• Home
  • The Necromancer Summit: Part III – Overall Thoughts on the Necromancer

The Necromancer Summit: Part III – Overall Thoughts on the Necromancer

by - 7 years ago

In this final part of my coverage of the Necromancer Summit series, I talk about my personal impressions of the Necromancer and the event itself. You can find Part I and Part II here.

The Event

While not about the Necromancer itself, I wanted to take a little bit of time talking about the event itself. This is the first time Blizzard has done a global influencer summit for Diablo III. Many of Blizzard’s other games have done events like these in past, and they are great opportunities for the developers to get direct feedback and discussions with players from around the world. It’s great seeing Blizzard is still committed to development of content for Diablo III, and I hope that a) this Necromancer summit provided the developers with the feedback they were looking for and b) we could look forward to more events like this for future content. It was also an amazing experience to network with other influencers from within the Diablo community and get to know them and their experiences, thoughts, and ideas of what the game and franchise mean to them.

Just like at Blizzcon, the passion and dedication of the development team was extremely apparent. They made it clear how much they really cared about not only the game, but its community as well. While the event went on for most of the day, many of the developers were only present for their panels as they were very hard at work on the development of the class back at Blizzard HQ. I am extremely thankful to the developers for taking the time to come and talk to us. I would also like to take the time to thank Nevalistis and the rest of the Diablo community team for putting together this event and making the community feel included in the design of the Necromancer.

The Feeling of Death: Thoughts on the Necromancer Design

The Necromancer is the seventh class for Diablo III and it really shows. The developers have nailed the process of designing classes and they’ve focused on creating a class that not only pays homage to its Diablo II namesake, but is a testament to everything the developer team has learned over the last five years since Diablo III launched. The developers have figured out that it’s the theme of the classes that make them unique and are willing to make decisions that break from previous class designs (five elements per class, etc.) in order to make the Necromancer really feel true to its nature. The class plays and feels exactly like how’d you expect it to by just looking at the art, animations, and armor previews. You won’t be forced into playing the Necromancer as a pet class if you don’t want it to. As was shown in the Meleemancer Demo, you will have a wide range of playstyles to take advantage of. The developers made it very clear that they want the Necromancer to have something for everyone, whether you to play a ranged caster, melee/caster hybrid, or the traditional pet class you will be able to find a playstyle to fit your tastes.

While in the process of writing this article, the Necromancer Beta was announced. While at the summit the developers were a bit reserved in talking about unannounced skills or the release window for the Necromancer, but we now know that the Beta will be beginning shortly so I think the Necromancer is far further into development than they were letting on. Originally I thought the Necromancer was likely still a few months off, as the developers repeatedly stated that they were still filling out Skills and Runes. With this in mind, I expect the Necromancer Beta to start with no sets so that the developers can see what skills we, the players, gravitate towards so that they can make items and sets that we want to play. While the Crusader was being created with the development of Reaper of Souls and the creation of Loot 2.0, the itemization of Diablo III was still far from finished and it wasn’t until a few patches later that we finally got the system we now are familiar with. The Necromancer will be the first class designed with this system in mind and I will be very interested in how the developers approach the itemization for the class alongside the development of its skills.

 

The Community

There were a lot of other influencers in attendance at the Necromancer Summit and since we were all divided into different groups, we all had slightly different experiences and asked different questions. You can find the thoughts and feelings of some of these other community members below:

Curse’s Coverage: Necromancer Influencer Summit 2017

Rhykker’s Thoughts:

Bluddshed’s Thoughts:

 

Now we wait…

I cannot wait until the beta starts and we can get our hands on the full skill set of the Necromancer and really dive into their runes and passives. Stay tuned to our page as we’ll be covering all things Necromancer throughout the entire Rise of the Necromancer beta test.

Part I

Part II

Part III


Whitney Fairchild

Whitney "Neinball" Fairchild has been involved in the Diablo podcasting community since 2011. He focuses on the analyzing game development and the lore & story of the Diablo franchise.


0 responses to “The Necromancer Summit: Part III – Overall Thoughts on the Necromancer”

  1. Great recap, thanks!

  2. Long Jonson says:

    “making the community feel included in the design of the Necromancer”
    Yes, “making” it feel like it but in reality they do what they want to do.