The necromancer is the most underpowered character in Diablo II

So I still have some actually important writing to procrastinate on. None of this is new information to me. I didn't stumble on any startling revelations. But this has been bugging me lately and it probably bugged me before and now I'm going to write about it instead of doing important things. This is a poor decision on my part, but shut up.

I like necromancy. Whenever I play a fantasy game, if I can, I play a necromancer or, if there is no necromancer option, whatever class is closest to looking like a necromancer. Perhaps this is because I am a twisted individual. It's not the black robes or the skulls or anything like that. And it's not so much that I think death is awesome. It's more that I like the idea of controlling death. As a necromancer, I get to use the ultimate weapon, death itself, to smite my enemies. And in the process, I make death my bitch. I win.

Diablo II has seven playable character classes. Six of them are stronger than the necromancer. Since the necromancer is necessarily my favorite, I do not like this. Most games have problems balancing things like the power levels of classes, so I could write it off as an unfortunate coincidence. But there's something else that bugs me. No one else ever points out that it is, in fact, the necromancer that is the weakest class in the game. When I've looked for guides or game information on the internet, I've never run into anyone saying, "Yo dawg, the necromancer is the weakest character." To my knowledge, I am the first person to officially declare this fact. Of course, I'm sure I'm not the first person to do so in reality, but the fact that I never see anyone say it indicates that, at the very least, it isn't being said enough. So I'm saying it now. Yo dawg, the necromancer is the weakest character in Diablo II. If you want to have a fun time and not be frustrated at the fact that everyone else does everything better than you, don't play the necromancer. The barbarian is stronger than the necromancer. The amazon is stronger than the necromancer. The sorceress is stronger than the necromancer. The assassin is stronger than the necromancer. The druid is stronger than the necromancer. The paladin is stronger than everything.

Whatever man, that's just, like, your opinion. Well no, actually it isn't. The necromancer really is underpowered. I was going to provide a list. But I ran out of time and wasn't nearly done. I'll post this, then do a separate post for each reason.

Patriarch Oberon

I could be writing about actually important things right now, but I choose not to. Anyway, I just played Diablo 2 for the first time in a few months. When I sat down and played the full game with the expansion, LOD, for the first time, I decided to try out one of the characters that wasn't in the original version of the game. My first character was Oberon, a druid. I learned a lot playing him and was able to make stronger characters. Because I started Oberon earlier, he initially had a level advantage on my other characters. But as I played my newer, more powerful characters more often, Oberon fell behind. With the advent of the respec, I was able to fix the errors I'd made with him and turn him into a fully synergized fury werewolf. He still isn't my strongest, but I was able to easily solo any area of the game at low player-count settings. I didn't find him as interesting as some of the others, so I wasn't motivated to play through all of Hell on /players8 because some of the mobs would take too long to kill (usually went with /players3 or so). Well, Oberon has finally beaten the whole game. Baal killed my mercenary a few times, but I couldn't bear to finish him without her.

So far, only three of my characters have finished Hell difficulty, but I have three more that easily could (even on /players8) assuming I invest the time. But I don't know. I don't play this game as much anymore. I guess we'll see.