Don’t worry I got it. Using spoiler2 tags now 
Yes, sir, you are right about the fact that the necro is a great class and you can make VIABLE builds around most skills (even Drain Essence with inquisitor). However, the problem is that pet necro >>> all other variants.
In order to test this hypothesis, I made two cabalists in softcore because I didn’t know what to expect in AoM. One of them was a full pet build and the other one was a vitality caster. None of them died, of course, but the pet master kills Cronley before his maiven is up. The vitality caster, on the other hand, has to run circles around all important bosses because it can’t destroy them in under 3 seconds. Valdaran fight: pet build annihilates him in 9 seconds. Vitality caster…1 minute+. Edge of the void: fighting oppressors on Ultimate with a vitality caster was monstrously hard. The pet build…well, there is no problem when CD of skeletons is basically 0 and your tank has 100k health and overcapped resistances.
I believe any experienced enough player can basically maintain his death count to zero if he knows what to expect. What can I say… why would you build any other type of necro when a pet build can put 350k/second dps with you staying at the other side of the screen ?
P.S.: Don’t judge pet builds with what you see on this forum…
But the thing is pet builds have always been insane. Especially the ones that never got posted
If we’re doing such a comparison then same should apply to pet Pyromancer and its comparison with any other non pet pyro. The pet Pyro could kill MQ in 7 seconds or so, don’t recall any other Sab could do it (in the same version of the game)
The thing I’m trying to say is that each class has its strong points, Necro is excellent for pets. But what’s more important is that it is good for other build types as well. This is what matters imo
I think Fluff’s I think that is fluff’s point, people are overlooking the mastery thinking it’s only good for pet support when this statement is highly untrue
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I did not raise a necrozoomancer but went 2 hand instead dealing mainly vit damage and a necro really delivers in that department… though I kinda wish harbinger of souls has attack speed mod but it can be attained easily anyway. too early to make a conclusion but i can say a necro is a solid melee based mastery and a good support for a variety of damage types.
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Diablo 2 necro wins, love the character animation when selecting new character select:rolleyes:… seriously i cant decide for now.
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D2 necro: bone spear and poison skills… D3 necro: meh
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would love to have a better summon… liche king was cool from tq… not digging reap spirit
Many bones in the Jagged Waste are going to waste
Yes, sir, you are right about the fact that the necro is a great class and you can make VIABLE builds around most skills ? Oh cmon, reaper and Aether Death knight are past the point of viable tweaked or not. Reaper breezes through content. Give them a chance. this is far from some pre expac druid viable type situation. You made your opinion on vitality caster and they are slow, especially without end game gear mods. Most things vitality are slow, except maybe a very good pet build
P.S.: Don’t judge pet builds with what you see on this forum. Yes I’ve learned, especially after talking to Dashiv, that late game pet builds require thinking well beyond the obvious.
And Fluff is certainly right in that respect - necro builds can indeed function outside of pets, just like any soldier build can function outside of shields.
The real problem, however, is that in case of the soldier, you will pick it out in a variety of circumstances, viz.:
a) when someone wants to make a physical/internal trauma build;
b) when someone wants to make a retaliation build;
c) when someone wants to make a HC build;
d) when someone wants to make a DoT build using anything besides poison (due to the insane amount of WD% on cadence). And even here I think a Venomlance ranged Witchblade would be quite strong.
For necro, all you have is basically pets and (maybe) melee aether and I’m not even entirely sure that melee aether would not be better with inquisitor. Vitality/Bleed caster - i.e. the other obvious possibility which is supported by a high-lvl. set I haven’t even completed yet - is much better done by Conjurer with absolutely no shortcoming in terms of survivability. Let’s not even discuss poison…
I would like to see Crate expand on the aether part for necro…I really do !
I promise you it’s better with necro, even if Krieg set doesn’t support Necro. Frankly i think it supports arcanist cause it needs it so much more and even then it does not come close to DK Aether face smash level.
PS: that doesn’t mean I wouldn’t also like an actual DK melee set without any pet stuff on it and without the need for illusionist to make it look Death Knighty 
So far for aether all we really got is Aether Uroboruuk Abostate, and Spellbinder Diviner set so yes more is better allways
Edit:PS: I really want to try that diviner btw…1 Sec Cd Reap Spirit. It’s like Necro version of Doom Bolt
Necro has Mark of Torment, OA and health from Spectral Binding, and 1pt Ravenous Earth with 12/12 Decay is like War Cry but with 100% uptime.
It’s not on the same level as Arcanist in this regard but far from “lacking”.
Not to mention that Master of Death is so overtunen that it’s a great exclusive for non-pet builds even.
Love it, and think it’s an awesome implementation of the necro. Also like the new class skill item modifications on some items, which do stuff like allow summoning of two pets instead of one.
I think overall I like Grim Dawn’s the best, only because at this point I just don’t care about D2 anymore. I have no inclination to play it again now that Grim Dawn is out and especially since the expansion.
That said, both iteration completely blow away D3’s necro which frankly I can’t stand. They’ve made it into a twitch class where you have to re-summon stuff every 1-2 seconds for maximum efficiency. I hate it, and once I got to around Inferno (or whatever it was called) rank 5 o 6 I gave up out of frustration. Maybe some people like that kind of gameplay, but I found it obnoxious.
Im surprised how good Necromancer turned out for AoM. Its actualy realy good and versatile mastery with a lot of options for T1 builds, Most notably Spellbinders, Reapers, Cabalists, Apostate.
Funny how i underestimate it during prewiev.
I really, really like the Necromancer in AoM, and I’d say it’s maybe slightly inferior to D2 Necro, if at all.
I think the theme of the mastery is superb, with one exception. Namely, I think that, unlike D2 Necro, Crate didn’t have to put acid and poison damage in their Necro’s skill tree. I think AoM Necro should have been built around cold, vitality, aether and physical damage. For acid and poison we already have Nightblade and Occultist.
I think that this design decision (to put acid and poison in Necro skill tree) has blocked some exciting avenues. For instance, I’d love another bone-themed skill. True, Bone Harvest is great in that it has both single target damage and a decent aoe, but bones are Necro’s thing.
Someone already said it in the thread that damage types seem somewhat overstretched, and I agree. Instead of Blight Fiend, there could have been another pet, maybe something like a Lich (someone also mentioned that), with aether and cold damages. That would have been supremely awesome.
Also, instead of Ravenous Earth, we could have had a single debuff skill (I mean, without a line with modifiers). Instead, we could have had another bone skill, maybe a short-lived Bone Spear, scaling with player damage bounses, which could be focused on a single target and which could, with heavy skill-point investment deal significant damage to that target in say, 7 or 10 seconds (yep, I loved D2’s Bone Spear).
And finally, I think Necro needs: a modifier on Spectral Binding, which would add conversion from physical to aether damage (and perhaps a significant portion even), and a transmuter on Reaping Strike, which would convert 100% of flat vitality damage to cold damage (this loss could be compensated by adding flat vitality damage to Harbinger of Souls). I think these changes would make it easier to run a Death Knight with high damage, and would make a melee cold Reaper more viable (and by adding flat vitality to Harbinger of Souls, a melee vitality character would remain perfectly viable).
Heh. Well then…
- I like it overall. Was especially surprised with apostate.
- If we aren’t counting nostalgia, Crate wins. Counting nostalgia I’d have to give it to D2. The fact you had to have bodies to reanimate, corpse explosion, etc. Was just much stronger thematically BUT, though the variety was technically stronger within JUST that class, Grim Dawn has the mastery system so wins the variety contest in anything except pure necro.
- See above.
- Corpse explosion and Blight Fiend feels like it needs to be a player skilled pet the way I want to work with it (which may just be a failing of my imagination), but it burns my mind thinking that about any pet in Grim Dawn.
I’m surprised. Necro is really good. I’d say D2 Necromancer is better because he has more “power” I mean my favourite Bone Spear/Spirit. Nevertheless D2 is old and I think GD mixed masteries are superior. I wish also more synergies with other masteries.
U hv single handedly crushed all my dreams. 
1. What do you guys think about the necromancer overall?
Its nice but some of the skills aren’t necromancerish enough. I will elaborate a bit more below on why.
2. Who did it better? Crate (Grim Dawn), Blizzard Irvine (D3) or Blizzard North/Condor (Diablo II)
D2’s necro is still my favorite in regards to the variety of necromancing skills to choose from and lots of dead things coming back to life.
3. What features of the other two (Diablo II and D3) necros do you think are better than Grim Dawn’s necro?
From D2:
~ The ability to choose between melee & ranged skeles to summon.
~ Resummoning skeles won’t override those that are still alive mainly because it is single summons instead of in threes and had no CD.
~ Player could unsummon any of his minions for whatever reason.
~ Caster skeles had randomized elemental ranged attacks instead of just flaming meteors with chaos bolts. Correct me if there is a way to change their element in GD as Im currently 20/16 raise skele and I only get fire casters. No aether, lightning, vitality, etc type casters.
From D3: None coz i quited D3 before necro expansion.
4. What features do you think the Grim Dawn Necro should have had?
~ Pet Attack command should actually instruct ranged minions to attack enemies closest to the clicked location intead of suicide diving towards it along with melee minions then rebounding back away before attacking anything. Only melee minions should dash in while ranged minions should just move into attack range and start attacking.
~ They are the masters of bringing the dead back to life. Hence D2’s Revive skill was one of the most interesting skills and it made every section of D2 engaging due to the different types of mobs to revive.
PS: I also miss my Iron Golem very much.
the most epic pose among them all, the nostalgia is real! :rolleyes:
honestly I dont remember this necro having this skill in actual combat though
Diablo 2 was much sexier, as in 100% since the GD sexy factor is zero degrees kelvin lol. i mean shopping for appliances at Sears is sexier.
but OUTSIDE that GD wins in every other category hands down. I played D2 for years… Loved necro, but GD is just more of what i loved there, and if you tried some (perhaps fail) necro hybrid you could get even more pets, using player bonuses with pet bonuses,
so you can literally have like 30 pets on the screen and that is insane, it brings GD up from “meh” in the pets category compared to ARPGs in the past, to crushing them under its boots.
necro has been a blast, and even multi-spec possibilities are FAR greater here than D2, in D2 necro had basically two options, in GD there’s so much more you can do.
What can i say, i’m an old school Necro lol.And u gotta admit that D2 can hold aggro a hell of a lot better. In GD I find it just too easy for pets to lose aggro. I hv yetl to try blight fiends passives though.
D3 necro simply put: not fun at all.
If you want to use a pet build, you have to spam summon your pets all the time because they only last few seconds before they die. You can summon skeleton army to fight for you but it has insane cooldown and short duration so spamming it is not possible.
Other than that, there is caster build using corpse lance which surpasses all the existing single damage mechanics in the game by a huge margin.
Basically necro is p2w addition to the game. People play it because it has place in current 4-man gr meta. I guess some people like it but then again most people competing for leaderboards would play anything, like deckard cain bashing things with his walking stick, if it just was the strongest build atm.
To be fair, that sounds awesome…
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