Summon Necromancer constructive feedback. >DEVS, please read<

Necromancer
1

First, couple of facts;

  1. Summon Necro was since the very beginning a primary archetype of this class.
  2. Summon Necro in Diablo 4 unquestionably under-performs compared to other classes.

People complain about how low the dps of the minions is but that is not the root cause of poor performance in my opinion.

Below some critical issues with a constructive proposal to fix (in order of criticality):


Issue #1: Minions attack random targets as opposed to focus on the selected target

We would like to COMMAND the ARMY of the dead and not rely on their AI algorithms.
This is the main dps issue as every minion hits a separate target, also randomly changing targets without a good reason.

Proposal:
Add a function to Raise Skeleton and Golem skills to prioritize highlighted by the cursor targets and if no corpse or target is highlighted then move all minions to the cursor position. Simple and a huge game changer.


Issue #2: Minions don't attack unless we make a first move.

We understand this is some sort of anti-afk-farming feature, but itā€™s making this class extremely hard to play.
When we need to run and canā€™t cast any skill, our army runs with us, and then all monsters run after us. Just play Benny Hill running music in the background and that will showcase the experience we are having.

Proposal:
Make minions aggressive, donā€™t let them wait for us to initiate with a skill, and make them only follow us when they are off-screen.


Issue #3:Minions don't have any hit marks checks.

They will blindly try to hit a target when there is an object in their way. Trying to reposition minions by us moving around is not a good solution.

Proposal:
See Issue#1 move all minions proposal.


Issue #4: Golem `charge` doesn't work as we hope.

Golem constantly gets stuck in the way of charge. Either on the map object or other minions.

Proposal:
We want Golem to say ā€œMove, b***h, get out the wayā€ when he charges. Add a feature to push everything out of his way until the target is reached. A similar effect is used when riding a horse and pushing monsters away. Also, improve the golem pathways.

Issue #5: Some monsters are smarter than our minions.

Minions are doing their job (see issue#1) while Iā€™m being targeted by an elite and have to reposition and this causes (issue#2)

Proposal:
Make minions smart and prioritize the target that is hitting us.

Issue #6: Minions don't crit

All other endgame builds rely on crit bucket - chance/dmg. Minions doing flat dmg canā€™t get any close to other classesā€™ dps

Proposal:
Allow minions to crit. Split the chance to crit even by the number of summoned minions or some smarter algorithm.

Skills Issues:

Blighted Corpse Explosion The ā€œfogā€, when stacked in one place, obscures the vision of all the AOE effects monsters cast. I cannot count how many times I couldnā€™t see the effect on the ground and died cause of that.

Proposal:
Make fog stacking less or bring the fog effect to the bottom layer so we can see the negative AOE effects on top of the fog.

Blight

pull aspect pulls monsters with big hitboxes out of the defiled area
Proposal:
Make pull to the center of the monster ā€œaxisā€ and not to where Blight hit captures the monster hitbox.

Overall, the game is great, but there is a lot to improve. I hope Devs will read this and review the current Summon Necro.

6 Likes
2

There are 5 problems that necro summoner currently has:

  1. Limited dps of summons due to afk expā€¦ Solution after 40-90s of not using other skills (for example at least basic or any other curse type so that the game sees that the player is active) summons stop attacking

  2. Weak dps of minionsā€¦ This is also the problem from point 1, but their dps is so weak that you can dream of serious farming on WT4 using only minions + boosters.

  3. High dps of minions = no need to regenerate essences, spell costs, which may not be fair in relation to other classes. And I understand it, only summons need scaling, at least to our lvl and weapon power in such a way that they at least take out mid dps, and the rest of the dps move (along with scaling) to the passive use of Summoning Skelleton (for priests, which, for example, with each use if owning skeletons consumes x essence, gives x% dps x% attack speed, x% crit chance, stack x times, essence cost increased by x%)

  4. Investing in dps for minions, we lose a lot on defense ā€¦ Here I would not change it, I believe that something for something. And if minions are supposed to have high dps, Iā€™m in favor of introducing something like having more than 4-5 summons they have more dps, more health etc, at the expense of our dps and defense (This is basically a solution to problem #2).

  5. And most importantly, the AI ā€‹ā€‹of the minions is so terrible that if I knew from the start that this is how they work, I wouldnā€™t do Nekro. I feel cheated and I think this class could practically be thrown in the trash if they donā€™t do anything about it soon.

And looking at the whole thing, the tier klass currently looks like this:
S++: Barb and Druid
S+/A: Wizard Lotr
C:Necro

Where barb got nerfed and is still one of the best classes. Nekro is Tier C (yes) because he has too much resource generation problems compared to other classes, you have to sacrifice summons to get DPS at the expense of his resource generation ability, but once you decide to use them to generate essences or corpses, youā€™re playing a summoning simulator anyway.

2 Likes
3

DEVs do need to read this thread. D4 has the potential to be a really good game. They canā€™t allow themselves to miss the mark about what a necromancer is.

Here are a few issues with the game that the devs need to read. Some of these are the same as the initial message.

Iā€™m not trying to insult any of you by saying this : If you need an idea of how playing a necromancer should feel, feel free to try diablo 2. (Not diablo 3) The game still needed improvements but the feel of how it should be is definitely there.

1- Minions are not going after ennemies unless we start attacking something. This is not how they should behave. They should be charging at ennemies the same way ennemies are charging at us.

2- Minions are weak and we have no idea how to improve them. We need precise information of what can or cannot be used to improve them. Thereā€™s no ā€œMaybeā€ on this point. Reddit forums and other websites mention the silence of D4 dev team on the topic. This issue can be calmed by a simple post.

3- Ennemies charge straight for the player and ignore the minions approximately 80 to 90% of the time. Minions should be the first target. Always. This is what having a necromancer in the team is all about. The skeletons should be helping the team by tanking most of the damage for the team. The necromancer isnā€™t a dps but he can get through most fights over time. Thatā€™s what a summon necro is.

4- The size of the necromancer army should be able to grow. 4 Skeletons and 3 mages only? And ā€œMaybeā€ a golem on top of it if you possibly have the room in your skills for more? This is not what a necromancer is about. The necromancer is the army master who can replace killed units from corpses when needed.

I will not talk about item class issues here but I will have to add one final topic which affects the necromancer possibly more than other classes.

Monster Spamming : There is no problem with a special occasion where monsters are being spammed from all directions. That being said, an entire game where any encounter found in dungeons/boss battles/events/random monsters outside/etc. will most likely have ā€œMonster spammingā€ in it is a very bad game design. I would encourage thinking about better encounters with monsters. If you ever played ā€œPlayer made gamesā€ from the game called ā€œMario Maker 1 or 2ā€ you would know this type of levels as ā€œ5 years old kids game designā€. (aka Red flag in a game) They have a very bad reputation and get generally voted down by everyone. Please do not let D4 go down that path. You need to let the player try strategies against their oppenents and not always force an ambush on the player. This is getting old and repetitive very fast.

Diablo 4 has a lot of potential. I really hope you will get these points sorted out.

Good luck!

1 Like
4

  • my skeletons will often run after things and attack them. sometimes when i dont want them to

  • paragon board can improve skeleton damage and survival in the Cult Leader section

  • enemies will always target a summoner. thats what they should do, its what i would do if i were killing enemies - target the enemy that is respawning the monsters.

  • the skeleton army can be grown. there are legendary affixes that add 2 more warriors and another that adds a couple more mages

necromancer skeletons targeting invulnerable enemies and stationary objects during battle is a problem

1 Like
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Only skeleton mages deal damage once you hit around the 70-80ā€™s and ive legit tested it, if i havenā€™t been hit or hit another target my skeletons stand still and donā€™t do shit until ive either been hit or i hit them with any kind of spell that damages. While the army can be grown it also handicaps it, if i start losing minions ( i donā€™t anymore, but i used to) you canā€™t heal them while summoning so if they start dying faster or you run out of corpses you are essentially dead or have to flee.

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** my skeletons will often run after things and attack them. sometimes when i dont want them to*

You are possibly the only one in the game reporting such a thing. Either a straight up lie or you do not understand what is being complained about.

** enemies will always target a summoner. thats what they should do, its what i would do if i were killing enemies - target the enemy that is respawning the monsters.*

You are telling me that if an army is running after you, you would not defend yourself and kill the minions so you can finish off the big guy after? A sumon necro has an army which should block the opponents from going after him because he is weak. Currently in diablo 4, the army is being ignored so hard it is painful to play. Some of us actually care to make sure blizzard can finally make a sumon necro either as good or better than diablo 2. Right now, due to how minions are ignored and unable to defend unless a golem taunt them, (which is not how it should be played) the sumon necro is not what it should feel like and is a total disapointment. Until this is fixed, the sumon necro will and always will be a disapointment the same way d3 sumon necro missed the mark and disapointed a massive amount of players who loved that one specific class and how it is meant to be played.

** the skeleton army can be grown. there are legendary affixes that add 2 more warriors and another that adds a couple more mages*

I have one of those. I also know that if I put it on my necklace, i would have +3 warrior skeletons.
An army master has nothing but a few weakling minion at the front. Diablo 2, you could reach 10 before using any items. It would block an entire section ahead and you would have to figure something out extra only if your opponents would attack from the sides.

Please try playing with a sumon necro and learn how it is played in general before writing non-sense which would hurt other players who do enjoy such characters the way it should be played.

7

This is totally bugged. When I played Necromancer (now Iā€™m switched to Sorcerer becauseā€¦you know, we are here talking about issues xD) a lot of times Skeletal Soldiers or Mages or both they didnā€™t attack, forced me to walking around spamming spells and searching other targets to attacks.

8

This is a poor example. Weather you use essence or not shouldnā€™t be a dps factor.

Barbs donā€™t even use basic attacks. How is that fair to rogues who do?

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Yeah, actually addressed some of this in feedback during betaā€¦ I honestly dunno why they did not read the feedback. I understand this is not POE and its a different game but why not learn from problems they have solved and why. You literally have a gem that makes minions aggressive to a single target. With a perk of doing some extra damage to that one dude. Minions have taunt in poe and so on.

I also added that using corpses as fuel for summons would be a huge issue late game. Which it is. Cause the moment you die a dungeon you need the necro ability where you summon all ya minions at once. However, itā€™s also a huge damage CDā€¦ So likely it was used for the fight you were just in and now u have this painful as uhummm task of resummoning all ya dudes with no corpses.

10

Im a massive summoner necro fan and i agree with the comments about controlling your minions. I do feel that some of the people have not gone into summoner hard enough. i cleared wt4 capstone (elias) at level 57. renown not cleared so i didnt make it to any legendary paragon node yet. So all my damage came from gear/talents.

Ive read somewhere that not all affixes are working? but if they dont i should only be getting stronger. (because things dont scale down, up to level 73 i should only be getting stronger and at level 60 i can wield ancestral gear.) so 60 to 70 should be the easiest of them all. I ignored all build guides and just went with what worked.

Skills
Decrepify
Iron vulnerability slam
Corpse explosion
Corpse tendrils.
Skeleton reaper & cold mages with vulnerable.
Army of the dead ultimate.
Pick all minion related abilities and passives and take the ias keystone.

affixes
ias + dr on army of the dead
ias on 3 strikes (on weapon)
minion damage taken reduction
increase damage of minions when alive

  • 3 mages (amulet)
  • 2 warriors)
    Cold mages cast blizzard

playstyle:
Deceprify everything
keep mage priest buff up
Cast tendrils
Cast slam
cast corpse explosion

ias on minions proc cdr and corpses.
with the massive cdr from deceprify, tendrils and slam have a 4 second cooldown and and army of the dead around 30 seconds or less.
with the corpses you can infinitly spawn priests/ tendrils or blow up tiny mobs with explosion.

Even wt4 dungeon bosses went down in 10 15 seconds at level 57.

1 Like
11

I only use minion classes in whatever arpg Iā€™m playing. I knowā€¦ I should have my head examined. That said Iā€™ve grown accustomed to the positives and negatives of minion classes. My 2 cents on the D4 minion class:

Minion Aggressiveness - I get it. We shouldnā€™t be able to ā€œafk farmā€. But minion aggro isnā€™t where it should be imo. Fortunately I think thereā€™s a simple fix: Make curses trigger minion aggro. If Iā€™m cursing a target I want it dead. My minions should see my action as aggressive and react accordingly. That would prevent me having to explicitly do damage to a target or constantly run forward to force my minions to engage. It would make engagement faster which translates smoother combat without allowing the player to be afk.

Minion AI - AI is always a problem with minion archetypes. Typically itā€™s an issue with the ā€œcombat\engagement AIā€, an issue with pathing, or a combination of both. Generally speaking I think the AI in D4 is ok with the exception of the Golem. For whatever reason the Golem does not engage consistently. It will often remain in one spot even when all the skeletons and myself are engaged in the fight. Sometimes it will happen with the target 2 feet in front of the golemā€™s face. On a separate but related note, thereā€™s an AI issue with Suppressor. The bubble will sometimes hinder melee minions from seeing the target. Doesnā€™t always happen but itā€™s enough to be notable.

Necro DPS - I tend to disagree with my fellow necros on this point. As it compares to other classes necro dps is underwhelming but I believe it should be. The minion archetype has the benefit of having a very passive playstyle. It also has the downside of being slower than other classes. Typically in both movement speed and clear speed. Weā€™re supposed to be defensively oriented spellcasters. Like a rook on a chessboard. Powerful, but more guardian oriented. By nature thatā€™s slower. Would I like to do more dps? Of course but I donā€™t think itā€™s unbalanced atm.

12

Fully agreed. Spoken like a true minion master player.

Summon Necro should NOT be able to smash everything in a second unless he is going from act 4 to act 1 for whatever reason. Your army is fighting at the front and using your extra abilities, you help your army win.

Curses, corpse explosions, bone walls, etc. You control the fight and make sure you stay behind your skeleton wall. Make decisions wisely.

DPS isnā€™t an issue in my opinion.

If they could fix the massive bugs with aggressiveness and the fact that we shouldnā€™t have to play tag with monsters due to how they completely ignore skeletons, the class should already be good enough to have some fun with.

It is completely stupid that whenever the butcher shows up ; the best tactic is to find a room large enough to run in circles so while the butcher is running after me, my skeletons can run after him and damage him until death. Necro is supposed to be weak. Thats entirely fine! But ffs what kind of idiot am i playing in this game that canā€™t even throw his minions in front of him to protect himself?!

Still no word from the devs on this though. Iā€™m getting tired of this.

13

Yes i feel there are alot of bugs, i got my Minion Necro working now after a day of testing, and i am still not done (need to test if the paragon boards notes work, most of the glypes seem not to work well).

  • Minions seem to scale very bad with krit etc so i thrown everything away in my build
  • Minions seem to do way bigger dmg with 2h weapons even if you have the same stat dps
  • Most Minion legendarys seem not to work reliable
  • Minions seem to get shields

So what i did is cut out nearly all Minion stuff from my build and going full for lucky hit on the Minion Ring, with corpse Tendrils Legendary on 2h for Crit, Bonespear or Bloodnova (with the Blood Nova Amulett) worked good for me as core skills, but bone spear seem to be more consistent. Bone Spirit worked too but eh blood nova or bone spear seemd way better.
Bone Storm with legendarys is another big one, the Shield seem to buff Minions surviablility ten fold, its insane i cut all minion notes for tank and all legendary that do that out my build and now they survivie better then ever.
Same with the Minion Key passiveā€¦dont pick it.

Same with most Paragon board/runs Flesh Eater seem to be a insane dmg buff so is controll and Territoral.

Later i want to try to switch to wand/oh to get more lucky hit to proc the ring and cdr but i am not sure if its worth to give up the big Corpse Tendril Legendary (that seem to buff minions ? or maybe only the ring proc ) and the stronger Minion hits for it.

Its so counter intuitiv that you should pick up only non Minion stuff to buff Minions.

I can easy do 10-15 level higher Nightmare atm, so with my level 78 level 35-40 or more is easy, and i sure i dont have perfected the build. Other classes are for sure faster or can push higher but for me thats the first time my minion necro felt playable since i switched to t4.

14

This is absolutely terrible, we have no mobility or survivability compared to other classes and you think its fine on top of that we should have the lowest dps as well???

On top of that, just to improve our CLUNKY minions, we pretty much have to sacrifice all imprints on our gear leaving nothing for defense or actual raw dps for ourselves.

I think it speaks for itself that there barely is any max level necro content out there. Im tired of watching 500 different barbs whirling through insane level tiers oneshotting elites left and right at crazy movement speeds while their HP bar doestn move at all while happily spinning inside poison, fire, ice whatever.

No, this is ridiculous, if you even flat increased damage across the board for minions AND summoner, we would still worst class cause we play with clunky minions that dont even tank anything at all where it matters.

Necro is in such a terrible state, we need 5 patches (2 years more or less) of nerfs to other classes and simultaneously buffs to necro to make it somewhat even.

Are we ready for this? Are you ready for this? Years of forum crying just for a 10% skeletal mage damage buff every 4 months? You know blizzard wont ACTUALLY fix it cuz streamers like to wtfpwn everything on barbs and rogues.

We all saw what happened in D3 with the witchdocter, that was so laughable. We should not have expected anything else tbh. We fell for it, again.

15

I appreciate the difference of opinion. As I said I know my opinion on dps differs from most of my fellow necros. The example you describe above, honestly, sounds like a really boring game to me. What would be the point of mindlessly oneshotting everything on the screen with no risk to your health. Personally Iā€™d much rather play a game has a bit of grit and challenge.

Frankly, yes. I would prefer being undertuned and being buffed slowly than to be overtuned and getting nerfed. When that happens the nerf bat usually hits like a freight train and makes the affected class near unplayable. As what happened with necros in server slamā€¦ To be clear Iā€™m not saying necros are perfect, but in my opinion they do feel pretty close to where they should be given the design and intent of the game.

16

i just give up on necro. Yeah i know iam just lvl 55 but its painful to play summoner necro now and i donā€™t want be just another bone spear necroā€¦ similar to another mass of ww barbarianā€¦
Just entered room with 2 elites that does aoe dmg, my skeletons and golem runs like headless chicken attacking everything in the room while those 2 elites put fire and poison on the ground, and swinging with weapons doing aoe. I ran with my char from one corner to another between fire/poison trying to do some dmg with tandrils/corps explosion etc. before i halved one elite half ot the skeletons were dead, So i started to raise them again so no dmg from my side. alive minions attacking whatever they can, but no ā€˜power/orderā€™ to focus them on something. Again full minions, iā€™m doing dmg, one elite down but i didnā€™t see the fire explosion on the ground after all those corpse explosions skill and diedā€¦ going back tothat room with golem, raising minions again, killed that one elite left, cleared dungeon and here iam writing this post tired of this.
Thinking of making sorc/barb/druid and maybe slowly will push forward necro some time later againā€¦
Iwas a fan of a necro in d2 in d3 it was also fun but now iam just tired
maybe like some one write here, in about 2 years fans of summoner necro will have working class :frowning:

17

Necro has 2 op builds, neither uses minions. Itā€™s Bone spear and infinimist. Minions have only one scaling stat and that is summoning damage. Which they receive a 100% of the damage from. The rest receive 30% of the stat value. Minion attack speed is a joke. Due to a bug they receive almost no value. Even if it states minion attack speed. Stacking attack speed buffs only stack once and then fall off. This game is essentially in beta as far as necro is concerned. These are just a small portion of the insane minion bugs that exist.

I am 100% sure that they did almost no testing on necro. Blizzard is in the lucky position; people still have an attachment to the franchise. No other game would be able to get away with this. Look at wolcen. They did this in wow. Shadowlands was the point people stopped complaining and started leaving.

1 Like
18

I tried multiple variants of summoner necro and they are all nowhere near compared to bone spear with corpse tendrils - and most important thing I did not change any aspects or paragon. All equipment and boards where set for minions and I still cleared the same tier dungeon twice as fast with ease. Some of you mentioned Ring of Mendeln and I agree it is very powerful for this build, but you have to drop it somehow. Honestly, I found it really silly to lock the best (and only viable) source of damage behind uniques, when other builds/classes have it out of the box.
Minion AI and durability was discussed earlier in this thread and frankly I can only add that I still do not understant which stats are passed and in what percentage.

Before someone will mention all the YouTubers that showed viable builds just one remark - I just want to chill with my summoner necro and play the way I like, I do not aim to race through the leadeboards with top tier God Necro Build in the upcoming seasons. For now I barely struggle to make it playable with minions. Just it.

19

Yes minions need HP and DPS buff. Skeleton summoning is too slow.

My idea:
-if skeletons dont get HP and DPS boost double the ammount of skeletons
-after player death automaticaly summon all minions without corpse
-if you have less than 3 skeletons summoned, 1 press of skeleton button summon up to 3 skeletons without corpse
-if you have 3 or mor skeletons, 1 press of skeleton button summon 2 skeletons from 1 corpse or better 1 skeleton + 1 priest from 1 corpse
-if you have all skeletons summoned, 1 press of skeleton button summon 2 priests from 1 corpse
-add skeleton healer as another minion

Yesterday i bought Last Epoch. In this game you can use 5 skills and as a necro you can play pure minion master with 5 different minions. And its FUN. Why Diablo IV is pain to play as a minion master?

1 Like
20

The Necromancer Lead Class Developer has gone on record stating that in his views, summoning is not representative of a necromancer archetype. Helps in understanding how we got here