With this being the most played class at launch, I’m curious how others feel about the changes and how far everyone has gotten with them. I’m currently level 50, and this is my breakdown and personal experience so far. From a design standpoint, I’m genuinely curious about the reasoning behind some of these decisions. I understand there’s no requirement to provide insight, but knowing the “why” behind things would be helpful. I’ll do my best to break everything down, and I’m sure I’ll add more along the way, so please forgive any grammar mistakes.

Pacts - These don’t scale at all. A completely naked Necromancer receives the exact same attributes as a fully geared Necromancer. Both get the flat 20% reduction, but pets receive no additional benefits from gear or stats. I really hope this is being reviewed because, without scaling, it’s difficult to justify using them. Pale Pact especially needs something more. A light source in exchange for 10% of your health doesn’t provide much value. Maybe give it a damage shield aura, a purge aura, or some other beneficial attribute. Perhaps it could prevent the pet from being hit by DS while Pale Pact is active, or provide an additional proc that benefits the group.

DoTs - Removing the ability to stack DoTs or limiting us to just two DoT lines feels rough. Even now, when grouping, I can only cast a single DoT, and 90% of the time, it doesn’t get its full duration because mobs die before the 30 seconds are up, even at level 50. With a four-second cast time, by the time my DoT lands, the mob is already at nearly 75% health or lower. I might get two or three ticks before the mob dies, and that’s it. The mana cost and cast time just don’t feel worth the return. I understand how this might work in solo play, but this is a group-focused game, and the current setup doesn’t feel very group-friendly, even when utilizing Eld Pact. As mentioned above, some scaling with the pacts might help support this playstyle, but the flat amounts just aren’t cutting it.

Spirit Crack - This ties directly into the DoT problem and adds another layer of frustration. I spend four seconds casting a DoT on a blue-con mob, only for it to be resisted. At level 50, our resist debuff is only -7, and it doesn’t even apply to disease or poison, which are the damage types our DoTs rely on. To make matters worse, a large number of mobs seem to have poison resistance buffs that we can’t purge or debuff. Meanwhile, Elementalists and Wizards have tools and debuffs to support their damage. Is this an oversight or an intentional design choice for Necromancers? Resist rates feel extremely high. Melee classes shred through content while we struggle to land spells on greens and light blues. That’s not even factoring in the fizzles that still happen at max skill, even at level 50, sometimes back to back.

Lifetaps - Lifetaps used to have a resist modifier, but now they seem to get resisted very frequently across all con levels. It feels strange that Necromancers, a class built around health and mana transfers while also sacrificing health through Lich, don’t have the proper tools to recover that health reliably. Somehow, Shadowknights kept a modifier on their lifetaps and even received a reduced cooldown, while ours leave us waiting around four seconds just to potentially get resisted at 5% health. At that point, you have to click off Lich immediately to avoid dying. This gameplay just doesn’t feel good. I don’t think lifetaps should be unresistable against red or yellow mobs, but even-con and lower mobs shouldn’t cause this much trouble. When you factor in fizzles and all the other resist issues we’re already dealing with, it makes the overall experience feel poorly tuned for a redline class. Now, with pacts added to the mix, your health pool at level 50 is roughly 500 HP, give or take 100 depending on gear.

Life transfers and mana transfers - These now have long cooldowns, leaving us with very little flexibility. You’re basically stuck on a never-ending schedule of watching cooldown timers and using abilities as soon as they become available. The freedom and decision-making that should come with playing a class built around transferring life and mana have been significantly reduced. I can no longer make clutch saves or nearly sacrifice myself to turn a bad situation around. I can’t casually run past newbie camps and toss someone some help without then having to wait 30 seconds, nor can I help someone who runs past my group if I’ve already used the ability and am locked out. It feels like we’re playing within strict guardrails, with limited choices and very little control over our own resources. The playstyle feels bad when we can’t manage those resources on our own terms. I can’t imagine other classes having their defining abilities restricted in the same way.

Unliving buff - This doesn’t seem to split health with the pet when either of us is at lower health. I’m not sure if this is intended, but it seems worth looking into.

Removal of DD against undead - I don’t feel the DoTs provide enough value to justify removing the direct damage spells against undead. The DD spells were more impactful and helped burn down targets when they were trying to gate or when the group was under pressure and needed to burn something down before things went south. Necromancers no longer have a reliable way to contribute in those situations, and with the long cooldowns on life and mana transfers, the class feels even more limited when things get desperate.

Lifetapping yourself - With one of the tab-targeting bugs, or maybe I accidentally clicked myself somehow, I ended up lifetapping myself. This probably shouldn’t kill you when you’re converting your own life. 🙂

Positive changes worth mentioning:

Pet survivability - The pet no longer dies in two to five hits most of the time. This is a nice improvement over the previous nerfs, so thank you for addressing that.

Combined buffs - Combining See Invisible/sense and Unliving into single buffs is a nice quality-of-life improvement. Thank you for that as well.

I’m looking forward to seeing more class adjustments, and I genuinely hope some of the concerns above can be addressed. I appreciate the work being done and understand that balancing a class is a process. I’m also looking forward to Rise Undead and seeing how that fits into the overall Necromancer playstyle.