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 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.

The Necromancer is Underpowered Reason 14: Elite items

We're almost done. I have mixed feelings about even posting this one. Unlike class-exclusive items, elite items in general can be used by anyone. But for players that have access to the best possible equipment and that bring their characters to the highest level, this one just might count more than any of the other reasons.

By elite items, I mean certain runewords, unique items, and set items, generally ones which can only be equipped by high-level characters. Some items that are powerful enough to be the best end-game options in certain circumstances are technically exceptional, rather than elite. But whatever, those count too. For an optimal character build in Hell, almost every piece of equipment will be one of these items. The necromancer is no exception.

Part of the problem is that some of the most powerful items, the ones that make the biggest difference, are melee weapons, usually runewords: Breath of the Dying, Grief, Last Wish, Death, and so on. The necromancer just can't take advantage of these weapons in the way that other classes can. The amazon is mostly left out as well, but she has the option of using some equally powerful runeword bows, such as Faith, Ice, Brand, and Phoenix. The sorceress isn't even really left out: with enchant, she can still use runeword weapons easily.

One of the most powerful benefits of elite equipment is the option to use "oskills." These are weapons and armor that grant one character the ability to use a skill from another class. Some of them are class-exclusive items that the necromancer doesn't have access to, but for the most part, the necromancer is capable of equipping them. None of the oskills add necromancer skills (in fact, the necromancer and the assassin are the only two classes that don't have any of their skills as oskills on items), so the necromancer doesn't lose out in that way. The option to use skills from other classes might seem to be an advantage. And the necromancer does benefit greatly from the Enigma runeword, which grants him Teleport. It's only a level 1 Teleport, but it definitely helps. Unfortunately, Enigma is just about the only one that really works for necromancers. The fire skills from the Trang-Oul's set are viable, but don't really do all that much damage. The necromancer's skill kit just doesn't offer him anything that really lets him take advantage of the other oskills. I might test the Passion runeword for its Zeal on a melee Necromancer, but at the moment, it looks like this is about it.

Elite equipment can also add auras when worn. These can be extremely powerful. My auradin is nearly through Hell and has been more dominant than any other character so far, thanks to doubling up on Holy Fire (Hand of Justice and Dragon) and Holy Shock (dual Dreams) auras through equipment. I plan on using dual Dreams for my enchantress and the Might aura from Last Wish on my kicker assassin, although they are not high enough in level yet to use those items. My bow amazon uses Faith for a Fanaticism aura and gives her mercenary a Pride weapon for its Concentration aura. My hammerdin had his mercenary wield an Insight weapon so that he could have full mana at all times. There are other options (Harmony for its Vigor aura is pretty nice too), but none of them really benefit poison or bone necromancers and the use of auras to improve skeletons is vastly overrated. I have used Beast for its Fanaticism aura on my summoner, but it doesn't really seem to help. Having a mercenary hold Pride or Infinity for their auras does even less I ended up just having my mercenary wield Obedience).

Another powerful option available from elite equipment is to use effects that proc on attacking or on striking. And again, the necromancer is in the worst spot for trying to use these. And many of these give other classes access to necromancer curses, hence my earlier title of "Curses sure are useful (to paladins)." Amplify Damage, Decrepify, and Life Tap are all readily available from elite equipment through chance to cast on striking procs, generally at sufficient levels to make them reliable. The only necromancer curse that other classes can't make better use of than necromancers is Lower Resist. Because they lack a melee skill kit other than curses, necromancers are in no position to take advantage of all the other abilities that can proc from melee weapons.

While other classes can use equipment to make good skills better, necromancers are forced to use equipment to shore up deficiencies.

The Necromancer is Underpowered Reason 13: Golems are weak

I could have made a whole post about how one of the biggest problems with the necromancer is his inability to have multiple primary skills because of the large point investments necessary to make his skills viable. My bow amazon, for example, was able to max Guided Arrow and Strafe, dump points into passive and magic skills for utility and a powerful Valkyrie, and still have some left over for the elemental arrow skills as secondary damage. Poison necromancers are stuck with poison and not much else, bone necromancers are stuck with magic damage and almost nothing else, and summoners get their skeletons, but can't invest in other skills enough for them to count. A post on this deficiency would be a bit redundant because I've already said as much when I covered each of those skillsets.

Without further elaborating on why skeletons are problematic, I'll note that as pets, they're different from what other classes can get. Pets in Diablo II are generally one of a kind. They can divide the attention of monsters and, if points are invested to make them more powerful, they can act as tanks for the player and as a secondary damage source. Or perhaps that should be tertiary damage source, since a properly equipped mercenary does more damage than a pet. The necromancer's pets are different. The druid is the only other character that can really have multiple pets at the same time, but even for a druid using wolves, the pets are more of a complement to the druid's other skills. Compared to other pets, skeletons are incredibly fragile without devoted skill investment.

The necromancer does have another pet option other than skeletons (and the even more problematic Revives). Golems are much closer to the Valkyrie, Shadow Master, and Grizzly Bear than they are to skeletons. The necromancer can only have one at a time and can instantly summon a golem without requiring a corpse. At first glance, golems might seem to be better than the pets other classes get. Necromancers have four different golems to choose from, two more skills, Golem Mastery and Summon Resist, that improve golems, and each golem acts as a synergy for the other three. And with sufficient skill investment golems can be better tanks than other pets. But they are not a damage source. They attack too slowly and do too little damage. Even against the most pathetic monsters, golems do negligible damage.

Even Iron Golem, which can take on the properties of items, just doesn't do significant damage. Golems might as well just not do damage at all. This is inexplicable. It's not as though making golems do more damage than the pets of other classes would break necromancers. This flaw is very easily corrected and very stupid.

The Necromancer is Underpowered Reason 12: Mobility

Since necromancers obviously can solo Hell even on /players8 (I've done it), my case that the necromancer is underpowered compared to the other classes rests largely on killing speed. Versatility and survivability are nice too. But there are a lot of monsters to kill. Efficiently wiping out large mobs and the bosses leading them is a hallmark of a good character and perhaps even the hallmark of a good character. A character does not necessarily need to move quickly in order to kill quickly. Simply walking around from dungeon to dungeon slaughtering everything is entirely possible, if a bit tedious. But even if it isn't a necessity, mobility is wonderful to have. Being fast makes the game more fun, makes targeted boss-runs possible, and is helpful for survivability.

Someone who actually read all of these posts, but had never played the game, would probably anticipate, incorrectly, that I would launch into an explanation of why every other class has better mobility skills than the necromancer does. But veteran Diablo II players already know what's coming. It's not that other classes have better mobility skills: the necromancer doesn't have any. The necromancer's mobility skills are not merely inferior. They are nonexistent.

Sorceress: Teleport.
Assassin: Burst of Speed, Dragon Flight.
Barbarian: Increased Stamina, Increased Speed, Leap, Leap Attack, Whirlwind, Frenzy, Battle Orders.
Paladin: Vigor, Charge.
Druid: Werewolf, Feral Rage.
Amazon: None.
Necromancer: None.

The amazon and the necromancer are the only two classes that are completely devoid of mobility skills. This list might be mildly deceptive in that the barbarian has seven mobility skills, but most of them are only minor, while the sorceress has just one, but it's the best one in the game. However, both the amazon and the necromancer are adversely affected by this, being generally less mobile than other classes. Druids that are not werewolves are similarly affected. This reason isn't as strong as the others because mobility isn't as important as killing power or survivability and because another class is in the same situation, but this is still another way in which necromancers are underpowered. Also, amazons usually either fire bows or throw javelins, so they can strike from a great distance, mitigating the problem of mobility in combat. The only necromancer build that can fight from such a distance is the bone necromancer. I've already covered the problems with bone necromancers (less damage and more skill points needed than other magic damage specialists). Other necromancers need to get close, whether it's to hit with melee weapons or to launch Poison Novas. Even summoners have to briefly close the distance to bring their skeletons to the enemy.

The Necromancer is Underpowered Reason 11: Defensive skills

A common theme in most of my points has been offensive deficiency. Killing monsters in Hell requires lots of damage. To be fair, summoners can potentially generate considerable physical damage and poison necromancers can kill monsters that do not resist poison very quickly. Both methods are generally surpassed by what other classes can do, but they do work. However, there's no point in being able to deal massive damage if you're instantly killed whenever monsters do land hits. Survivability is just as necessary as lethality. To this end, all classes have defensive skills. And all of the other classes have better defensive skills than the necromancer.

There are several ways to increase survivability in Diablo II, notably one can increase defense rating, increase the size of the life pool, increase block rate, resist elemental damage, absorb elemental damage, leech life from monsters, impel monsters to attack false targets or to attack each other, stun monsters, push monsters away, kill monsters from a greater distance than the distance from which they are able to attack, cause monster attacks to miss, and provide some means of escaping from aggressive mobs. Not every character does all of these and some of them are done more by items than by skills. With the right gear, any character can have appreciable survivability, even without using defensive skills very much. But skills do help.

The amazon has Slow Missiles, Dodge, Evade, Avoid, Decoy, and Valkyrie, all in her Passive and Magic skill tree. This kit is all about being hard to hit in the first place. The Valkyrie and Decoy can act as human shields and the other skills can make it so that few attacks actually damage the amazon in the first place. Amazons can easily invest in all of these skills to avoid damage while spending most of their points on offense. Equipment can enhance offense and simultaneously mitigate the damage from those attacks that do manage to hit the amazon. Amazons can also strike from great distances and bow specialists can slow monsters down with their cold skills.

The assassin has Burst of Speed, Fade, Psychic Hammer, Cloak of Shadows, Weapon Block, Mind Blast, and Shadow Warrior/Master in her shadow disciplines tree. This is a tankier kit than the amazon's, with multiple skills that can reduce the damage taken from hits, but it still employs measures to avoid and outmaneuver enemies by knocking them back, keeping hidden from them, moving away from them, and using a pet to distract them. With traps, the assassin can easily damage monsters from a distance, but a melee assassin can also have excellent survivability.

The barbarian's masteries give him Increase Stamina, Increased Speed, Iron Skin, and Natural Resistance. These help the barbarian to act as a tank and also improve his ability to escape. His combat skills tree is primarily offensive, but does give him options to stun enemies to leap away from them, even if the barbarian is surrounded. The barbarian's warcries help make him one of the most impressive tanks in the game. Howl and Taunt are of minor use as crowd control, but Shout and Battle Cry can reduce the amount of damage monsters deal and War Cry gives a stun. But it's Battle Orders that really gives the barbarian defensive power. Even without a shield, a barbarian is an incredible tank.

Like the amazon and assassin, the druid can use pets to distract monsters. In fact, the druid gets more pets, including pets that can heal the druid or increase his total life. But the druid's defensive kit is less focused on avoid monsters and is better for making him a tank, although not quite to the same extent as the barbarian. Elemental druids also get Cyclone Armor, which reduces elemental damage, usually the deadliest kind of damage, as well as some stuns from their wind skills. Shapeshifting druids are better off, with Lycanthropy and both of the were-form skills enhancing the druid's total life. And the attacks in the shapeshifting tree can knock enemies back or leech life from them. The druid's defensive skills definitely let him be a respectable tank and his summoned pets let him avoid some damage altogether.

As in all other areas, the paladin excels in defensive skills. Since he can only have one aura active at a time, the defensive auras are largely situational. Vigor is great for mobility while Salvation and Defiance can be used to survive while taking huge amounts of damage. Cleansing can remove poison and curses. A paladin that does choose to put points into the resistance auras, like my auradin, gets improved maximum elemental resistances, although the auras themselves aren't great. Paladins can also use Holy Freeze to keep from being swarmed. But the paladin's real defensive power lies in Holy Shield. With Holy Shield, a paladin easily reaches max block with minimal dexterity investment, allowing for more points into vitality. The skill also gives a huge bonus to defense rating. These advantages combined with the powerful shields paladins can wield that other classes cannot (Herald of Zakarum and Exile in particular) turn paladins into awesome tanks.

The sorceress has many spells that can damage enemies from far away, allowing her to focus more on offense than on being able to tank, but her defensive skills are also impressive. The Cold Spells tree has three different ice armor skills, each with their own advantages (Shiver Armor is probably the best). These provide defense bonuses and slow or completely freeze monsters. Cold spells in general are good for slowing monsters down. The Lightning Spells tree has Telekinesis to push monsters away and Teleport to escape and outmaneuver monsters. Should a sorceress choose to employ Energy Shield, she has, for an admittedly costly skill investment, one of the best damage reduction abilities in the game and can become a tank that rivals the barbarian and the paladin.

Other than using pets to distract monsters and tank, which requires a necromancer to become a summoning specialist, the necromancer doesn't have much. Bone Armor is a terrible skill and doesn't absorb that much damage. Decrepify does slow enemies down and lowers the damage they do. Life Tap would be good if the necromancer had enough melee damage to take advantage of it, which he usually doesn't. There are several crowd-control curses, but they can't be used alongside another curse and they only serve to keep monsters from getting close to the necromancer without offering a permanent solution. Other than that, all the necromancer gets are Bone Wall and Bone Prison, which can keep monsters from swarming him.

Now, the necromancer does have a defensive skill kit. I never said that his survivability was non-existent Decrepify does work. Golems can distract monsters. The bone skills and curses can keep monsters from reaching the necromancer. But for all other classes, preventing large mobs from pinning the player down is only part of a defensive skill kit. Everyone else can either use skills to avoid most hits entirely or to reduce the damage that incoming attacks do. For that, all the necromancer gets is Bone Armor, which does nothing against elemental damage and doesn't absorb that much physical damage anyway.

The Necromancer is Underpowered Reason 10: Unncessary diminishing returns on skill investments

This is another one I've touched on in previous posts, but that stands on its own as a glaring weakness. Only a few of the necromancer's skills have diminishing returns on skill point investments and the necromancer is not the only class that has skills with this problem, but the necromancer is probably the most adversely affected by it.

I should note that this mechanic annoys me in general. It makes sense that not all skills can be equal. By their nature, some skills will be prioritized over others. Some skills are one-point wonders and some skills simply must be maxed because they're that good. That's fine. But where skills have diminishing returns on point investment, it's almost always problematic. Skills that could be useful are forced into roles as one-point skills because further investment isn't worth it. In principle, it could be the case that designing these skills to scale without diminishing returns would be difficult. In reality, it seems that these skills are usually underpowered anyway, and switching to linear scaling on everything wouldn't really make any of these skills overpowered.

The necromancer has diminishing returns on several skills. Golem Mastery gets diminishing returns on running speed, but no one could realistically be worried about a golem that runs too quickly. Raise Skeleton has diminishing returns on the damage that the skeletons do, which is a bit silly considering how much more damage a real melee character can do. Even fully synergized and enhanced with runeword auras and assisted with Amplify Damage, skeletons can't compare to a Barbarian's Concentrate. But the worst offender in the summoning tree is probably Summon Resist. This skill gets diminishing returns so hard that putting more than one point into it would be a complete waste, especially because summoners use a ton of +skills anyway.

Curses are generally not afflicted with diminishing returns, although only a few of them get magnitude gains from skill points in the first place. The one curse that does unfortunately employ a diminishing returns system is Lower Resist. This is particularly irksome considering that Lower Resist only reaches -62% at level 20. The paladin's Conviction goes all the way to -125% at level 20. As usual paladins get better skills.

The Necromancer is Underpowered Reason 9: Physical and elemental damage sources

All classes can achieve both physical and elemental damage, and most have some reliable way to deal elemental damage of at least two types. This is useful because elemental immunities are common in Hell, although perhaps not as common as poison immunity. One skill that makes all of this especially easy is the paladin's Vengeance, which deals all three types of elemental damage at the same time. But not every approach needs to be so compact. One of my characters is a tri-elemental sorceress that uses Frozen Orb, Hydra, and Charged Bolt. If a monster is immune to two of those, the third spell will kill it. Dealing multiple types of damage is vital, and the necromancer is the worst class to pull it off. As I've already argued, poison necromancers and bone necromancers have too few skill points left over to achieve two primary damage sources. But for classes other than necromancers, magic or poison specialists are niche characters, not virtually the only options. Most characters rely on physical and/or elemental damage.

With the exception of hitting monsters with a weapon, and remember that the necromancer has no native skills that synergize with weapons except for Poison Dagger, the necromancer's only sources of physical and elemental damage are pets. Well, Corpse Explosion has fire and physical damage, but let's not get too crazy (it requires corpses as ammunition and is not suitable as a primary killing mechanism). I'm not going to reiterate my problems with pets. Already wrote that post. But I don't even have to. Even ignoring the limitations of skeletons, they simply don't match up to what a character of another class can do with a suitable weapon. Elite equipment does help summoners, but really, since skeletons don't get much better from the necromancer's own equipment, it's all about the +skills. Other characters may be more reliant on equipment, but in the end, they have more damage output, more sustainability, more versatility, require less time to set up, and are just outright better. That's true for the skeleton warriors and their physical damage and it's also true for the skeletal mages and their elemental damage.

Curses have their own limitations, and I've written about those as well. However, curses aren't really the problem. The ones that I noted as being useful (Amplify Damage, Decrepify, Lifetap, and Lower Resist) are actually quite good. It isn't the curses that really stifle the necromancer, it's the lack of anything to go with them. Barbarians get Frenzy, Assassins get Dragon Talon, Amazon's get Strafe, Paladin's get Zeal, and Druids get Fury, just as examples. If the necromancer got even a single skill that could deliver weapon-based physical damage so quickly and with such force, Amplify Damage and Decrepify would look amazing. This is why the runeword and unique items that give a chance to cast a curse on striking are so good. If the necromancer had some skill that could actually give him damage output, he'd be powerful. No need to rely on items giving a chance to cast curses when you can just cast them yourself. Simlarly, if the necromancer had some skill or skills to generate respectable elemental damage, Lower Resist would look amazing. Sure, Lower Resist is good for poison necromancers or for sorceresses if playing with friends, but the necromancer doesn't have a way to take advantage of his ability to make monsters vulnerable to elemental damage on his own. Skeletal Mages just aren't enough.

This might seem similar to an earlier reason in which I deplored the necromancer's inability to use weapon-based damage, but it goes deeper than that. Sorceresses have similar problems, with Enchant as their only real melee skill, but they can easily attain massive elemental damage to make up for it. Other casters, such as druids can also achieve respectable elemental damage. In fact, every class has the capacity to, with either physical or elemental damage, hit harder than the necromancer can. He is stuck with magic damage (which takes all of his skill points and is substantially weaker than what a barbarian or paladin can do with magic damage) or poison damage (the most common immunity, with no viable way to get another major damage type).

The Necromancer is Underpowered Reason 8: Class-exclusive items

This reason is admittedly not particularly severe. Many items in Diablo II either have properties that are specific to a single class or that can only be equipped by a single class. In just about all cases, some of the items are terrible and some of them are worth using. My point here is not "the necromancer gets the worst items." That wouldn't be true. It's more complicated than that. And it's muddled by the fact that some of the other class items might seem better because they are being used by those other classes in the first place. A rigorous analysis would be required to determine which class really has the best class-specific items (it's the paladin, of course). My intention here is not to present such an analysis, but to contend that, in general, the necromancer is lacking here. For the previous reasons in my list, the necromancer was either worse than everyone at something or had his own particular flaw. This one is a bit different: multiple classes are deficient in this category. The necromancer isn't alone for once.

Paladins have class-specific shields. Any class can use a shield and most characters end up with a shield. But the best shields can only be equipped by paladins. Since paladins have access to the amazing Holy Shield skill, this helps to compensate and give the other classes an advan—oh wait, it does the opposite of that. The combination of Holy Shield and paladin-specific shields, which often have high resistance bonuses and block rates, lets paladins reach max block far easier than other classes while achieving massive defense ratings. With a single skill and the right shield, a paladin can tank almost any monster in the game. There's even a powerful runeword that only works in paladin shields.

Claw-type weapons can only be wielded by assassins. These weapons aren't particularly impressive on their own, but combined with assassin claw skills, they excel. As a class-specific item, claws generally make sense. Assassins can dual-wield claws and can even use them to block. The claw-based skills also work well with these. Not every assassin needs to use claws (kickers don't have much use for them), but they can be potent.

Amazons have both their own class-specific bows and their own class-specific spears and javelins, so any amazon can have access to these weapons, no matter her specialty. The amazon also has exclusive access to her bow/crossbow and spear/javelin skill trees. With the best weapons of these types and skills that only work with weapons of these types, it's almost as though these weapons solely exist for the benefit of the amazon.

The barbarian can dual-wield one-handed weapons. This is useful for some of his skills, but there are not technically any barbarian-exclusive weapons. He just uses the same weapons as everyone else. The only exception is the Bul-Kathos' Children set, which consists of two swords (so only a barbarian can equip the full set). However, the barbarian does have skills based on throwing weapons. Other than the amazon's javelin skills, no other class can use skills with throwing weapons, so while throwing weapons (and throwing axes in particular) are not barbarian-specific, the barbarian makes the best use of them. For actual barbarian-specific items, there really isn't much. Barbarians get some helms that only they can equip. These helms are not particularly amazing, so barbarians sort of lose out here.

Like barbarians, druids have their own class-specific helms. Pretty much the same story here. The helms aren't necessarily awful, but they aren't that great. They give bonuses to druid skills. I know my theme this whole time has been the necromancer and his problems, but the druid and barbarian aren't much better off here, if they are at all. Some unique items that are worth using happen to be barbarian or druid helms, but overall, these helms just don't provide the power that the other classes get from their exclusive items.

Sorceress orbs are terrible melee weapons and are obviously designed with casters in mind. Since most sorceresses are casters, this makes some sense, I guess. You'd never want to actually hit something with one of these things because they do virtually no damage. They do have considerable bonuses for spellcasting, which is what sorceresses are supposed to specialize in anyway. Perhaps because they are necessarily focused on spellcasting, orbs don't seem as strong as the class-specific items that amazons, assassins, and paladins get. But I'd still rate them higher than the special helms barbarians and druids get. Sorceresses also have staves, many of which have properties that only benefit sorceresses, but staves are not technically unique to sorceresses and orbs are better anyway.

Wands are the typical necromancer caster weapons. They often have bonuses to necromancer skills and some general properties that help spellcasting. Technically wands are not unique to necromancers. Anyone can use them. But the main attraction on wands are bonuses to necromancer skills, and obviously other classes don't benefit from those. Wands are abysmal as melee weapons. So are orbs, but any sorceress that is a caster can use a good orb. Caster necromancers would be better off with Heart of the Oak or something. Necromancers using Poison Nova could be an exception to that with Death's Web, but Death's Web is good for poison in general and other poison-based characters could use it because, after all, wands are not necromancer exclusives. I will note that I made extensive use of Arm of King Leoric on my summoner and I consider it to be a pretty good wand, although it's mainly a pre-buff sort of thing.

So sorceresses get orbs, paladins get special shields, amazons get special weapons, assassins get claws, and barbarians and druids get some helms. What do necromancers get? Severed heads. They can carry the severed heads around and use them as shields for some reason. Not only is this thematically moronic (why would a severed head be a shield?), they aren't even good items. Severed heads have bad block rates and mediocre defense values. Like all class-specific items, they can give bonuses to class skills, so they're not completely worthless. But most of the time, a real shield would be better. It's rather annoying that paladins, the class that get Holy Shield and don't need help with defense, get powerful exclusive shields while necromancers are stuck with these pathetic severed heads.

Even with the skill bonuses, severed heads are generally not worth it because of the dexterity investment required to reach max block. The biggest exception is probably Trang-Oul's Wing because of the bonuses associated with the Trang-Oul's Avatar set. And it's probably the worst item in the set. I did use it on my poison necromancer, but the massive amount of dexterity that took only serves to further my annoyance as this disparity. Severed heads are generally lackluster and compound the deficiencies of necromancers.

The Necromancer is Underpowered Reason 7: His most powerful damage source is a clumsy gimmick

Corpse Explosion does work well for clearing massive hoards of weaker monsters (although, as I've already stipulated, not as well as the hype surrounding the skill would indicate). These situations are a large portion of the game, but they aren't all of it. For me, at least, boss fights are the heart and soul of Diablo II. Against strong enemies, every character puts away those crowd-clearing skills and brings out the big guns. And the bigger the better. Rapid attacking is key here, whether it's nuking bosses with a spell, firing a bow as though it were a machine gun, or swinging away with a melee weapon. Increased attack speed, faster cast rate, life leech, mana leech, deadly strike, open wounds, and crushing blow are all valuable here. Some of the things that are good here are good everywhere in the game, but often, strong monsters call for a bit more. Precautions, like extensive pre-buffing or changing gear, that might be overkill elsewhere, tedious, or just unnecessary can make perfect sense if the monsters are strong enough.

If you haven't played necromancers, particularly summoners, in Hell, you can be forgiven for not seeing what's coming next. But if you have experience with summoners at high levels and you don't see what's coming next, shame on you. The necromancer's skeletons, although they can achieve respectable damage, can't be improved much by preparations in the way that other characters can do with their damage sources. Summoners do have a way to get massive damage, though: Revives. Besides being improved by Skeleton Mastery, Revives also take on the abilities of the monsters that the skill was use on. The necromancer can turn this into a boss-killer by going to the River of Flame in Act IV and using Revive to grab a bunch of "urdars." These guys have crushing blow and a large group of them will make quick work of a single target like Diablo or Baal. In addition to their massive damage output, they are very difficult to kill.

Out of all the pets available to any character, Revives are potentially the toughest tanks and the hardest hitters. Unfortunately, they are clumsy to use. I want to make it clear that I do not say this based on my unwillingness to use a build that requires skill or my desire to play mindless left-click-and-win characters. The problem with the Revive skill isn't that it requires finesse. It's just needlessly awkward. Revives behave stupidly and require constant babysitting to get them to beat up on enemies. Even though they can deal insane amounts of damage, it takes telestomping, which requires a specific runeword armor, to get them to actually focus on an enemy. They also tend to wander off and if they get separated from the necromancer, they disappear, so Teleport is virtually a requirement just to keep them from vanishing after thirty seconds. Revive cannot be used on certain corpses, such as those of unique monsters, which makes some sense (even I don't want necromancers to be able to run up to Baal with Colenzo, Aachmel, Bartuc, Ventar, and Lister as pets). But the worst limitation is the timer. Revives only last three minutes, no matter what you do. With proper planning, that probably is enough time to kill any single enemy in the game, but it requires rushing against a clock in a way that no other character has to do. I'm all for games requiring some skill, but trying to telestomp bosses with Revived urdars before the timers on the Revives run out just isn't fun.

Revive is the ultimate display of wasting potential. This skill potentially provides the most numerous and the most powerful summoned pets, but in practice, they just end up being the most annoying and ineffectual. Monsters that zero in on the necromancer with deadly accuracy mostly just wander around when they are Revives.

The Necromancer is Underpowered Reason 6: Curses sure are useful (to paladins)

Every class gets three evenly distributed skill trees, but not all skill trees are equal. The paladin has a tree full of defensive auras, but he can only have one of his auras active at a time and the offensive ones are so much better that there's no point investing heavily in defensive auras except as synergies. I'd say that the assassin is an example of well balanced skill trees: just about any assassin can invest in all three trees. Some individual skills are lackluster, but the trees themselves work well together. And I'd say that the druid is an example of poorly balanced skill trees: shapeshifting precludes elemental spells, so it's either one or the other, which forces player to build from a very limited set of archetypes.

I've complained enough about the necromancer's poison and bone skill tree (investing in either poison or bone only allows for one type of damage and takes up too many points to have another primary damage source) and about the summoning tree (skeletons are unreliable). That leaves curses. There is no curse that deals damage to enemies (even though there totally should be), so they can't be the central focus of any build (that actually works). They are designed for utility. The tree as a whole does have its problems. Some monsters cannot be cursed. Because curses are targeted on enemies, rather than passively affecting one's own party, they're clumsier than auras. But more annoyingly, most of the good curses don't actually get better with multiple points invested in them. The magnitude of the effect generally stays the same, and more points into the skill only improve the duration.

Four of the curses affect monster behavior. These crowd control curses mostly only affect weak monsters, so they're not worthy of much consideration. I usually leave them alone. Of the remaining six curses, two more of them are bad. By this, I mean they are not good curses. They suck. Iron Maiden is unusable outside of Normal and Weaken is garbage. That leaves four curses that are actually worth having: Amplify Damage, Decrepify, Life Tap, and Lower Resist. Of these four, three are one-point wonders. Putting more points into these curses only improves the affected radius (easily dealt with by spamming the curse over a wide area) and the duration (easily dealt with by spamming the curse). Lower Resist does get a magnitude increase with greater investment, but unlike the paladin's Conviction, it has severely diminishing returns.

All four of the good curses would be great for a necromancer playing in a party, supporting his allies by crippling monsters for easy kills. But for a solo necromancer, curses are harder to take advantage of. For another class, items grant curses, usually by having a chance to cast them on striking, allow these curses to shine much moreso than they do in the hands of a necromancer. Amplify Damage may complement Corpse Explosion, but it's so much deadlier when a barbarian is using it. Runewords and unique gear let the other classes put Amplify Damage, Decrepify, and Life Tap to better use than necromancers can. And a sorceress or other elemental damage-dealer would wreak havoc with Lower Resist if there were a decent item for it. On the necromancer, if not for breaking poison immunities, it would be entirely wasted. Life Tap is amazing, but it only synergizes with high physical melee damage, something necromancers don't have. Decrepify is similar to Amplify Damage in this regard, but the damage reduction and slow components benefit a melee character more than one that sits back casting spells or hides behind a wall of pets. So yeah, the necromancer gets some good skills with these four curses, but the best uses of these skills are all demonstrated by non-necromancers.

The strange thing about curses is that it's almost as though Blizzard is doing this part of the whole "make necromancers the weakest" thing on purpose. Items that grant auras are some of the best in the game, but they're never made so strong that they outcompete the paladin's own ability to use auras. Other characters can get auras, but they can't get the highest level auras and they can't get the synergies that auras get from other paladin skills. Curses don't improve much with level and don't have any synergies for some reason (synergies were not part of the original game, but were added retroactively, and curses just never got any for some reason). The end result is that getting curses from items while having access to strong weapon-based damage skills is a much better combination than having those curses natively, but lacking skills to go along with them. Lower Resist is the lone exception only because it's the one good curse that gets better with more points and the two items that do give other classes access to Lower Resist are crap.

This is the area where I see the most potential room for improvement. Curses can be buffed considerably without making the necromancer broken. Weaken should be cut and replaced with something that doesn't suck. There should be a curse that helps the bone skills. Lower Resist should lose its diminishing returns. Iron Maiden could use a rework (Blood Golem finally got one, but Iron Maiden is still outdated). Amplify Damage, Decrepify, and Life Tap could be changed so that they gain some benefits from having points added to them other than range and duration. Finally, the curses should have synergies, just like most skills do now.

The Necromancer is Underpowered Reason 5: Corpse Explosion is overrated

I should dispel the illusion that I'm running out of ideas and trying to draw this out by focusing on a single skill. I'm not going to write one of these for every skill in the necromancer's repertoire. Corpse Explosion isn't just any skill. It's one of the defining features of necromancers. Some consider it to be one of the most powerful skills in the game. Paradoxically, it is both a one-point wonder (because it does its full damage with only a single point invested) and a skill to prioritize (because of the geometric increase in range). For summoners in particular, maxing Corpse Explosion is almost mandatory and it's generally thought of as the main damage source for summoners. Skeletons are there to make the first few corpses. The bulk of the monsters are then destroyed by Corpse Explosion. Since it does both fire and physical damage and necromancers have Amplify Damage to weaken monsters to the physical component of the damage, Corpse Explosion is effective against almost all mobs that leave corpses behind and the few that resist it sufficiently can be dealt with by pets.

Of course, all of this requires corpses as ammunition for the skill. A summoner also needs corpses to raise new pets. But that's a minor limitation and usually not a problem. No skill is perfect, and this consideration wouldn't be nearly enough to stop Corpse Explosion from being awesome on its own. And yet, Corpse Explosion really is overrated. It has two major weaknesses.

The damage from Corpse Explosion ranges between 70% and 120% of the exploded monster's maximum health. Since most monsters in a mob have about the same maximum health, blowing up a single corpse can potentially kill some and blowing up three or four while all the monsters are cursed with Amplify Damage will kill everything in the area (excepting bosses and such). But on higher player counts, the damage remains the same as it would be at /players1, while monsters have much higher health pools. At higher player counts, a single Corpse Explosion isn't likely to actually kill anything. I've seen the sentiment that this is not a problem for Corpse Explosion because it just means the skill must be used more times, which is true for all of the other skills used to kill enemies. This reasoning fails because those other skills don't require corpses as ammunition. I played the whole game on all three difficulties with a summoner on /players8. And I contend that no one who has done that would express the sentiment that Corpse Explosion isn't weakened more than other skills by the player count increase. It's very difficult to get a Corpse Explosion chain going. Letting pets or a mercenary bring down one monster and using that corpse to wipe out everything on the screen might work on /players1, but it's impossible on /players8. In some circumstances, I found it faster to use those corpses for Revives instead of blowing them up. In contrast, other damaging skills really do still work on /players8. The character I've been working through Hell most recently, my auradin, tears right through everything on /players8 without any problems at all.

I realize that this limitation only applies to increased player counts. And one might dismiss it on the grounds that those increased player counts are not the "real" game (unless there really are multiple players, in which case one would have help from other players). If Corpse Explosion is still awesome at /players1, then at least it's still awesome at /players1. I don't buy this. I would buy it if higher player counts were something that limited almost all characters to this extent. That's simply not the case. I now play all of my characters on /players8 (my druid, the character that I started first but only finished most recently, was on /players3 for much of Hell because /players8 was taking too damn long, but I did solo some of the most difficult areas on /players8 and even beat Uber Diablo on /players8, which my summoner couldn't do). Some are certainly better than others. The summoner was so slow that I only persisted because I really, really wanted to. And Corpse Explosion was only moderately useful.

Corpse Explosion has another, perhaps more obvious, weakness. Any idea how much damage Corpse Explosion does to Duriel? Several of the strongest monsters in the game spawn in areas with either no corpses or a very limited supply of corpses. For every other damage-dealing skill the game (except Poison Explosion, which is mainly just a synergy for the other poison skills anyway, on account of its limited range, although it does kill almost anything it actually hits), this is not even a consideration. Corpse Explosion is mostly just nonviable against bosses. And on some level, that's fine. Most classes have skills that are better suited to wiping out waves of weaker monsters and are not the primary method of killing stronger monsters and bosses. As utility, Corpse Explosion is fine. I'm not saying that the skill needs another buff or that it's a bad skill. But it doesn't deserve the hype. It's a situational way to weaken or finish mobs, not a primary killer.

Oh, and its range when maxed is overrated too. Some players seem to think it's like a hydrogen bomb, obliterating every monster for miles around. It does have a large area of effect, but the range has definitely been exaggerated.

The Necromancer is Underpowered Reason 4: Summoning isn't reliable

So far, I've presented problems pertaining primarily to poison necromancers, bone necromancers, and melee necromancers. Those familiar with Diablo II will easily notice the topic that I've avoided up to this point. The necromancer has a whole skill tree devoted to summoning and summoners are the most popular type of necromancer. Even granting the inferiority of other types of necromancers, one could simply assume that summoning is where the true power of the necromancer is to be found. However, the single character I've spent the most time on has been a summoner, and I contend that summoners have some major problems.

Just to be clear, unlike with the poison skills, the bone skills, and melee, I will never make the claim that the necromancer is outclassed in this particular area by the other characters. By this, I mean that I fully acknowledge that when it comes to using pets as a primary killing method, the necromancer is the most powerful. That's not much of a point in his favor because pets aren't generally a viable primary damage source anyway. The amazon's Valkyrie and the assassin's Shadow Master are not meant to sweep out dungeons by themselves. They are utility. They distract monsters, tank bosses, pick off occasional stragglers, and add a little damage during intense fights. The only character other than the necromancer that can run around with multiple pets is the druid. And I suspect that a summoner druid wouldn't be that great anyway. The druid does get excellent utility out of his pets when used alongside his other skills, though.

The summoner definitely has some things going for him...

1. Each point put into Raise Skeleton makes skeletons stronger, and every three points put into it gives another pet. The same goes for Raise Skeletal Mage. Every point put into Skeleton Mastery also increases the potency of these pets. And every +skill that affects these keeps on giving all of those bonuses. So the summoner gets more out of +skills than just about any other build in the game. Maxing Raise Skeleton only allows for 8 skeletons. But with +skills, my summoner went up against Baal with 14 of them. And to reiterate, it's not just quantity: those skeletons are also stronger.
2. Most monsters never get the chance to touch the necromancer. Defensive measures are still necessary. Having high resists is a good way to stay alive. But once a summoner has enough pets, they serve as a sort of protective barrier.
3. Amplify Damage makes everything die faster and breaks most physical immunities.
4. The skeletal mages have fire, cold, lightning, and poison damage. Nothing resists all of those. Unbreakable physical immunities are generally not much of an obstacle.
5. The golems make decent tanks.
   
6. Skeleton Mastery also makes Revived monsters stronger. They're virtually impossible to kill.
7. The summoner is one of the least item-dependent characters possible. Powerful equipment is good for a summoner, but it's not as vital as it is for most builds.
   

With all that, one might wonder what the problem is. Well, I usually play on PlugY. So back when I was working my summoner through Hell, on /players8 like I'd been playing the whole game, I suddenly got the Uber Diablo event. I was in the Durance of Hate at the time. I went back to Act I and let Uber Diablo spawn in place of Rakanishu, so that he wouldn't interfere with my getting to Mephisto. I ran up to him with my army and watched as they were wiped out. I tried replacing my fallen skeletons with new ones, but quickly ran out of corpses. I managed to save myself from dying thanks to my "Enigma" runeword's Teleport and some potions. I went back multiple times, bringing my full army of skeletons, my golem, my mercenary, and as many revives as I could. I tried teleporting my full army right on top of him. I tried teleporting around him and letting my mages blast him. Nothing worked. I couldn't kill him. My army could damage him enough to beat his regeneration for a while, but then he'd kill enough of my skeletons that his regeneration was outpacing our damage output. I ran into Uber Diablo later with that same character, facing a similar outcome. And then, amazingly enough, I got the event a third time with my summoner. The third time it happened, I remembered to switch to /players1 immediately. He spawned in Pindleskin's place. This time I brought urdars. He still wiped my army out, but at least I cleared the area of other monsters. I went back to the River of Flame and got as many urdars as I could. I brought extra potions and made sure to keep my mercenary alive. I used my "Beast" axe and joined in on the action myself. I used Lifetap after he hit us with a big spell and kept him under Decrepify at other times. It took a while and my Revives started dying, but I did kill him.

Perhaps that anecdote makes it seem as though I'm expecting too much. After all, this was an event monster, substantially more powerful than anything in the normal game. Against almost any other boss, my skeletons would be more robust and I'd be able to go back and grab some more without the boss regenerating if my army did perish. I was actually a bit worried about the Ancients in Hell for this reason, but they ended up not being a problem. However, I'll note that I also got Uber Diablo when my poison necromancer was in Act I. Even though it did take a while, I beat him rather easily. Shut up, that's not proof that necromancers are actually good.

I think what this really illustrates is that with summoners, if something goes wrong, recovering is an ordeal. In Nightmare difficulty, Baal depleted my army considerably, but they finished him off. In Normal, I actually did have to go back after Diablo wiped out all of my skeletons. At high levels, with godlike equipment, a summoner's skeletons may be strong enough that most enemies won't pose a threat. I did have to do a whole lot of summoning in the Halls of Vaught when the guest Tomb Vipers decided to destroy half of my army Fortunately, I had so many skeletons that they were able to win, even if it was only barely. But this is all just mitigating a problem that, for most characters, doesn't exist. I suppose that an amazon might need to worry about running out of arrows. But no other character has to worry about running out of corpses.

The need for corpses is actually quite irritating. Druids, amazons, and assassins don't need corpses. They can summon their pets out of thin air. The only pet the necromancer can get without corpses is a golem. If golems could become real powerhouses, that might help balance things. Instead, the golem is one of the least damaging things in the whole game. This is something that baffled me when I started building characters in the other classes. Why wouldn't a golem be able to do some damage? Even for a powerful summoner, skeletons do tend to die and need to be replaced. Revives are much hardier, but they only last three minutes. Sure, monsters are numerous in this game, so potential corpses are common, but some areas lack a ready supply of corpses (you can't replenish your skeletal army while fighting Duriel, for example). Some monsters don't leave corpses behind and some monsters have abilities that destroy corpses. And in addition to needing corpses to replenish the undead army, summoners generally make use of Corpse Explosion to speed up gameplay. That's another expenditure of precious corpses. Speaking of speeding up gameplay, summoners are slow. And speaking of relying on Corpse Explosion, well, more on that later...

The Necromancer is Underpowered Reason 3: He has the worst skill kit for weapon-based damage

The game is all about killing monsters. To kill monsters, you have to do damage to them. To do damage to them, you have to use skills. Although it isn't explicitly stated in the game, there are two major paths to dealing damage, both of them branching out into subcategories. A character in Diablo II can either rely on weapons or spells for damage. There are throwing weapons, missile weapons, and melee weapons. Any of those can be used without skills, but they really shine when used with a skill like the paladin's Zeal or the the barbarian's Whirlwind. And these skills really shine when used in combination with an overpowered runeword or unique weapon.

To put it bluntly, spellcasters just aren't as powerful as characters that use melee or ranged skills. That's because of the aforementioned synergy between these skills and the godlike items that they can be used with. Equipment can't do as much for spellcasters: faster cast rate and +skills are good, but not as good as what equipment can do to improve melee and ranged skills. Spellcasting can still achieve respectable damage levels, though. The sorceress is particularly adept at this, with several builds that hit waves of monsters with gigantic elemental damage.

I've already touched on the weaknesses of necromancers as spellcasters somewhat and will be visiting it again later. But for all classes taken together, most builds are not casters, and use the superior weapon-based skills to kill monsters. The barbarian has his combat skills tree and in particular, Concentrate, Double Throw, Frenzy, Whirlwind, Berserk, and Leap Attack are all very good. The amazon has two full skill trees devoted to enhancing weapons, one for bows/crossbows and one for spears/javelins. The paladin gets Zeal, Smite, Charge, and Vengeance. The druid's shapeshifting tree offers multiple options, with Maul/Shock Wave for bears, Fury/Feral Rage and/or Rabies for wolves, and Hunger/Fire Claws for both. For the assassin, there is the entire martial arts tree along with Blade Fury (which behaves like a spell, but works with weapons) and Venom (which adds poison damage to strikes).

In addition to skills that deal damage, these classes have other skills that complement their damage-dealing skills. For the barbarian, that's basically all of his other skills except for some of the shouts (e.g. Find Item), giving him considerable offensive and defensive bonuses. The amazon has skills to let her dodge attacks. The paladin has Holy Shield and two skill trees full of auras. The druid gets bonuses from his shapeshifting, spirits, and vines. The assassin has the powerful shadow disciplines skill tree, most of which can be used to either enhance damage or increase survivability, and Blade Shield.

Two classes are left out of this: the sorceress and the necromancer. Of course, there could be some sense to this. The rationale seems to be that the sorceress and the necromancer are more focused on using magic than on using weapons. When someone builds one of these classes to actually pick up a weapon and hit monsters with it, that's a "meleesorc" or a "meleemancer." Those terms don't apply to barbarians, because almost all barbarians (throwers excepted) are already melee. For the enchantress and the necromancer, each gets only a single skills that improves weapon damage: enchant and poison dagger, respectively.

Well, this isn't about the sorceress. She's already the most powerful spellcaster. But building her melee is totally doable, assuming one has the right equipment. I'm building an enchantress now. Enchant adds huge fire damage to every swing, even moreso if it's synergized. Using the "Dream" runeword for her helmet and shield gives a level 30 Holy Shock aura, which can be enhanced with Lightning Mastery. Oh, and the "Passion" runeword gives the sorceress access to the paladin's Zeal skill, enabling her to hit multiple targets very quickly. And I'm sure there are other viable options. In addition to enchant and the elemental masteries, the sorceress has excellent skills for positioning herself in melee and protecting herself. Teleport and telekinesis let her be where she needs to be and can keep her from getting surrounded and taking hits. Energy Shield is potentially one of the strongest damage reduction abilities in the game. The ice armors can also reduce damage and weaken enemies. Static Field is an easy way to take away a large chunk of health from monsters before the fight even starts.

Poison Dagger is subject to all the problems I already covered when I wrote about the lack of versatility hampering a poison-based necromancer. But it's worse than that. Relying on Poison Dagger as a melee skill means that you must use a dagger as your weapon. That rules out the awesome runeword weapons that other classes can use. I hope you like Blackbog's Sharp, because that's about the best you can get. Daggers have short range and are slow. Poison Dagger does boost attack rating, which is good, because while you're swinging your slow dagger to hit something, you want to be sure to land that first hit, so as to move on to the other 50 monsters that are rapidly closing in on you. And for those rather common poison immune monsters, the physical damage of daggers is puny and since Poison Dagger is so slow, killing these monsters takes forever.

Like the other classes, necromancers can complement their melee with other skills to improve both offense and defense. Curses have their own problems, which I'll cover later, but they do work. Amplify Damage would be an amazing asset to the necromancer's physical attack if he had any to begin with, which he doesn't. Decrepify and Lifetap have the same problem. Lower Resist does complement Poison Dagger, but, well I've already explained the problem there. Curses and bone skills offer some crowd control, but this slows down gameplay and will kill the necromancer with boredom before he ever manages to make it through all of the monsters.

Meleemancers can and do work, albeit slowly and with some difficulty. But they're outclassed by Enchantresses and the sorceress is really the only character that shares the necromancer's dearth of weapon-based skills. For everyone else, it's not even close: options abound and even the builds that aren't quite as powerful are still far more effective than any weapon-based necromancer.

The frustrating thing about Poison Dagger is that it should represent exactly the sort of thing that appeals to me. I like the idea of trading acute damage for lingering damage and often try to make that tradeoff in any game that allows for it. Poison Dagger does that. Weaker enemies take one hit and, eventually, die. Stronger enemies can be poisoned, then crippled by other skills and have the poison applied again until they die. Poison Dagger really does have support (Lower Resist, crowd control from curses and bone prison/wall). And it really does do massive damage. I desperately want it to be good. But I've used it with some of the most powerful equipment for the job and found it lacking.

The Necromancer is Underpowered Reason 2: Everyone else that uses magic damage is better at it

The necromancer, like the other classes, has three skill trees. Later, I'll elaborate more on curses, which aren't really viable as anything more than utility, and summoning, which has its own problems. The poison and bone tree is the one that gives the necromancer offensive spells. Bone spells do seem to have certain advantages over poison. Firstly, there are more synergies here, which means investing heavily in bone spells improves their damage incredibly. Secondly, they offer better defensive capabilities. Poison can, well, poison monsters and nothing else. The bone skills offer a shielding spell, walls, and the ability to strike from a greater distance. And finally, they do magic damage. Poison immunity is very common in Hell. Magic immunity is the rarest immunity for monsters to have, meaning that a character that relies primarily on magic damage can run around in Hell and generally ignore those "immune to..." labels on everything.

Synergies are the key to using the "bone" portion of the poison and bone skill tree. The increase in damage output from synergies is massive. But compare it to other classes. Most of the other characters don't have any source of magic damage. The amazon has Magic Arrow, but the magic damage there is an afterthought, not a primary killing method. The assassin is in a similar position with Psychic Hammer. Two other characters have access to a single magic damage skill that really is all about magic damage: the barbarian with Berserk and the paladin with Blessed Hammer. They both completely outclass the necromancer. While the poison necromancer gets more poison skills than other classes and can get more raw damage, but loses out on versatility, the bone necromancer, with far more investment into his magic damage skills, actually gets less damage than other magic specialists. And yes, he's still less versatile.

Using Berserk, a barbarian's weapon damage is factored into the skill damage. Berserk has two synergies that improve the damage, but most berserkers only max one of them anyway. The rest of the skill points can go into typical barbarian skills, so that you can dominate everything in your path. When a berserker runs into magic immune monsters, he can easily demolish them with physical damage from Concentrate, Frenzy, Leap Attack, Double Swing, or whatever. Probably Concentrate, though. So yeah, more magic damage than bone skills, and easy access to skills that can absolutely wreck magic immune monsters.

Blessed Hammer has two synergies, like Berserk. When I made a hammerdin, I maxed both of them, so that's more investment than a berserker would need, but still a lot less than a bone necromancer would require. The main advantage to Blessed Hammer is that paladins get the Concentration aura. With Concentration maxed, Blessed Hammer does far more damage than bone spells, and flies all over the place, killing everything on the screen. Blessed Hammer no longer ignores the magic resistances of anything (before the latest patch, it ignored the resistances of undead and demons). But almost everything that is immune to magic is undead anyway, and the paladin's Holy Bolt, which is enhanced by points put into Blessed Hammer, does affect undead that are immune to magic. But a hammerdin can easily mitigate the immunity problem with Smite, Charge, or Zeal. Smite really only requires a single point and is improved by Holy Shield, which a hammerdin should be maxing anyway. And that Concentration aura will still work wonders with whatever combat skill one chooses to deal with magic immunity, improving the damage of those skills by even more than it improves the damage of Blessed Hammer.

It's true that this issue only applies to bone necromancers, but dammit, these skills take up most of a skill tree. They should work. Barbarians and paladins, on top of having far more options to increase survivability and to deal with magic immunity, also get far more magic damage for a smaller investment in skill points. That's just wrong. Oh, and did I mention that these are some of the coolest looking skills in the game. Bone Spear and Bone Spirit look awesome and are a big part of the appeal of the necromancer.

Blizzard should just fix this one. At the very least, the bone skills should get massive damage upgrades. Better yet, there could be a curse that actually works with them, because that's the real problem here. The barbarian uses masteries and such to improve damage from his skills, including Berserk. The paladin uses auras to improve damage from his skills (specifically the Concentration aura in this case, although Fanaticism and Conviction are the more prevalent ones for paladins that are not hammerdins). The necromancer's analog to those enhancements is curses. He has a whole skill tree devoted to curses. He has Lower Resist for elemental and poison damage. He has Amplify Damage (or Decrepify) for physical damage. There is no curse that helps the bone skills. And there is no reason not to have one. My preference would be Decrepify. For some reason, that one makes the most sense to me. But there should be some curse, any curse, that lowers magic resistance. Since there isn't, the bone necromancer is completely outclassed.

The Necromancer is Underpowered Reason 1: Everyone else that uses poison is more versatile

Any character in Diablo II can use poison from charms or equipment. The damage from charms and equipment alone isn't huge, though. Not everyone has poison skills, which can make poison a primary damage source. But of the classes that do have poison skills, all can put it to good use, at least against most monsters. The amazon, druid, assassin, and necromancer all get poison skill damage.

The amazon has Poison Javelin and Plague Javelin. Maxing both skills and using appropriate equipment give considerable poison damage. The druid in his werewolf form has Rabies and a little help from his Poison Creeper pet. The assassin has the incredibly powerful Venom skill. All of these are viable. The necromancer gets more poison skills than the others, with Poison Dagger, Poison Explosion, and Poison Nova, and his poison skills all synergize with each other. On top of that, the necromancer has the Lower Resist curse, letting the necromancer weaken enemies to his poison and even break the poison immunities of most monsters.

All of that would make the necromancer seem to be the best poison-user, not the worst. Other characters have less poison damage and can't weaken the poison resistance of monsters. The problem is that for any of the other characters, investing in poison can be part of a versatile build. For the amazon, poison skills lie in the spear and javelin tree. Maxing both poison skills leaves her with plenty of room to stack points in the other spear and javelin skills for lightning and physical damage. A werewolf druid can easily dump points into both Feral Rage and Fury (Fire Claws would probably be a bit of a stretch). An assassin can max Venom and go with pretty much whatever else she wants. So yes, the necromancer can get the most poison damage and can break some poison immunities. That's good for him and makes a "poisonmancer" one of the most viable options for killing monsters with a necromancer. But some monsters have such a high poison resistance that Lower Resist cannot break their immunities and some poison immune monsters cannot be cursed. This isn't much of a problem for other poison specialists, because they can easily destroy poison immune monsters with damage from other skills.

For my own poison necromancer, I addressed the issue by equipping the full Trang-Oul's set, giving me access to fire damage, and using Grief as my switch weapon. With the Lifetap to keep my health from dropping, I can wear down almost anything. But it's slow and clunky. It relies on a full set of elite equipment. Now, this certainly works. My poison necromancer is powerful. But I contend that I could get similar levels of power with other characters while using cheaper gear.

Lower Resist is essentially only available to a necromancer (there are items that can cast it, but they only provide low-level versions of it). In terms of sheer poison power, especially factoring in Lower Resist, the necromancer beats everyone. This might seem like an odd point in favor of my claim that the necromancer is completely underpowered, but I'm leading with poison because it's all downhill from here. The necromancer gets his greatest strength, the one thing he does better than everyone else, first. His other skills are weaker in comparison.

Most importantly, the necromancer has the the worst capacity for complementing poison damage with damage from other skills. Maxing all three poison skills requires 60 points. Then there are the prerequisites and the extra points into Lower Resist (I've put five points into the curse for my necomancer and let +skills do the rest, because upgrading the curse yields diminishing returns). That doesn't leave much to work with. The bone spells require even more points. A poison necromancer could put points into the summong tree and let pets do part of the killing, but the skeletons will be too weak unless some poison damage is sacrificed. You can have a poison necromancer with massive dagger/nova damage or you can have a summoner with powerful skeletons, but you can't really have both. And a poison/summon hybrid still runs into the problem that summoners have in general. More on that later, though.

This is why I use the word "versatile" in the title here. Other poison specialists can branch out into other skills and be effective with them. It's no problem at all for the assassin (Venom only takes 20 points) and the druid and amazon even have skills that could be one-point wonders like
Fury and Fend. The necromancer doesn't have those options. Poison is all he has.