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.