d3 Necromancer Ability and Gameplay Preview

[Starym 3,801]

 

We have a preview of the Necromancer abilities from the playable demo at BlizzCon, as well as some thoughts on how the class plays!

Our team braved the lines of the BlizzCon demo stations to give us a little look into the abilities the Necromancer will be coming with.

The Necro uses essence and has a base amount of 200. Here are some of the abilities from the demo:

Siphon Blood

Siphon the blood from your enemies, dealing weapon damage as Physical and restores essence. Siphon Blood heals you every second while channeled. [15 essence each time it damages, does 300% weapon damage each tick, heals for 2% of max HP]

 

Bone Spear
 

Summon a piercing bone projectile that causes weapon damage as Physical to all enemies it passes through. [450% weapon damage]

 

Corpse Explosion

 

Target an area exploding all corpses, dealing weapon damage as physical. [20 yard area of effect, 150% weapon damage]

 

Blood Rush
 

Shed your mortal flesh and reappear yards away passing through most obstacles. [4 second CD, 50 yard range]

 

Command Skeletons

 

Active: Command your skeletons to attack the target and increase their damage. [50 essence cost, increase damage by 100% for 5 seconds]

Passive:Raise skeletons from the ground. Skeletal minions deal weapon damage per attack. [Raises 1 per second, max of 10 skeletons with base ability, base damage of 50% weapon damage]

 

 

Decrepify

A crippling curse that reduces the enemy unit’s movement speed and reduces damage done. [10 essence cost, 75% movement speed decrease, 20% damage done reduction]

How does it play?

 

It's very mobile with a short-CD teleport. If there are any items that reduce the CD, it will be incredibly OP. It is likely that Necro will feature a speed farming build that stacks CDR to clear bounties with a spammable teleport (similar to that of the Bounty Wizard build). Given that you only need a small amount of CDR or an In-geom, it will likely be an early build for people to farm with.

 

It's much easier to direct damage towards specific enemies than with Witch Doctor. You can decide when to push the damage of your skeletons and what to push their damage on.

 

Very good at allowing for kiting and damage reduction. Will likely fit well into GR groups as a

support. Damage is very hard to judge since we can’t see any of the gear that our Necro was using.

 

Corpse Explosion did stand out as hitting very hard, but it will likely be useless at very high Grift levels. Unless a rune or item is added that allows you to use it on living targets, you will only be able to pop it once many mobs are dead, something that simply isn’t worth it in GRifts. You might as well take something that does the same damage but constantly. It could work on bosses that have a lot of adds, but I doubt it is worth fishing specifically for those.

 

 

[Valhalen 1,484]

I am really excited to see this Necromancer. The whole idea of a controlled swarm of skeletons is awesome. I hope they bring back some of his vanilla spells from Diablo II, such as Poison Nova, Bone Prison/Wall and Bone Spirit (which I'm pretty sure it'll be a Rune for Bone Spear).

[Marvus 7]

9 hours ago, Valhalen said:

I am really excited to see this Necromancer. The whole idea of a controlled swarm of skeletons is awesome. I hope they bring back some of his vanilla spells from Diablo II, such as Poison Nova, Bone Prison/Wall and Bone Spirit (which I'm pretty sure it'll be a Rune for Bone Spear).

After playing HT-pet WD for a season, the single most important thing I wanted in a possible necro was that it should have a direct control over it's minions (which, to be fair, should be modified at least on the WD too but maybe other classes could use that as well), so it was comforting to see they thought of it too and implemented it :)

Also, I was more into summoning in D2, so I'm more interested in seeing the golems (which are probably will be runes for one base type) and revives (which was fun to use but don't know how that would work in D3) and more curses (like iron maiden) and I really hope they don't just adjust the D2 spells to D3 but also come up with some cool skills of their own (maybe even some form of transformation skill, but that would fit a druid better, which I hope they'll make if they don't make an expansion but character packs anyway), because I'd like to see something new and interesting.

[Valhalen 1,484]

5 hours ago, Marvus said:

After playing HT-pet WD for a season, the single most important thing I wanted in a possible necro was that it should have a direct control over it's minions (which, to be fair, should be modified at least on the WD too but maybe other classes could use that as well), so it was comforting to see they thought of it too and implemented it :)

Also, I was more into summoning in D2, so I'm more interested in seeing the golems (which are probably will be runes for one base type) and revives (which was fun to use but don't know how that would work in D3) and more curses (like iron maiden) and I really hope they don't just adjust the D2 spells to D3 but also come up with some cool skills of their own (maybe even some form of transformation skill, but that would fit a druid better, which I hope they'll make if they don't make an expansion but character packs anyway), because I'd like to see something new and interesting.

Ah yes, I'd love to see more summoning spells. I'm pretty sure the Golem is already confirmed to return as seen in a Blue Post, if I'm not correct. I'm taking a wild guess that the Necromancer will have just one base "Curse" spell with all subsequent variations in the form of Runes, since in Diablo II you couldn't stack curses anyway.

Seeing the amount of effort they seem to be putting into this class, I'm pretty sure they will try to bring the most of the vanilla flavor of Diablo II while spicing it up for both veterans and new players. I also can't wait to see the Set Items and Legendaries tailored just for the Necromancer. I'll definitely want to play with a Summon Build.

The Druid is a character I really want to see in Diablo III. With the right tweaks he could be really interesting to use. But after the iconic Necromancer return I doubt they will bring another class back.

[Marvus 7]

4 minutes ago, Valhalen said:

Ah yes, I'd love to see more summoning spells. I'm pretty sure the Golem is already confirmed to return as seen in a Blue Post, if I'm not correct. I'm taking a wild guess that the Necromancer will have just one base "Curse" spell with all subsequent variations in the form of Runes, since in Diablo II you couldn't stack curses anyway.

Seeing the amount of effort they seem to be putting into this class, I'm pretty sure they will try to bring the most of the vanilla flavor of Diablo II while spicing it up for both veterans and new players. I also can't wait to see the Set Items and Legendaries tailored just for the Necromancer. I'll definitely want to play with a Summon Build.

The Druid is a character I really want to see in Diablo III. With the right tweaks he could be really interesting to use. But after the iconic Necromancer return I doubt they will bring another class back.

You couldn't stack shrine effects in D2, so I still have some hope that we will be able to maybe stack curses too :)

Yeah, I'll probably go for a summoning build too, but I hope they can make it interesting in other builds.

And about the druid, although I understand that it does not have the same level of hype and following as the necro and may not have that much of an impact, but with a new model you should go for the maximum effectiveness anyway to gauge if it worth the effort, so I'm on the other side, because it would be weird for me to go with a DLC/microtransaction model just with one character. Maybe this is wishful thinking, but I hope they will release more characters at least this way if they don't go for the second expansion and they got their numbers from the necro.

[Valks 2,375]

On 11/6/2016 at 3:14 PM, Valhalen said:

Seeing the amount of effort they seem to be putting into this class, I'm pretty sure they will try to bring the most of the vanilla flavor of Diablo II while spicing it up for both veterans and new players. I also can't wait to see the Set Items and Legendaries tailored just for the Necromancer. I'll definitely want to play with a Summon Build.

We asked a question about this in the interview and they definitely said they wanted to keep some of that flavour, but did want it to fit into D3 too. For sets, they'll get 2 first and then others will be added as they start gauging different builds.