Books again

Books were one of the biggest topics on this blog before I went back to school and didn't post anything for a year or whatever. Well, just over a month ago, I read a science fiction novel because I wanted to. I posted about it. Go find it yourself if you want to. No link for you. Anyway, despite some misgivings about the book itself, specifically the ending, or rather the lack of one, I found the experience refreshing. I can totally read books while I'm going to school. It's not bad. It might even be good. Apparently it's a habit I have now. Since writing that post, I've read four more books.


The Difference Engine by William Gibson and Bruce Sterling
As with Children of the Sky, I had mixed feelings with this book, and ended up mildly disappointed. The idea seemed to be, and the back cover described it this way, that the book would follow three main characters. And yet one of them, albeit the most interesting one, dominates the story. It makes the segment with the first character the authors introduce seem superfluous, and once the real main character's segment ends, the book keeps going, but doesn't have enough room to really do anything. Complaints aside, it is an interesting book and left me frustrated at my lack of knowledge of history, because I wasn't sure which references I was missing. I figured out quickly enough that Ada Byron had to be the equivalent of the real-life Ada Lovelace (I didn't remember that Ada Lovelace actually was the daughter of Lord Byron), but definitely had no idea who some of the other people were (Isambard Brunel, for example). I was generally fascinated while reading the book and a bit disappointed immediately after, but now I'm not sure what to think.

Eon by Greg Bear
My mother claimed that The Difference Engine wasn't science fiction (it is) because it didn't have spaceships, time travel, or aliens. So I grabbed this book that looked like it definitely had spaceships and might also have time travel and aliens. All I really knew about it was that it was written by Greg Bear. I am a fan of Greg Bear's short stories, but had never read one of his novels, so I decided to correct that while simultaneously dealing with my mother's complaint about my previous reading choice. And I found the first novel that I've read this year that didn't disappoint me. If you didn't already know, science fiction in the 1980's almost always involved the threat of a nuclear holocaust due to tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union. See 2010: Odyssey Two by Arthur C. Clarke or Man Plus by Frederik Pohl. Oh wait, Man Plus is from the 1970's. Well, they did it then too. I suspect that the trend started in the 1960's, but that's a topic to research later, I guess. Anyway, Eon is the first example I've encountered that plays the trope, then actually goes through with the nuclear holocaust. Yes, there is nuclear war in this book. Spoiler alert. Oh, and there are also spaceships and aliens. In fact, most of the story takes place on a time-traveling spaceship that has aliens. So shut up, mom. Almost as though Greg Bear decided to show Vernor Vinge, William Gibson, and Bruce Sterling (who left me, in the two previous novel I read, what the hell happened to my ending) how books work, the conclusion is satisfying and I only found out well after starting my next book that Eon actually has a sequel (and a prequel).

Neuromancer by William Gibson
Despite being mildly disappointed with The Difference Engine, I felt compelled to give William Gibson another chance. I knew Neuromancer was the book that made him famous, so I let it be the book I'd use to give him another chance. I'm glad I did, because Neuromancer is fucking awesome. The world is vivid, the the plot is engaging, and the protagonist is one of the best antiheroes I've ever seen.

The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
I'd been wanting to read this for a while, and I picked it up because Neuromancer looked short and I thought I might need a second book. I had a feeling it was going to be one of those books that I'd be annoyed at not having read when I was younger. And of course, that's exactly what happened. Anyway, everyone should read this book. Everyone.

More Diablo II nonsense (all the builds I'm considering)

I know I have too many Diablo II posts here. Well, I wanted a full list of every build that, at this time, I'm considering running. So here we go...

Amazon

• Bowazon: Artemis is in Act I Hell. She already has all of her gear and has a 2 FPA Strafe. The focus is on Strafe and Guided Arrow with a Faith Bow and gear meant to increase damage and attack speed. She's not the most durable, but she hits incredibly hard and from a distance.
• Spear/Javazon: Athena is in Act II Normal. I'm still not sure where to go with her, because I am not entirely sure how effective the spear skills are or how many points need to be invested in them. I only work with builds that can at least generally handle monster immunities, so an amazon focused purely on Lightning Fury or Plague Javelin is probably out of the question.
• Spear/Javazon #2: I don't have one yet, but once I get a better feel for the spear and javelin tree, I think it's possible to get a second build out of it. If Athena is pure javelin, then I can make a second amazon that is pure spear, probably with Fend. If Athena uses one of the javelin skills and one of the spear skills, a second amazon could use another of the javelin skills and another of the spear skills or something.
• Magezon (elemental bow skills): Not sure where I'd go with this. If it's possible to get both decent fire and decent ice damage on the same character, this could totally be viable for me. Again, I'm not going pure fire or pure ice, because of immunities.
• Proc-zon: I'll look into it. Not enough information yet to know whether I could make it work.

Assassin

• Kicker (Dragon Talon): Nemesis is in Act I Nightmare and is looking good. I'm going with Last Wish as her endgame weapon because I want to and because it looks awesome, but right now she's using Voice of Reason. Even though she's not high enough in level to use the equipment I have planned for her, she already has very fast kicks. This could become one of my favorite builds. Unfortunately, Nemesis is the only assassin that I actually have right now.
• Pure Trapper: I'm sure that I can make this work. I'm just not sure on the details.
• Elementalist (Phoenix Striker): Looks easy. Again, I haven't planned on any equipment or anything, but this could be a fun build. And I might use the Natalya's set here.
• Tiger Strike/Dragon Tail: This looks like the best way to use the whole charge-up/finisher mechanic as intended.
• Dragon Claw: I was helping my brother build one of these, but he was making some weird choices against my advice. It didn't seem to be working out all that well for him, but I could try it for myself.
• Whirlwind Assassin: Something else to try, although I'd probably rather just go with a barbarian for this skill.

Annoyingly enough, the assassin is the class I've played the least, and she seems to have more viable builds for my purposes (soloing Hell reasonably well, and preferably on /players8) than almost any other class. What I've listed here isn't even comprehensive because I've seen there there are so many hybrid builds like kick/trap assassins and such.


 Barbarian

• Thrower: Enlil is in Act V Normal. I haven't played him in a while. Not as overpowered as melee barbarians, but seeing axes fly all over the screen makes me smile.
• Whirlwind Barbarian: Enki is in Act I Nightmare. He's going for the full Immortal King's set. I don't like how mana-intensive the skill is, but other than that, it seems great for killing just about everything. Hopefully, by the time Enki is in Hell, his mana problems will not be too severe.
• Frenzy Barbarian: This looks like the most broken barbarian build. It's another build I was helping my brother with, but again, I'd take it a different direction than he did. If I get around to making one of these guys, I'll probably go for Ethereal Breath of the Dying in one hand and Beast in the other hand, because why the hell not?
• Berserker: Haven't really looked into this one, but it seems good. The damage output is huge and the drawback can generally be ignored or at least mitigated. Update: I started a new barbarian, Ares. He will be either a berserker or a concentrator, but I haven't made up my mind yet.
• Concentrator: A barbarian that doesn't dual-wield, but this looks like it could be very powerful.

Druid

• Fury Werewolf: Oberon has finished Hell. He was my first LOD character ever and even by endgame, my setup for him was probably not ideal, but I can't really picture myself doing another pure Fury druid just to see if I can do better. And Oberon worked well enough, really. He took on Diablo Clone and won.
• Werebear: Hephaestus is in Act I Normal. I was going to try for the whole Hunger build, and then I found out that it's plagued by a desynch bug. So instead, I'm thinking that I'll fill a weapon with Shael runes or something so that I still get a bear that hits at 4 FPA. I'll be using Armageddon of course, because why the hell not?
• Wind Druid: I'm apprehensive about this one, but I should give it a shot.
• Poison Werewolf: Haven't investigated this much, but I know that it exists and is viable.

Necromancer

• Summoner: Master has finished Hell. I made myself stick to /players8 the whole time, which was the beginnings of my realizations that necromancers have so many problems in this game. It took forever. So even though there are some variants, like the commandomancer and the lich lord, I don't know that I care to build another summoning necromancer.
• Poisonmancer/Fire (Trang-Oul's set): Set is in Act III Hell. Poison and fire immunities are common enough to be annoying, but I can manage, even on /players8, by using Poison Nova to kill everything around the offending monsters and then proceeding to beat them up with my switch weapon's physical damage. This build isn't all that durable and is sometimes a bit clumsy, but the Poison Nova normally slaughters everything around me. Not really overpowered, but I do like the build.
• Bonemancer: Namtar is a character I've created, but he hasn't done any quests or anything yet. I've been saving him for later. My plan is to go with a sort of bone/melee hybrid so that nothing will be immune to me, but we'll see if that's viable.
• Meleemancer: Even though I do really like the Trang-Oul's set, I've been thinking about building another necromancer using a similar skill distribution, but with different items, so that I'd have a tankier character that was better at melee. I'd lose the fire skills, but oh well.Update: Nergal is in Act 1 Normal and is doing quite well. I'm planning on going with Fleshripper and other gear to make Poison Dagger have considerable physical damage alongside all that poison.

The necromancer is my favorite class and also one of the most problematic classes, if not the most problematic. I do have some other ideas, like a damage-return necro and a golem/melee specialist, but I think this are mostly unrealistic if I want builds that can solo Hell effectively.
Paladin

• Hammerdin: Shamash has finished Hell. I wanted to be sure to finish him before the 1.13 patch took away Blessed Hammer's ridiculously overpowered property of ignoring most magic resistances completely, and I did. Since then, I've modified his gear so that my switch weapon and shield give me a powerful smite. With further gear changes, Shamash was able to beat PlugY's crappy ripoff of the Pandemonium Event (using Smite).
• Auradin (Conviction Zealot): Stephen has finished Hell. Yes, I named this character after myself. I did that, because I knew auradins were broken. To clarify, I'm using Dragon/Hand of Justice and dual Dreams, none of that hybrid nonsense. Stephen isn't particularly versatile. He just runs around and kills everything with his auras. I was able to solo the PlugY ripoff of the Pandemonium Event on /players8 and recently beat Diablo Clone on/players 8. Definitely my most overpowered character so far.
• Avenger: I remember Nick had one of these and I played alongside him. It seemed pretty powerful.
• Fanatic Zealot: Probably the cheesiest build in the game. I already achieve a similar effect with my auradin. This is basically an easier version of the game thing, albeit with mostly physical damage instead of mostly elemental damage.
• Fist of the Heavens Paladin: Not traditionally used for PvM, but I want to try it. Not sure what the backup skill would be, but paladins generally don't have problems with immunities, I've noticed. My "templar" (Fist of the Heavens paladin), Zeus, is in Act 2 Normal. It's too early to be certain, but I think this skill is underrated for PvM. It is single-target and on a cooldown, but the damage is huge and cooldown isn't that long. Lightning immunity should be the only problem, and I'm already planning for that.
• Smiter: Yes, a pure smiter. I want to. At least, I think so.

 Sorceress

• Archmage (tri-element): Isis is in Act I Hell. I'm using Frozen Orb, Hydra, and Charged Bolt. Oh, and I'm also using the full Tal-Rasha's set, so Isis is technically a magic-find character, although I don't seem to have much use for that anymore.
• Melee Enchantress: Hestia is in Act II Normal. My plan is to have her use dual Dreams, so this could be reminiscent of Stephen's dominance. She'll get rapid attacks using the Zeal from a Passion sword.
• Ranged Enchantress: I didn't think this would be worth it, but that was because I didn't realize how good Demon Machine is. On the surface, doesn't look as powerful as a melee enchantress, but I should give it a shot.

The sorceress is another problematic class, which is why I only have three build ideas I'm even considering right now. In truth, a hybrid enchant/caster should be fine and I could definitely do other variations on the archmage, but all of those use Frozen Orb anyway. Not having any source of multiple types of damage other than Enchant (fire and physical, but it doesn't even really count) and needing synergies to get a lot of damage out of her spells, the sorceress doesn't have a ton of options. Frozen Orb would seem to be the only viable non-synergized cold damage skill, and fire and lightning aren't much better off (Fire Wall, Hydra, Enchant, and then Charged Bolt and maybe Lightning or something).

Diablo III

Today I finished the Diablo III beta. I'm not making any promises, but at this moment, I don't really see myself buying the game—ever. There are a few reasons for this, which I'll get to momentarily. I should also note that even despite some significant problems that had nothing to do with the game itself, I mostly enjoyed the game and wanted to play it more than I got to. Actually, I should begin with those problems.

My laptop has a cracked screen, so I've been using an external monitor. My external monitor is ancient. Well, it's from 2000. Even though I did use this monitor for almost a decade, now that I'm forced to use it again, I'm annoyed at how bad everything looks on it. So there's that. Worse still, I had some computer-crashing issues that I suspect were not related to Diablo III at all. I suspect this because the computer seemed to be overheating. Last year, I had major problems with my computer overheating and crashing. I had my dad take it to a repair place that replaced a fan, which solved the problem. For several months, everything was fine. Eventually, yet another problem (this computer is a lemon, as you might notice from my posts in 2010) arose that resulted in my cracked screen, but that's a topic for another time. Anyway, in all the time I played Skyrim and other games, the computer never once overheated. However, that's exactly what it seemed to be doing while I was playing the Diablo III beta. It could have been the game crashing my computer, but I strongly suspect that it's merely an indication that my computer's overheating problems have returned. I was still able to play pretty reliably for well over an hour at a time, so I finished the beta. But if I hadn't been worrying about my computer crashing, which was likely not the game's fault at all, I might have actually played the whole beta all the way through with a second character. So I'm going to criticize the game, but keep in mind that it was good enough for me to finish the (pretty short) beta, and that I would have played it even more if I'd had the opportunity.

The Good

• I don't think I used the vanilla "hit monster with weapon" attack once the whole time. I played as the witch doctor, which is allegedly the substitute for the necromancer in Diablo II. I started out with a poison dart skill and always had enough mana for it. Eventually, I replaced my poison dart skill with a thrown jar that exploded and released spiders (yes, really) to attack my enemies. These skills were spammable and cost so little mana that it wasn't even noticeable. I suspect that it's similar for the other classes. That's a breath of fresh air compared to Diablo II's use of mana.
• More fluid skill usage. I don't know what finished builds will look like, but early on, I was tossing jars of spiders, snaring enemies with magic hands, summoning zombie dogs as distractions, and using a draining spell all at the same time. In Diablo II, most finished characters use the same skill over and over to kill everything, and even early on, most characters are relying on one or two skills most of the time. Oh sure, one maxes synergies and uses pre-buff skills and some mobility or shielding skills or whatever, but when it comes time to actually fight anything, it's just two skills or sometimes even just one. If I'd been playing a comparable portion of Diablo II, I would have a necromancer with a golem, a curse, and either a poison dagger, a few skeletons, or a damaging spell (Teeth) for actually killing things. My enchantress is way farther along in Diablo II than the length of this entire beta, and she's still stuck with her vanilla attack for killing enemies, and will be for a while even after she beats Normal difficulty Diablo!
• Followers apparently have skills as they level-up. I'm still a little apprehensive about this one. The original Diablo didn't have followers at all. Diablo II introduced them and LOD greatly improved them. But this might be a bit much. The game is supposed to be about me, about my character, not about followers. Still, this seems to have been done in a way that makes it work. Overall, I think it's a positive.
• Boss fights seem like they will probably be better. There's really only one boss fight in the beta, and it comes later than Blood Raven would have in Diablo II. I don't know how long the full game will be, but I'm assuming the boss in the beta is roughly analogous to Andariel. If so, that's definitely an improvement. Andariel could be a bit intimidating for a weak character, but really, all she does is call you names, tell you to die, and shoot poison at you. Far stronger poison than any other poison before that point in the game, but still, just poison. Any character that can throw damage at her while avoiding the poison or that can dish out a lot of damage can easily whip Andariel like the bitch she is. Now, the Diablo III beta was, as a rule, very easy, but the Skeleton King actually took some time to kill and actually seemed to pose a threat. He teleported to me, hit me with a big axe or something, summoned undead to get in my way, and generally didn't go down without a fight. He also talked to me before we fought and was more dramatic than Andariel.
• In multiplayer, every player gets his or her own item and gold drops. This is actually rather brilliant.

The Bad

• I guess it's impossible to namelock enemies? It was often hard to actually focus particular monsters. Also, I sometimes couldn't run up to a mob because when I clicked in their general area, my character kept spamming his jars.
•  In Diablo II, even with a brand new character, actually, even when I was just starting out, I was looking down the skill trees and planning my skill investment. I had some idea which skills I wanted to sink points into, which ones I only needed as prerequisites or as one-pointers, and which ones I could ignore because they weren't for my build. It wasn't perfect, but it was intuitive. Even after playing all the way through the beta, I still have no idea how skills work in Diablo III. I was unlocking either a new skill or some enhancement to an existing skill every level, with seemingly no room for customization. Even if it turns out that end-game characters can be incredibly diverse, this is still a problem.
• The beta was way too easy. I was never in real danger. Part of the atmosphere of the Diablo series is that you're fighting demons and such. They have claws or shoot fireballs or whatever. They are legion. They want you dead. If a level 1 character is running around in godmode, that atmosphere is gone.
• Even before I ever played the witch doctor, and moreso now that I have, I thought the biggest problem with the class was that they should have named it "shaman." Setting aside the fact that everyone immediately thinks of that stupid song by the asshole that invented "Alvin and the Chipmunks" whenever the phrase "witch doctor" is uttered, the name connotes a healer or at least someone that attempts to heal. A spellcasting individual that uses animals and nature and curses and stuff to disable his foes is already a thing in lots of games. And it's called a shaman.
• Apparently multiplayer games are limited to four people. That's half as many as in Diablo II. What gives?

The Ugly

• Well, the graphics are ugly. I mean, my horrible monitor doesn't excuse everything. For a game that's so many years in the making and is coming out in 2012, it just doesn't look very good. League of Legends looks cooler, and it's not even a game that needs to look good. Also, it's free to play. Hell, Diablo II looks better, is over a decade older, and uses 2-D graphics.
• The game was unavailable the majority of the times I tried to play it. I had to be very persistent. The servers were crashing or going down for maintenance all the time. And yeah, I know it's just the beta, but so what?
• There is no necromancer.
• The random conversations are dumb. Unlike some people, I found the voice-acting in Diablo III to be fine, at least mostly. But sometimes my character would suddenly strike up a conversation with townsfolk or followers, either discussing history or engaging in shallow philosophical banter, which was annoying.
• Everything is on Battle.net. Online play is the only play there is. By far, this is the worst thing about the game. A lot of people are dismissing this one, but I cannot. I've played Diablo II without an active internet connection or without a reliable internet connection, well, a lot. And then there's the issue with servers crashing or otherwise being unavailable. I have this crazy notion that if I buy a game, I should be able to play that game when I want to, not when Blizzard says that I can. That's one of the reasons that all of my Diablo II characters are stored on my computer, not on Blizzard's servers. Oh, this also means no mods and no item packs. Well, no thanks.

The Children of the Sky (makes me want to stop reading books by people who are still alive)

I had a lot of time to kill while waiting for a bus earlier this week, so I browsed the library. I think it was mid-2010 that I saw on the internet somewhere that Vernor Vinge was writing a sequel to A Fire Upon the Deep. I thought that was just great. To this day, I still haven't read anything else from Vinge aside from the Zones of Thought books (A Fire Upon the Deep and A Deepness in the Sky), but I love those books. However, The Children of the Sky never came out and eventually I just assumed that it never would. So it was a pleasant surprise to see the book sitting on the shelf. Apparently it was finally published in October last year.

To be clear, the book is good. It's not great, and it probably seems weak in comparison to the other two, both of which are superb. But at no time did I think that I was reading a bad book. This could still be some sort of solid trilogy with the third book faltering a bit but not compromising the awesomeness. The problem here, if you didn't guess from the title, is that this book is incomplete. Yes, I've been tricked yet again, albeit not so dramatically as with Connie Willis. The book has denouement—barely. A few big threads of the plot do get resolved, but most of them, including all of the ones that were brought back from A Fire Upon the Deep, are left as cliffhangers. There's a subtle distinction here. The previous books left some questions unanswered in a way that made the conclusion more powerful. When A Fire Upon the Deep ended, it was fine that we didn't know exactly what happened to Pham Nuwen and Countermeasure or what would become of the Blight fleet. The major conflicts, the race to activate Countermeasure before the Blight could destroy it and the machinations of Lord Steel, ended decisively. That's how good stories work: it isn't "everything works out for everyone and they all live happily ever after." What's different with this book is that instead of resolving the major conflicts, everything just stops because there aren't any more pages left. It's infuriating.

There might still be a sequel. Maybe more than any book I know of, The Children of the Sky needs a sequel. If that sounds like a compliment because I was tantalized and wanted more, rest assured that I don't mean it that way. A Deepness in the Sky was incredible. And while I would have loved a sequel, the book is great on its own. When I found out that it was a prequel, that just made me want to read the first book. A Fire Upon the Deep was also great, and again, the book stands on its own. The Children of the Sky doesn't stand on its own. It needs A Fire Upon the Deep to set it up, which is fine, but it also needs an ending. Even if Vinge does release some amazing grand finale, this will still be the weakest volume.

Patriarch Stephen

I did it. For those of you keeping score (just me), that's one druid, one necromancer, and two paladins completed. No more paladins for a while. I'm not swearing off paladins forever. I could still see myself doing a Fist of the Heavens paladin or a Smiter or an Avenger or maybe even a Zealot. I've got another necromancer on his way through Hell and an amazon too, so I assume that one of them will be next if I ever actually manage to complete another character.

Conclusion: How I might rework the necromancer

The curse skill tree is probably the easiest to improve on. The AI curses are generally lame. If I could completely redesign the tree, some of them would have to go. I just never find myself thinking, "It sure it is a good thing that I have Dim Vision right now." I know some people seem to like crowd control curses, but do there really need to be so many? Surely at least Attract could go. It's completely useless. And there are so many other possibilities for better curses. My personal favorite would be a decay curse that actually damages monsters over time. There could be a dedicated slowing curse. Another fun possibility would be a curse that makes enemies more vulnerable to other curses, either extending their durations or increasing their magnitudes.

Barring the removal of old curses and the introduction of new ones, there are some less radical improvements. Curses should affect immobile enemies. It never made any sense that curses didn't affect sessile foes. The curse that has suffered the most with the expansion and all of the new patches has been Iron Maiden. I discovered the synergy between Iron Maiden and Blood Golem on my own back when I played the original, unpatched game. There's no reason not to bring that back. Iron Maiden should be substantially buffed and should work on all damage, not just physical damage.

Amplify Damage and Decrepify are already pretty good. It's boring that investing in them only improves duration and range, but at least they work. I still say that they should scale with skill levels, or at least the slow on Decrepify should scale. Every class needs a few one-point wonders, and Amplify Damage already fills that role well enough, I suppose.

Life Tap should scale linearly with increasing skill investment and should be changed to restore health based on damage from any source except pets. The biggest problem with this curse is that it only works with physical melee damage, and the necromancer is the worst class for that. And because Life Tap doesn't scale with skill level, it's simply too good when used as a proc skill by other classes, letting them instantly restore all lost life with every hit. Allowing the health drain from Life Tap to scale could give the necromancer more benefit from this curse, only restoring a modest portion of health at low skill levels, but restoring massive amounts with some investment.

Lower Resist has diminishing returns. Conviction does not. Lower Resist caps at -70%. Conviction caps at -150%. I realize that Lower Resist has the benefit of working with poison, but that's no excuse. Let the necromancer actually be better than the paladin at something for once. Lower Resist to should scale linearly and should either outpace or equal Conviction up to skill level 25 (when Conviction reaches its resistance-lowering cap) and surpass it from there. This simple fix would be a godsend to necromancers everywhere.

There should be a curse that lowers resistance to magic. Lower Resist is the most obvious candidate for this. If it sounds like I want to buff Lower Resist into insanity, keep things in perspective. The paladin gets a huge increase to his magic damage with the Concentration aura, but the necromancer is stuck with no way to boost the damage of his bone spells. Lower Resist is presently not even that good for boosting poison damage, especially against immune monsters. Necromancers would still not be overpowered, even if Lower Resist were substantially stronger. Decrepify is another option for this. That way necromancers couldn't lower both poison and magic resistances at the same time.

For the poison and bone skill tree, if I got to replace skills with new ones, Teeth could easily be cut for something else. Having both Bone Wall and Bone Prison is a bit redundant too. To replace one of these skills, I would add a cool necromancer mobility skill, something perhaps not as good as Teleport, but still great for moving around. There should also be a weapon-based left-click skill. The necromancer might be a caster primarily, but I think the way he works thematically now, especially with Poison Dagger, shows that he is not afraid to get his hands dirty. So if he could get a single new skill, he should have something that really lets him unleash his wrath with a weapon. I'm tentatively calling these skills "Gravewalk" and "Bone Strike." But I realize that replacing existing skills, even bad ones, with entirely new skills is far-fetched.

Bone Armor simply needs a serious buff. It absorbs paltry damage even at high skill levels, not that investing in it is ever a good idea, as synergies from Bone Wall and Bone Prison improve Bone Armor more than actually putting points into the skill itself. Bone Armor isn't a terrible skill. It just needs to absorb more damage.

The damaging bone spells should get a damage increase. With less investment into synergies, the paladin easily deals far more magic damage using Blessed Hammer than a fully synergized Bone Spear or Bone Spirit. I would cut some of the synergies among the bone spells, but increase the base damages of these skills, when maxed, to a level that is competitive with Blessed Hammer. I don't mind that the paladin can act as a caster. Blessed Hammer, especially now that it doesn't ignore the immunities of undead and demons, is fine. But let the necromancer, the character that is supposed to be more suited to spells, compete on the same playing field. And one more thing: if a paladin goes to the trouble to get equipment that lets him use Amplify Damage or Life Tap, those curses work with the melee damage from his skills. But the only spell that the Concentration aura improves is Blessed Hammer. This is blatantly and pointlessly unfair. If a Necromancer uses the Pride runeword to get a Concentration aura, it should boost the power of his bone spells.

Corpse Explosion and Poison Explosion are both fine for the most part. The only change I'd make is to have Poison Explosion's range increase with skill level, instead of staying so small the whole time. Poison Nova is fine too. There are two changes I'd consider making to Poison Dagger and I'd prefer to make both of them, but either one of the two would be an improvement. Firstly, there's no sense in having this skill only work with daggers. It ruins a great skill by attaching it to a specific and mostly weak type of weapon. Change the name to something else (Poison Strike, Poison Weapon, Poison Blade, or whatever) and let it work for all melee weapons. Secondly, Blizzard already realized one way to fix this skill when they created the Assassin for the expansion. Her Venom skill adds poison damage to her weapons for a set duration based on level, and she can then attack with one of her other skills and apply poison with each hit. This is also one reason why the sorceress' Enchant is so much better than Poison Dagger. These changes wouldn't automatically turn the necromancer into some melee powerhouse that outperformed paladins and barbarians, but it would at least give him some respectable base from which to fight.

From what little I've seen, it looks like Blizzard is doing a better job with summoning on their new character in Diablo III, the "witch-doctor." That's a pity, because the necromancer is so much cooler. The witch-doctor, rather than struggling to maintain an army raised from corpses, is able to repeatedly summon more transient pets, sacrificing them to achieve additional effects (like blowing them up to damage enemies). There are a lot of ways to rework the necromancer's pets. But without doing anything too drastic, I can't think of much to help skeletons. They're already too strong in some ways and too weak in others. Buffing them would run the risk of making them overpowered. Balancing skeletons is tricky. Letting Summon Resist scale linearly wouldn't hurt. As for Revive, the solution is simple and straightforward: remove the timer. There's no real reason not to.

All golems should get buffed. The annoying thing about the golems is that each one is unique and has some nice features, but they're all too weak. Clay Golem slows enemies. Blood Golem heals itself and the necromancer. Iron Golem takes on the properties of an item. Fire Golem has an aura, fire absorption, and has a damaging explosion on death. Simply make golems stronger. The necromancer is this game's primary summoning character. This is his domain. If he invests points into a golem, that golem should be a more powerful pet than anything an amazon or assassin can achieve. Other characters have their own strengths. Let the necromancer have this one. Make golems a force to be reckoned with.

I realize this is all pointless anyway. The necromancer is underpowered in this game and is going to stay that way. But if I had the opportunity to change that, this is where I'd start.

The Necromancer is Underpowered Reason 15: The previous reasons compound each other

This will be my last one. In case the title is misleading, my point is not to reiterate my reasons from one to fourteen. They stand on their own. But the intersection of all these weaknesses really deserves its own post. I've hinted at it before, but only vaguely. The fact that the necromancer's weaknesses compound each other is the crucial problem that makes him underpowered.

No class in Diablo II is perfect. The druid has a sort of jack-of-all-trades-master-of-none thing going on. The amazon is almost forced into ranged attacks, which can lack damage output compared to melee. The barbarian has virtually no utility. The assassin hits quickly but isn't all that robust. The sorceress can only cast one type of elemental damage at a time and must sacrifice damage output for versatility or vice versa. The paladin? Well, he's overpowered, but he's still not perfect. With these classes, their weaknesses are what force them into roles, helping to define them. Having each class be better at some things and worse at others is what makes the game interesting.

The necromancer's weaknesses are different because he gets stifled at almost every turn. That bone spells take so many points to achieve respectable damage prevents them from being used alongside anything else, ruling out bone/poison or bone/summon hybrids. Personally, I'd love to play a bone/poison hybrid. But it's impossible. And that Poison Dagger is his only melee skill and is slow limits the power of poison necromancers while also making the necromancer a poor choice for melee combat in general. Since casting is weaker than weapon-based damage, he is further weakened. Since he gets diminishing returns on key skills, he can't invest in those skills to compensate for his weaknesses in other areas. Since he lacks good defensive skills, trying to use curses to compensate for melee inadequacy is difficult. And since skeletons require corpses and Corpse Explosion requires corpses, using cold (which can prevent corpses from being left behind) is detrimental. Because skeletons can get killed quickly by powerful monsters, Revives are necessary for summoners. Because Revives are clumsy and only last three minutes, summoners are clumsy too. Because auras are better suited to players characters than pets, other classes benefit more from runeword equipment. And so on. The deficiencies spiral out of control.

Oddly, some of the same attributes that make necromancers underpowered as solo characters make them desirable for parties. Ranged attackers would appreciate being able to strike from behind Bone Walls. A necromancer can do more with curse than other characters, helping melee to tank bosses with Life Tap, slowing mobs down with Decrepify, and weakening monsters to sorceress spells with Lower Resist. But since I've almost always played solo, the fact that the necromancer is a good team player isn't much consolation.

A single change, if big enough, could solve the problems of a single necromancer build archetype. But what the necromancer could really use is a complete rework. Annoyingly, Blizzard seems to think that the necromancer is just fine. This post concludes my reasons that the necromancer is underpowered. I think I've made my case, perhaps even made my case a little too exhaustively. I will write one more post to conclude this series. It won't focus on how the necromancer is underpowered, but will instead explore ideas, some simple and some drastic, on how the necromancer could be fixed.