Understand that some of the feedback provided below might have been provided by other players, so just providing based on personal experience…
Disclaimer: TBH i doubt even pet build players are in consensus that the necromancer mastery as a whole could provide better support for its own pets. This feedback is not framed in a context whereby the second mastery will be occultist or shaman, more of a feedback on the mastery itself (particularly in SR/crucible) so that more combinations for pet playstyle can be more viable/less painful.
Lack of pet speed bonus (Example:Total Speed) - For a mastery whose pets are more frail than the other masteries (Occultist/Shaman), this is particularly important for Necromancer mastery, and it is missing
Lack of pet health bonus - while necro pets will have less health than other 2 masteries, some degree of %Health boost makes a difference.
IMO, thats why the updated Shepherd of Lost Souls set in game modes like SR makes a difference for skeletons (it increases pet speed and health quite a fair amount)
Pet Health restoration - Understand that skeletons are very disposable, but the only source in necro mastery is flat heath regen for call of the grave. Given that necro pets tradeoff health for damage in numbers, perhaps some bonus to pet ADCTH could be considered, especially for the blight fiend.
Comparative lack of pet resistance bonus - Again, understand that skeletons are disposable pets but as a whole given that both the occultist and shaman mastery have various resistance bonuses to pets (aura or duration skills), some degree will help, especially for blight fiends. Vitality resistance is easier to find in items for pets, not sure why Will of the Crypt & Master of Death both boost pet vitality resistances…
Edit: To be more specific, some degree of physical resistance boost for all pets (since both Occultist/Shaman have it), others such as aether/poison are great as well.
Resistance reduction - A small point, but spectral wraith could do with poison as well…
DA reduction - Perhaps Rotting fumes DA reduction should use the stackable version of DA reduction. Whenever i have necromancer as one of the mastery, it eliminates picking other skills that also reduce DA for x seconds or devotions such as Korvaak the Eldritch Sun or Modrogen the wolf.
I feel a bit bad for posting this after all your time pointing these bits out, but while it is possible to run a single class, the entire concept behind GD is to run a Dual class, thus lacking support in one class can be made up with the 2nd class. No single class is supposed to be fully capable on its own and I really doubt Crate are going to make changes to encourage single class builds as that’s not the core concept of the game.
Thanks for the reply. Now at least i see how others intepret this post. To clarify, the idea behind this post is not about getting Necromancer to be a good solo class.
Example: Using Shaman as my base class and choose arcanist (Druid). Even though Arcanist has very limited pet support, the Shaman mastery itself has undergone changes over patches that result in improved pet support without taking into account items such as beastcaller set.
However, If i choose necromancer + arcanist (Diviner), without using the Diviner’s Vision set (which creates a very niche build IMO), build performance across various game modes are more inconsistent.
The above example is not perfect as there are other differences to take into account such as the different pets, but I hope this clarifies the idea behind the reason of the post and the stuff that is pointed out. (btw occultist IMO has some significant advantages over the Shaman for pet support such as manipulation/bonds of bysmiel, but over the various patches we have seen improvements for Shaman mastery, I am hoping that this will also bring some attention to the necromancer)
I also understand that pet support wise it is not meant to be exactly the same across all 3 classes and to be fair to the necromancer, it does have a higher pet count. Just pointing out what I perceive as lacking based on some gameplay and interchanging of items.