Anyone got some ideas? The necromancer in diablo 2 was also one of the least popular after the druid and sin i think.
Well, the Necro wasn't always the most popular class. For quite a while, he was pretty unpopular in fact. From release, the Necro's skeles and skele mages sucked late game and poison was never useful. His only survivable summons were the raise dead minions, but even they sucked because they did no damage. The golem was virtually useless once they nerfed the iron maiden/blood golem combo. The only thing the Necro had going for him was his bone spirit, but that only lasted until patch 3 or 4, when they nerfed that too for no apparent reason.Originally Posted by Dogbert
It took years until patch 10, which fixed all of this. The skeles and skele mages became survivable and dealt decent damage (at the cost of being able to summon 1 skele every 3 skill levels after level 3 versus 1 every level, but that was welcome given the lag). Raise dead and clay golem became good one point wonders. Poison and Bone each became their own twink trees for massive damage. And, most importantly, telebombing aura-mancers entered the game and were easily the most versatile, over-powered build. That's when Necros became favorites.
Witch Doctors are unpopular for the same reason the early Necro was unpopular: their minions are useless and they are pigeonholed into one build (as far as I know): spam zombie bears and use a bunch of high duration spells to accomplish that.
Witch Doctors seem to be unpopular for a couple reasons:
1. They disappointed the hopes of people who wanted to play them as a pet/summon class. All those folks made WDs, got to inferno, probably kept going in spite of not having fun because they wanted to make gold, then switched to another class. The pets' bait and switch soured them for WDs.
2. Witch Doctors don't have a miracle build. They aren't particularly weak compared to any other class's default CC builds (tank barbs, gc dhs, blizz/hydra wizards, standard monks), but they also don't have any special builds that become fantastic with only very specific gear like the ww/sprint barbarians and critical mass wizards.
Both of these lead to fewer people playing WDs; most of the excitement is centered around two builds from two other classes and the people who originally wanted to play WDs anyway have often quit.
Jedouard, I'm going to have to disagree about WDs having only one build (rain of toads/acid rain tanks at the very least are quite different and there are a lot of variation for VQ builds too) and fishymancers being overpowered and most versatile (they had their weaknesses and shared the versatility title).
Last edited by Karth; 08-08-2012 at 23:38.
Witch Doctors are the least popular because:
1. Pets suck in endgame.
2. Mana... you either have to use vision quest passive or not use any secondary skills (by using 2 primary skills).
3. Less people are attracted to this archetype than the other 4 classes.
Yes i remember this. My very first charachter in diablo 2 classic 1.00 was a necromancer using the blood golem/iron maiden combo.
Lol people were always crying. "Plz necro no skeletons or mages" heheh. I guess the minions caused massive lag or something.
Even corpse explosion was nerfed. Do you remember? It used to kick some serious *** before it got nerfed. I think they changed it to not scale with monster hp or something (When more people entered the game) Or maybe it was the monster resistances that got buffed. Can't remember. At any rate it wasn't quite the same after that.
But is the witch doctor really that bad? The necro was great for group play. Lower resist everything for sorcs. Or Amplify damage for the rest. Revives were awesome tanks etc.
yes, the WD is that bad
summon skeleton warriors are awesome in D2 -- but zombie dogs die too easily and the 60 second cooldown to resummon them is ridiculous; they die and you have to stand there waiting and waiting before you can resummon them
corpse explosion is awesome in D2 -- but you had mana leech and charms and runewords and items that increased your mana and man regen
you don't have that as much in D3 so its difficult to keep bears or acid rain going because you keep running out of mana
my zombie dogs don't even get healed when I drink a potion
Yes pets are horrible past nightmare.
It should be a priority to fix them.
Meh... People say WDs suck for the same reason they said Necros sucked back in the day. Its because their puny brains cant figure out how to use them.
Even in this thread people are saying WDs suck, but what they really mean is their 'build' isnt working for them. Mainly summons... And i agree Summons are bad. But summons are a small part of WDs and they still can be used with the right set up.
Back in d2 my necros where mostly PVP necros. Any negative attitude toward me i would simply go to town and hostile everyone.
It was always funny.. To watch players talk smack about Necros, not invite me to partys and STILL mock me right after i hostile them. Even funnier when i killed them all in seconds, took their gold and hacky sacked their ears around.
Some players would try and get back to their corpse and id bone prison them while they where naked putting them on time out.. Oooh the rage that followed was priceless.
Yes...Necros suck.. And yes WD suck. I hope it stays that way...lol
Last edited by Vooodu; 09-08-2012 at 14:18.
No.... Not every WD uses zombie bears or is pigeonholed intot one build. Lord knows i didnt.
Also...Real d2 was before enigmas and synergies. Necros where considered the underdog class then and thats whan they where the most fun to play. I used to hang out with alot of PvP Necros on useast.
And i can say, between me and that group of Undead Freaks we could chew up and spit out 99% of the players on Useast in seconds.
Necros sucked... And we liked it that way.
@Vooodu
If you noticed we didn't said they sucked, we said they are less popular.
They maybe are less effective in inferno than other classes, but definitely don't suck.
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