Diablo 2 Fallen Classes: The Necromancer

[gogoblender 3,223]

I have great respect and appreciation for all the work here Flix.  Years and years after the release of this game, you're a model of fan ardor and dedication in building what must be one of the greatest mod to a game made.  The sheer effort and commitment is just astonishing.

Thank you for everything you and your team has put together for thecommunity

 

gogo

[Androdion 899]

8 hours ago, gogoblender said:

I have great respect and appreciation for all the work here Flix.  Years and years after the release of this game, you're a model of fan ardor and dedication in building what must be one of the greatest mod to a game made.  The sheer effort and commitment is just astonishing.

Thank you for everything you and your team has put together for thecommunity

 

gogo

Hear hear! 

[Flix 5,184]

The Necromancer is getting a balancing pass along with all the other characters in v13.  Some properties were scaling to 100% too quickly, and some were not scaling that should have been. And one combat art gets a complete reworking.

• Poison Dagger: Chance for Mortal Wounds from "Judgement" mod scales more slowly.
• Poison Nova: Decreased base range by 20%. DOT duration decreased from 10s to 5s, but now scales with level. All modifications are completely reworked (see below).
• Bone Spear: Range boost from "Chaos" mod is now a fixed radius.
• Corpse Explosion: Chance to stun from "Violence" mod scales more slowly.
• Lower Resist: Damage from "Wildfire" mod is doubled and the damage type changed to fire.
• Iron Maiden: Radius reduced by 10%. Hits per second now scales with level. Damage sharing from "Sacrifice" mod scales more quickly.  At max level 45% of damage intended for the Necromancer will go to minions instead (was 25%).

These are the new modifications for Poison Nova:

• Contamination - Increases the chance to poison opponents by 30% + 0.1% per level.
• Blight - Increases the chance for critical hits by 30% + 0.1% per level.
• Toxin - Increases the base poison damage inflicted by 28 + 14 per level.
• Effluvium - Increases the radius of Poison Nova by 50%.
• Virulence - Increases the poison damage over time by 4.2/s + 2.6/s per level.
• Deadly Strike - Inflicts double damage when opponent health falls below 25%

The old mods that had the player choosing between an additional pulse and increased damage just didn't make for a good choice, since an additional pulse was itself just increased damage with no other benefit.

[Flix 5,184]

Spotted another issue with Iron Maiden: the Life Leeched per Hit from the "Life Tap" mod has been applying itself to the Necromancer's weapon hits all this time.  This is not what I intended. Beginning with v13, the life leech will trigger from the physical damage pulses that Iron Maiden inflicts on enemies in melee range. 

[Flix 5,184]

Raise Skeleton

After the recent discoveries that the "Equipment" bronze mod wasn't scaling with Dark Summons Lore (it will now as of v13), I got to thinking how it was probably intended by the devs to provide the skeletons with visible armor, and not just a bonus.

So for v14 I have been working on texturing an armored Skeleton model made by @dimitrius154 (great work!). The armor will apply to the skeletons only if the "Equipment" mod is taken, and it's just a cosmetic feature. The actual resistance bonus will be the same as the previous release.

I've also augmented the "Sharpened Blades" silver mod to not just summon new swords but also provide a physical damage bonus that will scale with the Dark Summons Lore skill.

Finally, the shields summoned by the "Spectral Shield" gold mod will have guaranteed defense rating boost + chance to block melee & ranged attacks, as opposed to the randomized, sometimes useless bonuses of before.

[Androdion 899]

[gogoblender 3,223]

They look great Flix and Dimitrius!  I'm also getting a bit of a "transformer" feel from their structure.  Which I like.  Good job

 

gogo

[Dragon Brother 619]

Looks great!

[Flix 5,184]

A few more tweaks to Necro summons for v14:

Skeletal Mages will now shoot projectiles with their wands while their spells are on cooldown.  This should result in a more consistent "stream" of attacks coming from them.  The projectiles can be any of the 5 elements based on whatever random wand they spawn with.  Overall this should make them feel more true to original D2.

I've also changed Gold mod "Skeletal Mastery" to summon two additional skeletal mages.  I think this balances out the choice better now.  2 mages with Area of Effect, or 4 mages with single-target high damage & debuffs.

I've reworked the visual selection of shields for Raise Skeleton based on the new modifier revamp:

Basic Shields: Physical Armor, Defense Value +X, Chance to Block Melee

 

Spectral Shields mod: Physical Armor, Defense Value +X, Chance to Block Melee, Defense Value +X%, Chance to Block Ranged (all bonuses greater intensity)

[Flix 5,184]

Upcoming changes for the Necromancer in v15 

Bone Spirits have new designs and FX. They have a new glow and some ghostly transparency.  The summoning FX and explosions are also now blue instead of fiery orange.

  

Raise Skeleton: Initial sword/shield are now ethereal to match the base armor VFX. The sword & shield will become substantial on taking the appropriate modification upgrades.

Now there's a unified aesthetic from no modifications (ethereal gear) to taking all the upgrades (metal equipment).

  

Skeletal Mages no longer use wands. Their basic attacks are now random elemental projectiles fired from both hands. A.I. is enhanced to be more aggressive.

They may spawn randomly with magic, poison, fire, or ice attacks on their hands. This is in addition to their usual arsenal of spells. Combined with the new A.I. they should be almost constantly attacking instead of wandering aimlessly at times.

        

Iron and Fire Golems now use their Thorns and Holy Fire auras, respectively.  This was a feature from original D2 that I never thought to implement until now.

Thorns imparts massive reflect chance for Melee and Ranged attacks, while Holy Fire protects the golem from fire damage and causes pulses of fire damage to nearby enemies, also weakening their fire resistance.

  

Revive: Yellow pentagram persistent FX is removed.  It was too visually chaotic.  Now like the original D2, revives are just a blackened, ash-like version of the original enemy. Anyway if you like extra VFX, Revives can still gain them through various enemy buffs.

Necromancer class quest gets more reworking!  I already gave this quest a good once-over in previous releases, now I'm doing some more polishing as well as some expansions.

Quest now includes a fight with a Paladin in Clearview (formerly just a group of unarmed Zakarum monks).

In "Shirka with the Dragons" I changed the Fisherman NPC to user the Fisherman model instead of a fancy pants human noble.

I adjusted the buggy desert phase ("Shirka and Keytan") so that duplicates of Shirka and Semil no longer appear. Semil is no longer standing right next to Shirka in Khorum while the quest text says you need to escort her to a doppelganger Semil who is on the other side of the Jungle.  Shirka also now starts out this phase in civilian clothes instead of transitioning into them for no reason in the middle of the fight.  Also the pointless option to "Decline" this quest is removed.

Ultimately the quest concludes with a boss fight against Sophia after recruiting Shirka. Since the quests now feature two rewards (weapon + helmet) I made sure all characters in v15 will include a powerful boss fight near the end.

  

Shirka's Necromancer form ("Shirka in the Wastelands") has new powers/animations and is now immortal.  She can use Iron Maiden, Lower Resist, and Bone Spear. She also dual wields sickles.  I completely deleted/disabled the scripts that mark her as a victim. So she's in it for the long haul once you talk to her for the final time (required to get the reward drops).