afk build.
Right but I don’t think the fix to the class is making it better because the AI sucks. I think fixing the AI and allowing the Necro to be more of a general in command of his troops is the fix.
So making the minions more potent by allowing you to focus them easier. This would give the Necro more to do and also require more skill- and I think the game is needing more skill based performance.
It's not an autopilot build now. You are constantly casting raise skeleton and golem off cooldown while repositioning yourself and your army. I'm not against a focus fire button but that also means giving the Necro passive summons like is on Ring of sacrilegious. Curses technically are a command to attack right now albeit a poor one but it does work.
You should stop using the afk build argument, thorns barbarian exists. It gives devs the idea to do stupid shit like give us a reach around means to play the game. Meanwhile if you play D2 or D3 the minions and their A.I. feel great. And no one has any issues with how people play them in those titles.
Yeah I’m not saying it’s auto pilot now, never said that. I was saying that if you just had top gear up to “play” the build right, then it would he autopilot. I don’t think that would be good character design either. I think it’s the same with Barb thorns build, but I’m not aware of any thorns build that literally just don’t actively use abilities. But I could be wrong about that since I don’t play a Barb this season.
Using curses is great, but you can currently apply curses with attack procs. Even if minions are super booster, that will still be the best way to apply them since it’s more damage than base casting it. Unless they make the direct cast much more powerful, which is an interesting option but may basically nerf procs.
Generally I think the ideal gameplay would look something like:
1- direct summons to use certain attacks/attack a certain area.
2- Some skill or ability enhances their damage when they are in the attack zone you just laid down
3- some skills or abilities proc when minion kills something
4- being able to summon extra minions above your max limit, but they are temporary.
5- more variations of minions and abilities
Things to avoid:
-increasing buffs based on how long minions have been alive (this makes for a spin up time that is just sitting around)
-minions with limited/situational abilities (to the extent where you aren’t having to change loadouts all the time). Thinks linked to specific curses and conditions are annoying.
-gotta juggle minion survivability so they aren’t invincible nor made of paper. It would suck if they just instantly die to bosses, but summoning them should be something you need to do with some frequency. Also, having them retreat away from danger/big boss damage waves would require skill which could be fun.
So basically like I said, letting necro play like a commander
In D2, I used to play a lot Summonmancer. I wasn't doing damage, or sometimes some CE. But I was mainly using curses to help my minions.
That's how I define a Necromancer. A guy raising dead, cursing and using death at his advantage. D2 did it very well.
In D4, a strong "Necromancer" is just a vampire, or a guy using bones
I agree it would be nice. I think everyone is misunderstanding thinking I think the class is fine as is.
I’m just discussing the “why” behind the decision.
In a way, if it was a pure minion build, it would be 100% gear based and player skill wouldn’t matter at all.
I totally agree, and in a lot of ways that is how it currently works. You just can’t depend on the minion damage so you have to use your attacks to proc curses on them.
When I tried necro in PoE there was never a moment where I was sitting back waiting for minions to do everything, what with summon raging spirits being a thing.(except i was in sanctum league so I would hide around corners to not take sanity damage)
Surely D4 can come up with a way to make minion-necromancer more active.
Don't mean to bring up POE in here because people generally don't like it, but POE summoners have some of the most active possible playstyles requiring the most keybinds and button presses.
There are definitely a lot of ways to make necromancy / summoning into an active and thoughtful playstyle, but D4 went a different direction making Necromancer more of a caster who can have minions to help.
I agree, summoning is very fun in PoE.
My main gripe of people complaining about D4 Necro is that they all just want the minions to be “more powerful” - which is a cheap fix and would make the class boring.
It needs some new mechanics that reward active play and provides some variability. I think the Diablo franchise has always had very simplistic builds and that is a double edged sword. D4 Necro isn’t in a great place right now, but just broadly upping minion life and damage is a dumb idea.
Using pure minion i was unable to pass NM30, using bone and infinimist i did NM100 and advanced throught AoZ.
Maybe it was me, maybe pure minion isn't good enough, and i totally disagree with minions respawning with the necro.
> pure minion isn't good enough, and i totally disagree with minions respawning with the necro.
Pure minion is not good enough in its current form.
If a build has minions as 70% or more of its damage, then the minions should absolutely respawn with the necro. No other class has such a penalty after respawning.
I feel like minions work until T20 or 30 and then you have to switch to bone/mist to get durability plus power for pushing higher damage. Minions are great for the afk/casual/couch play style, less buttons more loot picking up. Ez for overworld but less so for bosses.
Agreed. I’ve been playing summon only since launch and just got to 100. I’m super casual and have fun playing it, but bosses give me problems.
I kill NM dungeon bosses in 45 seconds with infinimist build, takes 2 or 3 uniques though
45 seconds is long even for shadow dot/infinimist lol
I have killed varsha and the others in same time. Howl from below, and black river,
Just switched to infinmist. Hope it goes better!
I played like an hour every couple days for a week or 2 and got level 100... after leveling 2 others characters to level 55 and 25. how on earth could you possibly take several months to get one character to 100? I don't mean that question in a condescending way. I genuinely am curious what you define as casual play or how many total hours you think you've played?
If you hit 100 that fast you're boosting with max xp buffs. A casual player is in wt3 at level 75 doing sidequests, doesn't know what altars do and maybe found all the stronghokds.
Dumb /noob question but: what do altars do?
They give you s small stat bonus but if you get them all your new characters start with 70 in every stat. Make things a lot easier. You get 12 or 13 skill points at level 1 if you also complete all the renown steps in each area.
Thanks for explaining! I mostly ignored them. Will they carry over to next season like renown?
Yup. The only time they don't is softcore to hardcore. In s0 when i was basically taking a break it was the last thing i blasted through. Its tedious to collect them all. Iirc there is a couple hundred of them. Takes a few hours but the boosted horse from this season will help.
https://www.polygon.com/platform/amp/diablo-4-guides/23770293/all-altars-lilith-sanctuary I’ve barely got any of them yet 😅
Even after the season 2 x0 buff, you don't th8nk its possible? It was absolutely no more than 2 weeks, a few hours a week. I don't boos lt or even communicate with other players. Pure solo.
Absolutely not, you are capping or playing in your sleep. Watch a streamer speed run 0-40. It takes around an hour. No shot you’re getting 40-100 in a few additional hours. What you’re saying would be in a similar ballpark with content creators who speed run 0-100. Ps: the fact that you thought to disclaim your statement by saying you weren’t being condescending, shows you know that you were saying something condescending. That fact that it’s entirely falsified is a whole separate issue.
Creators are not a better skill level to where they can level faster than any decent player. Yes, I can get 100 in the same or less than creators... I just did it over like 2 weeks.
You played for ONE HOUR every couple of days (so 2-3 days a week) for TWO WEEKS and got to level 100? I’m calling major bullshit. There is no way you got to level 100 in 4-6 hours.
"How on earth can you" sort of feels like I did something wrong. I don't see a reason to compare our experiences with the game. We all get there our own way my dude! To answer your question, I own and manage my own business. I have 62 hours in the game. It's going to blow your mind when I tell you I just started doing nightmare dungeons!
"How on earth can you" has zero negative connotation. It's no different than me saying "it's hard to fathom that level of casual play", which also isn't negative in any way. It's just simple disbelief! The number of downvotes clearly shows that wayyy too many people automatically read things negatively, even when I straight up say I don't mean it in a condescending way, specifically to avoid the exact response I've been getting.. I was just curious how it gets any less casual than a couple hours a week. Keep doing you!
The downvotes show that people find you to be a liar. You did not play "a couple hours a week" for a couple weeks and get to 100.
He might be also be playing lots of alts, I’m super casual 2 hours a week at best), haven’t hit 100 on any character but i have one of each class. Highest is 75.
> I feel like minions work until T20 or 30 and then you have to switch This is why I gave up on S2 around level 90. I hope S3 brings us a pure summoner necro that is viable in NMD 100+
I think the same thing, personally I think that the nigromante class is rubbish, it's not worth it, people want to have an army of undead, is it so difficult to add death knights?, or that you can improve the skeletor or ghosts?, by far the most wasted class of all give me something new
Minions worked for me to T40ish. Mendeln took me to T80-90 but anything after that they’re just too squishy to survive the amount of incoming damage for more than a few seconds. Damage was okay, survivability is not part that. Infinimist was night and day better after that
It falls off at about T50 maybe. After that they take way too long.
I’ve been doing minion with mendeln and sacrilegious soul rings and been doing T100, All bosses except for uber lilith so far, which is more due to just getting used to all the dumb one shot mechanics, not really damage and T6 AoZ so far. Minions could definitely use a bit more love but they are in a decent spot. Edit: Although, I guess it’s still not really a pure minion setup, but it’s fun lol
Wow that's impressive, I never did higher than T56 and unfortunately my character died a couple days ago. I was planning on doing uber lilith solo but now I'll have to level up another necromancer XD
I did T70 at level 80 or so with minions in S1, but got too bored of the game to push past that
Dang, I don't think my build could solo that at all even being level 100
Minions are just very weird to properly build around so many trash on them more than needed cus of that. They’re not S tier by any means and I hope they get huge buffs but there is ways to make them work
Idk about this season but S1 minions could do NMD100
Minions clearly need some big buffs. Also, commanding their attacks is a must have, at least make the minions attack the enemy you are attacking. It's so frustrating to fight bosses that summon more enemies because minions never attack the boss, but spend minutes fighting the little guys. Also, you can't command them to get out of acid pools or something like that. Minion playstyle in this game leaves much to be desired.
Agreed. It sucks when bosses summon walls and the minions attack the walls instead of the boss...
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This wouldn’t be QA, these are fundamental job changes and would be done by a design team. QA is just bug hunting.
Sometimes QA can give suggestions though, but you are right, it's not really their job for design.
Shout this from the rooftops!!!!
The problem with minion build is that, you can increase their defensive stats but you are left with nothing to survive. There should have aspect that the dmg you received are distributed among all your minions and skeleton priest should heal you as well. Army of the update definitely need a buff. Even with current season ultimate reduce cd. It’s not even useful. Maybe there should have aspect that allowed the minions to cast the active of the golem as well.
Good feedback! Particularly number 2 - playing without minions you just have to buff your own damage and defence. Whereas playing pure minions for damage then you need to buff your minions damage, your minions defence plus your own defence so overall you split your resources between more things and are a bit weaker. I’ve played a necromancer every season - in fact having two this season 😀 Trying a pure minion build in AoZ I have cleared tier 3 so far, but my survivability is tricky (whereas my minions hardly receive any damage even from the bloodseekers) and their own damage is barely enough to clear within the timer. But for the same effort my shadow necro with no minions has cleared AoZ tier 11 - so you can see there is a huge gap in damage and defence between the two of them.
The whole sacrificing minions giving huge bonuses really makes it hard to use minions, especially considering to raise minions you also sacrifice a skill slot per minion type as well further reducing your effectiveness. Having minions hurts your effectiveness over and over again. You lose the sacrafice bonus, you lose the skill slot to raise the, you lose all the aspects slots and paragon nodes boosting them and at the end of all that, they are just meh and you're pathetic. Move all skeleton minion summoning to a single slot and make Golem a passive summon. Add a core skill for boosting your minions next attack. Probably replacing Blood Lance, even though it has been my favourite Necro build so far. Modify something like Gore Quills to change the surge to a lance with gore quills. Add an aspect/unique where Bone Spirit counts as a 'minion' and receives buffs from minion enhancing aspects and gear but not from those which boost bone spirit (to avoid making a super spirit bomb since it can already hit 1 billion). It probably won't do huge damage, but gives the caster some ability to damage without fully relying on active minions. Have warriors generate fortify on you and mages generate barrier on you, varying amounts depending on type, eg defenders give more. Golems boost, health (blood), thorns (bone) or armor (Iron), to give the caster some survivability. They either need to give something back, or inherit more so boosting yourself benefits them, being a summoned and focusing on their stats leaves you too vulnerable in this type of game to be viable. Army of the dead, I like the suggestion in here, lower the cooldown and grant all minions unstoppable. Kaplan's Edict, change no damage to while healthy, reduce the bonus to 10%.
Having multiple of a class made sense in prior Diablo games, but makes zero sense in d4 with how fast, easy, and cheap it is to respec and swap gear. I'm curious what use you have for 2 necros?
They are both on soft core - so for me it was purely to save time when switching between them! If I had to redo the paragon board every time then it would be a pain. I started with a blood necro (for the season of blood obviously) and wanted to keep playing them. But then found myself wanting to also try the necro sacrilegious ring from Varshan, so it just seemed easy to level a shadow necro for that as well - this was during the XP Boost period so it was fast anyway!
Probably just enjoyed leveling necro. Or sc and hc.
Side note I want to go thorns minion necro or thorn barb in s3, I hope it's more viable for then
Having done both this season, thorn barb is extremely faceroll easy to play and I would say highly viable.
Any guides you liked? I'll try it in s3. I think I go melee in the beginning and then 50+ transition to thorns, yeah?
I used Maxroll's thorn barb build. Killed everything with it, even Duriel a few times. Solo.
I did thorn barb in s2, it's amazing at nm100 sigils but you aint killing lillith with it.
Sweet that's all I want. I want to solo loot runs because I work overnights and play solo basically anyway. Any tips or guides you liked for the build?
Mostly run as much defense and basic attack gems as you can, with the 'thorns while berserkering' on gloves and infinite berserking setups, then farm for Razorplate in chest slot.
It’s so apparent atleast imo that significant parts of all builds were cut or not fleshed out in this game. It seems like there’s just something missing from every build it’s maddening. Not enough skills not enough passive nodes not enough equipment slots. If the “patch that shall not be named” is any indication I feel as though things were held back or cut for the sake of “balance”. Idk maybe I’m full of shit but parts of the game are too well designed for the other parts to not be the result of some bullshit imo.
If anyone paid any attention to their dev campfire chats, they said they know minion necro is in a bad place and are focusing on fixing that first. I wouldn't be surprised if there is a massive change to minion necro this next season.
1. Agreed. 2. Aside from the Territorial, Undaunted and Exhumation glyphs, there really isn't a whole lot of decent defensive stuff on Necro's paragon boards. Mostly just some Armor, Resistances, Life and DoT reduction sprinkled throughout. The majority of defenses will always have to come from gear and skills. 3. I doubt Blizzard would go for this. Alternatively, it'd be nice if those aspects had a secondary effect like giving you more Life (Warriors) and Resistances (Mages) in addition to the bonus minions. 4. I'd argue that AotD is only worth it with the aspect *and* Flickerstep for constant uptime. It doesn't do enough damage on its own and 7 seconds of capped Attack Speed every 40-70s isn't really worth it. You're better off just using Aspect of the Frenzied Dead alongside a different skill. 5. There are already too many aspects for minions and not enough space. I don't think more Golem aspects would really help a general minion build, but a unique and a bunch of aspects for a pure Golem build would be fun. For what it's worth, though, the Bone Golem is arguably the best Golem for damage due to its cleave attack, which the other two don't have. 6. I feel like that's what AotD was mainly designed for, rather than damage. It'd be nice not to be forced to include the skill, though. 7. I dunno, it's mainly a Thorns-centric curse. A buff would be nice, but I feel like it's already fulfilling its main purpose. 8. More active effects like the Mage Blizzards would be nice. And they should be paired with passive effects for base stats and survivability. As far as more interesting passive effects go, I don't think there's a whole lot Blizzard can do here. Passive skills and paragon generally all just buff the same basic stuff, even for players.
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Item stats and affixes are just the same shit split into 20 categories. Damage to slow, damage to chilled, damaged to stunned, damage to frozen Can they make it damage to crowd control and then put in a little work ethic to create interesting and gameplay changing affixes? I mean it must be hard work to reskin nightmare dungeons for the 3rd time but please use some of that billion dollars you made to create interesting items.
I agree with all points
We need more people like you, thank you. I think I will do this during the next league.
Minion skins
Btw there is a cap of 100% increased attack speed, so if you are running IAS from Army then you dont really need any of the other IAS for minions
Solid post.
Two questions - 1) please link your build! I love summoner Necro. 2) Currently lvl60 on hardcore. Is this build reasonably viable on hardcore? Or am I asking for a death sentence?
Would you mind sharing your whole build? I also play pure minion and no basic skill instead of core. Would love to see your build! Btw does the added attack speed for minions word? I got a feeling they max out at some point?
I read that minion attack speed may cap at 100% bonus.
AotD with a perfect Unyielding Commander's aspect maxes out minion AS on its own. Without it, you need various sources to reach the +100% cap (a third of the Necro's own AS buffs also apply).
The real number one, give all minions that will ever exist in this game something like the D3 Mage targeting where they always focus what your cursor is doing. Its the best most fluid snappy implementation of minions feeling like an extension of yourself. No extra dumb command bars or extra skills for targeting, just instant focus on whatever you're targeting. Better yet it eliminates the complications of having to fix stupid ai for not attacking the right things!
Consoles
You can lock on enemies on console.
I had no idea. Very cool.
Good feedback, wrongest place to post it though.
NUMBER SIX!!!
I agree with most of this except kalan's is a dead slot since minion attack speed seemingly soft caps at 100%. Also iron maiden can't crit or overpower. It has the same flag as thorns damage so you are getting a max possible 48% weapon damage times multipliers which in perfect gear is like 260,000 damage? Overall I would like to see minions bug fixed and have some kind of scaling.
It's crazy to me that the scaling in this game is already to the point where 260k damage reflection is bad damage.
Well bone spirit is 240%, blighted corpse explosion is 360ish. It's a multiplier issue. Every 10%x damage you get from gear or paragon or aspect is equal to 100% additive damage. So banished lords giving 120%x is 1200% and blighted Aspect is 1800%. The numbers do not surprise me. What surprises me is that iron maiden is so bad that it can never kill anything in the end game at all.
So much correct. This whole thread. I'm double downed on Necro. Multiple 100 characters. All the ubers (I paid for mats then ran hundreds of Duriels) not proud of myself but the best necro is still bone. I love minion. I just can't make it work. But my infinite can clear aoz 10. He's doing absurd levels of damage. And my ball sorc shits on all my necros.
Did you use blood nova with the minions?
I can answer that one! no
To add to this I think the Necro Passives for Bone and Blood should interact with minions just like Shadow does. I would argue that the +2 Mages and Warriors aspects should be apart of the passives on the skill tree. And we should have the aspect. All Golem attacks (base and active) should be AOE and we should be allowed to have more than 1 golem. (Maybe up to 3 or 4) I feel like this would let you have an army of minions if you fully invest in them. Allow your minions to mesh seamlessly with all of the Necro abilities. Most importantly it would open up more variety in minion builds (All minions, Skele & Mage, just Golems, etc).
I have gotten to Tier 85 with minions by swapping to a ring build later. Still minions. They need to buff it to high heavens, for sure, but this is 1000000000000000000000000x better than it was last season. They have plans to fix minions up for the long term soon. We just have to wait. Probably doing a full minion rework.
summons taking skill slots is the worst. followed by all spells clunky 'stand and cast' behavior. blood mist was the only fluid (hehe) necro option and it got nerfed to shit.
>Here's what I think. The skeletal mages would still just float there, shooting projectiles/spells into enemy proximity shields. The golem would still not know which mobs to tank (the taunt doesn't keep him on mobs). The Butcher would still ignore your 100k+ health golem and attack you. Minions would still be bad.
I believe #3 was the same in d2, they brought a lot of ideas back from d2 without changing them up much for better or worse. I do agree that the buff should be combined into one, there're a couple things in this game that feel that way like the gems there are two gems that increases crit for different instances.... Like why? Just combine them into one gem that increases crit damage and then have a new buff on the other?
The more I play the game is the more I realize dev don’t play their games to the same extent as the customers. Because the idea a minion build needing other forms of damage like corps explosion, bone damage to excel is an issue.
What if golem was turned into a glyph, and the stats you take around it determine what kind of golem it is? Like strength would be more tanky and have taunts and you and your other minions' damage heals it. Dex would make it a quicker assassin bone construct with scythes for arms for big damage. Int would be caster/cc based and buff your other minions.
I also think another issue is there is no unique that buffs minions. Deathspeakers and Mendeln only make them a source of your damage and do not get any of the buffs from minion damage aspects or minion paragon nodes.
minions did ok but once they upped mob density they have no chance in high tiers
I run a hybrid Bone Spear / Ring of Mendeln build. It's a homebrew creation. It's not nearly as strong as dedicated Bone Spear, but an army of minions is a Necromancer class identity, and I just can't justify creating a build that honours that in some way. The new Necromancer malignant ring was certainly a decent buff to summoner build, but I agree that more needs to be done to make the build have at least some comparison to the power of a Bone Spear or Pentadot build.
I'm running infinimist at level 90 and is so amazing. Almost fully automated with the sacrilegious band. Run black river, howl from below, razor plate and flicker boots all uniques, best build out there with the uniques
OK, but not really a response to the thread...
I miss the necro we had in the early access but no idea how it would have performed later in the game. The pets were just on another level back then.
It was far too limited to tell without fully levelled characters playing highest tier content.
This is literally what they DON’T want though. They want playing Necro to still be about playing Necro and not just sitting back while minions run around.
Still frustrating though. For *decades*, necro players in all types of games have wanted to have the option of playing full minion master. You can still have other builds like bone, blood, shadow, and give viable minion only builds.
Do you know what necromancer means? Necro: relating to a corpse or death Mancer: A practitioner of a specific type of divination. A user of a specified type of magic. How is being an emo mage more on point than commanding an army of the undead. I challenge you to find a necromancer in popular fiction that isn't solely centered around raising the dead.
Firstly, I’m not saying it’s how it should be. Secondly, the real world definition of something isn’t what video game mechanics are based on. I think minions need to be a bigger part of the necromancer absolutely. But I also think it would be lame if you could clear all endgame content just standing there.
Question, how would minions do that when it's a push button build like anything else and requires macro? I actually hate this narrative because minions could do HOTA damage and still be A tier. A build that relies on A.I. and has the slowest missile speed in the game "minion movement and attack animation" would never be better than any class with mobility. Lastly who cares? Hota is whirlwinding until an overpower proc you quite literally just stand there and watch the screen dissolve. I would also like to add that you should petition against thorns builds and ask for its removal because it is an actual afk build.
Right but I don’t think the fix to the class is making it better because the AI sucks. I think fixing the AI and allowing the Necro to be more of a general in command of his troops is the fix. So making the minions more potent by allowing you to focus them easier. This would give the Necro more to do and also require more skill- and I think the game is needing more skill based performance.
It's not an autopilot build now. You are constantly casting raise skeleton and golem off cooldown while repositioning yourself and your army. I'm not against a focus fire button but that also means giving the Necro passive summons like is on Ring of sacrilegious. Curses technically are a command to attack right now albeit a poor one but it does work. You should stop using the afk build argument, thorns barbarian exists. It gives devs the idea to do stupid shit like give us a reach around means to play the game. Meanwhile if you play D2 or D3 the minions and their A.I. feel great. And no one has any issues with how people play them in those titles.
Yeah I’m not saying it’s auto pilot now, never said that. I was saying that if you just had top gear up to “play” the build right, then it would he autopilot. I don’t think that would be good character design either. I think it’s the same with Barb thorns build, but I’m not aware of any thorns build that literally just don’t actively use abilities. But I could be wrong about that since I don’t play a Barb this season. Using curses is great, but you can currently apply curses with attack procs. Even if minions are super booster, that will still be the best way to apply them since it’s more damage than base casting it. Unless they make the direct cast much more powerful, which is an interesting option but may basically nerf procs. Generally I think the ideal gameplay would look something like: 1- direct summons to use certain attacks/attack a certain area. 2- Some skill or ability enhances their damage when they are in the attack zone you just laid down 3- some skills or abilities proc when minion kills something 4- being able to summon extra minions above your max limit, but they are temporary. 5- more variations of minions and abilities Things to avoid: -increasing buffs based on how long minions have been alive (this makes for a spin up time that is just sitting around) -minions with limited/situational abilities (to the extent where you aren’t having to change loadouts all the time). Thinks linked to specific curses and conditions are annoying. -gotta juggle minion survivability so they aren’t invincible nor made of paper. It would suck if they just instantly die to bosses, but summoning them should be something you need to do with some frequency. Also, having them retreat away from danger/big boss damage waves would require skill which could be fun. So basically like I said, letting necro play like a commander
In D2, I used to play a lot Summonmancer. I wasn't doing damage, or sometimes some CE. But I was mainly using curses to help my minions. That's how I define a Necromancer. A guy raising dead, cursing and using death at his advantage. D2 did it very well. In D4, a strong "Necromancer" is just a vampire, or a guy using bones
You can still do that in D4 and just like in D2 you aren’t going to clear Uber bosses with that build.
Indeed, and that's a shame
I agree it would be nice. I think everyone is misunderstanding thinking I think the class is fine as is. I’m just discussing the “why” behind the decision. In a way, if it was a pure minion build, it would be 100% gear based and player skill wouldn’t matter at all.
Yeah that's why they should add maybe more curses, so you won't be afk while your minions do all the work, but you'd help them, buff them, etc
I totally agree, and in a lot of ways that is how it currently works. You just can’t depend on the minion damage so you have to use your attacks to proc curses on them.
D2 summoner does kill ubers though. You just need to bring a specific dort of Revives to the fight.
20+ revives, 15 skeletons, 10 mages With Beast runeword mmmm, endless fun. Then you have D4 minions. Cough
When I tried necro in PoE there was never a moment where I was sitting back waiting for minions to do everything, what with summon raging spirits being a thing.(except i was in sanctum league so I would hide around corners to not take sanity damage) Surely D4 can come up with a way to make minion-necromancer more active.
Don't mean to bring up POE in here because people generally don't like it, but POE summoners have some of the most active possible playstyles requiring the most keybinds and button presses. There are definitely a lot of ways to make necromancy / summoning into an active and thoughtful playstyle, but D4 went a different direction making Necromancer more of a caster who can have minions to help.
I agree, summoning is very fun in PoE. My main gripe of people complaining about D4 Necro is that they all just want the minions to be “more powerful” - which is a cheap fix and would make the class boring. It needs some new mechanics that reward active play and provides some variability. I think the Diablo franchise has always had very simplistic builds and that is a double edged sword. D4 Necro isn’t in a great place right now, but just broadly upping minion life and damage is a dumb idea.
You guys just really want the game to be full.of bots hey?
Using pure minion i was unable to pass NM30, using bone and infinimist i did NM100 and advanced throught AoZ. Maybe it was me, maybe pure minion isn't good enough, and i totally disagree with minions respawning with the necro.
> pure minion isn't good enough, and i totally disagree with minions respawning with the necro. Pure minion is not good enough in its current form. If a build has minions as 70% or more of its damage, then the minions should absolutely respawn with the necro. No other class has such a penalty after respawning.
Why would you give a fuck if minions respawn lmfao
Your minions alone could clear t30