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Necromancer Influencer Summit

Diablo Fans attended the first ever Diablo 3 Global Influencer Summit hosted by Blizzard last month. Attendees were able to demo the Necromancer's "Meleemancer" build, discuss the Necromancer with Diablo 3 developers, and discover new information about the upcoming class.

 

Some of the information included in this post has already been revealed, but we did learn new details about specific skills, set designs, and more.

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 Necromancer Overview

• The Necromancer will be released with Patch 2.6.
• The Necromancer wasn't designed for the group meta or with a support role in mind. Instead, it was designed around sets and playstyles.
• However, the Necromancer does seem viable in a support role thanks to pets and curses.
• Playstyles will be extremely varied for the class.

Skills, Runes, and Resources

• The Necromancer will have three resources: essence, health, and corpses.
• There is currently no passive essence regeneration.
• Necromancers will have three Elemental damage types: Physical, Cold, and Poison.
• This makes the Convention of Elements ring quite worthwhile for the class.
• Command Skeletons (seen at BlizzCon last year) now only summons melee skeletons.
• Skeletal Mages will still be a part of the Necromancer somehow - just not with Command Skeletons.
• Revive is a corpse skill, and it took the most development time by far since different skins had to be created for each creature type.
• There is a limit to the number of monsters you can have revived at one time.
• Revived monsters are visibly different from their normal counterparts and last a short amount of time.
• When elite monsters are revived, you'll get a normal version. Additionally, you can't revive bosses.
• You can, however, revive Mallet Lords.
• Don't expect the cooldown on Blood Rush to be removed without Legendaries.

Blood Rush in action.

 

• Devour allows you to consume corpses to regenerate essence.
• The skill's Cannibalize rune makes the skill regenerate both health and essence.
• When you use the skill, you consume all the corpses on screen. (The skill's range is basically the entire screen.)
• Though it can feel wasteful, the decision to consume all the corpses is intentional, so Devour isn't used mindlessly.
• In the demo, the Blood Golem wasn't easily controlled. (The pet often chased after enemies the Necromancer wasn't targeting.)
• The level of control varies based on the Golem's rune, so other runes will grant you much more control.
• Sacrificing health to benefit pets isn't currently being considered, as it's often unexpected. (Pets are sometimes dumb and stand in fire.)
• There is currently no cooldown on Leech, a curse that restores health to you and your allies when cursed enemies are damaged.
• This is intentional, as the lack of a cooldown is justified from a cost/benefit perspective.
• Existing fading technology in the game can be used to differentiate pets between Necromancers in a group.
• The developers practiced "DoT avoidance" - meaning they wanted to focus on more hard-hitting, visceral skills.
• Travis Day wanted to avoid runes that were straightforward, obvious choices. (For example, simply dealing more damage for that particular skill.)
• Instead, Necromancer runes will be more focused on trade offs, such as lowering a skill's radius for increased damage.
• Because many Necromancer skills are focused on corpses being available, you should anticipate swapping skills based on your current situation.
• The developers learned a lot about cheat death passives with the Crusader, and they realized all of the passives should be on the Crusader's level.

Armor Set Concepts revealed last November.

Themes and Items

• The four Necromancer sets will be: a ranged caster set, a pet-focused set, a blood-focused set, and a melee set.
• The aesthetics for these sets are currently a "Plague Doctor"-esque set, a bone-themed set, a Dracula-esque set, and an Aztec-inspired set with over-the-top gold elements.
• The sets are still being finalized, but the Aztec-inspired set will be the melee set.
• The Necromancer was designed with three themes: Blood and Bone, Frost, and Blight.
• Blood skills are more powerful, but cost health.
• Frost isn't about blizzards or frostbolts, but more about the cold and isolation surrounding graves and death.
• Blight, similar to a death and decay theme, will encompasses debuffs, snares, and the idea of things withering away.
• Some obvious Necromancer themes are better represented in items, sets, or animations rather than skills.
• For instance, Priest of Rathma themes will be present in items.
• The developers tried to avoid too many class-specific items for the Necromancer.
• The Necromancer will avoid the slapstick humor of the Witch Doctor; this class is not meant to be funny.

Dealing with Corpses

• For group play, each Necromancer will see their own corpses.
• For same screen co-op on consoles, corpses may have two charges.
• Corpses will eventually despawn when off screen.

Yes, We Asked About Poison Nova

• Poison Nova is an iconic part of the Diablo 2 Necromancer, but it's not being used for the Necromancer in Diablo 3.
• Julian Love discussed the controversy around dropping Poison Nova. Did people really love the poison aspect - or did they just love the ability?
• Blood Nova fills the void for the Poison Nova nostalgia. 
• Other Poison skills from Diablo 2, such as Poison Dagger and Poison Explosion, weren't worth bringing over.
• The Witch Doctor covers a lot of the potential Poison skills that could be used in the Diablo 3 Necromancer.
• The developers didn't want to force Poison skills if they weren't viable.
• Poison will be represented in the "Blight" theme.

Patch 2.6

• Effect locality will be added in Patch 2.6, greatly reducing the clutter you see from other players' abilities.
• You'll still see important skill animations (like curses), but around 75% of animations from friendly players will be removed.
• Patch 2.6 will start effect locality with the Necromancer before the development team moves on to other "big offenders."

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Influencer Content

You can view additional content covering the event from Bluddshed and the Westmark Workshop podcast.