So, to begin… I have a lvl 69 rogue who just dashes through everything. Just mentioning this so you have an idea of what i’ve seen and noticed throughout the game so far.
My necromancer is lvl 29. Some things went smoother and some things went worse compared to my rogue when I was leveling. But i’ve noticed a few things that will make the summon necromancer specifically a lot weaker in end game.
it’s all about speed. How fast you can walk, attack and dodge etc. The necromancer is just slow. Sure you can give it some movement speed like any other character but that is not going to cut it because your minions are always behind you. You have to wait for you minions to attack. And then the monsters will just ignore your minions and attack you.
Because your minions are ignored and you are attacked, the most basic passive buffs for your minions are gone instantly. You have 2 of them which gives your minions attack speed but only if you haven’t been damage for 4 seconds or if you have been healthy for 4 seconds.
If you get a hit in higher lvl’s you will lose enough life to lose both passive’s and then you have to dodge everything to get the passive back.
Because you are up front and your minions follow you, you are always hit when encountering enemy’s which is also a reason you will lose your buffs
To counter the enemy’s generally ignoring your enemy’s I wanted to use the golem. But the golem has it’s own skillslot which makes it unusable because in my eyes you need a basic attack, corpse explosion, 1 curse, minions, a secondary damage dealing skill (I use bone spirit) and Army of the dead.
MAYBE you can get rid of corpse explosion but that means removing a huge damage dealing skill which you need for big groups because you need a tank for your buffs
Your iron golem sacrifice buff means nothing for a summon necromancer. 10% attack speed is not enough (which your minions only get 30% of so it’s 3% attack speed)
You Blood golem sacrifice buffs means nothing because 10% life gives you 10% on your basic life pool. Not the added life you can get on gear. Do your skeletons even benefit from like%? Than that’s also only 3%
30% increased critical strike damage (10% for your minions). Again too little to have any benefit for what the golem can otherwise give you
(ish). I’m aware that the barrier can help with at least the buff to stay healthy. But you will need a permanent barrier for that which does not exist? But also that means you NEED the barrier for this builds passives which is ultimately only supposed to help you be tougher.
Nope, we are waiting for buff but I think it’s never come :/… I just going to unlock all benefits for other chars, and try another class I guess. No one tell us summons are weak at start.
@edit also it is worth mentioning that many passive skills in the tree are bug, do not work as described or do not work at all. In addition, when you go under the “shadow” dps from affixes from items or trees are calculated incorrectly (or they are not included in final dps). So you lose about 30-40% dps. So if you have a rogue, I’d stick with this class because you’ll get more done with it than a necromancer who actually only has 2 playable builds.
points 1 and 2 - just use the golem to taunt. it works against most things
it even works against bosses (dungeon bosses that is) contrary to what others have said
i dont use curses so the golem is always in my skill bar. you dont need curses like decrepify. im lvl56 and in tier 3 and doing fine with a shadow build
run around cast taunt when i see enemies (elites) in range and then decompose at distance whilst spamming blight and corpse explode. army of dead ultimate when i need to quickly resummon all my minions because they died
necro movement speed is slow i agree. i use dodge to get a quick burst of speed all the time in dungeons. but thats a placebo because it isnt really increasing movement speed for any length of time
its painful running through dungeons. the speed i get when carrying an orb or shrine buff is very welcome
ive complained about the skill bar before though. there arent enough slots for things. ultimate skill shouldnt be on the skillbar tbh - it should be a special skill you cast by pressing a keyboard key (or l2+r2 on console)
diablo 2/3 necro was better. i dont necessarily think thats because it was more balanced but because we could use more skills.
You are right that points 1 and 2 can be helped (not fixed) by using the golem. But that means you HAVE to use the golem. If you HAVE to use the golem they will have to change how the golem fits in the summon build.
Right now its a skill on its own with very little to show for. Golem is, as far as ive seen, only used as a tank for when you play only the golem and sacrifice your other minions.
So you either use minions or the golem. If you use both you are heavily disadvantaging yourself
The curse, i think, is kind of mandatory because of the 20% damage reduction. Sure you can do without but that again means you have to use the golem. Also the slow it gives will help in dealing more damage vs slowed and all that jazz.
Other than that you still always run up front. Your minions follow. Your golem does as well. So you are always open to get that first hit and lose your 2 passive buffs.
If you are in an event and enemy’s spawn all around you. You basically have no passive buffs for your minions because IF you use the golem it can only go to one side. You will get hit and lose your passive buffs.
To counter with my negative i’ll give a positive. I really like how army of the dead works right now. Also with the legendary affix to give your minions damage reduction and damage.
I think the skill bar is fine. Just feels lack luster for the summon necro. Maybe they should add an extra hotkey for the minions to summon/heal. But that might be too much/too OP because you basically have another skill slot vs other characters.
This curse is mandatory in a minions build and any other, because you have a passiv effect that reduces the cd of all your spells with every lucky hit. And believe it or not, if you hit a group of enemies with 3-4 elites, not only do you reduce their dps and slow it down (your minions also apply lucky strike if I remember correctly because they inherit 30% of your stats) you have an ulti right after using it. If you’re lucky at 30%+, you can spam the iron golem skill one after the other. If it wasn’t for the fact that the golem’s AI is terrible and if he used it without looking at obstacles, it would be sweet. But this class has such bugged dps ratios that practically and minions miscalculate dps and shadow dps (where we lose 30-40% dps), that the only sensible alternative is bone build for crit and lucky hit.
@edit today I will be testing most of the passive effects for minions and the rest of the things that I noticed that most of them don’t work properly.