I think there are more answers for this. For some people, - like me I just like the play style. I like the idea that my army is owning the place. But yeah this is not for everybody, as most things is life.
Reading further… I agree with you on most things. It would be the best probably if we could use the “A” button as an attack, like this is already done in Last Epoch. You are right, minions are support right now, nothing more or less then that. Minion build is playable until nightmare dungeon ~tier25 or so, but after then the mages are generating resource/slowing/freezing, and the reapers are giving me endless corpses. The golem is still superdumbdumb, but hes a good meat-shield (I use blood with 15% mitigation). I have about 70-80% (above 3/3 Death’s Defense) damage mitigation on my army, they survive most of the time even on tier45. But… there damage has become almost nonexistent. I think for now this is probably the closest minion necro build we can get “working”.
I still really love to have a more minion oriented build where I am not forced to migrate my build to either boon spirit or boon spear…
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100% agree. I tried to play summoner up to level 50 (combined with bone spear), and if at the beginning it was not bad, then over time I began to realize that I have no damage at all, each dungeon has to be completed for a long time. And although minions were often a good distraction on bosses, the rest of the time it was a pain. As soon as I gave up minions (and changed the build), it became much easier to play.
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- Lack of survivability
This is pretty much okay until you start doing nightmare dungeons. Even word bosses are cool. But once you start fighting a group of mobs that are a bit nasty, survivability of the skeletons becoming a real problem even having them constantly healed by the priest.
Dots and area attacks are also really-really bad. (don’t forget they are dumb too to avoid these…)
I found a easy solution for this and it’s not quite obvious.
When we have all Skellies alive we can press the “Raise Skeleton” Skill again to buff our Minions dmg 20% and heal them for 10% or 70% with the passive after 5 seconds.
I think most people including me think that u need to let this buff run out so the heal triggers and you buff them again. THIS IS NOT THE CASE. Actually the Dmg buff and the heal buff are seperated, if u press the button “Raise Skeleton” again the dmg buff will get refreshed but!!! the Heal buff won’t. The heal buff keeps it’s timer.
For example if u press the Buff (5s duration) and press it again after half it’s duration (2,5s) the dmg buff will be refreshed to it’s full 100% 5s duration, but u will 2 Heal Timers active running 1. with 2,5s till heal and 2. with 5s to heal. So if u simply spam that buff every 0,5s your minions will get healed 70% every 0,5s.
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I was already doing this, but its a great point to mention. Spamming skeletal priest also give you resource so its easier to stay on top and do max essence spears/spirits. But the problem is, later on as you climb a bit higher (nm tier 40-50) some elite packs regardless of this mechanic shreds our skelies into pieces. I could get them more health in my case, that would help for a another few tiers, but its a waste of points because there damage wont scale enough. They can kill elites in tier 45 (if only 1 elite remained from the pack and its relatively stationary)… but its really funny how they raid it down and takes quite a time haha.
I would like to be able to rely much more on my army’s potential. Currently the problem is still given, they are literally incapable of doing endgame. I mean, our “signature ability” to have a powerful unread army that makes us a diablo class fantasy necromancer is totally a meme.
What skellies are u using? I read this a lot to be an issue but survivalability is def. no problem in my case even now in Nightmare Sigils t25. Do u have minion life % on your gear? I have around +150% minion life and all rare + magic nodes in the first Cult Leader paragon Board.
For me def. dmg and elite modifier is the issue and i’m being way to slow.
Till t4 even with minions u should easily rush through dungeon. At the end of t3 before i went to t4 (with lvl 61) in most cases i didnt even need to stop moving because my minions cleared faster than i could run.
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This is meme! It’s form pinned thread in Necromancer forum. I think they should change it for “Necromancers are cunning summoners that conjure vengeful hordes of the undead over and over which basically do not have the right amount of hp and dps. So choose one of the other 4 classes that will actually bring you much more enjoyment from the game. Choose Necro if you are a masochist and like big challenges in the game.”
I believe if the race was “complete a nightmare at rank 60+ as summoner necromancer” and maybe in a year or two, maybe there would be a name of the player on the statue xD…
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bro you’re just a dumb GH by talking like this lol
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Look how much posts are in necro forum about how weak he is. And check other classes forum. There are only bug reports, not how weak class are >>
The problems with the necromancer isn’t minion survivability, mine hardly die in t28-t30. The problem is the lack of any damage or focus fire ability. I can clear bosses decently fast but give me 5 packs of elite with 15 montsters to go and it can become a problem and will probably take me 3 minutes to clear which is to long. and that is with pretty good gear, i hardly die or lose unless due to certain modifiers on maps.
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in his other post he talks about being lvl 61 and can’t wait till T4. I can tell him that T3 was a breeze, i soloed dungeon to T4 at lvl 63. im now lvl 74 and its a pain in the ass to level glyphs, dungeons take forever while minions don’t die they deal no damage reliably, a sorc 4 levels below me with the same quality of gear could clear the dungeon 2 times before i even get close to the end.
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Thats why he is weak dude, other classes has smart and good res regen, we need cops or minions to regen our, but they die realy fast. Also build with no minions are so squishy, we die faster than others because we have lack of mobility. So necromancer best build is like other classes mid or low build (and they don’t need to drop powerfull items to do something)
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Wow, look at the big man insulting people online from the safety of their bedroom using total anonymity, never seen that before… also no-one asked and that was 5 days ago?! I know it’s a thread about necro’s but don’t necro 5 day old comments 4/5th’s the way back in the history of the thread ffs.
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I feel like Minions have issue atm i have decent gear and can do 21-25 nightmare stuff, but you can feel some issue creeping up that made me respecc to a shadow minion build.
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The biggest one by far is some affixes/mobs are a big problem the bubbel for example it can make the elite impossible to beat, and affixes that help the mob do high dps my best guess would be poisen. Cause all that makes minions survive is that they cant take all hp in one hit, the joke is now that i changed away from minion stuff other then getting the few notes they have exactly the same surviability with me not investing in them.
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It feels like you cant scale minion dmg very well the legendarys are not as powerfull, while the single target at the start of t4 is absulty insane, group damage is bad and just gets worse.
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Surviability of the Necro itself since the minion legendarys are so bad you dont rly have slots for Surviability and i havent found a good legendary that could even help there, maybe the pants with the shield but havent found them yet. Like Bone Storm seems to be the “defensive” skill that can keep you in a fight for the low damage you sometimes do.
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Well, yet im lvl 53 still in t3, i solve this big pack with my golem taunt, decrepify and bonestorm 
and mostly all mine minions can survive pretty well, in rare occasions (like elites have many aoe mods) mine army got wiped
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The problem with necro isn’t apparent before you start hitting the scaling of enemies in high 60s or low 70s around Nightmare dungeon T25-30. World tier 3 was a breeze soloed dungeon to T4 at lvl 63 7 lvls below. currently sitting at lvl 74.
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All the damn tooltips point minion builds to shadow. If you’re not running a fully capable shadow build at 70 your not reading or building right.
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Shadow skills with minions didn’t work out for me, i even tried a build i saw online where you use bone spear as vulnerable support dmg, the guy was lvl 92 and still he took minutes to kill shit but atleast he hit lvl 92. Shadow skills are not that great with minions even if they “improve dmg” they don’t really give much with it and aren’t good with the current ai of monsters or the minions.
Im thinking ur talking decompose and blight, blight is bad because most monsters ignore ur freaking minions and therefore don’t stand in it. Decompose well monsters rush you, so unless you facetank no casting it.
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No, I’m talking about blight and corpse explosion with the blight, and the shadow passive.
and all the damage from blight affixes it’s kinda broken right now. if you can’t build a broken blight build right now you are not good at building. Follow a maxroll guide.
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I would like to correct myself. I wrote our minions needs 200-300% damage but it turned out its a lot more then that. I just saw a video where a barb is critting for 10-11 millions…
So I am not sure what is the expected reference threshold for a certain power level (so what I am trying to say is “how much damage X class on Y level with Z gear suppose to do”). For us bone spirit does similar damage with the similar play style.
It depends on the threshold, but our army should be capable of doing near the 10mill damage converted to similar dps. The guy did “set that big hit” up but still crazy. This is pure theory from me, but lets say we need to divide that number by 10 for dps, its still 1mill. My army fully glyphed, geared, skilled etc is not even close to 100k… This problem comes from low damage numbers and the insane dumbdumb AI. I can 1-3 shot an elite with bone spear (of my own level@90), depends on the effects stacked on me, but worst case I kill them in 3 seconds. My army needs 15-30 seconds to raid a single elite like that or more. Or takes minutes if the elite has bubble /clownface.
So not sure about the exact math, but the minions are light years away from the required damage to play the actual end-game above nighmare tier 25.
So here is a quick summery what is a mandatory to make the summons work (based on experience):
- much better AI / gives us some minor control over minions (A key to attack for example… or move then when no target)
- much higher damage numbers (overall army damage should be 10++ times bigger then what it currently is) This also should effect legendaries like the blizzard power for frost mages.
- aoe damage on melee skeletons (iron golem is a meme) or any other solution for aoe damage, so they can kill grouped effective.
- ranged skeletons must be aware of the bubble that is around some elites… Right now this is really cringe.
You know, the important aspect here is what eq this barb had and what lvl. If he spent tons of hours dropping items that increased his power, that’s understandable. The question is whether the rest of the classes can achieve this or proportionally effective dps along with defense for these numbers. And I’m sure the necromancer is definitely not, because the best build I’ve ever seen with bone spear was 500k crit+overload.
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