-old skills retooled to be more fun, like revive and corpse explosion have a wide radius that explode all corpses or revive all corpses in said raidius, also they have no cooldown and cost no resources, only corpses
-its a bit better than d2 since there are skills and runes that can generate corpses
-no bullshit "frozen enemies dont generate corpses" in this game
-regular skeletons dont cost corpses, and its almost like an..aura? you get 7, they are around you at all times, they respawn fast when they die(one skeleton every 1-2 seconds if that), active part of the skill has them attack anything you target for a resource cost.
- golem can generate corpses(or do other things like provide a potion like heal) with a long cooldown,
-skeleton mages are temp summons that die after like 6 seconds but do an insane crazy amount of damage and cost no corpses and can generate corpses with a rune when they die
-resource works like monk except you get more resource, use primaries to generate, you get 200, and doesnt regen naturally, but you do get a skill called devour which gives you resource for each corpse...so...even early on you can have semi unlimited resource
-only 3 curses instead of what? 12 or so in d2, but you really only gave a shit about decrepify and that's one of the 3 so we all good in the hood. I think one of the other curses has a rune that sorta works like amp damage.
-don't like the mobility skill they got, its literally wizard teleport (which i don't like at all) but with a shorter cooldown i think, but instead of resource it natively costs 5% life. you can rune out of the life cost, or double down on the life cost for more charges (quadruple down if you count using both 10% life teleports). Looks cool though.
-super early on (duh) but single target damage doesn't seem good at all, so rift bosses may be an issue. future items and skill tweaks will most likely fix this.
No necro specific items in the game yet. They get phylacteries as their specific offhand but they aren't in the drop table yet and only gambled, also no uniques yet. But the class is definitely NOT the witchdoctor, they worked to make their minion stuff function fundamentally differently than the witchdoctor, and corpses and skills feel different. Plus, witchdoctor is a ranged class, they have plenty of builds that put them in melee range sure, but they dont have any melee attacks or any of that jazz (unless you count cloud of bats rune, but thats reaching). Necromancer is kind of like crusader in a sense that it has both ranged and melee and you can use both or either. They literally have a scythe melee attack that is a resource generator, and bone armor which works like a defensive armor version of the docs soul harvest.
In summery, the d2 necromancer was more of a commander who sat back debuffing while the army kills everything. d3 necromancer is more of the star of the show using his minions(or not, one passive gives you 100% armor if you have no minions, decreasing 10% for every minion you have) but also getting into the thick of things and blowing everything up. I mean the way I played mine so far has felt more like a d2 nova sorc than a necromancer.
Totes getting the class day one before playing it, and after...fuckin duh blizzard take my money.
*edit*
rank 69, i have accomplished the highest task in diablo 3.
This character has 2 hours in total played from level 1 new character to twinked out of her mind rank sixty nine, thanks gem of ease and my witchdoctor full ancient LoN set.
