Idea Idea for a Necro Rework

Spoiler: Before reading

Following the change of engineer to be more interactive in its gameplay, I wanted to propose a rework for the necro class that similarly places more emphasis on PvP than has previously been the case.

I want to give credit to @Lceman502 for helping me with this idea. I also want to mention that this idea has changed a lot over the course of the thought process involved. The only thing that I believed was key to the idea of a “necro” was the ability to summon, commune with, or get help from the dead. The idea behind a lot of this is that a necro should be able to create or sustain life by taking it from someone else, and that a necro’s source of power stems from the dead.

For convenience as well as clarity, when referring to the proposal for the reworked necro, I will use the term Necro, capitalized and italicized. If it’s not too much to ask, I’d like comments to also use some way of differentiating between this specific idea and current necro, again, for the purpose of clarity.

This rework is very much a work in progress, and if something like it is implemented, the specifics will likely change in order to ensure balance with other classes.

Necro


Equipment:
Necro has a stone sword with Sharpness I. Upon getting a kill and going into Phantom Form, the name of the sword changes from “Necro Sword” to “Ethereal Blade” to indicate to a killed player what occurred, though this is admittedly unnecessary.
Necro also has the Staff of Draining, a renamed and (for aesthetics only) enchanted bone.
Necro has no steak. Its only source of self-healing is the Staff of Draining.
Necro has the following armor: no helmet, a black leather tunic, black leather pants, and iron boots, all enchanted with Protection I. This is the area where I’m least confident. Please let me know if this level of armor is too low, too high, or if it could use any protection adjustments.


Phantom Form:
One of Necro’s main mechanics is what I refer to as “Phantom Form.” As far as flavor/lore goes, the Necro takes on an ethereal, ghostly form that is able to deal more damage with the help of ghostly spirits, while also sacrificing some of its own life force to receive the aid of the undead. The Necro is able to use the power of the undead from a kill it gets to attack through armor (dealing true damage) for a brief period of time (5 seconds). However, because the Necro’s life force is tied to the ethereal, the health of the Necro is temporarily reduced to 7 hearts for the duration of the effect.

EDIT (for clarity): When I wrote this up, I had in mind the idea that this would occur the moment a Necro gets a finishing blow on anyone. However, I will concede that it may be better to have a single charge that is filled when getting a normal kill (outside of phantom form), similar to how pyro charges frenzy with hits. However, because Necro uses a sword (as opposed to an axe), right clicking already has the function of blocking, so a consumable would be required to use the ability.


Staff of Draining:
The other unique mechanic to Necro is the “Staff of Draining.” The Staff of Draining creates an area of effect of radius 3 around the Necro. Upon use (right click), the Staff of Draining has an instantaneous effect that gives the wither II status effect to any enemy players within the radius for 5 seconds. Whenever a player takes damage from the wither effect, the Necro restores the same amount of health (e.g. if two players are in the radius when Staff of Draining is used, they will lose a half heart every second, the Necro will restore a total of 1 heart / second for 5 seconds, or 5 hearts total). As mentioned earlier, the area of effect is one-time and the ability is used instantly (i.e. it does not linger, and affects everyone within the radius as soon as the ability is used). The Staff of Draining has a cooldown of 10 seconds.


Design philosophy:
The main goal of this rework is to increase the level of interactivity of necro while also allowing for some “necro”mantic flavor.
I wanted to make Necro more tied into PvP than the current iteration. I believe that there is always room for PvP to be more or less important to a class, but I think it should always be relevant. Even for classes like archer and assassin, players are rewarded with being good at self-defense.
However, unlike assassin and archer, current necro doesn’t just reduce the importance of PvP; it discourages its active use by encouraging the use of mobs, which essentially means players spend effort thinking about how to best use mobs to do damage or get kills without needing to do damage personally. While necro isn’t currently a problem in this regard (as it seems far too underpowered for anyone to complain about necro not needing skill), the current iteration does not encourage interactive, player to player engagement, which I believe is the opposite of fun.
Please understand that a lot of this information is indefinite; numbers are given for the sake of understanding/clarity, and because the numbers chosen seemed to be in a ballpark of where they would be at a balanced level. Many of this is suspect to change.


Thank you for reading!

 

To be perfectly clear:
Yes, but I’ve been playing on it a while. The reason it says I’m new to forums is because I only made the forums account itself very recently.

 

In hindsight, I definitely agree. In a world full of the burst damage that comes from ninja, scout, chemist, and pyro (not to mention TNT, lightning, and instakills), a single healing ability with a long cooldown doesn't work too well without more defensive abilities (like mage has). As far as I know (and someone can correct me if I'm wrong), armor reduces damage taken by a set percent, and protection reduces the remaining set of health, meaning adding a level of protection will do something, but may not be as impactful as changing the armor before anything. A leather helmet with protection I doesn't add too much else to the armor of Necro, so maybe we can discuss changing the iron boots to diamond in addition to that, or adding an iron (or chainmail) helmet instead of leather?

EDIT: What do you think of the idea that Necro heals maybe 2 hearts on kill? This has an interesting dynamic with phantom form, seeing as you can deal way more damage than normal, but you have reduced health, so it doesn't do much good against burst as it is. It isn't especially original, seeing as assassin has the same ability but with an extra healf heart, but it might work out well. It also isn't nearly as good as a steak passively, but I don't know if having the staff and a passive healing ability that heals 4 is a great idea.

Brilliant idea! Since the armor is already enchanted, the best I can come up with is changing the color of the armor upon use, so white or a lighter gray might work. Or we could do bright green like #dannyphantom. @scapezar

One reason I picked wither was because wither kills. In one aspect, it makes it so that Necro can get kills with the staff, as opposed to always needing to get the last hit. On the other hand, Necro can't possibly heal from dead targets, so getting a kill on a low target means that a player will get less healing, providing some depth of play. The other (and admittedly more superficial) reason for this is wither fits Necro's flavor more.
In hindsight, though, I realize that getting a single hit isn't a big deal, and poison doesn't reduce players' health below a half heart as it is, so Necro's healing wouldn't really be impacted too much. It's probably for the best to use poison instead.

Thanks for the feedback!

I like it! I'm thinking, though, since the original idea was that you'd lose 3 hearts at the top of your total health, maybe with this "resurrect" effect, health is capped at 5 hearts instead. Instantly gaining 7 might be too powerful if armor is changed like @Foodcourt suggested. Either that or we keep it at 7 and just don't change armor, allowing Necro's survivability to hinge more on the side of having a second temporary health pool.

Thank you to you too!

Note that I'm not going to frequently update or edit the thread with community ideas. I'd rather wait for more to come in and just create a new thread with all the feedback and input. As far as the edit I put in the original post, that was just an alternative design to the original idea I'd come up with. I will take any and all feedback and use it to polish and refine this idea!

Thanks again!

 

The simplest thing to do is to add steak. Everything else seems to have at least some other side effect, the greatest of which is buffing the AoE healing itself. Because the AoE healing is meant to be perfectly in line with the damage enemies take, increasing the level to wither III (for instance) will exponentially increase the rate of healing per enemy inside the radius. The lower end of the side effects is the helmet, which would basically mean losing armor when grabbing the flag, but that probably won't end up being your main goal anyway. In the middle are two interesting ideas: adding a second healing item, and increasing the AoE's radius. I'm going to touch on the radius first. I think that this might end up being a much better buff, just because overall it makes it easier for Necro to heal consistently, as well as to consistently drain multiple players. At the same time, though, the larger the radius is, the more room there is for the Necro to accidentally hit an invisible ninja, a hiding assassin, etc., which feels awful for people who were trying to hide after getting hit by the ability. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it does bring a certain lack of control to the class's balance. Finally (and I don't know if you saw this), but I talked to Foodcourt about gaining health on kills like assassin does. This would bring in a second way for Necro to heal itself. The (tentative) number is 2 hearts a kill, to make it about half a steak's worth, but that can be easily improved to 3 without too many repercussions. Whether or not 4 would be balanced is questionable. In phantom form, healing from a kill is very easy, but outside of phantom form, even 4 hearts a kill is comparable to only ever using a single steak when you get a kill. On the other hand, 5 seems excessive. That being said, a very simple solution is to give Necro diamond boots and an iron helmet, resulting in 10 (of 20 total) points of armor, in addition to protection.

Honestly, I was more referring to that in terms of flavor more than anything but you've given me an interesting idea:
What do you think about gaining levels per kill, similar to the idea of a consumable phantom form, but instead of just the one, you have two distinct consumables to use? One gives you phantom form and all its upsides and downsides. The other gives you a maximum of 5 hearts of healing, and if there is excess, a maximum of 3 absorption hearts can be added to the top of the health bar (e.g., if you're at 6, you'll restore 4 and gain 1 absorption heart; if you're at 8, you'll restore 2 and gain 3; at 10 and you'll gain 3).