Unique Item Design Proposal - Feedback Appreciated

Without further adieu, allow me to unveil the thoughts that have been cooking in my head concerning The Necronomicon utility in regard to curses and their interactions with minions.

X% Increased Spell Damage (Spell Damage Implicit)
"Weapons are Disabled"
"X-Y% Increased Energy Shield"
"X-Y% Increased Spell Damage"
"Enemies can have 1 Additional Curse"
"Your Minions inherit your Additional Curses" (For the purposes of applying multiple curses)
"Cursed Enemies slain by your Minions spread Curses to Nearby Enemies"
"Your Minions deal X-Y% Increased Damage against Cursed Enemies"
"Your Minions have a X-Y% chance to apply Socketed Curse Skill Gems in this item On Hit"
"Increases and decreases to Spell Damage also apply to Minion Damage"
"Insanity" (Hidden Modifier)

When I have the time (and am not typing from work) I will use the unique item creator that was used to post an image earlier in this thread in order to create and showcase the above.

What do you guys think?

"

AbdulAlhazred wrote:

Without further adieu, allow me to unveil the thoughts that have been cooking in my head concerning The Necronomicon utility in regard to curses and their interactions with minions.

X% Increased Spell Damage (Spell Damage Implicit)
"Weapons are Disabled"
"X-Y% Increased Energy Shield"
"X-Y% Increased Spell Damage"
"Enemies can have 1 Additional Curse"
"Your Minions inherit your Additional Curses" (For the purposes of applying multiple curses)
"Cursed Enemies slain by your Minions spread Curses to Nearby Enemies"
"Your Minions deal X-Y% Increased Damage against Cursed Enemies"
"Your Minions have a X-Y% chance to apply Socketed Curse Skill Gems in this item On Hit"
"Increases and decreases to Spell Damage also apply to Minion Damage"
"Insanity" (Hidden Modifier)

When I have the time (and am not typing from work) I will use the unique item creator that was used to post an image earlier in this thread in order to create and showcase the above.

What do you guys think?

• For "Weapons are disabled", we already have the modifier from the Goddess swords of "Uses both hand slots".
• I'd recommend getting rid of the "Cursed Enemies slain by your Minions spread Curses to Nearby Enemies" modifier since your minions applying curses on hit should provide enough curse coverage.
• For "Your Minions have a X-Y% chance to apply Socketed Curse Skill Gems in this item On Hit" I'd just have them apply socketed curses on hit and get rid of the percentage chance.

"

crystalwitch wrote:

• For "Weapons are disabled", we already have the modifier from the Goddess swords of "Uses both hand slots".
• I'd recommend getting rid of the "Cursed Enemies slain by your Minions spread Curses to Nearby Enemies" modifier since your minions applying curses on hit should provide enough curse coverage.
• For "Your Minions have a X-Y% chance to apply Socketed Curse Skill Gems in this item On Hit" I'd just have them apply socketed curses on hit and get rid of the percentage chance.

True. I can just reuse the Goddess wording. And it would be fair to say using a spellbook uses both hands.

I have the Curse spread + X-Y% chance to apply On Hit for extra balancing levers for GGG's sake. If I can get away with it, then I'll have it as a 100% chance, and spread can be ignored/removed. Otherwise, if they have to have a %chance to "proc" a curse On Hit, then the spread would be beneficial.

My attempt at a Necronomicon.

Socketed gems are supported by Level 8 Minion Damage
Socketed gems are supported by Level 30 Minion Speed
Your minions have Level 21 Vulnerability Curse aura
When your minions die, they leave corpses
1% Damage dealt by you is leeched to your minions as life per 300 Intelligence
15% chance to cast Level 10 Summon Deep One on kill
You cannot block
Uses both hand slots

I love actons music though and it's the one map when i turn of my electro swing for.

Your entirely correct on maps being nerf-proof, i still enjoy all the unique maps till this day and i don't think any of them have gone under heavy changes ever.

Peace,

-Boem-

"

AbdulAlhazred wrote:

I want mappers to go in blind.

Oh... oh now there's an evil thought.

We know from places like the Perandus Manor that you can have areas that don't show up on the mini-map.
So you could have no mini-map at all.

Just the indicators for your character and your portal.

Looking at your unique idea, the ability to gain an effective 7L is sounds fairly good, but nowhere near powerful enough to justify the loss of both block and a weapon slot. Think about what we're losing, either Montregul's grasp, Midnight Bargain, Ephemeral Edge, Severed in Sleep/United in a Dream, as well as a 3L which forces us back to the same problem of being socket starved because we never actually gain any sockets in the end, it's jut re represented within the Necronomicon. If the idea were to be submitted now and added into the game it would find little utility outside niche budget options most likely.

So this present us with either two options: re enable the equipping of weapons or bump up the power.

Now for the second option, keeping with the theme of having multiple minion gems within the shield, level is decided by GGG, we can go further. Perhaps rather than having the gems in the shield only apply to the socketed gems, we can have it be a part of every minion: all your minions are supported by x level minion damage, minion life, etc. What looks powerful at first comes with its own drawbacks, if per say all minions are supported by level 15 minion damage, then when actually choosing the support gems for our minions minion damage is off limits and not as powerful as a 20/20 gem would provide. Equally, however, this opens up a myriad of possibilities for new supports with our minions, one example could be that we finally have Curse on Hit Vulnerability on our zombies because we don't have to worry about socketing both minion damage and minion life

Perhaps even reconsider is you want that 7L for your shield, it's the Necronomicon and a huge design space for both utility and thematic element. Now the Necronomicon is the fabled book of the Old Ones and their summoning techniques, now I very much doubt you could get GGG to design an Old One to be summoned, but you can touch on the ideas of summoning. Perhaps you could have flavor text that says: "For every 50 corpses consumed, summon 10 extra zombies for 30 seconds. They don't count towards the minion cap". Or perhaps "10% chance to summon a skeleton whenever your minion kills an enemy". Of course these are my own ideas, and they do stray far from your initial idea so it's completely understandable if you just wanna brush past those ideas. But as it stands, I do think that your unique idea needs a more 'unique punch' to it. Which bring me to...

I saw that you wanted the shield to have spell damage also apply to your minions, I think that that is a wonderful idea because it means that a summoner build using your shield will have some level of gear investment past a Bones of Ullr and a few chose uniques as well as forcing a unique passive tree for summoners past the standard grab all the ES and minion nodes. This is a stat that would make it definitely deserve the title of unique, as the other stats are all really just numbers, nothing groundbreaking. Perhaps if you really want this to be a cool T1 unique, you could have spell damage apply to both minion damage and minion movement speed/life, but this is all something you'd have to negotiate with GGG. Rarity will determine just how powerful your unique will become, and if you're straight with GGG and tell them that you want a rare T1 unique chances are you'll probably get all the insane stats you want

On another matter, life vs hybrid vs ES. Now the obvious choice is ES and subsequently it's the one I recommend. What you have to realize is the fact that most summoners, if not all, are going to be a witch, or more specifically the necromancer ascendancy. ES would reach the majority of build running summoner simply because its more efficient. If you do consider ES being the shield's defense, then now its a matter of power, and a powerful negotiation tool with GGG if you want to have the other stats of your shield be bumped up. If you really want powerful gems to support your minions, then consider perhaps consider lowering the amount of ES provided, summoners don't need as much ES as other builds require as they aren't in the direct line of fire a lot of the time.

Ultimately I think that your unique definitely is crossing a fine line between 'vendor trash' and unique summoner support, so hopefully my thoughts on your unique idea would lead to something that you and everyone else is comfortable with.

I don't really play ES builds, or minions builds, or Dominating Blow, but how would Facebreakers + Dominating Blow perform with your shield? Have you considered that such an interaction could ever become OP (or future items that may disable weapons. Point being, if you stacked such items, you could drastically mitigate the downside by throwing em all on the same build.

I'm already pretty sure the answer is 'not OP', just throwing out more food for thought. Whatever the downsides may be, how will the shield play with other uniques that share that downside?

Just go crazy ;)

So you want an evil book that posses the power of the death?

Necronomicon
Fossilised Spirit Shield

Chance to Block: 22%
Armour: 666
energy Shield: 61

Requires Level 66, 141 int
3% reduced Movement Speed (Hidden)
15% increased Spell Damage

Uses both hand slots
Item has 6 Sockets and is fully linked (Hidden)
+666 to armour rating
100% of Block Chance applied to Spells
Grants level 30 Summon Skeleton
+4 to maximum number of Skeletons
Cast level 10 Vaal Summon skeleton on Block
Cast level 20 Summon Raging Spirit on minion's Death
Increases and Reductions to other Damage Types
are Transformed to apply to Minion Damage
Yours curses apply to yours minions instead
You can't Deal damage or Hit with Skills yourself