Suggestion Necromancy

[Immortal]

A suggestion from the depths of the Silent Graves
A potential new class branch for the mage that is only unlocked late-game.

After the player defeats the Gravekeeper boss in the Silent Graves, and they are any branch of the Mage class, things go on as normal for a while. Maybe one ingame season later, they begin experiencing 'weird impulses' and 'a desire to go look at graveyards' and dream of the dead. They then obtain a quest to approach an archivist to seek information, and they tell the player that they had been tainted with the power of the Gravekeeper. They then have two options: 1. Drink a potion of Life and purge the Death from their bodies or 2. Set off on a quest to realize this hidden power in them. The second one should be decently long and involve them returning to the Silent Graves at least once. At the end of this questline, they would become a base level necromancer. They would then have to work upwards again, but it would progress much faster for obvious reasons (You wouldn't want such a high-level player to go through everything again, would you?).

The Necromancer would be quite unique. Their normal attack spell would deal garbage DPS, but then again, that wouldn't be their main forte. Their main skill would be 'Resurrect', where they would raise mobs from the ground who would target the last player who attacked the summoner. These mobs would depend on the summoner's class/skill level, ranging from weak corpses and cobbled together bones to skeletal mace-wielding monsters. Hence, the necromancer's minions would have a level of autonomy. Please suggest anything else you'd like to add to this idea, I'll be adding more myself shortly

 

[KabbyDankGod]

I'm gonna do more indepth post once I am home, but as a short reply, this is basically like a hero class from WoW (A class that begins at a high level)

 

[KabbyDankGod]

Alrighty boys time for Kabby's Reply!!!

First off, I don't think this should be a direct mage branch. I think the necromancer could be its own class with separate branches. This would make it so non-mage players could also unlock it.

I do like this idea of doing a quest chain to unlock the class. The grave keeper could be a midway boss for an expansion or something. Once you kill him and complete the quest, you will be able to create a necromancer, that begins at the expansions base level, if expansions increase the level cap. I don't think making them reset to the bottom would fit the theme and way you unlock it. You could also start them fresh as level 1 characters as they would be just a separate class, but I do think that they could start off at a higher level.

The ressurect / minion necromancer could be one of the branches for the necromancer class. I do like minion classes in games, but making the minions be the main focus wouldn't be that good for gameplay as then you'd just summon the minions to let them do everything while you AFK. I think there either would have to be a good mechanic to make minionmancer fun or you'd have to give more worthwhile things to do while using minions.

For the two other brands. A melee grim reaper style branch, similar to gw2's necromancer branch. Yes, it's not original but I just love reaper from GW2. The other one could be a blood magic healing branch. They could use their minions to heal allies or sacrifice them to heal allies. They could give some more support to their team also.

 

[Immortal]

Thanks for the reply!

As for the minionmancer, they would summon their minions in a specific location highlighted by a crosshair with a specific skill, or summon them in a circle around the player. AFKing would only be possible with a macro since the summoning spells are abilities and have a cool down, etc etc, and I think macros should be banned on the server. Also, as another feature, every time the minionmancer increases level by five times, they would get a screen with three options to pick from - Numerous but weak minions, strong but few minions, and a middle ground between both. This would help them better customise their class to fit their play style.

As for the other suggestions, I really like the reaper! Let’s call them the deathmancer for now. They would perhaps steal souls on player kills, and the more souls they absorb, the stronger they would get. This could either work in tandem with the level system, separately, or be a complete replacement for it just for deathmancers. I also feel deathmancers should deal extra damage to players, because it fits the theme.

A blood magic healing branch? Epic! We’ll call them the bloodmancer for now, or maybe the blood shaman. There’s this one system in a game wherein a specific type of creature regains an armor bar proportional to the damage it does. For the bloodmancer, they could have a life point bar which would gradually fill up from their damage rather than a mana bar. Their abilities would then consume this bar, primarily healing and supporting their allies. An example: Doomfury: Only activates if the blood mage is very low on HP. Kills the blood mage and uses all the remaining LP to create a circle around their death location that gives huge damage boosts to allies proportional to the LP used.

Also, as for the first paragraph, I still feel that necromancers should start at level one. But I also feel that their leveling up should take maybe a quarter of the normal time. Or perhaps they gain half of their mage levels back as a necromancer and then gain the XP gain boost on top of that.

 

[KabbyDankGod]

Reply chain activate!

First and foremost. You didn't reply to me saying that necromancer should be It's new class, but from your reply it sounded like you agreed, good!

By AFK I mainly ment, you press all your buttons and just sit there waiting for your minion CDs to come back up to use them again. This is why a minionmancer should have some kinda other skills that are needed. Maybe a skill that makes the summoned mobs attack a target, or a skill that buffs your minions. Just something to spice it up.

I think the deathmancer could have an extra bar that is maybe souls that they can then use to use special soul requiring skills. These could possibly work like WoW Warlock soul shards, where they are just items in your inventory. This could also just be a stacking buff, so every time you use a soul-sucking ability you gain a bit more attack speed and damage. This reminds me of a rune in League of Legends that I enjoy using called "Dark Harvest". Essentially whenever you hit an enemy with 50% or less HP, you drain their soul and deal damage based on how many souls you have. So early you have maybe 1 or 2 souls, dark harvest doesn't do much damage, but once you start to get a lot of souls, dark harvest deals a lot of damage to enemies, maybe completely killing them from half health.

I think it would be cool for the bloodmancer to possibly have a blood bar instead of mana. They would have to use their basic weapon to draw blood so they could use other abilities. They could also have a basic DPS skill that increased the amount of blood. They could then exchange this blood to heal allies or deal damage.

Personally, I do think that they should either start at a higher level or have normal leveling from level 1. This would make it so if in the future there would be other classes similar to this that unlock after reaching some sort of checkmark in the future, they'd have this kind of leveling. I will stand my ground on this one. Either have the classes start at a higher level (expansion base level?) or that they have normal leveling from level 1. You're going to have to level your other characters normally from 1 till max anyways so why would this special class get this advantage? If Dyescape is made well, everything is fun and enjoyable. Leveling, endgame everything in between should be enjoyable so why would you give someone the ability to speed past all of it?

 

[Immortal]

Reply chain continued!

I definitely think the minionmancer should have more than just summoning spells. Target spells would be good, but so would be Minion buff spells that gave a temporary buff to all minions. Also, another system could be that after a minionmancer kills X number of a certain mob, they unlock it and it's added to their summoning options and they can summon it. Its cost would depend on the creature. That is, its DPS, its health, any special abilities, etc.


As for the beginning from level one, sure. But I doubt a mid or high-level player would appreciate having to go through all the levels again at the same pace they did when they began. Maybe faster progressing, or the power of the abilities directly correspond to their previous level + their necromancer level.

As for Dark Harvest, great ability as well! A sort of execution ability that would deal higher damage to the target based on health lost by the target as well as the souls in the collection of the deathmancer.

 

[KabbyDankGod]

Still going!

Yeah, I do like the idea of adding new mobs to your pool. You'd then just have to make a system for swapping the minions around. Maybe you could have three spells that you're able to bind mobs to. You could also be rewarded for grinding rare mobs to get them. Obviously there should be a limit to them, no bosses, etc.

If leveling is actually an enjoyable part of the gameplay experience, I doubt players mind leveling characters, hell I have eight characters on the max level in GW2 and on none of them did I just boost them up to max level. Also, I think you really should get the idea of your character turning into the necromancer out of your mind, that's why you might be thinking that it would be such a drag. Whenever you unlock the necromancer class, you would have to make a new character, unless you want to make your current character a new level 1 character, which people wouldn't do, unless for RP reasons. You could always just make a new character, select necromancer as it's class and level it like everyone else on any other class.

For Dark Harvest, I do think that it would be a cool execution ability, but there should be a reset point on the number of souls. Like after reaching 10 souls, you can use it once more and it resets to zero. You would only gain a soul if you kill with it. Maybe have it so it deals 200% Base damage * Souls to targets below 50% health.