Looking forward to everything here. Never been a fan of pet builds but Blight Fiend has me interested now :D.
Far more mature, designed and intelligent than the popcorn/blockbustering necro teased in Diablo 3 today.
It s official, grim is THE hns.
I was hoping for pets with player bonus scaling so normal builds can use them.
Maybe there are some passives that make it worthwhile as a secondary mastery. Or that one great skill you need as a main skill.
I want to run a cold caster, as soon as i put my hands on xpac. I like drain essence with cold modifier and inquisitor trap. Maybe necro+ inquis??
Reap spirit is a two-in-one Doom Bolt + temporary summon, if that fits your needs.
now is the right time to say when we will get expansion 
Same, I can’t wait to put my hands on Bone Harvest. 
Also : I’m eager to see mithycal version of less used sets : Harbringer, valdun etc…
Omg. The necromancer looks amazing. I am going to be skipping the D3 necro anyway, but this one looks so fun to use. I am looking forward to learning what the weapon skills are for melee builds (my personal favorite builds), as well as the exclusive skills at the end. Looks like there are three. So hyped!
So turns out poison is a major damage type of necro.
Pretty sure bloody pox would had made more sense as a necro skill while ravenous earth as an occultist skill.
Love the looks of summons btw. Such dread, very macabre. 10/10 sculls.
I’m not sure I understand how Mark of Torment works actually. Ok i link myself to a foe and he receives 25% of the damage I take but… considering the amount of incoming damage a player endures that would insta kill that poor thing in a nanosecond
The assumption is that you would link it to the more resilient foes, similar to Pox in this aspect.
When it’s ready 
Crate cannot give a time when it will be released as it’s not even in testing and until then there’s no idea how many bugs of what type will be found and how long it will take to fix them and then see if fixing them has caused any new bugs to appear. 
Love the new skills and the vomiting mobs (just like the late night takeaways in uk near the pubs :D)…apart from the “causing some mobs to flee” just a pet hate of mine as I’ve then got to go and chase them and kill them… I know it’s useful for giving yourself some space when surrounded but…mutter, mutter, whinge, whinge…
Fair do’s, i wasn’t sold on necro but i’m definately coming round! Really like the blight fiend, reminds of THE THING if it had fat people to take over! I agree with powbam, it’s sexier than Salma Hayek pouring whiskey off her foot in from dusk till dawn!
And I’ve only messed around with the necromancer designs so far, uh oh…
That’s why it’s nice to see new abilities, right now I’m just tossing stuff in because “aether green/blue and purple look good together”. I want to know if it’s CANON, dang it! :eek:
Still looks great though, take your time and im sure it will come out looking badass with the blight fiend 
As for the misadventure, very cool stuff. Cant wait to try this stuff out
This skill jumps out the most to me as interesting, though playing a retaliation/reflect Commando right now probably has something to do with it…
I wonder if the absorption reflection is based off only the 25% absorption from Mark of Torment, or if it’s from all damage absorption effects you stack on yourself. Turtle Shell, Elemental Barrier, Blade Barrier, Maiven’s Sphere of Protection, and Overguard all grant damage absorption so there would be different ways to scale this.
At base 16 second recharge and 3 second duration… this seems like something to use when you’re getting burst damaged by a group of mobs, or when you see a boss’ ultimate attack animation targeting you. The low base duration, low base damage absorption, and lack of other defensive benefits make it appear weak compared to “oh shit” button like the Nightblade’s Blade Barrier, Arcanist’s Mirror of Ereoctes, or the Soldier’s Overguard. Simply running away or using another class’s skill seems better for defensive purposes than Mark of Torment. Absorbing 25% of damage means you still get hit for 75%, after all. We’ll have to wait and see how it scales when leveling, but at a first glace, at level 1, it seems lacklustre for defense.
The short duration makes it less useful/reliable as an offensive tool, with boss monsters usually attacking relatively sluggish, and without boosting your absorption you will end up taking much more damage than the mob you are reflecting damage back at. Consider this: a mob hits you for 1000 damage. You absorb 25% and reflect that back at 150%, dealing 375 damage to the mob. The mob starts laughing because you tickled it. You still take 750 points of damage, which is less funny. With monster HP being much higher than player HP, the absorption/reflection ratio needs to be more in your favour to be effective as an offensive tool.
If recharge and duration were flipped, so a 3 second recharge and 16 second duration, it would be more useful as an “always up” kind of skill during combat. This would allow you to benefit from the damage absorption when you get hit, and when the target dies you can recast it soon enough. It takes the pressure off from using it for tanking the big hits, which you don’t really want to get hit by anyway. If you recast it when a target is active, you simply move the effect to another target. Alternatively, with a mutator skill, you could allow stacking of multiple absorption effects by having marks on more than one mob. Damage absorption would probably have to be lower if you could reliably stack it more than 3 times. 2-3 stacks are what I would consider interesting.
For level scaling they can reduce the recharge rate, increase the duration, increase absorption and/or increase the reflect damage. I’m curious to see if they will scale all of them, to some degree, or if some values will remain fixed as they are.
Speculation: assume they give it 10 levels, maxed it could reduce recharge down by 1/level to 7s. Other 3-second absorption skills usually don’t scale duration, so this could be an opportunity to be different. Duration could increase by 1/level to 12s, and ultimate levels could even extend this further. If this duration/recharge scaling is part of the design, it would make it more widely usable as a core part of your build, instead of an odd utility skill. Absorption could scale by 1%/level to 34%, and can increase with ultimate levels. If the recharge/duration does not allow permanent uptime, absorption could even scale higher because it won’t be abusable. The retaliation amount at level 1 falls in the “cute but not highly effective” realm, so scaling it by 10%/level is the minimum I would expect. That’ll be 240% at level 10.
An alternative effect (via mutator/passive skill) could be an always on type of skill, similar to Counterstrike and Vindictive Flame, which does away with the need to continously re-cast it, and which simply applies the mark to whichever mob last hit you. Something like a 3 second recharge and 5 second duration would allow it to stay up for most fights, but it can still jump between mobs during a fight, or re-apply to a new mob when the previous mark dies.
I’m very curious to see how this skill will end up in the game, and how it will scale. It has the potential to be awesome, but it can end up useless if the scaling is off.
i know enough now, give me xpack
I love that Necromancer has more active pet abilities that require some player input rather than the more traditional afk pet build we see from conjurers. If a more active pet build was intended, it seems like a success; I finally want to play a pet build for the first time. That ultimate ability is amazing for either player damage or pet damage, but especially for hybrids! Just look at that obscene 8 second decay duration; With high spirit and some duration gear, I could take a bathroom break and the enemy would still be ticking out. Now Doom Bolt just needs some vitality decay too and the world will be at peace.
Here’s wishing for a swift release, I’m anticipating getting my hands on this so much that it hurts :eek:
Not really, it’s actually quite weak.
Monsters have obscene health but very low damage. Players have very low health but obscene damage. If a monster hits you for 4k in Ultimate, rank 1 of the skill will inflict 1500 damage to your target. And then you autoattack them for 10-20k, all the while said-monster has hundreds of thousands of health. Couple this with a very low duration and generally low monster attack speeds, and all in all the damage potential of the skill is pretty piss-poor.
Defensively, however, it seems like a weaker version of Mirror of Ereoctes but with a far shorter cooldown. So perhaps in this way the skill can get some use.
While I used Ultimate as an example, the same generally applies to all difficulties.
narnach’s evaluation is spot-on.