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.