The reason why I made a change to Blood Storm is because in the Definitive Edition, all "storm" master skills for all schools of magic save for geomancy, got their damage multipliers gutted from 200 to 120 (Pyroclastic Eruption, the strongest magic damage skill in the game however, retains its 300 damage multiplier for some reason).
Blood Storm while obviously overpowered with a damage multiplier of 200, it now has an abysmal damage multiplier of 100, so even lower than all other similar master skills.
While I don't want to make it broken as it was before, I do believe the skill is now cost inefficient, so for now I've brought the damage multiplier in line with other storm skills at 120.
I'm completely aware of Warfare exponential scaling, but as I've said in the disclaimer, I need to test out everything a lot more.

Well now I feel like an idiot for suggesting you remove the damage increase to blood storm. I didn't know they straight up halfed the damage. As for summons for necromancy, that's something that honestly should've been in the game to begin with, even if only as combo skills between summoning and necromancy. The fact that you're trying to implement it means the world to me and probably a lot of other DOS2 fans. What's a necromancer without his skeleton armada (or in this case single minion).

Originally posted by Ushiwakamaru:

I didn't know they straight up halfed the damage.

It wasn't halved, multipliers make it so that damage scales exponentially, a damage multiplier of 200 actually boosted damage a lot more than just doubling it, so technically speaking, the damage of blood storm with a multiplier of 100 is less than a third of what it used to be.
Take vanilla mosquito swarm and Infect for example, the former has a dmg mult of 100, while infect has a dmg mult of 140, yet infect deals almost twice the damage of MS.
That's why even a 5% damage increase on mosquito swarm goes a long way in increasing damage output.

Regarding summons and multiple summons, the mod "Overlord Necromancy 2.0" (previous version is discontinued) allows you to have multiple skeletons running around, without increasing the summon limit. The creator did this by classifying the skeletons as "totems" instead of "summons". This does mean you can't control them, instead they act on their own (like actual totems), but it does let you have a small undead army with you.

That's very cool to know, thanks alot for the insight!
For now I'm focusing on making sure that all the changes are balanced in the DE.
After I'm done with making sure the mod is fine as it is now, I'll start working on all the new skills, I'm planning on also adding a new single target damage skill, and a necromancy themed Jump skill, on top of all the minion summons.
I'll start working on a mass summoning skill after that.

Do you have any plans to adjust grasp of the starved? It was nerfed pretty hard with the DE patch. I know it was OP before, but I think it may have been gutted too hard along with blood storm. BTW, I love the reduced CD to decaying touch and added bonus to black shroud for damage with heals. The area affect for mosqito swarm and infect make necro viable early game! Yay! Thanks for making my necro-hydro cleric a blast to play through in DE!

Originally posted by kelseyschall:

Do you have any plans to adjust grasp of the starved? It was nerfed pretty hard with the DE patch.

Nope, dmg mult of grasp was 300 in classic, they lowered it to 250, it wasn't nerfed at all basically, it will just take you couple more levels to oneshot everything, necro is still the best class late game objectively just because it has access to grasp (now that blood storm was gutted), coupled with the best scaling in the game. I think that grasp doesn't need adjustments for now.
Thanks for your feedback, sorry to let you down

No problem, I appreciate the explanation. I thought they lowered the damage further - but this seems very reasonable! I haven't quite made it to that part of the game yet, it was just anticipation based on the patch info. Where can I find infomration about the base damage and damage multipliers you are talking about? It isn't on the wiki or reddit or anywhere I've seen. Also, not necro related, but do you have any idea why they didn't reduce the damage mult of pyroclastic eruption? Was it not overpowered?

Originally posted by kelseyschall:

Where can I find infomration about the base damage and damage multipliers you are talking about?

I take all of this information directly from the game files.

Originally posted by kelseyschall:

do you have any idea why they didn't reduce the damage mult of pyroclastic eruption? Was it not overpowered?

No idea, but it shouldn't be gutted like the rest either, maybe lower the multiplier just a little, and make other storm master skills for elemental magic have the same multiplier. Magic already suffers by not dealing physical damage, no need to nerf it on top of that.
EDIT: For reference, all other elemental magic storm skills had their multipliers reduced from 200 to 120.

Hey!

First of all, thanks a million for your great work. Like everyone else, I love how you've managed to bring back that minionmancer feel.

I have a slight concern though. I'm not too far into a playthrough with a friend. I'm playing Necro and he's a backstabby rogue. I have recently unlocked and started using the "Raise Zombies", and they seem way too powerful. Each Zombie with me at lvl 6 Lone Wolf almost rivals me for health and hits like a freight train. If I raise zombies and they get to hit the same enemy, my rogue friends' backstab crits look laughable by comparison. That spell alone (the set and forget 3 zombies) does way more damage baseline than a dedicated backstab DPS rogues entire arsenal, and then I add the regular necro spells on top of this...and by the time my friend kills one or two enemies, I have wiped the remainder of the encounter.

This is without a single point into summoning and only 4 in necro and a couple into warfare.

This is such a shame because I LOVE these spells from a theme and feel perspective. A slight nerf particularly to the base DAMAGE (or damage scaling?) of the mass raise undead spells (not sure if this issue follows through to the archers and grave wardens. Hopefully not, but probably?) would go a long way since this is super tweakable upwards (if you feel your army isn't keeping up damage wise, add a point or two in summoning) with points in summoning as you've recently pointed out.

I definitely do not mean to be whining, and I hope you see this as constructive feedback to help improve the balance of what is already a fantastic mod.

I noticed you were given the tip to work the mass summons like the "overlord 2.0" mod...did you end up using it for inspiration? Because that mod blatantly says in its description it is borderline overpowered and would work well in conjunction with difficulty balancing mods.

The damage spells, the blood shift and all the "regular" summons feel perfectly balanced, I should add ^^ My only concern is about the base damage of the multi summon spells.

Originally posted by Falkor:

First of all, thanks a million for your great work. Like everyone else, I love how you've managed to bring back that minionmancer feel.

In turn, I thank you for playing with my mod! :)

Originally posted by Falkor:

I noticed you were given the tip to work the mass summons like the "overlord 2.0" mod...did you end up using it for inspiration?

Nope, I actually started working on the 2.0 version of this mod much earlier than Overlord 2.0 came out, I just figured out by myself based on that comment what I should've done to make mass summons work. I'm actually friends with Razor, the maker of Overlord 2.0

Now onto the main topic:

Originally posted by Falkor:

I have recently unlocked and started using the "Raise Zombies", and they seem way too powerful. Each Zombie with me at lvl 6 Lone Wolf almost rivals me for health and hits like a freight train. If I raise zombies and they get to hit the same enemy, my rogue friends' backstab crits look laughable by comparison.

I understand your concern, if you can, i'd like to look at your friend's build, just for the sake of making sure he's not doing something wrong, but regardless, since you're still level 6, scoundrel builds don't have access to some of the better bread and butter abilities at that level yet, and if he's not making use of warfare skills either, i can easily see why he's underperforming.
My idea behind zombies having "high" hp is that they have no armour, and will be easily CC'd, but admittedly, the AI prioritises players over summons, so they might not even bother with them at all, that could be a good reason to nerf their survivability.
As for the damage side of things, mass summon skills are very hard to balance right, it's very easy to either make them too powerful or not worth using, so I'd rather go with the former.
From my testing, playing on tactician, they are powerful but not excessively so, I have to justify the 4AP cost somehow. I'll look into adjusting their damage a bit if I receive more feedback like this on the zombies. Also, sadly, without a good base statline, summons really don't get all that better if you pump many points into summoning, so I can't really overdo it, which makes it all even harder, all the summons are balanced with 10 Summoning in mind, since it only makes sense to do so, but yeah, i will keep what you said in mind, probably do some more testing on it early on.

Thanks for your feedback!

I definitely notice the zombies' voulnerability to CC. And then there is the -50% weakness to fire, which got them killed rather quickly in my fight againts those burning skeletons in the gargoyle labyrinth.
Also, let's not forget that they can only be summoned once per battle.

Thank you for the swift feedback.

I hear where you're coming from on the balancing issues, and you are a hero for doing the difficult work, sir.

The scoundrel is starting to come into its own with some more gear (that build feels more gear dependent, but that's his choice and not a balance issue), and we swapped over to tactician difficulty because we realised we weren't and were wiping the floor with classic..

With the added CC coming in from the NPC:s at this difficulty (I can tell now that this is where you were testing and balancing. The no armor and slightly higher damage makes more sense now) as well as steering clear of summoning levels altogether they are feeling way more balanced...which makes me the happiest minion commander camper :)

I just have one follow-up question. You said:

Originally posted by freeway:

[...] All the summons are balanced with 10 Summoning in mind, since it only makes sense to do so [...]

Here, do you mean including yours? Because I totally get regular summons like the incarnate that gets a different statline altogether from 10 on. The mass summons feel at their most balanced (thus far) without a single point in summoning. Is that intentional? on the one hand is great because it frees up those points for people to diversify their build, but on the other it leaves me hesitant to put points into summoning to pump the crawler, the widow etc and even to get access to cool synergistic abilities like rallying cry and supercharger.

Originally posted by Falkor:

Thank you for the swift feedback.
Here, do you mean including yours? Because I totally get regular summons like the incarnate that gets a different statline altogether from 10 on. The mass summons feel at their most balanced (thus far) without a single point in summoning. Is that intentional?

I'm indeed referring to my mod's summons yes, since if one wanted to focus on the summoner necromancer aspect, they'd lose a large chunk of damage on their blood magic abilities (because they'd be spending points in summoning instead of warfare), at least early on where you can't really max out both summoning and warfare, later on players will be more incentivised to put points into summoning as an alternative to the usual warfare > twohanded > huntsman/scoundrel progression.

Originally posted by Falkor:

We swapped over to tactician difficulty because we realised we weren't and were wiping the floor with classic..

Ahh, that explains it, Classic difficulty is incredibly easy already, i'll always balance things around tactician, as I believe it is the only way to actually experience what the game has to offer.
In any case, I've asked other people as well as having done some more testing myself early on, i lowered the damage of the zombies by about 30%, as they were indeed a bit too powerful, especially combined with the archers starting at level 9.