At the end of that trailer: Stash tabs. Hahaha. I love it. That’s one thing I definitely don’t miss about the PC version. No need for stash tabs in the console version, obviously, since they don’t have the tetris inventory of the PC version.
I wonder how Path of Exile is going to handle that since it’s coming to Xbox One (and PS4, I think)? Surely they aren’t going to still have stash tabs and tetris inventory sorting in the console version, I hope? What a nightmare that would be using a controller.
So what were people’s favorite Necromancer builds in Diablo 2?
I was always partial to the summoner Necro. Walk around with either a skeleton army or a really strong Blood Golem. Or sometimes both, if you could get your hardcore Necro at high enough level. What was really cool was when one of the patches (1.10 I think?) made the skeleton army much, much stronger, so that each skeleton actually lasted a while and each skeleton mage, for example, actually did substantial damage.
As someone who didn’t play Necros very often though, I had a friend who did. And my favorite builds of his as someone who was in the same party as him was always the curse-focused Necro who had a special curse for every occasion. Once we paired my Sacrifice Paladin with his life-stealing curse necro. The life stealing curse made it so that I could steal life from everything that was cursed. Even enemy skeletons and other enemies that usually don’t allow life-steal. You see the Sacrifice Paladin dealt huge damage, but sacficed 8% health (8% of your damage) with each swing. On Normal difficulty, that could be easily countered by having more than 8% life-steal on your weapon/equipment, so you didn’t lose health with each swing. On Elite difficulty, you had to have 16% life steal to counter Sacrifice, and on Hell difficulty you needed 32% life steal. By the time you got to Hell, you were also someone who swung really really fast and hard. So if you did thousands in damage in a second or two, it meant that if you ever went up against an enemy who didn’t allow life-steal, you’d die almost instantly. And we only played Hardcore. So a life-steal paladin in Hell was a nerve-wracking experience, unless I paired up with my Necro friend who always cursed everything to allow life-steal on everything. Phew!
Another Necro build I enjoyed hanging with was the poison Necro, who cast Poison Nova everywhere, and a few other poison spells. I liked using my barbarian around him because everything around us would just die, you just had to survive long enough for the poison to work. In a similar vein, I also enjoyed hanging with the Bone-Necro. The way my friend used his bone prison and wall, and bone spear and bone spirit did a lot of damage. But the beauty was how well my friend used bone wall to prevent us from getting overwhelmed. The AI of enemies in Diablo 2 really hated bone walls. They became a priority target! :)
The one Necro who started off TOO strong (corpse explosion-focused Necro) became too weak a build once they patched that skill. None of the necros we made focused on that skill made it very far. And they didn’t really ever do enough damage after that first patch that lowered the damage on that skill.
One of the problems when building a D2 necro, was that literally every skill was good with at least 1 point in it. All of those curses could be incredibly handy depending on the situation. The other problem was, that no matter what build you used, one of the acts would really screw you for it. Trying to play a summoning necro in act 2 for instance, probably the worst disconnect between character and level design in any game ever. Playing a summoning necro in maggot lair is one of the stupidest things in gaming history. Pet collision, horrible pathing, and really narrow tunnels…great idea guys.
The D3 necro, does retain the “feel” of the D2 necro, but with some of the more obvious problems solved. It doesn’t have the same over the top potential with summons via revive that D2 did, but it’s still pretty fun.
I always had trouble with bosses playing as a necro in D2. I guess whatever build I was using just wasn’t flexible enough to work for mobs and bosses? I forget the details, but D3 is more forgiving of build mistakes, since you can pretty much change them on the fly, so I’m anxious to try the necro out.
There’s no limitation to the builds, really, right? I guess I haven’t seen high level items in Diablo 3 yet, so maybe high level equipment does limit whether you’re best off making a poison necro or a bone necro or a summoning necro, etc.
Essentially, yes. Since the challenging part of the game doesn’t really start until you hit level 70, everything before that is basically a tutorial and trial run. You can switch skills out willy-nilly and try whatever you want with very little consequence. The gear is really where you build your class.
If you don’t have a build that works well, you’re going to hit a solid wall long before someone who does. D3 will let you skate along for a while before bringing your harshly back to reality.
From what i’ve heard watching people play the beta (which i was not in), there are a few strong builds. I don’t think i’ve seen a good poison one though.
Another new zone too? I need to go seeking a list of all the new zones they’ve added. Still wish we had a proper desert / Egyptian setting like Diablo 2’s Act 2. I’m in, I guess for the PS4? Have the PC version too but I think I’d prefer to play on the PS4.
@Kadath, thanks for that. Great great read. Sooooo, any reason to do Story mode and not Adventure? Can I do Adventure if I’ve never completed Story mode (I did on the PC, not PS4, but I’d like to play on the PS4 now)?
You used to have to finish a run through story mode before you could do adventure mode on an account (on PC anyways). I have no idea if that is still the case.
