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.
Saturday, March 17, 2012
Friday, March 16, 2012
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.
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).
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).
Tuesday, March 13, 2012
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.
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.
Monday, March 5, 2012
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.
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.
Sunday, March 4, 2012
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.
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.
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.
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