While Diablo 4 isn’t launching until June 6, fans of the franchise were able to experience two beta periods: an Early Access Beta and an Open Access Beta.
A limited portion of the Sanctuary was available during the beta, called the Fractured Peaks. In this area, players could complete the prologue of the storyline, explore the map, and enjoy several dungeons, delves, and world events. However, one of the more highly-anticipated classes was only available during Diablo 4’s Open Access Beta—the powerful Necromancer.
For those who played the Necromancer class and maxed out the beta level limit, it became clear that if you followed a particular build tree, you were almost unstoppable.
Although that was fun, it made the game far too easy, even on the Veteran difficulty. After a while, the gameplay became a tad stale and repetitive, which was an issue for many players during the beta.
How could Blizzard fix this before the game launches in June?
1) Nerf Corpse Explosion
In many ways, Corpse Explosion is too powerful. This ability detonates a targeted corpse, dealing 75 percent damage to the enemies around it. When this ability is maxed out and is enhanced with Plagued Corpse Explosion, you deal x10 percent damage to enemies that are slowed, stunned or vulnerable enemies—and this ability stacks.
So as soon as you had a few corpses, your enemies would die in a bloody explosion. And yes, this was fun to spam, and it made clearing mobs and bosses much easier, but it also became tedious and repetitive.
One of the downsides to this ability is the corpses must be targeted for you to use it. So, if you target the wrong corpse, you may be doing less damage to the enemy you’re supposed to be targeting, which can be incredibly frustrating.
Before launch, it would be great to see this ability nerfed and also buffed, in a way. Reducing the percentage of damage dealt would be a great start to nerf this ability. Then, the other areas, like Plagued Corpse Explosion, could also be reduced to limit the number of x10 percent stacks at one time.
Now, this may not seem like the best idea because we don’t know what the bosses or mobs will be like in the higher difficulty levels, but to avoid the repetitiveness that is spamming Corpse Explosion, this would help.
Regarding a buff, not having to target corpses would be a godsend. So, a potential trade-off for the reduced damage and limited stacks could be that you no longer have to target corpses and that all corpses within a certain radius around you will explode. However, such a trade-off may not be ideal for those who enjoy a more long-ranged style of Necromancer gameplay.
2) Nerf Aspect of Explosive Mist
The Codex of Power, Aspect of Explosive Mist, must be nerfed because it is too broken. And while it was a fun build to exploit during the beta, it made the Veteran difficulty feel like a ‘very easy’ difficulty mode. And here’s why.
If you add skill points to Blood Mist and enhance it with Ghastly Blood Mist, you will leave behind a corpse every second. So, you may leave behind three or four corpses while misted, making it incredibly easy to create a minefield of corpses that you can explode once you’re out of the mist.
The problem with the Aspect of Explosive Mist is that it triggers Corpse Explosion and reduces Blood Mist’s cooldown. So, not only are you invulnerable for three seconds while using Blood Mist, but you’re also dropping corpses, which you automatically explode because of the Aspect of Explosive Mist. And you can quite easily spam this ability because of the cooldown reduction.
But that’s not all. Because this codex automatically triggers Corpse Explosion, you don’t need to have this skill taking up one of your skill slots. In essence, you’re getting a free skill, and if you’ve maxed out and enhanced Corpse Explosion, you can do incredible amounts of damage.
While getting a Legendary item with this codex can be challenging and RNG-based at times, you’re instantly in what feels like ‘very easy’ mode as soon as you get it.
So, before the launch, it is a must to see a nerf to this codex, whether it’s to remove or reduce the cooldown or to limit the number of corpses you can explode.
3) Buff monster and bosses if there is no direct Necromancer nerfs
Once you’ve gotten a few abilities and decent gear, you can cut down most monsters in a few hits. And if you’ve gone with an enhanced Corpse Explosion-focused build, killing bosses takes less than a minute—if that.
The bosses and monsters in Diablo 4 are too easy to kill, especially for the more OP classes, and they often have repetitive mechanics. While you may die once here or there due to unknown mechanics or because you’ve run into a higher-level monster, it’s easy to overcome that and defeat them once you know what to do.
If there are no direct Necromancer nerfs, it would be great to see bosses and monsters getting buffed with more armor, exciting mechanics, stronger attacks, or even having their levels always one or two above your own.
They need more strength and kill power, especially if the Necromancer class doesn’t receive any strong nerfs before the game fully launches in June.
4) Nerf the Skeletal Summons
When playing the Necromancer class, you can have up to eight Skeletal Summons, depending on your build, and this doesn’t include your Golem. So when you have all your Skeletons summoned, you run around with a personal army.
While they can sometimes die when you fight a boss, they’re easy to re-summon. And if you’re fighting regular monsters, they generally do all the work for you and tank much of the damage. Although this is nice, it is a little broken.
Before the game fully launches, it would be great to see a nerf to either the number of skeletons that can be summoned or their summoned duration.
Playing as a Necromancer during the Diablo 4 beta period was fun and explosive, but seeing this class receive nerfs in time for the full launch in June is needed.
