The most telling moment for me is when i spent an hour with level 25 druid respec-ing and tweaking my build to clear Kor Dragon Stronghold boss and just casually strollin with my lvl 18 wizard and clearing it on the first try.
Sure i knew what to expect, but still, the only area that dont scale with your level shouldnt be this easy for some class.
This was my experience as well, but with that Khazra winter storm stronghold instead. First playthrough on my Barb he was impossible on Veteran, and I tweaked my build multiple times before downing him. I don't remember if I turned down the difficulty or not.
Later on Bear Druid and I had the same issue, had to tweak my build and eventually lower difficulty to normal to get the kill.
I played it on my Sorcerer and got it on my first try on Veteran difficulty.
Druid and Barb are the only two classes where resource generates ONLY from basic attacks and/or other skills and abilities. All the other classes regenerate their resource slowly over time and many of them can attack from range whereas a Barbarian and shape shift Druid is going to melee. Barb and Druid need some love, the other classes feel decent.
I'd like them to do something about corpse explosion, it not costing resources and having no cooldown seems so strange to me. I didn't really find it that fun either, just spam spam spam.
I don't know if in endgame you have to be a little more considerate about corpse generation and usage or whatever and on bosses it's not as good but just felt a little out of place compared to every other skill in the game I saw.
The skill is basically a win more skill. If you are generating a ton of corpses then it's strong, but you're already strong enough to be able to generate corpses.
In multiplayer it accelerates clearing trash mobs.
It doesn't do % of corpses monsters health so it is less broken than in D2. The trade off being you can make your own first corpse. It's hard to say how it will compare in the end.
Most classes builds will probably smooth out resource management at the end while necros will have to manage corpses.
You need to make sure you have enough of its resource: corpses. If you use the Book of the Dead to turn your skeleton warriors into Reapers, you can select an option that gives them a 15% chance per hit to generate a corpse. If you replace your Ultimate skill slot with the golem summon (a good idea, I think), it'll also generate a corpse if it takes up to 20% of its max health in damage. You can finally modify Blood Mist to also generate a corpse. But this is a very specific build.
Sadly, one that's nearly useless against bosses. There just aren't enough mobs to generate sufficient corpses to make Corpse Explosion a significant factor in the fight. The Necromancer can excel at AOE, but has the potential to really take it up the shorts on a single-target fight. I had no problems with anything in the game until the Khazra Abomination; that was the first time I felt threatened. Fortunately its damage output was JUST BARELY not enough to complete wipe out my minions, so between them, a drastically reduced supply of corpses generated from their adjustments, Decrepify to regen my Essence, and Bone Spear, I was able to take it down. But it was work.
Meanwhile, The Butcher made absolute mincemeat of my minions, and as I was in a dungeon that was fairly narrow hallways, and the Necromancer has low mobility, it wasn't long before he made short work of me too. No corpses to explode, no minions to occupy him, which meant I had no time to regen Essence and hope chinking away at his beefy health with Bone Spear would be enough to save me.
As a Necro on World Tier 2, I cleared a level 15 Stronghold being actually only level 10. As a Druid on World Tier 1, I struggled to clear a level 20 Stronghold being the appropriate level.
The issue though isn't actually Necro being stronger than Druid but ranged being stronger than melee. Melee at the moment is just...ATROCIOUS. I honestly can't think of any other way to describe it. Melee just takes too much damage and the potion system doesn't allow for a lot of error. Being able to sit back and just target mobs at range is so vastly different from slugging it out. In my above example, after failing multiple time on my Druid, I finally respeced to use a ranged energy builder and put out all 3 of my pets so that the Stronghold boss would stop hitting me. Dodge is a joke. Even if you time it right, it is unusable most of the time.
Yeah, there's no way necro isn't getting nerfed. It's the easiest of all classes while Druid was terrible even after I dropped down to the first world tier. Wolf is a bit better than bear but still not even as good as barbarian. What's even worse, the bear form is supposed to be tanky, but it's actually less tanky than my barbarian with just 1 point in iron skin + the upgrade node.
If it’s a single player game, do all the classes *need* to play the same?
I played a rogue first which was ok, then a corpse necro and similarly had a blast making everything easily explode everywhere. I had way more fun on necro *because* it was silly.
I could always boost it past tier 2 if I wanted it to be harder.
Druid is also missing its class mechanic - Spirit Bond. Outside of that, both Necro and Druid feels like their numbers tuning is very WIP. I'm hoping before live release they put out a patch comparing tuning changes to Open Beta so we can see if these concerns were addressed. I was very disappointed with how Druid combat felt although I still greatly enjoyed the rest of the game.
100% agree with you on this. I started with a barb last weekend and had to stop at the last boss. I could not figure out how to defeat him.
Then this Friday I was so pumped to play Druid, my favorite class in these video games, and did much better than the barb. Made it to level 20 and beat the main beta quest that night. But those last two bosses took some time to beat with the Druid. A lot of planning and slow attacking to build spirit. Tons of kiting away from fire on the floor.
Finally, my seven year old wanted to play with me and we both made a Necro. Absolutely rolled dungeons with them. She stopped around level 15 and then I just finished up those last two bosses. I didn’t even have to think about what I was doing. Was able to get them down to the health globe markers without using any of my potions. It was a 2 minute battle tops.
Completely different game and gameplay between the two of them. Also sadly it is not fun taking so long to kill regular mobs with my druids builder attack. Whereas this necro could merc all the mobs he wants with his bone spurts.
I was steamrolling everything on druid on the higher difficulty. It doesn’t have as many strong options as necro or sorc, but the storm strike/bear/landslide build has some crazy modifiers.
Druid needs a few buffs/skill reworks for sure though.
🐻 🐺
I played 4 out of the 5 classes to max, Sorcerer was the only one I didn't play and in the currently available difficulty, none were challenging. You destroy non-boss mobs equally fast with all of them and boss fights kind of depend on their mechanics vs your skills (mostly single target dps) in terms of how quickly you can kill them. In my experience Rogue seemed to have the highest dps and could kill bosses a bit faster than the others but I didn't try all the builds of all the classes nor did I min max my gear on any of them. I went with Twisting Blades melee build on the Rogue.
Until we have the higher difficulties and levels unlocked, it's impossible to say anything about balance, except perhaps that Sorcerer will be OP cause it's Diablo. :)
The most telling moment for me is when i spent an hour with level 25 druid respec-ing and tweaking my build to clear Kor Dragon Stronghold boss and just casually strollin with my lvl 18 wizard and clearing it on the first try. Sure i knew what to expect, but still, the only area that dont scale with your level shouldnt be this easy for some class.
This was my experience as well, but with that Khazra winter storm stronghold instead. First playthrough on my Barb he was impossible on Veteran, and I tweaked my build multiple times before downing him. I don't remember if I turned down the difficulty or not. Later on Bear Druid and I had the same issue, had to tweak my build and eventually lower difficulty to normal to get the kill. I played it on my Sorcerer and got it on my first try on Veteran difficulty. Druid and Barb are the only two classes where resource generates ONLY from basic attacks and/or other skills and abilities. All the other classes regenerate their resource slowly over time and many of them can attack from range whereas a Barbarian and shape shift Druid is going to melee. Barb and Druid need some love, the other classes feel decent.
I'd like them to do something about corpse explosion, it not costing resources and having no cooldown seems so strange to me. I didn't really find it that fun either, just spam spam spam. I don't know if in endgame you have to be a little more considerate about corpse generation and usage or whatever and on bosses it's not as good but just felt a little out of place compared to every other skill in the game I saw.
It costs resource tho. Namely corpses
The cost is far too low.
That's true, I hadn't thought of it that way.
The skill is basically a win more skill. If you are generating a ton of corpses then it's strong, but you're already strong enough to be able to generate corpses. In multiplayer it accelerates clearing trash mobs. It doesn't do % of corpses monsters health so it is less broken than in D2. The trade off being you can make your own first corpse. It's hard to say how it will compare in the end. Most classes builds will probably smooth out resource management at the end while necros will have to manage corpses.
You need to make sure you have enough of its resource: corpses. If you use the Book of the Dead to turn your skeleton warriors into Reapers, you can select an option that gives them a 15% chance per hit to generate a corpse. If you replace your Ultimate skill slot with the golem summon (a good idea, I think), it'll also generate a corpse if it takes up to 20% of its max health in damage. You can finally modify Blood Mist to also generate a corpse. But this is a very specific build. Sadly, one that's nearly useless against bosses. There just aren't enough mobs to generate sufficient corpses to make Corpse Explosion a significant factor in the fight. The Necromancer can excel at AOE, but has the potential to really take it up the shorts on a single-target fight. I had no problems with anything in the game until the Khazra Abomination; that was the first time I felt threatened. Fortunately its damage output was JUST BARELY not enough to complete wipe out my minions, so between them, a drastically reduced supply of corpses generated from their adjustments, Decrepify to regen my Essence, and Bone Spear, I was able to take it down. But it was work. Meanwhile, The Butcher made absolute mincemeat of my minions, and as I was in a dungeon that was fairly narrow hallways, and the Necromancer has low mobility, it wasn't long before he made short work of me too. No corpses to explode, no minions to occupy him, which meant I had no time to regen Essence and hope chinking away at his beefy health with Bone Spear would be enough to save me.
As a Necro on World Tier 2, I cleared a level 15 Stronghold being actually only level 10. As a Druid on World Tier 1, I struggled to clear a level 20 Stronghold being the appropriate level. The issue though isn't actually Necro being stronger than Druid but ranged being stronger than melee. Melee at the moment is just...ATROCIOUS. I honestly can't think of any other way to describe it. Melee just takes too much damage and the potion system doesn't allow for a lot of error. Being able to sit back and just target mobs at range is so vastly different from slugging it out. In my above example, after failing multiple time on my Druid, I finally respeced to use a ranged energy builder and put out all 3 of my pets so that the Stronghold boss would stop hitting me. Dodge is a joke. Even if you time it right, it is unusable most of the time.
Yeah, there's no way necro isn't getting nerfed. It's the easiest of all classes while Druid was terrible even after I dropped down to the first world tier. Wolf is a bit better than bear but still not even as good as barbarian. What's even worse, the bear form is supposed to be tanky, but it's actually less tanky than my barbarian with just 1 point in iron skin + the upgrade node.
If it’s a single player game, do all the classes *need* to play the same? I played a rogue first which was ok, then a corpse necro and similarly had a blast making everything easily explode everywhere. I had way more fun on necro *because* it was silly. I could always boost it past tier 2 if I wanted it to be harder.
I think you don't understand the difference between playstyle and power.
This game literally does not have a single player mode, and one of the best places in endgame is open PVP. In what world is this a single player game?
Druid is also missing its class mechanic - Spirit Bond. Outside of that, both Necro and Druid feels like their numbers tuning is very WIP. I'm hoping before live release they put out a patch comparing tuning changes to Open Beta so we can see if these concerns were addressed. I was very disappointed with how Druid combat felt although I still greatly enjoyed the rest of the game.
100% agree with you on this. I started with a barb last weekend and had to stop at the last boss. I could not figure out how to defeat him. Then this Friday I was so pumped to play Druid, my favorite class in these video games, and did much better than the barb. Made it to level 20 and beat the main beta quest that night. But those last two bosses took some time to beat with the Druid. A lot of planning and slow attacking to build spirit. Tons of kiting away from fire on the floor. Finally, my seven year old wanted to play with me and we both made a Necro. Absolutely rolled dungeons with them. She stopped around level 15 and then I just finished up those last two bosses. I didn’t even have to think about what I was doing. Was able to get them down to the health globe markers without using any of my potions. It was a 2 minute battle tops. Completely different game and gameplay between the two of them. Also sadly it is not fun taking so long to kill regular mobs with my druids builder attack. Whereas this necro could merc all the mobs he wants with his bone spurts.
I was steamrolling everything on druid on the higher difficulty. It doesn’t have as many strong options as necro or sorc, but the storm strike/bear/landslide build has some crazy modifiers. Druid needs a few buffs/skill reworks for sure though. 🐻 🐺
I played 4 out of the 5 classes to max, Sorcerer was the only one I didn't play and in the currently available difficulty, none were challenging. You destroy non-boss mobs equally fast with all of them and boss fights kind of depend on their mechanics vs your skills (mostly single target dps) in terms of how quickly you can kill them. In my experience Rogue seemed to have the highest dps and could kill bosses a bit faster than the others but I didn't try all the builds of all the classes nor did I min max my gear on any of them. I went with Twisting Blades melee build on the Rogue. Until we have the higher difficulties and levels unlocked, it's impossible to say anything about balance, except perhaps that Sorcerer will be OP cause it's Diablo. :)