Current State
The last patch has completely moved the Necro to trash tier to extremely good tier.
Close to Death and Axe Training are no more mutually exclusive, that means that on your Axe you can stack 15% permanent damage boost + 20% damage boost when enemy is under 50% of HP and Life Blast can benefits from the boost too.
Deathly Perception can give your Life Blast a 100% crit chances and, most important, Life Blast damage is no more tied to the amount of Life Force you have, but to the range only.
That means that a zerker Necro, now, hits like a truck, which is what all PvE is about, right?
Sounds very exciting.
Are MM builds viable now?
(edited by Kaii.6805)
Yes they are. Unmentioned in the patch notes was that minions are now very responsive (though they still have occasional issues in large group battles when it’s tough for the game to tell who you want them to dogpile)
In which gamemode?
I haven’t played minions that much because I found it boring, but for the bit of time I’ve played minions, they looks quite effective.
The Death Nova trait has been changed to inflict damage on trigger.
I haven’t had the chance to test the damage because it apparently doesn’t trigger on sacrifice, but it looks quite high.
Also, Shadow Fiend and Bone Fiend secondary skills are now instant.
The damage is around 1.5k
Necro’s are still in the trash tier for optimized groups. Rangers however have recently been seen to be a benefit when played with sword + warhorn and frost spirit + spotter.
In terms of useful classes which dont provide anything the group cant get from other sources engi and necro are a complete waste to take. Which is really sad to see.
Yes they are. Unmentioned in the patch notes was that minions are now very responsive (though they still have occasional issues in large group battles when it’s tough for the game to tell who you want them to dogpile)
No they aren not viable and never will be until they introduce the AoE damage reduction passive they should come with to make them viable in dungeons and on bosses. This was something WoW took forever to figure out, but once they did, pets were amazing, not OP but viable just as everything else on boss encounters.
From a PvE side.
MM is lots better than it was.
They are very good for farming with a magic find set of gear, as there damage/tankyness isn’t affected by your gear.
Even with 50% extra life & faster CDs trait’ed. They don’t cut it in a dungeon. There sooo much better in that they are responsive, and teleport to you often. (So you can skip trash without them pulling floors of the instance down on you.).
They will just camp in fire/cleave/pain. They are going to only get 1-3 attacks per summon before dieing on boss’s.
The other ‘necro’ feeling thing that has been ‘slightly fixed’… Is our Vamp (Stealing life on dam). It now works off healing power!
The downside is, even if you get every piece of heal power in game… it’s only +6 and less than 1/4th of Ele’s 6sig with NO heal power. (Even with the 50% stronger trait).
What PvE necro has going for it is…
Well Axe’s trait go moved, so it can be used with Close to Death. Making it a viable weapon in a dungeon that stacks vuln for the group.
Wells got shorter CDs now. Power got a ‘brake stun’ thrown on it! (Nice combo fields for others in group, still don’t have access to much finisher yourself/solo)
Death Shroud. We got slightly more LifeForce gen while attacking. So from time to time, you can use DS as ‘attrition’ to suck up that extra hit the rest of the party with vigor can roll away from.