Necromancer Q&A - Live Updates

Necromancer Q&A - Live Updates

Today, starting at 4:00 pm PDT, Senior Game Designer Travis Day and Lead VFX Artist Julian Love will be participating in a live developer Q&A. You can watch the Q&A below, and we'll also be updating this post throughout the broadcast.

 

 

  • The Necromancer Q&A is now starting!
  • Two character slots, two stash tabs, a pennant, banner, pet, wings, and a portrait frame will be included with the Necromancer pack. 
  • There will be four class sets and set dungeons.
  • The majority of the Necro kit will be physical, with two other minor damage types- Cold and Poison.
  • There wasn't much debate internally about the execution mechanic - they feel it's similar to just having another skill that does more damage. 
  • The sets will be as open ended as possible; the pet set was kind of the exception, but pets are one of the core fantasy roles of the Necromancer.
  • The saint set focuses more on the Meleemancer playstyle.
  • Xbox and PC will not share the Necromancer DLC. You will need to purchase both separately.
  • The team went back and looked at D2 for curses, but also wanted interesting choices rather than just having a bunch that just increase damage in slightly different ways.
  • The team didn't necessarily want to make a thorns build with a set built around it, but decided to add little ways to hook into that playstyle if players wanted it.
  • Resource Cost Reduction will not affect health for Necromancers. They were close to making that change, but it was too risky considering all the extra legendary item interactions that would be affected.   
  • There are currently no items that increase timers for pets or that will increase the caps. However, there are items coming up that will allow you to more quickly reach that cap or to further buff the pets.
  • Plague set has some really powerful legendary items on the way. Major synergy coming next week.
  • The team didn't go into designing the Necromancer with 2-3-4 person rifts in mind. They just went with what you would expect to find from the Necromancer: curses, pets, blood, and bone! They want it to be flexible. 
  • Travis Day has kept a close eye in particular on streamers in higher GRs. The team noticed that Necromancers are squishy at these levels, but have some more legendary items on the way, along with small skill changes, including Bone Armor.
  • Blood is Power is going to be redesigned. Players broke the skill, allowing invincibility and massive damage output. It will maintain the same theme however, just in a less broken and abusable way. The Bone Armor - Invulnerability rune allowing you to become invincible will also be fixed, making the CD start after the skill ends.
  • Decay Golem currently has no plan to have a tracker on how many corpses he consumes.
  • Necromancers will have scythes and phylacteries, but no unique armor piece.
  • Necromancer sets won't have seven or more pieces. Sets are meant to feel powerful on their own, and when you combine them, they just blur together.
  • Internally, automatically regenerating essence caused gameplay to break down, and it didn't feel great. They just decided to make the generator skills more efficient.
  • Next Tuesday, all of the new legendary items should be available to play with.
  • The Blood set will be tweaked, and they're going to make healing mechanics not drain the stacks as quickly. It should just end up with more healing overall and maintain the ebb-and-flow playstyle.
  • All of the two minute cooldown skills will be made to feel really powerful, but they wanted to leave it open at the moment just to see how they all interact with sets and legendary items.
  • There are 1,100+ monsters in the game right now, and it was one of the challenges to making Revive work.
  • While it would be interesting to revive your allies, there are no current plans to implement it.
  • There will be no Iron Golem from D2. It would have been a big challenge, taken player interaction away from gameplay, and have players focused on items. It just didn't feel like a good fit.
  • Necromancers have white hair, and it's explained by lore. It will be in other media somewhere down the road.
  • For some classes, the damage type is the fantasy, but for the Necromancer, they didn't feel like Poison was a core theme. Putting Poison on a dagger and stabbing enemies one by one just didn't feel cool.
  • Instead they felt blood and bone, as well as curses and pets, felt more appropriate. They also wanted to differentiate the Necromancer from the Witch Doctor. They design around chasing the fantasy first.
  • Rewards for set dungeons will be two pennants. The Necromancer won't interact with old achievements for set dungeons. You won't have to complete Necromancer dungeons for the wings. 

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