Why the Necromancer needs to be added.

[Sierra85]

I was hoping to see Druids moreso than the "Paladin" or Necro personally. Oh well, maybe next expansion.

i don't think druids would fit into D3 so to speak. visually and theme wise.

[traen]

i don't think druids would fit into D3 so to speak. visually and theme wise.

I said exactly the same about d2 druids 12 years ago.
And tbh I still believe I was right back then.

Neither pandas fit into wow atmosphere.
But who cares? Everybody is playing, everybody is having fun.

Even if blizzard implemented a new class "space jedi" players would still play it.
D3 lore is a failure anyway, no one really cares about it.

[Deleted]

People that say necromancers are 2 similar to WD's let me make a list of the differences. But before that making a Vit based class would be awesome and necromancer would fit perfectly as he can control the essence of life the life force of different people. This would more then satisfy the fetish that Diablo 3 development team has over not implementing anything similar to d2 because d2 had no vit based class.

WD and necro differences

1. Summons

WD summons come out of nowwhere as if a dog accidentally on that spot, and this is seen throughout the all of the games maps and environments. Necro in d2 was based of summoning from corpses of the fallen. If you argue that if necro was supposedly to be added then they would probably implement the way of summoning like the mobs from ACT1 jondar's servants because it is such a hazzle to get corpses first in order to summon the pets.

2. Spells

Corpse explosion, bone spells, poison nova, debuffing curses, golem, there are like 9023509230953 different skeleton skins for possible summons that you could summon when you pick the appropiate rune for the lets say "summon skeleton warrior" ability. Defense moves-bone armor, bone wall, bone shield, bone prison.

3. Resource(s)

Ofcourse a new resource would have to be created maybe a second dual-resource one for summoning and for magic spells? Why not. Or just have a single resource called necromantic power.

I believe that all of us if we were given the task to create a necromancer class for the D3 RoS expansion we could execute it, or at least some of us. I believe that necromancer or any other second class will be announced at Blizzcon. Come back and refer to this post when Blizzard does so its just that we have to wait, and see.

[Simulacrum]

D2 necromancer was my favourite class in any hack-n-slash game ever. The witch doctor is a pathetic, shallow imitation, with a retarded tehmatic, and its existence genuinely makes me upset because it being around means that there's no hope we'll ever see a necromancer in D3.

I do not understand why they did it. I'm baffled. What puzzles me the most is the thematic. Why would they give the WD the theme it has? Who prefers the thematic of the voodoo doctor to that of the gothic priest? Well, I guess some people do. But surely they're vastly outnumbered by those who prefer the latter, especially because of the goodwill that theme would carry over from D2. But instead they went with the WD thematic instead of the nec thematic. Why? It makes no sense. Not even financially.

[Deleted]

But instead they went with the WD thematic instead of the nec thematic. Why? It makes no sense. Not even financially.

At first they didn't even want to include the Barbarian either. Why? Because they wanted to show they can innovate and not rely on older products. The thing with innovation though is that sometimes you win and sometimes you lose. And I think the vast majority of people would've prefered the Necromancer over the Witch Doctor and the Paladin over the Monk.

Blizzard basically kept the classical archetypes but changed their theme and background. But innovation for the sake of innovation alone is quite stupid. Don't fix something that isn't broken.

Heck, just imagine what we would've gotten instead of the Barbarian if things took a slightly different turn. I don't think it would've been as good.

[Themos]

I do not understand why they did it. I'm baffled. What puzzles me the most is the thematic. Why would they give the WD the theme it has? Who prefers the thematic of the voodoo doctor to that of the gothic priest? Well, I guess some people do. But surely they're vastly outnumbered by those who prefer the latter, especially because of the goodwill that theme would carry over from D2. But instead they went with the WD thematic instead of the nec thematic. Why? It makes no sense. Not even financially.

The thematic of the Witch Doctor is fine. The issue, as mentioned in this thread repeatedly, is that witch doctor pets die to easily and fail to act as a proper buffer between the summoner and the summons like the Necromancer in D2 was. If the devs decided to amp up the amount of pets a Witch Doctor can have out and their effectiveness most of the complaints centered around the hero from this thread would be squelched. But Blizzard went down a different path and made the hero what it is.

RoS may change things up a bit for the class, Blizzcon would shed some light on that.

[brirrspliff]

the necromancer does not need to be added. the battlemage has to be added.

[Simulacrum]

The thematic of the Witch Doctor is fine. The issue, as mentioned in this thread repeatedly, is that witch doctor pets die to easily and fail to act as a proper buffer between the summoner and the summons like the Necromancer in D2 was. If the devs decided to amp up the amount of pets a Witch Doctor can have out and their effectiveness most of the complaints centered around the hero from this thread would be squelched. But Blizzard went down a different path and made the hero what it is.

RoS may change things up a bit for the class, Blizzcon would shed some light on that.

Even if we disregard all the issues I have personally with the theme itself, it also locks the WD out of cool abilities that would be too necromancer-y, for the purpose of keeping it different enough from the necromancer that the difference in theme can be justified. We're never going to see bone walls (but we can have a boring, huge cooldown zombie wall!), for example, or proper curses, or revive, or cool abilities like corpse explosion (lol@sacrifice).

Ignoring the difference in relative power between nec pets and WD pets, nec pets were also more interesting (except maybe for the fetishes, which can be pretty cool); seeing skeletons upgrade their weapons, and equip shields, as they got stronger, mages with different elements, treasured revives with special abilities, golems that did all sorts of different stuff (even if you, after a while, rarely used more than one)... the only pet you even notice being around is the gargant, and one is still pretty boring. Maybe with some more interesting runes than just "he does damage, but in a different way", he'd be more fun.

Even if the pets were not actually worthless at higher difficulties, they'd still be boring, shallow replacements for the necromancer pets. Maybe if they removed the cooldowns on all of them, and let us summon ten times as many of each of them I'd care less, since then the individual interest in each unit would matter less than the army as a whole (individuals skeletons may get boring after the novelty of their different weapons/spells wears off, but when you have 40-50+ of them you tend not to care so much about that), but obviously they're not going to do that, because that would be too fun. Even if it probably would be a nightmare to move all that shit around without teleport. Of course, we can't have teleport either, because that'd also be too fun. But I digress...

[Jokubas]

I have to say, when I was reading about Reaper of Souls and noticed all the themes of undeath and how Malthael's goal will shatter the balance of the world forever, it seemed jarring that Necromancer was not added, considering that those are the very two ideas that define them.

I don't see why it can't be in the game. There is a huge thematic difference between Witch Doctor and Necromancer even if they're mechanically close, and Necromancers are a very popular archetype. I hope it's not due to Blizzard's obsession with having the only class to ever cross Diablo games being the Barbarian because they're apparently supposed to literally be the same character. Blizzard, you're having us choose a class, not a character. Who says our Diablo II version of that class can't have gone insane and we're just playing a new one of the same class? The Crusader is apparently just a higher ranking guy in the same order as the Paladin, so what's wrong with just being a different person with the Necromancers?