by Hotstreak - 8 years ago     show comments

“No known being, living or dead, possesses a skull like this one. It’s origins lie in mystery, like the fate of Rathma himself.”

Welcome to my Necromancer Notes where I will be going over each set over the next few weeks and giving my thoughts and feedback about the builds that come with them. This week I’m starting with the summoner set Bones of Rathma.

So far this set seems to be the strongest out of the four and is reaching the highest Greater Rift levels. Don’t let that fool you though, there’s definitely going to be more tuning because ever since the patch on Tuesday, the highest grift level with this build is currently sitting on level 88. Which isn’t very high considering where the other classes are at. But that’s fine because this is a beta after all and the number values and mechanics are definitely not final.

So lets take a look at this build in it’s current form.

As you can see, these two sets were designed to work together and they absolutely do work well with each other. Combined with a Scythe of the Cycle, Tasker and Theo, and Circle of Nailuj’s Evol your minions can do some really good damage and clear out elite packs very quickly.

The play style of the build revolves around summoning a bunch of Skeletal Archers

and commanding your Skeleton Warriors to trigger the 400% damage bonus from the Jesseth’s weapon set. I didn’t initially like the fact that Skeletal Mages were turned into a non-permanent resource spender but, it did allow them to be more impactful and have more of a presence in combat. So it’s kind of a bittersweet thing for me now.

I always played the summoner build for Necromancer in Diablo 2 and I can happily say that it’s definitely just as fun in Diablo 3. But it could still use some tunes and tweaks to make it better. One thing that you’ll notice is that the set not only buffs and synergizes with your pets, but it also tries to include Army of the Dead into the build as well. But unfortunately, AotD is not really worth taking over something like Decrepify or Frailty.

The issue is AotD has too long of a cooldown for how useful it actually is. It’s up there at 120 seconds with big game changers like Wrath of the Berserker and Archon. Sure, it does 12,000% weapon damage but to be honest it doesn’t feel like it hits that hard and currently, the only really useful rune for it is Death Valley which pulls all enemies to the center. At higher level greater rifts, the damage modifier isn’t nearly enough for it to be taken as a nuke and the really long cooldown makes it really hard to take it for it’s CC capability.

Yes, the armor set makes your minions lower it’s cooldown by a pretty good amount but, it still doesn’t really perform well enough to make a huge difference even if you’re using it every 40 seconds or so. This is backed up by the fact that no one in the top 20 are even using it in their build. So what can be done about this?

I don’t think it needs a lower cooldown or even a huge damage buff. Instead I think it needs another legendary to support it and make it better, and I’ve got a couple of ideas. Preferably for the bracer or belt slots.

The Dead’s Rumba – Gives Army of the Dead a second charge.

Rathma’s Call – Army of the Dead is triggered a second time.

I feel like if you could use it twice before it’s cooldown, that would make it a very powerful skill especially combined with the CD reduction on the set’s 2 piece bonus. If that sounds like it could be too powerful, then maybe replace the current 2 piece bonus with giving AotD a second charge. Hopefully the Diablo dev team gives AotD some love and tuning in the future. Because I really like the idea of this skill and it has a very cool visual to it with hundreds of skeletons rising from the ground.

Other than the fact that AotD isn’t where it needs to be, the set and build is very fun and extremely nostalgic. In fact, I like this current version of the build much more than before the latest patch. I was not a fan of the poison build with the stationary Skeletal Mages. But I think that the new cold damage version of the build is much more fun and satisfying to play and they are definitely on the right track with it. Necros didn’t have skeletal archers in Diablo 2 so it’s definitely a fun change of pace.

I also love how with Jesseth’s weapon set you need to command your skeletons around to get the 400% minion damage bonus. It makes the play style feel really interactive and engaging.

With all of that being said, I think this set is the most balanced of the four even with the issues I mentioned. But there definitely needs to be some more numbers tuning when it comes to damage and survivability.  Other than that, I’ve had a ton of fun with it and I’m really excited to see how this one evolves over the remainder of the beta.