Non-Raiding Necromancers

22 thread pages, me thinks someone did a no no here.

All kinds of Necromancers have come out and spoken against this change. We have given reasons why this change is inappropriate. Made suggestions on how a change of this type could be made, that is in line with the class. Requested rational for why this change was made vs. a number of other, more reasonable ways in which this could have been changed.

The most we've gotten for a response is that this a minor change where we will "maybe cast 1 less dot in your average mob situation (or just wait for a few seconds longer before engaging), and in the end it'll be pretty much the same".

Oh, and a belittling statement that, "Change is never comfortable".

Bovine excrement.

THEY AREN'T LISTENING!

This thread remains alive so that we can "vent" and that is it. Good luck to you all.

Actually what it needed was a buff to return about 50% more mana at the price of 30-60% more HP. If this nerf to the timer had ACCOMPANIED extra levels of the AA e.g. "We're adjusting the timer so that we can adjust the amount of mana returned!" that would have been reasonable.

Heck they could have also made it only work out of combat (which btw, would ACTUALLY have been the fix to address the original concern of necromancers having too much mana on raids). Instead we end up with no fix for the perceived problem and an almost broken class in some parts of the game.

Doing what I did after WoW went easy mode and nerfed time and again... voting with my feet. You'd think SOE would learn after SWG failed, EQ2 essentially failed, losing almost their entire player base to WoW at one point, and now after WoW took a page out of EQ's nerf book, people start returning, and now lets piss them off again too, old school "you're in our world now" (C) verant interactive style...

So since SOE has a LONG and distinguished record of not admitting their screw-ups and un-nerfing something after they nerf it, after 4 years of it being part of the game... farewell again.

See? Problem solved.

THEY AREN'T LISTENING!

Did you buy the expansion?? If you did then you supported these nerfs. I have 6 accounts and bought ZERO expansions. Not because the expansion is awful, because of another straw on the broken camels back with these nerfs.

Well I took a lot of heated tells from Necros on the Tunare server. A lot of them asking me how they are supposed to maintain fast groups. I feel that after hearing everyone and taking into consideration they dev's "vision" this nerf is really just hurting the class more then a better vision.

So for everyone who has a major issue with this and feels how it effects them playing our class I feel you.

Simply amazing, yet another nerf to try and equal class's playing field. Well you badly missed the mark on this one SOE go team!!!! Its just seems anymore who the most about class X get's nerfed.

You know I am warrior and i have to sit down and med from time to time ? On my mage with chorus on melody with and without a mount I have to use every mana ability i have and still have to sit out a fight or two every now and again to catch up on mana and thats 3 boxing so thats not even in a fast pulling real group.

I feel you guys are making this more of a deal then it should be necros were able to solo missions while the rest of the group was wiped for the last 3 years without any complaint of having to med or even begging for rods.

And just to be straight . I do not feel going back years later and nerfing an ability is a good thing (duel wield tanking / ISS) b ut you know sometimes it is needed.

And why in heck after all these years have you guys not got an ability like fd that works on mounts maybe that's something you should be trying to get added ?

not keeping up with group
not having fun

but caster mercs are getting fixed and need the xp more.
i'll go sit in a corner until sub(s) run out

I play a mage also(besides a necro), and there is a reason mages need to watch their mana. Necros take a long time to get up to doing good damage to a mob, you have to get several dots going on a mob. A mage can just mana dump and do very high dps quickly and that needs to be finite. A necro has no way to do high, instant quick damage to a mob, and once all our dots are on, having more mana doesn't really do much in terms of additional damage. It's a trade off, Necros can sustain damage and mana for long periods of time, Mages can do faster, higher dps burst, but will eventually have to slow down. One of the necros biggest pluses was their mana regen with lich. Now they are on par if not lower than most other casters. This nerf needs to be changed to 6mins, I don't understand what the hold up is.

Why do non necros keep coming up with stuff like, "necros were able to solo missions," I wonder? If a mission was necro soloable before, it still is after the nerf. This does not effect our short term performance as measured by killing one boss mob. We perform in that environment the same as always (ignoring the dot nerf that all dot classes just got too). It is in the sustained fast killing group that this cripples us.

To illustrate, think back to SoD and Murdunk's mission where you had 35 mobs that spawned one at a time every 45 seconds. A DPS check type of mission. It was difficult as a necromancer to get that mission done.. because the rest of the group had to carry you. We had no quickdots, we had no pet swarms, we had no deathbloom. All three of those came about to address the group necros issue with performance in groups.

Solo the deathbloom nerf will slow down the necro, as they will need to med, not especially bad, unless running lessons. It will take fun out of the class, no one likes to sit around when they could be doing something in a game.

Raid the deathbloom nerf is irritating, especially for the recently rezzed, but there are Beastlords, Chanters, Mages, Bards, and Clerics there to help support mana flow, so in the long run it isn't as crippling. Also raids are mostly about short term performance. If necro can stay in mana for 15 minutes, chances are the raid is won, or wiped.

Group the deathbloom nerf is a big step backwards, and actually should be upgraded, not nerfed. It is crippiling. As a recent example, I was doing Dead Hills Heroic adventure with a wizard... and his mana problems were much less than mine and he was doing more damage. They were burst fights, so the DPS isn't the problem, except that mana was barely an issue for him, where I was sucking fumes several times. In my mind he should have been beating me in DPS, and complaining that I must be barely casting because my mana was still high.

There were a huge number of people that did not know about the nerf before they bought the expansion.

They (SOE) knew this, and introduced the nerf in the eleventh hour. Now they are laughing all the way to the bank.

Bad form anyway you look at it.

Yeah and from the amount of tells from necro's on my server last few days kinda seeing this more of an issue then I really thought it was going to be...

This also has a silver lining. Kind of like "Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice shame on me". Next time I'm sure all those necromancers will have their eyes open, and watching every move being made. So if anything, this was a wakeup call, to not so blindly trust.

Funny thing is, I was a very happy EQ player before all this happened, just shy of 9 years played on my main account (took a 5 year break to play anarchy online, been back a couple years now). Can check all my previous posts before this all went down. Was always willing to spend time on the boards offering advice, helping to answer questions. The way they did us wrong, totally rubbed me the wrong way.

Plan now is to just dial it back from using these forums. Spend my time on the player made class forums. One stop shopping isn't always best, mom & pop places then suffer. Gotta diversify where I get my information from. But when it comes time for beta again, make sure I pop in here, and get my invite. Never gonna trust em after this, so will make sure I'm always joining in for beta. Would suggest the same for everyone else, even if you don't have time to log in an play beta, just access to the beta forums can be invaluable.

There was plenty of information and feedback given in beta and most of it was ignored. Beta is useless when they don't listen.

Piestro -

Why do you keep popping in here and commenting on the frivolous outlying fluffy stuff? Many posters have directly asked you and SOE questions, yet you keep dancing around not answering them better than any of the politicians we have in Washington.

Your title says that you are "Community Relations". It seems to me, and possibly many others, that we have a difference of opinion what that means. If you can not answer the questions directly asked of you, please be good enough to go get someone who can.

SOE's lack of actual true communication leaves a lot to be desired. Token half-youknowwhat responses are a huge part of the frustration the community is feeling over this fiasco.

Very directly, Piestro - Is it the position of SOE that the player community, especially those most affected by this change, deserves less than an honest discussion about what has happened and why?

The reason for this change has been very clearly stated, to make mana more of a resource again. My responses have been for specific reasons, to deal with quite a bit of misinformation that is being thrown around. While the Deathbloom changes are not liked (reductions in power rarely are), they do not destroy the Necromancer class.That isn't to say every post in this thread is like that, there is quite a bit of more reasonable discussion. I've also popped in on one occasion to clear up why Necros don't like mounts, and another to explain a change that happened 6 months ago.

That being said, I continue to listen to feedback and convey it to both the team and SOE as a whole. There isn't really much more to say at this time.

Edit: removed extraneous words

Pie maybe you can chime in on "mana/endurance" being a resource for other classes since the inception of OOC regen in the group game basically threw that out the window. Ever since it came about no one really uses "mana/endurance" as a resource, everyone basically goes full bore as long as they can at max level and then power meds via OOC regen. This is why for the past 8 years or however long its been you hear nuke classes complaining about tons of nukes that are never used and are worthless (because their only value was efficiency which again went out the window long ago and thus they never get uses) or why melee are pleading to go back to their sustained roots or have worthwhile spammable sustained abilities added back or when melee complain that why would they use this inferior dps disc with a faster reuse that shares a timer with a bigger dps and longer timer ability. Those spells and discs no longer have a use for 99% of players because you guys threw managing mana/endurance out the window when OOC regen came about.

The nature of necro dps prevents us for burning through mana, IE mana dumping, for more of a reward like heals, aggro and other forms of dps can. So we sit there looking guilty with mana to spare not because we have something they don't regen wise when you look at the big picture but because we simply can't dump our mana for more reward so we sustain what we can do instead of winning the spike game of healing, tanking or dps that the group game is. We are limited by our spells not our mana so to speak. So why are grouping necros, which already are held back by the very nature of "damage over time" spells, suddenly being forced to go back and manage their "resource" when others are not? Healers, tanks and other dps should not be able to go full bore for 10-20 minutes or more at a clip and then be rewarded with power medding via OOC regen if necros version of OOC regen, which is what deathbloom is for grouping necros, can't. They to should be forced to have to use the lower dps or whatever by using more efficient nukes, heals and aggro abilities. Sorry guys its time to cut back on the amount of mobs killed in X amount of time so you can "manage" your resources better in the group game and not simply burn threw them as fast as possible in every scenario there is. Managing a resource is adapting and changing how its used based on difference situations, not doing the same thing every time regardless of the setting like EVERY CLASS in the group game does since OOC regen came about.

No one in their right mind would revert this game back to pre OOC regen, it would kill the game and piss every other class off. But by nerfing Deathbloom this drastically thats exactly what the team is doing to necros and necros alone. Dots and swarm pets take time to do their job the trade off for that efficiency and sustained. Now on top of that trade off we now also get to manage our mana in the group game like its 2004 when everyone else now gets to burn burn burn and just count on OOC regen. So either nerf OOC regen to its even again, which is ludicrous, or reconsider this piss poor nerf.

Just because other classes can still burn threw their mana/endurance and thus not hold on to it looking guilty doesn't mean they are any less guilty of not managing their resource. In fact OOC regen and the nature of the game favors burning thru the resource as fast as possible for the most reward from OOC regen, thus totally negating any management by making choices about using more efficient nukes, heals or aggro or by leaving some out for lesser performance. Instead you burn thru them as fast as possible and manipulate ooc regen every so often by waiting for tic of regen now and then or just sync up medding as a group and burn burn burn. Necros are left in the dust with this method which is what inspired deathbloom 4+ years ago.

You don't know because you DON"T play one like 99% of the necro MAINS in this forum do, as you clearly stated, your necro is your 2nd character, are you as versed as many players here? I have no idea, but I can gather that if you were you would see this nerf is overboard, and really does impede the group necro.

in the bolded statement from your quote, you forgot to add the target was the RAIDING necromancer, which this did not harm, really at all, there's too many tools available to really run oom in a raid setting, at least that's been the case on all the T3/T4 RoF/current raids I've been on since this nerf was implemented.

IMO, you guys have lost a ton of credibility in being able to properly balance stuff, you missed the mark on this one, big time.