What a lame time to get invited Aikouka, as they disabled playing Necromancer the day after. I liked it myself, but I guess there were plenty of complaints out there.
I played enough to know I want to buy it, but it could be lame at high levels as I didn't get a chance to get that far.
Yeah, I was actually really confused when the adventure mode was suddenly disabled for the Necromancer. The worst part is that it seems that quite a few people that got the beta invite at the same time as me don't have access to the Necromancer sub-forum. So, you're just left sitting there wondering what in the world is going on.
Although, I did get to play my Necromancer up to level 69, so I did get to experience quite a bit. Keep in mind that I did import my existing characters, which let me use my Hellfire accessories and a level 70 weapon with -40 ilevel. I actually forgot about the Gem of Ease, which would've let me use a crazy weapon at the start! Anyway, I just wanted to get a chance to see everything in action, so I wasn't as worried about the leveling balance. I do want to go through and do it again with normal gear.
My thoughts on the character are kind of mixed. I did struggle to find
interesting abilities that were more useful. I pretty much stuck with the Bone Spike ability, which is the first one that you get. I tried the Grim Scythe ability, but that requires you to be in melee range, and the Necromancer only has a single escape ability with a cooldown. You also pretty much have to use Bone Shield if you're going to fight in melee range, which can be a mixed bag. Bone Shield is more potent depending on how many enemies are in range when you hit the ability. Essentially, it "grabs a bone" from up to 10 enemies around you, but if you're fighting a boss, you may only have a few enemies around you at best. To note, unlike the similar World of WarCraft Death Knight ability which works on charges, Bone Shield is just a duration.
The best ability that I saw was Raise Skeletons with the Frenzy rune. Frenzy is pretty potent as it raises their attack speed by... 25% I believe. But that's not the real bonus... the best part is that it also commands the skeletons (you can have up to 7) to attack the target that you highlight when you hit the ability. I was actually able to kill one of those ooze goblins because I could tell my minions to attack any of the tiny ones that was fleeing. Oh, and when you tell them to attack, they pounce on the target, so it's pretty much an immediate target switch. Also, while the active portion of Raise Skeletons has a resource cost (50 out of the 200 that you get), it's not hard to keep your resource up if you spam Bone Spikes. I tried weaving in Bone Spear with the +attack speed rune, which is pretty easy to do against a lot of mobs. (You gain 1 charge per enemy hit up to 10 max charges.) However, it's not so easy to do against a boss where you only gain about one at a time, and the bonus fades after a few seconds. So, you really have to weave in the spear every 2-3 attacks.
So, to list out the abilities that I tried...
Bone Spikes: As mentioned above, I did like this ability a bit. It's a ranged, AoE ability that springs up a bunch of bone spikes wherever your cursor is. I tended to use the Frost Spikes rune, which slows down enemies by 60% for 2 seconds.
Siphon Blood: I tried out this ability against Malthael for funsies, and it was okay overall. It's not as great against bosses, because you need to be able to take focus off you to make it work well. I feel like this ability will probably get some crazy aspect added to it in some set armor to make it viable as a build. It does heal a decent amount (+2% per second, or +6% with the Drain Life rune.) I used the Power Shift rune with this one that increases the damage by 10% each time it deals damage up to 10 times.
Grim Scythe: As mentioned above, I didn't care for this ability much. The arc seemed a bit too shallow for good group AoE damage and the range means you need to be in melee range, which can be a bit dangerous without a good Bone Armor. I don't recall if I tried a rune with this one as I changed away from it pretty quickly.
Bone Spear: I used this as my RMB and primary resource spender. Overall, it's a decent projectile attack that deals 3x as much damage as Bone Spikes. I used it with the Crystallization rune, which reduces enemy attack speed by 20% and raises yours by 3% per stack. As noted before, the bonus stacks for you per enemy hit.
Bone Armor: This ability will reduce the damage you take by 3% per enemy that you hit. That's why I noted above that it's a bit of a mixed bag in that 3% is worthless against bosses, but 30% is great against packs of mobs, which is what you're likely to see. I don't know if I ever found a rune that I really liked on this one. Reap of Anguish, which increases your run speed by 1% per enemy seems good on paper, but I don't know if it stacks beyond the base 25% movement speed. If it doesn't, then it's worthless as you need to guarantee +25% at all times.
Command Skeletons: This is the ability that I was gushing over above. It summons up to 7 skeletons (I do wish they would summon immediately when in town rather than one every 2 seconds) that deal 50% weapon damage. So, overall, you're getting 350% weapon damage if they're on the same target. They are a bit frail as I definitely lost some in a few tough fights, but they come back at a decent rate. As noted, the active ability costs 50 essence and grants them +50% damage. I used this with the Frenzy rune that also granted them +25% attack speed.
Command Golem: I decided to try pairing this with the skeletons, and I ended up dropping it pretty quickly. The active ability on this one is designed to be used with something like Corpse Explosion as it causes your golem to become 5 corpses at the location that you choose. Overall, the ability just felt lackluster compared to Command Skeletons... especially given that I can't command him nearly as well.
Army of the Dead: This is another ability that I dropped quickly, because it just didn't seem that useful. This has a very long cooldown of 120 seconds, but it does deal a lot of damage (3000%). The problem is that I always found it a bit awkward to target it properly, and it just never seemed to do much in battles. Frankly, I'd prefer if a rune added a hefty resource cost for a cooldown reduction.
Decrepify: This is the main curse that I used while playing. It reduces movement speed of all enemies hit by it (it casts in a circle around your cursor) by 75% and reduces damage by 20%. I don't know if I ever really cared for any of the runes when using this one, but if I had to choose right now, I'd probably go with Borrowed Time for the cooldown reduction or Enfeeblement for the higher movement speed reduction.
Corpse Explosion: I tried this ability for a bit -- prior to using the golem -- but I found it hard to really quantify how much damage it deals to packs of enemies. You also have to kill enemies to use their corpses before you can really use the ability as it is, which makes it nearly useless against bosses without using the golem.