So I’ve been enjoing the Together Update and followed the news and teases about the Necromancer archetype. Being one of my favourite archetypes, I’d like to share my 2 cents about what I think would make a great class in the context of such a game.
CORE FANTASY
The Necromancer archetype fantasy is usually associated with staying in the back lines while an army of minions does the work for you.
In such a combat focus game, this would be a strong change but I believe it can be made into a beatiful reality.
Let’s make some assumptions with what was teased so far and current design:
Main hand: bone staff. Being a staff I assume it will be a two-handed weapon
Off-hand: for offhand I would go with a Tome or Amulet of sort, something like the quiver for the bow that doesn’t need to be hold in hand specifically to be effective.
I think it would make sense for this item to be the one that provides passive bonuses for summons specifically, which in turn could extend the fantasy of summoner beyond the necro, keeping the “freedom of choice to mix and match” design pillar intact.
Attributes will be gone so no more scaling off levels for stats increase.
Since the combat is action focused, the player should still have something to do rather than circling around. I’m not keen on adding a special resource for summoning so I’ll stick with Health and Focus.
An example would be to apply a debuff that allows allies to lifesteal from the debuffed enemy, which in turn would unlock more options for support focused build as a whole.
The bone staff should allow to start necromancing corrupting the enemies. When they die, you get a rune that summons them (gotta catch them all)
This makes also so there can be unique summoning runes to find or inside legendary weapons.
Now, for the big questions, how many summons are too many?
How easily should they die and disrupt the gameplay?
I would steer away from the concept of corpses need to summon as it will slow down things unnecessarily, making the class suffer a disadvantage compared to any other archetype in the game.
Assuming a summoned minion reserves some maximum focus, depending on the cost it would make valuable and reasonable to increase Max Focus as opposed to invest in regeneration. An average skill cost 50, so out of the gate you can have 2 minions. With itemizations that ease the cost or increase max focus we could push it to 4-5 let’s say.
For the damage, I would assume that their DPS would be in the ballpark of a two-handed weapon per 2 minions. Movesets and capabilities will make this number become less set in stone but I’d like to think the damage output is comparable to any other party member wielding a weapon.
The other alternatives would be that the summoning rune is a toggle effect, so instead to use it X times to summon X copies of a minion, you toggle it on and are basically sacrificing that rune slot for the permanent effect.
If utility rune slots are allowed along with the weapon ones, this would make for a potential of 8 minions right off the bat. this seems a lot if not for the fact that once they are dead, they would require some health to raise again (off-hand rune skill) which is not something that can easily be done in the heat of battle.
Enemies interactions:
Given that most of the attacks in this game are area of effect, Minions should inherently take less damage from AoE sources as they would die too easily otherwise. Imagine trying to go against the tall pole wielder that starts spinning, say goodbye to your army in 2 swings!
Compared to other classes that can just walk into an encounter at full power all the time, the summoning archetype has the inherent weakness of requiring to micromanage a party. Getting the balance right to avoid zerg rushing the game is important but so is not making it a gimmicky class that requires double the pain for half the success.
I hope this rumbling was somewhat useful, keep up the great game!