Feedback on the Acolyte & Necromancer's skills

Acolyte
1

Hello.

I give a moderately firm opinion because I have played “only” 60 hours. I would like other players to give their opinion, and that we can help the team with our feedback. :slight_smile:

https://imgur.com/FCNltSA
I will give no feedback on the following skills:

Rip Blood, Narrow Shards, Harvest, Wandering Souls, Detonate Corpse, Exhume, Hungering Souls, Spirit Plague and Defile:

Because either I have tested these skills very little, or their specializations do not yet exist.

I will only talk about the skills that I found underpowered. The others are well calibrated I think, which is pretty impressive for an early access game. :ok_hand:

— Summon Skeleton —

Skeleton Rogue:

https://imgur.com/U0Np8CM
The Skeletons Rogues seemed to me underpowered. Either I want tanks, and only warriors interest me. Either I want archers. In addition, rogues tend to teleport into groups of enemies, and get killed since they are isolated.

So I do not see at the moment the added value that bring rogues.

Dread Phalanx:

https://imgur.com/IARslvN
I understand the idea. The idea is to avoid occupying too much space, especially in close combat.

Yes, but I’m not sure how useful this skill will be in the end. It is better to have two archers who send ice arrows with two more chances of freezing, than one archer.

Same for the rogue, it is better to do twice damage to the armor with their Acid Flash ability, than once. :spider:

Bone Share:

https://imgur.com/tJ1BUPv
-75% for non minions seems to me to be high.

Basically this buff reduces damage by 40%. If it was a -50%, it would be 20%. Which would not be huge in itself.
That said, it is not an important point.

— Mark for Death —

Flow of Anger :
https://imgur.com/LHfZr2R

Mark for Death has a low cost: 9 mana.
In addition, the spell gains 2% Mana Efficiency per point of intelligence.
And there’s no point in Spawning and Stacking Marks for Death.

This specialization is therefore irrelevant at present. It should be changed I think.

Lingering Curse:
https://imgur.com/daDXY2d

It’s the same problem here.
The spell has a duration of 8 seconds, which is long. And it doesn’t cost much.

In addition, this specialization does not increase the time of the effects of Chill and Fear.

No player has an interest in upping this specialization. :mask:

Bone Prison:

https://imgur.com/GZq0Q9J
This skill is currently uninteresting, due to the cooldown being too high, of 20 seconds.
To compare, Transplant has a cooldown of 4 seconds, and 4 seconds is already a lot in a nervous fight.

I don’t know which cooldown it would take.

Another possibility is not cooldown but a higher mana cost, to avoid the limitless spawn.

— Transplant —

https://imgur.com/Nof7M05
An essential spell for a necromancer. Versatile, useful for any build.
There are still very uninteresting specializations.

Anemia:

https://imgur.com/lQd6tIu
-2% Health Cost it’s nothing. Very underpowered.

Purgatory and Ivory Court:

https://imgur.com/fPflHSH
https://imgur.com/tsVDNh2
These skills are useless for the following reason: an Acolyte will transplant every 4 seconds. It will do damage and where / protect itself, gain mana, health.

He will therefore naturally replenish his stock of Bone Minions.
There is therefore no need to delete the cooldown.

These specializations should be changed.

Ossification:

https://imgur.com/Oaz7QY4
An impractical skill.
Not being able to cast a spell or even move, seems to me to be something unnatural in the gameplay of an ARPG.
Have other players tested it, have they seen its usefulness?

I think that skill should be changed, but I don’t know how.

Summon Bone Golem:

Nearly only usefull skills here.

I am not sure of the effiency of Tower of Bones (Threat + 25% per point) as we don’t know how Threat works. But it’s another subject.

Summon Skeleton Mage:

Very usefull specializations here.

One is strange:

Macabre Waltz:

https://imgur.com/ZKeOFxN
What is the use of letting mages use Sacrifice on their own minions, knowing that they will have this spell without specialization and with low intelligence (I think), and therefore its real effectiveness will be low right?

Has anyone tested this power at a high level? Can it be can it be really useful?

— **Sacrifice ** —

I am skeptical about the real effectiveness of the spell. :thinking:

You have to be able to use Chain Sacrifice to have a real mass effect. Sacrifice is an expensive spell, and Chain Sacrifice makes it even more expensive which is expensive.
You have to be able to summon the sacrificed minions, then summon them again.

Compared to a “normal” mass spell, I find this spell very complicated to use, expensive and far from being so powerful.

In addition, it happened to me that the chain of sacrifice goes back to my minions in the back (my skeletons archers). It’s hard to use this spell safely if you use a lot of minions.

I think that spell should be improved. Maybe make it cheaper.

Summon Wraith:

A very interesting skill. It combines very well with Sacrifice and Crimson Horror, since it allows you to summon 5 Blood Wraith in one go.

A note however: There are several specializations which allow to increase the Health of Wraith. Now that seems to me relatively useless, given that their lifespan is short, and that they die quickly.

It would be really useful, if the speed of Decay (vanishing) was decreased for example.

Maybe some of these health bonuses should be replaced by other bonuses (attack speed for example).

Thanks to have read me.
Please share your own feedback. :grimacing:

1 Like
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Some good points made.

Regarding mark for death duration:

It seems like they wanted to force players to take 5 weak skill points to get a ‘powerful’ one in bone prison. As to why bone prison would be considered powerful, I have no idea. I agree with you that the cooldown makes it worthless.

Regarding Ossification:

I have used it, and in theory it is a great utility to keep a squishy necromancer alive while the minions do damage. In practice there are so many ground effects that linger, AOE projectiles that stack and other things that you will die as soon as you lose bone armour, even if your minions have killed everything.

Regarding mages casting sacrifice:

The damage is underwhelming, but the ward generation on minion death in the acolyte tree is a convoluted way of generating ward, so mages casting sacrifice is not always offensive. It can also be a way to try to get putrid wraiths from the passive that spawns wraiths when a minion dies.

Regarding dread phalanx

The key to this node is that odd numbers are rounded up. So if you have 3 skeletons and take this node, you drop to only two skeletons who each get 80% more damage. I guess it’s made for Lich builds that want to allocate a skill slot to skeletons, but won’t take any skeleton limit increases.

There are builds that want a lot of minions on the screen - they use wraiths to shred armour/apply poison and provide minion count, which can increase damage, or they use lots of minions to increase the players life regen and armour through a necro passive.

If the game can ever handle so many minions on the screen without frying the graphics card, then wraith health will be more desirable/useful.

1 Like
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New feedback cycle on the Necromancer

Thanks for your reply Grimlok.

Several days have passed. I now have more experience on the Acolyte & Necromancer, and I have watched some builds made by other players.

I writted new observations. If you disagree, please say it. :slight_smile:

The Necromancer is a weak class

The players who make competitive builds in late game, told me that the Necromancer is a weak class. The fundamental reason is that the Minions are not strong or resistant enough for the late game. And most of the passive skills of the Necromancer are linked to the Minions.

Low Health High Ward builds are strongers than no ward builds

I observe a wide use of low health high ward builds. They are stronger than builds without ward. There are several passive skills and passive skills that make them possible. Another strong reason, it’s the Lich, is a class which roughly doubles its damage when it is in low health. And she has many passive skills that go in the low life direction.

All that is very good but it would also be good that the classic builds, which are not full ward zero health, could be as powerful, which would need maybe more skill’s specialistions, or more passive skills, to make them reliable. Perhaps this is an almost necessairy situation for the liche, this class being strongly made to evolve at low health.

No one uses Transplant as a source of damage

From what I saw, nobody uses Transplant to do damage.

The damage is too low. There is a cooldown. And you have to get close to the enemies, which is dangerous. And the Acolytes have other, much more interesting sources of damage. All the damage part of the skill is therefore neglected by the players:

https://imgur.com/GpSrvo7

Rip Blood: Versatile and balanced

Rip Blood has 4 possible uses: Regenerate health and mana, Buffing minions, Poison enemies, and do direct damages.

The first three uses are all used by players, especially because Rip Blood synergizes very well with Transplant. However, I have not seen any build that seeks to use Rip Blood as a source of direct damage (Physical or Necromantic). Perhaps this is normal, since this spell already has several useful external functions.

Marrow Shards: Non used spell

Reasons for this: there are other much more powerful spells, and whose AOE is much wider. Marrow Shard pumps 9% of the character’s current health (and much more with certain specializations), which makes it complicated to use for builds that are not Low Health.

It’s a shame because the spell is interesting and thematic. The Bones Splitters are interesting but underpowered too.

I don’t know what it would take to make this spell more attractive. Maybe put it in synergy with other skills, like some skills not yet developed?

https://imgur.com/nObyetE

“Bones of the Follower” is a specialization that seems unusable to me. Each shot by Marrow Shards eliminates a Minion, including the golem. It’s hard to play without minion, and yet I have not found a builder who succeffuly used this specialisation.

Harvest: Good skill but reserved for Reaper Form?

Harvest is a very interesting skill that I think is balanced. But I’ve only seen Reaper Form Liches using it. The reason for this is that Acolytes are fragile and coming into contact with enemies is dangerous.

This skill therefore seems unfortunately difficult to use outside the Reaper Form (skill reserved for the Lich Mastery).

Wandering Spirit: Versatile and balanced

The different branches of the skill are useful and interesting. And it synergizes well with other skills.

Hungering Soul: No opinion

I have not tested or observed this skill enough in other builds to give an opinion.

Summon Bone Golem: Skill very little used

This skill is good on paper, but in reality I have not seen any competitive player using it.

Summoners do not have enough slots available to use it. They don’t need a tank, and they prefer a more offensive skill (Skeletons, Wraiths).

As for the casters, they kill the monsters fast enough, and they have enough protections (usually relying on Ward).

This self-sufficiency coupled with the low number of slots available (5), means that players must focus on a few skills only and will not spoil a slot on an unnecessary golem.

Personally I find that high level monsters are eliminated way too fast, and this is a major reason in the lack of interest in the aggro and taking of the golem.

Something is wrong. Most casters should not be able to clean maps alone, without minions.

Spirit Plague: No opinion

Untested yet.

4

I don’t have very strong opinions on all the different skill nodes in the skill tree, as I think it’s fine there are some weaker ones, and I also think it’s a matter of balancing which shouldn’t be that hard to do. I like the concepts available in teh minion skill trees, even though they aren’t all that viable at the moment, but that is not an issue for me.
Regarding the minions, I agree they should be tankier. They are simply too squishy, they die from AOE, at high level they basically die all the time and there’s no good way to consistently keep those guys alive. Ranged minions are your best bet, but a slam form a rime giant or a siege golems decimates your army, regardless of their resistances.
Another issue I have and one of the main reasons they are weak, imo, is that there is no synergy between minion stats and your own stats as a necromancer. You have to choose, bascially, and it’s not a great choice. You make yourself vulnerable, and your minions strong, or vice versa. There is no real middle ground, and even with close to perfect gear on previous necromancers, pushing high arena was just tough because either my minions died, or I did, without many ways to prevent that. I’m sure a few people made it work, but I think the vast majority of players has issues with this. Some built-in synergy, which has been suggested in other posts as well, would really help out.

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